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Slow Ski

A new way to live mountains


Slow Ski is the new wave of skiing: an invitation to enjoy ski and snow with ease and slowness, enjoyng panoramics views and natural rhythms.
Slow Ski is the praise of the winter holiday to be spent without the frenzy of downhill skiing and incredible performances. This is a new approach to skiing, more relaxing, more user-friendly: in some ski resorts have already decided to equip the paths in this direction, providing them with comfortable benches and rest areas, to admire the surrounding views and to stop to breathe deeply, snow in sync with nature and embracing. The slow descent from the ski slopes is not taking speed on specific routes.
The trend, however, embraces more than one area and seems to know more fans of the genre: it is enough to mention the slow food culture to realize that in these frenetic times, on vacation you try just relaxing and find peace.
In an expression: slow ski.

Slow ski allows to enjoy the mountains in a more complete way
http://railaway.ffs.ch/snow-n-rail/tessin/

Downshifting and simple life

Reset our lives in other register!

The phenomenon of downshifting, including in the broader concept of simple living, living in simplicity, is affecting even the beautiful country and that Italians like to translate the term "voluntary simplicity."
A practice not just recently. In the seventies, philosophers such as Jean Baudrillard (The consumer society, 1970) and André Gorz (Environment & Policy, 1975) theorized the need décroissance, decrease, based on awareness dell'insostenibilità, individually and globally, development rates too fast.

Today, as thirty years' ago, partisans of the slowness I think we should do the best possible and as quickly as possible.
But who are the supporters of going slow? Above all professionals with a good job, graduation, various specializations. They can choose. They have this privilege. They do this by opting for a lifestyle on a human scale, as "green."
These are people who have decided to give up marathons stressful jobs to have more free time to devote to family, their hobbies, friends. Men and women who, facing a global economic crisis, the depletion of the planet's wealth and all'inaridimento of their lives, they begin to reset their own lifestyle. To give an impression more "Eastern", leaner, less determined by impulse, sometimes manic consumption. And less "connected".

Downshifter 
The downshifter is the one who recovers his emotional, depriving them of chances for career success and money. And 'one who invests on the concept of happiness, waiting for individual choices become fashionable, able to transform our society and our rigid division of labor.

 
 http://www.voglioviverecosi.com/index.php?consigli-per-cambiare-vita-vivere-una-vita-migliore-e-pi%E3%B9-felice-_84/come-migliorare-la-qualit%E3-di-vita-downshifting-e-slow-living_231/

Slow Reading

How to comprehend and appreciate a complex text

Slow reading is the intentional reduction in the speed of reading, carried out to increase comprehension or pleasure. The concept appears to have originated in the study of philosophy and literature as a technique to more fully comprehend and appreciate a complex text. More recently, there has been increased interest in slow reading as result of the slow movement and its focus on decelerating the pace of modern life.

The use of slow reading in literary criticism is sometimes referred to as close reading. Of less common usage is the term, "deep reading" (Birkerts, 1994). Slow reading is contrasted with speed reading which involves techniques to increase the rate of reading without adversely affecting comprehension, and contrasted with skimming which employs visual page cues to increase reading speed.

The earliest reference to slow reading appears to be in Nietzsche's (1887) preface to Daybreak: "It is not for nothing that one has been a philologist, perhaps one is a philologist still, that is to say, a teacher of slow reading."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_reading

Slow Money

A new movement based on money

Slow Money is a movement to organize investors and donors to steer new sources of capital to small food enterprises, organic farms, and local food systems. Slow Money takes its name from the Slow Food movement. Slow Money aims to develop the relationship between capital markets and place, including social capital and soil fertility. Slow Money is supporting the grass-roots mobilization through network building, convening, publishing, and incubating intermediary strategies and structures of funding.

Formation	2008
Founder	Woody Tasch

Slow Money was started by Woody Tasch, former chairman of Investors’ Circle — a nonprofit network of over 200 angel investors, professional venture capitalists, foundations, family offices and others.The idea to initiate the Slow Money movement came to Woody Tasch while he was writing his book Inquiries Into the Nature of Slow Money– Investing as if Food, Farms and Fertility Mattered. The non-profit, Slow Money, was founded in November, 2008, following the publication of Mr. Tasch’s book. The movement gained significant momentum from a number of local and regional meetings, and press coverage during the first half of 2009 leading to an Inaugural National Gathering.

"Once in a while, a book comes along that has the potential to change things. This is one such book. It is going to unleash a major movement in this country." - Steve Costa, Point Reyes Books

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Money

http://www.slowmoney.org/

Slow Gardening

Slow cures for our gardens

Slow Gardening is a philosophical approach to gardening which encourages participants to savor everything they do, using all the senses, through all seasons, regardless of garden type of style. Slow Gardening applies equally to people growing vegetables, herbs, flowers, and fruits, as well as those who tend to their own lawn, or have an intense garden hobby such as topiary, bonsai, or plant hybridizing. It actively promotes self awareness, personal responsibility, and environmental stewardship.

It's a no-brainer, comparing modern gardens to how we eat. In just a couple or three generations we've gone from eating mostly home-cooked food, and gardening with mostly local resources, to routine fast-food and "mow-and-blow" landscapes filled with plants from afar.

Waistlines have been supersized while garden sizes have withered. Why bother to grow when you can just run to the store and get prepackaged? Instead of sowing saved seed, we buy uniform hybrids by the six-pack, shipped to us at a huge cost. Sure, we've shed a lot of the menial work of putting both food on the table and flowers in the garden, but at what cost to the connections with the Earth that our ancestors took for granted?

Slow Gardening to the rescue! Similar to Slow Food(Tm) , an international movement started in Italy in the 1980s by convivial connoisseurs who savor producing, preparing and consuming traditional in-season dishes, a "slow-gardening" approach can help us enjoy our gardens year in and year out and possibly connect us with our neighbors. 

Some ways to enjoy Slow Gardening:

Take it easy - Life has lots of pressures: why include them in the garden? Your garden provides natural opportunities to kick back, relax, step off the treadmill. Think "long haul" and take your time.

Cliches can help: No need to go whole hog right off the bat. Don't have to eat the whole enchilada.

Grow plants of all descriptions -  native or well-adapted - that like your climate and provide something for you and local wildlife through all seasons. Include plants for evening enjoyhment, and at least a little home-grown food (herbs, vegetables, or landscape-quality fruit plants).

Get 'er done - You don't have to be an expert to garden, or even to work very hard. Even a small potted plant can help you focus on the "here and now" of everyday living. 

Get together - Gardeners have always been a sharing tribe. Find a safe group of like-minded folks who won't impose their expectations onto you or your garden, grab a digging fork and slip right into the rhythm of the seasons. 

Slow doesn't necessarily mean lazy. As Steve Bender, senior garden editor for Southern Living Magazine put it, "Maybe you can't save the whole world, but by slightly modifying the way you garden you can save your own backyard. And that's a start."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_Gardening
http://slowgardening.net/

Zeno's Paradox

Speed explained in ancient greek philosophy

 Achilles and the tortoise

“	In a race, the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead.	”
Aristotle, Physics VI:9, 239b15 In the paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 metres. If we suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed (one very fast and one very slow), then after some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 metres, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say, 10 metres. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles reaches somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has farther to go. Therefore, because there are an infinite number of points Achilles must reach where the tortoise has already been, he can never overtake the tortoise. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno%27s_paradoxes#Achilles_and_the_tortoise