Speedlinking 11/2/07

Quote of the day:

"There are lots of ways of being miserable, but there's only one way of being comfortable, and that is to stop running round after happiness. If you make up your mind not to be happy there's no reason why you shouldn't have a fairly good time."
~ Edith Wharton

Image of the day:


BODY
~ Training Like an O-Lifter, Without The O-Lifts -- "It's recently dawned on me that if you follow my training recommendations, you'll be essentially training like an Olympic weightlifter, although you may not actually be doing the O-lifts themselves."
~ Fix Anything with Yoga -- "Whether you can't touch your toes or have lost a step turning the corner, yoga can pump up your sports performance and fend off injuries from shin splints to back pain. Watch Ford model Tara Stiles' yoga-jock workout video and see if you're man enough."
~ Christams Gift Ideas To Fight Obesity -- "For a healthy kick-start to 2008 choose Christmas gifts that promote healthy habits and fight obesity, says Australia's leading nutrition organisation, the Dietitians Association of Australia (DAA)."
~ Exercise improves balance in older adults -- "Growing older is a cause of concern for many individuals in our age-obsessed society. However, with medical and cosmetic advances making fast progress, aging isn’t nearly as scary as it used to be."
~ Healthy Diet Unaffordable for the Poor -- "The cost of fruits, vegetables may put healthy eating out of reach for the poor."
~ Weight loss during menopause linked to bone loss -- "Weight loss during menopause appears to be associated with increased rates of bone loss at the hip, the findings of a long-term study suggest."
~ Diet and Exercise May Help Prevent Ovulation-Linked Infertility -- "Following a so-called fertility diet and exercising may promote fecundity in otherwise healthy women with an ovulatory disorder, researchers here reported."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Let Your Unconscious Mind Go To Work for You - Part II© -- "This month on Positive Psychology News Daily, I want to return to the power of the unconscious mind. Today’s article is a follow-up to the one I wrote earlier this year."
~ PTSD, Depression Sufferers Find Success with Web Based Treatment -- "An investigation undertaken by the Veterans Administration Boston Healthcare System and Boston University, and funded in large part by the NIMH, has found that an online self-treatment program was successful at treating post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in survivors of the 9/11 attacks and the war in Iraq."
~ 7 Ways to Help Your Child be a Homebody -- "After a 10 hour road trip this past weekend, my family and I spent the balance of the weekend puttering around the house and enjoying some of the simple things in life. We have come to accept that we are content spending time at home just being a family. Here are seven simple tips for helping you and your children enjoy time at home."
~ Evolution, cooperation and kinds of altruism -- "In a first approximation, a cooperative behavior i) benefits the recipient and ii) is beneficent or costly to the actor. Thus cooperation has two components: altruism (costly,) and mutual benefits (beneficent)."
~ Empathy And Understanding Should Be Employed When Patient Nondisclosure Requested -- "When family members ask physicians not to disclose bad news to ill loved ones, clinicians often struggle to balance their obligation to be truthful to the patient with the family's belief that the information would be harmful."
~ How Do I Know What I Feel? -- "Many people’s goal, in counselling and out, is to be ’sure of themselves’, which they conceive of as knowing exactly what they think and feel all the time. I would say that this is unlikely to work."
~ The Subliminal Thinker By Michael Mcgrath -- "Throughout your day you think an average of 50,000 thoughts. In what direction are yours going? Have you become a habituated negative thinker?"
~ Mind Tools: Egos at Work -- "Managing a Co-worker's Superiority Complex - All Readers - Do you work with people who have big egos? Learn how to manage egotists' behavior without sinking to their level."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Potter Author Begins Post-Harry Career With Fairy Tales -- "J.K. Rowling's first book after her wildly popular Harry Potter series is a hand-crafted collection of fairy stories called The Tales of Beedle the Bard."
~ The Feminine Critique -- "Writing about life and work means receiving a steady stream of research on how women in the workplace are viewed differently from men. These are academic and professional studies, not whimsical online polls, and each time I read one I feel deflated. What are women supposed to do with this information? Transform overnight? And if so, into what? How are we supposed to be assertive, but not, at the same time?"
~ Stephen Balkam: Towards a New Culture of Responsibility -- "The Internet has changed everything -- including the Internet itself. This vast, global, organically growing online medium has seeped into every facet of our lives and upended how we work, learn and play. And it is changing the way our children experience the world -- for good and ill."
~ Ben Fractenberg: Generation What? -- "A lot has been said recently about my generation: we are cynical apathetic, privileged, irrationally optimistic, ironically detached, isolated, connected in new ways through the Internet. We like to volunteer but not to protest, we like to protest but not to do grassroots organizing, and on and on. How can there be this much contradictory talk about today's youth?"
~ Tailgate Nation -- "The party before kickoff is often just as big as the game itself. Photographer David Burnett travels America in search of the best collegiate revels."
~ Election Scorecard: Romney on the cusp of leading all three early-primary states -- "A new Winthrop/ETV poll in South Carolina shows Mitt Romney tied for second with Rudy Giuliani in the state, only one point behind Fred Thompson for first. Romney's numbers have been trending upward recently, corresponding with increased advertising in the state. In case the GOP candidates need more motivation, the poll says nearly 30 percent of Republicans are still undecided."
~ The evangelical crackup is a myth -- "As a politically interested evangelical, I'm constantly surprised to find that newspapers know more about my political feelings than I do. I haven't even picked my presidential candidate yet, but, it turns out, I'm supposed to be frustrated and dissatisfied with my options—and my peers."
~ Study Challenges Bush Counterterrorism Strategy -- "The Bush administration's 2006 National Strategy for Combating Terrorism may rely too heavily on the benefits of democratization while ignoring some of the key factors driving terrorist violence, according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Best Inventions of the Year -- "The iPhone (surprise!) heads TIME's list, but there's more, from a building made of water to a remote-controlled dragonfly."
~ Burrowing Mammals Dig For A Living, But How Do They Do That? -- "Next time you see a mole digging in tree-root-filled soil in search of supper, take a moment to ponder the mammal's humerus bones. When seen in the lab, they are nothing like the long upper arm bones of any other mammal, according to a paleontologist."
~ Microbes Plus Sugars Equals Hydrogen Fuel? -- "Wanted: Bacterium that can eat sugar or sludge; must be team player or electrochemically active; ability to survive without oxygen, a plus. Thus might read the bacterial "job description" posted by scientists, who are collaborating on ways to make microbial fuel cells more efficient and practical."
~ Divers find new species in Aleutians -- "There are unknown creatures lurking under the windswept islands of the Aleutians, according to a team of scientific divers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks."
~ Bursting dark energy's bubble -- "Theorist suggests mysterious force could be an 'artefact' of a void in space."
~ Shrinking glaciers threaten China -- "China's glaciers in western Xinjiang Uygur region are shrinking alarmingly due to global and regional warming, posing a threat to the oases in the area."
~ The Happiness Gap and the Future -- "David Brooks wrote a column Tuesday on The Happiness Gap that ought to be required reading for every bright green advocate on the planet, for here, now that we have come to the end of the beginning, is what the opposition sounds like. Brooks (who in 2002, you may remember, wrote an appalling pean to "Patio Man" in which he said that suburban sprawl was the highest manifestation of the American ideal, and a wholly good idea), makes the argument that American voters (by whom Brooks invariably means upper-middle class suburban voters) suffer from a "happiness gap," between their private success and their public gloom and fear for the future of the country and planet...."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ New Blog -- Integral Strategies -- "The Integral Strategies website is written, designed and produced by me, Matthew Kalman, a founder member of the Integral Institute. It was launched on October 25th 2007. In 2000 I also founded the London Integral Circle (then called ‘Politics and Spirit’) – an integral/Ken Wilber-orientated salon/group – which is also featured on this site."
~ If You Meet Wilber on the Road, Kill Him -- "In the current essay I'd like to highlight three areas of criticism that seem relevant to me:

• Evolutionary theory,
• postmodernism and
• meditation research.

They are very Wilberologically correct taken from the broad spheres of It(s), We and I."
~ Deepak Chopra: A CAT-Scan of the Global Brain (Part 2) -- "When it first came into usage, "the global brain" seemed like only a metaphor. But the more we learn about how the human brain functions, the more convincing the parallels are in real life. In many ways each of us is participating in a brain without borders, one that encompasses humankind. I'd like to focus on several striking similarities between individual and collective intelligence."
~ Suicide Dictionary, a new book by Paul Lonely -- "Suicide Dictionary, a new book by author Paul Lonely, offers an intellectually moving and poetic expression of spirituality in our time. We now live in an age where to be Integral is to be on the leading edge of human consciousness."
~ Neuroscience and The Enlightenment Machine -- "In this episode we spoke with neuroscientist and Buddhist meditator Daniel Rizzuto. Vince and he discussed a number of topics including the link between contemplative and scientific methodologies, some of the potential technologies that could emerge for the neuroscientific research, including Daniel's favorite, an empathic training device."
~ FlailingFruit: Falling Fruit, the new podcast website, launches into a sea of green -- "Two-thirds of the Buddhist Geeks have teamed with eight others to form the webspace Falling Fruit, which is the new home for the "Buddhist Geeks" podcast series and a second, new podcast show -- as they‘re calling it -- "Conscious Business."
~ Postformal dialectics -- "The following is copied-and-pasted from the Integral Review forum on this topic. I pasted the first few posts here and the rest of the posts to date in the comments section."
~ I GET LETTERS -- Brad Warner -- "You guys can say whatever you want. All I know is that the comments section under my Suicide Girls articles is always pleasurable and informative. The comments section here is like a visit to the nut house."

Tags: Brad Warner, postformal dialectics, Buddhist Geeks, Daniel Rizzuto, conscious business, Deepak Chopra, Frank Visser, Ken Wilber, integral theory, Buddhism, Integral Strategies, Matthew Kalman, David Brooks, bright greens, glaciers, dark energy, Aleutian islands, hydrogen fuel, burrowing mammals, inventions, Combating Terrorism, Bush, evangelicals, Mitt Romney, tailgate parties, Culture of Responsibility, feminism, J.K. Rowling, egos, subliminal thinking, knowing what you feel, therapy, altruism, web based therapy, unconscious mind, infertility, weight loss, menopause, poverty, healthy diet, balance, gift ideas, yoga, olympic lifting, speedlinking