Competing or Complementary Concepts?

I travel mostly in the Lutheran world - churches and schools, and the leaders from both - and I see many of them working hard at engaging their communities, some with the help of Wheat Ridge Ministries. In the case of schools, one of the areas that many schools work hard at is being current with technology. Not an easy task with the speed of changes, the impact that has on budgets and staff learning curves etc.  This recent Facebook post is an example of the conversations that are going on around tech in schools. (Churches have a similar challenge as well.)

In my time here in the 21st Century it has become obvious to me that tech is not going away.  Churches and Church Schools need to learn how to get good at it - and be on the front end of the curve instead of always playing catch-up.

Lutherans aren't alone in facing this challenge: how to use/keep up with technology in education. I'm wondering if, in the midst of dealing with that challenge, churches and schools aren't missing a very important concept that provides just as strong a connection to the community, and in the case of schools, just as big an academic boost to the people involved - that is health, and specifically exercise and what we eat and how well we rest.  I also came across this post (and there are dozens more like it) that highlights the huge gains we get from simple exercise.  And there is strong research that links exercise to academic gains.

We are living more and more in an electronic world... but we are still humans with a body that was designed to move. It should be possible to address both of those needs for the best possible results.

Nutritional Choices... How to decide?

I still can't get over how much choice you have here in the 21st Century in your food stores (although, to be accurate, the variety of choices is not world wide... the 'western' world has many choices; some of the people in the world do not have any. That is the subject for perhaps another post).

It is mind boggling to think about having to decide between all the choices.  What criteria should you use?  What criteria do you use?  Taste, price, ease of preparation, how healthy is it?

Here is an interesting concept.  I wonder why this was not invented sooner.  NuVal - a simple number, decided with algorithms (Google searches work pretty well using those, don't they?) that can tell you, basically without bias, which food item from the same food category is the most healthy - the higher the number, the more healthy it is.  You can even compare across food types... the higher the number, the better it is for you.

Check out your local grocer to see if they have it. If not, ask them to get involved...  Much of what makes us healthy - or not - is decided when things get put into the shopping cart.

Mapping the Brain in the next ten years...

As 21st Century scientists did with the human genome, the plan is for a ten year project to map the human brain.  Exciting stuff... can't believe how much human knowledge has grown since the 1st Century - and much of that has really happened in the last 100 years!

Ten years to map the brain.  What about Pastors taking a year of their Circuit Conferences and Educators taking a significant portion of their in-service time for a year and focus on some of the best books out there on current knowledge of the brain. This emphasis on brain research will present an even bigger seismic shift in our ability to understand the brain and how it works, and how that applies to the way we do things... some practices will be reinforced, others will need to change.

And, as with the new genetic information, the scientific world needs to hear the theological voice on ethical issues as well.

Exercise and executive function in the brain...

Want to help your children, your students and yourself have stronger "executive function" (that is the set of higher-order mental skills that allow us to plan and organize, make considered decisions, manage our time and focus our attention)?

Exercise!  You can check out an blog article by Annie Murphy Paul, along with some supporting documents.

A big gain for the brain, and a big gain for overall health.  A great design!

Advertising and the Brain...

I came across an interesting article about the brain and advertising. I'm still in a bit of a daze at all the advertising a person is exposed to these days. You really can't get away from it. And apparently it is doing its job since the companies keep investing in more and more of it as we keep buying more and more of what they want us to rather than what we need.

And I'm astounded at how much your scientists are learning about the brain. Put advertising and brain research together and you get some interesting results.

The article tells about how much power advertisers have over us, when we are not aware of what they are doing - and perhaps even when we are. They are getting pretty sophisticated and, dare one say, sneaky.

The article is a bit long but worth the read to catch up on brain scanning technology (very portable and powerful), the differences between MRI and EEG (MRI takes 5 seconds to register, EEG is almost instantaneous - and that means it measures our subconscious reaction - what the advertisers are really after), and how the technology is used.

The second to the last paragraph offers the most promising ways to use this scanning technology for community good rather than just to sell product for a company (allowing quadriplegics to control wheelchairs by thinking alone).

This is all a very long way from 1st Century life with very low key advertising and word of mouth. And I wonder what a brain scan would register when someone thinks of Wheat Ridge.