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anthroposophic walking

(I want to know why there's not one aspect of life that cannot be anthroposofied. That's a side note.) The Parenting Passageway has a new blog post about anthroposophic walking. It's true. Babies can't walk, the head is too wobbly, apparently.

"Most of all, anthroposophy sees walking as very important for several reasons.  Walking upright differentiates man from animals.  “Endowed as they are with a horizontally oriented spine, the animals remain part of the world.  They are overwhelmed by sense impressions and the abyss between self and world does not open.”  In anthroposophic terms, walking is also related to the ability to control feelings and moods and also the conscious use of memory."

Of course, in non-anthroposophical terms this is silly. First of all, what about penguins? They walk on two legs. Secondly, walking isn't related to the ability to control feelings -- and frankly I'm not so sure human's "conscious use of memory" is very different in nature from animals' use of memory. By that I mean, it's not as "conscious" as humans' would prefer to believe.

Also, mr Dog walks on 2 legs and consciously remembers everything I'm hoping he will forget. The stuff I'd prefer him to remember, he conveniently ignores.

Looking down #1: shopping bag

vlomo | day3 | videoblogging month

vlomo | day3 | videoblogging month from Philip Campbell on Vimeo.

today was a grim day outside.

detubbification via perambulation

I must say this walking nearly 4 (steep) miles a day is paying off when it comes to reducing my mass. In just over a week of doing this every day, I've managed to lose roughly 3 lbs. I've not altered my diet much, which I still need to do (I eat plenty of good things but need to cut down on cake...), so this is primarily down to exercise.

I'm keeping an eye on things with the inestimable FatWatch - a modern day equivalent of the equally inestimable EatWatch:

vlomo | day2 | videoblogging month

vlomo | day2 | videoblogging month from Philip Campbell on Vimeo.

i like to walk these days. on average it is three miles. i want to start running part of it too. it does however get me down when i have done an hour walk and burnt off effectively a few biscuits. that sucks.

http://vimeo.com/groups/vlomo

Sideways Rain (The Horror)

Place-Based Pantone

"Cool stairs in Wuppertal." Example.pl

Pedestrian Freedom

Jane Jacobs discusses her ideas on creating pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods and how these changes shape the community's imageability.

Walk With God

How do you get to church?

The question occurred to me the other day, while I was examining the distribution of churches in my hometown of Newburgh, IN.

While not particularly spread out, most of these churches are actually located near the commercial areas of town, right on the edge of the major subdivisions. No one I know ever considers walking or biking to church in Newburgh.

(As far as non-Christians go, forget about it. The newly-built Hindu Temple is on the far eastern outskirts of town, surrounded by farms. The new Mosque is being built on the far West side, practically in Evansville [smack in the middle of the entirely commercial Lloyd Expressway corridor] and the Jewish Temple is on the south-west side of town, a decent distance from most residential areas, and certainly not walkable for any of the area's Jews. This literal banishment of non-Christians to the fringe of town is significant, but outside the scope of this post)

Muncie, being much more like a real city than sleepy, suburban Newburgh, is more densely packed with churches.

Furthermore, many churches are located in the middle of residential areas, making transport much more convenient. Despite Muncie's orientation towards the automobile, it should, in theory, be much easier for Muncie's faithful to make it to their place of worship without driving.

My question, then, is this. How many of church-goers out there walk or bike to services (weather permitting)? How many could? Does geographical proximity even play a factor in deciding where to go?

(Full Disclosure: I don't attend any religious services)

[All maps Google]

Bloggers nearby? Layar's an app for that.

Trying out Layar,  a 3D augmented reality browser in Japan on the iPhone,
spotting blogs with published addresses nearby.

Really cool: overlaid on the photo and grid you can see which way and how far away.

Or switch to map or list view to see more detail.

Thanks for the review and tweet to

@tamegoeswild: Just uploaded review of stunning new Augmented Reality app Layar - see Twitter, Google Local, Flickr in AR on your 3GS http://bit.ly/layarjp

I imagine some day soon cars will have head-up displays pointing out shops and other early warnings for our personal preferences.

How to make it less distracting, so the drivers will still have enough attention to focus on the road?