"In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress."
~ John Adams
Image of the day (John Craig):
BODY
~ Tips for Longer, Healthier Living -- "With chronic disease such as high blood pressure, diabetes and obesity on the rise, so are many guys’ concerns about living a longer, happier life. There are certain things you can do every day to live a longer, healthier, more fulfilling life. Here are some tips on staying healthy and fit."
~ Preparing for Battle -- "If you need to decide what to eat, track down those foods in the proper amounts, and then finally take a bite — the chances of you skipping that meal are much higher. Here's how to take the thinking out of eating."
~ A Warm Welcome to 2008 From Fortress! -- "Fortress thinks people who make New Year's Resolutions are, well, "ass clowns." He'd prefer the SOBs just fail miserably; smoke more, drink more, become fat and weak, and lose more money on online betting sites."
~ Fitness: They’re Playing My Song. Time to Work Out -- "There is a rough science to choosing performance-enhancing music." To each his/her own, but for me, it's aggressive, angry metal -- cathartic as well as boosting hormone levels.
~ The Latest Diet Books: Recipe for Success? -- "ALL of the popular diet books and programs, regardless of the "scientific" explanations they give, recommend menus that give you 1500-1800 calories or less per day. For most people this means you will be taking in fewer calories. You can lose weight on ANY OF THEM, but ask yourself: Is this a way of eating I can follow for the rest of my life? (If not, you will regain the weight as soon as you go back to your old eating habits.)"
~ Study Results Provide Surprise Benefits Of Cholesterol -- "If you're worried about high cholesterol levels and keeping heart-healthy as you get older, don't push aside bacon and eggs just yet. A new study says they might actually provide a benefit. Researchers at Texas A&M University have discovered that lower cholesterol levels can actually reduce muscle gain with exercising." I've had this issue. So I adjusted my fat intake to 1/3 monounsaturated, 1/3 polyunsaturated, and 1/3 saturated (where we get cholesterol), to good results.
~ You Are What You Eat - Benefits of Superfoods -- "Do you know that "an apple a day can keep the doctor away"? Well that's what this famous saying indicates. Now maybe it won't keep the doctor away completely but it sure has some tremendous health benefits. It's considered by Dr. Steven Pratt, MD to be a "superfood." A "superfood" is a whole food. And whole foods are foods that are unprocessed or are minimally processed in such a way that none of the nutritional characteristics have been intentionally modified."
~ Cranberries have medicinal qualities -- "Many know cranberry juice can help prevent urinary tract infections, but an Israeli researcher says the tart berry has other medicinal qualities."
~ Diet affects older men's weight training success -- "Getting enough protein and moderate amounts of fat from food may help older men's muscles respond better to weight training, a study suggests." It's silly that they still have to do studies to reveal the obvious.
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Do We Have a Natural Bias Toward Superstitions? -- "A top British psychologist is attempting to explain the biological basis for superstitions."
~ Anxious babies have more bad dreams as preschoolers -- "Preschoolers' odds of having nightmares may be related to their temperament as infants, which may be noticed as early as 5 months old, new research suggests."
~ Study Finds Link Between Bipolar Disorder and Later Substance Abuse -- "In a study published in the January issue of the journal Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers interviewed subjects over a period of 20 years in order to discover connections between mood disorders and alcohol, cannabis, and benzodiazephine abuse and dependence. They found a strong association between bipolar disorder as well as sub-threshold mania and subsequent use of all the substances included in the study."
~ Did You Know? -- "Fast facts on antioxidants, depression, and multitasking."
~ 11 Tips to Carve Out More Time to Think -- "How much time do you get a week to just think? Not while listening to music, driving your car or during group brainstorms. Not while playing video games, doing chores or taking a shower. Just you and your brain."
~ The Great American Meditation Challenge Transforming 100,000 American Minds -- "One Oregon woman is challenging Americans to transform their relationship to the idea of "waiting" by turning waiting rooms across the country into meditation rooms. She has launched a nationwide campaign called the "Don't Wait - Meditate Challenge" to help people across the America utilize the estimated 42-50 mts a day that they spend waiting for miscellaneous events to happen."
~ How to Write a Personal Mission Statement to Make 2008 Your Best Year Ever -- "2008 is here and it is time to take a personal inventory to make this year your most productive year ever. You may be asking yourself, “How am I going to do that?” You, my friends, are going to write personal mission statements."
~ Psychoanalysis And Medications -- "As Americans increasingly seek a "quick fix" to physical and mental ailments, psychoanalysts can be caught in the crossfire of a debate about the potential benefits and drawbacks of including medication in their treatment plans. A panel discussion entitled, "The Uses of Medications in Psychoanalysis: What We Know; What is Uncertain," will be led by internationally renowned psychoanalyst Glen O. Gabbard, M.D., at the American Psychoanalytic Association's 2008 Winter Meeting."
~ The psychology of the politics of fear -- "Newsweek has a fantastic article on the psychology and neuroscience behind the politics of fear which draws directly on examples from the current and past US elections."
~ Read A Good Book And Reduce Your Stress Levels -- "Whether the book you choose to read is one that will have you looking into the future world of Big Brother, going back to the days or prehistoric monsters, or the kind which will make you drift off with the sounds of small silver waves lapping on a white sandy beach, reading the book is sure to be a great help in reducing your stress levels."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War -- "The DoD is flirting with the idea of medicating soldiers to desensitize them to combat trauma -- will an army of unfeeling monsters result?" This is just plain scary.
~ New World Symphony and Discord -- "In the Gilded Age, a Czech visionary saw America's musical future in 'negro melodies'."
~ Democracy: inevitable no more -- By Madeleine K. Albright -- "In 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down, it appeared that the global debate had been settled in freedom's favor, yet almost two decades later, the struggle to define and defend self-government still rages on every continent. Indeed, a real danger exists that the world will again be split by competing ideologies, not communist versus capitalist but democratic versus autocratic."
~ Language past its use-by date -- "You can picture the scene. It's Friday evening at the Hilton Chicago, and Private Dining Room 2 is bustling with grammarians, etymologists, lexicographers and morphologists: America's linguistic elite are awaiting the announcement of the American Dialect Society's Word of the Year 2007 with barely contained excitement. As the moment gets nearer, the tension mounts. By the time the golden envelope appears it's hardly bearable. Then it's time, and the winner is ... " subprime!" The crowd goes wild."
~ Can Obama Build a Movement? -- "Democrats were supposed to return to the good old days of Clintonism, with its war rooms, relentless partisanship and parsing denials. But Hillary's version seems less compelling than her husband's -- a Clintonism without charm. And despite his loss to Clinton in New Hampshire on Tuesday, this has allowed Sen. Barack Obama to turn a coronation into a real race."
~ Consuming Our Way to Unhappiness -- "Our excessive consumption is trashing more than just the planet."
~ Kofi Annan to Lead Kenya Mediation -- "Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is taking over mediation in Kenya's disputed presidential election."
~ The Voter ID Fraud -- "Garrett Epps | Conservative Supreme Court justices are poised to uphold draconian ID requirements on voters that will redefine electoral politics in America."
~ An Old Democratic Fault Line -- "Beneath the profound novelties of this year's Democratic race lurk the same rifts that have characterized the party for 40 years. Breaking down New Hampshire's vote, the old divisions of class, and the sometime divisions of age, are plain to see."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ A Brief History of Infinity -- "The paradoxical twists and turns of infinity have baffled many great thinkers. The first person to truly come to grips with the concept was the remarkable Galileo Galilei."
~ Scientists riff on fabric of the universe -- "Their music may be the scourge of parents, but the thrashing guitars of heavy metal bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden could help explain the mysteries of the universe." If this was how they taught science when I was in high school, I'd probably be a physicist.
~ The Big Bang Wasn't the Beginning -- " What if the Big Bang wasn't the beginning of the universe, but only one stage in an endlessly repeated cycle of universal expansion and contraction? So suggests mathematical physicist and string theorist Neil Turok. He thinks there may be many universes, at once interpolated but separate, like a mixture of gases."
~ Study: Daily Visits to Video-Sharing Sites Double -- "The number of internet users checking out YouTube and similar sites jumps to 15 percent, according to a new study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project."
~ Math Trek: Small Infinity, Big Infinity -- "A mathematician develops a new proof showing that infinity comes in different sizes."
~ New X-ray Source In Nearby Galaxy Spawns Mystery -- "Astronomers studying a nearby galaxy have spied a rare type of star system -- one that contains a black hole that suddenly began glowing brightly with X-rays. Though this type of star system is supposed to be rare, it's the second such system discovered in that galaxy, called Centaurus A. The discovery suggests that astronomers have more to learn about the lives and deaths of massive stars in galaxies such as our own."
~ Feeling the Heat: Berkeley Researchers Make Thermoelectric Breakthrough in Silicon Nanowires -- "Energy now lost as heat during the production of electricity could be harnessed through the use of silicon nanowires synthesized via a technique developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy`s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley. The far-ranging potential applications of this technology include DOE`s hydrogen fuel cell-powered “Freedom CAR,” and personal power-jackets that could use heat from the human body to recharge cell-phones and other electronic devices."
~ Scientists: Earth Barely Supports Life -- "Without earthquakes, life on earth would cease to exist."
~ Fighting pollution the poplar way: Trees to clean up Indiana site -- "Purdue University researchers are collaborating with Chrysler LLC in a project to use poplar trees to eliminate pollutants from a contaminated site in north-central Indiana."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ Freedom Is Just Another Word For Freedom -- "In case anyone got the wrong idea, the purpose of this blog is not to give a blow-by-blow account of my experiments in the practice of self-inquiry, but simply to post whatever seems relevant to me in the course of attempting to immerse myself in this process. I'm not even sure how to describe self-inquiry in that way."
~ TEACHERS AND STUDENTS -- "The whole teacher/student thing is interesting to watch. At a big residential place like San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) where I've been staying for the past week or so, it's vital to keep some clear lines of demarcation between teachers and students."
~ "Mapping the Dharma"--A Book Review -- "If you are just a bit like me in these respects, there’s help for us in the form of a neat little book called “Mapping the Dharma: A Concise Guide to the Middle Way of the Buddha,” 2007, by Paul Gerhards. Gerhards sets out to provide 'a visual guide to the teachings—more a map than a text,' with the recognition that 'The Buddha said that a map is not a territory; it is merely a tool of discovery.'"
~ Studying Happiness -- "I’ve been spending much of my time over the past few weeks reading about happiness. My new course on the philosophy of happiness begins on Friday – with Aristotle – and so I’ve been putting in a fair amount of preparation. The course is designed to look at various approaches to happiness from the perspective of philosophy, the sciences and systems of practice such as Epicureanism, Stoicism, Taoism and Buddhism, and I hope that it will be a truly hands-on course, looking hard at the roots of happiness in our lives and trying to put these various philosophies to the test."
~ Buddhism as philosophy -- "In modern Western culture there is a tendency to suppose that certain questions are to be settled through the use of reasoning, while others can only be addressed through faith and feeling. This is the dichotomy between reason and faith, with reason seen as a matter of the head and faith a matter of the heart." The post presents an excellent Mark Siderits quote.
~ Red ~C Diary: So, Am I an Atheist? -- "With all my postings about religion, politics, atheism, and the New Atheists, I think it's time that I reflect on where I stand within the psycho-socio-spiritual spectrum."
~ A 5-Level Model of Youth Organizing -- "It is commonly know that human development and justice are limited by social divides. This is especially the case among economically disadvantaged children and youth. In order to address the complex issues and life conditions of youth everywhere a wide spectrum of non-profit and charitable organizations have emerged to try and address inequality and social deprivation."
~ The Complete English Translation of Great Master Dogen’s Shobogenzo -- "This is a remarkable achievement on the part of Rev. Hubert Nearman and the monastics of Shasta Abbey. I’ve read through Volume One, in which the first 11 chapters were published, many times but this complete translation makes another 85 chapters available. That’s over 1,100 freely downloadable pages of Great Master Dogen’s writing. I am speechless - which is good because I have a lot of reading to do." Great link -- I look forward to checking this out.
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