Old School Commercials: Crossfire

Good Eats

Learning our place in the cosmos

No, we humans are not the center of the universe.

He Shoots! He Scores!

Suggestions to rename “Disgusta” aren’t much better

Steps for a better self

          Everyday outside the work environment, there are stories documenting the pressure of the ever-faster pace of life that leaves individuals with poor life balance feeling they have little or no time for personal interests, relationships, family, or even health.  In this situation, it is easy to lose sight of what is important and to find it difficult to know which direction to take to make things better.
          Because self confidence and feeling good has a major 'hormonal' element, you can change the way you feel by re-living good times. If you can remember a time you felt really self confident, then excellent - use that! If not, then use a time you felt contented or happy. Taking deliberate control of your thoughts and emotions will have a huge impact on your self confidence and other areas of your life.

            When you feel self-conscious, (you can usually tell because you start to feel anxious), choose something outside of yourself to focus on and study it in detail. For example: examine a door, look at the different textures and shades of color, wonder about who made it and how and so on. The important thing is that you're learning how to keep your attention off yourself.

             Social self confidence can be difficult to find sometimes because it is unclear what you are 'supposed to do'. In this event, concentrate on what your purpose in the situation is. People are often most comfortable with others when working towards a common goal. The common goal of socializing could be making friends, the exchange of mutually beneficial information, expanding your knowledge of different types of people... it could be whatever you want it to be! The key is to have an aim. Challenging your own assumptions about yourself and other people can really help build self confidence.            

Marital Psychology

            It has been suggested that early experiences in families may be related to one’s parenting as an adult. Conceptual models were tested that investigated how personality and marital relationships are linked to parenting within and between generations.

           Relationships are an essential part of our lives, from family and friends to partners and spouses. We have a natural tendency to develop intimate and intense relationships with a few select individuals, which can bring joy and happiness. Difficulties in relationships are one of the most common causes of unhappiness, and often brings people into therapy
            To attain a deep understanding of the relationship between women and men, it seems to us essential that the issue be situated within larger biological issues, namely the comparative characterization of the human animal and the general significances of sex and sociality, in the living world. In all societies, women and men enter into individualized marital alliances, which entail entitlements and obligations recognized and acknowledged by the marrying couple and by others. A central component of marital alliance is that it bestows legitimate sexual access (often, but not always, exclusive). Not coincidentally, marriage is also the relationship within which reproduction is deemed legitimate, normal, or appropriate, and marriage entails the expectation that the couple's reciprocal obligations will extend far beyond conception. In other words, the relationship between marital partners develops, in the event of reproduction, into a relationship of biparental obligations. Moreover, marital alliance is the relationship that determines and/or legitimizes the cross-generational transfer of heritable material and social resources.             

Money and Psychology

If psychological factors influence your spending, credit reduction programs are like using perfume to cover body odor: they will treat only the symptoms, not the root cause.   

Psychology and overweight.

Approximately 135 million adults in the United States are overweight. That's 64.5 percent of the population. Of all U.S. adults, 4.7 percent or about 10 million are morbidly obese

Very many people engage in dieting.  Health professionals could be forgiven for assuming that reducing diets are for fat people.  However, this is far from the case. Up to one third of men and women in the western world is said to be overweight.  Yet twice as many believe that they weigh more than they should.  Thinking that one is overweight is more common in normal weight women than in men.  Moreover, not only do these normal weight people believe they weigh too much, many also have lives that are in some way restricted by worry about weight. There is no diet program nor diet pill that will yield permanent weight loss unless you are willing and able to process and resolve the psychological issues that you have concerning your extra pounds.

The popularity of dieting is fuelled by several factors, the first being a national aversion to fatness. This attitude sets in at a very young age.  Schoolchildren in one study showed a stronger aversion to being overweight than to being blind or physically crippled, Even children as young as 8 are restricting their food intake and by age 15 one in three has been on a diet.

Dieting also changes the way we feel about our body. 

The terrible internal conflicts which are the result of food restraint are a source of continual stress.  All dieters score higher than non dieters on measures of emotional agitation and are more likely to show impaired mental performance.

By denying themselves food, dieters also make it much more important.  Dieters are more likely than non dieters to turn to food when they are emotionally anxious or depressed.  This phenomenon is created by dieting itself.

Suicide Facts

Suicide cannot be defined other than the act of taking ones own life. To some, it could be a selfish act, something weak and brash and stupid. To others, it could be the ultimate sacrifice, to take life and death into one’s own hands and decide weather or not they live or die. Untreated mental illness (including depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and others) is the cause for the vast majority of suicides. Some people are genetically predisposed to depression, and thus they may not appear to be undergoing any negative life experiences, yet still become depressed, and may die by suicide.

                 Women continue to attempt suicide more often, but men tend to complete suicide more often. Many people who complete suicide do not tell any mental-health professional they plan to kill themselves in the months before they do so.

                Suicide prevention measures that are put in place following a psychiatric hospitalization usually involve mental-health professionals trying to implement a comprehensive outpatient treatment plan prior to the individual being discharged. Suicide prevention measures that are put in place following a psychiatric hospitalization usually involve mental-health professionals trying to implement a comprehensive outpatient treatment plan prior to the individual being discharged.

               Over  19,000 young people attempt suicide every year and about 700 of these succeed.Firearms are by far the most common means by which people take their life, accounting for nearly 60% of suicide deaths per year. Older people are more likely to kill themselves using a firearm compared to younger people.

Week 21: Pretty in Pink

Sometimes Halloween is more about being funny than being scary. Give us an entertaining caption for this Associated Press photo and you could win a prize.

Economic data go well with a good whine

Local criminal loses laptop containing 30,000 stolen identities

Old School Commercials: Pete Rose sings Aqua Velva

Tweet Wittle Baby

My Menu Brings Them To Tears

Week 20: Tennis anyone?

Social networking for the antisocial

I recently decided to step up my networking by trying out “social networking” Internet sites, which allow you to meet people and stay in touch while sitting alone at a computer.

Mysteries of the Universe

Always Something

Hard-Earned Sympathy

MGM to bring megacasino to Augusta area

Old School Commercials: Big League Chew

Week 19: Fast food

Give me some 'real' data - if they exist

Echo Project - Not over, but out

I had a teacher, well, a golf teacher actually, tell me once to always leave on a high note. And while I still am something of a golf menace, I think there's some sage advice there. That's why I'm leaving having made Thievery Corporation my last act. A DJ collaboration out of Washington DC, Thievery usually plays as a duo. An exception was made for Echo. For the show, Thievery played its anthropological dance music as a full band, bringing in Latin percussion, a sitar, a rotating cast of international singers and a bass so heavy that after a couple of minute, my kidneys began to hurt. As I type this farewell missive, the sun, is quite literally, setting in the West. The always conspicuously shuttle permitting, I hope to be riding into that sunset, or actually with that sunset at my back very soon.

Hi Ho Silver...

Echo Project - Homies and Houseguests

Started my musical day with a band called Louis XVI. I had actually seen Louis once before, at one (perhaps the final) Music Midtown. At the time, I didn't really dig 'em. I thought the band was too affected, trying too hard at a rock persona. Today was differnt. The band has clearly grown up and, in a way, grown into the image. The histrionic are tones down some and finally the music and performance lives up to the self-hype.

I left Louis XVI early because I wanted to catch the set by Augusta boys Dead Confederate. Despite the fact Dead Confederate isn't much of a daylight band, the band's dark Southern boogie, dangerous and brooding, seemed to go over well. Perhaps next year they can campaign for a better slot.

Next I wandered over to catch Avett Brothers, an act with an increasingly impressive career scheduled to play the Imperial Theatr Nov. 9. It seems the band has recently added a cello player, with real success. Sounds good.

What continues to impress me about the Avett's is the band's seeming efforless but cleary careful arranged style. It encourages listeners to fill in gaps, to imagine and believe that the sound they are hearing is much more complicated and complex than a four-piece string band should be able to produce.

I also caught small bits and pieces by both Son Volt and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. The nice thing about Echo's expansive size is that walking from one stage to the next often grants you a couple songs easy listening.

I plan to catch some of the Thievery Corporation before heading back to Augusta this evening. I'll try and offer an impression of the set before I hit the road.

Echo Project - Loose Lips and Sinking Ships

After relatively peaceful beginnings, things got a little crazy at Echo. That's not to say that there was widepread panic (that band isn't even booked) but there did seem to be a real wave of chaos usurping the quiet control that marked the early hours of the event. I mean, when the batik-and-Birkenstock crowd eagerly enters in a shotgun homicide singalong with the infamous hip-hop act Cypress Hill, you know that strange things are afoot.

Of course, it's possible that the oddball vibe was just right for some of the marquee acts that followed. Both former Primus frontman Les Claypool and psyche-rock kingpins The Flaming Lips seemed to feed off the mostly-natural fog shrouded crowd, turning in magnetic sets. The Lips, in particular, seemed charged. Of course, it should be noted that rock revivals, resplendent in confetti, balloons and oddball antics are a Flaming lips specialty.

Theoretically, I planned to end my evening with a little bit of minimalist magic with Album Leaf and this filing. Check the time stamp. Clearly that didn't happen. Instead, I spent several minutes fruitlessly struggling with the wireless connection and then trudging to find a shuttle that would take me to my car. Instead of a shuttle I found surly staff who had clearly been exposed to too much sun, bass and drum and a seat on a van that dropped me miles from my car. Put the shuttle and badges with bad attitudes on the list of issues to be shorn up before next year's event.

I've also decided to make today my final Echo day. Without going into too much detail (believe me it's better that way) I find myself running at about half-speed today, the after affects of a delicious, but clearly semi-toxic, falafel dinner. Still, expect a few more dispatches from the trenches before I finally give in a call it a day.

Deep in the Greek

This year's annual Augusta Greek Festival has already been nothing short of fabulous!  Saturday stands to be an all time record breaker for attendance as well as the atmosphere, food and festivity.

Festival goers are transformed upon arrival at this year's Festival with the music setting the tone and the aroma of the cuisine cooking under the big tent - you find you have arrived in a Greek village in the heart of Augusta!  There is much to see and experience and most attending will need all four days this year to see and enjoy it all!

As evening approaches, the music and dancing performances heighten and the ambiance is electric - you will find that you are deep in the Greek!

Beginning today, the semi-professional dance group from Florida, The Hellas Dancers, will be performing.  If you have never seen or experienced traditional Greek folk dance - this is a group you will not want to miss.

Admission to the festival is free and includes tours of Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, music and Greek dance entertainment.  There is much to experience and enjoy at this long standing Augusta tradition.  For more information you can call 706-724-1087 or visit www.HolyTrinityAugusta.org.

Retro Active

For such a forward-thinking fest, there sure are a lot of acts roaming the stages with a distinctly vintage vibe. Over the past few hours I've caught portions of sets that unapologetically reference musical movements and moments long since expired.

 Although Stephen Marley's original music fully embraces the amalgamatory spirit if reggae, incorporating slices and samples of R&B, hip-hop and rock into the traditional Jamaican sound, he clearly understands that when an audience sees a Marley, they want some sort of direct reference to the legendary father. Stephen Marley, Bob's second son, seemed happy to oblige. Not only is the producer/performer a dead ringer for his father, both visually and vocally, he's more than happy to spike his set with some of daddy's hits.

Later, on the outlying lunar stage, the vaguely cultish Polyphonic Spree channeled the ghost of Sgt. Pepper and Pet sounds, with no less than 23 musicians, including two drummers, a string section and small choir, vamping through a set of orchestral pop. Somewhere, Phil Spector is smiling. Well he would be, were those legal issues not hanging over his head.

On the small Solar stage, which, in keeping with the green theme of the fest (more on that later), Col. Bruce Hampton led his latest band, the Quark Alliance, through a set of the sort of jammy prog-rock that has been his calling card for years. Good stuff, but it probably isn't going to get him promoted to general.

Echo Project -- In like Flynn...sort of

Make no mistake, the South Fulton County farm playing host to the inaugural Echo Project music festival is an Atlanta locale in name only. I've been here less than an hour, but it took me a good 45 minutes to get from I-85 to the media area that thumps and bumps with the backbeat from a couple of nearby stages. Among my misadventures, finding the proper place to park (still not sure I did that right), finding a lift from the parking lot to the festival site (thanks catering guy) and a stealth run through the backstage areas to the rather non-descript media tent. Still, I've managed to make it and have a couple of first impressions to share.

The Echo Project footprint is large, far larger that required for the few early adopters here for the initial set. I feel certain things will fill up some as the day progresses, but my thinking is this layout has been developed with further growth in mind. It will be interesting to see what sort of elbow room there is once the event is in full swing, but so far there is none of the toe-crushing clausterphobia often associated with a mega-fest.

Clearly, this is an event marketed toward the neo-hippy patchouli set. If it had an official flag, the colors would be tie-dye. If it had an anthem, it would include a 20 minute guitar break. Halfway across the midway (I dig the carnival allusion) and I had already noted a couple of heated-if-mellow hacky sack matches, an enthusiastic, if unskilled, hula-hoop girl and the occasion scent of mysteriously acrid smoke riding the breeze.

Still, there are worse places to be. The weather is beautiful in the way only autumn in the South can be, the setting is spectacular and the music I can pick out from my folding chair sounds sweet. It's a good, if somewhat disorganized start. I'm off to check out some tunes. More later.

Crazy, Busy, Fun.

The Bible: Updated Names Edition

The Masters Ala ESPN

Augusta Spartans considered the greatest team in the history of the World*

It’s official. The Augusta Spartans have cemented their place as the greatest football team in the history of the World*.

Week 18: Head games

Stress tips

A Really Fine Sunday

Augusta's economy: Good, bad or ugly?

Stolen Moments

How Do You Like Your Cookies?

How about with a nice tall glass of charcoal gray milk?

hkj

Any Mario Bros. fans out there?

Area extras hurt that “Caddy” not mentioned in rankings

Deep Breath

Week 17: Bald ambition

Give us an entertaining caption and you could win a prize.