Tag Archives: process

How to Run Faster

by StephenMulga Posted on May 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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If you want to become a better runner, the obvious answer is to run more. Practice, practice, practice. Well, maybe not. It turns out that more time laced up, running longer distances, may not be the best way to improve. These days, many athletes are ditching long runs for interval training—and for good reason. Pushing the human body to maximum capacity, for shorter amounts of time, forces it to adapt quickly and could even change its physiology in the process.

Interval training helps the cardiovascular system by improving the body’s ability to use oxygen and insulin. It makes arteries more elastic than slower-paced exercise does, and some say it helps burn belly-fat. It isn’t just for athletes: Scientists in Denmark have found that patients with Type 2 Diabetes who did intervals of intense walking had enhanced fitness and better blood-glucose levels compared to a control group that walked at a moderate pace for an extended period of time.

If you’re not one for getting sweaty, running isn’t unlike the many other hobbies at which you might be desperate to improve. There’s tons of emerging science that can help show you how to get better—and that explains what separates the good from the best. On this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, musician and neuroscientist Indre Viskontas talks with Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson about what it takes to become great. You can listen below:

If you’re familiar with the 10,000-hour theory from Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, you may have heard of Ericsson’s work. Gladwell argued that we can become experts at a sport, musical instrument, or hobby in part by logging more than 10,000 hours doing it. Ericsson, who says Gladwell “misinterpreted” some of his work, argues that it’s not merely time that’s important. He points to what’s called “deliberate practice“—putting mindfulness into our chord progressions, tennis back swings, or Spanish vocabulary review—as one of the keys to becoming an expert. People often mistake the results of deliberate practice for raw talent, Ericsson says.

“It’s the belief that people are born with this thing, and it’s their job to find it,” he says. “We are arguing that you need to build it.”

In Ericsson’s new book, Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise—co-authored with Robert Pool—he argues that becoming great at an activity is not about practicing hard enough to fulfill one’s potential, but practicing well enough to maintain motivation. And as for the willpower supposedly needed to become an expert? Ericsson balks at that idea and instead says that experts produce a continued enjoyment in their playing or performance, which leads them engage in yet more deliberate practice. So in short: If you don’t like what you are doing, you’ll probably have trouble becoming great at it.

There’s another habit that Ericsson says is helpful for improving performance: rest. In the early 1990’s, he and his team found that elite violinists slept an hour more each night than average ones—and they frequently took naps, as well. So as you strive for greatness, you might want to consider spending a little less time practicing and a bit more time sleeping. Are you listening, Donald Trump?

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow, like us on Facebook, and check out show notes and other cool stuff on Tumblr.

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How to Run Faster

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Welcome to the New Mother Jones

by HeleneAldridge5 Posted on May 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Forty years ago, operating out of a dingy office above a McDonald’s on San Francisco’s Market Street, a group of writers and editors inspired by Watergate decided to launch the equivalent of a crowd-funded media startup—a spiffy-looking new magazine, devoted to investigative journalism and supported by its readers. From the very first day, Mother Jones has emphasized making in-depth journalism look good, because powerful storytelling shouldn’t feel like homework.

In keeping with that spirit, we’ve decided to celebrate our 40th anniversary with a new design. These days when a magazine overhauls its look, the process normally works something like this: A new editor or creative director walks in, decides whatever came before was crap, hires an outside design firm or three, commissions a custom typeface or maybe 10, gets a team of web designers and app developers to translate that vision to the digital space, and lines up some celebrity buzz, and many, many months later, voilà! A redesign is born.

We did pretty much the opposite. First, except for the inspirational input of Luke Shuman, who helped our brilliant creative director, Ivylise Simones, design our new logo, we did this all in-house. We did it with the resources at hand. We did it in a few all-too-short months, amid our already awesomely hectic jobs. And, though we are over the moon about the new look for both the magazine and the site you are now on, we reverse-engineered the typical process, beginning with article pages on our mobile site and working back up the food chain, as it were, to the home page of MotherJones.com and then on to the print magazine. We did it that way, in part, because for far too long these three “products” looked nothing like each other; they’d each grown uniquely fusty. And we did it that way because every month 9 million people read our journalism—multiple new stories each day—via their desktops, laptops, tablets, and phones.

We wanted to give those 9 million people a better experience; one that was clean, easier on the eyes. We ditched a lot of clutter. Buttons for bygone social networks and services were banished from the page. So were an overwhelming number of links on the home page. We even cut down on the number of ad units per page.

We also wanted to make it easier for you to find our one-of-a-kind coverage about food politics and science and our signature investigative deep-dives. Both now appear on our navigation bar at the top of each page.

A new home page feature, called Exposure, will give you a dose of our commitment to photojournalism (the stunning pictures in our feature on Flint’s toxic water crisis are an excellent example). And for signature stories, we’ll deploy a photographically lush wide format, which will look eye-popping on your laptop and your cellphone.

We are also obsessed with our new favorite color, orange. We’ve used it to make links and other text easier for you to spot. And we are thrilled to be using a new display font called Mallory, from the Frere-Jones Type studio, that, in the words of the designers, “was built to be a reliable tool, readily pairing with other typefaces to organize complex data and fine-tune visual identities.” Our body font is Calluna.

Okay, now back to the “investigative journalism” part. Like most in our trade, we do a lot of things these days. But at the core of what we do, and why you read Mother Jones, is the promise that we’ll rake the muck, that we’ll afflict the comfortable and, as our namesake put it, “fight like hell for the living.” Our dedication to investigative journalism ripped the lid off the Ford Pinto cover-up soon after the magazine launched in 1976, and we exposed Mitt Romney’s “47 percent” remarks during the last election—a story that, though it arguably altered the course of history, notably never took a spin through print.

Today, when a Pandora’s box full of vulgarity, obstructionism, and authoritarianism has been let loose upon the political landscape, when spin has tucked tail in the face of bald-faced lies, when people from every walk of life and every political persuasion feel like the deck has been stacked against them and the dealer is cutting cards to boot, the fight for justice is more important than ever.

We have your back and we hope you have ours. This publication—which might more properly be dubbed a nonprofit, digital-first news organization with a magazine’s secret sauce, if that weren’t such a mouthful—has always relied on reader support. It was readers who pitched in eight years ago when we wanted to expand past a six-times-a-year collection of freelance pieces to become what the PEN American Center recently called “an internationally recognized powerhouse” that often puts “more well-known and deep-pocketed news divisions to shame.” You built this.

We’ve tripled the size of the newsroom and grown our audience twenty­fold, but we’re not done yet. In the coming months we’ll unveil some truly blockbuster investigations as well as our ambitions to be far bigger and better still. We’ll be asking for your help and your input on how to get there. You can read why you should consider joining our community of sustainers here. Let’s fight the good fight, together.

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Welcome to the New Mother Jones

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Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

by NicoleIrons Posted on May 12, 2016

Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

By on May 12, 2016 12:57 pmShare

This story was originally published by Mother Jones and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday released the final version of new federal rules intended to curb emissions of a powerful greenhouse gas. Methane, which is the main component of natural gas, had previously been unregulated. There’s a mounting pile of evidence suggesting that as the United States relies increasingly on gas to produce electricity, methane emissions are much higher than most people expected them to be.

That’s a problem for the fight against climate change. Methane emissions are far lower than carbon dioxide emissions, and methane survives in the atmosphere for a relatively short period of time. But methane is far more effective at trapping heat than CO2 is, which makes it a significant near-term warming threat. As I reported in a deep dive on methane yesterday:

When unburned methane leaks into the atmosphere, it can help cause dramatic warming in a relatively short period of time. Methane emissions have long been a missing piece in the country’s patchwork climate policy …

The natural gas system produces methane emissions at nearly every step of the process, from the well itself to the pipe that carries gas into your home. Around two-thirds of those emissions are “intentional,” meaning they occur during normal use of equipment. For example, some pneumatic gauges use the pressure of natural gas to flip on or off and emit tiny puffs of methane when they do so. The other one-third comes from so-called “fugitive” emissions, aka leaks, that happen when a piece of equipment cracks or otherwise fails.

The lack of regulations on methane was one reason why President Barack Obama’s climate strategy, which hinges on swapping the country’s coal consumption for natural gas, has been frowned upon by some environmentalists. Even today’s regulations are just partial solution, since they only apply to new and modified natural gas infrastructure, not systems that already exist. And by some analysts’ reckoning, more than 70 percent of gas-sector methane emissions from now until 2025 will come from sources that already exist.

Still, the regulation announced today achieves one of the final remaining big items on Obama’s climate checklist. It aims to reduce gas-sector methane emissions 40-45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025 by tightening the allowed emissions from pumps, compressors, wells, and other infrastructure; requiring more frequent surveys for leaks; and implementing a data-gathering survey that will give officials and companies a better understanding of just how much methane leakage there really is. The EPA expects the regulations to cost $530 million by 2025, but produce $690 million in environmental benefits.

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Obama’s latest climate move: Cracking down on methane from fracking

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New documentary gives us an idea of what will survive climate change

by hattiepullman4 Posted on May 5, 2016

New documentary gives us an idea of what will survive climate change

By on May 5, 2016Share

“I had to make a place in my heart for despair, and just keep doing the work,” climate activist Tim DeChristopher tells the camera. The statement is a perfect encapsulation of Gasland director Josh Fox’s latest documentary. But despite DeChristopher’s seemingly dreary outlook, Fox’s ode to a post-climate change world is not all doom and gloom.

The film, under the Seussian title How to Let Go of the World and Love All the Things Climate Can’t Change, takes Fox across 12 countries on six continents. He highlights communities that are fighting back against fossil fuel extraction and seeks out the things that climate change can’t destroy — like human ingenuity. DeChristopher, for example, bid on federal leases and effectively blocked the sale of thousands of acres of canyonlands in Utah to oil development. How to Let Go is currently screening across the U.S., and Fox is touring with it to meet with activists while promoting the film’s message.

HBO Documentary Films

The film is a departure from the 2010 documentary Gasland, which earned Fox an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary and a reputation as a prominent voice in the movement to ban the process of hydraulic fracturing, bka fracking, across the U.S. In contrast to Gasland, which blew the whistle on an at-the-time unknown extraction technique, Fox’s new film takes a fresh angle on the well-known problem of climate change, and focuses, he says, on solutions.

“What does have an effect is mobilizing in the streets, disrupting the system in some way, through non-violent political action,” he told Grist. “If we had 5 percent of the U.S. population in the streets, you’d see real action.”

So what are the things that climate change can’t destroy? Well, spoiler alert: besides the good attitudes of an army of activists, not a whole lot. But the film does give audiences a crash course in climate organizing to adapt to those changes. In one of the film’s most moving storylines, a group of Pacific Islanders stage a demonstration in traditional canoes at the world’s largest coal port in Newcastle, Australia. With police boats zooming past them to kick up waves, one of the canoes capsizes, forcing its weeping rowers back to shore. But the canoe, quickly repaired, returns to blockade the 40-foot-tall coal tanker. It’s an apt metaphor for the struggle of a tiny group of people who are up against a global catastrophe.

HBO Documentary Films

“We need to win from within,” says Mika Maiava, one of the rowers leading the charge. “So even if the people look at you like you’re losing, you’re not losing, because you already won in your heart. That energy you give out will change someone else’s heart.”

Fox also interviews New Yorkers recovering from the unexpected disaster of Hurricane Sandy, mothers campaigning for their children’s health in the smog-filled streets of Beijing, and other on-the-ground climate warriors. The result is a diverse overview of what people are doing around the world to make the reality of climate change a little less painful.

“What we’re looking at right now is that we are disastrously late in addressing climate change and that extreme measures need to be taken,” Fox said. “Even that won’t stop the havoc, but we have to examine our own lives and the way Americans live.”

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Conservatives Are Drooling Yet Again Over Hillary’s Email Account

by AraceliClucas Posted on May 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Several years ago a Romanian hacker broke into the email accounts of several high-ranking US officials. One of the email accounts he hacked belonged to Clinton pal Sidney Blumenthal, and it was this hack that eventually led to the revelation that Hillary Clinton had a private email address.

In early April he was extradited from Bucharest, where he had been serving a seven-year prison sentence, and conservatives have been drooling with anticipation ever since. Well, guess what? It turns out the hacker claimed in a jailhouse interview that he had, indeed, downloaded “gigabytes” of Hillary Clinton’s email. Imagine that! Let’s listen in:

“It was like an open orchid on the Internet,” Marcel Lehel Lazar, who uses the devilish handle Guccifer, told NBC News in an exclusive interview from a prison in Bucharest. “There were hundreds of folders.”

….A source with knowledge of the probe into Clinton’s email setup told NBC News that with Guccifer in U.S. custody, investigators fully intend to question him about her server.

When pressed by NBC News, Lazar, 44, could provide no documentation to back up his claims, nor did he ever release anything on-line supporting his allegations, as he had frequently done with past hacks. The FBI’s review of the Clinton server logs showed no sign of hacking, according to a source familiar with the case.

Well, I’m sure he’s telling the truth, not just making up shit. Naturally Fox News is on the case with a more recent jailhouse interview:

Wearing a green jumpsuit, Lazar was relaxed and polite in the monitored secure visitor center, separated by thick security glass. In describing the process, Lazar said he did extensive research on the web and then guessed Blumenthal’s security question. Once inside Blumenthal’s account, Lazar said he saw dozens of messages from the Clinton email address.

Asked if he was curious about the address, Lazar merely smiled. Asked if he used the same security question approach to access the Clinton emails, he said no — then described how he allegedly got inside.

“For example, when Sidney Blumenthal got an email, I checked the email pattern from Hillary Clinton, from Colin Powell from anyone else to find out the originating IP. … When they send a letter, the email header is the originating IP usually,” Lazar explained.

He said, “then I scanned with an IP scanner.” Lazar emphasized that he used readily available web programs to see if the server was “alive” and which ports were open. Lazar identified programs like netscan, Netmap, Wireshark and Angry IP, though it was not possible to confirm independently which, if any, he used.

In the process of mining data from the Blumenthal account, Lazar said he came across evidence that others were on the Clinton server. “As far as I remember, yes, there were … up to 10, like, IPs from other parts of the world,” he said.

So there you have it. Not only did Lazar hack into the Clinton server, but nearly a dozen other hackers did too. And every single one of them, apparently, has said nothing about it until now. Nor have they released any actual hacked emails. And they were all able to do it without leaving behind even the slightest trace.

Nonetheless, the resident expert at Fox News called Lazar’s story “plausible.”

Sigh. I’m sure this will lead to yet another whirlwind of emailgate activity. Buckle your seat belts.

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Conservatives Are Drooling Yet Again Over Hillary’s Email Account

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Party Unity Time Is Coming Soon for Bernie and Hillary

by AudreaMinchin Posted on April 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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Greg Sargent thinks that Bernie Sanders has already conceded to the reality that he’s not going to win the Democratic nomination. He’ll continue to go through the motions for a while, but will then start up “serious unity talks” with the Clinton campaign:

At that point, the question of how the Clinton campaign, not just the Sanders campaign, handles the conclusion to this whole process will play a big role in influencing what happens. It’s still unclear whether the Clinton camp will see a need to make any concessions to Sanders in order to win over his supporters and unite the party. But it will be in the interests of Clinton and the Democratic Party to ensure that this process goes as smoothly as possible. They’ll likely conclude that there is greater risk in not making any meaningful gestures towards unity than in making them. What this might look like is the subject of a future post.

Speaking very generally, it’s obviously in Hillary Clinton’s interest to have Bernie on her side. But what kind of concessions can she make, if indeed Bernie demands some? She can’t credibly make any major policy switches, but perhaps she could make some minor ones. She could make concessions on future appointments, but that would have to be done privately, which is always a danger. What else?

My own take is that Hillary probably doesn’t have to do very much. Past candidates haven’t, after all. In theory, the difference this time is that Bernie’s followers are so loyal and committed that they’ll withhold their votes if Bernie even hints at it, but I just don’t buy that. By the time September rolls around, the prospect of a Trump presidency will have every liberal in the country fired up. Hillary’s weaknesses simply won’t seem important anymore. If Bernie seems even slightly less than completely enthusiastic about her campaign, that will reflect back on him, not Hillary.

So…I think there’s less here than meets the eye. Hillary and Bernie will make nice, because that’s what candidates do when primaries are over, and perhaps Hillary will make a few small concessions—either privately or otherwise. Then it will be all hands on deck to defeat Trump. No one who doesn’t want to be drummed out of the liberal movement entirely can afford not to be a part of that. Bernie Sanders, of all people, knows this very well. When the time comes, he’ll be there. He’s much too decent a person to sulk in his tent just because he lost a campaign that he never expected to win in the first place.

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Party Unity Time Is Coming Soon for Bernie and Hillary

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Half of U.S. oil is now fracked — but it might not stay that way

by JerrellRosas Posted on March 28, 2016

Half of U.S. oil is now fracked — but it might not stay that way

By on 28 Mar 2016commentsShare

The U.S. has quickly become a global fracking powerhouse, and it’s not slowing down.

According to a March report from the Energy Information Administration, hydraulic fracturing now accounts for more than half of all U.S. oil output per day, compared with 2 percent in 2000. America’s 300,000 fracking wells pumped out 4.3 million barrels per day in 2015 — a staggering figure when compared to the 102,000 barrels a day in 2000. That growth has allowed the U.S. to “increase its oil production faster than at any time in its history,” the report notes, and places it third in the world for oil production, trailing only behind Saudi Arabia and Russia.

But fracking, a process that involves injecting a chemical cocktail into deep underground reserves of shale deposits to extract oil and gas — isn’t without its dark side. It risks water contamination and its methane leaks are poised to worsen climate change. And a growing body of scientific evidence has found that operations associated with fracking — specifically, the disposal of chemically laden wastewater into underground wells — can contribute to seismic activity.

The next person to occupy the Oval Office could decide whether this fracking boom will go bust. Or, at least, a Democratic president may try to stop it, as fracking emerges as a major concern in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Bernie Sanders has proposed to ban the process entirely through executive action, but his proposal could be as controversial as the drilling process itself: For instance, Mother Jones warned that if fracking were banned, consumers and operators would turn back to coal for energy — a fuel that releases less methane but is the world’s main climate change culprit. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton has also struck a harder tone on fracking than she did as secretary of state, now claiming that as president she will enact limiting regulations on fracking operators that “by the time we get through all of my conditions, I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”

Either way, a ban on fracking won’t have the support of Congress. For the foreseeable future, fracking — and its side effects — will continue to be a powerhouse, and a problem.

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Half of U.S. oil is now fracked — but it might not stay that way

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The Washington Post Asked Donald Trump If He Would Nuke ISIS. This Was His Response.

by JaunitaJ21 Posted on March 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Noted without comment, Donald Trump’s comments on ISIS to the Washington Post yesterday.

RYAN: You MUFFLED mentioned a few minutes earlier here that you would knock ISIS. You’ve mentioned it many times. You’ve also mentioned the risk of putting American troop in a danger area. If you could substantially reduce the risk of harm to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out ISIS?

TRUMP: I don’t want to use, I don’t want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, I’m a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, he’s a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million dollars’ worth of negative ads on me. That’s putting MUFFLED…

RYAN: This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS?

CROSSTALK

TRUMP: I’ll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I’m talking to?

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The Washington Post Asked Donald Trump If He Would Nuke ISIS. This Was His Response.

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The Green Gold in Your Wedding Dress

by EstellaMassie Posted on March 21, 2016

Keeping your wedding dress forever might seem like a good idea the day after your wedding when you’re still euphoric after your wonderful event. But within a few years or maybe even a few weeks, you may be wondering just what you’re going to do with a big white gown that needs to be kept in an airtight plastic bag for the rest of its life.

Are you going to move itaround from place to place, then cram it into the back of a closet somewhere? Or maybe stuff it into a trunk in the attic where you’ll forget all about it? Or pay to store it at a facility that will keep it pristine until maybe a daughter or niece or godchild gets engaged?

Why not take amore eco-friendlyapproach, one that may generate a little cash for you, too?

Enjoy your dress, then find a way to repurpose it sooner rather than later.

Here’s how:

Turn it into a cocktail dress:Depending on the style of your dress, you should be able to shorten it or dye it. There are many tailors who could do the job so well for you, you’d never be able to tell that the garment originally was a wedding gown. Some dry cleaning facilities will dye fabrics if you prefer to have a dress that’s a color other than white. Take a look at 11 different wedding dress transformations Cosmopolitan featured recently.

Re-use the material:If your dress has a long train for a big flowing skirt, that material could pretty easily be converted into a shawl or shoulder wrap, a short jacket for evening wear or even fancy napkins and a tablecloth. Check out the free skirt sewing patterns on So-Sew-Easy.com. If you’d rather not sew something yourself, have a tailor do it for you. It’s pretty straightforward to convert fabric into a shawl or wrap, but Prom DIY puts up the instructions on YouTubehere.

Donate it:Search “donate wedding dress + your locale” and you’ll find women’s shelters and organizations that help girls who need prom dresses. You can also donate your dress to Fairy Tale Brides, a non-profit that re-sells the dresses at reasonable prices, then donate their profits to charities that include St. Judes children’s Research Hospital, Suited for Change and the Kids Network. You can download a donation form on their website here.

Rent it:You can rent a gown to wear or you can rent out your own gown. A surprising number of online companies make this process easy, from Rent the Runway to Borrowing Magnoliato Pre-Owned Wedding Dresses.

Sell it:Many of the online companies mentioned above will buy your wedding gown from you and relieve you of all responsibility to ever have to take care of it again. Given the care with which most gowns are made, they should be able to stand up to at least ten weddingsso why not let them? Of course, you can also put your dress on EBay or Craig’s List, sell it at a local consignment shop, or let your Facebook community know it’s for sale. Agree on a price you think is fair, then enjoy the pictures and the memories, as well as the thought that someone else is extending the life of your lovely gown.

Related
10 Easy Ways to Make Your Wedding More Eco-Friendly
25 DIY Wedding Ideas

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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The Green Gold in Your Wedding Dress

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Hydroponics kit takes the dirty work out of kitchen gardening

by MackenzTAVY Posted on March 16, 2016

Hydroponics kit takes the dirty work out of kitchen gardening

By on 16 Mar 2016commentsShare

Here’s a new project to join the ranks of your Shiitake log, sourdough starter, and alfalfa sprout operation: an indoor hydroponics kit.

The practice of hydroponics — a fancy term for growing plants in water and nutrients instead of soil — dates back centuries, according to Fast Company. Now, IKEA is jumping on the bandwagon in the hopes of starting an in-the-home hydroponics revolution. Its indoor gardening kit is scheduled for release in April.

IKEA’s ad above shows the process of starting a soilless garden operation on your kitchen table, from seed to majestic lettuce leaf. The time-lapse video, set to a big band tune, offers a peek into just how much labor it takes to grow a salad. The starring actress provides her plants with TLC: watering them, turning on grow lights, and even playing the recorder to encourage the little sprouts to grow.

Sure, the grow lights use more energy to produce salad greens than the sun’s free, ever-giving rays. But with winter weather or lack of space soiling many of our garden plans, countertop hydroponics — and soil-based projects like growing herbs on your windowsill — provide us with ways to grow our own food no matter where we live. (IKEA’s Swedish homeland, for one, relies on imported food due to its short growing season.)

After all, there might be only one thing better than farm-to-table: table-to-table.

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