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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Speedlinking 10/11/07

Quote of the day:

"Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand."
~ Kurt Vonnegut

Image of the day:



BODY
~ Most Adult Steroid Users Seek Muscles, Not Medals -- "The majority of non-medical anabolic-androgenic steroid (AAS) users are not cheating athletes or risk-taking teenagers. According to a recent survey, containing the largest sample to date and published in the online open access publication, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, the typical male user is about 30 years old, well-educated, and earning an above-average income in a white-collar occupation."
~ The Round-Up Interviews: Eric Cressey -- "In honor of the League Championships that start tonight, we present a look at how baseball has pretty much abused weight training and sports preparation in general. Hell, listening to Eric Cressey, it's a wonder any of them can throw a ball."
~ Exercise of the Week: Blitzkrieg Triple Dumbbell Press -- "To win the war on der chest, we must attack it, Blitzkrieg style! We shall crush the pectoral enemy, see it driven before us, and listen to the lamentation of the vimmen!"
~ Entrepreneur seeks condom size variety (AP) -- "As the world's top condom experts convene this week to update international standards, one American entrepreneur has a simple message: Size matters. It's shaking up an industry that has generally taken a one-size-fits-all approach."
~ Many arthritic adults suffer work limitations -- "About a third of U.S. adults with arthritis say the chronic condition — the nation’s leading cause of disability — has limited their ability to work, the government said Thursday."
~ Breast Cancer and Your Diet -- "Does diet affect breast cancer treatment?"
~ How much is a life worth? -- "Fighting cancer has always been one of the most expensive prospects in medicine — in part because the drugs that treat it are among the most costly on the market. But biotechnology treatments such as Herceptin are pushing prices into a whole other realm — one that may be out of reach for many people."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Build Your Self Esteem: A Starter Guide To Self Improvement -- "In today’s fast-paced, difficult environment, it can be tough to keep your self-esteem intact and to stay calm. Here are some things you can do in your quest for self-improvement and to build your self-esteem."
~ How to Increase Self Esteem and Self Confidence -- "Having a high self-esteem is essential to happiness, success and fulfillment. Having self esteem simply means to appreciate yourself, to regard yourself as worthy and important . How you esteem yourself is reflected in your self image and it is your conception of your beliefs about yourself."
~ Rejection sets off alarms for folks with low self-esteem -- "Few can tolerate such romantic or professional rebuffs as "It's not you, it's me" and "we regret to inform you that your application was not successful." But while a healthy dose of self-esteem can absorb the shock of rejection, poor self-esteem can trigger the primal fight-or-flight response, according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley."
~ The Strength of Optimism -- "With the advent of the Positive Psychology movement, there has been a great deal of interest in the topic of optimism. Voluminous and robust research has brought wonderful news indeed. Not only does an optimistic approach provide amazing benefits, but it can be learned by anyone… yes, even by dyed-in-the-wool, lifelong pessimists!"
~ 8 Powerful Ways to Release Pressure from Your Life -- "Now I don’t how your mind works but personally I perform better without a lot of pressure. It’s easier to focus on your task and not second-guess or hold yourself back when you feel light and relaxed."
~ The 7 Energy Sinkholes (and How to Avoid Them) -- "Energy sinkholes are situations that repeatedly drain your energy and stress you out. There are plenty of good reasons to invest your energy, so don’t waste your attention on a sinkhole. Unfortunately, it is often hard to see sinkholes since they rarely cause a drain all at once. Instead they slowly leech away at your lifeforce until your stressed, depressed and apathetic."
~ Music: Fine Tuning The Brain -- "How music lessons may strengthen verbal skills."
~ Studying Self Control -- "Drug abuse, crime and obesity are but a few of the problems our nation faces, but they all have one thing in common -- people's failure to control their behavior in the face of temptation. While the ability to control and restrain our impulses is one of the defining features of the human animal, its failure is one of the central problems of human society."
~ Dream Symbols and Meanings -- "Dreaming reveals a language all its own, lush with images and symbols which seem perplexing in the conscious realm. Here are some keys to interpreting them."
~ Self-help treatment for social anxiety will ease burden on mental health services and for sufferers -- "New research from Macquarie University suggests certain self-help treatments for social anxiety disorder may be just as effective as more traditional, therapist only treatments."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ "You are no longer monks," Myanmar prisoners told -- "Hundreds of Buddhist monks rounded up by Myanmar's junta were beaten and kept in animal-like conditions without toilets or drinking water during days of interrogation, one of those freed said on Thursday."
~ Adam Hanft: When Doris Lessing Become Jane Somers and Tricked the Publishing World (And Possibly Herself In the Process) -- "To demonstrate the struggles that unknown writers face in the brand-name obsessed publishing Coliseum, Ms. Lessing submitted two novels for publication under the name of Jane Somers: Diary of a Good Neighbor and If the Old Could."
~ Bill Maher: Idiocracy -- "Have too many Americans become gullible, ill-informed idiots who have elevated feelings over facts and replaced critical thinking with a blind sense of trust for authority? I'm not trying to be insulting here...." Despite the way the article begins, Maher has a good point.
~ Do the Indians have the guts to dump Joe Borowski? -- "No one would be shocked if Indians closer Joe Borowski, he of the 5.07 ERA, costs the team the World Series. Why does one of the best teams in baseball pin its ninth-inning hopes on its third- or fourth-best reliever?"
~ Short Stories for Real Men -- "This week, Jim Shepard's short story collection was nominated for a National Book Award. And rightfully so."
~ Who Will Be Punished for Haditha? -- "Coming up with a prosecutable case against the Marines responsible for the alleged massacre of Iraqi civilians has turned out to be more difficult than anyone expected."
~ Antihunger help misses 3 million in big cities: study -- "Nearly 3 million poor Americans in 24 big cities do not receive food stamps despite being eligible for them, an antihunger group said on Thursday, at the same time food prices are up sharply."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Yellowstone Wolves: Embattled Again -- "The once vanished gray wolf has made a comeback in the Northern Rockies. The fight is over whether to remove them from the Endangered Species list and let hunters have at them."
~ 50 Quick, Painless Ways You Can Help the Environment Today -- "In theory, most of us would like to help the environment, preserve the world’s natural beauty, and generally make this planet a better place to live. In practice, we don’t necessarily have the time or energy to get involved in major projects, join Greenpeace, protest the corporate polluters, or make sweeping lifestyle changes. We want to help, but with all that’s going on in our lives, it gets put on the back burner."
~ Comcast Rollout of TiVo Box Begins -- "After more than two years of promises and delays, Comcast Corp. has finally begun the commercial rollout of its first cable set-top boxes that run TiVo's digital video recording technology."
~ Study of bacterial communities may provide climate-change clues -- "As part of the world carbon cycle, bacterial communities in freshwater lakes break down carbon in decaying organic matter, converting it into carbon dioxide that is released into the atmosphere."
~ Astronomers find most powerful supernova -- "Astronomer Robert Quimby has again found the most luminous supernova. Quimby discovered the current record holder, supernova 2006gy, last year as part of his Texas Supernova Search project. Now he has announced that a supernova he has discovered earlier in the project is actually twice as luminous. Using follow-up studies to pinpoint its distance, supernova 2005ap peaked at more than 100 billion times the brightness of the Sun."
~ Tyrannosaur Footprint Found in Montana -- "The giant footprint was made by either T. rex or Nanotyrannus."
~ Ice age not a global phenomenon: study -- "If the Earth is heading for a new ice age, Australia may not be as affected as countries in the Northern Hemisphere, according to new research from The Australian National University published today in Science."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Secret Worlds -- Sort of cool drawing.
~ Clarence Thomas on 60 Minutes/Thoughts on Integral Judiciary -- "As to his judicial philosophy—controversially called The Constitution in Exile, more neutrally perhaps originalism or the one I prefer strict constructionist. I think the latter term is actually correct but that it interestingly undercuts the understanding that those who typically espouse such a belief understand it to mean."
~ Backing Out -- "In Clarissa Pinkola Estes' live recording Theatre of the Imagination, she re-tells of the classic Little Red Riding Hood story; this time under the name of "Little Red Cap". Unlike the more familiar children's version (wherein the little girl is rescued in the nick of time by the woodsman), Estes' version has the little girl realizing that she is in bed with the wolf (dressed as Granny) and trying to find a way to sneak out before she is attacked."
~ My God Can Beat Up Your God -- "I wonder, as I looked for healthy amber/blue aspects of the writing, how later stage consciousness communicates with this thinking? It's certainly not a matter of telling them they have a limited perspective. That would just be preaching at them while they're preaching at me."
~ Teaching -- "Best described, perhaps, as an introduction to the understanding of the self as an integrated whole, it challenges students to look into themselves and their relationships—with friends, with families, with life partners—and to find ways to heal those areas that may be broken. It treats such matters as pain, grief and anger seriously, as they deserve to be treated, and invites them to be brought out into the open rather than repressed, allowed to fester, and destroy lives."
~ Bush to Honor Dalai Lama -- "Risking heightened tensions with China, President Bush will attend a ceremony to award Congress' highest civilian honor to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader whom Beijing reviles as a separatist."


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