#he is only perceived to be; big. destructive. dense.

[javierduffy]

would we like to talk about how hosea also contributed to arthur’s entrapment in and eventual demise due to the van der linde gang because he was constantly affirming to arthur that he was “dim-witted” and “a fool”, and we can assume he’s been doing as such since arthur was very young, and therein causing arthur to internalize the narrative that he is nothing but a dumb brute who could never make it as anything other than a “born and bred” killer or is that too controversial

[tlbodine]

Literary vs Genre Fiction

The divide between literary and genre fiction is one of those topics that gets endlessly debated in writer circles. You’ll see it making the rounds on social media every time a book gets some buzz for busting out of its category. You’ll hear it in MFA programs across the country. But what even is literary fiction? How is it actually different from genre fiction? Is one better than the other? Why does anybody care?

A lot of smart people before me have thrown their hat in this particular ring, but I’m going to try tackling this one anyway. 

First Off: What Do We Mean When We Say “Literary Fiction”? 

Defining the thing is almost the hardest part of this whole discussion, and that may be part of the reason why people argue so endlessly about the literary vs genre divide -- if you don’t have a clear definition of the categories, that divide can be drawn up just about anywhere. 

So before we dig into characteristics of literary fiction, let’s look at some clear examples. The Booker Prize is a literary award specifically given to works of literary fiction, so it stands to reason that winners of that award would be the best examples of the category, right? Here are some recent Booker Prize winners (as pulled from Powell’s bookstore): 

Margaret Atwood - The Testaments The sequel to A Handmaid's Tale, told as testaments from three female narrators in Gilead, a dystopian setting where women have been stripped of their rights.

Bernardine Evaristo - Girl, Woman, Other Twelve central characters, mostly black British women, lead intersecting lives with struggles of identity, race, sexuality, class, etc.

Anna Burns - Milkman A girl identified as "middle sister" catches the unwanted attention of "the milkman," a local paramilitary, and has to deal with the threat of violence and spread of rumors.

George Saunders - Lincoln in the Bardo A father-and-son story about Abraham Lincoln and the 11-year-old son who died of illness in the midst of the civil war, leading to them both struggling in a type of purgatory.

Paul Beatty - The Sellout A satire about an isolated young man who ends up at a Supreme Court race trial after trying to reinstate slavery and segregate the local high school in an attempt to put his town back on the map.

One thing becomes immediately clear about literary fiction when skimming through the titles and summaries of these award-winning books: These novels are well-nigh impossible to summarize in a way that actually sounds enticing. 

So okay. What are some genre fiction books, for comparison? There are genre fiction awards, like for example the Hugo award for Sci-Fi/Fantasy: 

Mary Robinette Kowal - The Calculating Stars A cataclysmic meteor collision in 1952 causes an accelerated effort to colonize space, leading to a woman fighting to join the astronaut team in this alternate-history book.

N. K. Jemisin - The Stone Sky The third in a trilogy of post-apocalyptic novels about two women with the power to avert destruction of mankind.

Cixin Liu - The Three-Body Problem Against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project makes contact with aliens whose civilization is on the brink of destruction, leading them to plan a takeover of earth.

There’s also the Edgar Award, which is given to mystery fiction (it’s named after Edgar Allan Poe): 

James A McLaughlin - Bearskin A man on the run takes a job as a park ranger, but runs the risk of being found by the men he's hiding from when he tries to expose some poachers.

Walter Mosley - Down the River Unto the Sea After spending a decade in prison for a crime he was framed for, former-detective King works as a private investigator whose investigation of his own frame-up leads him to cross paths of a journalist with a similar story.

Sujata Massey - Widows of Malabar Hill In 1920s India, Bombay's only female lawyer investigates a suspicious will on behalf of three Muslim widows, a case that takes a murderous turn.

These aren’t the best summaries in the world, but there does seem to be a stronger sense of both plot and character in the story concepts. At least, when someone asks, “What’s that book you’re reading about?” the genre fiction ones will have a somewhat easier time explaining it. 

So What REALLY Separates Literary From Genre Fiction? 

There are a lot of battle lines drawn between genre and literary fiction. I’ve heard it argued that literary is about character while genre is about plot; that literary is about the quality of the prose while genre is about the story; that literary is about experimenting while genre is about adhering to formulas. That literary is about expanding horizons while genre is about escapism and comfort. That literary is about realism and genre fiction is about fabulism. 

I think there’s a nugget of truth in all of these, but I’m not really happy with any of them. 

So I’m going to toss out my own hypothesis: I think the difference between literary and genre fiction is the way tropes are employed. 

“Okay, great, but what are tropes?” 

I’m so glad you asked. Fiction tropes are a type of shorthand. They are things that we the audience have seen before, so we know immediately what they mean. Tropes exist in characters, plot points, settings, concepts -- you name it. Here’s a sampling of tropes you might be familiar with: 

The tough lady-cop whose dad was a police officer 

Thanks to a mix-up, two people with hidden romantic feelings book the last available room at a hotel but there’s only one bed 

A man goes on a quest for vengeance but destroys himself in the process

The wise old man who teaches the young hero valuable lessons but then dies before the pivotal battle

And so on, and so forth. Every genre has its own tropes -- a formula, if you will. In that sense, genre fiction is formulaic, but that doesn’t make it easier to write; actually, a big part of the challenge is in giving fresh twists to familiar tropes. Readers of genre stories demand certain tropes; the author has to deliver on those demands in a fresh way.

By comparison, I would argue that literary fiction does not rely upon tropes. There certainly are tropes and conventions that emerge in literary fiction -- a middle-aged academic struggling through divorce, for example -- but these tropes are more often than not met with irritation, not delight. Readers of literary fiction are looking for fresh insights and innovations, not familiarity. 

Tropes are powerful tools. They are the mythic seed of storytelling. They are the archetypes that pass down through generations. They are a sacred backbone of mythology and folklore. Genre fiction, at the end of the day, carries the torch for storytelling in a long and (ha, ha) storied tradition from our prehistoric days huddled around a campfire. 

Literary fiction, on the other hand, eschews tropes -- with their agreed-upon meanings -- in favor of assigning fresh meanings to things. Literary fiction is chock full of metaphors, but it’s the author, not convention, that determines what those metaphors mean and how they’re employed. Literary fiction reinvents the wheel. When it succeeds, it hits on depth and emotional resonance that can be life-changing for the reader. When it fails, it comes off like so much navel-gazing nonsense. So it goes. 

Fiction Wars and Gatekeeping

The problem with the literary vs genre fiction divide is that it never stops with “This is how these categories are defined.” The problem is that people will insist on ascribing moral significance and hierarchy to them. 

Literary fiction is viewed as being smarter, deeper, more meaningful or more valuable than genre fiction. If a genre fiction story manages to break out and gain wider appeal, suddenly people will start ascribing to it literary attributes (whether or not the book and many others in the genre had them all along). And that is all a bunch of nonsense. 

It’s the exact same thing that happens in horror fiction -- when a horror story goes mainstream, suddenly it becomes a “psychological thriller” or a “dark drama” or anything other than horror, because “horror” is an inferior genre. 

The fact of the matter is that literary fiction gets elevated over genre fiction for systemic reasons: 

Most MFA programs focus on writing literary fiction, which means that a lot of lit-fic authors come out of those programs, which means that literary fiction is often the domain of upper-middle-class, frequently white, people who can afford to graduate from those programs

A focus on dense prose and “difficult” writing means lit-fic books must be analyzed and interpreted; it’s hard to read, making it exclusionist to people who lack formal education 

Lit-fic dominates awards, gets pushed heavily onto book clubs, is talked about more often on daytime TV and so forth (because it is perceived as being better/more important, thus creating the ongoing cycle)

Basically, lit-fic gets held up as an example of Fine Culture. And any time something is designated as Fine Culture and High Art, it is subject to a completely arbitrary classist distinction meant primarily to keep out an undesirable element (women, BIPOC, poor people, you name it). 

That’s not a problem endemic to lit-fic itself. It’s really a problem of the culture surrounding it, and attempts to hold it to a higher esteem than genre work. 

Cross-Pollination Is Inevitable and Desirable 

How do tropes get made? 

Someone comes up with a new metaphor, concept, character, or idea that resonates so deeply that others who follow borrow that same thing and its meaning, and it gets repeated enough times that it becomes a stock trope. 

In other words, every single piece of genre fiction exists because someone writing in some other established tradition decided to experiment and go off on a tangent to create something really fresh and new -- and knocked it so far out of the park that people were compelled to follow. 

People like to pretend that the overlap and blurred lines between genre and literary fiction are somehow a new trend, but the fact is that this has been the trajectory of fiction-writing for the whole history of storytelling. 

Literary agents have a term for this: Upmarket fiction. Books that “transcend” genre definitions to appeal to readers on either side of the aisle. And those are highly sought-after books, because they have the potential of bringing in double the readers. 

So, snobby gatekeeping aside, is there any real reason to argue about the definition of literary vs genre fiction? 

I’d say...no. Not even a little bit. I’ve got a mix of both on my shelves. I incorporate a mix of both in my writing. And I don’t see that changing any time soon. 

A Final Note 

I mentioned above that lit-fic tends to be written by people in MFA programs, and I wanted to touch on that again as an MFA drop-out and someone who was once warned by a teacher not to bring “any more of that genre nonsense” into the classroom. 

I can understand, from a teaching perspective, why writer’s workshops would want to focus on lit-fic. From the perspective of learning how to write, forcing writers to derive stories from their experiences, to dig deep into themselves and ascribe unique meaning to things, to develop their own metaphors and hone their craft at the sentence level -- all of that makes a lot of sense. Banning genre tropes is a way to force writers to hone their craft without leaning on the work of generations of storytellers before them, and as a teaching tool I think that’s actually really valuable. 

But I think it’s pretty important that we keep that in context. The lit-fic focus in writing classes should be a teaching tool first and foremost. It should not be the end-all and be-all of writing classes.

This post topic was voted on by my Patreon subscribers. If you would like to vote for future posts and get early access to posts before they go live on tumblr, you can become a patron here: https://www.patreon.com/tlbodine

[shinneth]

Gem Ascension Tropes (White Diamond-specific: K - P)

Primary General Post ♦ Full Article ♦  Primary Peri Post ♦  Primary WD Post 

Karma Houdini: Pretty much everyone except Steven is fully aware she is this no matter how decisively she’s been defeated. When Steven spares her with an Energy Donation, she proves this when she retaliates with that very energy.

Killed Off For Real: White shattered into a ring of dust moments before Homeworld followed suit. She ain’t coming back from that.

Know-Nothing Know-It-All: For being the Diamond of Omniscience, White has one hell of a selective memory and for the most part all but disregards Steven and Peridot’s identities and lives on Earth. She is solely focused on who they are as Diamonds; White speaks as if they never had lives or a purpose elsewhere. This behavior works to the Crystal Gems’ benefit on more than one occasion throughout Act III. Literally, the only time White seems to have any kind of awareness of Steven and Peridot’s Earth lives is when she’s part of the Celadon Diamond fusion.

Lack of Empathy: A bit of a given when one considers the countless amounts of lives she’s ruined at best (outright ended at worst) even before the events of GA. Not to mention the fact that White makes it very clear that she doesn’t see herself at fault for anything that ever went wrong with Homeworld and isn’t sorry for a single crime she commits. Losing Pink Diamond is probably the closest White ever came to averting this trope, but that was also largely her fault (that she, shockingly, refuses to own up to). Pink’s spirit outright admits she’s the only soft spot White has that the Crystal Gems could exploit to appeal to her alleged “better nature” … but given the lives she’d shatter before reality finally makes her face the music, it really isn’t worth the effort.

Last-Second Chance: After Steven grants White an Energy Donation at her request before leaving, she’s extremely offended by how neutral he’s behaving around her. She’s also not taking Peridot’s mellowed down stance on her well, either, given everything she put these two through, and by extension, all their friends and everyone she ruled over. To be treated like she’s irrelevant is far worse than being reviled, as it makes her feel insignificant despite being who she is. Despite Steven’s good intentions, White sees this as a Cruel Mercy. So, against all rational thought, she attempts to throw a last fatal parting shot In the Back at the Crystal Gems before Peridot nearly turns it into a Backstab Backfire (which she only defies at the last second after the sheer satisfaction of terrifying White is far more rewarding than simply taking her life).

Let’s See YOU Do Better!: Literally the only somewhat-valid ammunition White Diamond has against the Crystal Gems towards the end of Act III is her speculation on whether or not they can do a better job at handling an entire empire than her. The Crystal Gems maintain their positive outlook on how life will play out from here on out, but every single one of them has at least some degree of concern on how they’re going to handle adapting millions of confused and terrified Homeworld gems to Earth, as well as how to handle the issue of the colonies inevitably falling apart unless they get involved. The only thing that’s certain at this point is that the Crystal Gems won’t be following White Diamond’s example.

Light/Bright is Not Good: She is a Complete Monster, and also the lightest, whitest, and brightest of the entire cast by far.

Logical Weakness: Since White Diamond’s powers of omniscience largely rely on her ability to Body Surf through the bodies of gems she hijacks with her pallification, it stands to reason that White is screwed and practically blind if she is in a situation where there are no gems for her to use as puppets. In Act III, Pearl manages to create a vaccine that grants gems immunity to her influence (though it can’t cure gems that are already infected). By Chapter 5, all of the living Homeworld gems – regardless of their health – were migrated to Earth courtesy of Steven and Peridot. By Chapter 7, Garnet and Moonstone dispatch all of White Diamond’s proxies after the real White fused to become Celadon Diamond. This left White with no means of observing the world through her subjects’ eyes, and the Crystal Gems were immune to her influence. White also could no longer hide behind a mass of clones; she had to confront the Crystal Gems directly from that point onward.

Mad Scientist: She, Yellow, and Blue were behind the development of all Unwitting Test Subjects prior to Peridot. The reason, at least as far as White is concerned, is little more than For Science (and whether or not diamond dust is a viable component to add to injector fluid to better a gem’s inherent skill). This trope’s more of a thing for Peridot’s case specifically, since she’s the only test subject who got an extra element in Yellow Diamond’s shard thrown into what made her; White’s rationale for this was to see not only if she could grow a new Diamond from another gem, but to see if a gem from the bottom of the caste system can rise all the way to the top through this experiment. Surprisingly, White ended up being successful on both points.

Manipulative Bastard: Might as well be White’s middle name. She pulls a very long and elaborate game with Peridot to wear down her defenses, then at the right moment, targets Peridot’s weakness for Steven to overcome the Determinator. From that point onwards, Peridot becomes very easy to manipulate over to her side. Although it isn’t long before Peridot (as Chartreuse Diamond) pulls a Heel-Face Turn, all White Diamond has to do is trap her again along with her friends and then make Peridot’s resolve crumble with a single Armor-Piercing Question about her inability to fuse (with some heavy implication that her very influence is hazardous to Steven’s health). With that, White is able to force Peridot into a fusion to form Celadon Diamond, and as a bonus, has Peridot as a permanent hostage.

Master of Illusion: Conjures an illusion of Steven that even bears his voice with the sole purpose of distracting Peridot long enough for her to lose in the ongoing struggle to keep her neck from getting lacerated. She ripped it straight from Peridot’s own mind, as a bonus.

Meaningful Title: The Diamond of Omniscience; as a serial Body Snatcher, she can oversee everything going on in Homeworld without ever having to leave her palace.

The Mentor: Makes herself out to be one for Peridot in Act III when she ascends and becomes Chartreuse Diamond, but it’s all an act to keep Peridot Properly Paranoid about using her new powers too much.

Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: White really didn’t think through her rebooting-Homeworld plan very well. She obviously had no plans for precautions on how to protect her own subjects from the planet’s inevitable destruction, let alone the infrastructure of the metropolis or even herself. Arguably, White might have survived such an event in peak condition, but there was no evidence whatsoever that she had any plans for damage control or any form of a Plan B if this process didn’t work the way she intended it to. Ironically, Homeworld did end up getting reborn, albeit through natural means – in other words, it’ll be millions of years before the new Homeworld would even be inhabitable. It also happened without any input from White whatsoever, and frankly couldn’t have worked out with her as an element even if she did live to see it.

Mind Hive: Utilizes proxies to resemble identical copies of herself via Clone by Conversion of several pallified gems fusing together.

Mind Rape: Resorts to this after accepting that she can’t break Determinator Peridot any other way.

Moral Event Horizon: Objectively, White crossed this a loooong time ago; she’s every bit as responsible (if not more so) for countless acts of global genocide and everything else inherent with being the ruler of a densely-populated planet where Individuality is Illegal and life can be forfeit merely on a whim. In terms of Gem Ascension, well… the easy answer would be the moment she (as Celadon Diamond) blew up the Crystal Gems’ spaceship, resulting in the attempted murder of Greg and actual murder of Pumpkin in Chapter 7 of Act III. But honestly, her very first heinous action of killing Blue Diamond in Chapter 6 of Act I could count, too. Then there’s the slew of atrocities White’s committed between these two moments…

Narcissist: No matter how often she screws up, White Diamond will never admit to being anything less than perfect. Even when it’s painfully obvious how ignorant and delusional she is late in Act III, at no point does White even show the slightest hint of self-awareness of her own insanity and ineptitude. She blames Homeworld’s crapsack state on everyone else, which is why she wants to form the Diamond of Miracles to reboot the planet back to its previously-perceived “perfect” form it once was thousands of years ago.

Never My Fault: Homeworld is dying because of her by Act III. It was already merely a shell of its former self prior to GA, but that was also largely due to White Diamond’s carelessness. Still, despite being shown all the evidence that points to her as the cause, she will point fingers at literally everyone else to blame for the state of Homeworld before ever considering her own responsibility.

No One Sees the Boss: Downplayed in that White Diamond has clearly been seen in canon by several of the main characters before GA even starts, but it’s made clear in Chapter 6 of Act I that this is actually a very big deal. Historically, White Diamond almost never shows herself, and Peridot confirms that it’s actually taboo to even talk about White, or even namedrop her. This has been the case not only in modern times, but even Lapis and Bismuth can’t recollect anything about White Diamond when they lived on Homeworld many thousands of years ago as well. As GA progresses, the trope becomes averted, as White is pretty much forced to step out from the shadows to address her subjects in order to fill in for Yellow and Blue Diamond after killing them both in Act I.

No Sympathy: Surprising, isn’t it? The self-centered, morally-bankrupt, and single-minded main villain of the main story doesn’t give two hoots how much others around her suffer as a consequence of her actions. Most of the time, White is shown not acknowledging someone’s turmoil at all, even when it’s shoved right in front of her face. 

Not So Omniscient After All: With Steven and Peridot sending away all remaining gems on Homeworld to Earth, then later Garnet and Moonstone destroying all of her remaining proxies, White Diamond no longer has the means to be anywhere and everywhere. She can’t exactly be a Body Snatcher (nor a Body Surfer) if there are no bodies left for her to hijack. She can’t even use the Crystal Gems for that purpose, as by that point they’ve all been immunized to her pallification.

The Omniscient: Official title is the Diamond of Omniscience. 

The Perfectionist: Per canon, but subverted and deconstructed in the GA continuity. Much as White strives for perfection, even within Act I it’s apparent how unhinged and imperfect White truly is through her actions and judgment. She honestly does more damage to herself and her plans than the Crystal Gems do. At no point does she consider herself responsible for driving Homeworld so far into the ground that it can no longer sustain itself; all White cares about is creating a miracle to reboot the planet to its former “perfect” glory, so that she can continue pretending she runs a flawless empire.

Possessing a Dead Body: While pallification technically doesn’t fully kill a gem, they’re little more than a vegetable after the fact, whether they’re directly being controlled by White or not. Played a little more straight with the White Diamond proxies, which are made up of several pallified gems forcibly fused together to take on her appearance and likeness; White directly controls those more so than the standard pallified gem, and Chapter 7 of Act III proves the gems who make up these proxies are impossible to save; even poofing a proxy will automatically shatter every gem in that “fusion”. The fact that they weren’t transported to Earth with the other Homeworld gems by Steven and Peridot (who even rescued standard pallified gems) is also indicative that they are well beyond saving, and therefore the proxies are little more than several dead gems melded together.

[ourhealthyfoodblog-blog]

New Post has been published on Healthy Food and Remedies

New Post has been published on http://www.healthyfoodandremedies.com/2017/05/17/19-ways-give-sugar/

19 Ways to Give Up Sugar

It’s time to call sugar out for what it is: A heartbreaker, a big-tummy maker, and a health-food faker. We’re not talking about the sugar that comes in fruit (because a lot of Americans aren’t getting enough servings of healthy food, as it is), but the refined stuff, such as high-fructose corn syrup, that sneaks into everything from ketchup to coffee creamers. To help you quit the white stuff, we rounded up 18 experts to share their favorite sugar-ditching tips.1. AVOID DOUBLE AGENTS

1. Avoid double agents

If you think your oatmeal and yogurt are health foods, time to turn the package over. “Flavored instant oatmeal is often a vehicle for sugar, with about three teaspoons of added sugar in each little packet,” warns Dr. Bhatia (as are these other sneaky sources of sugar).

Yogurt is another sneaky sugar food. “The sugar-filled stuff is candy in disguise,” she says. Yogurt does have naturally occurring dairy sugar and, if sweetened with fruit, the fruit has sugar too, but these aren’t the culprits. “Fruit and flavored yogurts often contain added sugar in the form of sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup.”

2. Love your liver

2. Love your liver

Your liver does more than filter out your body’s toxins—it also plays a vital role for your sugar cravings. “A healthy liver plays a key role in regulating blood sugar levels,” says Murchison. “High blood sugar levels can leave you hungry, unable to concentrate, confused, emotionally volatile—and absolutely craving sugar.”

Clean up your liver with these 34 foods so that your detoxifying organ can do its job keeping your blood sugar stable.

3. Feed your good gut bacteria

3. Feed your good gut bacteria

… suggests Elizabeth Lipski, PhD, CCN, CHN, author of Digestion Connection.

Your gut bacteria play a surprising role in setting off food cravings, so keep them happy with the right foods. “Honey is a good prebiotic food,” says Lipski. “Other foods with probiotics include asparagus, bananas, eggplant, garlic, kefir, sugar maple, and yogurt.”

4. Eat more chocolate

4. Eat more chocolate

Chocolate is a great tool for taming your sweet tooth. “Teach your tastes to like the healthier options—like dark chocolate,” says Clower. “In neuroscience, this is called ‘gustatory habituation.'” He likens it to making the switch from whole milk to skim—at first skim tastes like water, but after a while, you wonder how you ever drank milk that now tastes like cream.

Chocolate is a great way to train your brain to prefer less-sweet foods because there’s a wide variety of chocolate sold, from milk chocolate to upwards of 85 percent dark. “As your preference moves toward darker chocolate, your tastes will be sculpted so that you won’t even want your former faves.”

5. Eat fat

5. Eat fat

Indulging your sugar cravings will only set you up for more failure later. Virgin explains that high-sugar foods cause blood-sugar spikes, leading to insulin imbalances. Follow this down the rabbit hole and you go into a nasty downward cycle of cravings, spikes, and more sugar.

Instead, satisfy your cravings with healthy fats. “Fat doesn’t raise your insulin levels,” says Virgin. “Insulin doesn’t acknowledge fat, and that’s just the way you want it.” She recommends having two to three servings of these expert-approved healthy fats, like avocado, ghee, or olive oil, at every meal.

6. Labels 101: Know the difference between marketing and nutrition

6. Labels 101: Know the difference between marketing and nutrition

“The food industry spends billions of dollars a year to encourage people to buy their products, but foods marketed as ‘healthy’ particularly encourage sales and, therefore, greater calorie intake,” says Nestle. She explains that research shows that people will eat more of a food if they perceive it to be healthy. Eating too much of even healthy foods is a problem, but often these ‘healthy’ foods are anything but. For instance, the flavor that you lose from taking the fat out of yogurt to make it “low fat” is often replaced with, you guessed it, sugar.

7. Labels 201: Do a quick scan of ingredient labels

7. Labels 201: Do a quick scan of ingredient labels

If you have trouble deciphering the nutrition label, remember this quick tip: -ose is gross. “If you find high-fructose corn syrup, then that container should be gone,” says Dr. Peeke. “Anything with sugar, rice syrup, corn syrup, or an -ose (fructose, sucrose) as one of the first three ingredients. Gone.”

8. Labels 301: Get more in-depth on ingredient labels

8. Labels 301: Get more in-depth on ingredient labels

“There are 56 names for sugar, and the food industry uses all of them,” says Dr. Lustig. “What they’ll often do is use different kinds of sugar specifically to lower the amount of any given one so that it goes further down the ingredient list.” It’s a sneaky trick that manufacturers use so that “sugar” isn’t the first thing people see. “You can have different sugars for ingredient number five, six, seven, eight and nine; but if you add them up, it’s number one.”

Luckily, the FDA has recently made a change that requires manufacturers to list added sugars on ingredient labels. Consider that a win for your sugar-free choices!

9. Figure out why you’re eating it

9. Figure out why you’re eating it

“You’re supposed to enjoy a chocolate chip cookie,” explains Alexander. “But if an out-of-control sweet tooth threatens your health, it’s likely that you overeat sweet foods for reasons other than pleasure. Two of the most common are stress relief and emotional comfort.” She points out that understanding why you’re turning to sugar can help you find healthier alternatives, such as exercise or support from friends.

10. Love yourself more than sugar

10. Love yourself more than sugar

It’s OK to forgive yourself for sugar slip-ups, but remember that, for next time, you can be your own best friend. “Self-oriented compassion is a key part of loving ourselves, inside and out,” says Fuhrman. “You may fight yourself on the urge to dive into an entire cheesecake and then feel guilty or shameful because you didn’t have the discipline to stop yourself from eating the whole thing—but the truth is, you can love yourself more than you love that quick hit of sugar.” She points out that self-destructive binges often stem from low self-esteem, so focusing on loving yourself can be easier than focusing on avoiding sugar.

11. Change your mindset

11/19 NEMANJAMISCEVIC/GETTY IMAGES

11. Change your mindset

If deprivation diets haven’t worked for you in the past (and do they really work for anyone?), change “never” into “sometimes.” “Just because it’s called devil’s food cake doesn’t mean it’s evil,” says Promaulayko. “Labeling foods as “sometimes” for indulgences and “always” for the good stuff will keep you on task better than quitting cold turkey.”

12. Recognize if it’s sugar addiction

12. Recognize if it’s sugar addiction

“Craving is always withdrawal,” says DesMaisons. She explains that when you eat sugar, your body comes to expect it, and when you don’t get it, you crave it. This kind of addiction can’t be overcome by willpower alone. “It’s not willpower. Most people think, ‘Oh it’s just that I’m weak willed,’ but they don’t realize that willpower doesn’t work because of the biochemistry. It’s actually the same brain chemistry as going off of heroin,” she says. By recognizing sugar addiction, you can then approach getting it out of your diet with self-compassion and forgiveness.

13. Boost your serotonin

13. Boost your serotonin

A hormonal imbalance in serotonin may be to blame for your sugar cravings. “Serotonin exerts powerful influence over mood, emotions, memory, cravings (especially for carbohydrates), self-esteem, pain tolerance, sleep habits, appetite, digestion, and body temperature regulation,” explains Dr. Turner. “When we’re feeling down or depressed, we naturally crave more sugars to stimulate the production of serotonin.” She says that chronic stress and multitasking overload are the main causes of serotonin depletion. Dr. Turner recommends eating more chia seeds. “This wondrous little grain also contains high amounts of tryptophan, the amino acid precursor of serotonin and melatonin,” she says.

14. Reward yourself with exercise

14. Reward yourself with exercise

Exercise doesn’t need a reward. Exercise is the reward. “A substantial body of science tells us that exercise engages the same neural regions as other mood-enhancing rewards and produces similar chemical responses, says Dr. Kessler.

15. Stop drinking liquid sugar

15. Stop drinking liquid sugar

“For both adults and children, the largest source of added sugar in our diets is sweetened beverages, especially soda,” says Gustafson. “In fact, almost half of the added sugar we now consume comes from sweetened soda and energy, sports, and fruit drinks.” She points out that while the American Heart Association recommends people have no more than 6 to 9 teaspoons of sugar per day, a 12-ounce soda has 10 teaspoons.

16. Ditch fruit juice

16. Ditch fruit juice

You see “fruit” so you think it’s healthy, but really, it’s just an overhyped source of sugar. “Containing neither protein, fat, nor fiber, fruit juice is calorically dense, provides no satiety, and receives 100 percent of its calories from sugar,” says Pasternak. Opt for tea, coffee, or water—drinks that are all naturally zero calories. That said, fruit itself isn’t off the table. “Just compare a cup of unsweetened apple juice with a medium-sized apple,” says Pasternak. “The former contains 114 calories and zero fiber; the latter has only about 72 calories but boasts 3.5 grams of fiber.”

17. Use subs smartly

17. Use subs smartly

There’s a big difference between safe sweeteners and sugar substitutes that make your sugar cravings worse. “Xylitol, a sugar alcohol, is found in many fruits and vegetables,” says Asprey. “Women who use xylitol have less osteoporosis, and xylitol is well known to inhibit cavities, tooth decay, and even sinus infections.” What not to use? Aspartame, sucralose, or acesulfame potassium, as these alternatives have been linked to health issues, including cancer and gut bacteria disruptions.

18. Address your body’s needs

18. Address your body’s needs

Spence takes a divide and conquer approach to handling sugar cravings. “The craving for sweet can be a craving for sweet, but it can also be a craving for caloric intake,” he says. Figure out what you’re body is really asking for by eating something savory, healthy, and full of protein, such as nuts. If you’re still craving something sweet, he suggests using a safe replacement like stevia.

19. Don’t get too hungry

19. Don’t get too hungry

“Most people make poor eating decisions when they are missing meals,” says Cruise. The good news is that this means you can eat more—well, more frequently that is. “Keep your cravings at bay with a healthy snack between regular full meals.” He likes deli meat and cheese roll-ups, or just munching on just about any kind of veggie under the sun.

[nofomoartworld]

Hyperallergic: Seeing Art in the Shadow of Qatar’s Extreme Wealth

A nighttime view of the Museum of Islamic Art with the Doha skyline (photo by Still ePsiLoN/Flickr)

DOHA ­— The international reputation of Qatar is based on the country’s extreme degrees of wealth and security, underwritten by vast reserves of natural gas which will last beyond the 21st century. The country’s creative culture is a less obvious resource.

The ruling Al-Thani family has collected modern Arab art for decades, and the Duke University–educated Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, an irrefutable queen of the world’s major art sales rooms, has brought a succession of blockbuster exhibitions of Western art to Doha. However, a shift in emphasis is beginning to reveal itself. The big shows continue to be shipped in, but there are signs that the Qatar Museums (QM) organization is increasingly intent on fostering local artists who are grappling with current subject matter.

The relationship between Qataris and contemporary art has not always been a comfortable one. Qatari culture is dominated by conservatively minded Sunni Muslims, not a few of whom were appalled by “Printemps,” a video installation by the artist Adel Abdessemed — displayed in 2013–14 at the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art — which appears to show burning, shrieking chickens hanging from a wall. They were also shocked by Damien Hirst’s “Coup de tête” sculpture and elements of his Relics exhibition in Doha around the same time. But there seems to be a measured provocative intent in this strategy. Referring to the reactions created by Damien Hirst’s work, Khalifa Al Obaidly, director of the QM-funded Doha art space and residency Fire Station, said that sometimes it was sometimes good for art to be disturbing: “And the next time, you might say, ‘Oh yes, I’ve seen this before.’”

There are three current headline art shows in Doha: a clever arrangement of works by Picasso and Giacometti at the Fire Station’s Garage Gallery, which is also an outpost of Qatar Museums (QM); large-scale images and artworks by the ebullient French socio-urban agitator JR at the QM Gallery Katara; and a 400-piece retrospective showcasing the London-based Iraqi artist Dia Al-Azzawi at the Mathaf and QM Gallery Al Riwaq. They have thus far caused no offense; Picasso’s nudes might have, but they were ruled out by the curators.

Pablo Picasso, “Child with Doves” (1943), Musée national Picasso-Paris

Depending on your metric, the import strategy is proving successful in Doha. The Picasso–Giacometti show attracted 400 people on its opening day and 3,000 in the first three weeks — an exceptional turnout. Works by Takashi Murakami and Louise Bourgeois produced the city’s first blockbuster exhibitions of foreign art in 2012. At the time, the local blogosphere was filled with complaints that the money should have been spent on a Formula 1 circuit instead, but these would not have registered with Sheikha Al-Mayassa, who paid $300 million for Gauguin’s “When Will You Marry?” and whose central cultural project is to turn Doha into a dynamic, international arts incubator. She made this aim quite evident as far back as 2010, in a TED talk titled, “Globalizing the Local, Localizing the Global.”

It is rather strange, then, that art was removed from Qatar’s statewide curriculum seven years ago, only to be reinstated four years later; when questioned recently, senior figures at Qatar Museums, part of whose remit is to guide school educational programs, were unable to explain these on-off mandates.

The Fire Station (photo courtesy Qatar Museums)

The Fire Station is a new phenomenon in Doha: a combined gallery and studios for young artists. The gallery segment sits at the base of an ornately clad 1980s building regarded as one of Doha’s three earliest modern architectural icons; the other two are the Baroque Brutalist main post office and the Sheraton Hotel, both ziggurat-like. The Fire Station’s extension contains 20 studios (and a rather luxe communal kitchen) for young Qatari, and some international, artists in residence, who, since 2015, have been mentored and ultimately introduced by Qatar Museums to buyers and gallerists. Most of them have studied at the Doha campus of Virginia Commonwealth University and at art schools such as London’s Central Saint Martins.

The latest cohort includes Ahmed Al-Jufairi, who recently told the Reconnecting Arts website: “Qatari men and women should not be judged or ostracised if their interests do not complement the norms of society . . . I am trying to terminate the fear of expressing one’s self.”

The norms that Al-Jufairi and other young Qatari artists face are encapsulated by the view a mile northeast of the Fire Station, across the jade-green waters of West Bay. There, the excruciatingly vivid architecture of the thickets of corporate and hotel towers expresses Doha’s most obvious 21st-century characteristic: extreme economic wealth. It’s reflected in shimmering surfaces and a vibe that recalls a tranquilized version of the gated Eden-Olympia in JG Ballard’s novel Super-Cannes.

Doha in 2015, near the West Bay area (photo by Shahid Siddiqi/Wikimedia)

Not entirely tranquilized, however: a spate of recent international criticism of the working conditions of the armies of indentured laborers who are building paradise caught the Qatari government off guard. It has now responded by making it a legal requirement for workers to be paid electronically and allowed to move to other employers.

One of Doha’s four new Msheireb Museums portrays the history of international and Gulf slavery — subject matter championed by the Emir’s wife, Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned. The material is blunt and detailed. One photo display caption, headed “Contractual Enslavement,” reads: “Workers having lunch in Doha. Throughout the Gulf States, the abuse of the kafala (sponsorship) system directly affects large numbers of foreign migrant workers.”

Doha’s first modern buildings, as well as piped water and electricity, arrived in the 1950s, as its oil and gas industries accelerated. The extraordinary explosion of urban redevelopment and expansion began in the 1990s and can be summed up by the scales of three current projects: the 76-acre planned city of Msheireb Downtown Doha, with a four-level car park beneath the whole of it; the 14-square-mile Lusail City and Pearl-Qatar developments, which will house 500,000 people; and the construction of a $36 billion Doha Metro system. These don’t even include the dozens of hotels being constructed to absorb the Gadarene masses who will fly in to attend the 2022 World Cup soccer tournament.

One wonders if the commercial gravities of such huge projects are a stimulant or a narcotic to Qatari artists. At least one, the 33-year-old Qatari-American Sophia Al-Maria, has taken an anti-consumerist position. Her video installation “Black Friday” was shown at the Whitney Museum last year — a hallucinatory, drone-videoed fugue about shopping malls, the 21st-century equivalent of Coleridge’s “caverns measureless to man,” where we are all spendthrift Kubla Khans.

“The project of 20th century futurism is turning out to be fata morgana, boomers taking us down the wrong path to drown where the tide came in,” Al-Maria told the Miracle Marathon at London’s Serpentine Gallery last year. “The future I was promised was erased and washed away in a flood of human folly.” Her on-trend subject matter and aesthetics overlie a longing for past Qatari cultural certainties; she has spoken of the need to learn lessons from older people and from more traditional settings.

Dia Al-Azzawi, “Untitled IX” (1975), Halaat Insaniyya series, gouache on paper, 43 x 33 cm, private collection, Dubai

There are certainly no fata morganas in Dia Al-Azzawi’s work, no layers of metaphor. The most potent of the 77-year-old’s 500-plus pieces at Mathaf and the QM Gallery concern loss. His gouache-on-paper series Human States contains images suggesting burial or coffins, and was prompted by the Iraqi purges of the Kurds in the early 1970s. “They were our brothers,” he told me, adding that the raw fatality of the images had proved unexpectedly magnetic to parties of schoolchildren.

Of Al-Azzawi’s large-scale works, the huge, four-panel “Sabra and Shatila” (1983, in Tate Modern’s collection) is a “Guernica” portraying the destruction of Palestinian camps in Beirut in 1982. Having absorbed the emotional intensity radiated by the contorted figures and objects on these canvases, it’s startling to encounter Al-Azzawi’s workbooks — lusciously sensual and densely colored, with freely expressed and highly engaging figuration.

Installation view, Dia al-Azzawi: A Retrospective (from 1963 until tomorrow), Qatar Museums Gallery Al Riwaq, Doha (photo courtesy Qatar Museums)

The conundrum-figure of the three current Qatar Museums shows is JR, the French photograffeur who is routinely, and mistakenly, described as a street artist. The word “artist” can be applied only in a secondary sense: the combination of JR, in person, and photographs of his work at the gallery in Katara reveals him to be a sociopolitical activist — a bright-eyed, Elmer Gantry–like performer, plainly irresistible to himself and to Doha’s cosmopolitan set at the opening.

He does, however, possess the admirable, everyday-people sensibility of Henri Cartier-Bresson, marbled with traces of Peter Pan and the Beat generation’s canonically hyperactive Neal Cassady. His work is essentially the application of giant photographs, on paper or other materials, to various types of urban surfaces — roads, decaying buildings in Beirut, the West Bank Wall, corrugated rooftops in a Kenyan shantytown. The interventions are meant to highlight ordinary people who are perceived by the dominant society as being in some way other — really agitprop devices rather than art or hip matériel.

The images of the West Bank Wall are particularly effective: paired photographs of Israelis and Palestinians who do the same jobs. In Pakistan, huge photographs of civilian drone-strike victims were affixed to flat ground so that drone operators could see them. There is a coincidental link to the ethos of Al-Azzawi’s art, and to Diego Rivera’s.

JR, “The Wrinkles of the City, Kadir an, Turkey” (2015), color photograph, mat plexiglas, aluminum, wood, 180 x 270 cm(© JR-ART.NET, courtesy Galerie Perrotin)

Among the headline acts, Al-Azzawi is the most hopeful omen of things to come. As he takes his place on Qatar’s cultural stage, and as Sheikh Mohammed Rashid Al-Thani’s Institute of Arab and Islamic Art moves forward in New York, one wonders about the Al-Thanis’ major collections of Arab art — how long will it will be before they’re presented as blockbuster shows in Doha, with the same degree of hoopla as, say, Hirst’s Relics?

Notwithstanding the superb contents of the city’s Museum of Islamic Art, it seems particularly important to show and make available as much of the Arab modern art resource as possible. It is living proof of the region’s 20th-century cultural heritage — a hearth which produced the Fire Station and the creative flames now being fanned within it.

Dia al-Azzawi: A Retrospective (from 1963 until tomorrow) continues at Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and QM Gallery Al Riwaq through April 16. Picasso–Giacometti continues at the Fire Station through May 21. JR Répetoire continues at QM Gallery Katara through May 31.

Editor’s note: The author’s travel expenses and lodgings were paid for by Qatar Museums.

The post Seeing Art in the Shadow of Qatar’s Extreme Wealth appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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[kpopdancings]

STEPHEN HAWKING & THE HYPOTHESIS 'GOD DID NOT CREATE THE UNIVERSE! '

New Post has been published on http://www.whatsupkpop.com/stephen-hawking-the-hypothesis-god-did-not-create-the-universe/

STEPHEN HAWKING & THE HYPOTHESIS 'GOD DID NOT CREATE THE UNIVERSE! '

STEPHEN HAWKING & THE HYPOTHESIS ‘GOD DID NOT CREATE THE UNIVERSE! ‘

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  “Without God. Nobody created the universe and no one decided our destiny ”- the late physical genius Stephen Hawking once wrote.

It is a quote from the book “Brief Answers to the Big Questions”, the last publication of Stephen Hawking published by John Murray.

  In life, Hawking was a vocal champion of the Big Bang theory. The idea that the universe began by exploding suddenly out of a singularity that is extremely smaller than an atom. From this speck emerged all the matter, energy and empty space that the universe would ever contain, and all that raw material evolved into the cosmos we perceive today by following a strict set of scientific laws. To Hawking and many like-minded scientists, the combined laws of gravity, relativity, quantum physics and a few other rules could explain everything that ever happened or ever will happen in our known universe.

“For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God. Well, I suppose it’s possible that I’ve upset someone up there, but I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature. If you believe in science, like I do, you believe that there are certain laws that are always obeyed. If you like, you can say the laws are the work of God, but that is more a definition of God than a proof of his existence,” Hawking wrote.

  With the universe running on a scientifically guided autopilot, the only role for an all-powerful deity might be setting the initial conditions of the universe. So that those laws could take shape a divine creator who caused the Big Bang to bang, then stepped back to behold “His work”.

“Did God create the quantum laws that allowed the Big Bang to occur?” Hawking wrote. “I have no desire to offend anyone of faith, but I think science has a more compelling explanation than a divine creator.”

  In his book written in 1988, A Brief History of Time, Hawking had seemed to accept the role of God in the creation of the universe. But in the new text, co-written with American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said new theories showed a creator is “not necessary”.

  In the past, Hawking almost never spoke directly about his religious views. However, he always said that humans are the pinnacle of evolution and needs to be perfected with the help of scientific and technical means such as automation, gene therapy …. In his books, Hawking often uses the word “god” to clarify what he presents.

But in the new text, co-writing with the American physicist Leonard Mlodinow, he said: “Due to the obvious existence of physical laws, such as gravity, the universe can and will continue to self-destruct. create it out of nothing. The spontaneous formation of the universe is the reason why the universe and people exist. It is therefore unnecessary to include God in the creation of the universe. ” Hawking wrote in the book.

  Hawking’s explanation begins with quantum mechanics, which explains how subatomic particles behave. In quantum studies, it’s common to see subatomic particles like protons and electrons seemingly appear out of nowhere, stick around for a while and then disappear again to a completely different location. Because the universe was once the size of a subatomic particle itself, it’s plausible that it behaved similarly during the Big Bang, Hawking wrote.

  That still doesn’t explain away the possibility that God created that proton-size singularity, then flipped the quantum- mechanical switch that allowed it to pop. But Hawking says science has an explanation here, too. To illustrate, he points to the physics of black holes — collapsed stars that are so dense, nothing, including light, can escape their pull.

Black holes, like the universe before the Big Bang, condense into a singularity. In this ultra-packed point of mass, gravity is so strong that it distorts time as well as light and space. Simply put, in the depths of a black hole, time does not exist.

Because the universe also began as a singularity, time itself could not have existed before the Big Bang. Hawking’s answer, then, to what happened before the Big Bang is, “there was no time before the Big Bang.”

“We have finally found something that doesn’t have a cause, because there was no time for a cause to exist in,” Hawking wrote. “For me this means that there is no possibility of a creator, because there is no time for a creator to have existed in.”

  Hawking says the first blow to Newton’s belief that the universe could not have arisen from chaos was the observation in 1992 of a planet orbiting a star other than our Sun. “That makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions – the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass – far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings,” he writes.

  Hawking explained that, since the universe has an infinite number of galaxies and each galaxy has an infinite number of planets, it is very likely that the earth is not the only place where life is present. Even our universe exists with many other universes. The other universes have the same laws of physics as ours, that is, they are also created out of nothing, not by the hand of God.

If God is human-oriented, wouldn’t you expect him to create a universe in which humans feature prominently? You’d expect humans to occupy most of the universe, existing across time. Yet that isn’t the kind of universe we live in. Humans are very small, and space, as Douglas Adams once put it, “is big, really really big”.

  Scientists estimate that the observable universe, the part of it we can see, is around 93 billion light years across. The whole universe is at least 250 times as large as the observable universe.

Our own planet is 150m kilometres away from the sun. Earth’s nearest stars, the Alpha Centauri system, are four light years away (that’s around 40 trillion kilometres). Our galaxy, the Milky Way, contains anywhere from 100 to 400 billion stars. The observable universe contains around 300 sextillion stars. Humans occupy the tiniest fraction of it. The landmass of planet Earth is a drop in this ocean of space.

Like Adams Centauri , the universe is really too old. Probably more than 13 billion years old. Earth is about 4 billion years old, and humans have evolved about 200,000 years ago. Temporarily speaking, man existed in the blink of an eye.

  In 2011, in the scientific film Curiosity for the Discovery channel, Hawking asked: “Did God create the universe?”. He affirmed that, in order to create the universe God “had no time,” since before the Big Bang happened, time did not exist …

  At Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in 2011, Hawking also said that “philosophy is dead.” Philosophy, he believes, “has not kept pace with the modern development of science”, and that scientists have become the leading torch bearers of the quest to discover knowledge. Hawking believes that philosophical problems can be answered by science, especially new scientific theories that will lead us to a very different new picture of the universe and our place in it …

  At the end of his lecture at the California Institute of Industry, the genius cosmologist made a point about saving humanity: “We need to continue to explore space for the future of humanity. I don’t think we will live a thousand years if we don’t finally run out of this fragile planet.

Hawking’s lecture in Caliphornia was very popular with the public. Although the subject of it was purely scientific, the people who wanted to listen to it were still very large and they lined up for a mile and a half. 

This argument will do little to persuade theistic believers, but that was never Hawking’s intent. As a scientist with a near-religious devotion to understanding the cosmos, Hawking sought to “know the mind of God” by learning everything he could about the self-sufficient universe around us. While his view of the universe might render a divine creator and the laws of nature incompatible, it still leaves ample space for faith, hope, wonder and, especially, gratitude.

  Stephen Hawking has been considered the king of theoretical physics of the world for many decades. He is famous for his studies on black holes in the universe. Hawking also pursued his goal of finding a “unifying theory” to resolve the contradictions between Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum theory. Hawking used to hold the position of Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge University, England. This is also the title that Newton held.

  The book “A Brief History” is the most famous publication written by Professor Hawking in his lifetime, and has sold more than 13 million copies worldwide. At the age of 20, Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease (MND), predicted only 2 years to live.As the years passed, he did not die, but his mobility and communication became increasingly limited, and he ended up living in a wheelchair and talking on a voice synthesizer.When he died at the age of 76, the scientist became the longest-lived MND patient ever.His war against illness was told vividly in the movie “Theory of Things” (2014) starring British actor Eddie Redmayne. Hawking’s role also brought the Oscar for Redmayne in 2015.