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Archive for the ‘speed’ Category

slow down London

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Later this month will be a London event I feel like I can get involved in (unlike the G20 protests…what was it they wanted again?)

Slow Down London is a ten day festival that sets out to encourage Londoners to  improve their lives by slowing down to do things well.

Also coincidently discovered Academic Earth this week, kind of Ted talks but with guaranteed PhDs. In Paul Bloom’s lecture “The Good Life” he refers to two solutions to the hedonistic treadmill: keep doing different things or just get off the treadmill.

The Slow Down folks want to get off.

Written by Karen

April 2nd, 2009 at 7:21 pm

Posted in cities,happiness,speed

cherry crumble cheesecake: a slow exploit

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This cheesecake is one of those all day baking exploits. It is very easy (apart from the flipping at the end which really requires two pairs of hands) but you have to make sponge cake, bake, mix up the cherry layer, make crumb topping, make cheese layer, put it all together, bake, bring to room temp, refridgerate for hours, flip, remove foil, eat.

I made it more complicated by using fresh cherries so there was the extra painful step of stoning cherries. It took me all day and a lovely day it was too. So what if I got nothing else done?

The resulting creation is huge and PW will be able to feed off it for days, sparing him last week’s fate of eating a whole box of muesli.

And yes, we did eat some for breakfast.

Written by Karen

June 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 am

Posted in food,happiness,speed

slow movement

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The slow movement seems to be booming. In the beginning there was Slow Food. Now there is:

And I got bored at slow management so I’m sure there are more. Slow IA, anyone?

Written by Karen

June 7th, 2008 at 9:53 am

Posted in speed

future of sleep

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FringeHog has been thinking about breaking the sleep barrier:

“In 2020 imagine that a 17-hour work day is the norm: business, home life, school and recreation all blend together in seamless shifts of just a few hours each. The sleep patterns of knowledge workers could be mapped, networked and optimized to create a truly 24/7 company. Gone are excuses that we simply “don’t have the time” to work out, or read, or learn another language. Freed from the biological mandate of sleep, could we become a more creative society?”

This sounds like adding extra lanes to the motorways. There must be a chance that cutting out sleep will just mean more time available to work, which a few will utilise to get ahead and then everyone else will join in.

Written by Karen

February 16th, 2008 at 10:16 am

Posted in speed

catching up, recouping

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The New Year resolution to write regularly was going great but has noticeably trailed off. I’m in the midst of an exhausting time at work and everything else has suffered. Including thinking about what I’m doing.

Now I enjoy crises at work. They make it clear what the problem is and what needs to be worked on right now. But continuous frenzy doesn’t allow you to observe yourself and what you are doing.

Sometimes life is best contemplated on Sunday morning, sat on top of the rabbit hutch, enjoying coffee and sunshine whilst the chickens, rabbits and cats romp. Zazen, Loasby-style.

Written by Karen

February 11th, 2008 at 12:40 am

Posted in speed,work

slow

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Slow Down Week was brought to you by the International Institute of Not Doing Much (slogan: multitasking is a moral weakness). I forgot to mention it till it was all over but that feels in the spirit of the event.

Whilst surely an excuse to indulge in some Slow Food or take a leisurely trip to a Cittaslow, Christopher also assures us that slowness is the key to creativity.

I shall be doing very little today.

Written by Karen

January 19th, 2008 at 1:10 am

Posted in speed

observing Remembrance Sunday

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20 years ago I would have been standing outside Northaw Church in my Brownie uniform, grateful for once for the tea-cosy hats we had to wear and being amazed at how long 2 minutes can be.

Today I simply closed my laptop and the time seemed like no time at all. Perhaps that was simply the difference between observing the silence in the lounge and standing outside in November. Or perhaps I’m just more used to being still than I was at 9 years old, more able to value time to pause, to think.

I’ve just read Faster by James Gleick, a rather disappointing book on an interesting subject, the pressure we feel to live our lives at a faster and faster pace. I was struck that my act of remembrance was shutting the laptop, not just stopping reading and typing but actually shutting and putting it down, the latter act having only symbolic value. A lot of my life is spent with one computer or another. Computers are not yet vilified in the way that televisions are but what would I be paying attention to without them?

Written by Karen

November 11th, 2007 at 5:07 am

Posted in speed