"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence."
~ Robert Frost
Image of the day:
BODY
~ The Cheat to Lose Diet -- "Joel Marion discovered a weird thing while trying to get ripped: the more often he cheated (within reason), the more he leaned up. He didn't know it at the time but he was manipulating leptin, a primary fat-burning hormone."
~ Don't Plan Your "Off Weeks" -- Good advice for serious lifters.
~ How You Can Avoid Lower Back Pain On The Overhead Press -- "What’s keeping your torso upright? Two things. Your abs & your lower back. Your abs give you support from the front. Your lower back gives you support from the back. If one is stronger than the other, the strongest will bear all the weight. This leads to pain & eventually injury." Almost no one has stronger abs than lower back. The ab exercises he recommends are excellent, some of my favorites.
~ Pot Bellies Linked To Early Signs Of Cardiovascular Disease -- "Most of us rely on the bathroom scale to tell us when middle-aged spread is getting out of hand. It might be better to keep a tape measure at the ready. New research shows that adding several inches to the waist even if body weight still falls within a normal range markedly increases the risk of unhealthy plaque build-up in the arteries of the heart and the rest of the body."
~ Few obese patients receive weight-control plans -- "Few obese adults receive a formal weight-management plan from their doctors, despite the proven health benefits of even modest weight loss, a new study suggests."
~ Work muscles hard to preserve strength, but pamper your joints -- "Weight training is tough on the joints, particularly for those of us who are getting up in years."
~ Antioxidants, bad science and the end of honest journalism in the mainstream media -- "Following yesterday's announcement of a new study showing the phenomenal benefits of antioxidants for preventing heart disease in women, the mainstream media rallied behind a blatantly false distortion of the study designed to convince the public that vitamins E and C are somehow useless. The popular press, which maintains an incestuous relationship with the pharmaceutical industry, once again demonstrates it is little more than a mouthpiece for the pro-pharma propaganda machine."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Top 24 Tips for Making Your Self Confidence Soar -- "There are actually quite a few practical tips you can use to raise your self confidence. Here are 24 of them. As usual, with these tip-lists, don’t try it all at once. Just try a few suggestions and see which ones work best for you."
~ Increase in eating disorders among men -- "New research from the Department of Health has found that over the past three years there has been a 90% increase in the number of men reported with eating disorders."
~ College Students Bias Psychological Research -- "Since the 1960s, college students, who are cheap and convenient, have been the primary subject pool for nearly all psychological research conducted at universities across the country. What at first must have seemed a perfect match has now become an issue of some concern as heavy reliance on students in laboratories has raised critical questions about the potential for sampling bias." From an integral psychology perspective, this seems to be a serious issue.
~ Creative Genius and Madness -- "The myth that madness heightens creative genius."
~ Creativity's Bum Rap -- "Rumination often leads the artist to the blues."
~ How the Mind Works by Steven Pinker (Book Review) -- "Right from the outset Steven Pinker, a Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, is apologising for the title of his book: 'How the Mind Works'. We do not yet know how the mind works, he explains. The ideas contained in his book are not, he admits, his own but culled from various other fields. But this is rather false modesty as reading on it soon becomes clear Pinker does indeed intend to tell us how the mind works, albeit one particular version."
~ Living a Balanced Life -- "Our lives are full of stress: we have 24 hours each day and more activities than we feel we have time for. In this age of multi-tasking and instantaneous communication through cell phones, e-mail, and BlackBerrys that do both and more, the demands on our time are relentless. These demands have increased our levels of stress-related health problems, and as an antidote, the quest for “balance” has become a popular fixation. In our search for balance, we re-prioritize our to-do lists and think about ways to shift our schedules around. But what is balance? How do we live a balanced life?"
~ Testosterone patch benefits women with low sexual desire -- "Novel research published in the current issue of The Journal of Sexual Medicine supports the claim that women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder or HSDD (persistent or recurrent deficiency and/or absence of sexual fanatasies/thoughts, and/or desire for, or receptivity to, sexual activity, which causes personal distress) show noted improvement in sexual desire and sexual function following low dose testosterone treatment."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The Sacred and the Human -- "Today's atheist polemics ignore the main insight of the anthropology of religion—that religion is not primarily about God, but about the human need for the sacred. As René Girard argues, religion is not the cause of violence, but the solution to it."
~ Debate on lower drinking age bubbling up -- "A quiet movement to lower the legal drinking age to 18 is taking root as advocates argue that teenagers who are allowed to vote and fight for their country should also be able to enjoy a beer or two."
~ A Student Backlash Against Coke -- "A movement is growing on college campuses to boycott Coca-Cola for alleged labor and environmental abuses."
~ The Post-Rove White House -- "With its chief strategist leaving, the Administration must now manage the fallout of his flawed political vision."
~ Books: Hunter S. Thompson's Widow Moves into the Future of Gonzo -- "Hunter S. Thompson's widow Anita tries moving the celebrated writer's legacy forward (By Jake McGee)."
~ Two Arts, Many Dimensions -- "Theater disappears; film remains behind as evidence. And yet, paradoxically, theater is permanent and film evanescent. Ingmar Bergman, who died on July 30 at age 89, was a master of both arts. In film, he made a worldwide reputation, permanently altering both the shape and sense of what had previously been thought possible in that medium. In the theater, he made a reputation confined to his native country, and to the small circles elsewhere of those who love theater and were lucky enough to experience his productions."
~ You Have No Rights -- "Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive and author of “You Have No Rights,” explains how our president became a “medieval king,” and why your civil liberties are in greater danger than ever."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Map reveals ancient urban sprawl -- "The great medieval temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia was once at the centre of a sprawling urban settlement, according to a new, detailed map of the area."
~ Is Glass A Solid Or An Extremely Slow Moving Liquid? -- "When most people look at a window, they see solid panes of glass. But for decades, physicists, who view window glass at the molecular level, have pondered the question of whether or not glass is a solid or merely an extremely slow-moving liquid. An Emory University research team led by physicist Eric Weeks has yielded another clue in the glass puzzle, demonstrating that, unlike liquids, glasses aren’t comfortable in confined spaces."
~ How sea slugs fall in love -- "Scott Cummins and his colleagues at The University of Queensland have uncovered a potent mix of chemicals which acts like a cross between Chanel No 5 and Viagra, —but only if you are a sea slug."
~ Aussie northern savanna 'largest, most intact on Earth -- "A new book on Northern Australia by four of the country`s leading scientists reveals the region has the largest and least damaged tropical savanna in the world, and calls for a new approach to development and conservation to ensure it remains one of the last great natural places."
~ New study warns limited carbon market puts 20 percent of tropical forest at risk -- "In an ironic twist, 11 countries that have avoided widespread destruction of their tropical forest are at risk of being left out of an emerging carbon market intended to promote rainforest conservation to combat climate change."
~ U.S. federal agencies, World Bank help developing countries emit more -- "President Bush has made clear his feelings on global-warming mitigation: "We all can make major strides, and yet there won't be a reduction until China and India are participants." So it seems a wee bit hypocritical that the United States is actually contributing to global-warming emissions in China, India, and other developing countries."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Buddhism revived in Tibet -- "After years of living under political repression, Buddhism in Tibet is undergoing a revival." Brief, but hopeful.
~ Runaway horse -- "I sat last night for the first time in months it seems. My daily practice gave way to a move, vacation and lots of business that made it easy to avoid. But I returned to staring at a wall with only my breath and runaway thoughts."
~ BLOG: Integral Field Course This November in El Salvador -- "This November, we are offering an Integral Field Course to complement the on campus and online courses at JFKU. I wanted to send you information on this, to see if you could post it on your blog for the integral community to check out. These field courses will ideally run every year, with this inaugural course taking place in El Salvador this fall."
~ Breathwork and mutuality -- "Breathe, and knots unravel."
~ Onward Christian Soldiers -- "A much graver offence against the spirit of religion is when it religious rhetoric is used to justify war. No major religion has completely escaped this blemish; Buddhists sometimes boast that we've never had a war fought in our name, but that claim is historically dubious to say the least."
~ The Fastest Growing Segment in Religion Today: Personal Spirituality! -- "Traditional and even progressive religions are being turned on their heads by an integralizing rapidly growing Personal Spirituality movement. But what is it? Why did occur now? Who is involved? Where is it going and --- should you be involved?"
~ Enter From There -- "The story goes that a monk named Kyosho came to Zen Master Gensha seeking instruction. Kyosho said, “I’ve come seeking the truth. Please, master, tell me how I can enter the way of Zen.” Gensha said, “Can you hear the sound of the creek down beyond the gate?” Kyosho listened, and replied, “Yes, master, I can hear it.” “Enter Zen from there,” Gensha told him."
~ Buddhist Geeks 32: Dharmic Throw Up -- "This week, we had the great pleasure of speaking with teacher and artist Robert Spellman, who was a student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and a long-time member of the Shambhala tradition. In the first part of the series Robert shares several personal vignettes and also introduces a somewhat (w)retched metaphor for understanding the development of the path. Sounds tasty huh!?"
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