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vivekbesant-blog · 6 years

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Following Books are Expand our mind

WHO WILL CRY WHEN YOU WILL DIE

This book have inspired million of people across the world including STEVE JOBS . This book describes the 18th- 19th century monks from India who have achieved superpowers through MEDITATION . Majestic BABAS across india with different superhuman abilities will surely inspire you to achieve greater being

2. Shakti Gawain : Creative Visualisation

This is one of my personal favorite book on power of imagination . And it is a complete guide on think and achieve and I personally recommend you to give this book a try

3. Losing my virginity : Richard Branson

This book is an autobiography of an Adventure loving entrepreneur and Billionaire and this book will give you hope and courage for your worse days as a entrepreneur . It gives you lesson on how to balance life between fun and money and gives you courage for risking anything

4. Thin And Grow Rich

Best work from Napolean Hill , This is one of the all time best book and I will suggest you to read this book and make small notes on the topic that you require .

5. Demon Haunted World : Carl Sagan

This book is for the one who love mystries and this will broaden your thinking and change your thinking toward universe

6. How The Mind Works

What better way to expand your mind than by understanding more about it? How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker is a book about just that. Pinker is an experimental psychologist, linguist, cognitive scientist, and author. He’s forgotten more about our minds — how we think and learn — and language than most of us will ever know, but he explains it in a way that most of us can easily understand. This book looks not just at how the mind works, but tackles specific questions like why and how do we fall in love, why — as rational beings — we’re so often irrational, and how our brain allows us to see in three dimensions. If you have a question about your mind, the answer is probably her

7. Thinking, Fast and Slow

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a bit of a behemoth. Its author, Daniel Kahneman, won a Nobel Prize for behavioural economics in 2002. As a psychologist, he deals primarily with the psychology of judgment and decision-making. With those kinds of credentials, you know he’s going to delve into some complicated ideas. And he does. The book can be a bit of a slog for the average reader, but if you push through, you emerge better for it on the other side. Kahneman divides out thinking into System 1 and System 2, the fast and slow from the book’s title, and how they work together…and sometimes at odds with each other. He systematically examines intuition, risk taking, biases, and decision making, among many other subjects. It will change the way you think about thinking, and likely even how you live your life.

8. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is very well-known, and deservedly so. Not everyone can claim to have launched a respected and popular theory, but Taleb — a statistician and risk analyst — did just that with this book. In the theory, a black swan event is improbable but causes huge consequences. They’re unpredictable, have massive influence, and are explained away in some manner after the fact (humans tend not to like random events and circumstances).

Taleb explores many black swans — the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the success of Google — and offers guidance on how to bounce back from negative ones, and capitalize on positive ones. According to Taleb, by their very definition, you can’t predict a black swan. You can only react.

9. The Alchemist

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho packs a powerful punch in a small package. You could probably read the entire thing, cover to cover, in less than two hours. But don’t let that fool you. The book — translated into over 80 languages — has a massive following the world over.

The Alchemist tells the story of Santiago, a shepherd boy from Spain, and his travels to Egypt in search of a secret treasure. Along the way, he meets a cast of characters that all teach him some valuable lessons. The allegory teaches us to listen to our hearts and follow our “personal legend” in all things. It’s a delightfully simplistic mix of magic, wisdom, mysticism, and common sense…things we could all use a little more of.

10. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience

Ever been in the “zone”. Ever had time fly by in an instant while doing something that you love? If so, then you’ve experienced the flow already. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (try saying that three times fast) provides the tools you need to perform your best. You can learn to control this “flow”, willing it into existence rather than waiting for it to appear, and experience greater happiness, enjoyment, and creativity in all that you do. A timeless work for everyone.

11. Cosmos and A Brief History of Time

This is a two-for-one bonus. Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking, both tackle nothing less than the universe and our place in it. A colossal undertaking, but handled with aplomb by both authors. Sagan — an astronomer, astrophysicist, and astrobiologist — and Hawking — the world’s leading theoretical physicist — explain our world and beyond in a way no one has done since or before. Cosmos explores 14 billion years of existence, mixing science, philosophy, and speculation in an easy to digest package. A Brief History of Time attempts to explain such complicated topics as black holes, time travel, and the big bang itself.

12. This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking

This Will Make You Smarter: New Scientific Concepts to Improve Your Thinking, edited by John Brockman, covers a wide range of topics from some of the leading minds in the world today. Brockman started with one simple question: what scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit? Jonah Lehrer writes about willpower, Daniel Kahneman (of Thinking, Fast and Slow fame) introduces the focusing illusion, and Charles Seife tackles randomness in the universe. And there are dozens more. The title promises to make you smarter. That’s the very definition of expanding your mind…so read on!

13. Uncommon Sense: The Strangest Ideas from the Smartest Philosophers

Uncommon Sense: The Strangest Ideas from the Smartest Philosophers by Andrew Pessin is a collection of ideas from some of history’s greatest philosophers. It’s a fast-track exploration, starting with the Greeks Plato and Aristotle, and culminating with Thomas Nagel and David Chalmers. Pessin includes most of the thinkers you’ve at least heard of and boils their complicated thoughts down to their essence. More specifically, he examines their strange ideas, the ones that appear somewhat crazy or odd upon first glance, but can’t be dismissed outright when examined under the microscope.

14. Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion

Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion by Sam Harris offers a look at removing organized religion from spiritual fulfilment. Is it possible? Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher (how’s that for a combo?!), says absolutely. Through meditation, rational practice, and an understanding of neuroscience and psychology, Harris provides a roadmap for anyone looking to remain spiritual in an increasingly secular world.

15. The Book and The Wisdom of Insecurity

Yet another two-for-one for your consideration. Alan Watts was a tremendously influential philosopher and writer, and he was instrumental in bringing Eastern thought to a Western audience. Two of his best works are The Book: On the Taboo of Knowing Who You Are and The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety.

The Book deals with our place in the big picture. Our belief that we are isolated and separate from the universe is the root of the hostility and maliciousness we see in the world. Watts provides a framework for being human in this popular title, outlining the folly of our thinking, and how to adapt it.

#expand our mind #expand our mind books #expand our mind book #mind book #books #top books #book

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keidas0 · 7 years

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A murmuration of starlings in the south avenue

So why do starlings form such large flocks in the evening before they roost?

Starlings do this for many reasons. Grouping together offers safety in numbers which means they individually protect themselves from predators like the sparrow hawk and peregrine falcon. Predators find it hard to target any one bird in the middle of a hypnotising flock of thousands, something rather like fish shoals. They also flock to keep warm at night and to exchange information, such as good feeding areas.

When and where on the Wimpole Estate?

Autumn roosts usually begin to form in November, though this varies from site to site and some can begin as early as September.

More and more birds will flock together as the months go on, and the number of starlings in a roost can swell to around 100,000 in some places but at Wimpole we have approximately about 10,000.

Early evening just as the sun is going down seems to be best, just before dusk. However they can be earlier if the sky is cloudy and the light dimmer.

They are roosting in the Octagon pond which is full of reeds and drop straight in before spreading out among the reeds, they also make a tremendous noise!

Why are there some many when numbers have been crashing?

Despite the size of the starling flock at Wimpole, starling numbers have fallen dramatically over the last few decades. I remember seeing a huge flock in Leicester square in London and apparently they used to be huge flocks in many cities. I have no idea why they have crashed in and around cities but modern farming practices which have ripped up many permanent pastures, the loss of livestock especially in the shires (once upon a time each parish might have had up to a 1000 sheep plus cows and other livestock but certainly in the east they have made way to fields and fields of rape and wheat) and the use of livestock chemicals like wormers but also arable farm insecticides. The starling population has fallen by over 80% in recent years, meaning they are now on the critical list of UK birds most at risk.

Two Dorpers in the foreground overlooking Rectory farm

Here on the Wimpole Estate starling numbers have been increasing year on year especially since the arable in hand farm went organic. Wimpole also has a large amount of permanent pasture and its own livestock to boot. It is also notable that the arable ley grasslands along with Jacobs (we call him the flying shepherd, well no he doesn’t fly himself silly!) South African Dorper sheep that graze these arable leys in the winter months have also seen more and more starlings where there were none.

A beautiful sunset and a murmuration of starlings

This is a nice article from the Telegraph by Daniel Butler 23 Feb 2009

‘As the Shropshire sky gradually deepens from yellow to orange and finally angry red, so the noise levels build above the reed beds. A swirling, chattering,flock of starlings swirls above the wetlands of Whixall Moss on the Welsh Border, shimmering dark then light as it drifts like a plume of smoke from some monstrous pyre. Back and forth it twists like an out-of-place tornado before suddenly, when it is almost too dark to see, the flock streams to earth and is gone.

“Numbers build up slowly near the roost over the afternoon as small groups of birds return from foraging in the area,” explains Paul Stancliffe of the British Trust for Ornithology. “By late afternoon there is a huge swirling cloud. It’s all about safety in numbers – none wants to be on the outside, none wants to be first to land.”

A “murmuration” of starlings, as this phenomenon is known, must be one of the most magical, yet underrated, wildlife spectacles on display in winter. Impenetrable as the flock’s movements might seem to the human eye, the underlying maths is comparatively straightforward. Each bird strives to fly as close to its neighbours as possible, instantly copying any changes in speed or direction. As a result, tiny deviations by one bird are magnified and distorted by those surrounding it, creating rippling, swirling patterns. In other words, this is a classic case of mathematical chaos (larger shapes composed of infinitely varied smaller patterns). Whatever the science, however, it is difficult for the observer to think of it as anything other than some vast living entity.

Until recently such sights were common over London. Indeed, in 1949 so many roosted on the hands of Big Ben that they stopped the clock. Sadly, such invasions are a thing of the past, but Rome is currently subject to a vast influx of several million birds each winter. This produces spectacular swarms, but the problems associated with the roosts are not so wondrous. Starling droppings are extremely acidic and the authorities are worried about the damage to ancient ruins, while car owners have to pay out millions of euros for resprays.

The logic behind this spectacular behaviour is simple: survival. Starlings are tasty morsels for peregrines, merlins and sparrowhawks. The answer is to seek safety in numbers, gathering in flocks and with every bird trying to avoid the edge where adept predators can sometimes snatch a victim.

Flock sizes vary around the year. During the breeding season, groups are rarely more than a few birds gathering at a good food source, but in late summer juveniles begin to congregate and are soon joined by adults. These flocks are in turn swollen by continental birds fleeing the harsher winters. During the Seventies a particularly large murmuration of one and a half million birds regularly gathered near Goole in East Yorkshire, but the current flock of around 5,000 at Slimbridge is more typical.

During the day, big flocks disperse into smaller foraging groups. The search for calories is now critical and grouping allows each to put more effort into finding food, safer for scores of watchful eyes. These tend to scour rough pasture for insects, but they punctuate these bouts by preening and chattering in tree tops or on telephone wires where there is good all-round visibility. In late afternoon, however, the smaller groups move back to the main roost, flying up to 20 miles to coalesce in ever-growing numbers. By dusk this murmurating cloud can number thousands or even millions of birds.

Sadly, starlings have recently declined sharply; the breeding population is down by some 73 per cent since 1970. It is not clear what lies behind this fall, but it is probably due to the loss of suitable nest cavities and a decline in the rough pasture where they find most of the insects which form the backbone of their diet.

To put this drop in context, however, a shortage of literary references to the birds before the 18th century suggests they were comparatively uncommon even two centuries ago. Certainly their Welsh name adern y eira (“snow bird”) suggests they were regarded as winter migrants. It seems that they expanded rapidly after the Industrial Revolution, probably aided by milder weather and better food thanks to agricultural improvements.

There is another glimmer of hope. In 1890, an American eccentric, Eugene Schieffelin, decided to introduce all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare to his native land. He released 60 starlings in Central Park and the birds have thrived, spreading as far as the Pacific. There are now 200 million and thus, in years to come, it seems we are as likely to see murmurations over New York as a Shropshire peat bog.’

A murmuration of starlings So why do starlings form such large flocks in the evening before they roost? Starlings do this for many reasons.

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