Mindful October 2015

Is school a good thing? What’s your ideal school type? 58% THINK PUBLIC SCHOOL IS THE BEST OPTION. Private and independent schools tie in second place at 17% apiece. Almost no one likes the school of hard knocks (2%). What was your favorite subject in school? Only 3% chose gym. Because no one likes gym. Just kidding! Exercise is important. Should meditation be taught in school? 95% SAY YES, IT SHOULD. WE AGREE (Read more on page 48). How do you keep in touch with old classmates? 42% USE FACEBOOK OR OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA TO STAY IN CONTACT, and almost as many DON’T KEEP IN TOUCH AT ALL (41%). The rest opt for the occasional phone call (10%) or chat over coffee or lunch (7%). What’s one thing you wish…

Wow, this mindfulness stuff is pretty scary. Having spent the past week reading more than 30 critiques of the mindfulness movement from the last few years, I’m thinking the whole thing seems pretty dodgy. It’s hype, smoke, and mirrors. It’s the decline of a great tradition. It’s a secret takeover of our minds. It’s ineffective. It’s flaky. It’s a wet blanket. It’s narcissistic. And apparently a whole lot of people are making huge piles of money from it. Then, I remembered how cyclical things are. Once something reaches the point that it’s celebrated on the cover of Time, look out. The knives are being sharpened in the back room. The biting criticism, naysaying, and debunking will soon follow. One of the great things about the media is that we can…

SOARING WITH MINDFULNESS You know meditation matters when it becomes part of history in the making. In July, two Swiss pilots, André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard, flew the Solar Impulse 2, a fully solar-powered airplane, across the Pacific in an epic five-day journey from Japan to Hawaii. Among their companions on the trip were yoga and meditation. “Yoga and meditation gives us balance and keeps us in the right state of mind, which is very crucial when you are on such a difficult mission,” said Borschberg. He and Piccard not only flew the Solar Impulse 2—they also conceived of the project and oversaw the plane’s construction. With a cockpit just big enough for the two pilots to sit in (the toilets are built into the seats), the plane’s wings are…

mindful A biotech startup invented a synthetic product genetically identical to rhino horn, which is popular on the Asian black market where it’s more valuable than gold or cocaine. They plan to flood the market with their product, forcing out the real (and illegal) stuff. A school in Québec provides desks attached to exercise bikes for students with attention deficit disorders, so they can stay active while concentrating on schoolwork. California farmers may have a saving grace: A new app measures how much water different soils and crops need using a few small sensors, which trigger automatic sprinklers when needed. It can save up to 25% of water use. Smartphones don’t have to be fragile and made unethically. The Fairphone uses ethically mined minerals, is constructed to outlive your phone…

HOW TO LIVE WELL WITH CHRONIC PAIN AND ILLNESS Toni Bernhard • Wisdom A highly successful law professor at UC Davis, Toni Bernhard fell ill in 2001 with an energy-depleting, painful condition that she never recovered from. It led to an early retirement and a life utterly rearranged. She turned to mindfulness practice not simply to “get through it,” but to alter her perspective altogether. Now, she brings wisdom and hands-on experience that’s of value not only for chronic pain sufferers, but for anyone who finds that life is so often not the bed of roses we’d dreamed of. NEUROTRIBES The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity Steve Silberman • Avery Steve Silberman first wrote about autism for the December 2001 issue of WIRED, where he is a…

Isn’t it scandalous that Barack Obama, whose health-care reform law established death panels, is a Muslim who was born in Kenya? And isn’t it scary that all those scientific studies have shown that childhood vaccines can cause autism? You might not believe these falsehoods, but if so, you’re a minority. In a 2015 study, political scientist Adam Berinsky of MIT asked thousands of US voters to rate the truth or falsity of seven myths, such as that Obama is a Muslim or that vote fraud in Ohio swung the 2004 presidential election to George W. Bush. On average, people believed about two of them, he found. “Some people believe a lot of crazy things,” Berinsky said, “but mostly it’s a lot of people believing a few crazy things.” Such credulity…