"There's a fine line between genius and insanity. I have erased this line."
~ Oscar Levant
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Twenty of the World's Healthiest Foods -- "When it comes to eating healthy most people think of dull, boring food that's green in color. In reality, most of the world's healthiest foods not only taste great, they also come in a vast array of vibrant colors. Many require little, if any preparation, yet provide you with the energy and stamina to get through the day. They are the ultimate fast food!" The list doesn't include fish or chicken, but it's still useful.
~ Plyometrics: Getting Stronger And Faster -- "Plyometrics are a form of exercise designed to produce the greatest strength gains in as short a time as possible. Plyometrics actually use gravity to store potential energy in the muscles, then quickly turn this stored energy into kinetic energy. Here are some examples of plyometric drills that can be useful to a guy who plays football recreationally, or who is looking to just increase their strength and add variation to their workouts." I LOVE plyos.
~ The 2008 Fat Loss Roundtable, Part I -- "It's the New Year, the traditional time to think about ditching all that blubber. What's the best way to do it, low carbs, low fat, low calories, exercise, supplements, or some novel approach?"
~ Pilates: Why Every Guy Should Try It -- "Pilates is a fitness craze taking the world by storm. Classes are popping up in gyms, home fitness gurus like Denise Austin have put out video tapes, and Pilates mats are being sold everywhere from Target to health food stores. More and more men are practicing Pilates by the day."
~ How to Exercise in Cold Weather -- "It’s freezing outside, it’s freezing when you exercise. Your home gym isn’t isolated. Your gym manager doesn’t heat the gym. But that doesn’t stop you. You decided to stop making excuses not to exercise because it’s too cold."
~ Chronic Pain Relieved By Strength Training Of Neck Muscles -- "Neck pain has been steadily increasing over the past two decades and is now second to back pain, the most common musculoskeletal disorder. Women are more likely than men to suffer from persistent neck pain, in particular those who engage in repetitive tasks such as working at a computer keyboard."
~ Help your preteen get strong the safe way -- "You would expect to find pre-algebra, American history and grammar in a middle-school curriculum, but what about a lifetime lesson in fitness? As childhood obesity reaches epidemic proportions, an increasing number of schools are paying closer attention to what's being taught during physical education."
~ Scientists Explain How Alcohol Causes Hypoglycemia (Too Low Blood Sugar) -- "Scientists at the leading Swedish medical university Karolinska Institutet have now disclosed the mystery how alcohol may cause exaggerated insulin secretion resulting in severe hypoglycemia (too low blood sugar)."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Actually, happiness isn't within -- "There is, it turns out, little difference between You and Me. Both outlooks reflect a firmly held and particularly American belief that happiness lies deep inside the inner you, or me, or whatever.The self-help industry has it wrong."
~ Language doesn't influence our thoughts ... except when it does [Cognitive Daily] -- "The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis -- stated in its strongest form -- claims that language determines thoughts: if a language doesn't have a means of expressing a particular idea, then people speaking that language can't even conceive of that idea. This strong form has long since been rejected: There are plenty of thoughts we can have without having the words to express them."
~ Progress & Change Aren't Possible if You Keep Doing the Same Things -- "When you feel safe inside of the status quo of whatever it is you have done to this point in your life, and when you feel safe in any field of endeavour that has formed part of your life to this point, you are inside your comfort zone. It is only when you notice the tug of fear, of apprehension, perhaps merely of discomfort, that you actually are feeling the call of what may very well lead to potential growth and change."
~ Fantasies: In Your Dreams -- "Why anxious women fantasize about anonymous sex."
~ How Do We Know When We Have Enough? -- "One of the challenges we face in life is realizing when we have enough. Often there are times when we think we need more of something only to find out that we had it all along. Other times, we feel our lives are missing something – we feel an emptiness that we can’t identify. That emptiness is often a sign that we are missing or don’t have enough of a certain item in our life – be it enough family time, education, happiness or a myriad of other things."
~ The Four Laws of Simplicity, and How to Apply Them to Life -- "It’s been nearly a decade since I first started trying to simplify my life, and in those years I’ve struggled with clutter, I’ve had surges and ebbs of complications and simplicity, I’ve tried dozens of methods of simplifying from as many sources. It’s been an interesting journey, although not one that I can recommend to everyone. If you’re looking to simplify a certain aspect of your life, you don’t want to go through that kind of confusion."
~ Sol Snyder on Finding God in the Brain [Terra Sigillata] -- "The first 2008 issue of New England Journal of Medicine came yesterday in the snailmail box and I read the following story with such great interest that I nearly walked into a tree. Bear with me but the news lately has taken me on a neuroscience streak without my having specific professional expertise in the area."
~ The reading cure -- "The idea that literature can make us emotionally and physically stronger goes back to Plato. But now book groups are proving that Shakespeare can be as beneficial as self-help guides. Blake Morrison investigates the rise of bibliotherapy."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ "There Will be Blood" wins top critics' awards -- "'There Will Be Blood' took top honors from the National Society of Film Critics on Saturday, scoring wins for best picture, best actor for Daniel Day-Lewis and best director for Paul Thomas Anderson."
~ Will the Humanities Save Us? -- "Do the humanities ennoble? And for that matter, is it the business of the humanities, or of any other area of academic study, to save us? The answer in both cases, I think, is no."
~ Revolution -- "Change, particularly generational change, was also at the heart of Barack Obama's victory over John Edwards and Hillary Clinton. Voters under 30 supported him by better than 5 to 1 and he carried independents by more than 2 to 1, according to media entrance polls."
~ Look back in wonder -- "What is the nature of memory? And can it be captured in literature? Craig Raine considers the most successful attempts at doing so, from Wordsworth's 'spots of time' to Proust's tea-soaked madeleines."
~ Can You Count on Voting Machines? -- "But when Platten went to retrieve paper copies of each vote — generated by the Diebold machines as they worked — she discovered that so many printers had jammed that 20 percent of the machines involved in the recounted races lacked paper copies of some of the votes. They weren’t lost, technically speaking; Platten could hit “print” and a machine would generate a replacement copy. But she had no way of proving that these replacements were, indeed, what the voters had voted. She could only hope the machines had worked correctly."
~ Election 2008: What Happens When Politicians Promise Change -- "It is hard to imagine the candidates providing much change when their political strategists are the same crew who've been around for years."
~ You're a Good Man, Charlie Gibson -- "Saturday night's GOP/Democratic debate featured an unusual moment: ABC's Charlie Gibson, its moderator, took advantage of the debate's back-to-back, Republicans-then-Democrats format to ask all the candidates, from both parties, to share the stage."
~ GOP's Focus Is Fear -- "Look for an emphasis on terrorism, taxes, and immigration." That ain't news, it's GOP politics as usual.
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Some Biofuels Are Worse Environmentally Than Fossil Fuels, Analysis Shows -- "Biofuels reduce greenhouse-gas emissions in comparison to fossil fuels. In the journal Science, researchers consider environmental costs of biofuel production. Corn, soy and sugarcane come up short. The authors urge governments to be far more selective about which biofuels they support, as not all are more environmentally friendly than fossil fuels."
~ Intel Banks on Another Wireless Gadget -- "Intel Corp. is betting on a big expansion of "ultra-mobile" computing, an idea that depends on people being willing to tote around a portable device beyond their ubiquitous cell phones."
~ Sunspot is harbinger of new solar cycle, increasing risk for electrical systems -- "A new 11-year cycle of heightened solar activity, bringing with it increased risks for power grids, critical military, civilian and airline communications, GPS signals and even cell phones and ATM transactions, showed signs it was on its way late Thursday when the cycle`s first sunspot appeared in the sun`s Northern Hemisphere, NOAA scientists said."
~ Ceramic hybrid needles take the sting out of shots -- "New polymerization technology may one day take the pain out of injections and blood draws. A team of researchers at the University of North Carolina and Laser Zentrum Hannover have recently used two-photon polymerization to create hollow needles so fine patients wouldn`t feel them piercing their skin. Clustered together on a patch, these microneedles can deliver drugs or draw blood efficiently as standard hypodermic needles."
~ Prairie grass energy boost studied in the field -- "Using switchgrass as a biofuel yields five times more energy than is used to grow it."
~ Why Are Chickens Getting So Fat? -- "Over the years, poultry breeders have bred chickens that grow faster and produce more meat in response to a growing worldwide consumer demand. But modern broiler/breeder chickens don't adequately balance their feed consumption to match their energy requirements. When these birds are given unrestricted access to feed, they will overeat and become obese."
~ Scientists find cultural differences among chimpanzee colonies -- "Socially-learned cultural behaviour thought to be unique to humans is also found among chimpanzees colonies, scientists at the University of Liverpool have found."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ Allowing Nirvikalpa -- "There's an interesting comment from an earlier post that I thought was worth responding to. It's from mayagaia, who has an interesting website worth checking."
~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali Tells It Like It Is -- "Ayaan Hirsi Ali reviews The Suicide of Reason by Lee Harris on the NYTimes Sunday Book Review. She sympathized with Lee Harris on his efforts to bring about awareness on radical Islam, but then she left a big gaping hole on the main argument put forth by the book."
~ Why I Don't {Heart} Huckabee -- "I'm quite sure that Mike Huckabee has policies that make perfect sense to his supporters, not to mention their attraction to his religiosity. Case in point: See this Exclusive Interview: Governor Huckabee Speaks with Catholic Online. But this article on Physorg puts it succinctly...."
~ Steve Whitmire on Integral Naked - It's Not Easy Being Teal -- "Steve Whitmire is one of the few individuals who has carried on the whole-hearted legacy of Jim Henson, and the mastery and development of puppetry through Jim’s unique Muppets. Since the passing of Jim Henson in 1990, Steve has served as the animating force and puppeteer for beloved characters such as Kermit the Frog and Sesame Street’s Ernie."
~ Overcoming gender -- "Your gender is a constraint. This is an inalienable truism, regardless of whether you’re a man or a woman."
~ Meditation as Natural History -- "To say that the world is an illusion is not to say that there is nothing going on out there. This is the kind of claim that may succeed in amusing idle philosophers and would-be mystics, but that is pretty darned useless for any other earthly purposes. And earthly purposes are the purposes I care about."
~ The Universe Project Continued... -- Andrew Cohen -- "Deepak [Chopra], I’ve come to appreciate, is a deeply genuine and authentic human being. He’s thoughtful, reflective, sensitive, generous, and caring. I have to admit that I didn’t always see him this way. My original—and erroneous—impression from his public persona (and I hope he will forgive me for saying this!) was that he was kind of a lightweight salesman whose ambition superseded his spiritual depth."
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