"Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane."
~ Philip K Dick
Image of the day (John Craig):
BODY
~ Top 10 Fun Ways to Live Longer -- I'm going to go with number four on the list.
~ Waterbury Rules II: Good Grub, Good Books, and Good Training Tips! -- "Hey you! That's right, you, with the attention span of an 18-year-old speed freak. This article contains easily digestible snippets of cool, useful information about training, food, and even books (should your attention span tolerate them). Read and absorb... quickly."
~ Yale Researchers Weigh The Science On Soft Drinks And Health -- "Yale University researchers have released results of a study showing clearly that soft drinks are associated with increased caloric intake, higher body weight, a decrease in calcium and other nutrients, and increased risk of Type II diabetes. The report also noted that studies funded by the food industry were much less likely to show detrimental effects from soft drinks than studies that received no industry funding."
~ What is your fitness excuse -- "What is your fitness excuse, why are you not eating or getting the exercise that you need?"
~ Diet Advice to take to Heart -- "Find out 6 ways to make your diet heart-healthy and lose weight."
~ Pizza as health food? Food chemists say yes -- "It's the junk food junkie's wildest dream come true -- pizza as health food."
~ Trans fats linked to greater heart disease risk -- "A study published today supports recent efforts to rid the American diet of trans fats. In the study, women with the highest levels of trans fat in their blood had triple the risk of heart disease as those with the lowest levels."
~ Grape seed extract may help prevent skin cancer -- "Chemicals found in grape seeds may help ward of skin cancer due to regular exposure to the sun, according to the results of an animal study reported Sunday in Chicago at the 223rd annual meeting of the American Chemical Society."
~ Blueberry-rich diet may keep the colon healthy -- "A natural antioxidant abundant in blueberries called pterostilbene may help prevent colon cancer, according to an animal study reported Sunday in Chicago at the 233rd national meeting of the American Chemical Society."
~ Sugar: Major Cause of Cancer -- "In this study, women were harmed far more often than men, as elevated blood sugar was linked to cancers of the pancreas, urinary tract, womb and skin, along with breast cancer for females under age 49."
PSYCHE
~ Top 10 Ways To Improve Your Mental Fitness -- "There are two basic principles to keep your brain healthy and sharp as you age: variety and curiosity. When anything you do becomes second nature, you need to make a change."
~ Study ties day care to behavior problems -- "The more time that kids spent in day care, the more likely their sixth -grade teachers were to report problem behaviors such as getting in fights, being disobedient in school and arguing a lot, according to the largest study of child care and development ever conducted in the United States." See also: Few effects of poor day care last past age 11.
~ Schizophrenia And Sex Differences In Emotional Processing -- "Patients with schizophrenia are known to be impaired in several domains of emotional processing. These deficits have been associated with impaired social functioning."
~ Modeling a real brain [Cognitive Daily] -- "A rat's brain has millions of neurons, each with up to 10,000 connections to other neurons. This "simple" animal's neural network is mind-bogglingly complex. Yet a Swiss laboratory has achieved remarkable success duplicating a vast region of a rat's brain using a supercomputer."
~ Seven Ways Music Influences Mood -- "Good music has direct access to the emotions. As such it's a fantastic tool for tweaking our moods. Saarikallio and Erkkila (2007) investigated the ways people use music to control and improve their mood by interviewing eight adolescents from Finland."
~ Hallucinations or Things Psychic? -- "Some mental health professionals are not open to people's psychic experiences and are likely to ignore them or misdiagnose a person as having hallucinations or delusions."
~ Wandering Minds, Study Focus -- "Do your thoughts stray from your work or studies? Do you catch yourself making to-do lists when your attention should be elsewhere? Welcome to the club."
~ Toddlers engage in 'emotional eavesdropping' to guide their behavior -- "University of Washington researchers have found that 18-month-old toddlers engage in what they call "emotional eavesdropping" by listening and watching emotional reactions directed by one adult to another and then using this emotional information to shape their own behavior." Wow, that explains a lot.
CULTURE
~ House Panel Examines Medicare Advantage Plan Payments, Considers Cuts -- "The House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee on Wednesday held a hearing to examine whether the government overpays Medicare Advantage plans, which are operated by private insurers, the Washington Times reports."
~ Democrats Seize on Health Overhaul in Split From Republicans -- "All the Democrats running for president agree the US government should ensure that every American has medical coverage."
~ How to end the standoff on executive privilege -- "What information is Congress entitled to know about the U.S. attorney scandal, and what is the White House entitled to withhold? Whose testimony may Congress seek, and whose appearance is off limits? Here is our best effort to answer those questions in relation to the U.S. attorney scandal."
~ The Truth About Talibanistan -- "Islamic militants have turned the borderlands between Pakistan and Afghanistan into a new base for al-Qaeda. An inside look at the next battleground of the war on terrorism."
~ Religious Practices Down in America in Past Decade -- "Many religious ideals and core tenets of social conservatism have grown less common in America over the past decade, according to figures just released by the Pew Center for People and the Press."
~ Reports: Gonzales aide will invoke Fifth Amendment, refuse to answer questions -- "A Justice Department aide involved in the controversial firings of eight federal prosecutors will refuse to answer questions at a Senate hearing this week, citing protection against self-incrimination, the Associated Press reports."
~ Who's Scripting Gonzales? -- "Why did Attorney General Alberto Gonzales go before the television cameras two weeks ago and deny that he knew anything about last year's firings of U.S. attorneys, when -- as we just learned from yet another Friday-night document dump -- he approved them during an hour-long meeting in November?"
~ The most revealing three-minute You Tube clip ever -- "The refusal of national journalists to acknowledge the importance of the U.S. attorneys scandal reveals much about the dysfunction and corruption of our media."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ The Sordid History of Monsanto Poisoning Our Milk -- "Last fall's wave of dairy companies dropping Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) to spur the production of milk might have led you to believe the drugging of cows was a fairly recent development. Not so, according to the Family Farm Defenders."
~ The Changing College Library -- "Books are still books, but the 21st century has brought other changes to college libraries. The 24/7 news cycle is one. Many college libraries, including most recently the library at American University, says the Eagle, are opening their doors all day and all night, even on weekends. Starbucks is another change." Damn, a coffee shop in my college library would have been awesome.
~ Dolphin Numbers Still Low Despite "Safe" Tuna Fishing, Experts Say -- "Twenty years of friendlier fishing practices haven't spurred dolphin recovery in a remote region of the Pacific, and scientists are struggling to find out why."
~ New 'biofuel cell' produces electricity from hydrogen in plain air -- "A pioneering “biofuel cell” that produces electricity from ordinary air spiked with small amounts of hydrogen offers significant potential as an inexpensive and renewable alternative to the costly platinum-based fuel cells that have dominated discussion about the “hydrogen economy” of the future, British scientists reported here today."
~ Greenland's Mysterious Winds Tied to Global Climate -- "Odd hurricane-force winds off the southern tip of Greenland may be a force that helps drive the ocean's main circulation system."
~ Monsanto Asks Court To Allow Sale of GMO Alfalfa -- "Monsanto Co. has asked a San Francisco federal court to allow it to continue selling its genetically modified Roundup Ready Alfalfa while the USDA conducts a court-ordered environmental impact study." Monsanto is evil.
~ Heat Invades Cool Heights Over Arizona Desert -- "'A lot of people think climate change and the ecological repercussions are 50 years away," said Thomas W. Swetnam, director of the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research at the University of Arizona in Tucson. "But it's happening now in the West. The data is telling us that we are in the middle of one of the first big indicators of climate change impacts in the continental United States.'"
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Descanso Gardens -- Nice pictures of an Asian garden from The Buddha Diaries.
~ From Tyson Williams: Awareness, Gross and Subtle Mind -- a video.
~ The Paradox of Expression from Sean at Deep Surface.
~ The Stuart Davis Show, Episode 8: Death Day! -- You can watch it at YouTube.
~ Moved to WordPress! -- Mystery of Existence has moved -- update your feeds.
~ Matthew at The Daily Goose links to a new Camille Paglia column.
~ Joe Perez and CJ Smith on the Episcopal Church (USA).
~ Spirituality, Atheism, Evolving Worldviews, Christopher Hitchens -- From Julian at Zaadz.
~ Mike at Unknowing Mind blogs on Subtle Stress and Sensation.
Tags:
No comments:
Post a Comment