"Art is science made clear."
~ Jean Cocteau
Image of the day (Yanaar Lee):
BODY
~ Shredded at Last -- "Despite the backlash against cardio, Dr. C thinks you ought to be slapped around if you're not doing it. In fact a little cardio, along with his prescription for carb cycling, might be all you need to get shredded."
~ Einstein Researchers: Do National Dietary Guidelines Do More Harm Than Good? -- "For nearly three decades, Americans have become accustomed to hearing about the latest dietary guidelines, which are required by federal regulation to be revised and reissued at five-year intervals. Mid-way to the drafting of the 2010 guidelines, researchers at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University raise questions about the benefits of federal dietary guidelines, and urge that guideline writers be guided by explicit standards of evidence to ensure the public good."
~ Study: Fewer Intense Workouts, More Recovery for Maximum Performance -- "How much time should you spend working at your maximum level in your sport, compared to miles or days spent going at a relaxed pace?"
~ How to Add 100 Pounds to Your Squat in 13 Weeks -- "Smolov is a Russian strength training routine designed by Master of Sports S.Y. Smolov. Smolov is guaranteed to increase your Squat. Increases of up to 100lbs in 13 weeks are possible. Here’s the full routine." This is for advanced lifters only.
~ The Missing Link Between Belly Fat And Heart Disease? -- "By now, everyone knows that overweight people have a higher risk of heart attacks, strokes and other problems that arise from clogged, hardened arteries. And people who carry their extra weight around their waist giving them a "beer belly" or an "apple" shape -- have the highest risk of all. But despite the impact on human health, the reasons behind this connection between heart disease and belly fat also known as visceral fat -- have eluded scientists."
~ High vitamin C level linked to decreased stroke risk -- "A person's level of vitamin C may predict his or her likelihood of having a stroke, according to a long-term study of some 20,000 middle-aged and older residents of Norfolk, United Kingdom."
~ Crunching numbers at the gym -- "Is it OK to exercise beyond your target heart rate? Should you work out in the "fat-burning zone" to lose more weight? Smart Fitness answers your workout queries." Good answers.
~ Great Fat Burning Workout -- "Many people this time of year would love to burn more fat and the best way to do this is through a great fat burning workout. There are three kinds of workouts. There is a weight lifting workout where you are slowly conserving energy and trying to gain muscle. There is a cardio workout where you are burning all of the glycogen in your muscles and hopefully some fat as well and there is a Circuit training workout that will help you burn fat really quickly while gaining some muscle at the same time." This will only work if you push hard and can do 3-4 giant sets.
~ Drugs Used To Treat Rheumatoid Arthritis May Have Hidden Benefits -- "Powerful drugs used to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis have a profound, previously unrecognized effect on the immune system, breaking up molecular "training camps" for rogue cells that play an increasingly recognized role in autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis and lupus."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Light therapy may help women with bipolar disorder -- "Bright light therapy can relieve depression in some women with bipolar disorder, a study shows."
~ Memory loss linked to loss of imagination -- "While most children can easily imagine themselves as astronauts, athletes or superheroes, make-believe might not be so easy for the kids' grandparents."
~ Are There Benefits To Having Depression? Specialist In Neuroscience And Emotion Offers Radical New Approach To The Condition. New Book -- "Depression affects huge numbers of people. One in four of us suffer from it at some point in our lives; one in ten will in the next year, and about one in twenty of us is living with the condition right now. Dr Paul Keedwell argues that, although depression is unpleasant and sometimes unbearable, it can have some long term benefits both for individuals and possibly for us as a species."
~ Misreading the mind -- "The success of modern neuroscience represents the triumph of a method: reductionism. The premise of reductionism is that the best way to solve a complex problem -- and the brain is the most complicated object in the known universe -- is to study its most basic parts. The mind, in other words, is just a particular trick of matter, reducible to the callous laws of physics. But the reductionist method, although undeniably successful, has very real limitations."
~ 6 Self-Help Books for Depression Recommended by Experts -- "There are many, many self-help books for depression around these days, but which ones do experts recommend and which ones work? Liz Anderson from the University of Bristol and colleagues examined the use of self-help books for treating depression (Anderson et al., 2005). They found six books that were recommended by experts, although only one book had evidence for its effectiveness."
~ How Quickly We Forget: The Transience of Memory -- "This is an example of what Harvard psychologist Daniel L. Schacter calls the first deadly sin of memory: transience (Schacter, 1999). Transience can be seen in both short- and long-term memory. Short-term memory, for psychologists, means the things that are in your mind right now, and only those things. On the other hand long-term memory is anything you store to be retrieved at a later time. Studies have shown that both types of memory can be extremely fragile over their respective timescales." There's also medium-term memory, which I hope to be blogging about soon.
~ Letting Go, Opening Up and Discovering – The Path to Serenity -- "It’s easy, however, to say we want to lead a life free of stress and anxiety, but achieving it is something altogether different. In our modern world it seems that stress and anxiety are part of everyday life. We are constantly being asked to do more with less, the evening news is full of chaos and unrest, and it seems that respect of our elders, ourselves, and of others has been tossed out the window."
~ The Power of Ritual: Conquer Procrastination, Time Wasters and Laziness -- "Life is wasted in the in-between times. The time between when your alarm first rings and when you finally decide to get out of bed. The time between when you sit at your desk and when productive work begins. The time between making a decision and doing something about it. Slowly your day is whittled away from all the unused in-between moments. The solution to reclaim these lost middle moments is by creating rituals."
~ Why Does My Partner Treat Me Like This? -- "The eternal cry of the broken heart; the eternal cry of the emotionally abused person; the eternal cry of the person who feels the pain, the frustration, the jealousy, the violent emotions that are the result of living with someone who treats them in ways that are less than loving."
~ A Comparison Between Gay And Heterosexual Couples Finds Equal Level Of Commitment And Relationship Satisfaction -- "Same-sex couples are just as committed in their romantic relationships as heterosexual couples, say researchers who have studied the quality of adult relationships and healthy development. Their finding disputes the stereotype that couples in same-sex relationships are not as committed as their heterosexual counterparts and are therefore not as psychologically healthy."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Ghettoizing Barack -- "But the damage has been done. And reviewing the returns from Nevada and the polls in South Carolina, it may be irreversible. Barack is no longer a crossover candidate who transcends race. The color-blind coalition he seemed to be assembling appears to be coming apart."
~ The Taste of Silence -- "For Heidegger, more than any other philosopher, looked to poetry as a model of what thinking should be. He used individual poems, especially the hymns of Hölderlin, to help explicate his own ideas about nature, technology, art, and history. He constantly dwelled on the mysteries of language and translation, how the way we name things can reveal and conceal their essence. And he himself approached writing in a poetic spirit."
~ The Pursuit of the Blissful -- "There are 22 countries that are happier than America. One man visited them to understand why."
~ Clinton-Obama Debate Mudslinging Splatters Onto Web -- "A barbed exchange Between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama hits the internet, and Clinton launches a post-debate barrage against Obama on her campaign site."
~ Art attack -- "We are living through an exciting time for political art. I have been an artist for 40 years, and my work has always focused on political and social issues. In the 1970s, I started making photo montage work, drawing on imagery from the Vietnam War and the row over nuclear armaments (a retrospective opens at the Pump House Gallery this month). Since the build-up to the Iraq War in 2002, I have been collaborating with a younger artist, Cat Picton Phillipps, developing new techniques and using digital technology to expose the lies that led to the invasion and the subsequent humanitarian disaster."
~ Jim Wallis: Why I Wrote "The Great Awakening" -- "God's Politics called on people to take back their faith after it had been "hijacked" by the Religious Right. Millions of Christians have done just that, and now the question is what are we going to do with our faith, now that we have it back? My new book, The Great Awakening: Reviving Faith and Politics in a Post-Religious Right America, addresses that question."
~ God's Profits: Faith, Fraud and the GOP Crusade for Values Voters -- "A look into the shady finances and manipulative politics of America's leading televangelist hucksters."
~ An Open Letter to Ralph Nader -- "Ralph Nader is thinking of running for president again. Here’s an open letter from me to him, reflecting my own views, not TMV’s."
~ How Do We "Fix" the Inherent Problems With Elections? -- "I don't know how you change the election laws to make things any different. The great paradox of politics is that the set of skills and talents it takes to win a campaign are decidedly different than the set of skills and talents it takes to govern."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Utah Scientist: Dust Shortening Winters -- "Western winters are getting shorter because of dust kicked up by urban and agricultural development, a University of Utah researcher said."
~ Pigmentation In Some Butterfly Wings Created By Nanostructures -- "Nowhere in nature is there so much beautiful color as on the wings of butterflies. Scientists, however, are still baffled about exactly how these colors are created. One young scientist has been examining the structure of the surface of the wings of the cabbage white and other butterflies in great detail. He notes that the colors on butterfly wings are created in two different ways: via pigments and via nanostructures on the scales, which ensure that light is distributed in ways that are sometimes spectacular."
~ International effort to catalog complete DNA of 1,000 people -- "Researchers on three continents will join together to catalog the genomes of 1,000 people in an ambitious project that they hope will help determine genetic roots and factors for human disease, the group announced Tuesday."
~ Newly discovered active fault building new Dalmatian Islands off Croatian coast -- "A newly identified fault that runs under the Adriatic Sea is actively building more of the famously beautiful Dalmatian Islands and Dinaride Mountains of Croatia, according to a new research report."
~ Forests could benefit when fall color comes late -- "Do those fall colors seem to show up later and later—if at all? Scientists say we can blame increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for prolonging the growing season of the trees. And that may actually be good news for forestry industries."
~ EPA takes the Fifth [Effect Measure] -- "Recently we posted on the EPA highly unusual (as in unprecedented) decision to reject Californian's new greenhouse gas regulations. Why did they do it? Good question and one the California Congressional delegation wanted an answer to. To whom did EPA talk about the regulations? Who advised them to reject it? Sorry. Mum's the word."
~ Endangered Gharial Deaths Pose Mystery -- "The crocodile-like reptiles have suffered a die-off in an Indian sanctuary."
~ New Contact Lenses Go Bionic -- "Researchers have taken the first step toward bionic eyes.
~ Bizarre Amphibians Found Living on the Edge -- "A zoological society announced the 10 most unusual and threatened amphibians."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ Fame & Disrepute -- "In the Buddhist tradition, there is an interesting teaching that the Buddha gave on what he called the eight worldly vicissitudes (or eight worldly dharmas). These vicissitudes have to do with the way life actually is, and they contain 4 pairs of opposites, namely 1) praise and blame 2) gain and loss 3) pleasure and pain and 4) fame and disrepute. It’s this last pair that I want to focus on, especially as it regards the media business, and my own limited experience with it being a host of a semi-popular urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/www.buddhistgeeks.com');">podcast."
~ Two Films -- "It was a strange pairing, I have to say. We had DVDs of two movies, and watched them one after the other on Saturday evening: No Country For Old Men, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
~ Suicide, Faith, and Compassion -- "Martin Luther is said to have made waves early in his career by performing a Christian burial for a young boy who committed suicide. Five hundred years later, some churches, including many Protestant ones—Luther’s theological heirs—do not follow his example of valuing compassion for suicide victims and their loved ones over dogma."
~ WHY WRITE? -- "An art work consists of encoded information, it is an object with an independent subject on either end. But the transmission is oriented in a certain direction. Feedback is indeed critical in this relationship (especially in performance contexts) but the transmission originates with the artist. The integral artist is concerned with the overall fidelity of that transmission; not just in sound or line or color, but also the information component."
~ Rage Against The Cosmic Machine – More Dreams and Visions -- "For those of you who might wonder if there is any way to fight the Cosmic Machine, if there is any place for rebellion and dissidence in the face of our vast multi-dimensional universe of form and structure, I offer the following Dream-Vision I had about 15 years ago. I think it sheds some light on quite a few matters, including this whole reincarnation scam we are stuck in."
~ Authenticity (and a review of 2007) -- "Looking back at much of what I have written since 2005, and focusing specifically on what I posted in 2007, a common theme that emerges is authenticity. So here is a brief and absurdly inadequate selection of examples of this theme taken from the last calendar year for those who haven't been slavishly following everything I post."
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