Writer Marianne Schnall sits down with David Lynch to discuss Transcendental Meditation, his practice and the work of his foundation to bring meditation to the mainstream.

Artists don't want to lose their edge and they worry that meditation might take away that edge and make them calm and worthless. This was one of my worries before starting meditation, but I find way more of an edge, way more creativity flowing, way more happiness in the doing, way more energy to do the work. And I say that this transcending every day fuels the work and a very good feeling in life. No one likes to suffer. Sometimes in a romantic way, artists think suffering is part of the art life. But looking a little deeper we see that it is only romantic for others, it's not really romantic for the artist to be starving, cold and suffering in the garret. It's absurd to think suffering fuels creativity. The artist should understand suffering, but the artist doesn't have to suffer to do his or her work. Suffering and negativity kill creativity. So let's get real and experience that treasury within which fuels real creativity.

Tip: See also my post "Transcendental Meditation and the Alternatives".

Photo credit: David Lynch interviewed by Moviechrome (video).

Swedish freediver Annelie Pompe explains how it feels to experience "freediver blackout":

A freedivers blackout looks much worse from the outside than it is experienced from the inside. In fact, it might be worse observing a blackout than having one. My last memory from the dive is only of having a good feeling of strength, swimming up towards the surface and next breath, having been to 131m depth I believed that I was on the way to break a world record. I spent what felt like an eternity underwater. And I obvioulsy spent a lot of oxygen swimming up with the monofin. My legs was obviously filled with lactic acid, but I could handle it. I remember seeing the safety freediver and being happy I was getting close to the surface. This is what’s scary with a blackout. It’s sudden and without warning. I suddenly started dreaming. The dream was just like a dream at night. Physiologically the hypoxia (lack of oxygen) had made my body shut down. As I ascended the lungs expanded and the pressure made the oxygen push back from the blood into the lungs, which makes the probabilty of a shallow water blackout occur near the surface. It’s also more likely to happen if you breathe to much and fast before a dive. What I knew, but was not aware of in my dream-state was the safety freedivers grabbing me and aiding my lifelss body up to the surface.

Next thing I knew I was transferred from the dreamworld to the reality. The sun was in my face. People were watching and talking reassuringly to me. It took a few seconds before I’d realised what happened. I breathed and felt a urge to cough. My chest rustled and I coughed some specks of blood from a lung squeeze. Someone gave me a regulator to breathe oxygen. There was silence around me, and I felt sad to have let the others down. I closed my eyes and focused on breathing. It’s all I could do for a few minutes. Dissapointment. And a decision to try again.

Photo credit: Annelie Pompe photographed by Nanna Kreutzmann.

I can't stop laughing watching this! Does this remind you of something? It seems human behavior isn't that human after all. Priceless!

Via Olof Röhlander.

Spectators watching a Turkish F-16 pilot coming in for landing, got more than they bargained for:

Via Metro (SE).

Australian dad David Richard's Christmas decorations has earned him a place in the Guinness World Records for the largest image made of LED lights:

With 1,194,380 lights making up a 3D image of three Christmas gifts spanning 3865m2, as well as tens of thousands of lights creating a magical backdrop, the display has transformed Canberra’s CBD into a festival of light to raise money for the charity SIDS and Kids ACT.

TV segment from Australian television:

Oh, I'm gonna watch this! PilotsEYE.tv captures the footage of whole flights by placing 6 HD cameras inside the cockpit, getting a nice view of the scenery and interesting behind-the-scenes of how the captain and his first officer work.

The flights are edited down to between 60 and 90 minutes and have english subtitles. Available in DVD and Blu-ray.

In this clip, Captain Hans Klikovich and First Officer Cornelia Ollinge fly from Vienna to Barcelona with an Austrian Airlines’ A321 above the entire East-West route of the Alps.

Trampe is the world's first bicycle lift. It's located in Trondheim, Norway and was invented by Jarle Wanvik. A prototype took form in 1992 and the opening ceremony of Trampe was held on August 18, 1993. It was dismantled in 2012 and replaced by CycloCable in 2013.

Invented in the 90’s by a commuter who grew tired of showing up to work sweaty and exhausted, the Trampe lift, recently upgraded and reinvented as the CycloCable, has already carried over 200,000 bicyclists up this 150m-long cyclist deterrent. The curious escalator has become a tourist magnet as well.

Cyclists who place one foot on the escalator’s angled platform will be pushed uphill at a speed of 5mph. Up to 5 people can use it simultaneously and it is not limited to bicycles, as it can carry basically any small wheeled transport with its owner, be it a kid with scooter or a mother with a baby stroller.

Installing this invention is obviously a great way to boost cycling in hilly cities, but they’ll have to be quite busy – one meter of this elevator costs 2,000-3,000$.

So, it looks like I'm not the only one using a phone that isn't connected to the internet. Well, I don't use an "old school" phone per se, but I choose not to connect it to the internet and many of the popular apps won't function on my phone anyway. It's sort of a smart phone but without the little extra. That makes it easy for me to un-plug from technology and be more present in everyday activities.

It's a constant high-tech race to keep up with the latest smartphone technology. But a nostalgic wave seems to be sweeping over a high-profile segment of the cell phone market, reports CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller.

Vogue's editor in chief Anna Wintour was seen at the U.S. Open three months ago with a flip-phone model from the early 2000s.

Actress Kate Beckinsale and singer Rihanna were also photographed using the hip accessory. On draft day, Colts quarterback Andrew Luck answered the call from the Colts on his flip phone.

And New York Senator Chuck Schumer likes his flip phone so much he's stockpiling the device.

"Since I like these so much I bought a whole bunch cause I figure they'll stop making them sooner or later," Schumer said. "They may have already stopped making them."

But what's behind this low-tech, high-profile renaissance?

"People are going back to the flip phone because it works, it is functional, you just flip it open. Also, you don't have to get internet on it," New York Times columnist Michael Musto said. "You can actually go out and enjoy whatever you're experiencing instead of taking pictures for Instagram and looking at it later."

Photo credit: Brock Miller / Brock Miller

Via Metro (SE)

Little White Lies presents the 25 best films of 2014 in this 12 minutes long compilation. Edited by David Ehrlich.

Luca Iaconi-Stewart builds a 1:60 model of an Air India Boeing 777-300ER entirely out of manila folders. The work is incredible well done and the details are absolutely amazing.

He’s now spent more than 10,000 hours building an exact model replica — at 1/60th scale — of a Boeing 777-300ER plane entirely out of cut-out manila folder parts. He’s not even done.

[…]

Iaconi-Stewart began work on the model while attending Lick-Wilmerding High School, a private school in San Francisco.

He made models of skyscrapers, but it was the Boeing plane that drew him.

[…]

And so as he was finishing his junior year, in 2008, he began finding photos on the Internet, and the dimensions of the 777 from the Boeing website.

Air India had posted an extremely detailed schematic of the seat arrangements, and Iaconi-Stewart managed to get hold of a training manual for the plane.

[…]

Then, using Adobe Illustrator, he drew out everything.

[…]

There were 303 economy seats, 35 business-class seats, and 4 first-class seats that had to be made.

One first-class seat took 6 to 8 hours to make. Iaconi-Stewart got the making of the economy seats down to 1 hour each.

Some of the parts he had to make were literally the size of a pinhead.

“It’s hard to keep up that level of focus day in and day out,” he says. “When you have to create everything from scratch it can be very draining.

“There were times I absolutely hated it. But then I could see the end in finishing the project. But then you get a certain amount of satisfaction in reverse engineering something and making it out of unconventional material.”

The main landing gear works great:

You can see more of the project here.

Via Boing Boing.