When I think of breathing I understand that a physical breathe is a absolute necessity for me to continue living on this earth. If I don’t breathe, I keel over. Its that simple, right?

Well no.

Breathing can happen in so many ways. If there was anything I learned from yoga its that breathing is not breathing is not breathing, unless you learn how to breathe with your entire body, to relax and disburse energy and oxygen through your entire body, in the way you breathe.

Close your eyes, and take 10 deep, slow breaths right now. Make sure on each exhale that you imagine the deep, oxygen powered breathe distributes throughout every limb and every bit of skin in your body, and as you breathe in, that you are sucking in all the bad toxins in your body, and that as you transition to breathing out, that these toxins disappear from the body.

Dont you feel better right now? Of course you do.

Now remember, that in 20 seconds at any time of the day, you can improve your day, simply by breathing deep, and solid, and ridding your body of the stress which is holding you back in all areas of you life.

Breathe…

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so this beauty from Specialized is called The Shiv.

is it supposed to make you shiver when you look at it?

Was it an error from their side, and its supposed to say The S*^t? As in “Did you see that new Specialized? Its the Sh*$t!!”

Not quite sure. But the beaker on the front, and integrated front brake (a patent which belongs to Cervelo nogal) and the very P3 like rear are all very Zhoosh looking. As a triathlete though, I have a few concerns…

1. It only comes in road angles?!?! WTF Specco, that’s no good! I can ride 180km in the TT bars on road angles to suit the UCI? Try run a marathon after that….

2. It comes in very ltd numbers, which means its going to be Shiv expensive. Maybe that’s where the name comes from?

Other than that, I am sure it`ll make do for a uber wealthy german dude who rides it to the coffee shop for his friday ride. He may even deploy a parachute out the aero helmet to slow him down as he approaches the Vida in Camps Bay.

But you know, zis is imperative to critical speed yah?

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So much planning, and so well executed.

What do you mean, you cant see it?

Now have yourselves a great Monday…

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So, bearing in mind the sun will be shining for the first time this week in Cape Town, and you should be lacking melatonin and generally happy vibes right now, I feel it imperative we do a few things over the weekend, which will undoubtedly improve the run-in to Monday, leaving you fresh and happy.

1. Take a walk. (this excludes triathletes – you all should train 30min less and take a 30min walk with your significant others) It will be good for your system to get out and appreciate how beautiful the world is right now. Not just where I live, but everywhere. Take a drive and walk somewhere remote. Who cares where it is. But take a walk and be alone with your thoughts.

2. Cook something new and exciting. Take a chance at being terrible and making a mess. There is a late night Woolies somewhere near you. Go all out, and invite some people. It doesnt have to be super expensive, but go out your way to cook something you may have been scared to cook before. Conquer a fear, and drink some amazing wine in the process.

3. Write a list of things you want to do before the end of the year. We are almost 6 months into the year. Its time to do a bit of reflection and plan for the coming 6 months ahead…

Just do those 3, and I guarantee you, that you will power into Monday, and the week ahead will be awesome.

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which clip do I post?

which image captures the man correctly?

How do I put the words together to justify how I feel when I hear his music?

I guess I should just leave it to him, and probably my favorite video of all time..

When planes crash into towers, when wars are announced, these things claim the papers and the TV, but today, the radio, all social media, all blogs, all everything alles is all about MJ. I dare you to go to any club tonight, anywhere in the world, and not hear the DJ dedicate a tune. Every DJ is a MJ fan. His music makes us look professional, makes us bond with our crowd.

MJ for life.

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1. Conrad Stoltz shows us his wound. Not for the faint hearted.

2. WTF Wednesday is a bit of a weird set of photos, but its quite, well, WTF? I know today is thursday, but the post was originally placed yesterday.

3. Weburbanist Shows you some awesome Laptop Bags

4. Zenhabits gives us a doozy today. 20 of their posts you may not have seen! Carr you fee e aweshommnehh?

5. Baglett always has me laughing. Always.

thats it for today. Click the “share this” button below this, and put it on your Facebook profile for me…

pretty please…

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Just yesterday On June 23rd, the City of San Francisco signed into effect the nation’s first law mandating that all residents and businesses separate their recycling and compost material from normal trash.

While many other cities in the US require recycling, no other city requires separation of food scraps and foot material to be composted. The measure, which will take effect this fall, is intended to help increase landfill diversion rates to 75% by 2010 as well as reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

lekker my bru. read the rest here

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Very soon…

its tour time… viva Le Tour

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this from SA Rocks

This speech was given at the Mail & Guardian 300 top young business dudes event. I need to crack the nod for that in the next year or two…

Master of Ceremonies, Mr Songezo Zibi;
The Editor-in-chief of the Mail and Guardian, Mr Nic Dawes;
Representative of Xstrata South Africa, Mr Eric Ratshikhopa;
The 300 influential young South Africans;
Invited guests;
Ladies and gentlemen,

I am humbled by the honour to address the cream of South African youth today.

To be selected by the Mail and Guardian amongst 300 Young South Africans people must take to lunch is a confirmation of the prestigious position you occupy individually in our society today.
As a collective, you are the best that our country has in 2009, and what we will have in the foreseeable future. You are to South Africa what an emerging sun represents at dawn.
I need not remind you that you are all youth leaders in different fields of our social, political and economic life. Those who are worried about South Africa’s future look at you for national inspiration and hope.

For that, you all deserve a round of applause!

While I am aware that you are here to celebrate your individual success stories, I would like to take advantage of your collective presence and pose a question I think future generations will ask later on in your lives: Where were you, and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?
I raise this worrying question because I agree with the assertion made by Roberto Mangabeira Unger in his book, Democracy Realised, when he says:

The perversion of economic growth and its fruits begins when we attempt to make up for the scarcity of public goods by producing more private ones, and to find in the private consumption a barren solace for social frustration. (1998:7)

Who amongst you would argue that we have not yet reached a perverse stage in the evolution of post-apartheid South Africa, where the public sector is the worst preferred, and the private sector the most preferred?

Should anyone doubt if this is true, imagine how an average young South African would reply to the following questions:

• If you had a choice, would you like your mother to be treated in a public or private hospital?
• If you had the means, would you take your children to a private or public school?
• If you had a private option, would you go to the Department of Home Affairs for services?
• If you lived in a townhouse, would you trust the police or ADT to secure your private property?
• If you had to negotiate an ethical business transaction, would you prefer to talk to a politician or a private entrepreneur?

Those who would choose the private sphere as their answer to these critical questions must immediately be alerted that they are active participants in the construction of a private sub-state in South Africa!

A private sub-state is populated by people who choose to kill their conscience by conveniently turning a blind eye to the ills plaguing society. Yet the wealth and incomes generated by these private citizens owe a great deal to the sweat and toil of the suffering workers and the poor.

In his famous book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, Walter Rodney lamented this situation in post-colonial African states, focusing on the middle class. He said:

They squander the wealth created by the peasants and workers by purchasing cars, whisky, and perfume. (1972:19)

As the South African middle class, I am not sure if you do not, as Walter Rodney observed elsewhere in Africa, “squander the wealth created by the peasants and workers by purchasing cars, whisky, and perfume.”

But I am certain that, if the champions of the private sphere were to succeed, it would essentially mean the hastening of the very social perversion that Roberto Mangabera Unger wrote about.
The tragedy, however, is that at the peak of post-apartheid South Africa’s economic success in 2007, the Bureau of Market Research at the University of South Africa estimated the size of the black middle class – the so-called Black Diamonds – at 9.3 million.

We now know the economic difficulties the black middle class has fallen into, when the Reserve Bank raised interest rates sharply and the global economic crisis began to hit home.

Even if we were to combine the struggling Black Diamonds with the entire white population, we would still have to confront the painful reality that more than half of our country’s population live in poverty and cannot afford the services provided by the most preferred private sector.

It is these objective socio-economic conditions that divide our nation into ‘us’ versus ‘them’. Those who are cushioned by the comfort and opulence of the private sphere continue to withdraw further and further into their private cocoons, while the poor are left to their own devices.
But the two worlds do, in many ways, interface in a manner that reinforces and continues to widen the chasm between the haves and have-nots. Those who have the means feel threatened by those who do not. The propertied class fortify their private spaces to protect themselves against the property-less.

It is against this background that British cultural theorist Terry Eagleton wrote the following in his book entitled After Theory:

It is not hard to imagine affluent communities of the future protected by watchtowers, searchlights and machine guns, while the poor scavenge for food in the waste lands beyond. (2003:22)
When Eagleton made this profound observation in 2003, he probably thought he was a prophet whose words would come to pass like a religious prophesy that waits for centuries to pass before it is proven right.

Little did Terry Eagleton know that, three years down the road (in 2009), a fellow like me would address 300 Young South Africans, among whom there would be those who already live in communities protected by watchtowers, searchlights and machineguns while the poor scavenge for food in the waste lands beyond.

I say all this not because I am bent on spoiling your special day, but as a desperate attempt to point out your historic responsibility towards the broader society.

• If you are a famous young writer, and you do not write about the plight of the poor, history will ask: Where were you, and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?
• If you are a prolific young journalist, and you say nothing about corrupt politicians who embezzle public funds, posterity will ask: Where were you, and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?
• If you are a flourishing young entrepreneur, and you do not contribute to the improvement of the lives of the destitute, future generations will ask: Where were you, and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?
• If you are a singer, and you do not sing in defence of the downtrodden masses, history will also pose a question to you: Where were you, and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?

It does not matter what kind of work you do, there is a role you can and must play to stop the perversion of our society. Your success will mean nothing if it is not connected with the general advancement of society!

For those of you who are Black and whose success is connected to the struggles waged by the masses of our people, Frantz Fanon has an important message for you:

… we who are citizens of the under-developed countries, we aught to seek every occasion for contacts with the rural masses. … We aught never to lose contact with the people [who have] battled for [their] independence and for the concrete betterment of [their] existence. (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961:150-1)

If you do not take Fanon’s call seriously, the ‘us’ versus ‘them’ that already exists in our society will deepen its roots even further. You will fortify your private spaces without success. Criminals will not fail to reach wherever you live. ADT will not be enough to prevent the theft of your luxury sedan, the murder of your family members or the rape of your mothers, sisters and daughters.

We should indeed be wary of behaving as if the poor are powerless. When the gap between the poor, the middle class and the rich is allowed to widen its yawn, the poor always – and sometimes brutishly – have a way of outsmarting those who think they are educated and know it all.

Politically, the poor possess the disruptive capacity to disturb the untenable tranquillity of the educated elite. The destitute have it within their power to take over society in ways that leave the middle class kicking and screaming from the margins as if they are little children crying for help. As Roberto Mangabeira Unger reminds us once again:

The excluded … will not wait. They will strike back through politics, especially through the election of populist leaders, threatening to recommence the destructive pendular swing between economic populism and economic orthodoxy. (Ibid: 82)

Once this has happened, the educated class will be dismissed with derision, as if they have nothing to offer society. Society will be forced to celebrate mediocrity, and the slide into hopelessness can only be faster.

When mediocrity prevails, there will be circumstantial heroes whose heroism will be defended even if it means embarrassing society. Indeed, this hastens society’s collective descent into the abyss.
Once the poor have taken over, having been abandoned by the champions of the private sector, the public sector becomes a realm where corruption and inertia reign supreme! African and other countries that have gone down this road have, unfortunately, failed to make substantial reverse.
When the destitute strike back at the indifferent middle class and the rich, abnormality becomes normality; scorn is poured on sensibility; and rationality is subjected to demeaning ridicule.
When politics has reached this stage, the relationship between the authority of the office and the office bearer becomes tenuous. This is precisely what Herbert Marcuse refers to in his seminal book, A Study on Authority, when he says:

The dignity of the office and the worthiness of the officiating person no longer coincide in principle. The office retains its unconditional authority, even if the officiating person does not deserve this authority. (1972:16)

• Who amongst you does not know a youth leader whose authority does not coincide with that of his office?
• Who amongst you does not laugh or get embarrassed when some of our leaders speak on national TV?
• And who amongst you does not wish that some of our leaders were something close to Barack Obama?

If you have experienced this personally, it means that you agree with Unger when he says: “The excluded … will not wait. They will strike back through politics, especially through the election of populist leaders.”

If you find this situation familiar, you should then ask yourself the following question: How do I respond to Frantz Fanon when he says: “… we who are citizens of the under-developed countries, we aught to seek every occasion for contacts with the rural masses”?

If you do not ask yourselves this soul-searching question, you might find yourself unable to respond when future generations ask: Where were you, and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?

I know that most of you are by now upset with me, that I have troubled your hearts and souls during an occasion where you were invited to celebrate your success stories.

I did this because I am convinced that the Mail and Guardian selected you to be among 300 influential, young South Africans because of the burden history has placed on your shoulders.
Like the Mail and Guardian, I see no person better than you to rescue our society from the yawning divide between the private and the public spheres of life.

I see no other group of young people better placed to lead me in all facets of South African life in ten, twenty years from now. And I also think you have an immediate responsibility to halt our country’s slide into hopelessness.

There is nothing magical you are expected to do that is beyond your already proven capabilities! All you need to do is to intensify the work that made it possible for you to be selected as part of 300 Young South Africans people must take to lunch.

But when you do it, keep in mind that future generations will one day ask: Where were you, and what did you do when South Africa began to degenerate?

Congratulations, and thank you very much!

epic

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The government looking at expanding a pioneering scheme in Flint, one of the poorest US cities, which involves razing entire districts and returning the land to nature.

Local politicians believe the city must contract by as much as 40 per cent, concentrating the dwindling population and local services into a more viable area.

The radical experiment is the brainchild of Dan Kildee, treasurer of Genesee County, which includes Flint.

Having outlined his strategy to Barack Obama during the election campaign, Mr Kildee has now been approached by the US government and a group of charities who want him to apply what he has learnt to the rest of the country.

Mr Kildee said he will concentrate on 50 cities, identified in a recent study by the Brookings Institution, an influential Washington think-tank, as potentially needing to shrink substantially to cope with their declining fortunes.

Most are former industrial cities in the “rust belt” of America’s Mid-West and North East. They include Detroit, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Memphis.

In Detroit, shattered by the woes of the US car industry, there are already plans to split it into a collection of small urban centres separated from each other by countryside.

“The real question is not whether these cities shrink – we’re all shrinking – but whether we let it happen in a destructive or sustainable way,” said Mr Kildee. “Decline is a fact of life in Flint. Resisting it is like resisting gravity.”

Karina Pallagst, director of the Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective programme at the University of California, Berkeley, said there was “both a cultural and political taboo” about admitting decline in America.

“Places like Flint have hit rock bottom. They’re at the point where it’s better to start knocking a lot of buildings down,” she said.

Flint, sixty miles north of Detroit, was the original home of General Motors. The car giant once employed 79,000 local people but that figure has shrunk to around 8,000.

Unemployment is now approaching 20 per cent and the total population has almost halved to 110,000.

The exodus – particularly of young people – coupled with the consequent collapse in property prices, has left street after street in sections of the city almost entirely abandoned.

In the city centre, the once grand Durant Hotel – named after William Durant, GM’s founder – is a symbol of the city’s decline, said Mr Kildee. The large building has been empty since 1973, roughly when Flint’s decline began.

Regarded as a model city in the motor industry’s boom years, Flint may once again be emulated, though for very different reasons.

But Mr Kildee, who has lived there nearly all his life, said he had first to overcome a deeply ingrained American cultural mindset that “big is good” and that cities should sprawl – Flint covers 34 square miles.

He said: “The obsession with growth is sadly a very American thing. Across the US, there’s an assumption that all development is good, that if communities are growing they are successful. If they’re shrinking, they’re failing.”

But some Flint dustcarts are collecting just one rubbish bag a week, roads are decaying, police are very understaffed and there were simply too few people to pay for services, he said.

If the city didn’t downsize it will eventually go bankrupt, he added.

Flint’s recovery efforts have been helped by a new state law passed a few years ago which allowed local governments to buy up empty properties very cheaply.

They could then knock them down or sell them on to owners who will occupy them. The city wants to specialise in health and education services, both areas which cannot easily be relocated abroad.

The local authority has restored the city’s attractive but formerly deserted centre but has pulled down 1,100 abandoned homes in outlying areas.

Mr Kildee estimated another 3,000 needed to be demolished, although the city boundaries will remain the same.

Already, some streets peter out into woods or meadows, no trace remaining of the homes that once stood there.

Choosing which areas to knock down will be delicate but many of them were already obvious, he said.

The city is buying up houses in more affluent areas to offer people in neighbourhoods it wants to demolish. Nobody will be forced to move, said Mr Kildee.

“Much of the land will be given back to nature. People will enjoy living near a forest or meadow,” he said.

Mr Kildee acknowledged that some fellow Americans considered his solution “defeatist” but he insisted it was “no more defeatist than pruning an overgrown tree so it can bear fruit again”.

So Urban Ninja’ers – What do you think?

original article here

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