"Men live in a fantasy world. I know this because I am one, and I actually receive my mail there."
~ Scott Adams
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Runner’s High Revisited -- "Some scientists claim that endorphins are too large to pass through the blood-brain barrier - and if something can’t get into your brain you can pretty much guarantee it can’t make you high either. So if it’s not endorphins that give you that happy feeling inside after exercise, what is the underlying factor? One possibility is the production of anandamide, a messenger molecule naturally produced in our bodies that plays a role in pain, depression, appetite, memory, and fertility. As reported by CNN, anandamide is known to produce sensations similar to those of THC, which is the psychoactive property in marijuana."
~ Row Right: Get More Bang for Your Back -- "Girls may hate to see you leave, but if you've got a broad back, they'll love to watch you go. (Course it helps if you've got a nice ass, too, but that's a whole 'nother article.) Mike Robertson is here to troubleshoot your rowing."
~ Tapering for Athletes and Ordinary Exercisers -- "Tapering refers to the period just before a major race or game, when an athlete reduces workload to be in peak shape on the day of the competition. Ordinary exercisers can apply this training principle when they plan to enter a local race or charity event."
~ Bad Carbohydrates Are Not The Enemy -- "The latest common wisdom on carbohydrates claims that eating so-called "bad" carbohydrates will make you fat, but University of Virginia professor Glenn Gaesser says, "that's just nonsense." Eating sandwiches with white bread, or an occasional doughnut, isn't going to kill you, or necessarily even lead to obesity, he said." It's 80/20 -- eat right 80% of the time and 20% of the time that you don't isn't a problem.
~ Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Symptoms Reduced By Dark Chocolate Consumption -- "If you suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome you may well find that your symptoms are significantly reduced if you regularly consume dark chocolate - that means chocolate with a high cocoa content and without any milk in it. A pilot study carried out on patients with chronic fatigue syndrome found that their symptoms were alleviated when they consumed dark chocolate, much more so than when they consumed milk chocolate that had brown dye added to it."
~ Supersets for strength -- "Supersets are a popular weight lifting technique among many who are looking to kickstart a stalled weight lifting routine and add more variety into their program. They are a slightly more advanced principle to use so it’s going to be best if you have already have a fairly decent weight lifting background behind you." It's also a great way to strip fat and get more work done in less time.
~ Dietary quality of popular diets varies: study -- "There's no shortage of weight-loss plans for Americans to choose from, but some of the most popular ones fall short in dietary quality, according to a new study."
~ The Future Of Male Contraception -- "For decades, pundits have predicted new contraceptives for men within the next 5 to10 years. Are we really getting any closer? Judging from work presented at the second "Future of Male Contraception" conference, the answer may finally be yes. But will men actually use a new method if researchers make one? Elaine Lissner, director of the nonprofit Male Contraception Information Project, says demand is the least of the problems."
~ Rheumatoid Arthritis Patients Benefit From Meditation Therapy -- "A revered contemplative practice for centuries, meditation has recently inspired research into its therapeutic value for everything from anxiety disorders to heart attack prevention. A painful, progressive autoimmune disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with a high risk of depression -- double the risk of the healthy population, by conservative estimates -- and various forms of psychological distress."
~ The Eight Most Fattening Foods of Fall -- "As the temperature drops, we start yearning for comfort foods. But beware of their hefty caloric price. A few of autumn's least healthy offerings."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Depressed Teens Benefit From Fluoxetine And Psychotherapy Combination -- "Treating depressed teenagers with a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy and fluoxetine, an antidepressant medication, seems to offer better results than either medication alone or cognitive behavioral therapy alone, according to an article in Archives of General Psychiatry (JAMA/Archives).The authors explain that 5% of teenagers are affected by major depressive disorder - this causes great difficulties for the patient and his/her family, explain the authors."
~ Social Anxiety Disorder and Its Cure -- "Social anxiety disorder (technically known as social phobia) is one of those disorders that wasn’t diagnosed very often a decade or so ago. Occasionally you would see a patient with this disorder, but it was very, very rare."
~ Researchers Find Music And Language Are Processed By The Same Brain Systems -- "Researchers have long debated whether or not language and music depend on common processes in the mind. Now, researchers at Georgetown University Medical Center have found evidence that the processing of music and language do indeed depend on some of the same brain systems."
~ Say Won’t Instead Of Can’t -- "It’s funny how one word, a seemingly inconsequential one, can alter a statement’s entire meaning. Can’t and won’t are such words that, when switched, can give off much different intentions."
~ Writing My Way Out of a Corner -- "Writing is a great way to get yourself unstuck. The first thing that comes into your head will do. Just write whatever comes into your head and however it does so. The therapeutic thing in this is freedom from the internal censor, or critic, just bypassing him or her completely, because all you have to do is keep writing, not be good or be bad, just keep going."
~ Aging's Changing Face -- "Science is reshaping the way we think about aging."
~ Men and Women Are Psychologically Very Similar -- "That's it, I've had enough. I'm fed up with endless bogus stories claiming substantial differences between men and women which pass for news in the popular press. With the help of Janet Shibley Hyde of the University of Wisconsin-Madison and literally thousands of psychology studies, this myth can be banished forever (Hyde, 2005)."
~ Getting a Distance -- "As the counselling room is a safe place for all those fears and emotions, including the not so pretty ones, to be, so eventually we learn that we ourselves are a safe place for them to be. We eventually, slowly, gain some experience in being separate from uncomfortable feelings, in being, in fact, bigger than they are."
~ Discover The Art of Breathing -- "In reality however, a person’s breathing changes and becomes restricted in various ways, not just momentarily, but habitually. Unhealthy breathing habits can develop without us even being aware of it. The bad posture and/or slouched positions that we take part in diminish lung capacities and cause us to take shortened breaths."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Varsha Rao: A Feast of a Novel: A Thousand Splendid Suns -- "I've always considered books and literature to be an important part of my life. As a kid, I took stacks of books home from our public library to read and when I was a little older, I spent many summers reading beneath whirling ceiling fans or on the veranda of my grandparents' home during my visits to India. And as an adult, just as I enjoy traveling and a fine meal, reading a great book is still a treat, something to be savored. So, I thought I'd share one of my favorite books I've read in a while with you: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini."
~ Will Durst: Absolute, 100 Percent, Unadulterated Free Speech -- "It doesn't matter which holes free speech is coming out from. Everybody gets to say their piece."
~ The Administration’s plan for Iran -- "In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran."
~ Radiohead Says: Pay What You Want -- "The band's new album is available only on its website; the price is up to you. That has record labels very, very nervous." Cool.
~ Burma's foul regime depends on Beijing -- "Joining the young and passionate demonstrators outside the office of a certain Washington military attaché last week (and there was I, having thought that my "demo" days were over) helped me to settle one trivial question. The crowd was united in chanting "Free, Free, Free Burma." This may seem like a detail, but I think it's right to object to the grotesque renaming of Myanmar and Yangon, and I am glad that the Washington Post, at least, continues to say Burma and Rangoon."
~ Burma: After Protests, Rebels Plot Comeback -- "Burma’s rebel fighters were conspicuously absent when monks and ordinary citizens took to the streets of Rangoon. But guerrilla leaders say the mass protests have helped unite their divided groups." Might have been nice if they helped the monks avoid being slaughtered.
~ Christian Right Considering Supporting 3rd Party if Giuliani Gets GOP Nod -- "It's been well-documented that James Dobson hates most of the Republican field, but he realllly hates Rudy Giuliani."
~ Myopia in a Secular Age -- "America is the most religious society in the West, but faith flourishes in its pluralities and keeps us tolerant of those who believe something different. The robustness of faith gives strength to democracy."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Bringing Wi-Fi to the Skies -- "Up to now it's been mostly all talk, but commercial airlines will soon deliver on their promises to bring web surfing and e-mail to domestic U.S. flights."
~ Arctic Sea Ice Shatters All Previous Record Lows: Diminished Ice Leads To Northwest Passage Opening -- "Arctic sea ice during the 2007 melt season plummeted to the lowest levels since satellite measurements began in 1979, according to researchers at the University of Colorado at Boulder's National Snow and Ice Data Center."
~ Gamma Ray Delay May Be Sign of 'New Physics' -- "Delayed gamma rays from deep space may provide the first evidence for physics beyond current theories."
~ Physicists Tackle Knotty Puzzle -- "Electrical cables, garden hoses and strands of holiday lights seem to get themselves hopelessly tangled with no help at all. Now research initiated by an undergraduate student at the University of California, San Diego has resulted in the first model of how knots form."
~ Chemical compound found in tree bark stimulates growth, survival of brain cells -- "Researchers have identified a compound in tree bark that mimics the chemical reactions of a naturally occurring molecule in the brain responsible for stimulating neuronal cell signaling. Neuronal cell signaling plays a crucial role in the growth, plasticity and survival of brain cells."
~ Beyond a 'speed limit' on mutations, species risk extinction -- "Harvard University scientists have identified a virtual "speed limit" on the rate of molecular evolution in organisms, and the magic number appears to be 6 mutations per genome per generation -- a level beyond which species run the strong risk of extinction as their genomes lose stability."
~ New particles get a mass boost -- "A sophisticated, new analysis has revealed that the next frontier in particle physics is farther away than once thought. New forms of matter not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics are most likely twice as massive as theorists had previously calculated, according to a just-published study."
~ Nanotube forests grown on silicon chips for future computers, electronics -- "Engineers have shown how to grow forests of tiny cylinders called carbon nanotubes onto the surfaces of computer chips to enhance the flow of heat at a critical point where the chips connect to cooling devices called heat sinks."
~ Reshaping market economies -- "It's rare for any environmental book to receive the attention garnered by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger's Break Through, particularly outside the usual green circles. Anything that prompts conversation on these issues is, in and of itself, a good thing."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Bad Dog! -- "The following events are as faithful to fact as memory will allow. They span 52 years from my eighth year to my sixtieth. I have written of this particular sequence of three selected events because they show as well as I know how the way in which pain summons its own healing, and the sweet and improbable redemption that sometimes abides in one fortunate and humbling moment. It is a true tale of the arising of the compassionate heart of Avalokitesvara."
~ A Metta Game Board -- "An interesting day, yesterday, at the workshop to which we were invited by our friend from the Laguna Beach sangha, Dr. Barbara Wright, who has devised an ingenious game board based on the metta practice. Most readers will already know that metta is the practice of loving kindness and compassion."
~ Sophia in the Universe -- "I have decided that I will have to examine this Ken Wilber guy more closely. Before today, he was just a name to me, a name of a man that some regard as a spiritual teacher, and a man who has written books. That is all I know of him, before this."
~ Burma: A monk's reflection -- "In the last several days, we have seen reports from Burma showing brutal suppression of peaceful demonstrations led by Buddhist monks and nuns chanting the Metta Sutta, asking for social justice and a fair political system."
~ Buddhist Geeks 39: More on Tibetan Studies at Naropa -- "In this episode, Ryan continues his conversation (Part 1 available here) with Troy Omafray and Cory Leistikow, two of his fellow classmates in Naropa University’s MA Indo-Tibetan Studies program. They discuss requirements of the program including Nitartha Insttitute, dathuns, and Tibetan language."
~ Karma Power: What Makes a Monk Mad -- "As they marched through the streets of Myanmar’s cities last week leading the biggest antigovernment protests in two decades, some barefoot monks held their begging bowls before them. But instead of asking for their daily donations of food, they held the bowls upside down, the black lacquer surfaces reflecting the light."
~ The Radical Spirituality of Generation X, Part 11: In the Arms of the Goddess -- "After eighteen years of strict Catholicism, hearing the words, "God as Female" in my theology class freshman year of college was life-altering. For me, God was synonymous with He, and the possibility of God as She opened the door to a whole new world. At first, it was a struggle to even hold the possibility of a female God in my mind, God as He was so deeply ingrained. Yet, I searched for images of Her, information about Her, and gradually She was revealed."
~ Causal Awareness as a True Pre-Condition to Habermas's Ideal Speech Act -- "Jurgen Habermas has attempted to rescue the prospect of rationality as a meaningful human capability - lately devastated as a subject-oriented illusion of modernity - in a postmodern world by defining the playing fields in which rationality can survive: first, by presupposing a level playing field where objective truth is the possibility for consensus between willing subjects engaged in rational argument and who are not under the influence of any biasing power-structures, and second, an open playing field where subjective truthfulness and intersubjective rightness can co-determine social norms and all actors have open and equal access to the discourse."
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