Excerpt:
Creating Passionate Users: Self-induced passion
Is there something in your life you know you should do you, but you just can’t seem to do it on a regular basis? For lots of people, this might include things like eating right, exercising, even cleaning the house! We’ve had many good ideas here about how to create passion in our users, how about creating passion (or at least something resembling that) in ourselves? It’s easy to be passionate about things you love to do already, but for the things you want to do, but aren’t passionate about, so you tend not to do them when you know you should – that’s trickier.

I recently read a great little book called The Intrinsic Exerciser: Discovering the Joy of Exercise by Jay C. Kimiecik. This book is all about how to change your mindset so that you exercise for intrinsic reasons instead of extrinsic reasons. The idea is that if you can do this, then you will want to exercise, you might even be passionate about it. After reading it, it struck me that this should work for anything you want to do in a more passionate way, but are having a hard time figuring out how to get there.

Examples from the book of shifting from an extrinsic motivation for exercise, to an intrinsic motivation, include:

* Instead of exercising because you want to lose weight, do it because it makes you feel good

* Instead of thinking about exercise in terms of the future (e.g., I will lose this much weight, or I will look better in X months), do it in the present – “I am exercising NOW because I like the way it makes me feel NOW”.

* Instead of exercising because you will have enhanced fitness, exercise because you want to master some athletic ability

Excerpt:
Creating Passionate Users: Create an intention calendar
It’s also the case that “You are what you think.” Every single thought in our heads is created by nerve impulses that travel between neurons. These impulses travel from one neuron to the next by being transmitted across the synaptic gap between neurons. The neurotransmitters in that gap make this happen. Every time a nerve fires, and passes along a nerve impulse, you are creating a neural pathway for a thought and each time you think that thought, the neural pathway gets
stronger.

As you’re learning something new, you’re forging new neural pathways. That’s why learning something new sometimes feels hard, especially if what you’re trying to learn is something your brain thinks is not important. But, once you’ve convinced your brain it is important and, damnit, you’re going to learn it, then a neural pathway is created for that thought. If you practice that thought, it will become easier. If you practice it enough, it becomes habit.

This can work against us. It means that bad habits are hard to break. It means that thinking negative thoughts is bad for your brain.

Excerpt:
Boing Boing: Chocolate ingredient fights cancer
Chocolate ingredient fights cancer
Georgetown University scientists report that an ingredient in chocolate seems to have anti-cancer properties. Found in cocoa, pentameric procyandin turns off proteins that likely spur the out-of-control division of cancer cells. The research is funded by Mars Inc., makers of M&Ms and Snickers. Seriously. From the press release:

“There are all kinds of chemicals in the food we eat that potentially have effects on cancer cells, and a natural compound in chocolate may be one,” said the lead author, Robert B. Dickson, Ph.D., professor of oncology. “We need to slowly develop evidence about the selectivity of these compounds to cancer, learn how they work, and sort out any issues of toxicity.”

Chocolate, like many other foods, is the source of many possible anti-cancer compounds, but Dickson stresses that this research, which is part of a series of studies conducted at Georgetown on the chocolate-cancer connection, does not mean that people who eat chocolate will either reduce their cancer risks or treat a current case.

Excerpt:
Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Underwater bike ride to launch students’ eight-week crime spree
As US coast-to-coast crimewaves go, it is not in the league of Bonnie and Clyde. It lacks both violence and avarice and is further hindered by an overabundance of pre-publicity.

Undeterred, a couple of students from Cornwall are intent on making American criminal history by spending their summer breaking as many US laws as possible.

Starting in the liberal state of California, they hope to evade the attention of local police officers when they ride a bike in a swimming pool and curse on a crazy-golf course.

In the far more conservative – and landlocked – state of Utah, they will risk the penitentiary when they hire a boat and attempt to go whale-hunting.

If they manage to outwit state troopers in Utah, and perhaps federal agents on their trail, they will be able to take a deserved, but nevertheless illegal, rest when they have a nap in a cheese factory in South Dakota.