"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
~ Douglas Adams
Image of the day (Jim Goldstein):
BODY
~ The Risks and Benefits of Eating Seafood -- "Many people eat fish because it is low fat and contains oils that keep the heart healthy. Recently, however, there have been reports about high levels of mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, which may adversely affect your health. Should people consider giving up seafood, or is it still safe to eat it?"
~ Total-Body Perfection: Muscle Workouts -- "At this point, many of us are familiar with the idea of isolating certain muscle groups during our 4 and 5 day routines—sticking chest with triceps, biceps and back, shoulders and legs, whatever floats the boat. But after reading what Alwyn Cosgrove had to say about things in a recent Mens Health article, I’m beginning to rethink my approach. Cosgrove said, “Performing total-body workouts three times a week is the most effective way to gain muscle.” Whoa." I've been preaching this for years, because it's true.
~ An Expert's Secrets to Losing More Fat -- "Interested in losing more fat in less time and with less effort? Craig Ballantyne -- one of the world's top experts on healthy fat-burning -- provides 3 very useful tips for losing body fat in a faster, easier way. I always enjoy reading his stuff and I think you will too. Enjoy... 3 Ways to Lose More Fat from an Expert Fitness Trainer, By Turbulence Training author Craig Ballantyne."
~ Hungarian Oak Leg Blast -- "We don't have a picture of him in the article. We don't even know his name. But this alleged monster's training program was too compelling to pass up because of a technicality."
~ My Recent Fat Loss Training…again -- "I’ve been really surprised by all the curiosity as to how I dropped 13.5 pounds of fat in about 4 weeks (see My Training). I mentioned before that I pretty much followed the principles in Mike Roussell’s Your Naked Nutrition Guide with some minor personal modifications to adapt it to my current lifestyle, schedule, etc."
~ National Study Finds High Levels of Mercury in Tuna -- "The international conservation group Oceana has issued a report that found levels of mercury in fresh tuna in stores and restaurants across the United States that were as high as those reported yesterday in a New York Times article...."
~ Can Yogurt Really Boost Your Health? -- "A lawsuit says the health claims of so-called "probiotic" yogurts dupe consumers."
~ Statement On Use Of Sleep Medications From The American Academy Of Sleep Medicine -- "Insomnia occurs when people have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, and it is a common sleep complaint. While a brief case of insomnia can arise due to temporary stress, excitement or other emotion, more than 20 million Americans report having a chronic form of insomnia that keeps them from sleeping well nearly every night."
~ Chiropractic is Health Care, Not Disease Care -- "Chiropractors have always maintained that interfering with the transmission of the electro-chemical signals that connect your brain, the master control system for the human organism, to every organ and cell in your body has a detrimental effect on health."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Teaching Happiness, on the Web -- "Harvard makes its most popular course available online."
~ Using Music to Lift Depression’s Veil -- "Many people find that music lifts their spirits. Now new research shows that music therapy — either listening to or creating music with a specially trained therapist — can be a useful treatment for depression."
~ What you know, and how it's different from what you remember [Cognitive Daily] -- "We say that we know something because of a general sense that it is true, but we remember something because we recall a particular incident. Psychologists have actually been able to measure the distinction between the two, simply by asking test subjects whether they know or remember the answer to a question (and explaining what they mean by the two terms)."
~ Cognition and Emotion are not Separate [Pure Pedantry] -- "This review by Luiz Pessoa in Nature Neuroscience Reviews has to be the most intelligent things I have read in a long time. He argues that the notion that cognition and emotion are separable modules -- a notion that permeates the popular impression of the brain in our society (and more than a few scientific discussion) -- is fundamentally wrong...."
~ How to Be Happy, Confucian Style -- "In China two and half thousand years ago one man, Kong Qui, and his followers, synthesised the traditions of the Chinese people to create what they believed were the fundamental principles of humanity. Of course what Westerners now call Confucianism has changed over the years, just like the other major philosophies that have flourished in the East: Buddhism and Taoism. But to have survived this long, these systems of thought must have at their cores a useful set of principles that help people live the 'good life'."
~ Solitude vs Loneliness -- "Why one restores and the other destroys our mental health."
~ Neanderthink: Privacy Paradox -- "Our need to connect with others is stronger than ever."
~ Field Guide to the Loner: The Real Insiders -- "The introvert reaps secret joy from the solitary life."
~ The Extent Of Your Self-Control Depends On Your Personality Type -- "A new study from Northwestern introduces personality types used frequently in consumer research to the realm of self-improvement. People are motivated by one of two fundamental needs: they are either "promotion-focused," seeking products that will help them achieve hopes and aspirations, or they are "prevention-focused," seeking items that help achieve a need for safety and security."
~ He's Not as Smart as He Thinks -- "A British researcher reports that the male ego is often larger than his actual IQ. But you might be surprised by what women think of men's intellect."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ History, Amnesia, and the N Word -- "THE SUBJECT is small—a word. Yet the subject contained within the subject is immeasurable: racism American-style. It isn’t always a good idea to reduce vast social dimensions to a pithy cognomen—all the great “isms” are finally irreducible—but there are special cases, and when Jabari Asim asks us to examine American racism (particularly racism against black Americans) through the lens of a single word, it’s remarkable how much history he squeezes into the text."
~ One Culture, Two Culture, Three Culture, Four… -- "Coming from this background, of course I found myself intrigued by Jonah Lehrer’s clever little book, Proust Was a Neuroscientist, recently released by Houghton Mifflin. Some have argued that Lehrer overstates the case in claiming that a number of 19th and 20th century artists and writers anticipated the discoveries of modern neuroscience. But one can also read the book more modestly, as a catalogue of overlaps and resonances between thinkers working in vastly different arenas (or so we thought)."
~ Phoning It In -- "I can’t get my head around the article in the New York Times over the weekend on the craze for cellphone novels in Japan. Personally, I find it hard enough to write a novel using all ten fingers, so I’m struggling to imagine doing it with only two thumbs, then uploading it, serial style, to a website that reportedly contains one million such novels. That astonishing number, combined with the fact that cellphone novels published in book form made up five of Japan’s top ten bestsellers last year (including the three best selling books of the year), justifies calling this a trend."
~ The Future of Science . . . Is Art? -- "This view of science as the sole mediator of everything depends upon one unstated assumption: While art cycles with the fashions, scientific knowledge is a linear ascent. The history of science is supposed to obey a simple equation: Time plus data equals understanding. One day, we believe, science will solve everything.But the trajectory of science has proven to be a little more complicated."
~ Ari Melber: The Method to Bill Clinton's Meltdowns -- "But as Clinton knows, it doesn't even matter what people say, as long as they are talking about him and his latest attacks on Barack Obama. Like clockwork, these supposed outbursts give airtime to attacks while pulling attention away from Obama in the crucial, closing days of each primary." Sad, but true.
~ Is the Bush Stimulus Going to Help You? -- "There's a national economy, and then there's a 'people's economy.' Guess which one will see more 'relief.'"
~ The Resurrection of John McCain -- "He may be their only hope to win the White House, but John McCain still has to convince the GOP that he's one of them."
~ Kucinich Abandons White House Bid -- "Democratic presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich is abandoning his second bid for the White House. In an interview with Cleveland's Plain Dealer, the six-term congressman said he was quitting the race and would make a formal announcement on Friday."
~ How to Talk Foreign Policy -- "If the Democrats want to emerge from this primary ready to face Republicans in the general election, they need to find a cohesive, defensible way to talk about their foreign policy and how it differs from that of Republicans."
~ Some Things Even Obama Can't Transcend -- "Gary Younge | Bipartisanship is a hollow notion unless you define who you want to join forces with and why."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Redefining Genes -- "Will new revelations about RNA force us to rethink how our past affects future evolution?"
~ Here’s One Big Step Toward Artificial Life -- "Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Maryland have succeeded in synthesizing the complete genome of a bacterium, Mycoplasma genitalium. If the stitched DNA can be inserted into a cell that then replicates, it will appear to have met the criteria for the first "artificial life" form."
~ Space Odyssey -- "Virgin Galactic revealed the designs for its tourist spacecraft. A NASA expert critiques the effort."
~ Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn -- "Illinois startup Coskata says it can make ethanol out of almost anything for under a buck a gallon. Environmentalists and energy experts are cautiously optimistic that the company may be on to something."
~ Researchers Looking at Coral Threats -- "Even coral reefs thought to be pristine are facing challenges, researchers said Thursday launching the International Year of the Reef. The year of the reef is a "campaign to highlight the importance of coral reef ecosystems and to motivate people to protect them," Conrad Lautenbacher, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at a briefing."
~ Review: Low-Cost Laptops for Third-World -- "Little, cheap and sturdy, laptops designed to bring technology to the children of developing countries are rolling out after years of promises. But don't expect them to do much for high-tech kids in the U.S."
~ Stardust comet dust resembles asteroid materials -- "Contrary to expectations for a small icy body, much of the comet dust returned by the Stardust mission formed very close to the young sun and was altered from the solar system`s early materials."
~ Could Tiny Diatoms Help Offset Global Warming? -- "Diatoms -- some of which are so tiny that 30 can fit across the width of a human hair -- are so numerous that they are among the key organisms taking the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the Earth's atmosphere. The shells of diatoms are so heavy that when they die in the oceans they typically sink to watery graves on the seafloor, taking carbon out of the surface waters and locking it into sediments below."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ Reaching The Source through Art and Beauty -- "How brilliantly perceptive of the last of the great philosophers of antiquity Plotinus to realize that the challenge each and every one of us faces and that constitutes the kernel our shared human condition is that of finding ourselves – at least in this seemingly unending stage our evolutionary odyssey – half way between the animals and the gods. No wonder that human nature and human psychology are so complex and that the integration of the disparate elements that continuously exert their influence upon us – our material body, subject to decay, and the experience of consciousness with its associated sensations, emotions and desires - becomes a hero’s task only attained by the best amongst us."
~ Choice -- "Choice. It seems like such a simple word...and yet how many times have we made the wrong one?"
~ Confucius Say: Don't Worry, Be Happy -- "Previously, I responded to John Horgan's shallow view of Buddhism. In this post I will focus on the comparison of classical Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism when it comes to people's happiness and well-being (with stress on the word classical)."
~ Working with body symptoms -- "I had an opportunity to explore ways to work with body symptoms last week, this time mainly just by fully allowing the experience, exploring the sense fields, and also resting attention on certain sensations."
~ Electronica I composed -- "Amidst the development of sounds for a commercial radio spot, I worked up this piece of sound I wanted to share on the blog. This falls under the “listenable, music-like substance” category (me being a music purist and all, and paraphrasing Michael Pollan)."
~ Astral Evolutionary Materialism -- "I've been thinking about the two visions I posted here over the last couple of weeks, and what they mean to me. I'm been particularly interested in discussing the mechanics of bodily incarnation, and what that means both spiritually and developmentally for all of us. As it happens, I've been reading some interesting material lately that gives me fodder for some ruminations on these matters."
~ Becoming and becoming -- "I’ve started reading the Buddhist text, the Lankavatara Sutra, which is an important Buddhist sutra of the Mahayana branch. Compared to the Golden Light Sutra which I have been reading lately, the Lankavatara Sutra is much more technical, less poetic. It is a cornerstone of Zen thought, though, so it is widely studied."
~ More thoughts on God n’ religion -- "I ended my post God, Atheism, and Religion with the promise of a follow-up post to answer the question, “how do I relate to God if not through a religious lens?” I’ve had a bit of difficulty coming up with a satisfying answer to that question, other than saying that it is a very personal and subjective thing. However, I do have some thoughts on the matter that might be useful to yous readers."
~ Overabundant choices for the expression of direct and simple spiritual practice -- "Too many choices? It can be a pain being a sincere searcher for an authentic practice to express a simple and direct experience of grace, acceptance, and empathy. Even within the confines of Buddhism. Chan/Zen can be simple and direct. So can reciting the nembutsu. So can reciting the odaimoku (of Nichiren Buddhism). Even in Tibetan Buddhism there is the directness of Dzogchen. Each of them is intended to represents the full teaching of the Dharma in a format generally intended to be accessible to everyone to help them accept /realize /experience /awaken to their limited, karmic existence as well as their limitless, non-conditioned reality (i.e. becoming Buddhas). Greaaat. So which one?"
~ Great Artistry -- "Writing the first line of a new blog is one of the hardest things to do. Blogging is akin to blind dating. I am hoping to start a new relationship and I do not want to start off with a bad impression. So, here goes…."
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