"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."
~ Douglas Adams
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Jogging Not As Good As Soccer For Burning Fat -- "The experiment Sports scientist Peter Krustrup and his colleagues from the University of Copenhagen, the Copenhagen University Hospital and Bispebjerg Hospital have followed a soccer team consisting of 14 untrained men aged 20 to 40 years. For a period of 3 months, the players have been subjected to a number of tests such as fitness ratings, total mass of muscles, percentage of fat, blood pressure, insulin sensitivity and balance."
~ 5 Reasons You Should Build a Home Gym -- "Nothing is more irritating than training with the Pet Shop Boys playing on the background. When you train at home it’s your rules: chalk, shirtless, scream whatever." 'Nuf said.
~ How to get rid of cellulite! -- "Ladies, you’ve been mislead, lied to, bamboozled, and tricked into buying countless, useless products to rid your thighs of that ugly cellulite. Today, you’ll learn how to get rid of it for good with no gimmicks, gadgets, or potions. First, let me explain what cellulite really is. It’s body fat…plain and simple."
~ Resistance Training Study May Aid Weight Loss -- "Could explosive concentric muscle contractions be the key to optimizing the capacity for weight loss through resistance training? According to findings recently published in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise by Dr. Scott Mazzetti, Health, Physical Education and Human Performance faculty at Salisbury University, it could."
COMMENT: Explosive training (in the concentric phase) recruits more muscle fibers than slower, more controlled movements. The result is more strength, more calories burned, and better conditioning. If you are an athlete, no matter the sport, explosive work is essential to speed and power.
~ The skinny on spicy foods -- "Adding spices to your diet can curb hunger, strengthen muscles, boost your brainpower and improve mood, new research shows. Plus, you get instant big-time flavor for a few calories and nearly zero fat."
~ The Most Detailed Analysis To Date Of The Protein Composition Of HDL And Why Good Cholesterol Goes Bad -- "It's yet another example of how a good thing can go bad: Researchers have found evidence in laboratory studies that 'good' cholesterol, renowned for its ability to protect against heart disease, can undergo detrimental changes in protein composition that make it 'bad' for the heart."
~ Cinnamon for cholesterol and omega 3 fats in flax seed -- "Everyone likes shopping at a sale now and then, so today's column is two questions for the price of one."
~ Fish Oil Might Help Relieve MS -- "Fish oil containing omega-3 fatty acids could benefit multiple sclerosis (MS) patients, a U.S. study finds."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Enhancing Humanity -- "Of course changes will come about eventually. But it is the pace of change that matters. We can individually and collectively adapt to gradual technological changes; that is why they never quite present the insuperable challenges some doomsayers and dystopians anticipate."
~ The Miracle of Mindfulness -- "Mindfulness is simply the intentional awareness of your thoughts and actions in the present moment and without judgement. With practice you learn to see your thoughts & experiences without all the baggage that we commonly attach to them."
~ My picks from ScienceDaily (the Brain Edition) [A Blog Around The Clock] -- Some cool links.
~ Manipulating Bodily Self-Consciousness -- "Humans normally experience the conscious self as localized within their bodily borders. This spatial unity may break down in certain neurological conditions such as out-of-body experiences, leading to a striking disturbance of bodily self-consciousness."
~ When the Need to Belong Goes Wrong -- "People possess an innate need to belong that drives social interactions. Aberrations in the need to belong, such as social anhedonia and social anxiety, provide a point of entry for examining this need."
~ Interconnectedness -- "Attaining the sensation of humanity's interconnectedness as one collective soul is at the basis of Kabbalah's method."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ If you haven't read these by Christmas -- "From Fidel Castro to Germaine Greer, Philip Roth to Alice Sebold, The Observer's literary team pick this autumn's top 10 must-reads."
~ Whistle-blowers punished, not praised for reports -- "For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods." This story outraged me, and I am already a cynic.
~ 'Back to the Future' in the Middle East -- "A simple shorthand for this approach might be "back to the future," for it is strikingly reminiscent of American strategy during the 1980s after the Iranian revolution. The cornerstone is a political-military alliance with the dominant Sunni Arab powers -- especially Saudi Arabia. The hardware will be new arms sales to Israel, Egypt and the Saudis. The software will be a refurbished Israeli-Palestinian peace process."
~ Faith, Dopes & Secrecy -- "The 19 pages, finally and grudgingly released more than two years after they were written, are devastating, confirming suspicions that the National Security Agency refused to give the Central Intelligence Agency transcripts of telephone conversations between al-Qaida conspirators, and the CIA did not tell the Federal Bureau of Investigation that two of those conspirators were in the United States."
~ Challenging the Generals -- "America’s junior officers are fighting the war on the ground in Iraq, and the experience is making a number of them lose faith in their superiors."
~ The fallout of the mortgage mess -- "An increasing number of homeowners and prospective homeowners are getting caught up in the fast-spreading mortgage crisis that is claiming victims from all income levels and demographic groups."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ The Science of the Ultimate Jello Shot -- "Little did I realize that some awesome (and bored) sciency-types have a website dedicated to a series of experiments to determine how much vodka can be added to jello shots before they lose their gelainous cohesion."
~ A Hundred Katrinas: Climate Change and the Threat to the U.S. Coast -- "If you thought Katrina was the big one, wait till you see what's coming to your neighborhood."
~ Prius Envy: Honda to Introduce New Hybrid -- "Honda introduced the gas-electric car to America, but Toyota's Prius became the synonym for 'hybrid.' Here's how Honda hopes to regain its enviro street cred."
~ Photon-transistors for the supercomputers of the future -- "Scientist from the Niels Bohr Institute at University of Copenhagen and from Harvard University have worked out a new theory which describe how the necessary transistors for the quantum computers of the future may be created. The research has just been published in the scientific journal Nature Physics."
~ China Drafts Laws To Curb Pollution -- "China began deliberating a draft law aimed at boosting energy saving and emissions reductions on Sunday, its latest effort to curb widespread resource waste and degradation." The question is whether or not these laws will remain in effect AFTER the Olympics.
~ What is String Theory? [Uncertain Principles] -- "The title of this post is a famous question (posed, for example, by Joe Polchinski) which is modeled after an even more famous question by Ken Wilson, "What is Quantum Field Theory?". I certainly can't answer the first question, but Wilson's question now does have a widely agreed upon answer (which is sadly not well presented in a popular literature that continues to repeat old myths about regularization) which I will mention a bit later."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Four Key Conversations: Matrix Reloaded -- Good stuff from Julian Walker.
~ THE INTEGRAL WORLDVIEW MADE SIMPLE -- Lawrence Wollersheim -- "At this moment in time, a dynamic, new worldview appears to have burst upon the global stage. It is called the integral worldview. A worldview is a meta-paradigm of reality, a unifying cultural consciousness that both underlies and conditions an individual's way of knowing, seeing and acting in the world."
~ THE QUEST FOR THE INFINITE I -- Imre von Soos -- "There is a feeling. Greater than any religious ecstasy, any patriotic exaltation, any sensual enchantment: it is being. Not a mere superficial survival between two apparently accidental limiting events, called birth and death, but an illimitable existence in time and space, and all, in the physical plane unimaginable dimensions, as part of, but maybe even identical with a boundless, all-embracing consciousness: the Infinite I."
~ AN INTEGRATIVE/NON-INTEGRAL PSYCHOTHERAPY MODEL -- Elliot Benjamin -- "In my recent Integral World articles: “Integral with a Twist” and “IntegraL vs. Integrative,” I argued that Ken Wilber's Integral psychology lacks the conviction of an impactful central focus [1]. I suggested combining a comprehensive overview with a dominant theme and central focus, such as humanistic-integrative, existential-integrative, etc. Indeed this kind of focused overview has been effectively utilized in the humanistic and existential integrative psychotherapy context, as can be seen from a number of current illustrations."
~ Tricycle as The Buddhist Enquirerer OR Why Clark Strand Must Change or Die -- "In yet another one of his overblown, absurd attacks on Buddhism in Tricycle magazine, contributing editor Clark Strand, in the current issue, in an opinion piece titled "Dharma Family Values Or, Why American Buddhism must change or die", explains to us why American Buddhism must become Catholicism Lite or face a downward spiral toward oblivion."
~ Subject and object -- "When I explore content of awareness these days, and especially the content centered in the head area of space, I can more clearly see how a sense of subject and object is created."
~ Wow. Thank You, God -- No lede for this one -- just read the post, really.
~ A Politics of Properly Balanced Tensions, Part II -- "This is the second in my three-part series where I pontificate on various political issues. [See Part I, here.]"
Tags:
humor me please....do i just ad a link to you and you link Back? I have a running blog...Sorry, I know it is a riduculous question!
ReplyDelete