Last seen: 3 months ago
Gavin is a 34 year old guy from Ireland, England, UK
Let the stumbles do the talking: my favourite reviews.
And why not take a look at some beautiful Thangka paintings from Nepal
Rated • 24 reviews • painting, japan, arts, my favourite stumbles • pingmag.jp
The Japanese seem very fond of these paintings of squid-covered women. I've noticed this has a few thumbs-down, but I think it's much more playful than sinister.
Rated • 160 reviews • humor, china, my favourite stumbles • rahoi.com
Ahh, the tears are practically rolling down my eyes. Chinese food can be sublime, and the names just as dreamy. But occasionally you come across a menu like this, which has to be seen to be believed.
Seen on Sju, who commented: 'I tend to go for items with funny names. I could never get out of this restaurant.'
Reviewed • 14 reviews • classical music, humor, music, my favourite stumbles • youtube.com
Starts like a typical Youtube classical recital, and then gets very very funny, in a very clever way.
Rated • 71 reviews • buddhism, china, my favourite stumbles • chinaodysseytours.com
The majestic Buddha of Leshan, in Sichuan, China, not far from where we are at the moment. One of the world's great sights. Nicely stumbled by Kingboy
Rated • 3 reviews • religion, china, spirituality, taoism, my favourite stumbles • pages.at
This is pretty stunning - contains what sems to be just about every version of the Tao te Ching ever published, in a plethora of different languages - even recent ones like the Stephen Mitchell version from '88, which is the one I bought not so long ago. A very neat feature is the ability to compare various versions - for example an English translation with a Chinese pinyin one - by splitting the screen into 2 or 4 panes. Makes you just love what some people are doing with the internet these days. Thanks a lot vidchi.stumbleupon.com [vidchi.stumbleupon.com]
Reviewed • 51 reviews • photography, my favourite stumbles • flickr.com
"Man.
Sometimes our lives
seem hard - unbearable even -
but then we meet Kevin.
Or Lydia. Or Ray. And realize
again how lucky we are.
How hard some humans
have it.
Man.
And yet
he smiled. He smiled
for me. This man with his
face blown off - by his own
hand. And here he is -
in the sunshine, listening
to music, smiling."
Seen on Kristenlcolby.stumbleupon.com
Rated • 1 review • china, earthquake, my favourite stumbles • globalvoicesonline.org
Heads will roll in China - literally - for the shoddy consrtuction of some of the schools which collapsed. This page by a Chinese blogger, in English, has some affecting stories of teachers, like the one below, who gave up their lives to save the children they taught. This particular teacher, a girl of 20, ran repeatedly back into the school to save 13 young kids, before eventually being caught herself. Other stories tell of classrooms discovered by rescuers where teachers were found dead, crouched protectively over their young pupils, whose lives they had managed to save.
Rated • 9 reviews • health, depression, mental health, nutrition, my favourite stumbles • psychcentral.com
Pierre Pallardy, a French alternative therapist argues that depression can be cured by focusing on the stomach, through a combination of dietary and lifestyle changes coupled with abdominal breathing and meditational practices directing awareness to the stomach. This makes some sense to me, though it may not cover all kinds of depression. The Ayurvedic view would be that many disorders are connected in some way to digestion - though remember that this includes the whole digestive tract, not just the stomach, which Pallardy seems to claim. Think about the way stress impacts on digestion and stool formation, or the satisfying feeling of well-being that comes from a really good meal. Modern science has been slow to recognise the importance of digestion for all systems of the body, at least when compared to the importance it has been given by traditional medicines, but is catching up:
"deep relaxation was significantly more important than thorough chewing in the oral digestion of complex carbohydrates."
Morse et. al. 'Oral digestion of a complex-carbohydrate cereal: effects of stress and relaxation on physiological and salivary measures'
Another experiment checked the effects of stress in chickens and found it to cause:
"decreases in digestion of dry matter, proteins, gross energy, and carbohydrates, whereas fat digestibility was unaffected"
Puvadolpirod S, Thaxton JP. 'Model of physiological stress in chickens 4. Digestion and metabolism.'
The latter study's observation that stress did not affect digestion of fats strikes me as having huge implications for obesity. If people eat as an escape from stress they will fatten up, while remaining deficient in the nutrients needed for other physiological processes, hence the great health dangers of obesity.
The above studies relate how stress can cause digestive problems. That it can also work in the opposite way can be seen from articles such as Torres et al, 'Dietary electrolytes are related to mood.'
