Cavemen Didn't Get Fat

Take a step back in time to achieve greater health and wellbeing! This is the message from Mark Sisson in the book The Primal Blueprint and the companion volume The Primal Blueprint Cookbook. The Primal Blueprint presents Mr Sisson's complete plan for achieving a healthier life, eschewing what he calls conventional wisdom and taking us back to a more natural way of life. We cannot become the hunter-gatherers our ancestors were, but we can model our diets and our exercise routines to live more in harmony with our evolution. Not exactly a low-carb diet because of its emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables, he does recommend avoiding all types of grains to model our diet after what our primitive ancestors would have eaten. His advice on exercise leans towards regular, extended slow cardio (like long walks and hikes) with a few sporadic high-intensity strength training sessions and occasional sprints. It's a "new" approach to health and wellbeing that harkens back to a primitive time. If you find any of these ideas interesting you might also want to check out The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet & Neanderthin: Eat like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body, which explore similiar dietary themes. Also, the book Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World has Never Seen explores some of the benefits of barefoot running/exercising which is addressed in The Primal Blueprint and is itself a funny and enjoyable read about long distance running and runners. Take a step back in time with these interesting books and see if their ideas may fit into your modern life!


Visit Mark's Daily Apple: Primal Living in the Modern World, the Primal Blueprint website, for success stories, freebies, & more! Also, the library's Resource Center has a Health & Medicine section you can browse for more wellness tips.

What Not to Read into Fashion

There are a lot of people writing (& hosting TV shows) about fashion. We've all heard the catchwords: "What Not to Wear", "Fierce Style", "fashionista" & so on. You can read books about Audrey Hepburn's & Jackie O's style. But most of us are not America's Top Model or have an unlimited budget. Where can we look for style advice?

I like the following books on fashion as they reinforce the fact that there is no stereotypical beauty in real life, unlike the ideal created (usually by men) in the fashion world. Women come in all shapes & sizes, just needing a little guidance on their own attributes & how to enhance them. All women can make the best of what they have, given a little direction, & be beautiful in their own style.

Little Black Book of Style by Nina Garcia

Glamour's Big Book of Dos and Don'ts: Fashion Help for Every Woman by Cindi Leive

Style 101: What Every Stylish Woman Should Know from the editors of In Style magazine

Redefining Beauty: Discovering Your Individual Beauty, Enhancing Your Self-Esteem by Victoria Jackson with Paddy Calistro

Just to give you an idea of what goes on, here's a peek into today's fashion world, Chanel-style:



This year, Islamabad has its first Fashion Week!

Also, check out next month's - "FROCK, PAPER, SCISSORS" , NEW WORKS BY RECYCLED TIN ARTIST MARCIA SEDNEK - Mariposa Gallery - Reception Fri, Feb 4 from 5:00pm-8:00pm. "Combining fashion & folk art, Albuquerque artist Marcia Sednek creates mini dresses & ball gowns from vintage tin & found objects." ~from Local IQ

Check out this list of "Worn-Out Fashion Terms" from the New York Times!

Also visit James Laver and Laws on the Timeline of Style.

& here's a question we've all been asking ourselves at the branch:

Sandra Bullock Golden Globes 2011: Hit or Miss?

Art Things Considered

"Art is either plagiarism or revolution."
~Paul Gauguin

This year I am determined to increase my art knowledge. I am currently reading Sarah Thornton's fascinating Seven Days in the Art World-this is a great introduction, because in each chapter she delves into a different facet of the art world: The Auction; The Crit; The Fair; The Prize; The Magazine; The Studio Visit; The Biennale.Each chapter is a "day-in-the-life" narrative based on interviews & "participant observation" as Thornton attends a Christie's auction, a Los Angeles art school seminar, and so on. Published in 2008, Thornton writes about a booming art market-I don't know if it still is booming.

I also picked up a book called The Daily Book of Art: 365 Readings that Teach, Inspire, & Entertain. (It was cheaper than taking an Art History class.) Several authors contributed to it, & it features writings on "unexpected art forms", "profiles in art", "a picture's worth 200 words", "art around the world", & "art from the inside out". So far I have learned such tidbits as:

Tupilaks (day 7)

The Elephant Artists of Thailand (day 9)



That the paintings of Jan Vermeer "exemplify repoussir (French for "to push back"), a technique used to give the illusion of depth by situating large objects or figures in the foreground." Also, did you know there are only 36 surviving Vermeer paintings?

Happenings & the Fluxus Movement (day 18)

The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA): Art Too Bad to Be Ignored (day 19)

I hope to share more of my art knowledge with you throughout the year.

For more books like Sarah Thornton's, try a subject search under Art Criticism, Art -- Marketing, or Art -- Competitions in the library catalog. I would also like to recommend some of the movies that got me thinking about art: The Cats of Mirikitani; The Art of the Steal; Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child; L'heure d'été/Summer Hours; & Séraphine.

Albuquerque Comic Con

"Albuquerque Comic Con 2011 was an amazing success and a testament to the amazing people of New Mexico. Every celebrity guest that attended said that it was you, the people and fans of this event that made this one of the most memorable experiences of their convention lives. With over 10,000 of you passing through the doors for the 2 day event, we met so many great friends and can't wait to start planning 2012. ACC will begin selling tickets to our 2012 event as well as booth spaces to all of you vendors who enjoyed your time with us. Guest list is currently in the works. Any thoughts on who you would like to see? Let us know."
~from the website

Science fiction & fantasy & comic fans, keep an eye out for this fun event next year! Events at this year's ACC, which took place January 15th & 16th, included: Star Wars Costuming and Armor Building with 501st Dewback Legion; Self Publishing 7000 BC and others; Mixed Martial Arts with Herb Dean and Michael Westbrook; & a film festival. Special guests included Gil Gerard, Erin Gray, Peter Mayhew, & Lou Ferrigno.

One of our library staff members attended the wildly successful Albuquerque Comic Con & brought back these pictures!

Science Corner: Immanuel Velikovsky

"History is written by the winners, including that of science. Unorthodoxies that flourish at the grassroots are often beneath the contempt of historians. Zetetic astronomy (flat-Earth science) was a household term in Victorian England, but not a single reference to it is found in conventional histories. We ignore such histories at our peril."
~from Worlds of Their Own: A Brief History of Misguided Ideas: Creationism, Flat-Earthism, Energy Scams, and the Velikovsky Affair by Robert Schadewald

"For one thing Velikfovskianism, and indeed, any exoheretical view that becomes prominent enough to force itself on science, acts to puncture scientific complacency-and that is good. An exoheresy may cause scientists to bestir themselves for the purpose of reexamining the bases of their beliefs, even if only to gather firm and logical reasons for the rejection of the exoheresy-and that is good too. An exoheresy may cause scientific activity which, in a serendipitous fashion, may uncover something worthwhile that has nothing to do with the exoheresy-and that is very good, if it happens."
~Isaac Asimov

Immanuel Velikovsky was a Russian-born American "futurist, prophet, mythologist, historian, scientific renegade." His most famous work is probably 1950's Worlds in Collision, which was criticized & controversial-& a New York Times bestseller. The book "proposes that many myths and traditions of ancient peoples and cultures are based on actual events: worldwide global catastrophes of a celestial origin, which had a profound effect on the lives, beliefs and writings of early mankind." Velikovsky's theory was that Venus was originally a comet made from a piece of Jupiter, & that, as a comet, it travelled the solar system, its gravitational field causing catastrophes on our planet along the way. The controversy surrounding his work and its reception is often referred to as "the Velikovsky affair". Carl Sagan was one of Velikovsky's most vocal critics.

Despite his detractors, Velikovsky's theories still have many followers & in fact his theories got a mention in the article "Quakes, Tectonic and Theoretical" in the New York Times on January 15th.

For more on Velikovsky:

Find Velikovsky's books in the catalog. Or in our Science in Context database with your valid library card!

Find Velikovsky in...The UnMuseum

...The Immanuel Velikovsky Archive

...The Immanuel Velikovsky Encyclopedia

Adventures in Deltiology

deltiology (ˌdɛltɪˈɒlədʒɪ)
— n, the collection and study of picture postcards
[C20: from Greek deltion, diminutive of deltos a writing tablet + -logy ]
~from Dictionary.com

Every day, I still visit my mailbox when I get home with a sense of hope-even though the bulk of my correspondence is online these days. There's such a thrill in receiving "snail mail", I always think. My father used to write me regularly, & still sends postcards when he travels. Postcards have always been my favorite mail-whenever someone leaves town, I'll be begging them to send me a postcard from wherever their journey takes them.

Since I love mail but rarely find anything in the mailbox but bills & ads, I have joined an online project called Postcrossing. The website explains: "The goal of this project is to allow people to receive postcards from all over the world, for free. Well, almost free! The main idea is that: if you send a postcard, you will receive at least one back from a random Postcrosser from somewhere in the world." How does it work? After you sign up for your (free) account, it works like this:

1.Request an address and a Postcard ID
2.Mail the postcard to that address
3.Receive a postcard from another postcrosser!
4.Register the Postcard ID you have received
5.Go to number 1 to receive more postcards!

Postcrossing boasts 214,501 members in 205 countries; 766 postcards/hour; 6,154,685 postcards received; 207,549 postcards traveling; 33,699,683,074 km traveled! I have had a lot of fun with it over the last couple of years, sending postcards to the Netherlands, Taiwan, Brazil, & Iceland, & receiving cards from Japan, Iran, Thailand, Finland, & Estonia.

If, like me, you love postcards, consider checking out these offerings from the library catalog:

Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence written and illustrated by Nick Bantock

Frank Warren's Postsecret books (PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. See more on the website.)

Real Photo Postcards: Unbelievable Images from the Collection of Harvey Tulcenskyedited by Laetitia Wolff

Postcards from the Boys by Ringo Starr

Had a Good Time: Stories from American Postcards by Robert Olen Butler

Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards edited by Christraud M. Geary and Virginia-Lee Webb

A Postcard Memoir by Lawrence Sutin

Border Fury: A Picture Postcard Record of Mexico's Revolution and U.S. War Preparedness, 1910-1917 by Paul J. Vanderwood and Frank N. Samponaro

For children, try a subject search under "Postcards Juvenile".

The Game Begins April 17th!

George R.R. Martin fans! Are you ready to watch A Game of Thrones on HBO this spring? This series, starring Sean Bean, Peter Dinklage, & Lena Headey, is based on Martin's A Song of Fire & Ice books:

o A Game of Thrones
o A Clash of Kings
o A Storm of Swords
o A Feast for Crows
o A Dance with Dragons (forthcoming)
o The Winds of Winter (forthcoming)
o A Dream of Spring (forthcoming)




For more titles by George R. R. Martin, pay your local library catalog a visit!

Looking to find out the latest news & award winners in science fiction? Check out SF Signal & Science Fiction Awards Watch.