Speedlinking 9/14/07

Quote of the day:

"If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?"
~ Scott Adams

Image of the day (John Craig):


BODY
~ Bye Bye Back Pain -- "Have you ever suffered from a back pain so badly that it was hard to breathe, twist and bend? Chances are, you have. Back pain is a complaint of many Americans, but researchers are now saying that all you need to do is start moving."
~ Knee arthritis may be sign of early lung cancer (Reuters) -- "Having isolated arthritis in one knee could be an early warning sign for lung cancer, Italian researchers suggest."
~ Snack smart to stay energized -- "For some people, snacks can be a key to their good health and nutrition; for others, snacks may be their greatest downfall."
~ Healthy claims fool diners into eating extra -- "People who opt for a meal at a “healthy” restaurant often consume more calories than they would dining at fast food joints that make no health claims, a new study shows."
~ Teens’ unhealthy weight affects later fertility -- "Teenagers who are either underweight or obese are likely to have fewer children in adulthood, a study has found."
~ Sex Drive Low in Men Over 30 -- "A lack of sex drive and erectile dysfunction may be a result of low testosterone levels in men over 30, according to new research."
~ The dirty truth? You can be too clean -- "A dose of dirt could be the best medicine for preventing allergies in kids who've never had them."
~ Deconstructing 'detox' diets -- "In recent years the number of diet developers and holistic healers hawking products to purge your body of harmful chemicals and foreign substances has exploded. But how to know whether you should be trying any of them?" The best detox diet is healthy, organic whole foods -- fruits, vegetables, nuts, and lean meats.


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Tamoxifen Treats Manic Phase Of Bipolar Disorder -- "The medication tamoxifen, best known as a treatment for breast cancer, dramatically reduces symptoms of the manic phase of bipolar disorder more quickly than many standard medications for the mental illness, a new study shows."
~ Brain's memory may be less than thought -- "If you can't remember where you left the car keys, take comfort in a new study that suggests the brain's memory capacity may be far lower than once thought."
~ Body of Evidence: Making Sense of Your World -- "How your five senses put you on the path to wellness."
~ The Psychology Of Our Desire For Chocolate -- "Chocolate is the most widely and frequently craved food. People readily admit to being 'addicted to chocolate' or willingly label themselves as 'chocoholics'. A popular explanation for this is that chocolate contains mood-enhancing (psychoactive) ingredients that give it special appeal.Evidence and logic, however, find little support for this."
~ Neurobiology Of Human Intelligence -- "A primary mystery puzzling neuroscientists -- where in the brain lies intelligence? -- just may have a unified answer.In a review of 37 imaging studies related to intelligence, including their own, Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine and Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico have uncovered evidence of a distinct neurobiology of human intelligence."
~ Self-Confidence: 4 Thinking Patterns on How to Communicate with Self Confidence. By Emmanuel Segui -- "One thing common to all great communicators is that when they speak, everybody listens. However, communicating to people is one of the greatest fears...."
~ change and transformation -- "how does change occur? this is what nancy asked on her blog a few days ago. a money coach, she was confronted with a client who wanted to get some assurance that, were she to use nancy’s services, change would indeed happen."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Civilian Death Toll in Iraq May Top One Million -- "Tina Susman reports for The Los Angeles Times, "A car bomb blew up in the capital's Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday, killing at least four people, as a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million."
~ Disturbing Facts about Sexual Abuse -- "From research by economists J.J. Prescott and Jonah Rockoff, here are a few current statistics on sex offenses reported to the police..."
~ Geeks Roll Out for Ron Paul -- "Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul was given a warm reception in this liberal stronghold on Thursday as Silicon Valley professionals turned out to support the GOP candidate."
~ White House Report: Few Iraq Gains -- "A new White House report on Iraq shows slim progress, moving just one political and security goal into the satisfactory column: de-Baathification."
~ Paul Volcker: How to Fix the World Bank -- "The World Bank, reeling from scandal and questions about its role, needs to get its act together, says former chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve Paul Volcker."
~ Gingrich: No Match for Clinton -- "Former speaker says GOP candidates not running campaigns that can defeat the Clinton machine."
~ Renters face own housing crisis -- "On both coasts of the United States, and many cities in between, hundreds of thousands of renters face spiraling costs. The home mortgage crisis has received far more notice, but experts say the ranks of renters with dire housing problems are growing faster than the ranks of defaulting homeowners."
~ Ancient Scots Mummified Their Dead -- "Extensive preparation was applied to bodies from prehistoric Scotland."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Famed '$100 Laptop' Now $188 -- "The vaunted "$100 laptop" that Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers dreamed up for international schoolchildren is becoming a slightly more distant concept."
~ Voyager Probes Celebrate 30th Anniversary -- "This fall, exceeding all expectations, the probes Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are celebrating their 30th year in space! Launched in 1977 to explore the giant planets Jupiter and Saturn, they went on to fly by Uranus and Neptune as well as 48 of the four planets’ moons. By 1989, Voyager 2 had had its closest approach to Neptune, revealing many previously unknown details about its atmosphere, wind, and weather patterns. In 1998, Voyager 1 passed Pioneer 10 to become the most distant human-made object in space, a title which it retains."
~ Northwest Passage Opens Up -- "Arctic ice melting is clearing a path for a trade route."
~ O Canada, what are you doing? -- "Our civilization's addiction to oil is being displayed in all its nefarious glory in the tar sands of Canada."
~ U.S. Cities Facing More Bad Air Days -- "Ten cities are expected to experience higher levels of ground-level ozone."
~ Why is the Hercules Dwarf Galaxy so flat? -- "Through some of the very first scientific observations with the brand-new Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona, an international team of astronomers has found that a recently discovered tiny companion galaxy to our Milky Way, named the Hercules Dwarf Galaxy, has truly exceptional properties: while basically all of its known peers in the realm of these tiny dwarf galaxies are rather round, this galaxy at a distance of 430,000 Light Years appears highly flattened, either the shape of a disk or of a cigar."
~ PETA's dogma is all bark and no bite -- "The group's campaign is based mainly on a United Nations report released last November. That report is about the environmental impact of livestock, but it doesn't examine wild sources of meat, and it notes that some types of meat are more environmentally preferable than others -- poultry is better than beef, for example. PETA also shoves aside the report's conclusion that many of the environmental harms caused by livestock production can be mitigated through better agricultural practices."
~ The Packaging Crisis - Shopping Bags -- "For the next two parts of the look at shopping bags, we are going to take a look at what we can do to reduce the use of plastic shopping bags and mostly at what has been done already and the effects it has had. Countries and individual provinces and states around the world are taking steps to get rid of disposable shopping bags and setting an excellent example for the rest of the world to follow."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ From Belief to Faith -- This is a promotion for the current ISC offering, but it includes a brief look at the attempts of atheists to dismiss all belief in the wake of Mother Teresa's "dark night."
~ The Seven Integral Steps of Transformative Empowerment Healing for Full Abuse Recovery -- "Almost everyone knows someone who has been abused and still shows the effects of that abuse. Many individuals and even some psychologists still think of being healed from abuse in the traditional terms of recovery success as defined as “getting back to as close to as possible to where you were just before you were abused.” Today, because of the following new Transformational Empowerment Healing steps, that old standard is simply too low and no longer applicable."
~ Dust and Feathers -- "The Bad Dog! postings I’ll be sharing are about things – the stories, events, and images of things I have known and observed for myself. We all have lives and no one’s life is a generalization. Our lives are singular events that lie right before us in all their curious detail and beauty."
~ No Self -- "Jed McKenna says in his book, _Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing_, that we can't find our true selves because the true self does not exist. There is only false self and no self. Journeys of self exploration only perfect the ego, one's dream character. Most people aren't awake because they dread the nothingness of no self."
~ Religious, But Not Spiritual? -- "It takes a moment to reconcile oneself to the fact that the religious tradition of St. Francis and Mother Theresa is also the tradition of the Crusades and the Inquisition. Fr. Thomas Keating, considered one of the great contemplatives of our time, has spent a lifetime in the practice of Christianity, seeking and sharing its depths. The goal of the tradition, suggests Fr. Thomas in this week's video, is transformation—but transformation into what?" Includes 15 minute video of Fr. Keating in discussion with Ken Wilber.
~ Joyless Responsibility -- "But sometimes we have to take responsibility that is joyless, a burden, a thankless chore. For a few weeks each year when the fledglings are young, the adult birds in our yard look disheveled, exhausted. They know, I suppose, that it will pass, so they labour on, but they look tragic, unnatural. For many humans, too, responsibility is thrust on us unasked, even unfairly, and in our modern fractured nuclear society it is rarely shared."

Tags: Joyless Responsibility, Fr. Thomas Keating, integral spirituality, no self, Bad Dog!, Lin Jensen, Transformational Empowerment Healing, abuse, belief and faith, shopping bags, PETA, Hercules Dwarf Galaxy, tar sand oil, Northwest passage, Voyager, $100 laptop, Scottish mummies, rental crisis, Newt Gingrich, World Bank, Paul Volcker, Iraq War, Ron Paul, sexual abuse facts, Iraqi deaths, change, self confidence, neurobiology of human intelligence, chocolate, making sense of the world, memory, Tamoxifen and mania, detox diets, dirt and allergies, low testosterone, obesity and infertility, health food, smart snacks, arthritis and lung cancer, back pain, speedlinking