"If you develop an ear for sounds that are musical it is like developing an ego. You begin to refuse sounds that are not musical and that way cut yourself off from a good deal of experience."
~ John Cage
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Low bone density is a risk factor for athletes -- "A University of Missouri study suggests that athletic men may be at risk for low bone density. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, “osteoporosis affects more than 2 million men in the United States and nearly 12 million more have osteopenia-- clinically significant low bone density that is less severe than osteoporosis.” The study now suggests that men who engage in low-impact forms of exercise have a higher incidence of osteopenia." Another good reason for men to engage in weight training.
~ The Ultimate Legs Program -- "Scott thinks most quad routines consist of very low volume, too high a load for the individual trainee, and very low reps. Time to break out the puke bucket and embrace sets of 50 and a 100." This doesn't sound fun -- I'll have to try it.
~ Bill Starr’s Strength Training Program: The Big Three -- "This is a description of Bill Starr’s strength training program described in The Strongest Shall Survive: Strength Training for Football (1976). I recommend reading Bill Starr’s book, even if you’re not a football player." This is an excellent foundation program for intermediate lifters -- and for all athletes.
~ Organic Food Is More Nutritious Say EU Researchers -- "Early results of a 12 million pound, 4-year EU study on the benefits of organic food suggest that some of them, such as fruit, vegetables and milk, are more nutritious than non-organically produced food and may contain higher concentrations of cancer fighting and heart beneficial antioxidants."
~ Phys Ed: Twist and Ouch -- "Most athletes will have back trouble sooner or later — if they’re not suffering already. Here’s what to do about it."
~ Doctors Test Hot Sauce for Pain Relief -- "Devil's Revenge. Spontaneous Combustion. Hot sauces have names like that for a reason. Now scientists are testing if the stuff that makes the sauces so savage can tame the pain of surgery...."
~ Stumped for Healthy Snacks Ideas? -- "Rapidly growing children often require refueling between meals and a cookie is often the answer. Busy parents frequently resort to processed snack foods, which fill the tummy, but don’t offer much in the way of nutrition. A snack is a mini-bite or portion."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Are Kids Getting Too Much Praise? -- "Efforts to build self-esteem in schools may be leading to a generation of children with inflated egos."
~ Decision-making special issue in Science -- "This week's Science has a special selection of papers on the psychology and neuroscience of decision making. While most of the articles are closed-access, one on how game theory and neuroscience are helping us understand social decision-making is freely available."
~ New Possibilities in the Treatment of Auditory Hallucinations -- "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) is one of the latest treatments being studied by researchers. While studies have shown that it can diminish auditory hallucinations, more research is necessary to improve our understanding of auditory hallucinations and how TMS affects them."
~ Two Ways To Boost Your Low Self-Esteem -- "For me, self-esteem has always been a funny thing. I've always had pretty high self-esteem and have continually tried to help others who don't."
~ Manic Depression: A Mistaken Diagnosis -- "Sometimes bipolar disorder is easy to miss."
~ How to Survive Bipolar Disorder -- "Tips on gaining control of a bipolar mood cycle."
~ The Heart of the Matter -- "Depression is a disease, not an excuse but surely it makes for some extenuating circumstances. If only we could understand and forgive ourselves. If only we could make others understand and forgive . . . but we can’t. It’s a rare person that understands the twisted nature of depression, even rarer when they can forgive. We have to learn to forgive ourselves."
~ The Art of Effective Self Criticism -- "If you value your own progress, you need to learn how to criticise yourself. We are often eager to criticise others, but when it comes to criticising ourselves we are strangely reluctant. The art of self criticism is essential to learning from mistakes and gaining an improved perspective on life." As Pema Chodron often reminds us, the key here is to be gentle with ourselves.
~ Brain Activity Differs For Creative And Noncreative Thinkers -- "Why do some people solve problems more creatively than others? Are people who think creatively different from those who tend to think in a more methodical fashion? Scientists found a distinct pattern of brain activity, even at rest, in people who tend to solve problems with a sudden creative insight -- an "Aha! Moment" -- compared to people who tend to solve problems more methodically."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Pope objects to dispensing immoral drugs (AP) -- "Pope Benedict XVI urged Catholic pharmacists on Monday to use conscientious objection to avoid dispensing drugs with 'immoral purposes such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia.'" This is crap -- if you don't want to dispense drugs as prescribed, get a new job.
~ Bruce E. Levine: Has Psychiatry Earned Its Unpopularity? -- "Until recently, most journalists have been extremely timid about confronting Big Pharma's hijacking of psychiatry. One exception is Robert Whitaker, winner of the George Polk award for medical writing. Whitaker, in his book Mad in America (2002), summarizes the beginnings of the corruption of America's psychiatrists and their professional organization, the American Psychiatric Association (APA)...."
~ Rights and Liberties: Free Speech for Everyone, Except for Foreigners -- "The American commitment to free speech is the most robust in the world. But these days that tolerance stops at the border."
~ Michael Giltz: Good Grief! Celebrating Peanuts -- "Tonight on PBS's American Masters, they take a close look at the life of Peanuts creator Charles Schulz. Linked to the new biography by David Michaelis, it focuses on the parallels between Schulz's real life and the strip, as well as the very real melancholy Schulz dealt with his whole life."
~ The Red Sox Sweep! -- "The Boston Red Sox beat the Colorado Rockies in four games, taking home their second championship in four years."
~ The All-TIME Top 25 Horror Movies -- "From silent vampires to animated murders, from sharks that won't die to a love story set amid a zombie takeover, more than a century's worth of big-screen scares."
~ Interview With a Vampire Expert -- "As Nuzum crunched Count Chocula one morning in his Washington, D.C. home, he flipped on his TV and caught President Bush warning against the soft fascism of plugging in too many appliances and becoming an "energy vampire." Flipping through a magazine, Nuzum saw a model with fangs and a cape enticing him to buy some vodka and "drink in the night." He had his project. "If the vampire is ubiquitous," he wondered, "how did this happen? Why did this happen? I wanted insight.""
~ Show Us Your Geeky Jack-o'-Lanterns -- "From Battlestar Galactica to Steve Jobs, pumpkin carvers take a stab at creating Halloween masterpieces."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Why Do Autumn Leaves Turn Red? Soil May Dictate Fall Colors -- "Soils may dictate the array of fall colors as much as the trees rooted in them, according to a forest survey out of North Carolina. By taking careful stock and laboratory analyses of the autumn foliage of sweetgum and red maple trees along transects from floodplains to ridge-tops in a nature preserve in Charlotte, N.C., scientists found that in places where the soil was relatively low in nitrogen and other essential elements, trees produced more red pigments known as anthocyanins."
~ Researchers Study Bat Colony in Wash -- "Researchers are studying a colony of bats that live in an underground concrete structure at the Hanford nuclear reservation in hopes of determining how to provide a new home for them once the structure is demolished."
~ HIV's path out of Africa: Haiti, the US then the world -- "The AIDS virus entered the United States via Haiti, probably arriving in just one person in about 1969, earlier than previously believed, according to new research. After the virus, HIV-1, entered the U.S., it flourished and spread worldwide."
~ Researchers show evidence of 'memory' in cells and molecules -- "Research to be reported October 29 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides evidence that some molecular interactions on cell surfaces may have a “memory” that affects their future interactions. The report could lead to a re-examination of results from certain single-molecule research."
~ Primates: Extinction Threat Growing For Mankind's Closest Living Relatives -- "Mankind's closest living relatives -- the world's apes, monkeys, lemurs and other primates -- are under unprecedented threat from destruction of tropical forests, illegal wildlife trade and commercial bushmeat hunting, with 29 percent of all species in danger of going extinct, according to a new report."
~ New Ideas About Human Migration From Asia To Americas -- "Questions about human migration from Asia to the Americas have perplexed anthropologists for decades, but as scenarios about the peopling of the New World come and go, the big questions have remained. Do the ancestors of Native Americans derive from only a small number of "founders" who trekked to the Americas via the Bering land bridge? How did their migration to the New World proceed? What, if anything, did the climate have to do with their migration? And what took them so long?"
~ Social standing influences elephant movement -- "When resources are scarce, who you know and where you're positioned on the social totem pole affects how far you'll go to search for food. At least that's the case with African elephants, according to a study led by ecologists at the University of California, Berkeley, who collaborated with researchers at Save the Elephants, a non-profit research organization based in Kenya, and at the University of Oxford in England."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Roky Erickson at the El Ray -- "I saw Roky Erickson at the El Ray Theater last night. For those who don’t know, Roky Erickson was the leader of the 13th Floor Elevators, the world’s first psychedelic rock band. The Elevators were from Austin, Texas, of all places. In Austin, Roky and the band faced constant harassment from the authorities who didn’t like their long hair and their anti-authoritarian message. Roky was busted for possession of a single joint. For this crime he was sent for three years to the Rusk State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where we was subjected to electro-shock treatments. Whether it was insanity or not that led him to smoke dope, by the time he came out of Rusk he wasn’t quite right anymore."
~ Debunking Satan and Hell. Plus, The Governator Not Worried about Marijuana -- "Here's something to think about regarding the Christian idea of "hell" and "satan" being "god's" strong man, torturing those who don't "measure up" to the so-called, "all-loving" Supreme Being."
~ Connecting with the History of the Divine Mother -- "Some Wiccans used to maintain that their religion was the revival of a long-dormant Witch cult that had been put down for thousands of years by the Christian patriarchy. That may be romantic apologetics, but it’s awful history."
~ Deep Dialogue and Mindfull Change -- "While meditation strives for one-pointedness, dialogue attempts to enact multi-pointedness: dialogue focuses on each speaker, with multiple nodes of meaning, intention and response. Rather than transcending "the world," dialogue works with raw materials of the world, creating coherence & meaning out of the blitz of our multitasking 21st-century."
~ Buddhist Geeks is Moving to a New Home! -- "We just wanted to let you know that starting this week Buddhist Geeks will be moving to a new home urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/www.fallingfruit.tv');">www.fallingfruit.tv. Falling Fruit TV is a conscious media network that two of the founders of Buddhist Geeks helped to start, which will include a full network of podcasts on topics such as Spirituality, Business, Politics, Health, Technology, and more."
~ Love is not a feeling, it’s an ability -- "But if love is an ability, there is nothing to judge. As an ability love isn’t destroyed in the ravages of time and loss, insecurity or disappointment. As an ability, love is always there, ready to flourish and help our lives flourish. As conditions come together for anything to come into existence, always within there is the ability of love, recognized or not, given life or not."
~ The Radical Spirituality of Generation X, Part 15: Breaking the Cycle of Fear and Violence -- "I come from an unusual background. My dad, John Robbins (author of Diet for a New America, and an inspiration to millions) and my mom, Deo, are not just parents to me, they are also my dear friends. From an early age, they helped me to look at problems in the world not as monsters to fear, but as opportunities for healing. “However bad things are,” my mom used to tell me, “is exactly how much better they can be with a change.”"
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