Speedlinking 7/5/07

Quote of the day:

"Someone's boring me. I think it's me."
~ Dylan Thomas

Image of the day (John Craig):



BODY
~ The 9 Keys to Productive Training -- "So you spend maybe 5 or 6 hours a week in the gym. How much of that time is spent snapping towels or playing the soap dish game in the locker room? If you plan just a little and cut out the wasted time, you might actually build a decent physique."
~ How to Stay Slim during Wedding Season -- "Learn how to make smart food choices on special occassions."
~ Green Tea, Fish Oil, and LL Cool J -- "An in-depth interview about bodybuilding nutrition with the guy who helped carve out LL Cool J's Platinum abs. Find out what he thinks is the next big thing in bodybuilding nutrition (you read T-Nation, so you probably already know)."
~ A Little Daily Dark Chocolate Reduces Blood Pressure, New Study -- "A new German study suggests that eating a small amount of dark chocolate every day could lower blood pressure without increasing weight or other health risks.The study is published in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA)."
~ How to Stop Gaining Weight -- "There are ways to avoid the dreaded "weight creep." Simply by making a few gradual lifestyle changes, you can stop gaining weight and even drop some pounds."
~ It’s not jet lag, it’s ‘altitude sickness’ -- "Many of the effects of long-distance flight may be the result of altitude sickness rather than fatigue or jet lag, experiments carried out by Boeing doctors suggest."


PSYCHE
~ The Happy-Well: Positive Psychology Tips for Living Well and Longer -- "According to Lyubomirsky, et al, while half of our happiness may be the result of a genetic setpoint and 10% probably comes from our life circumstances, 40% is likely the result of our choices. The point? Make good choices now that improve your well-being."
~ 20 Tricks to Nuke a Bad Habit -- "Are you letting bad habits rule your life? I started learning how to change habits a few years ago. Since then I’ve switched to a vegan diet, began exercising every day, started writing new articles every day, began waking up earlier and trying some wacky experiments to improve my life. Here are some ideas I’ve found useful...."
~ Staying Mentally Sharp Takes Brain Work -- "Research is increasingly showing that aging doesn't automatically result in a steady erosion of brain cells. Rather, older adults who work their brains can develop new connections between brain cells. A brain workout using the mind in a wide variety of new and challenging ways can activate cells throughout the brain."
~ Diagnosing Dostoyevsky's epilepsy -- "In Dostoyevsky, neurologists have a rich source of information about epilepsy. Some of this information is first-hand, in the form of the writer's own descriptions of his seizures and symptoms, as related in his various correspondences. There are also numerous second-hand descriptions of Dostoyevsky's condition, provided by his second wife, physicians who treated him, and friends. And, of course, there are the accounts of epileptic characters in his novels, which one can safely assume are based on his own experiences."
~ Dreaming of the dead -- "The New York Times has an eye-opening article on research that has looked at how contents of dreams can be linked to emotional concerns - particularly when they relate to lost loved ones or turbulent life events."
~ Best of the Brain -- "A book called Best of the Brain from Scientific American (ISBN 1932594221) turned up unannounced the other day, and so far, I'm very impressed with it." Links to some online articles.


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ New Mexico's Pot Connection -- "State to Become First to Set Up Medical Marijuana Distribution, Over Fed Objections."
~ Fed Up With War, Some Won't Pay Taxes -- "Some Activists Fed Up With Iraq War Refuse to Pay Taxes, Interest Is Growing."
~ Time for Another New Deal -- "Is America ready for a "new" New Deal? When you put together all the various strands coming out of Democratic politics and liberal think tanks these days, it's pretty clear that plenty of people on the left-of-center side of things sure think so."
~ The Hillary and Bill Show -- "The former First Couple hit the campaign trail together in Iowa to reformat the Clinton brand. And it isn't Bill and Hillary."
~ Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why Young Adults Feel So Entitled -- "Fred Rogers, the late TV icon, told several generations of children that they were "special" just for being whoever they were. He meant well, and he was a sterling role model in many ways. But what often got lost in his self-esteem-building patter was the idea that being special comes from working hard and having high expectations for yourself."
~ Obama wows Iowa transcendental meditators -- "The Maharishi’s transcendental meditators, along with vacationing pilgrims from the East Coast, turned out in large numbers in the town’s traditional green square to hear the Illinois senator deliver his stump speech on the night of July 3 – more people, Fairfield’s sheriff said, than had come out to greet a sitting president."
~ On Literature and Politics, Part II -- "It’s tempting to see the New Criticism as a conservative reaction to the temptations of revolutionary political engagement among American writers early in the Twentieth Century, since this theory promotes a literature that turns its back on the struggles of the moment to engage with a timeless tradition. To make this claim is to argue that the New Criticism and its literary values aren’t simply a response to politics, but are themselves a specific political stance."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Oldest DNA Ever Recovered Suggests Earth Was Warmer -- "Ancient Greenland was green. New Danish research has shown that it was covered in conifer forest and, like southern Sweden today, had a relatively mild climate. Eske Willerslev, a professor at Copenhagen University, has analysed the world`s oldest DNA, preserved under the kilometre-thick icecap. The DNA is likely close to half a million years old, and the research is painting a picture which is overturning all previous assumptions about biological life and the climate in Greenland."
~ Birds take cues from their competitors -- "The idea that animals other than humans can learn from one another and pass on local traditions has long been a matter of debate. Now, a new study reveals that some birds learn not only from each other, but also from their competitors."
~ New light clock concept explains time dilation in special relativity -- "Joseph West, a physicist at Indiana State University, has recently proposed a method for intuitively visualizing and calculating the time dilation effects in special relativity—one of the stranger concepts in modern physics."
~ China Environment Chief Says Pollution Fuelling Unrest -- "Chinese anger with worsening pollution is fuelling increasing protests, the nation's top environmental official said, criticising local governments who he said protected factories turning rivers into "sticky glue"."
~ Wine: Kills Germs on Contact -- "Acids in wine effective at killing plaque, sore throat germs."
~ What's next for the Internet -- "If you think of the World Wide Web as a cloud of largely undifferentiated information, the mission of Radar Networks is to take that cloud and impose order on it via the semantic Web -- moving from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0. ... "


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ A "What is Enlightenment" Catastrophe -- "Andrew [Cohen] totally decimates any understanding that there are different approaches to enlightenment. Before you protest, he's basically saying that the only approach is the masculine, that a feminine approach doesn't work, and that women have to drop the feminine in order to become enlightened. He does not ask that men drop the masculine to do the same."
~ History and Dharma (4) -- "So it's states and structures, or structures and states. There are two basic models to take a look at: one was proposed in "Up from Eden" (KW, 1981) relating the average mode to the advanced mode of consciousness. The other is the Wilber-Combs lattice (pic here). First the average/advanced model."
~ The Cult of Digital Narcissism -- "Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur - How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, is a staunch critic of Web 2.0 (aka democratization of media). In his notorius Web 2.0 essay, he said: "If you democratize media, then you end up democratizing talent. The unintended consequence of all this democratization, to misquote Web 2.0 apologist Thomas Friedman, is cultural 'flattening.' No more Hitchcocks, Bonos, or Sebalds. Just the flat noise of opinion--Socrates's nightmare."
~ Fear as kernel -- "I notice that any belief tends to fuel a range of emotions, and these emotions seem to have fear as their kernel."

Tags: fear, digital narcissism, web 2.0, history and dharma, integral theory, Buddhism, Andrew Cohen, Web 3.0, wine, China, light clock, birds, earth history, literature and politics, Barack Obama, Mr. Rogers, self-esteem, Hillary Clinton, a new New Deal, Iraq War, medical marijuana, Best of the Brain, dreaming of the dead, Dostoyevsky, epilepsy, brain work, bad habits, positive psychology, jet lag, stop gaining weight, dark chocolate, bodybuilding nutrition, smart food choices, productive training, speedlinking