Bloomberg.com Princeton Grad Quits Morgan Stanley to Teach Yoga to Bankers:

Imparato, 28, is tapping into yoga's growing appeal among the result-oriented financial brokers and dealers who want to de-stress and work out at the same time. Hedge funds, including Karsch Capital Management LP and Blue Ridge Capital LLC, offer onsite yoga classes to their employees. Pimco's Bill Gross has said that he gets some of his best investment ideas while standing on his head.

Rivaling stories about athletes that practice yoga to improve their competitive edge, bankers-turned-yogis is a rising meme in the media coverage about yoga in the American mainstream, especially in the wake of the Wall Street crash last year. The irony of financiers meditating on the impermanence of reality is irresistible. Imparato has a nice website. Her studio is in her loft. I suspect that when she goes to the banks and hedge funds to give classes she charges more than $20 a session per student.

A global yoga pioneer has died, as announced on SHRI K. PATTABHI JOIS ASHTANGA YOGA INSTITUTE:

May 18, 2009 Guruji passed away today at 2:30pm (Indian Standard Time). Thank you for all your condolences and prayers. Please kindly refrain from contacting the family directly at this time.

Sad news for anyone who has been touched by his work. Below, I am posting the best articles and tributes that I come across:

• New York Times: Krishna Pattabhi Jois, Leading Expert in Yoga, Dies at 93 (nice piece, not just a news wire story)
• Guardian: Yoga Guru Dies
• USA Today: Major yoga figure dies
• Hawaii Health Guide: Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois- Ashtanga yoga legend passes

NY Times H. M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82 is about Henry Molaison, who opened the way for modern neuroscience because he revealed the crucial role of memory:

"And for those five decades, he was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science. As a participant in hundreds of studies, he helped scientists understand the biology of learning, memory and physical dexterity, as well as the fragile nature of human identity."

Molaison could not form long-term memory, and had to live each day as if its events were the first time he had faced them. He lived in an eternal present, without the weight of a future and with only a remote past (prior to the surgery that cut his hippocampus in 1953). He then went through years of investigations into how the operation affected his mental processes. He was known in the scientific literature as "H.M."

Expect to see more articles and blogs about H.M.'s importance in science in the coming days. For a start: A Blog Around the Clock ::: NPR ::: The Day His Day Stood Still ::: Wikepedia