"Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant."
~ Scott Adams
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Nutrition for Newbies, Part 1 -- "The fantastic series on bodybuilding for newbies (and crusty vets who could use a reminder) continues with Christian's take on nutrition. Just about everything you need to know is here. Just add salt (but not too much)."
~ Exercise More Important than Weight Loss for Diabetes Prevention -- "Exercise is even more important than weight loss for prevention or control of diabetes, according to a report from the Australian National University in Canberra. Dr. Richard Telford concludes that obesity is associated with, but does not cause, diabetes, heart disease and premature death."
~ Starting Strength 2nd Edition Book Review -- "In 2004 Mark Rippetoe & Lon Kilgore wrote Starting Strength. It was the first book that not only taught you how to do an exercise correctly, but also why you’re doing it wrong & how to fix it. Starting strength became a reference. Three years later Mark Rippetoe & Lon Kilgore release Starting Strength 2nd Edition. I pre-ordered the book in August 2007 & received it last week. Here’s a review of Starting Strength 2nd edition."
~ Increased Injury Risk When Energy Drinks Mixed With Alcohol -- "College students who drink alcohol mixed with so-called "energy" drinks are at dramatically higher risk for injury and other alcohol-related consequences, compared to students who drink alcohol without energy drinks, according to new research from Wake Forest University School of Medicine."
~ Yoga found to boost health in heart failure patients -- "An eight-week regimen of yoga proved safe for patients with chronic heart failure and helped reduce signs of inflammation often linked with death, according to a study released on Monday."
~ NSAIDs Protect Against Parkinson's Disease (HealthDay) -- "Taking over-the-counter pain medicines called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) may reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, according to a study by researchers at the UCLA School of Public Health in Los Angeles."
~ Antioxidants Could Protect Against Nuclear Radiation -- "Scientists say that antioxidants found in whole grains and high-fiber foods can protect against radiation from sunlight and even nuclear bombs."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Soul Pseudoexplanations -- "Out of this divorce between mechanism and experience came mind-body dualism and the conceptualization of a motivating 'soul' beneath physiological mechanisms. Dualism is the 'common sense' idea that some kind of supernatural mechanism is intimately connect to and drives the physical. Dualism is a soul-of-the-perceptual-gap pseudoexplanation."
~ Why Groups and Prejudices Form So Easily: Social Identity Theory -- "People's behaviour in groups is fascinating and frequently disturbing. As soon as humans are bunched together in groups we start to do odd things: copy other members of our group, favour members of own group over others, look for a leader to worship and fight other groups. Just glance at Sherif's Robbers Cave experiment for proof of how easy it is to provoke war between groups."
~ Is the developing world better for schizophrenia? -- "One of the most commonly repeated facts about schizophrenia is that people diagnosed with the condition tend to do better in developing countries, rather than in rich Western countries. A new study has reviewed outcome studies from low and middle-income countries across the world and found the picture just isn't that clear."
~ Dream Symbols 21: Animals (2) Fleeing From a Pre-Historic Creature -- "As previously said, animals may have to do with our not-yet explored instinctual (and often sexual) nature. If an animal is furthermore pre-historic, we may have a deeply primordial, chthonic (embedded in the depths) aspect of our psyche on hand. How this plays out, depends, of course, not only on the dream, but also on the dreamer and his or her life and understanding of the self to that point."
~ Love After Loss -- "When a boyfriend suffers grief and loss."
~ Coping with Grief -- "Grieving is not the same for everyone."
~ The Key to Archetypes -- "Carol Pearson & Hugh Marr's guidebook interprets the results of the Pearson-Marr Archetype Indicator test. It brings Jung's archetypes & psychological types to life!"
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Twenty years ago today -- " So the “Music” chapter is the most difficult one for young fans of The Closing Of The American Mind—because it’s the point at which you realize just how much Allan Bloom means it. And by “young fans,” I mean anyone under the age of Mick Jagger, who features heavily in that section." This is an excellent article -- see Matthew Dallman for a critique.
~ Suffering, Evil and the Existence of God -- "Now two new books (to be published in the coming months) renew the debate. Their authors come from opposite directions – one from theism to agnosticism, the other from atheism to theism – but they meet, or rather cross paths, on the subject of suffering and evil."
~ Permanent Adolescents Go Public -- "P.J. O'Rourke in the Weekly Standard writes only half in jest of the coming drain on Social Security: "How can present Social Security allotments be expected to fund our sky-diving, bungee-jumping, hang gliding and white-water rafting, our skiing, golf and scuba excursions, our photo safaris to Africa, bike tours of Tuscany and sojourns at Indian ashrams, our tennis clinics, spa treatments, gym memberships and personal fitness training, our luxury cruises to the Galapagos and Antarctica, the vacation homes in Hilton Head and Vail, the lap pools, Jacuzzis, and clay courts being built thereat and the his and hers Harley-Davidsons?" The political implications are immense."
~ Literature and History: A Response -- "A recent post at Pinky's Paperhaus entitled "The backwards academic," muses critically on the backward-looking focus of the GRE subject exam in English literature, required for applicants to English department Ph.D. programs, and, in Pinky's case, Ph.D. programs in Creative Writing." This post is essentially a defense of the depth and history focus of the GRE test -- and I agree.
~ Thompson Adviser Quits Campaign -- "An adviser to Republican Fred Thompson quit the presidential candidate's campaign Monday, one day after a report about his decades-old criminal record for drug dealing."
~ Wavering Republicans -- "Party faithful are upset with Bush, but a Clinton nomination may bring them together."
~ Can Musharraf Keep His Grip on Pakistan? -- "The declaration of emergency fuels an angry backlash—and anxieties in Washington."
~ Iraq: Nearly 2.3 Million Displaced -- "Nearly 2.3 million Iraqis - the vast majority of them women and children - have fled their homes but remain inside the country's borders and are in urgent need of basic care, according to a report issued Monday by the Iraqi Red Crescent."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Goodbye Selfish-Gene: A New Upheaval in the Science of Human Behavior -- "Well, it seems that the father of sociobiology, E.O. Wilson has changed his mind: in the current issue of New Scientist (November 3, 2007), evolutionary biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson effectively end the hegemony of the selfish gene idea: they review the field and declare in a voice loud and clear that group selection was mistakenly cast aside during previous decades, that the evidence for group selection is too strong to be ignored, and that the current ideas about how evolution works need to be revised."
~ Mars Express Probes The Red Planet's Most Unusual Deposits -- "The radar system on ESA's Mars Express has uncovered new details about some of the most mysterious deposits on Mars: The Medusae Fossae Formation. It has given the first direct measurement of the depth and electrical properties of these materials, providing new clues about their origin."
~ Cirrus Disappearance: Warming Might Thin Heat-trapping Clouds -- "The widely accepted (albeit unproven) theory that manmade global warming will accelerate itself by creating more heat-trapping clouds is challenged by new research. Instead of creating more clouds, individual tropical warming cycles that served as proxies for global warming saw a decrease in the coverage of heat-trapping cirrus clouds."
~ Scientists warn that species extinction could reduce productivity of plants on Earth by half -- "An international team of scientists has published a new analysis showing that as plant species around the world go extinct, natural habitats become less productive and contain fewer total plants - - a situation that could ultimately compromise important benefits that humans get from nature."
~ When Birds Get Lost, Experience Counts -- "A learned map of their migration keeps adult birds on track, but juveniles stay lost."
~ Three New Exo-planets Discovered -- "Three new extrasolar planets have been discovered. The planets orbit around stars similar to our Sun that are located at a distance of 850 light-years away from the Earth. Two are in the constellation of Phoenix visible only from the Southern hemisphere, while the third is in the Northern constellation of Lyra."
~ WCS study finds potential to double tiger numbers in South Asia -- "Researchers at the Wildlife Conservation Society and other institutions declare that improvements in management of existing protected areas in South Asia could double the number of tigers currently existing in the region."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Deepak Chopra: A CAT-Scan of the Global Brain (Part 3) -- "Trying to understand the global brain with the same objectivity that science explores the human brain is difficult, because every society is enmeshed in the global brain. None of us occupies a privileged position outside and apart. Our personal perceptions are often overwhelmed by influences from collective consciousness -- this is why so few people are able to separate themselves from fear of terrorism, for example, and why the vast majority don't even try. Yet the more objectively we observe the global brain, the more understanding it yields."
~ Hannah’s screening, tonight -- "Excited to report that Hannah has her first screening of her newest film this evening. The film is called Small Comforts. It runs 10 minutes. The screening takes place at Columbia College Chicago, along with four other films (made by her colleagues in the Directing III class). A medium-sized theater used for screenings of student films. But still, a big screen with theater-quality sound."
~ The Radical Spirituality of Generation X, Part 16: Where Soma Meets Soul: Body Stories from Within -- "Some say the soul transcends this mundane body, but I say the body is the transmutation of soul into dense fleshy form. Rather than profane, the body, the soma, is literally a medium of sacred transmission, the organic venue for the soul's voice. In our reaching, our holding, in our opening and closing, in each expansion and contraction within the pulse of a heartbeat or the rhythm of a breath, is the physiological signature of the soul."
~ What the Critics of the New Atheists Don't See -- "Overall, Dalrymple's essay is a good read. As he pointed out, intentionality, meaning, and purpose seem to have taken a back seat in the recent books by the New Atheists because of their focus on the bad side of religion and their often sarcastic, confrontational, and polemic tones. However, as Sam Harris had pointed out in his rebuttal to Dalyrmple...."
~ YET AGAIN MORE SNAPPY ANSWERS and MORE SNAPPY ANSWERS TO STUPID QUESTIONS* -- Brad Warner -- "I thought I’d try and answer a couple more e-mail questions."
~ Book Review: Basic Teachings of the Buddha by Glenn Wallis -- "Wallis is an associate professor of religion at Georgia and has a PhD in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard. The book he has written cuts through cliched translations of Buddhist terminology and popular assumtions of what practicing the dharma means, revealing the Buddha's teachings as a highly rational and pragmatic methodology based on direct, empirical, personal experience."
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Don't remember who said it but:
ReplyDelete"Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish, and he eats steak!"