Working in Movement

Back to blogging after an unanticipated vacation due to disk errors on the mac. This came up when I attempted to install Panther, the newest version of the Mac OS X operating system. The installer informed me that my disk had errors and that it couldn't install to it. A call to Applecare wasn't much help: they told me to get a copy of Diskwarrior and a firewire drive to use for backups. Otherwise, I could just reformat. Of course, despite my best intentions, I didn't have backups, so that option wasn't attractive. Well, a few days and more than a few dollars later, it's all working together again. I just wonder why Apple hasn't annexed the company that makes DiskWarrior, or developed something like it to include in the operating system.

Ironically, just days before I had been bragging about how the mac "just worked" better than my wintel machine. I am finding that Macs do work if you know what to do with them, whereas on the Wintel side, just knowing what to do doesn't insure that it's going to happen.

Whad'ya do with situations where you find yourself sweating, trembling, shaking, etc. In other words, filled with anxiety. One approach is to relax, and there are lots of techniques and reams of advice to do that. But according to David Barlow, the better approach lies in the opposite direction--towards the thing that gives you the willies. The Cruelest Cure chronicles Barlow's unorthodox treatment for anxiety disorders: intensify the mental distress of patients.

Here are a few quotes from the article:

Barlow's core belief is this: people aren't afraid of external things. It's all a matter of the relationship a person has to his or her own internalized terror. And once people disarm their terror, once they realize that they can survive it, then you have detoxified the problem and in some senses provided a cure.

'Just hearing about what he does gives me the fight-or-flight response.' says one colleque. New York Times: Health

For another, a little similiar, learning-based perspective see an article on fear of heights at Learning Methods.com.