Quite a lot of you over the years have asked me about Vipassana and my daily meditation practice. I’ve never been good at explaining meditation in general, as for me it is an experience that transcends words, and Vipassana in particular is a tricky nut to crack. But most of the questions come not from people who are trying to understand Vipassana, but rather those who just want to begin a daily practice of some sort and are looking for a place to begin.

The Chopra Centre are currently offering a 21-day online meditation challenge, free of charge. It’s a series of downloadable audio files, all quite short, that lead you through the basics of different types of meditation, focusing on one aspect per day. I’ve listened to a couple of the audio files out of curiosity, and they’re certainly suitable for any beginner, even if you’ve never meditated before, and Davidji (the man who guides the meditations) has a pleasant voice and is even humourous at times.

I’ll admit I don’t know a lot about Deepak Chopra, though I’ve heard plenty of reports both positive and negative, so I can’t really vouch for the overall quality of the material his organisation puts out. I certainly don’t think you should go into this 21-day challenge expecting to come out enlightened, or even an expert meditator, but that’s hardly the point. The point is to create the habit of daily meditation while exposing yourself to the different techniques that are available to you. I suppose the hope is that after you’re finished with the course, you’ll want to pursue meditation further, either on your own, or by seeking more formal instruction. So if you’ve always wanted to meditate but never managed to get the momentum up, now’s your chance. Link

If you find yourself today with a few extra minutes today and want to see something cool on the web. check out The Incredible Shrinking Man. This is a research site built on the premise that one way to relieve the current strain on the earth and its resources would be to genetically engineer smaller people. The eventual aim, according to the site, would be to have a planet full of humans who are 50cm tall and weigh 2kg. To quote the site directly: “It has been a long established trend for people to grow taller. This has many consequences, like the need for more energy, food, and space. What if we decided to turn this trend around and use our growing knowledge of genetics to actually shrink mankind?”

When I first stumbled across this site, I thought it was a satirical mockery of the green movement. Then I started reading and paying attention. These are real researchers who are serious about this idea, and frankly I find it fascinating. Well worth thinking about, even if you don’t buy into it in the end. Link

Tonic.com has published a fantastic story about the merits of crowdfunding sites like RocketHub, and Hidden Anatolia is one of the featured projects. It gives me a lot of confidence to know that major web hubs are picking up on the importance of crowdfunding, and thereby acknowledging the importance of independent art. It’s a great article, and it’ll only take you a minute or two to read it (I’ve heard you’re a pretty fast reader). Link

As you know, I love project-based art. It’s about stuff that isn’t just one piece, but a series of pieces that trickle in and eventually fit together to make a jigsaw puzzle of sorts. Gideon Slife (Gideon’s Life?) has embarked on a project that I really, really dig— a set of minimalist promotional posters, each based on an episode of Lost. As the show heads into the home stretch of the final season, a lot of people (including me) are revisiting old episodes in a (perhaps futile) effort to try to make sense of everything. These posters are particularly amazing because even with just a small amount of information, as soon as you see the image and read the quote you remember exactly which episode that was.

Who am I kidding, it’s impossible to choose favourites. Have a look at all the posters and you’ll see what I mean. Considering the pace of uploads, it looks to me like Gideon is timing it so that the end of his project coincides with the season finale. Fantastic stuff. Link

Yesterday, famed Atlanta photographers Leah and Mark featured the Hidden Anatolia project on their web site! I’m really thankful for the exposure, especially from two such respected artists. I encourage you to take a moment and read the write-up, as they do a great job of explaining the project and explaining how you as a supporter can benefit.

Becoming a part of the project is easy – you don’t have to sign up for anything new if you already have accounts with PayPal and Facebook. Project fueling starts with as little as a single dollar (yes, you can really give just one dollar and still take part!), and the best thing is that you get gifts, rewards, and prizes along the way for your contribution.

You can fuel the project here, and learn more about what you’re getting into here.

Many, many thanks to those who have already fueled the project and are helping to make it a reality!

Quick, go check out Levent Şen’s 360° panoramic shots of Kaleiçi. It’s basically like an upmarket version of Google Street View, except with exquisite photography and a nicer overall feel. It can be a bit processor-intensive, but if you’d like to see the most beautiful parts of the Antalya old town, it’s definitely worth it. Link

Originally I was going to delay the grand opening of hiddenanatolia.com, because the main purpose of it is to document the journey as it happens— daily photos, videos, anecdotes, micro updates, that sort of thing. However, the more I got to thinking about it, the more I realised that the site can also be useful as a sounding board for the preparations for the trip, as well as a tool for helping people decide at what level they’d like to contribute. I’ve set it up on Tumblr, and so far I think it’s looking really good— little bite-sized morsels of Turkishness. Do add me if you’re on Tumblr, or there’s an option to add the site to your RSS feeds, if you prefer that. See you there! Link

As you probably already know, the Turkish tradition of classical music varies greatly from the European tradition, but it’s also very different from the sort of classical music found in other parts of Asia. Turkish Music Portal is a great place to start if you’re interested in learning about the history, instruments, performers, or composers of Turkish classical music. I went there today to look something up, and ended up spending a couple of hours exploring. Fascinating stuff. Link

Here’s something I think is interesting in theory: a group of Turkish internet users has put together a Google map, which they are using as a venue to host a virtual protest march. The idea is to take a stand against internet censorship in Turkey, which isn’t as extreme as in some other countries, but still, slippery slope. According to the instructions, you’re supposed to put a marker on the map to represent yourself as a protester; when they reach a goal of one billion protesters (the actual map bears the typo “one trillion”— good luck with that), there’s going to be a pixel-by-pixel virtual march to the nation’s capital in Ankara.

While I agree that awareness is good, and that the internet is a great way to test things like this and get an idea of what sort of support is out there, in practical terms, exercises like this are futile unless they can be translated into real-life action. It’s this sort of lazy armchair activism, where people are happy to click on a link or change their Facebook status to the latest “support our cause” catchphrase, but if you ask people to put their money or their time where their mouse is, only a fraction would care enough to get out of their chairs and actually do something. Within a couple of days, everyone has forgotten again, so what exactly is the point?

I don’t think any of the policy-making bureaucracy in Ankara care in the least about an internet protest march, and to be honest most of them probably wouldn’t even understand what you were talking about if you tried to explain it. It just doesn’t affect them. Unless protest groups are willing to take the next step and move the protests off the screen and into the streets and voting booths, where lawmakers will actually have a chance of understanding what is happening, I’m afraid this is just wasted effort that could be put to better use. Link

Bread Came Sliced is another one of those nostalgia blogs that you just need to go look at, because I can’t explain it to you. It’s on Livejournal, which is a little bit of a strange choice of host for what is basically a public photoblog, but that just adds to the overall charisma. You’ll see photos in there you forgot about, photos you never knew existed, and photos that could have been taken by your parents or grandparents. Highly entertaining.

Incidentally, I totally remember grocery stores looking like the one in the above picture. I used to get in trouble for playing with the paper bags.

Oh, and the other day someone told me that people in the United States still write paper checks. Like… now, in 2009. Can you believe that? I’m not sure about the veracity of that claim, though. It seems pretty unlikely, actually, that something as simple and ubiquitous as chip-and-PIN technology has eluded the grasp of the world’s most influential superpower, but if it is true… how very, very quaint. It makes me want to go out and write a ton of checks for old times’ sake— it never occurred to me that something like that would even be possible anymore, since the rest of the world moved on more than a decade ago.

I wonder if American cars still have cassette players. That would be awesome… but not as awesome as 8-track.