Hasta La Gadget!

If you like to live a life of randomness, then you would definitely be able to enjoy a session at the casino. After all, it is all in the throw of the dice that might just determine your fate as to whether you would walk out of the casino a very, very rich person, or have just blown away all of your life savings in one go. Well, for other situations where there are four different options presented to you, and you are at a loss as to which one to pick from, why not let fate decide for you – not through a four sided dice, but rather, through this $9.99 Critical Hit Dreidel?

Do bear in mind that this happens to be a ThinkGeek creation and exclusive, which means you are unable to find it anywhere else. It would function as a light-up Critical Hit Dreidel, where it will flash whenever it lands on gimel. Should you have ever spun a d4 or d10 like a top, then you would definitely figure it all out as to what caused this idea to come into existence. This is as geeky as it gets for a Hanukkah/Chanukah gift, and will be powered by a single 3V CR2031 button cell battery which unfortunately, is not replaceable at all.
[ Critical Hit Dreidel lets you live out your random life in style copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

We all need help maintaining our personal spiritual practice. We hope that these Daily Meditations, prayers and mindful awareness exercises can be part of bringing spirituality alive in your life.

Today’s meditation features a song by singer/songwriter India Arie. “Private Party” reminds us to love and find peace within ourselves.

Private Party by India Arie

I’m having a private party
Ain’t no body here but me, my angels, and my guitar singin’ baby look how far we’ve come here
I’m havin’ a private party
Learning how to love me
Celebrating the woman I’ve become, yeah

I tried to call my mother, but
She didn’t get where I was going
I called my boyfriend and he said
Call me back a little later baby
I hung up the phone, I felt so alone
Started to feel a little pity
That’s when I realized that I
Gotta find the joy inside of me

[Chorus]

I’m gonna take off all my clothes
Look at myself in the mirror
We’re gonna have a conversation
We’re gonna heal the disconnection
I don’t remember when it started
But this is where it’s gonna end
My body is beautiful and sacred
And I’m gonna celebrate it

[Chorus]

All my life (all my life)
I’ve been looking for (I’ve been looking for)
Somebody else (else)
To make me whole (ooo)
But I had to learn the hard way (ooo)
True love began with me (ooo)
This is not ego or vanity (ooo)
I’m just celebrating me

[Chorus]

Sometimes I’m alone but never lonely
That’s what I’ve come to realize
I’ve learned to love the quiet moments
The Sunday mornings of life
Where I can reach deep down inside
Or out into the universe
I can laugh until I cry
Or I can cry away the hurt

[Chorus]

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday

Black Friday is starting earlier and earlier every year, leaving people little time to enjoy what Thanksgiving is actually supposed to represent. The sales and promises of bounty may be hard to resist, but that becomes infinitely easier with a slew of enticing alternatives on the agenda.

Skip Walmart on Black Friday and spend your day at one or more of these 10 spiritual alternatives:

1. A forest.

If you have access to wilderness, let yourself unplug for a hike or a meditation surrounded by the natural world. If you’re in an urban setting, get yourself to a park and watch the squirrels and birds going about their merry business, completely indifferent to Black Friday sales.

2. A museum.

Museums contain worlds of creativity and beauty to explore, and many stay open the day after Thanksgiving. Why look at toasters and electric razors when you could peer into the magical kingdoms of Picasso, Dalí or whatever artist you feel moved by?

3. A house of worship.

Your local church, mosque, temple or synagogue can offer infinitely more nourishment than Walmart or Target can. Light a candle for someone you love. Soak up the calm and stillness. Meditate on the things you’re grateful for that can’t be bought with money.

4. A friend’s house.

Community is at the heart of so many spiritual traditions, and there is no better way to tap into that than by visiting a friend, family member or significant other. Spend time with the ones you love instead of worrying about what to buy them for the holidays.

5. A labyrinth.

A labyrinth may be harder to find, but there’s a good chance your local church or botanical gardens has one. Moving through the winding paths of a labyrinth has the dual effect of disorienting and guiding you into a walking meditation. Let yourself get lost and see what comes up.

6. A zen garden.

Zen tradition combines meditation, deep breathing and mindfulness to bring practitioners to a state of greater awareness. Find a zen garden or meditation space and create some distance between yourself and society’s attachment to material goods.

7. A music performance.

Stevie Wonder once sang: “Music is a world within itself/With a language we all understand.” Immerse yourself in the captivating world of music — let it bring you closer to those around you and closer to the core of your being that doesn’t really care about half-off sales.

8. A lake.

Find a lake, a pond or even a puddle of water and look at your reflection. Ask yourself, “Who am I? Why am I here? What do I want to do in this world?” When you’re done having that inner dialogue, see if you still feel like hitting the mall.

9. Your imagination.

How often do you exercise the power of your imagination? When is the last time you picked up a paint brush, performed a skit or wrote a short story. There are infinite corners of your own imagination to explore and not a minute to lose.

10. Anywhere in the world.

You can literally go anywhere in the world with a good book and a few hours on your hands. It might sound cliché, but then again what is more cliché than shopping on Black Friday?

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Pope Francis arrived in Turkey on Friday at a sensitive moment for the Muslim nation, as it cares for 1.6 million refugees and weighs how to deal with the Islamic State group as its fighters grab chunks of Syria and Iraq across Turkey’s southern border.

Francis was expected to use his opening speeches to denounce the violence being committed in God’s name by the extremists, and to express solidarity with the Christians and other religious minorities who have been targeted by the onslaught, massacred or forced to leave their homes. The pope was greeting by a line of Turkish dignitaries, headed by Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, as he descended the steps of his plane at Ankara’s Esenboga Airport. He inspected and greeted Turkish honor guards before heading to the mausoleum of the Turkish republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, where he is scheduled to lay a wreath.

Francis paid tribute to Turkey’s willingness to host so many refugees during a brief encounter with journalists aboard the papal plane, praising its humanitarian response to “so many refugees from conflict zones.”

The three-day visit will give Francis a chance to reach out to Turkey’s tiny Christian community — less than 1 percent of Turks are Catholic — and visit with the spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I.

Francis will tour two of Istanbul’s most impressive sites, the Hagia Sofia complex — the Byzantine church-turned-mosque that is now a museum — and the nearby Sultan Ahmet mosque, Turkey’s most important place of Muslim worship.

Security will be tight: Turkish media reports said some 2,700 police officers would be on duty during the Ankara leg of the trip alone, and that a court had issued an order allowing police to stop and search cars and carry out random identity checks on people along routes used by the pope.

On the eve of his trip, Francis repeated that it was legitimate to use force to stop the Islamic State advance, but only with the endorsement of the international community. Asked whether dialogue was even possible with a group that is targeting religious minorities, Francis said “Maybe you can’t have a dialogue, but you must never close the door.”

Francis will wade into some local controversy when he is received Friday by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan at his huge new palace in Ankara, a 1,000-room complex on once-protected farmland and forest that dwarfs the White House and other European government palaces.

Francis, whose spartan living conditions are well-known, will spend Friday afternoon at the $620 million White Palace, meeting with the president, prime minister and delivering a speech to Turkish dignitaries and diplomatic corps.

The Vatican has dismissed a request by the Ankara branch of the Turkish Chamber of Architects to boycott the meeting, saying Francis would be received wherever the government chose to receive him.

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Yes, Virginia, there was a time when everyone waited until their wedding night to have intercourse. And perhaps even more shocking: Yes, that’s actually what they called it. For real. Everything about what currently occurs in our bedrooms has completely changed since boomers came of age — including the fact that “what we do in our bedrooms” is no longer only being done in our bedrooms. Sex has spilled over on to our kitchen counters, our beaches and the front seat of our Ferraris if “The Wolf of Wall Street” is to be believed.

While boomers may not have invented sex (the way we did the Internet), we certainly pushed its envelope and altered the way it is done, with whom, when and where, and even why. Here are five things boomers have done to change the course of the history of sex:

1. Boomers made outdoor sex OK.
What? You thought Woodstock was about the music? Sorry to disappoint, but nobody was really listening to Jimi Hendrix. That’s right. And while the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame knows of no head count of babies born nine months later, 1969 wasn’t dubbed “The Summer of Love” because of Ritchie Havens singing “Freedom.”

But freedom was at the core of things. In 1965, five years after oral contraception got FDA approval, 6.5 million American women were on the pill, making it the most popular form of birth control in the U.S. and freeing a generation from the fear of unwanted pregnancies.

2. Boomers made indoor sex more interesting.
Anyone remember Plato’s Retreat? Me neither. But the notorious swingers’ club epitomized the free-sex atmosphere of pre-AIDS New York City. Clothing was optional, only couples were admitted (although encouraged to mingle), and the centerpiece of the experience was a public “mat room” for exhibitionist sex. Going to the mats took on a whole new meaning when Plato’s opened in 1977.

AIDS, of course, changed everything.

3. Boomers took honoring thy neighbor to the biblical level.
Long before car keys were collected at parties from those who drank too much, suburban swingers in the 1970s collected them for a different reason. As they entered the party, the men would deposit their car keys in a bowl by the front door. On the way out, the women would fish a set of keys from the bowl and that’s who they’d go home with.

Boomers invented the American Swinger.

A Psychology Today report in 2013 dubbed the 1971 study by Gilbert D. Bartell “the most in-depth look on the swinging culture to date.” And here’s what Bartell found: Of the estimated one to two million American Swingers, most were middle-class suburbanites. In a fact that can only amuse, the Bartell study found that a whopping 42% of the male Swingers were salesmen. More than three-fourths of the female Swingers were stay-at-home housewives, most of them with kids. Contrary to what some critics believed, Swingers tended to be anti-drug and “anti-hippie,” not at all aligned with the lifestyle or values of the counterculture. Swinging, Bartell found, was something quite different than the “free love” of the sexual revolution, and its advocates wanted to have little to do with the rebellious, anti-establishment youth culture. Mostly, they just wanted to have sex with someone other than their spouses.

4. Boomers changed the language of sex.
Calling sex “intercourse” went out the window long before Bill Clinton wished Monica Lewinsky would have. While our former Prez “didn’t have sex with that woman,” the term for doing the nasty (that’d be circa 1977) used to be balling in the 1960s. For a while, women were “boinked,” “porked” or “got laid.” Sometimes, we got “nookie” or were “screwed” and occasionally they had a “slap and tickle.” Today people “hook up.” And of course, the F-word has been around since the cavemen and that’s probably who still uses it the most.

5. Boomers changed dating rituals.
Because we fumbled them so badly, obviously! Aside from inventing the Internet, which made it possible for online dating sites to exist, boomers totally blew dating. We may have originated the one-night stand, but we always struggled with long-lasting relationships. Maybe the bad bar scene and the people our mothers fixed us up with were just the kiss of dating death. Admit it: If anyone today bellied up to the bar next to you and asked you what your astrological sign was, you’d probably run for the exits, right? Yes, much safer to sit with your tablet swiping Tinder prospects to the side.

Nowadays, you see someone’s profile and start following them on Twitter. You check out their LinkedIn profile and see who they’re friends with on Facebook. One of the selling points of some dating apps is that they actually show whether you have friends in common so you can do some real-time investigating. The result is that long before you meet the person, you know his or her online persona, which as one younger friend noted, sometimes is a total disconnect from the real person.

Still, we think it probably beats putting your keys in a bowl.