Speedlinking 1/19/07

Quote of the day:

"Love is not blind - it sees more, not less. But because it sees more, it is willing to see less."
~ Rabbi Julius Gordon

Image of the day:

BODY
~ Nearly One-Third Of Children Having Surgery Are Overweight Or Obese, Study Finds.
~ BONUS ARTICLE: "Building-On" . . . For Greater Training Efficiency by Charles Staley -- Writing at T-Nation. " Whenever you can make a workout more time-efficient, you're stacking the odds heavily in your favor."
~ Maintaining Healthy Weight -- The Key To Avoiding Chronic Disease -- "The study -- also known as Women's Health Australia -- is the largest of its kind ever conducted in Australia."
~ Plus Size Fitness Clothes -- Clothes that look good and are functional -- but don't buy too many that you get comfortable at that size.
~ TFS Review: Boiron Arnica Gel -- I'm a fan of arnica for muscle pain.
~ Eating trans fats may increase infertility risk -- "Women who want to get pregnant may want to stay away from fast food French fries not just to avoid putting on some extra pounds, a new study shows."
~ Companies Swapping Trans Fats for a Different, but Also Dangerous, Fat -- "A study has found that a new method of modifying fat in commercial products to replace trans fats raises blood glucose and depresses insulin, both precursors to diabetes. Meanwhile, like trans fat, the new fat also lowers good “HDL” cholesterol."
~ Estrogens and Overweight -- "When Estrogens predominate, it causes accretion of fats in different body parts, and you can see for yourself when you compare the changes occurring in the body contours of a girl at puberty, and compare it with the body of a boy at the same age."


PSYCHE
~ Health Tip: Warning Signs of Child Abuse -- "Many children who are being abused are afraid or unable to talk to someone about what's happening to them."
~ 'On Track' For Staying Free Of Depression -- "Professor Kavanagh said the program, which has been running for over a year, was an ideal way of communicating with people who experience depression, as there was "something personal" about receiving a letter. 'The series of letters that our recruits receive will let them know when depression may happen in the future and help them to pick up early signs,' he said."
~ Examining the Bereavement Event -- "This week we had the opportunity to sit down and speak with an expert in the area of bereavement, Anita Sacks, LCSW and clinical instructor of psychiatry at NYU's School of Medicine."
~ Our Aversion to the Unfamiliar -- A review of Brain and Culture: Neurobiology, Ideology, and Social Change. Bruce E. Wexler.
~ Swallow Your Fear -- "Taking physical risks is good for you." Are You a Risk Taker?
~ A review of cognitive enhancement technologies.
~ Soccer as Therapy for Mental Illness -- "How sports therapy has helped patients with severe mental illnesses." Cool.
~ Daydreamers: Scientists Find Our Bored Baseline -- "Bored out of your mind is a reality. During mundane tasks, your brain shifts into a default mode of daydreaming, a recent study concludes."


CULTURE
~ The Ideological Animal -- " We think our political stance is the product of reason, but we're easily manipulated and surprisingly malleable. Our essential political self is more a stew of childhood temperament, education, and fear of death. Call it the 9/11 effect."
~ Culture and Near-Death Experiences -- This is some fun stuff from the Mental Floss blog.
~ Book review: “Mind Wars”, by Jonathan D. Moreno -- "In the battlefield of the future, cognitively and physically enhanced super soldiers will act as interactive ‘nodes’ in the battlefield. They will be equipped with neural implants which enable the highly efficient gathering of information about their surroundings, and instant transmission of the data to a central command post."
~ 'Half-animal' woman found in Cambodian jungle may be long-missing girl -- "She is like half-human and half-animal," said Mao San, police chief of Oyadao district in Rattanakiri province. "She's weird. She sleeps during the day and stays up at night."
~ Former Terrorists Take Seats in New Nepal Legislature -- "Observers hailed the inclusion of "Maoist rebels, once branded terrorists, into the country's interim parliament and the declaration of January 16 as a public holiday to celebrate the new nation that put behind it a decade of conflict," reported the Ecumenical News service in Switzerland."
~ Report: 34,452 Iraqis killed in '06 -- Nuf said.
~ Ten Democracy Projects in Seventy Minutes -- "In these sessions, people give quick demos of their products at stations scattered throughout a room, and other groups move from station to station, hearing a pitch for a few minutes at a time. It's kinda like all the bad aspects of speed dating combined with all the bad aspects of a venture capital conference. But the presentations were extremely strong, the projects were interesting, and my fellow travellers asked good questions of the ten groups we met with."
~ Scientists and evangelical leaders form new climate alliance.


HABITATS
~ Reports tally high cost of birth defects -- "Birth defects lead to more than $2.5 billion a year in hospital costs alone, according to the first national studies to estimate their financial burden on U.S. families." This is a tough topic, no matter how you look at it.
~ Vaccine strategy saves seven million children from measles death (AFP) -- "A goal to halve deaths from measles by 2005 compared with their 1999 levels has been exceeded, thanks to a massive effort to immunize children in poor countries, according to a new study."
~ Rising Nicotine in Cigarettes Could Lead to Litigation -- "Experts Say 11 Percent Increase Deliberate; Many Smokers Remain Unfazed." So why aren't these things illegal?
~ The distribution of world income -- "One of the most profound questions in economics is why are some countries rich and others poor?"
~ Hawking Warns: We Must Recognize the Dangers of Climate Change.
~ Transforming Philanthropy -- "Giving well -- giving money which provokes positive transformation over the long haul -- can be like juggling porcupines: things can easily end in tears, and everything keeps moving quickly. But the time has come to think about philanthropy in a new way: it's time for us to invent some new porcupine juggling moves."
~ Aurora-Investigating Probes Set to Launch -- "A quintet of NASA probes will study what triggers the strong magnetic storms that make the northern lights dance and will help improve space weather predictions."
~ Jerome: A ghost town that never gave up the ghost -- A fun article about a strange little town here in Arizona.


INTEGRAL
~ BLOG: Integral Spirituality Typos? -- S/he who reports the most typos wins a signed copy of the book.
~ Rejecting simplistic linear interpretations from Alan Kazlev.

Tags: integral theory, Integral Spirituality, Ken Wilber, Jerome AZ, auroras, philanthropy, climate change, world income, nicotine, measles, birth defects, scientists and evangelicals, democracy, Iraqi deaths, Nepal, Cambodian wild woman, Mind Wars, Near-death experiences, politcal development, daydreaming, soccer therapy, cognitive enhancement, fear, risk taking, fear of the unfamiliar, bereavement, depression, child abuse, estrogen, dangerous fats, trans fats, arnica, fitness clothes, weight and disease, training, overweight kids, speedlinking