Freedom Philosophy

The Before and After Speaks for Itself

As a slightly tech addicted docomo customer I wanted to keep the rock solid signal docomo provides even in the hinterlands of Japan. As the negotiations began back a few years ago between Apple and the mobile service providers in this country, I watched in dismay as they set up something with softbank. I spend a good portion of the year out in the countryside and am well aware of the softbank customer disclaimer, “I’ll see if I can get a signal and call you when I get there.”

I waited for iphone to get set-up with docomo. There were rumors but nothing happened…so I waited some more and waited a few months more until I couldn’t take not having a smart phone anymore. One chilly evening in December I found myself in Yodabashi Camera buying a blackberry and switching over my account from the pricey Sharp 906i touchscreen mobile with a 5mg digi cam I had been using. Over fancy camera features, I wanted wifi. I wanted to sync with my google calendar, contacts, and gmail. I wanted to stop beating my way through the Japanese language only i-mode websites and have full web browsing. I wanted a twitter app, wordpress app, evernote app, and flickr app. Basically I wanted my phone to catch up to web 2.0.

I’m a big mac fan and a sucker for the bells, whistles, and endless app options for the iphone but I am having a great time with this blackberry bold. While I imagine I’d get used to the iphone touchscreen, the tactile nature of the keyboard is a real bonus. I have also found enough available for me to get it to do almost everything I want it to, including sync podcasts from itunes. I am more than a bit annoyed with how long it is taking Skype and RIM to come out with Skype for blackberry but it probably won’t be too much longer now.

While I like it’s overall appearance, I did find the full black look a little unimaginative. Coveroo out of San Francisco, California has a whole heap of battery cover solutions to pimp out a blackberry. Mine now resembles something of a college dorm tapestry which I’m pretty happy with. It’s not an iphone but I love this device and in addition to all the web 2.0 stuff, it does radical things like make phone calls wherever I happen to be.

Editorial, Technology blackberry, coveroo, docomo, Technology

For people who haven’t been formally introduced to Aardvark, it is a service which taps into your existing social networks and capitalizes on the institutional knowledge base you have at your fingertips.

Basics – You put in a question and Aardvark sends it out to people who can help you. On the flip side of that, what are you an expert in? Aardvark also enables you to help people with questions that you know the answers to. It basically relies on that age-old joy of helping people out and maybe to a degree showing off what you know. After all, most everyone likes to at least be asked…

I’ve been working with aardvark for about 6 months and it isn’t invasive. I get a question every week or two and I try to respond intelligently. I claim not to know much but I know something about living in Japan (having been here 9 years) and a bit about fitness. Most of my questions seem to fall into those two niches and the answers aren’t hard to come up with.

So today I got this question from a guy in the US. “”What’s the best way to get rid if man-boobs sans surgery? Push-ups? And if so which form works best?” Tell me your heart doesn’t go out to a dude trying to rid himself of man-boobs so I wrote back.

Dear Aardvark,

There are no magic pills for this. Push-ups will make the muscle underneath whatever fat you are storing stronger but won’t address the issue directly. This is a common misconception in fitness like doing sit-ups to get rid of belly fat.

There are a few things to know…

One is that everyone’s body stores excess energy in fat. You actually need it because the human body can only store approx 800 calories in the blood. Everyone’s body stores fat in different places. For some guys this results in a big ole beer belly, back fat, or for others man-boobs. What you need to do is get your metabolism up (try cycling for burning off calories, hard to beat it), help your body burn off the fat by staying hydrated (drink water), and eat less food/more often like 6 small meals a day of modest portions ie not putting in enough calories in a single sitting where you body will need to store it in fat.

Then work on building some muscle tone like doing push-ups or sit-ups or lifting weights whatever. Muscle tissue burns energy just sitting there so not only will the exercise it takes to build muscle burn calories but having better muscle tone will enable you to burn more energy even when you aren’t doing anything at all.

Those efforts combined will get rid of the man-boobs, bro. Good luck.

In return, I get the satisfaction of helping a stranger during my morning break at work and will probably take my own advice and get out for ride after work.

Click to join Aardvark

Health, Wellness, & Nutrition, Technology Aardvark, Social Networks, Technology, web 2.0

Our increasing use of Web 2.0 technologies makes communication both more intimate and distal at the same time.  The news of this article, a video or a useless fb status telling you that a former high school classmate is out of yogurt instantly invades your consciousness all without the physical presence of the person who created it.

One potential impact this holds for counselling is that we are possibly more attuned to each others’ subtle shifts in mood but further removed from an actual experience of each other. This mode of existence may leave a therapeutic domain that relies on such fundamentals as empathy and understanding deficient in the millions of opportunities to practice and hone these skills.

Bergum & Dossetor (2005) proposed that:

While not obvious in this short quotation, this comment was primarily a response to a detached pathological view of therapy work. I offer that it is also a useful response to an expanding interpersonal culture with increasing rates of interaction but arguably decreasing intimacy. To me, the idea of deep and meaningful interaction is akin to “presence” as pointed to over two thousand years ago by the questions of Lao Tsu in the Tao-Te-Ching.



Can you coax your mind from its wandering
 and keep to the original oneness?
Can you let your body become
 supple as a newborn child’s?
Can you cleanse your inner vision
 until you see nothing but the light?
Can you love people and lead them
 without imposing your will?
Can you deal with the most vital matters
 by letting events take their course?
Can you step back from you own mind
 and thus understand all things?

Counsellors must work to be more and more helpful amidst a decline of certain forms of intimacy.  A look at modern day idea of embodiment against a backdrop of a Taoist interpretation of presence offers us meaningful direction and insight into where we should be placing our emphasis.

Bergum, V.,  & Dossetor, J. (2005). Relational ethics: The full meaning of respect. Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group.

Lao, T. (1995). Tao-Te-Ching (S. Mitchell, trans) Retrieved June 01, 2009 from Academic Brooklyn, academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu: http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/core9/phalsall/texts/ taote-v3.html. (Original work published 6th Century BC)

Counselling Study, Technology counselling, Technology, therapeutic alliance