"If God had really intended men to fly, he'd make it easier to get to the airport."
~ George Winters
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Diet plays a big role in colon cancer survival - "A recent article in The Journal of the American Medical Association has picked up national attention, saying that colon cancer survivors who eat red meats, sugary foods and refined grains were 3.5 times more likely to die as a result of recurrence of colon cancer when compared to those who ate the least amounts of those foods."
~ Maximum Recruitment Training II -- "You got the introduction to MRT last week, now here's the meat. If you've got limited time but want maximum results, this is your baby. The cool thing? The workouts won't take you much longer than 30 minutes."
~ Exercise and Fat Loss Plateaus -- "Frequent exercise can actually DECREASE calorie burning leading to fat loss plateaus. Here are five ways incorrect exercise programming could actually reduce metabolism or caloric expenditure."
~ Why You Should Always Do The Exercises You Hate -- "The truth is the exercises you hate, are the exercises you should do the most."
~ Supplement users better nourished than non-users -- "Older men and women who take nutritional supplements are more likely to get adequate amounts of several vitamins and minerals than their peers who don't use supplements, a new study shows." This is essential for everyone. Bad agricultural practices have depleted the soil, so we get far fewer nutrients from out foods than we need.
~ Most American Women Don't Know Their Cholesterol Level -- "80 per cent of women in the US between 18 and 44 don't know their cholesterol level, despite the fact that cholesterol is a major risk factor for the biggest killer of American women, heart disease."
~ Health Tip: When Acupuncture May Help -- "Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese procedure in which points on the body are stimulated using a number of very fine needles. Here are conditions and symptoms that may benefit from acupuncture, courtesy of the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine...."
~ The skinny on red wine and magnesium -- "Most scientists have come to believe that many human diseases, from congestive heart failure to cancer, are caused by free radicals, vile chemicals that attack healthy cell membranes through oxidation."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ MIT: Brain's Messengers Could Be Regulated--Potential For Better Understanding Of Schizophrenia -- "MIT researchers report that tiny, spontaneous releases of the brain's primary chemical messengers could be regulated, potentially giving scientists unprecedented control over how the brain is wired. The work, to be published in the Sept. 16 early online edition of Nature Neuroscience, could lead to a better understanding of neurological diseases like schizophrenia.:
~ The Ability To Step Into The Minds Of Storybook Characters Starts Very Young -- "A large part of enjoying a good book is getting immersed in the life of a character, especially a character's thoughts and feelings. A new University of Waterloo psychology study shows that preschoolers can already perform this impressive perspective-taking feat and get into the minds of story characters." This is one of the many reasons that kids should be encouraged to read -- being able to take other perspectives is crucial to critical thinking, compassion, and empathy.
~ Situationism, Virtues, and Control -- "Radical situationism is, of course, too extreme. But even if stable cross-situational character plays some role in our behavior, if that role is limited and much more derives from situation than from character, a moral psychology focusing on personal virtue may seem to miss the psychological reality."
~ Who Am I Today? The Importance of Roles -- "If you’re anything like me, life keeps you pretty busy. Sometimes — more often than I’d like, actually — it’s hard just to keep straight what day it is, let alone where I’m supposed to be and what I’m supposed to be doing."
~ Lucid dreaming in art and science -- "The New York Times has a short article on the recent upsurge of interest in both the arts and sciences on lucid dreaming - a form of reflective self-awareness in which you realise you're dreaming when it occurs."
~ How thousands have learned to transform their lives -- "Simple ways of discovering the hidden, inner drivers that twist and control your life."
~ Judith Beck: Train Your Brain to Think Like a Thin Person -- "Brain Fitness doesn't require the use of expensive equipment. Your brain is enough. Today we are honored to interview Dr. Judith Beck on how cognitive techniques can be applied to develop a number of important mental skills. The latest application of these?. Losing weight."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Clinton Calls for Universal Health Care -- "Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton called for universal health care on Monday, plunging back into the bruising political battle she famously waged and lost as first lady on an issue that looms large in the 2008 presidential race...."
~ Iraq Government Bans Blackwater -- "BBC News reports: Iraq has cancelled the licence of the private security firm, Blackwater USA, after it was involved in a gunfight in which at least eight civilians died."
~ Keeping Literary Magazines in Libraries: Susan Thomas Has a Suggestion -- "Throughout the country, public and academic librarians are eliminating periodials from shelves, partly to free up shelf and storage space, but mostly because of a budget squeeze. Scientific journals are expensive (subscriptions can run a hundred dollars or more). As a sort of collatoral damage, literary publications, which are much less expensive and in some cases impossible to duplicate in digital form, are disappearing, too."
~ Gold and the U.S. Dollar -- "Should the budget deficit make you buy gold as a hedge against a collapse of the dollar?"
~ Editors: Judging Mukasey -- "Complimentary statements about Mukasey from Sen. Charles Schumer and other prominent liberals have aroused some conservative suspicions. Schumer has described Mukasey as a conservative lawyer committed to the rule of law."
~ Gay Activists Push for Bias Ban -- "Gay rights advocates expect Congress will soon move closer to approving a federal ban on job discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender workers."
~ Saggy Pants Fad Finds Crackdowns -- "It's a fashion that started in prison, and now the saggy pants craze has come full circle - low-slung street strutting in some cities may soon mean run-ins with the law." This will surely be struck down as unconstitutional.
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Mercury concentrations in fish respond quickly to increased deposition -- "A joint Canadian-American research team have, for the first time, demonstrated that mercury concentrations in fish respond directly to changes in atmospheric deposition of the chemical. The international team`s research began in 2001 at the Experimental Lakes in Northern Ontario and is featured in this week`s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
~ Researchers shed new light on hybrid animals -- "What began more than 50 years ago as a way to improve fishing bait in California has led a University of Tennessee researcher to a significant finding about how animal species interact and that raises important questions about conservation."
~ Georgia Tech Takes Comprehensive Biofuels Approach -- "We feel it at the pump. Fuel prices are at record highs and so is the demand for alternative fuels. But major scientific and technological advances are still required before economically viable alternative fuels become a significant part of the U.S. energy supply."
~ Research overturns accepted notion of neutron's electrical properties -- "For two generations of physicists, it has been a standard belief that the neutron, an electrically neutral elementary particle and a primary component of an atom, actually carries a positive charge at its center and an offsetting negative charge at its outer edge." Wow! And we thought we knew what a neutron was.
~ New Method of Studying Ancient Fossils Points to Carbon Dioxide As a Driver of Global Warming -- "A team of American and Canadian scientists has devised a new way to study Earth's past climate by analyzing the chemical composition of ancient marine fossils. The first published tests with the method further support the view that atmospheric CO2 has contributed to dramatic climate variations in the past, and strengthen projections that human CO2 emissions could cause global warming."
~ The Eco-Nutrition Label -- "How do chic snobs judge the classy versus the trashy? With designer labels. For green shoppers, the equivalent is eco-labels. We have the US Energy Star and the EU Flower instead of Gucci and Prada, but green consumers have already shown themselves to be highly targeted, brand-conscious buyers."
~ Nanoscale computer memory retrieves data 1,000 times faster -- "Scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have developed nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster than existing portable memory devices such as Flash memory and micro-drives, all using less power and space than current memory technologies."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Coupling Human And Natural Systems For A Sustainable Future And Quality Of Life -- "No one says marriage is easy -- but an international group of 16 natural scientists and social scientists, including three from Michigan State University, are saying the wedding of natural sciences and social sciences is called for." In integralese, this means joining the interior (social sciences) with the exterior (natural sciences). Cool.
~ New Blog -- Progressive Buddhism, a group blog -- Free enquiry and faith: What a Kalama-ty -- "The Kalama Sutra is sometimes referred to as 'a charter for free enquiry' by many western Buddhists. This factor is often presented as what makes Buddhism stand out from other religions as being different from most other religions and more compatible with the modern mindset. I, like many others I'm sure, was drawn to Buddhism in part because of this apparent open-minded call for pragmatic empiricism."
~ Dan Millman on Integral Naked: The Peaceful Warrior’s Way - Part 1 -- "Many of us are familiar with Dan's first book, Way of the Peaceful Warrior—which has at least 2 million copies sold, and probably 6-7 million readers. But what many people often miss is that Dan has spent the twenty-five years since Peaceful Warrior’s publication writing 12 more books, and it is in these books where Dan lays out how you can actually take the inspiring impact of Peaceful Warrior and put it into practice."
~ Robb Smith, CEO of I-I, responds -- "Robb responded to the “Reinvention of I-I” thread, an encouraging sign."
~ Buddhist Geeks 37: Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Naropa University -- "In this episode, Ryan chats with Troy Omafray and Cory Leistikow, two of his fellow classmates in Naropa University’s MA Indo-Tibetan Studies program. They discuss the nature of the courses, their personal experience, and what to expect if you decide to pursue the program."
~ Walking through walls -- "Below is a guided meditation that I was first taught by one of my teachers Gen Loden Jampa (we have very similar names)."
~ WHY INTEGRAL? -- "TO WRAP UP this initial series of posts I will deal with the challenge of identifying an integral philosophy of creative music, one that is multi-directional and multi-dimensional, that explores a holistic integration of the personal (intuitive), technical (material), social (systemic) and cultural (intersubjective) aspects of individual and ensemble performance as well as the various historical modes of music making as they relate to the integral worldview."
~ An Unreduced Mind -- "A confluence brings my attention to the reductionistic approaches to understanding our minds tonight."
~ An Integral rant -- "The problem with the Integral Movement is that its foundation is not spirituality or enlightened revelation, but both a religion based on Wilber worship, and an intellectualism based on Wilber books, and some Westernised Buddhism thrown in (Buddhism is pretty much the only spirituality they can handle, because it is intellectual and pragmatic, and does not involve metaphysics or radical practices such as Surrender to the Supreme; you can be a physicalist and still be a practicing Buddhist! It is ideally set up for the secular Western mindset), as well as some Californian Lifestyle choices marketed as "Spiritual Cross-Training"."
~ You Should Quit Your Job on Monday -- "I’m in semi-retirement right now and I’m twenty-six. Back in my college town, eating Carolina Mud Pies (double-fudge pie w/fudge on top, รก la mode), getting hit on by pizza delivery men and, to anyone but me, perhaps, living the good life. If this is retirement, I’m planning to come out of it."
Tags:
No comments:
Post a Comment