Thanks to Mashable and the source, Medical Billing and Coding.

Selected from Meanwhile, The San Francisco Dog Walkers which can be found here, at The Rumpus. 

(download)

Click here to download:

wendy-macnaughton-drawings-sHEsarrDonFyFjGrxwlg.zip (2.4 MB)

About Wendy (from her web portfolio):

"Wendy has spent most her life in transit. She lived in LA, NY, Amsterdam, Paris, and East Africa before moving back to her hometown of San Francisco.

"She’s written advertising copy, designed humanitarian campaigns in Kenya and Rwanda, produced a film in The Democratic Republic Congo, sold used books, counseled survivors of torture, served as a social worker and non-profit advertising campaign director. She created and illustrated the national campaign for the first democratic elections in Rwanda.

"Wendy received degrees in art and social work from Art Center College of Design and Columbia University, respectively. Her art has been featured in Juxtapoz, GOOD, TimeOut NY, 7x7 Magazine, and Gizmodo. She is a staff illustrator for Longshot Magazine and her monthly illustrated documentary project "Meanwhile," is published in The Rumpus. Her work is available for purchase at 20x200 and by contacting her directly."

Dave Lieberman hosted the Food Network's shows Good Deal and Eat This. He is also the author of two cookbooks, Young & Hungry and Dave's Dinners. Dave is a contributing editor at Saveur magazine and works as a recipe consultant to private and corporate clients. He lives in New York City.

And, even my husband said it was one of my best dinners ever. So now it's one of my best and blogged. Enjoy.

The Aurora from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

Surely I am not the only who suffers from "I could do that with a few mega-prims" Syndrome, once they've spent time in Second Life.

Despite the horrific circumstances now facing the Japanese, there are opportunities as well. This piece in the New York Times offers a very interesting perspective from Peter Fretwell andTaylor Baldwin Kiland, co-authors of a forthcoming book on the resiliency and success of Vietnam-era American prisoners of war.

Amplify’d from www.nytimes.com

History Is on Japan's Side By PETER FRETWELL and TAYLOR BALDWIN KILAND Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan came before a press conference over the weekend and made a simple declaration: “I think that the earthquake, tsunami and the situation at our nuclear reactors make up the worst crisis in the 65 years since the war. If the nation works together, we will overcome.” History, and current research on human resiliency, suggest that he is right. In fact, history and research suggest that Japan will emerge stronger, not weaker, in the years to come. In recent years, research into post-traumatic stress disorder (P.T.S.D.) has led to a new term and a new area of research: “posttraumatic growth” (P.T.G.). Coined by Dr. Richard Tedeschi, a psychology professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and coauthor of the “Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth,” P.T.G. research suggests that an encounter with severe trauma can actually lead to highly positive changes in individuals. It can also increase their resiliency to subsequent adversity. Today, some researchers say that posttraumatic growth is far more common than long-term posttraumatic stress disorder. The norm is to adapt and grow following trauma. That phenomenon is, not coincidentally, Japan’s heritage and cultural norm. Research with former prisoners of war who spent up to eight years in Vietnam’s infamous “Hanoi Hilton” prison confirms two things: Most of them experienced positive growth from the experience (and a P.T.S.D. rate of only 4 percent), and those who experienced the worst trauma — including repeated torture, starvation, solitary confinement and physical injury over many years — reported the most personal growth in the decades since their release. While none of them expressed a desire to go through the experience again, a number have said they are stronger and better men because of it. In the months and years to come, the world’s third-largest economy, already troubled, will face even more challenges. But Japan’s remarkably well educated, highly productive and uniformly disciplined work force also will have reconstruction projects, recovery and clean-up to unite them. The economic and psychological drive provided by those tasks cannot be underestimated, even as we acknowledge the depth of the tragedy. Not that long ago, as their cameras showed us the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, television reporters earnestly declared that New Orleans might never return to its previous glory as The Big Easy. A few even declared the city a lost cause. Today, those predictions seem inane. New Orleans’s centuries of hard living was matched by its hard life — hurricanes, floods, disease and multiple wars, to name a few. Writing off a city with that life experience never seemed a good bet to those who study human resiliency. After the staggering loss of life (by some estimates, three million deaths) and property in World War II, Japan rebuilt itself into one of the world’s great intellectual, economic and industrial powers. Without diminishing for a moment the magnitude of the current crisis, or the human tragedies, Japan’s prime minister exhibited one of the hallmarks of leadership in crisis by reminding his countrymen of their heritage. In invoking Japan’s history of resiliency and determination, Kan tapped into one of the most powerful factors in human resiliency: knowing you have the strength, knowledge and stamina it takes to make it through, because you have made it through other adversity in your life. In these early stages, it appears that Japan’s cultural norms are providing some of the effective interventions needed following a disaster of this scale. In 2007, an international panel of experts developed a list of five conditions that need to be created in the early stages of mass trauma: 1. a sense of safety; 2. calm, 3. a sense of self and community efficacy; 4. connectedness; and 5. hope. Watching the videos of Japanese citizens in the aftermath of their calamity, one can observe many of these interventions already at work. The citizens of Japan have a benchmark for their conduct in the years to come. Ironically, the aging Japanese population may become a strength in the current crisis; the older citizens have the most experience in facing the challenges. Japan should emerge in a few years as a stronger and even more competitive world power. Peter Fretwell andTaylor Baldwin Kiland are co-authors of a forthcoming book on the resiliency and success of Vietnam-era American prisoners of war. Read more at www.nytimes.com

HOW TO BE ALONE by Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places, the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, where you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there. Where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in (guitar stroke). 

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places. 

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously (electric guitar plucking) based on your avoid being alone principals. 

The lunch counter. Where you will be surrounded by chow-downers. Employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they -- like you -- will be alone.

Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone. 

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner. A restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert to cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies. Where it is dark and soothing. Alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community. 
And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor till the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because, they're probably not. And, if they are, assume it is with best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.
Go to an unfamiliar city, roam the streets, there're always statues to talk to and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts are wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. but lonely is a freedom that breaths easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts, some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept. 

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Cuz if you're happy in your head than solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique, no one has the same synapses, can't think like you, for this be releived, keeps things interesting lifes magic things in reach. 

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that communitie's not present, just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. take silence and respect it. if you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. if your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it. 

you could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it
If your heart is bleeding make the best of it 
There is heat in freezing, be a testament.

Tanya Davis,Poet,  Facebook  Page: http://diigo.com/0g1nb

Found, thanks to blog of Washington, DC, Therapist, Jonathan Kirkendall : http://diigo.com/0g1n2

Amplify’d from www.metanomics.net

The Typist Speaks: Being Botgirl Botgirl Questi has long been an articulate voice regarding issues dear to those of us residing in Virtual Worlds. Whether discussing identity or posing for edgy artwork, she has provoked and amused, bringing her own brand of clarity to the process. When she gaily informed me that she would be delivering the keynote at this year’s Virtual World’s Best Practices in Education, I immediately invited her to speak with the Metanomics community and help to promote the event. She accepted, but now claims to be deeply involved in her preparations. So she’s sending her typist. David Elfanbaum, also known as ….well, also known as many other things, and remarkably fluent in both Photoshop and Gamestorming. He’s offered to speak with us about the VWBPE event, creativity and play, answering your questions as best he can. Please join us, on Thursday March 3rd at 12pm PST at the Metanomics Studio. You can join us in Second life for this event or watch it on our web site:www.Metanomics.net where it will be streamed live from the Studio. SLurl: Metanomics Community Forum Questions: Jennette Forager, Metanomics Community Manager | jennfor@gmail.com PLEASE NOTE – MIXED TEXT AND VOICE SESSION: The Metanomics Community Forum is a mixed voice / text discussion session. Please feel free to participate in voice or in text, to your preference. The facilitator and some participants will be using voice, so you may wish to enable voice in your viewer so that you can hear the voice portions of the session. Thanks for joining us! Read more at www.metanomics.net

Hello via Amplify. I get giddy when I see auto-post options and can't resist trying them. It's a problem I know, but I'm trying to control it. Be patient, my friends.