"It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues."
~ Abraham Lincoln
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Take 2 Cups Of Kale, And Call Me In The Morning? "Food And Nutrients In Disease Management" - A Medical Textbook Whose Time Has Come -- "Doctors need a comprehensive reference on nutrition. Ingrid Kohlstadt M.D., M.P.H., an associate faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, has accepted an author's contract with one of the world's largest medical publishers, Taylor & Francis Group, to develop a ground-breaking medical text entitled "Food and Nutrients in Disease Management."
~ Apple Juice Could Protect Children Against Asthma -- "There has recently been a great deal of interest in the possibility that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables might protect against asthma. More specifically, a study of adult asthma performed some years ago in Greenwich (UK) suggested that apples might be particularly effective."
~ Mastering the Deadlift: Part II -- "Get ready to master the greatest lift of all! Part 2 of the series breaks the deadlift down into 7 easy-to-follow steps. Eric also provides 9 videos on how NOT to do the deadlift. Hopefully, none of them look too familiar to you."
~ Grim Warning For America's Fast Food Consumers Offered By 'Supersize Me' Mice Research -- "It's research that may have you thinking twice before upgrading to the large size at your favorite fast food joint. Saint Louis University research presented in Washington, D.C., shows the dangers of high-fat food combined with high fructose corn syrup and a sedentary lifestyle - in other words, what may be becoming commonplace among Americans."
~ Heart Attack Risk in Women Tripled by Trans Fats -- "A study from Harvard Medical School on almost 33,000 women in the Nurses' Health Study shows that eating a diet high in partially hydrogenated fats triples a woman's chances of suffering heart disease (Circulation, April 10, 2007)."
~ High-carb diet linked to higher blood pressure -- "Carbohydrate-rich diets are associated with slightly higher blood pressure than diets rich in monounsaturated fats, according to the findings published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition."
~ Dietary fiber doesn't lower colorectal cancer risk -- "Although the potential connection between dietary fiber and colorectal cancer has long held an attraction for both medical researchers and the general public, investigators report that the results of a large new study do not support this link."
PSYCHE
~ Adult Brain Cells Rediscover Their Inner Child -- "You may not be able to relive your youth, but part of your brain can. Johns Hopkins researchers have found that newly made nerves in an adult brain's learning center experience a one-month period when they are just as active as the nerves in a developing child. The study, appearing in Neuron, suggests that new adult nerves have a deeper role than simply replacing dead ones."
~ Decision-Making Ability Impaired Among Binge Drinking College Students -- "People addicted to alcohol and young adults who are heavy drinkers, but not considered alcoholics, have something in common: they possess poor decision-making skills, according to psychologists at the University of Missouri-Columbia. The findings are based on research examining binge drinking and heavy alcohol use among college students."
~ Lithium Shows Promise In Mouse Model Of Devastating Neurodegenerative Disorder -- "Lithium is one of the oldest psychiatric drugs and still used routinely to ameliorate the symptoms of mood disorders. New results by Huda Zoghbi (Baylor College of Medicine and Howard Hughes Medical Institute), Harry Orr (University of Minnesota) and colleagues now suggest that lithium also holds promise in treating a group of devastating neurodegenerative disorders for which no other treatments exist at present."
~ Finding the wily thief -- "A study that followed the lives of young males for 20 years has found that cognitive ability predicted whether the person was likely to engage in violence or theft if they had a tendency for antisocial behaviour."
~ Can You Change Your Personality? Lord of the Rings vs. Schindler's List -- A rather pessimistic look at the possibility for personality change.
~ Don’t worry, eat Prozac -- "This year, Prozac celebrates twenty years of chemically evoked happiness. A drug that remains the most widely used antidepressant in history, prescribed to aproximately 54 million people worldwide."
~ The Trouble with Insecurity -- "How some of us sabotage relationships." See also: Build Your Confidence.
~ There's No Place Like Ohm -- "There are four immediate benefits of taking time for yourself in contemplation and reflection. We will focus on the 4 R's: relax, regroup, rething and reset priorities." Not for Buddhist's, but useful for the general reader.
~ Skip Buying Extra Stuff And Take A Vacation Instead -- "Shopping for that new high-definition television this summer? Skip it, and take a vacation instead, says a University of Colorado at Boulder psychologist who studies happiness."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Obama Offers Universal Health Care Proposal -- "Calling for the country to "turn the page on the failed politics of yesterday's health care debates," Sen. Barack Obama today proposed a new national health care system that would aim to lower premium costs and encourage millions of people to obtain health insurance."
~ The Best Novels You’ve Never Read -- "Sixty-one critics reveal their favorite underrated book of the past ten years." I agree with the person who chose Mariette in Ecstasy.
~ Americans split on doctor-assisted suicide, poll shows -- "More than two-thirds of Americans believe there are circumstances in which a patient should be allowed to die, but they are closely divided on whether it should be legal for a doctor to help terminally ill patients end their own lives by prescribing fatal drugs, a new AP-Ipsos poll finds."
~ Sam Harris Strikes Back at Chris Hedges -- It's good that religion is finally being discussed in the public sphere, but the problem (as Matthew Dallman pointed pointed out a while back) is that atheists are talking about God as though it can be disproved that God exists, and not about God as an idea that needs to be refined.
~ The New Mexico governor self-destructs on Meet the Press -- "Richardson is a world-famous hostage negotiator, so it was poignant to watch him fail to rescue himself from his own hostage crisis. By the end of the hour, he wasn't answering questions so much as swatting at them. "I'm not perfect," he said."
~ Colossus of Baghdad -- "As conditions worsen in Baghdad's embattled Green Zone, construction continues on the grandiose US Embassy. Tom Engelhardt conducts a virtual tour." This isn't an embassy -- it's a self-contained city.
~ Report: Very Few Immigration Cases Related to Terrorism -- "Of the more than 800,000 individuals whom the Department of Homeland Security charged in the immigration courts in the past three years, only 12 have been accused of terrorism-related crimes, according to a new report out today from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC)."
~ Fitzgerald Again Points to Cheney -- "Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby." Looks like Scooter took one for the team.
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ The Case of the Missing Bees: It's the Flowers, Dummy -- "Today's Salon features a round-table discussion that's the real bees' knees on the disappearing bee problem. The scientists seem to agree that the precipitous drop-off in domesticated honeybee populations (no one keeps track of wild bee populations) was likely caused, at least in part, by the unavailability of nutritious pollen."
~ Moroccans Cut Off From YouTube -- "Internet users in Morocco unable to access the video-sharing Web site YouTube since last week expressed fears Tuesday that the government has stepped up its campaign to restrict independent media."
~ Researchers Find ‘Skim Milk Cows’ -- "Scientists discover gene mutation that makes cow produce low-fat milk."
~ U.S. Rejects EU's Emissions Targets -- "An advisor says the U.S. prefers regulating pollution within a national context."
~ Greenland Continues to Slip-Slide Away -- "In 2006, Greenland had more melt days than in previous 18 years."
~ Green Your Coffee Habit -- "The coffee craze that has taken the Western world by the throat in recent decades has—like any other booming industry—an enormous environmental impact. Keep these tips in mind next time you’ve got a hankering, and you’ll help to avoid many of the problems."
~ Researchers Tap Cellular Communication Between Species -- "European scientists create a synthetic ecosystem based on communication between cells of different organisms—and potentially a way to safely manufacture cell-killing medicines."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Myth, Fairy Tale, and Psyche in Pan's Labyrinth -- "Well, it's finally out on video and I thought it would be a good time to watch Pan's Labyrinth again and offer up the second part of my review as promised at the beginning of the year! Go here to see my more conventional review of the movie that preceeded this piece."
~ Guest Blog: The Engine of Development: Integral Theory and Post-metaphysical Entelechy (Michael Garfield) -- "For its entire existence, evolutionary biology has wrestled with the vitalist concept of a metaphysical force that guides development. Taking an antithetical (and increasingly uncorroborated) stance, most biologists flatly deny any ubiquitous trends in evolution. However, an AQAL study of evolution, informed by developmental psychology, suggests that the interplay between interior and exterior aspects of an organism, as well as those between an individual organism and its ecology, do indeed create a force that drives increasing intelligence, complexity of communicative behavior, and depth of experience."
~ Buddha and the World (Part 4) -- Deepak Chopra -- "In the end, how does Buddha fit into the world? I think we will have an answer only after the question is put a bit differently. How does Buddha's purpose fit into the world? His purpose was to bring a kind of spirituality that frees people to live in peace."
~ Buddhist Geeks 21: Buddhism is Something that Old Folks Do -- "Anyone that’s had the chance to study with Brad Warner knows he’s young(ish), funny and knowledgeable about the Dharma. Warner’s new book, urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/www.amazon.com');">Sit Down & Shut Up, chronicles the life and times of Dogen, author of the Shobogenzo. The book simultaneously tracks Warner’s own career as a punk rock bassist and Zen teacher, weaving Dogen’s story seamlessly with his own."
~ Three pillars of integral psychotherapy -- "[Besides shadow] OK, so here are the other two: evolution and ever-present Spirit. So, the integral psychotherapist is challenged to bring all three of these items appropriately into the room. Outside of integral psychotherapy, I don't believe there is any system that includes all three…but please inform me if I am wrong, because then our synthetic work will be made easier!"
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