Infographics and Mind Maps 2

I have explored the free version of the Wondershare Edraw MindMaster software.  This software looked really good for my skill level and purposes.  I want to create info-graphics, charts, tables, mind maps, flow charts, knowledge representations, and visual-textual representations of concepts, processes, ideas, tasks, etc.  This software can export and import in many ways.  

The "Lifetime Permanent Pro" package offer (ending 3/30/2021) was very appealing to me because in included three Wondershare software products:  MindMaster, EdrawMax, and EdrawInfo software.  I purchased this software combination package on 3/19/2021 for $344.00.  

There are many creative and informative examples of Mind Maps on the Internet.  There are both online and offline software available, for free or fee, for creating Mind Maps.  I have used free online versions of FreeMind and UVE from Tufts University.  

Here are my notes on using Mind Maps.  

Mike Garofalo's Hypertext Notebooks

This is a .png file of a mind map created with FreeMind.  I did link each node/topic to a webpage.  However, no export file in FreeMind creates a file that is clickable online.  You must have the file open in FreeMind to use all the hyperlink functionality and other features of FreeMind.  

Here is an example of charts I created with Wondershare Edraw MindMaster:

We Are Better Satisfied in Particulars

"Science and psychoanalysis apart, the most profound development in thought since Nietzsche, as far as we are concerned, is the phenomenological approach to the world.  Mallarmé sought "words without wrinkles," Baudelaire cherished his minutes heureuses and Valéry his "small worlds of order," as we have seen: Checkhov concentrated on the "concrete individual" and preferred "small scale and practical answers," Gide though the "systematizing is denaturing, distorting and impoverishing."  For Oliver Wendell Holmes, "all the pleasure of life is in general ideas, but all the use of life is in specific solutions."  Wallace Stevens considered that we are "better satisfied in particulars."  Thomas Nagel put it in this way: "Particulars things can have a noncompetitive completeness which is transparent to all aspects of the self.  This also helps to explain what the experience of great beauty tends to unify the self: the object engages us immediately and totally in a way that makes distinctions among points of view irrelevant."  Or, as Robert Nozick, who counseled us to make ourselves "vehicles" for beauty, said: "this is what poets and artists bring us―the immense and unsuspected reality of a small thing.  Everything has its own patient entityhood."  George Levine call for "a profound attention to the details of this world."
-  Peter Watson, "The Age of Atheists: How We Have Sought to Live Since the Death of God," p.536

"The idea of one overbearing truth is exhausted."
- Thomas Mann, translated by James Wood  

"My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind."
-  Albert Einstein

"To study the self is to forget the self.  To forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things."
-  Zen Master Dogen

"The more we understand individual things, the more we understand God."
-  Benedict De Spinoza

"God is in the details."
-  Mies Van Der Rohe

"After appreciating and understanding thousands of the details, a common variety God is really superfluous."
-  Mike Garofalo

"Caress the detail, the divine detail."
-  Vladimir Nabokov

"Details are all there are."
-  Maezumi Roshi

"We think in generalities, but we live in details."
-  W.H. Auden

Gardening and Spirituality

Gardening and Religion

The Five Senses: Experience, Observation, Feelings

Green Way Research General Index

Living Matrix Model

 

"Every living cell in the body is connected in the living matrix of the connective tissue system.

The tensegrity of this system conducts vibrations, transmitting energy and information to each cell.

Energy, present in many forms in the body, is essential to the body's functioning.

The connective tissue system, composed primarily of collagen molecules and water, has a liguid crystalline molecular structure.

The liquid crystals of the connective tissue system form a continuum that permits rapid intercommunication, much faster than in the nervous system, and allows the body to perform as a coherent whole.

The energies of the body are responsive to consciousness.

Heightened coherence often corresponds to improved physical and mental abilities and better health."

- Rick Barrett.  Taijiquan: Through the Western Gate.  Blue Snake Books, 2006, 265 pages, index, bibliography.  VSCL.  The "Western Gate" is modern science, allopathic medicine, and materialism.  A challenging read with respect to scientific explanations, and showing parallels to taijiquan body-mind experiences and TCM. Quote from page 192.

The book is filled with fascinating explanations and some practical lessons and observations about mind-body practices like Taijiquan.  

Here is an example relevant to Taijiquan practice:

"If my intention is to push something (in the ordinary sense of the word) I automatically create tension in my arms and shoulders.  Try it.  The anticipated resistance of the thing to be pushed caused my body to tighten.  That is how we learn to move from infancy, and it remains the case until a better way comes along. If instead I reach with my fingers, rather than push, I don't encounter my own internal resistance.  Compare these to ways of moving and fell the difference in your body."
- Rick Barrett, p. 193.

There is more softness, more song, if I reach in the final phase of Grasping the Sparrow's Tail, rather than push.  

Point with your index finger when you move your arms.  What happens?
Expressiveness with the hands and fingers in an essential aspect of body-mind movement practices.  

Thinking about our bodies as being and functioning like liquid crystals is an amazing conclusion to reflect upon.  Gives "Go with the Flow" a new dimension.  

Interesting Documentaries

I enjoy watching documentaries on the Netflix channel.  Recently, I enjoyed watching three documentaries.

Inside Bill's Brain  The Mind and Projects of Bill Gates

Abdus Salam  Noble Prize physicist from Pakistan.

Birding   Flyways in Texas and Mexico.

I don't normally watch television fantasy shows about ghost hunting, zombies, tracking Big Foot monsters, aliens, etc.  I avoid programs about crime, drugs, criminal life, action-adventure killing films, WWE wrestling, game shows, lifestyles of backwoods "survivalists" driving four wheel drive vehicles, dirty duck and alligator good old boys, gun and hunting shows, religious services, outlandish conspiracies, and the endless political discussion programs and social talk shows, etc.