"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
~ Susan Ertz
Image of the day:
BODY
~ 12 Truths About Bodybuilding Training -- "Dr. Clay Hyght is a bodybuilder through and through; he couldn't care less about how much he can bench or squat. As such, he has a refreshingly logical perspective when it comes to packing on muscle."
~ Rise of the kettlebell -- "In an ever-changing world, there are some things you can count on: seasons will change, rich people will complain about taxes and Geri Halliwell will change shape. Unlike her last transformation, though - when she shrunk to near-emaciation - Halliwell is now looking healthy and strong and has been parading her six-pack around the south of France in a selection of fetching bikinis. And, if you believe the hype, her new look is all down to the latest fitness craze: kettlebells."
~ Mike Robertson's Words of Wisdom -- "Mike Robertson is the mechanic, the guy who not only fixes the machine, but the guy who knows how to soup it up, too, regardless of whether you need the machine to jump higher, run faster, lift more weight, or just get bigger."
~ 10 No-Nonsense Nutrition Rules To Get You On The Right Track NOW! -- "First things first, understand that even if you workout in a gym, no matter how hard you train, you simply cannot out-train a lousy diet. Here are ten great tips on getting on the right track to meet your fat loss goals!"
~ Yoga A Calming Influence In Israel -- "It seems a bit incongruous: the non-stop hustle bustle of life in Israel and the calm serenity of yoga. But during the last few years the two have found a way to coexist in harmony and in the process Israelis are becoming less stressed. Israel isn't a den of Zen just yet but there's always hope. Yoga is catching on with increasing popularity as exemplified by the opening last month of the country's largest yoga center in Kfar Saba."
~ High blood pressure often undiagnosed in U.S. kids -- "High blood pressure among children and adolescents, a growing problem linked to increasing juvenile obesity, often goes undiagnosed in the United States, according to a study published on Tuesday."
~ More activity improves recovery from knee surgery -- "The more frequently a person plays sports after having surgery to restore damaged knee cartilage, the better he or she will fare long-term, German researchers report."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Redefining And Treating 'Internet Addiction' -- "Is your first craving in the morning for your computer mouse? Do you obsessively check email in the middle of the night? If so, you may be among the ten percent of all Internet surfers afflicted with "Internet addiction disorder," a pathological condition that can lead to anxiety and severe depression."
~ Psyschologists Study Loneliness And Its Effect On Health -- "Two University of Chicago psychologists, Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo, have been trying to disentangle social isolation, loneliness, and the physical deterioration and diseases of aging, right down to the cellular level. The researchers suspected that while the toll of loneliness may be mild and unremarkable in early life, it accumulates with time."
~ Animal Kingdom: Head of the Pack -- "Animals are smarter than you think."
~ US psychologists snub CIA but scrap total ban -- "After much debate at the American Psychological Association conference a resolution was passed that condemns torture, bans psychologists from taking part in certain abusive activities, but still leaves significant grey areas for participation in contested CIA interrogation techniques." Cowards -- What happened to "Do No Harm"? See also: What does a psychologist do at a detainee interrogation?
~ The cognitive science of magic -- "The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness invited some of the world's best stage magicians along to their June conference to demonstrate how the conscious mind can be manipulated. The New York Times has just published a fantastic article on the conference and the cognitive science of magic."
~ New Approach To Delaying Onset Of Alzheimer's Disease -- "Scientists working on a cure for Alzheimer's disease find it hard to develop drugs that will pass through the highly selective blood-brain barrier. That may be why a Tel Aviv University researcher decided to take an alternate route -- through the nose."
~ Behavior: To Reap Psychotherapy’s Benefits, Get a Good Fit -- "If the outcome may be months or years away, how can a person tell whether his psychotherapy is any good?"
~ Area responsible for 'self-control' found in the human brain -- "The area of the brain responsible for self-control—where the decision not to do something occurs after thinking about doing it—is separate from the area associated with taking action, scientists say in the August 22 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Pink for a girl and blue for a boy - and it's all down to evolution -- "Women's fondness for the colour pink is so deeply embedded that it may have been shaped by evolutionary history, according to scientists whose study of colour preferences is published today. Rather than marking a girlie approach to home decoration or cake-icing, the trait's roots are more likely to lie in the struggle to find food in hunter-gatherer days, the researchers suggested."
~ Rovian Ways -- "Most politicians find the cult of the political consultant annoying, but George W. Bush always seemed to find it very annoying. When he began running for President, he insisted, as candidates rarely do, that all his top advisers work only for him. So Karl Rove sold the business he had spent his adult life building up, went to work for Bush as an employee...."
~ The Anxiety of Influence -- "As the saying goes, a museum is only as good as its collection. So it must follow that the Museum of Modern Art stacks up as the world's best. But does it? A museum can't be better than its contents, but can it be worse?"
~ The Politics of God -- "Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin."
~ Officials Admit Having Wiretap Papers -- "Lawyers for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asked the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday for more time to respond to subpoenas involving a wiretapping program."
~ SCOTT HORTON—Words of Wisdom -- "Who wrote the Great American Novel? As readers of No Comment know, I award that honor with no hesitation, to Harper Lee of Monroeville, Alabama, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. And yesterday in Montgomery, Harper Lee broke many years of public silence, uttering the most important words spoken in Alabama in many decades. . . ."
~ Editors: Sub-Prime Numbers -- "The Bush administration has demonstrated admirable restraint, resisting calls to let troubled mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge into the market and increase their holdings."
~ Interview with William Gibson -- "The Washington Post calls Spook Country "a devastatingly precise reflection of the American zeitgeist....Gibson takes another large step forward and reaffirms his position as one of the most astute and entertaining commentators on our astonishing, chaotic present." In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls it "one of Gibson's best." And they're right; if you haven't read William Gibson before, Spook Country might be the ideal place to start."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Greatest Mysteries: Where is the Rest of the Universe? -- "Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem—the vast majority of it is missing."
~ Seeing the Unseeable -- "Within the confines of the ordinary, vision is the most reliable tool we have. But some of the most extraordinary parts of nature, those that lie at the frontiers of science, can't be seen at all."
~ Safeway trucks switch to biodiesel fuel -- "Safeway Inc. today is scheduled to unveil its truck fleet's conversion to B20 biodiesel fuel during an official announcement that includes state and legislative leaders. For the last 30 days, the company has worked to convert all 79 of its Arizona trucks to fuel that is 20 percent biodiesel made from domestically manufactured virgin soybean oil."
~ Reusable water bottles you'll actually want to use -- "Unless you're stationed in the rapidly disappearing Arctic, you've probably heard about the evils of bottled water these past few months. I've watched this whole slow-news-season "controversy" unfold with great interest, as it spoke to my own fraught love-hate relationship with bottled water."
~ MTV, RealNetworks Challenge Apple Music -- "Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks and digital media company RealNetworks announced Tuesday a digital music joint venture that will compete with Apple's dominant trinity of the iTunes store, iPod player and iPhone."
~ New Report Lists “Top Ten” Threats to Oceans and Coasts in South America -- "The Nature Conservancy released an unprecedented study highlighting the top ten threats to marine conservation in South America. Citing over-fishing as the number one threat, compounded by intense development pressures and numerous environmental challenges."
~ Hiking by Transit -- "Many of us would love to get rid of our cars (or at least cut down on the number of cars our family owns), if we could find a sensible alternative. That time may not be far off; increasingly a combination of good urban planning, new technology and more flexible models of ownership is making car-free life not only possible, but alluring."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Love Is A Verb -- "Love is action. It's clear, it's kind, it's effortless, and it's irresistible." A nice quote from Byron Katie over Cree's blog.
~ The Four Initiations: Introduction -- "I want to talk about four key initiatory thresholds that define 21st Century Spirituality in the realms of Body, Mind, Shadow and Spirit. (There is a tie-in here with Integral Theory and the Integral Life Practice Kit.) In order for spirituality to be substantive it has to include both a theoretical and an experiential component - and those two components have to be in an evolving dialog of inquiry."
~ Does religious faith depend upon magical thinking? -- "That is that claim, or premise, of John Derbyshire (whose work I generally enjoy) made in this book review. But leave aside the book in question, and Derbyshire’s review (not one of his best, if you ask me). I read the sentence — that religious faith depends upon magical thinking — and it gave me great pause. Mainly because while it is a common sort of thing to say (especially by atheists, of which Derbyshire is one), I think it is complete balderdash."
~ Epiphanies -- "Thanks to Robin over at the Dharma Bums for the invitation to recall a moment of epiphany--one of those moments when the sign is clear that it's time to change one's life. Rather than take up too much space in the comment column of her blog, I decided to post mine here instead. It's the short version of a longer story, which I'll tell you more about at the end. Here goes ...."
~ How To Use Your Awareness To Keep You From Crashing -- "It takes a shift in focus to be aware of what’s happening in you as you do that job, make that call, write that report, or hammer that nail. When you make that shift, however, a world of possibilities opens up to you."
~ Staying power (3) -- "The only way to really understand the effects and benefits of meditation is through direct experience. According to the Tibetan oral tradition (*B. A. Wallace), among those who are well qualified to enter shamatha training, "those of sharpest faculties may be able to achieve all ten stages within three months; those with medium faculties may take six months; and those with dull faculties may require nine months". Of course, this assumes a contemplative environment and full-time devotion to training, while the "faculty" refers to the natural talent and ability in sustained attentional balance, ability in using mindfulness and intelligence."
~ Zizek on Western Buddhism -- "Slavoj Zizek has a generous critique of Western Buddhism."
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