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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Speedlinking 8/16/07

Quote of the day:

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it whether it exists or not, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedy."
~ Ernest Benn

Image of the day (David Winston):


BODY
~ What Are Some Grocery Shopping Tips For A Bodybuilder? -- "What are some grocery shopping tips for a bodybuilder? Proper diet is one of the most important aspects of bodybuilding. Here are some fantastic tips on making your way through a grocery store and learning about good nutrition habits."
~ Hybrid Training: The Prequel -- "Scot Abel is a bodybuilding anarchist. He doesn't believe in tempo training, pre-determined rest intervals, back-off weeks, or the fact we have elves in the basement that make Metabolic Drive. What he does believe in is pretty cool, though."
~ Selenium May Increase Diabetes Risk -- "If you take selenium pills, you may be increasing your chances of developing diabetes, according to a report from the Nutritional Prevention of Cancer (NPC) trial (Annals of Internal Medicine, August 2007)."
~ Too much exercise may speed heart failure -- "Though exercise can be a key part of managing high blood pressure and heart disease, new animal research suggests there can be too much of a good thing." This really only applies to those with untreated high blood pressure, so keep working out.
~ Healthy Lifestyle Key To Cancer Prevention (HealthDay) -- "While the number of deaths from cancer have been declining, many malignancies could be prevented by exercising, eating right, maintaining a healthy weight and not smoking, a new federal report finds."
~ Got a cold? Zinc lozenges won't help -- "There’s no proof that zinc lozenges, which are marketed for relieving symptoms of the common cold, work as advertised, according to a new research review."
~ Low-Fat Diet Not Good for Kids -- "Children need fat to fuel growth and should not be put on low-fat diets, researchers said." But the fats should be healthy fats, like nuts, nut butters (natural only), olive oil, and so on.
~ Lipo at 12? Weight Just a Minute -- "One pediatric nutritionist says diet control should have preceded the knife." Damn straight -- the doctor should lose his/her license.


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Love Games -- "A new study used simulated relationships to offer new insight into real romance—showing how certain personality traits can sabotage healthy bonds."
~ Come on, get happy! -- "Happiness guru Michelle DeAngelis shows you how to find more joy in your life."
~ Review backs antidepressant effects of omega-3s -- "The results of a major review of published research that examined the relationship between depression and level of omega-3 fatty acids in the diet suggest that omega-3 fatty acids have antidepressant effects."
~ Positive Psychology Coaching (Biswas-Diener & Dean) - a Review -- "But does this book have anything new to say? Is this a book we should go and buy? Far be it from me to be responsible for anyone’s purchasing decisions but my answer would be a qualified yes. If Positive Psychology is a relatively new field to you then this book acts as a good introduction and then takes you further into the ways you can use it as a coach."
~ Time Magazine on decriminalising mental illness -- "Time magazine has an article on attempts to train law enforcement to prevent people with mental illness from needlessly ending up in behind bars. It includes some startling information, like the fact that more Americans receive mental health care in prisons than in hospitals."
~ Emotional Music [The Frontal Cortex] -- "Here's a cool new music site. The premise of the site, musicovery.com, is simple: you pick a mood (somewhere between the poles of "energetic," "dark," "calm," or "positive"), select a few musical genres and a favorite decade, and then the site automatically finds songs that reflect your state of mind. It's affective reverse-engineering."
~ Discover's 10 unsolved mysteries of the brain: Did they miss any? [Cognitive Daily] -- "Discover's got a very nice article about 10 unsolved mysteries of the brain. They're actually careful not to call these the "top 10" -- after all, who's to say that these are the 10 most important? Nonetheless, it's an impressive list."
~ 6 Steps for Building Positive Daily Habits -- "We’ve all faced the disappointment and guilt that comes from setting a goal and giving up on it after a couple of weeks. Sustaining motivation for a long-term goal is hard to achieve, and yet the best goals can usually only be accomplished in a few months or even years."
~ Life Sucks, Then You Die -- "Your life is your creation. It’s not something that happens to you — unless you make the foolish mistake of abandoning your position as its chief architect. If you find yourself in that situation, don’t feel bad. We all make that mistake at some point. We all forget that we’re in charge of our own lives and that our experience of life is largely under our control. But the truth is that we live by choice."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Panel Urges Tighter Tobacco Regulation -- "To aid the nation's fight against cancer, the federal government should increase taxes on tobacco products and strictly regulate the sales and marketing of tobacco, says an advisory panel to the president. Both recommendations, part of a report released Thursday, place the panel at odds with President Bush...."
~ Richard Thomas: Toward a More Complex and Difficult Depression -- "The current liquidity crisis can be paralleled to events leading up to the Great Depression. Specifically, the departure from fundamental valuation principles and extension of credit in the subprime market is consistent with mistakes made by speculators in the late 1920s."
~ Room to Roam -- "Just what kind of a writer is Rebecca Solnit? It’s not an easy question to answer, given the effortless way she crosses the borders of disciplines and genres. Her irrepressible curiosity has led her to investigate and reflect on a diverse range of subjects: landscapes both rural and urban, politics, the environment, indigenous people, technology, gender, art, and photography. Each of the labels that have been used to describe her—historian, journalist, cultural theorist, critic, activist—bumps up against the others."
~ John Edwards Speaks Out -- "Though consistently in third place nationally behind Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the former North Carolina senator has had outsize influence on his opponents, staking out aggressive positions on issues from providing universal healthcare to rejecting contributions from lobbyists. During an Iowa bus tour last week, with his wife, Elizabeth, at his side, Edwards sat down with U.S. News."
~ The 6 Most Over-Hyped Threats to America (And What Should Scare You Instead) -- "Some say that the government and the media are partners in a vast conspiracy, with a goal of making you so afraid that you’ll submit to their every desire. And, well—that sounds about right. Whether it’s the threat of a terrorist attack, a shady foreign dictator, or men putting their genitals into other men, the powers that be want to keep you afraid of things you simply shouldn’t be afraid of. Here are the six most unwarranted sources of fear the Man uses to keep you dumb… and Himself in power."
~ Bernanke Plays a High-Risk Game -- "The Fed chairman is "all in" on a big bet that the credit crisis won't cause a recession." He's gonna lose that bet.
~ Most Americans Approve of Interracial Marriages -- "According to a recent Gallup Poll, 77% of Americans say they approve of marriages between blacks and whites. This includes the vast majority of whites and blacks, but blacks are much more likely than whites to approve of interracial marriages."
~ Nation's Soul Is at Stake in NSA Surveillance Case -- "The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco hears arguments on two of the most important cases in decades on the rule of law and personal privacy. Will the government have "national security" immunity from public oversight and prosecution for illegal activities? Will it be able to legally warehouse citizen phone calls and e-mails for unsupervised data mining?"


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ How Bloggers Will Change the World, and How You Can Help -- "Today I am helping to launch a new initiative called Blog Action Day, along with Collis and Cyan Ta’eed of FreelanceSwitch and FlashDen … and our goal is to bring the blogging community together, for just one day, talking about one issue — and for Blog Action Day 2007 (Oct. 15, 2007), that issue is the environment."
~ Genetic phonetics could be the trick to sounding out DNA`s meaning -- "Most modern attempts to decipher how portions of genetic code are translated into physical characteristics are akin to a first-grader trying to sound out a word letter by letter — or, in this case, base pair by base pair."
~ Photons on the Half Shell -- "In the realm of ultra-fast science, there's a region where photons of light can be made to dance only half steps. Here, advances in laser science are letting researchers tinker with the behavior light in an entirely new way."
~ Researchers develop method for mass production of nanogap electrodes -- "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have developed a reliable, reproducible method for parallel fabrication of multiple nanogap electrodes, a development crucial to the creation of mass-produced nanoscale electronics."
~ New Study: Household Chemicals Linked To Cat Disease -- "Common flame retardants meant to keep families safe from fire may be contributing to a rash of thyroid disease in household cats, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. They said polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs -- used in televisions, carpeting, furniture and mattresses -- were found in especially high levels in cats with hyperthyroidism, one of the most common and deadly diseases in older cats."
~ Structure of 450 million year old protein reveals evolution's steps -- "A detailed map that pinpoints the location of every atom in a 450-million-yeard-old resurrected protein reveals the precise evolutionary steps needed to create the molecule`s modern version, according to researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Oregon."
~ Ancient Tablet Vouches for Biblical King -- "A 2,500-year-old stone tablet supports the existence of an Old Testament king."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ IntegralJournal (August 16, 2007) -- "Several years ago, I read a book about Generational Cycles. The book was The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny. My wife just completed the book and points out that although the book was written in 1997, it forecasts the election of someone like Bush and an event like 9/11."
~ How to set a team on fire? -- "The broader question behind the comment is, 'how do you motivate a team of people? How do you get them to be more engaged? It's a good one isn't it?.. So rather than reply as a comment l'm posting here instead."
~ Touching Suchness -- "I like to walk alone on country paths, rice plants and wild grasses on both sides, putting each foot down on the earth in mindfulness, knowing that I walk on the wondrous earth. In such moments, existence is a miraculous and mysterious reality. People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth."
~ Staying power (1) -- "Sooner or later, one gets distracted. And then, one misses something - something quite significant. Hence, in order to really understand anything at all, developing the ability to remain undistracted is essential. In terms of 1st person awareness, such ability is taken to high levels of sophistication in the Buddhist training of shamatha, or calm abiding."
~ Gregg Lahood on spiritual projection (P2P in Australia 6) -- "Gregg Lahood, a transpersonal psychologist I had the opportunity to contact during my last lecture tour in Australia, has paid us a visit in Chiang Mai, and this was the occasion for some fascinating conversations on spiritual authoritarianism. I would like to share one of the texts found on his website, dealing with the link between that and the internal subjective process of ’spiritual projection’."


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