Speedlinking 10/23/07

Quote of the day:

"I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours."
~ Hunter S. Thompson

Image of the day:


BODY
~ Walking to Lose Weight: Miles Less Important than Intensity -- "For exercise to help you control weight, you must exercise fairly intensely or else you need to exercise for many hours, and most people do not have the time to exercise for three or four hours or more every day."
~ How beneficial is creatine with whey powder? -- "More indepth analysis showed that those who were using the protein and creatine mixture or the colostrum and creatine mixture also had higher increases in fat free mass during the training set-up than those who were just taking protein and colostrum."
~ 5 Ways To Increase Your Bench Press -- "“How much do you bench?” I’m sure you often get that question. The Bench Press is the most performed exercise in the average gym. No wonder many want to increase their Bench Press." The question should be, "How much do you deadlift?" But if you want a bigger bench, and who doesn't, this is good advice.
~ Global Study Finds High Numbers Of Men And Women Are Overweight, Obese And Have Abdominal Fat -- "A new global study revealed that 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women are overweight, while 24 percent of men and 27 percent of women are obese, researchers reported in Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. In the study, 168,159 people (69,409 men, 98,750 women) from 18 to 80 years old (average age 48) in 63 countries across five continents were evaluated by their primary care physicians."
~ Don’t Cut These Carbs -- "Self Magazine reports that research from the Rowett Research Institute in Scotland found dieters who limit their whole grain and fruit intake have lower levels of butyrate, a fatty acid that kills cancer cells. The scientists say cutting carbohydrates in the long-term may increase your risk of colon cancer."
~ For Better or Girth? Marrieds Pack Pounds -- "A new study found that marrieds get fatter than peers who are single and dating."
~ Low testosterone in men linked to earlier death -- "Older men with low levels of the hormone testosterone may die sooner than other men their age with normal testosterone levels, a study suggests."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Sleepless Nights Make for Grumpier Brains -- "Ever get a little testy after a bad night's sleep? Scientists may now know why. A new study finds that a lack of sleep causes the brain's emotional centers to dramatically overreact to negative experiences. A shutdown of the prefrontal lobe -- a brain region that normally keeps emotions under control -- is the reason for heightened emotional response in sleep-deprived people, said the researchers from Harvard Medical School and the University of California, Berkeley."
~ In the Dreamscape of Nightmares, Clues to Why We Dream at All -- "By all evidence, outrageously bad dreams are a universal human experience."
~ Are You Designing Your Purpose Around A Myth? -- "You against the world, fighting the odds to succeed… righting injustices, fixing the broken parts, places, or people… all by yourself. It’s the idea that for your purpose, your mission, to succeed, you have to excel above the rest, to be the shining star that shines brightest of all."
~ The Diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder: What Does It Really Mean? -- "A diagnosis of borderline personality disorder could, theoretically, mean that the psychiatrist made a serious attempt at evaluating defense mechanisms and ego integrity; or at least a matching of symptoms to DSM criteria. It's theoretically possible, yes. Other things that are theoretically possible include alien abduction, peace in our time, dual eigenstates, user friendly Movable Type upgrades, political discussions that don't rely on information from John Stewart...."
~ The Greatest Regret of All -- "Dyer says don't die with your music still in you. Imagine, I read when I was much younger, sitting on a rocker when you're quite old, thinking about all the things you never did and about all the people you never loved. I remember my blood ran cold at the image. Imagine, it went on, regretting not having done so many of the things you would have liked to have done, but that you didn't...."
~ Depression and the Mind-Body Connection -- "There is a strong possibility that when a patient goes to the doctor with depression, to be treated within the medical model, they may underplay or not even mention physical symptoms, thinking that "they're all in the mind" -- meaning not real, not worthy of attention. In fact, pain is felt in all kinds of ways, and when doctors and patients alike recognise that, research shows that treatment works better."
~ Can Psychotherapy Treat Physical Symptoms? -- "According to recent research, yes."
~ Development of Personal Values -- "Learn how values subconsciously contribute to your life; what they are, where they come from, and why values are so important."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Dumbledore's Gay: Does Anyone Care? -- "Harry Potter fans' favorite magical, wand-wielding headmaster is gay, says the series' author, and as it turns out, many bookworms don't love him any less because of it."
~ Colbert Ahead of 3 Democrats in Presidential Poll -- "Stephen Colbert’s presidential campaign —a compellingly postmodern play on identity and politics (or something like that)—is apparently being taken seriously enough by the polling firm Public Opinion Strategies to merit Colbert’s inclusion in the lineup of candidates the firm is currently tracking. Here’s how the TV comedian—who says he’s running as both a Democrat and a Republican—is doing in the race for White House glory."
~ RJ Eskow: Hitchens' Weak Defense of "Islamo-Fascism" -- "Christopher Hitchens attempts to defend the term "Islamo-Fascism" in Slate today and falls far short of his goal. The term is, in fact, incorrect and counter-productive. Fascism, by commonly accepted definition, incorporates extreme statism, nationalism, and corporatism."
~ Paul Jenkins: Obama and McClurkin: Don't Care -- "With all the ruckus about Barack Obama's cozying up to Donnie McClurkin, the gospel singer notoriously ignorant about the possibility of curing homosexuality, you'd think that none of the Democratic candidates have been pandering to the homophobic vote from the day they started running. More precisely, they have all been walking that tight-rope they hate so much between throwing a bone to the gays (and the LBTs) while not scaring off ostensibly straight voters." Any Dem who sucks up to anti-gay figures loses my vote -- which I means I may be voting for no one.
~ Mike Miley: Sean Penn: Master of the Moving Image -- "Penn tricks us into thinking we're in for a safe, comfortable ride, a ride we've taken hundreds of times before. When we realize that this is not going to play out in a predictable, safe, comfortable fashion, we get anxious. Then we get angry, but if we stay in the theater, it is because we want the film to explain itself to us. In other words, we are seeking to meet the work of art on its own terms, and that is when Penn has us exactly where he wants us."
~ How to listen to Haydn and Mozart -- "When I studied composition with the late Leonard Stein, one of my regular assignments was to compose minuets for string quartet "in the style of Mozart and Haydn." It was no accident that Stein employed the singular form of the word "style." The two composers share a common musical idiom; there are many reasons why inexperienced listeners find it hard to tell them apart."
~ Keeping the faith -- "It may be daring to say it but America seems to be experiencing an atheist moment. Although "In God We Trust" was declared the national motto by an act of Congress more than 50 years ago and has been stamped on the currency for longer than that, some considerable doubt has developed of late."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ IPhone's Security Rivals Windows 95 (No, That's Not Good) -- "Security experts are scratching their heads over Apple's decision to give the iPhone the same backwards security model that left Windows users vulnerable for nearly a decade."
~ What's at Stake in the Surveillance Debate in Congress -- "Key Democrats are joining with the Bush administration to pass an unconstitutional law allowing blanket electronic surveillance -- and to grant a pardon to telephone companies who made the NSA's illegal spying possible."
~ The Energy Road That Makes All the Difference -- "In the classic poem by Robert Frost, a traveler faces two divergent paths and the pivotal decision of which one to follow. He recognizes the significance of the moment and imagines telling the story in the future, Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. Last Thursday, Kansas faced a similar decision."
~ Fifty Years Of Wolf-Moose Research -- "Scientists have been studying the interactions and interdependence of wolves and moose at Michigan's Isle Royale National Park for nearly half a century. In the late 1940s, a pack of wolves made the treacherous trip across 15 to 20 miles of frozen waters of Lake Superior to Isle Royale, located not far from the Canadian border. There they found a wilderness island safe from hunters and traffic and home to an abundant moose herd. The wolves settled in to a self-contained ecosystem where they were virtually the only predators and the moose were their primary prey."
~ Geologists: Collier Glacier Is Shrinking -- "Between the North Sister and Middle Sister in Oregon's Cascade Range, Collier Glacier has advanced and receded for hundreds of thousands of years. But like many glaciers, it is headed in one direction these days: backward."
~ From moths and cicadas come improvements to solar cells -- "Designing better solar cells might seem a question of electronics or chemistry, but for one University of Florida engineer, it starts with bugs."
~ Sharp Develops Super-Thin 2.2-Inch LCD 0.68 mm Thick -- "Sharp Corp. has developed a 2.2-inch super-thin LCD for mobile devices with a thickness of only 0.68 mm, the industry's thinnest."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ So-Called People of Faith and Values Voters -- "This is simply code for "Christian values" and the Christian faith. They use the word as if Christians are the only ones who have "values" or "faith." They are an elitist group of people who honestly think that people of other religions couldn't possibly have any values and forget about Atheists and secular humanists."
~ Obama's gay problem -- "Obfuscating on gay marriage would be a detriment to any Democratic dandidate. But Obama was particularly hurt as an African-American candidate, for he was unwilling to explain why he would eaglerly defend the need to extend marriage rights to racial minorities where those rights were previously excluded, and yet he would not extend the same rights to gay couples."
~ Play, Practice, Flow -- "Nice summation of a basic Integral Life Practice over at Flow. This attention to the type of life one leads is fundamental to living a fully integrated life."
~ Remembering -- "my eariest memory is lying on my back in the crib as an infant. i don't remember wanting anything, needing anything. i wasn't hungry, or in pain, or sleepy. i just remember the pattern of the ceiling as it was framed by the horizontal border of my crib. i heard people in the back ground. no idea what they were saying. nothing special about that moment, other than it's as far back as my personal memory goes."
~ Ethics of the In-Between -- "I am sometimes uncertain about the lofty ethical demands that we impose upon ourselves and upon others. Take the demand for forgiveness mentioned by the interviewee, for example. This is a topic discussed by Derrida at some length in a short but penetrating essay. There, Derrida asserts that what calls for forgiveness is the unforgivable, that is to say, what demands forgiveness, true forgiveness, is a situation in which there is no possibility of any kind of genuine recompense, in which no true amends can be made for the wrong committed."
~ My Interpretation of the Skandas -- "I am always going after the skandas as I think they are really important as to how we see our world. I've been going after a definition of all five of the skandas for some time. It took a little time to investigate what was going on in my mind that the Buddha may have seen."
~ Is this the Most Useful One Minute Integral Meditation ever Created? -- "What if there was a (r)evolutionary new meditation that could dramatically improve the quality of your relationships, was easy to learn and took about a minute or less to do? What if it could be used by an individual of any denomination to improve almost any situation anywhere or anytime? What if such a meditation really existed? Would you take the few minutes needed to read about it and test it for yourself?"
~ Narrative Theology -- "Getting deeper and deeper into post-liberal theology. Right now I’m reading Jack Miles’ book God: A Biography. Miles takes the character of God through the Hebrew Bible as one character and reads this character’s development through the text." I loved this book.

Tags: God: A Biography, narrative theology, one minute integral meditation, skandas, Buddhism, forgiveness, remembering, Stuart Davis, Integral Life Practice, Barack Obama, values voters, LCD screen, solar cells, Collier Glacier, wolf-moose research, energy, NSA, illegal spying, iPhone, faith in America, classical music, Sean Penn, Democrats, gay rights, Islamo-fascism, Stephen Colbert, Dumbledore, personal values, psychotherapy, depression, regrets, borderline personality disorder, myth of the lone wolf, nightmares, sleep, low testosterone, marriage, weight gain, healthy carbs, obesity, bench press, creatine, exercise intensity, speedlinking