Stephen's Personal Blog

I’ve known about oxytocin for a long time. High school biology classes described it’s use as a hunger suppressant. Oxytocin is the link between you brain an stomach. Notice the delay after eating a lot and feeling full. It takes time for the hormone levels to change in the blood stream. It’s relation to pregnancy; triggering the uterine birth contractions and activating breast milk production. What they left out are it’s effects on emotions. Perhaps, Love Potion No. 9 is Oxytocin.

Hmmm.. So, what would happen with a Ecstasy/Oxytocin cocktail? The potion that will make him/her fall for someone “against” their will?

Oxytocin: A hormone for Love MorganWelt.de by Irina Bosse
But love consists of something else as well… emotions that have nothing to do with physical lust.

The blood samples provided insight into individual oxytocin levels before, during and after the erection. The results were unequivocal: during an erection, oxytocin levels rose to three times their normal level within seconds. Prior to the next measurement series, the test persons were given a drug that blocked oxytocin production. The astounding result: they still got an erection, but this time without any sensation.
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Cuddle Hormone by Susan Barker
In China, which enjoys a far lower birth-related morbidity rate than the United States, cool showers, which would stimulate the nipples and cause the brain to release its own oxytocin, are advised when labor needs a boost. In the United States, too, midwives have long known the benefits of applying ice to the nipples of women whose labor is stalled, Witt said.

But just as oxytocin is linked to the positive aspects of bonding, Witt thinks there’s every reason to suspect that pathological conditions – situations in which bonding breaks down or is established inappropriately -might well be linked to oxytocin, too.
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The Science of Love
And finally … how to fall in love
* Find a complete stranger.
* Reveal to each other intimate details about your lives for half an hour.
* Then, stare deeply into each other’s eyes without talking for four minutes.

York psychologist, Professor Arthur Arun, has been studying why people fall in love. He asked his subjects to carry out the above 3 steps and found that many of his couples felt deeply attracted after the 34 minute experiment. Two of his subjects later got married.

If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit
This book so speaks to the contemporary writer that it is nearly impossible to believe that it was originally published in 1938. In If You Want to Write, Brenda Ueland sets forth not just a philosophy about how to write or how to create, but also about how to live. Beginning writers will certainly be encouraged by Ueland’s words, but even the most experienced have much to glean from Ueland’s simple wisdom. “Everybody,” writes Ueland in the opening chapter, “is talented, original, and has something important to say.” Finding that something important involves embracing creative idleness (“the imagination needs moodling–long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering”), freeing “what we really think, from what we think we ought to think,” and “thumb[ing] your nose at all know-it-alls, jeerers, critics, doubters.” One must think, she says, “of telling a story, not of writing it.” And when revising one’s writing, she advises, “do not try to think of better words, more gripping words…. It is not yet deeply enough imagined.” Finally, “whenever you find yourself writing a single word or phrase or page dutifully and with boredom, then leave it out…. If what you write bores you, it will bore other people.” And just because If You Want to Write is passionate, sincere, and even spiritual, do not think it is not also witty. One footnote bluntly declaims, “No doubt my terms would horrify a psychologist but I do not care at all.” Elsewhere Ueland titles a chapter “Why Women Who Do Too Much Housework Should Neglect It for Their Writing.” Amen, sister!
Amazon Review
Brenda Ueland
Brenda Ueland (October 24, 1891 – March 5, 1985) was a journalist, editor, freelance writer, and teacher of writing. She is best known for her book If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Sprit
William Blake
William Blake (November 28, 1757 – August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake’s work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts.
The King of Kong
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters is a documentary that follows Steve Wiebe as he tries to take the world high score for the arcade game Donkey Kong from reigning champion Billy Mitchell.