Quote of the day:
"To predict the behavior of ordinary people in advance, you only have to assume that they will always try to escape a disagreeable situation with the smallest possible expenditure of intelligence."
~ Friedrich Nietzsche
Image of the day (Neil Creek):
BODY
~ 20 Minutes to a Hard Body -- "Chris Shugart has all kinds of tips on how to ruin your Thanksgiving and holiday dinners. No big deal. You'll thank him afterwards for ensuring that you're not picked to play Santa Claus this year."
~ Bringing the Pendulum Back to Center: Tempo Training -- "Tempo prescriptions allow coaches to have another way to measure progress. For instance, if a trainee completes a set of five reps with an additional 5lbs, it's tough to ascertain whether or not the trainee actually improved if they actually did the set in less time. But if the trainee did the 5 reps with the additional load at the same approximate speed as before then we know they improved."
~ In Search Of Wine, Ancients Become Earliest Chocoholics -- "The human love affair with chocolate is at least 3,000 years old -- and it began at least 500 years earlier than previously thought, according to new analyses of pottery shards from the Ula Valley region of northern Honduras. But the first people to appreciate the cacao tree were probably after a buzz of another kind -- a fermented, winelike drink, research shows -- and only later discovered the chocolaty taste we love today."
~ Thanks for the Nutrition -- "Thanksgiving dinner may be associated with oversized portions and fat-laden gravy, but many traditional “Turkey Day” foods are actually a bounty of nutrients."
~ Study: More Americans exercising -- "Americans are exercising more than in the past, but most are still not working out enough to meet federal guidelines, a new survey shows."
~ Tired? It's not the turkey's fault -- "Feel sleepy after a big Thanksgiving meal? Contrary to popular thinking, it's not the turkey's fault."
~ Why Thanksgiving Veggie Side Dishes Deserve Star Status -- "Cruciferous vegetables add a health kick to any Thanksgiving feast." This is huge! Eat your veggies first, especially cruciferous veggies, and you'll eat less overall, and you'll process the simple carbs you do eat more efficiently. I've been telling my clients this all week.
~ Keeping Holiday Meals in Check -- "Tips for healthy eating at the holiday table."
~ Too Much Sugar Turns Off Gene That Controls Effects Of Sex Steroids -- "Eating too much fructose and glucose can turn off the gene that regulates the levels of active testosterone and estrogen in the body, shows a new study in mice and human cell cultures that's published this month in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. This discovery reinforces public health advice to eat complex carbohydrates and avoid sugar."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ On Becoming Spiritually Fearless -- "What we're seeing -- if we are willing to look -- is that we are not alone in an indifferent universe. As Goethe put it, "This life, gentlemen, is much too short for our souls." If this life were sufficient for our souls, we would not go through it consumed with fear."
~ Even babies judge their companions -- "Even infants can tell the difference between naughty and nice playmates, and know which to choose, a new study finds."
~ Trauma Earlier In Life May Affect Response To Stress Years Later -- "Researchers have known for years that psychological trauma that results in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression can change how a person responds to stress. Now, Cornell researchers report that rapes, sudden deaths of loved ones, life-threatening accidents and other such traumas may result in long-term changes even if the survivor doesn't develop a clinical disorder."
~ Brain Fitness: How to Improve Your Thinking Ability -- "One of the greatest resources you have is the biocomputer between your ears: your mind. Consequently, one the best investments you can make is honing your thinking ability. This will potentially brings you great rewards in life. While the mind is not everything (things like relationships and spirituality also play important role), it is perhaps one of the most neglected."
~ 3 doors to instant relaxation -- "I have found that there are 3 quick and reliable doors to relaxation. Try these any time you are stressed to the max and need to relax."
~ This Wednesday: Twelve tips for stopping the buzz in your brain -- "The problem is – too many things are clamoring for your attention. People are trying to reach you, by phone, email, text or IM. There are the interesting subjects you want to learn more about, on the TV or the internet or the newspaper. Noises in the background occasionally catch your ear, from the TV or radio. Your kids all talk at the same time. Colleagues interrupt. You need to update, check in, post, or ping. Ads jump at you from the most unlikely places. Devices ping, buzz, ring, and vibrate."
~ SAD Comparable to Major Depressive Disorder -- "It’s common to feel depressed when the weather turns cold and dark, but seasonal affective disorders (SAD), which affects an estimated 5% of the population, causes serious emotional and cognitive changes that can be helped through treatment."
~ Thanksgiving and the Stories We Tell Ourselves -- "I’ve talked before about how stories are powerful ways of encapsulating and passing on information — but they do more than that. Stories give shape to and direct emotion, passion, and behavior. They help us to grapple with experience and extract meaning from it."
~ Holiday Ritual or Rerun? -- "Discover the meaning in your family's rituals."
~ Sustainable Happiness: Why It's All About the Day-to-Day -- "It's one of the great paradoxes of life that we all want to be happy, yet so few of us seem to know exactly where happiness comes from. Happiness itself can be defined in many different ways, it may have all kinds of components, it may be a life's work, or even no work at all, but we are, most of us, in pursuit of this elusive goal."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The End of America? Naomi Wolf Thinks It Could Happen -- "An interview with author Naomi Wolf, whose new book, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot," may confirm your worries about democracy in America."
~ The hoofbeat of horses -- "Virgil's epic, Aeneid, has been given a dynamic new translation by Frederick Ahl, says Sean O'Brien."
~ CONTEMPORARY POETICS: Redefining the Boundaries of Contemporary Poetics, in Theory & Practice, for the Twenty-First Century -- "Exploring the boundaries of one of the most contested fields of literary study--a field that in fact shares territory with philology, aesthetics, cultural theory, philosophy, and even cybernetics--this volume gathers a body of critical writings that, taken together, broadly delineate a possible poetics of the contemporary. In these essays, the most interesting and distinguished theorists in the field renegotiate the contours of what might constitute "contemporary poetics," ranging from the historical advent of concrete poetry to the current technopoetics of cyberspace."
~ Flying Spaghetti Monster Inspires Wonky Religious Debate -- "To a group of earnest academics who study faith, the Flying Spaghetti Monster -- the spiritual icon of a new internet-based religion -- is more than just a spicy pop-culture dish. They use words like "didactic device" to describe the beloved but carb-heavy god of Pastafarianism. They say the FSM is cloaked in a "folk-humor hybrid body," and reveals a web-fueled movement toward "open source theology" that challenges existing beliefs."
~ Waging war on the sublime -- "A David Moody's life of Ezra Pound is, at last, the ambitious, energetic biography the poet deserves, says Andrew Motion." This book covers Pound's early years, before he went nuts.
~ A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, reviewed -- "Schulz's mantra, his explanation of why Charlie Brown never got to kick the football in his endless and lopsided power play with Lucy, was "happiness is not funny," which sounds reasonable enough. Witnessing the principle in action last night inspired some ready-made nostalgia and some ritualized pleasure. It affirmed the conviction that Charlie Brown is not just a good man, but a beautiful loser."
~ Truth Teller -- "It takes a libertarian Republican to shame Democrats into acknowledging the true cost of this war for ordinary Americans." That would be Ron Paul, for those in a coma the past few months.
~ The Online Beat: Scott McClellan = John Dean? -- "McClellan's admission that he spoke falsely on Karl Rove's involvement in the CIA link scandal could be Bush's undoing."
~ The Best and Brightest 2007 -- "This year's batch of honorees aren't merely curing cancer, saving schools, remaking music, and creating synthetic life -- they give us reasons for hope, too."
~ SCOTT HORTON—U.S. Seeks to Prosecute Pulitzer Prize-Winning A.P. Photographer -- "Reports out since Monday note that the United States Department of Defense will seek to have criminal charges brought against Bilal Hussein, an Associated Press photographer who belonged to a team that won the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for photographs of the war in Iraq. Hussein’s contribution to the package included a series of arresting photographs of close up fighting from the assault on Falluja. . . ." He's been in custody more than 18 months without any charges being filed -- his lawyers can't even prepare to defend him because they can't get any information on what Hussein is alleged to have done (other than having the wrong last name).
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Embryonic stem cells made without embryos -- "Researchers have transformed ordinary human skin cells into batches of cells that look and act like embryonic stem cells -- but without using cloning technology and without making embryos."
~ Mars' Molten Past -- "Mars was covered in an ocean of molten rock for about 100 million years after the planet formed, researchers from the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas, UC Davis, and NASA's Johnson Space Center have found."
~ The early relatives of flowering plants -- "The emergence of flowering plants is regarded as a major botanical mystery. In today`s edition of the scientific magazine Nature, an international research team with participation from the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) publishes results that shed fresh light on this controversial question. New three-dimensional non-destructive imaging procedures have been used for the first time to carry out investigations into fossilised plant seeds. As a result, it has been possible to confirm an earlier scientific theory, which had previously been cast into doubt by molecular genetic analyses."
~ Trivia time: Tom Turkey, T. rex related -- "The modern-day turkey on American tables and the extinct Tyrannosaurus rex have one thing in common: their wishbone."
~ Preserve established for bonobos -- "Congo has established a rain-forest preserve to protect the bonobo from deforestation and poachers, government officials said."
~ 3-D Photonic Crystals Will Revolutionize Telecommunications -- "Smaller, faster, more efficient: Research scientists are helping to revolutionize the future world of telecommunications -- with the aid of 3-D photonic crystals."
~ Buckyball birth observed by Sandia nanotech researcher -- "Almost everyone in the scientific community has heard of buckyballs, but no one until Sandia`s Jianyu Huang has seen one being born."
~ Riddle of the jade jewels reveals vast trade arena -- "Analysing the origins of jade used in ancient jewellery has revealed a trading arena that was active for more than 3,000 years and sprawled over 3,000km in Southeast Asia - possibly the largest such network discovered in the region to date."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Announcing 2008 TED Prize winners -- "The TED Prize was introduced in 2005, and it is unlike any other award. Although the winners receive a prize of $100,000 each, the real prize is that they are granted a WISH. "A wish to change the world." There are no formal restrictions on the wish. We ask our winners to think big and to be creative. The goal is that it creates an incredible sense of excitement and common purpose. It inspires the TED community, and all those who hear about the wish, to offer their help in making the wish come true." -- This year's (2007) winners. The 2008 winners are very cool.
~ Fire Rituals -- "I posted the other day about visiting Buddha Dendo in the mountains in northern California. On the site there is a new building, a goma-do. This is for the performance of the fire ritual, the goma, that is part of esoteric Buddhism in Japan. You will find it in both Shingon and Tendai Buddhism and also within the Shugendo practices that have connections to both Shingon and Tendai. Most people outside of Japan are not familiar with the Japanese goma ritual."
~ Living My Deepest Realization -- "Yesterday I wrote about a man's deepest realization with an adaptation from the book Intimate Communion by David Deida. Today I'm writing about what it means to me, personally, to live that deepest realization."
~ Vestments -- "Aside from those attached to my car, I own two mirrors. One hangs by the bathroom sink, a mirror just large enough to give me the image of my face and hair. The other is a full-length mirror stored in the back of a bedroom closet."
~ Ego Development: 9 Levels of Increasing Embrace -- "In this paper Susanne Cook-Greuter outlines her theory of ego development. Cook-Greuter's research on mature adult development has contributed strongly to Ken Wilber's AQAL model."
~ "I may skip reincarnation this time", says Dalai Lama -- "Comments in Japan come on the heels of a recent order by China that it must approve Tibet's future spiritual leaders. Tokyo, Japan -- The Dalai Lama is floating the idea of breaking a centuries-old Tibetan Buddhist tradition by naming his successor or letting monks elect the next spiritual leader, according to news reports."
~ And With Delight: Integral Spirituality, Reflections, Meditations, Offerings & Thoughts on Integral Christianity -- "The following essay is a personal attempt to contribute to the movement of “integral spirituality” through explorations of the literature, descriptions of the tasks necessary for delight and ways of facilitating spiritual growth in the larger community."
~ 'Milarepa' a philosophical, familiar pleasure -- " Most of us, sitting down to watch a film about Tibetan Buddhism, have certain expectations. We think we have a good idea of what we're about to see: scenic mountain villages, prayer flags fluttering above brutal mountainsides and calm, clear-eyed believers blessed with infinite forgiveness and inner peace. 'Milarepa' delivers on the first two counts but pulls the proverbial rug out from under the third."
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