Friday's Brain: Vast, Cool, Sympathetic.

[elfs]

PASWOs behind the break. The public stuff is good, clean fun.

Break Free of the Tyranny of the Clock

Zen Habits reminds us of simpler pleasures: do less. Take naps. Ignore the clock, your ancestors didn't evolve to live with one, they evolved to live with the sun and the rain, the day and the night. Good stuff here.

How We Wreck Our feet With Every Step

My physical therapist gave me the advice to wear shoes as little as possible, saying "You walk wrong. It's the shoes. Our feet aren't built to wear shoes." This article echoes what she said pretty convincingly: We spent the first 125,000 years of existence shoeless, and that's what our feet have evolved to do: walk barefoot.

All 120 Crayola Colors, With Color Codes

Pretty! Useful! Geeky!

Five More Principles of Effective Web Design

Color experimentation, Marketing patterns, Clarity, User Experience: the stuff we're supposed to think about when we're also thinking about concepts, components, and composition, or contrast, repetition, alignment, proximity.

How users seek information

Four different kinds of users and the way they navigate your website, and how to meet the needs of those users.

Kinda Sorta Good News

Rush calls on Republicans his listeners to riot in November

Rush Limbaugh "dreams" that his listeners would take up the challenge of making sure that America sees riots at the Democratic National Convention, to provide a contrast with Republicans: "We don't riot. We don't burn our cars. We don't burn down our houses. We don't kill our children. We don't do half the things the American left does." Yeah, because the gods know that Seattle, a pretty damned lefty town, is full of burned-out cars, burned-out houses, and dead children. (hat tip to Jay Lake)

American Family Association says Gay-Straight Alliances are "Illegal."

Matt Staver goes for the merely dumb by repeating ancient lies about the Day of Silence ^[?] about it's supposed "disruptiveness" (in fact, students are actively encouraged to be non-disruptive and to participate in class as needed), but he really reaches for teh stoopid when he argues that by allowing students to participate in organized events like the DoS schools are breaking the law. He argues that because half the states require abstinenence-only education, discussing homosexuality is discussing sex, which is not abstinence, and, uh... Man, I'm not sure where he's going with that. (via Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Your link about how we should go barefoot more often reminded me of a website I found a while back. Basically some company has made a set of Vibram soles that they are making as much like being barefoot as possible. Their website is: http://www.vibramfivefingers.com/

They are actually surprisingly comfortable, I managed to find a store that stocked them near where I live. (I don't think near really actually counts, I had to drive more than an hour away to get to the store.)

Chris

[(Anonymous)]

That teaches me to not even read the link you post before commenting on it... Now I discover that the story mentioned Vibram Five Fingers.

[lisakit.livejournal.com]

I've always hated shoes. I already knew I walk much better without them and it's part of why my pain is down on weekends. When I'm able to hike I do so mostly barefooted, even on rocky ground. The only times I've ever actually injured my feet were when I was wearing shoes. Without them I'm able to feel the surface I'm stepping on in time to stop putting my weight down if there's a hazzard I didn't see. And your bare foot can bend around things like sharp stones and nails laying wrong.

But then, as I mentioned, I hate shoes. Horrible torture devices they are. Even if spiky heels are kinda fun.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Birkenstocks are also designed to be as barefoot-like as possible, and I very much like them. Some people have told me Birks don't work for them. I don't know whether this is a problem of nature (Birks work for some natural foot shapes and not others) or nurture (if you don't grow up in Birks, your feet may become poorly shaped to handle them later).

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

Birks slide around enough that they chafe my soles until they feel burnt, but I can walk barefoot even on cement without that happening. I wonder if it has to do with whether one's feet point straight?

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Or maybe how much your toes curl and grip when you walk? Or how much narrower the bases of your toes are than the tips (given the ridges in the shoes made to set into the gap)?

[tamsinj.livejournal.com]

i never wear shoes at work, or home.. only to go about outside. i've been looking for the vivo shoes here for sometime as they sound really perfect.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

I just bought the Vibram shoes today, and took them for a five-kilometer test walk. Amazingly comfortable! My ankles are quite sore, though, as are my toes, as I was forced to use muscles that are inactive when wearing shoes. Plus it was odd to feel the texture of the surface you're walking on (gravel, gratings, concrete)

[(Anonymous)]

I bought a pair today, and I can see that they'll be annoying to put on for some time, due to decades of toe-crowding that a few months of wearing Keen shoes hasn't had time to relax; my little toes are habitually curled in toward the next toe, and as a result they're hard to get into the last toe of the shoe. But they're quite comfortable, and I expect that they'll make up for the damper my compression stockings have had on any kind of barefoot walking.

[gromm.livejournal.com]

Break Free of the Tyranny of the Clock

Okay, but first I'm going to have to break free of the tyranny of work, money, social expectations, and daylight.

I for one, have a tendency towards keeping 25 hour days if I let it. It doesn't work very well.