"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you'll help them to become what they are capable of becoming.”
~ Goethe
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Troubleshooting the Deadlift: Part III -- "The final installment of Eric Cressey's deadlift masterpiece explains the many variations of this great lift. Now you can be a deadliftin' fool pretty much all-year round without going stale."
~ Obesity Drug Has Suicide Risk -- "An experimental obesity drug may be causing higher incidences of depression, insomnia and suicidal anxiety according to several media reports. Acomplia, made by Sanofi-Aventis, has been shown to help lower weight, cholesterol and blood sugar. A ruling about FDA approval is expected on July 27. The FDA briefing is available online."
~ Your Summer Workout and Meal Plan -- "Discover the TNT Diet and meet hundreds of others who have pledged to transform their bodies this season." Men's Health wants to Pump ... You Up.
~ Low-Carb Diets' Effects Linked To Rise In Newly Identified 'Starvation Hormone' -- "The benefits sometimes seen in those on a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet may depend on increased levels of a newly identified "starvation hormone" produced by the liver, according to a report in the June issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, published by Cell Press. Two studies in the issue show that the hormone plays a critical role in the metabolic shift seen in animals after a period of fasting and in those fed an Atkins-like diet."
~ Is it Possible to be Both Overweight and Malnourished? -- "The stereotypical picture of malnourishment -- a very thin, starving person -- is no longer accurate. It is possible, and quite common, for people to be both overweight and malnourished."
~ Sweeteners, trans fat creating 'toxic food environment' -- "High-fructose corn syrup, used to sweeten most pop, may be decreasing insulin sensitivity in teens. That, in turn, may be contributing to increased rates of type 2 diabetes in young people."
~ Water-Rich, Low-Fat Foods Encourage Weight Loss -- "If you're trying to lose weight, eating the right foods may be more effective than eating less, U.S. researchers say."
~ Learning the Alexander Technique -- "To learn the Alexander Technique, as the method came to be known, you must relearn the most taken-for-granted movements. Sitting. Standing. Walking. Speaking. Example: A good friend of mine, who gave birth to her first child in March, takes Alexander classes to learn how to hold her baby without pain."
PSYCHE
~ New Meditation Guide Proves Mind Control Isn't So Farfetched -- "A remarkable new book from Swedish author Ingrid Fredriksson, Free from Dangerous Stress explains the ins and outs of meditation and yoga, setting readers on a path to manipulating their own brains for a maximum health effect."
~ Anger Can Spur Logical Thinking -- "Despite the reputation as being a catalyst for disorder, a new study suggests that anger can actually be a productive force. According to research conducted by psychologists Wesley Moons and Diane Mackie from the University of California at Santa Barbara, anger helps people make better choices and think more logically."
~ The Autobiographical Blur Between Fantasy and Reality [Developing Intelligence] -- "Children have often been claimed to blend reality and fantasy, but according to some this is a wild exaggeration of the truth. For example, renowned child researchers have written that "even the very youngest children already are perfectly able to discriminate between the imaginary and the real" and certainly a lot of recent research tentatively supports that idea."
~ Have I Been Here Before? -- ""Have I been here before"? In today's fast-moving world of look-alike hotel rooms and comparable corridors, it can take a bit of thinking to answer this simple question. University of Bristol neuroscientists working with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report in the early online edition of Science that they have identified a neuronal mechanism that our brains may use to rapidly distinguish similar, yet distinct places."
~ Did You Know? -- "Fast facts on antioxidants, depression, and multitasking."
~ Latest articles on executive functions and will -- "The scientific study of choice, aka decision making, willed action or executive functions, has provided plenty of new articles just during the past few weeks. Here we provide some of them."
~ A secret to happiness: re-frame something that’s making you unhappy -- "One technique for happiness is to “re-frame” – that is, to change your attitude or your thinking about something that’s making you unhappy. This sounds Pollyanna-ish, but I’ve been surprised by just how often it’s quite possible, and extremely effective."
~ Why Don't All Smart People Make Smart Choices? [Living the Scientific Life (Scientist, Interrupted)] -- "Have you ever known someone who is intelligent but still makes astonishingly stupid decisions again and again? According to a recently published study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reasoning is a distinct skill, and not everyone possesses it in equal measure, even those people who are thought of as being intelligent."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ New Book Examines Communication And Aging -- "A new book by a University of Arizona researcher challenges long-held notions about how society communicates with its oldest members. The importance of this work is highlighted by the fact that people are living longer, and that seniors now outnumber those under 18."
~ Creationist Canard #1 : "Evolution is a theory, not a fact" [Galactic Interactions] -- "I had a long letter to the editor published in the Tennessean, as part of a segment on the question "should you take your kids to the Creation Museum?" I receive a fair amount of e-mail. This has motivated me to put up, so that I can reference it from now on, my own rejection of a couple of creationist canards. Doubtless you can find huge numbers of rejections of this elsewhere, since these are canards that creationists bring up all the time."
~ Would I do this story? -- "Though reporting on insurgents—or even "embedding" with them as in the case of Patrick Graham for his award-winning June 2004 Harper's article—is not uncommon, this three-minute profile of a twenty-nine-year-old member of an Al-Qaeda affiliate was different. Rather than focusing on the beliefs or lifestyle of Abu Abdul (a pseudonym)-a typical approach to covering insurgents-NPR's Baghdad correspondent, Anne Garrels, dedicated the majority of her segment to describing his military training, his involvement in several bombings, and his determination to blow himself up in the name of jihad."
~ Poll Shows Obama Most Electable Democrat -- "Obama, an Illinois senator, is clearly the strongest general-election candidate. He is the only Democrat who beats all three major Republican contenders: Giuliani, McCain and Romney. Clinton runs behind all three Republican contenders in head-to-head match-ups."
~ Free Speech for People Who Think Like Me -- "In his best-selling book The Assault on Reason, Al Gore name-checks Jürgen Habermas, Noam Chomsky, and I.F. Stone, digresses into the peculiarities of human brain chemistry, and, as expected, explains the intricacies of atmospheric science. He is, The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson recently wrote, “too ostentatiously smart to be elected president.” And as his book makes clear, he thinks the rest of us are hopelessly dumb." Reason magazine is not a Gore fan.
~ Politics: The Trouble With the Super-Rich -- "Well, there is a problem with the super-rich, several of them in fact. A bloated overclass can drag down a society as surely as a swelling underclass."
~ D.C. Fights For A Vote -- "Sens. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) presided over a pleasant, if at times contentious, three-hour discussion of the bill that would give the District of Columbia--and its population of 581,530 residents (more than Wyoming)--a full voting representative in the U.S. House. The bill has attained a measure of bi-partisan support by coupling the representative for heavily Democratic D.C. with an additional one for heavily Republican Utah."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Professor proposes theory of unparticle physics -- "Howard Georgi, a physicist at Harvard University, has recently published a paper on so-called unparticle physics, which suggests the existence of “unparticle stuff” that cannot be accounted for by the standard model. Appearing in a recent edition of Physical Review Letters, the paper says that unparticle stuff would be very different than anything seen before."
~ Invasive Cuban tree frogs threaten native wildlife, damage utilities -- "North Florida residents accustomed to tiny tree frogs may feel jumpy — a giant Cuban species has colonized half the state and is moving north, a University of Florida expert says."
~ NASA satellites watch as China constructs giant dam -- "Some call it the eighth wonder of world. Others say it's the next Great Wall of China. Upon completion in 2009, the Three Gorges Dam along China`s Yangtze River will be the world's largest hydroelectric power generator and one of the few man-made structures so enormous that it's actually visible to the naked eye from space."
~ N.C. Man Fined for Converting to Biodiesel [commonground] -- "Bob Teixeira decided it was time to take a stand against U.S. dependence on foreign oil. So last fall the Charlotte musician and guitar instructor spent $1,200 to convert his 1981 diesel Mercedes to run on vegetable oil. He bought soybean oil in 5-gallon jugs at Costco, spending about 30 percent more than diesel would cost. His reward, from a state that heavily promotes alternative fuels: a $1,000 fine last month for not paying motor fuel taxes. He has been told to expect another $1,000 fine from the federal government. (News &Observer)"
~ Rove beetles act as warning signs for clear-cutting consequences -- "New research from the University of Alberta and the Canadian Forest Service has revealed the humble rove beetle may actually have a lot to tell us about the effects of harvesting on forests species."
~ DNA Used in Search for 'Lost Colony' -- "Scientists plan to use DNA to trace a lost early American colony."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Absolute Perfection & Relatively Pathetic -- "Witnessing this object is a recently emergent self, aware of the absolute perfection of it all, that is an order of consciousness higher, yet occasionally constrained by this inertia. And you know, this emergent self is realizing that this kosmic groove I speak of has more inertia than is generated by this object's personal history."
~ The Role of the Skeptic -- Deepak Chopra -- "Since skeptics are also a pattern of behavior of the Universe, they must have an important role. In their absence, unleashed creativity (the ecstatic evolutionary impusle of the universe, which proliferates in the midst of chaos, uncertainty and ambiguity) would become total anarchy. What do you think?" Join the discussion.
~ V on TV! -- "Friday, June 15 at 9:30am HGTV will finally air the segment of me working that they taped in April of 2006 for their show, That's Clever! As the date approaches at last, I've been remembering snippets of the experience of a 4 person crew + me in my studio (and how punchy we were by the end)." Congrats Victoria!
~ What is Meditation? -- "So I've been doing a lot of little sittings, here and there, when I'm smoking or have a few moments on my own wherever I happen to be at the time. I often have a thought that keeps recurring that says "Is this meditation? What is meditation?". The answer often comes as "anything can be meditation". A lot of the time I find that I grasp after a certain feeling. The feeling is usually one of exaltation and intensity, but the fact of the matter is that meditation isn't this feeling."
~ BLOG: Is There Such a Thing as Integral Shamanism? (TRANSCRIPT) -- Interesting read for those who care about shamanism.
~ What we let go of -- "When we deepen into who and what we are - notice more of the wholeness of who we are as individual human and soul, notice what we are as Ground (awake void), and work with this in our human life - it is also a process of letting go of identifications and beliefs. This takes many forms. We let go of…"
Tags:
No comments:
Post a Comment