"There is absolutely no inevitability as long as there is a willingness to contemplate what is happening."
~ Marshall McLuhan
Image of the day:
BODY
~ A Singular Workout -- "If you're a bodybuilder and you've spent your weightlifting life doing sets of 8,10, 12, etc., doing singles will absolutely blow you up. A terrific idea and a terrific program that'll raise you head and shoulders above the competition." Doing singles is not for beginners.
~ Well: The Missing Ingredients in Organic Cereals -- "Organic cereals, free of additives like artificial preservatives and colors, may also lack the added vitamins and minerals found in commercial brands." Everyone should be taking a good multi-vitamin anyway, so go organic.
~ 10 Great Post-Workout Snacks -- "Fuel up post-workout on these tasty snacks."
~ Genetic Differences Predict Anti Inflammatory Benefits From Nutritional Products -- "Interleukin Genetics reported in the journal Nutrition that a botanical supplement reduced inflammation more effectively in individuals with genetic variations that are associated with over expression of inflammation and risk for early heart attacks. This is one of few studies that recruited study subjects who have different genetic patterns and tested how they responded to nutritional products or drugs."
~ Fruits, Veggies Won't Lower Colon Cancer Risk (HealthDay) -- "Although eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good for your health, doing so will not reduce your risk for colon cancer, a Canadian study finds." Or....
~ Blue, red, and purple fruits and veggies fight cancer: study -- "In a press release made available on August 19, a team of researchers at Ohio State University announced that anthocyanins, the compounds that give many blue, purple, and red fruits and vegetables their color are capable of cutting the growth of colon cancer cells both in vitro and in rats by 50%-100%, with certain extracts even destroying up to 20% of the cancer cells while leaving healthy surrounding cells intact." Hmmmm. . . apparently not colon cancer?
~ Omega-3 fatty acids lower risk of kids' diabetes: study (AFP) -- "Consuming the omega-3 fatty acids present in certain kinds of fish could lower the likelihood of acquiring type 1 diabetes in children who are at risk, a study suggested on Wednesday." This is the first link I have seen between omega-3 fats and type 1 diabetes.
~ Healthy Grocery Shopping without Blowing Your Budget -- "Is your grocery bill sometimes enough to raise your blood pressure? Some people think that filling the grocery cart with healthy food will blow the budget at the cash register."
~ Combining Acetaminophen With Caffeine Might Cause Liver Damage -- "If you consume caffeine with acetaminophen (paracetamol) you could be at a higher risk of liver damage, according to researchers from the University of Washington, USA. The report, which appears in Chemical Research in Toxicology, explains that the consumption of large quantities of both caffeine and acetaminophen combined raises the risk of liver damage." Acetaminophen causes liver damage all on its own and should be pulled from the market.
~ Fighting Obesity by using Hoodia Diet Pills -- "Hoodia gordonii is a type of succulent plant that resembles a cactus, and is known to have suppress a person’s appetite and thus help with losing weight. It’s sold in capsule form, and as a liquid or in tea form."
~ Discovery supports theory of Alzheimer's disease as form of diabetes -- "Insulin, it turns out, may be as important for the mind as it is for the body. Research in the last few years has raised the possibility that Alzheimer`s memory loss could be due to a novel third form of diabetes."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Cognitive Processes Affected By Eye Movement -- "A pair of Beckman Institute researchers has discovered that by directing the eye movements of test subjects they were able to affect the participants' ability to solve a problem, demonstrating that eye movement is not just a function of cognition but can actually affect our cognitive processes."
~ Memory Before Language: Preverbal Experiences Recoded Into Newly-Learned Words [Developing Intelligence] -- "Infantile "amnesia" refers to the apparent absence or weakness of memories formed at ages younger than 3 or 4. Some evidence indicates that these early-life memories are not actually lost or forgotten, but are rather merely mislabeled or otherwise inaccessible to adult cognition. One potential reason for this inaccessibility is that adults tend to use language in encoding and retrieving memories, and this strategy may not be sufficient for retrieving memories formed in early-life, which may have been encoded before language is firmly entrenched in the developing brain. A recent study in Child Development may challenge this hypothesis, as described below."
~ StevePavlina.com Podcast #020 - Creative Self-Expression -- "The path for conscious human beings is to focus first and foremost on joyful, creative self-expression. That is far more important than money, skill fit, or even contribution to others. Your own creativity is the very mechanism by which you’ll achieve everything else you could possibly want — including financial abundance, superior talent, long-term fulfillment, and meaningful contribution."
~ Men, Women, and Friendship -- "Men razz and backslap, while women share and relate." No wonder most of my friends are women. Or maybe I'm a girly-man.
~ More Than Egalitarian Values Are Needed To Eradicate Racial Bias -- "Why are some individuals not prejudiced? That is the question posed by a provocative new study appearing in the September issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The authors investigate how some individuals are able to avoid prejudicial biases despite the pervasive human tendency to favor one's own group."
~ Men Happier Than Women? -- "According to today’s New York Times, Americans are increasingly facing a happiness gap — men are becoming more relaxed and happier than women. It’s an article that describes how two recent studies appear to have come to similar conclusions. Yet the devil is always in the details."
~ Simple Living Simplified: 10 Things You Can Do Today to Simplify Your Life -- "Simplifying can sometimes be overwhelming. The amount of stuff you have in your life and the amount of things you have to do can be too big a mountain to tackle. But you don’t have to simplify it all at once. Do one thing at a time, and take small steps. You’ll get there, and have fun doing it."
~ Depression And Your Thinking By Stephen Lau -- "Thinking can change your depression – or at least the way you look at depression. Buddha believes that obsession with the self is one of the sources of human miseries. Interestingly enough, most people with depression are self-centered: they focus on themselves, thinking of their lack or their own needs."
~ Learn How to Defend Your Dreams! By Lyca Shan -- "Have you ever been convinced to walk away from your dreams by people who manage to throw enough self doubt at you to win that war of attrition?"
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The Evolution of Language -- "Why are humans the only species to have suddenly hit upon the remarkable possibilities of language? If speech is a product of our DNA, then surely other species also have some of the same genes required for language because of our basic, shared biochemistry. One of our closest relatives should have developed something that is akin to language, or another species should have happened upon its attendant advantages through parallel evolution."
~ Going After Gore -- "Al Gore couldn't believe his eyes: as the 2000 election heated up, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other top news outlets kept going after him, with misquotes ("I invented the Internet"), distortions (that he lied about being the inspiration for Love Story), and strangely off-the-mark needling, while pundits such as Maureen Dowd appeared to be charmed by his rival, George W. Bush. For the first time, Gore and his family talk about the effect of the press attacks on his campaign—and about his future plans—to the author, who finds that many in the media are re-assessing their 2000 coverage."
~ Booklust -- "After a few years of reviewing, I thought I would never buy another book. I was getting an obscene number of free ones in the mail -- upwards of 100 a week -- and I had run out of space on my walls and in storage, not to mention various off-site bunkers and colonized basements." Books are my most expensive addiction, so I get this post entirely.
~ Joe Robinson: Myanmar's Monks Show the Way -- "Anyone sick of the endless rhetoric about bravery and heroes that passes for political discourse these days should take a look at the real thing -- the extraordinary uprising going into its second week by the monks of Myanmar. In the pouring rain and scorching heat, they have filed in rivers of burgundy through the streets of Yangon (Rangoon), Sittwe, Mandalay, and Bago, with nothing but alms bowls to protect them from the guns of one of the most brutal regimes on the planet."
~ Ex-Prez Clinton: Blacks on Board -- "Bubba tells public broadcasting host Tavis Smiley that the Democrats own the black vote and Republicans have deserted their Lincoln roots."
~ Giuliani Willing to Consider Raising Social Security Taxes -- "So far, he's the only GOP candidate who says he is willing to do so."
~ Why Johnny Isn't Reading Much Better -- "The Nation's Report Card shows U.S. students are improving slightly in math, but less so in reading."
~ Diplomat: What We Should Do About Burma -- "Is there still time to avert further bloodshed in Burma? A former ambassador to the country discusses the protests, the role of the monks and what the international community should do now."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Calling All Stargazers: Count to Begin -- "An international survey of stars will begin to assess how light our night skies have become."
~ Researchers discover forests of endangered tropical kelp -- "A research team led by San Jose State University and the University of California, Santa Barbara has discovered forests of a species of kelp previously thought endangered or extinct in deep waters near the Galapagos Islands. The discovery has important implications for biodiversity and the resilience of tropical marine systems to climate change."
~ 'Remarkable' Drop in Arctic Sea Ice Raises Questions -- "Melting Arctic sea ice has shrunk to a 29-year low, significantly below the minimum set in 2005, according to preliminary figures from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, part of the University of Colorado at Boulder. NASA scientists, who have been observing the declining Arctic sea ice cover since the earliest measurements in 1979, are working to understand this sudden speed-up of sea ice decline and what it means for the future of Earth's northern polar region."
~ Yale scientists make 2 giant steps in advancement of quantum computing -- "Two major steps toward putting quantum computers into real practice — sending a photon signal on demand from a qubit onto wires and transmitting the signal to a second, distant qubit — have been brought about by a team of scientists at Yale."
~ Cave records provide clues to climate change -- "When Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Kim Cobb and graduate student Jud Partin wanted to understand the mechanisms that drove the abrupt climate change events that occurred thousands of years ago, they didn't drill for ice cores from the glaciers of Greenland or the icy plains of Antarctica, as is customary for paleoclimatolgists. Instead, they went underground."
~ Eleven New Species Found in Vietnam -- "The newly discovered band includes a snake, butterfly, orchids and other flowers."
~ Firefly's Flash Can Bring Sex or Death -- "When a firefly flashes it can attract something good or something deadly."
~ Clinton Global Initiative: Bill and Al, reunited at least -- "I'm not sure when Al Gore and Bill Clinton were last in the same room together, let alone on a stage together, but they reunited publicly today at the start of the Clinton Global Initiative annual meeting."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ The Buddha Diaries Recommends -- "What's happening in Africa? As is the case with every important issue, it is up to individual innovators and visionaries to make the subject digestible to those who are new to it. That is why we appreciate The Nata Village Blog."
~ Godel's Incompleteness Theorem and Ego -- "Godel's Incompleteness theorem basically states that any given system of logic can't define itself without going outside of itself. So you can define the rules and axioms of the system and how it operates, but you can't say this system is about infinity, for example, without using another system (like the english language) to say what it generally means."
~ Christianity and Buddhism -- "Many combine Christianity and Buddhism in different ways these days, and it is interesting to explore some of the ways this happens."
~ Toward Integral Consciousness -- A cool video.
~ "One City- A Declaration of Interdependence" by Ethan Nichtern - Book Review -- "Well for those of you who are Facebook friends with me, you would have seen that in my profile photo, I've had my nose buried in Ethan Nichtern's new book "One City- A Declaration of Interdependence" for the past week since receiving it in the mail, or... perhaps you have read my previous blog post linking to the prologue and had inferred that I was completely jazzed about this book. Well here's a little 'book report'. Please feel free to chime in with your thoughts on the book via comments or use this as a means to decide if you will pick it up and check it out (although I wholeheartedly encourage you to do so!!)"
~ Buddha is My Homeboy -- "I've always told people that I'm not a Buddhist. But it's no secret that I have a great deal of affinity with Buddhism. Then why haven't I converted to Buddhism or even claimed to be a Buddhist? To which my answer is: I don't have to, do I?"
~ Is Your Energy Exchange Balance with Life One of the Most Important Physical Laws of Your Life’s Success? -- "The evolutionary biologists and astro-physicists say that at the level of our 14 billion year evolving universe’s deepest core reoccurring patterns (physical laws) the evolving universe appears to be moving in the direction of creating or sustaining the following fundamental transactions, all of which indirectly or directly involve energy exchange."
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