"The wages of sin are death, but by the time taxes are taken out, it's just sort of a tired feeling."
~ Paula Poundstone
Image of the day (Robert Heverly):
BODY
~ (Recipe) Celebrate National “Eat Something Raw” Day -- "Hesfit.com invites you to celebrate today, January 8, 2008 as, “National Eat Something Raw Day.” Eating raw foods has many benefits, such as higher nutrient value, enzymes which aid in digestion, also preventing chronic disease such as diabetes."
~ The 2008 Fat Loss Roundtable, Part II -- "Our fat-loss panel shoots down just about every dieter's tip known to fat bastards the world wide. Fortunately, the single-digit body fat trio offers up a bunch of stuff that works, too."
~ Teen Nutrition - A Diet Blueprint To Overcome The Odds! -- "Being a teenager and proper nutrition don't exactly mesh too well. In fact, the average student probably finds it almost impossible to eat clean... Here a few sample meal plans along with some important nutrition tips!"
~ Personal Training Redefined - What Truly Makes A Personal Trainer? -- "Personal training has been a profitable commodity in the fitness industry within the past decade… Distinguish between the fake and respected trainer from the following: required credentials, respected institutions, what to be weary of, and much more!"
~ Issue May Really Be How Far Players Will Go to Gain an Advantage -- "With items like over-the-counter pills and prescription injections, baseball players’ medicine cabinets have expanded as unmistakably as their physiques."
~ Healthy Living Probably Gives You 10 More Years, Study -- "A study of middle aged and older people living in Norfolk, UK, has suggested that not smoking, being active, eating enough fruit and vegetables and drinking only moderate amounts of alcohol can increase lifespan by an average of 10 years compared to people who do none of these things."
~ The Secret To Successful Dieting -- "Every year, there seems to be some new diet craze that drives consumers to buy into the vain hope that they can be thin and healthy in little time without changing their habits. However, there is one dieting technique that deserves attention that has stayed true since the beginning of time and has yet gone unchanged. It is simple: eat less and exercise more."
~ Significant Lowering Of Glucose In Oral Tolerance Test For Proprietary Version Of Resveratrol, SRT501 -- "Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. that announced SRT501 (Proprietary Version of Resveratrol), apart from being safe and well tolerated, also significantly lowered glucose in an oral glucose tolerance test in a Phase 1b, 28-day, clinical trial with patients who had Diabetes Type 2." It also lowers cholesterol and reduces estrogen in men.
~ Weak at the Knees -- "Female athletes are especially vulnerable to ligament injuries. They can learn to protect themselves—by behaving more like boys."
~ Oatmeal’s health claims strongly reaffirmed, science shows -- "A new scientific review of the most current research shows the link between eating oatmeal and cholesterol reduction to be stronger than when the FDA initially approved the health claim’s appearance on food labels in 1997."
~ Words To Live By (Part I): The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga -- "You know what a dumbbell is; how sore your abs get in a 15-min core class; and how raw your butt gets if you forget padded shorts in spin class. But being the bonafide athlete you are, do you know what yoga’s Pigeon pose can do for your tight hips? To help the jock in you find its inner yogini (for health only), we asked runner, triathlete and yoga instructor, Sage Rountree to give us the best hatha yoga poses for specific sports from her new book: The Athlete’s Guide to Yoga."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Finding Balance in Graceful Movement -- "Do you ever bust out of your office at 11:49 AM for a noon yoga class that’s supposed to melt the workday’s tension away? How about scarfing down a healthy salad between phone meetings at your desk? In your quest to achieve a healthy balance, are all of life’s moving parts making you feel off kilter?"
~ Psychiatric Genetic Counseling Grows More Popular -- "In the (approximately) 20 years since researchers began to focus more intently on the hereditary aspects of mental illness, psychiatric genetic counseling has grown into a field which, while nearly invisible to the average citizen, could grow exponentitally larger in the near future. Like other practices designed to predict and, in some cases, artifically shape the course of human life, it raises nebulous ethical questions about the power we have over our own development the dangerous precedents that could be set by its expansion."
~ Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Top 5 Tips for Building the Life You Want -- "Bodybuilding world champion numerous times. One of the most highly paid actors in the last few decades. And now the governor of California. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s resume sounds more like the resume of three men rather than just one. How did he do it?" Whatever I think of Arnold, he certainly has built success from nothing but desire and discipline.
~ The Psychology of “Deal or No Deal” -- "The results of psychological research surround us every day, but few of us are aware of them. Psychology is interested in the study, observation and explanations for individual human behavior. It’s not about studying mice in labs anymore (although that’s still done, mostly in undergraduate psychology classes) so much as it is about studying real people in pseudo-real situations to better understand how and why people act, think or feel in the ways that they do."
~ 5 Ways to Help a Grieving Friend -- "The stages of grief are well-known and accepted, and last approximately six months. Here's 5 practical ways to help a grieving friend through the mourning process."
~ Stressing the Hippocampus: Why It Matters -- "The hippocampus is a brain area involved in memory that animal studies have shown to be sensitive to the effects of stress. Meanwhile, studies in adults with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) related to either early childhood abuse or adult traumas like combat have found smaller hippocampal volume. Two recent meta-analyses of the literature on PTSD and hippocampal volume (Kitayama and colleagues 2005, which I co-authored, and one by Michael Smith, also in 2005) found smaller volume for both the left and the right hippocampi in both men and women with chronic PTSD."
~ Literary Gluttony - How to Consume More Books This Year -- "I might only have read four of five books outside of class in 2002. My decision to build the habit of reading more books came from being sold on the benefits of reading more. Here are some of the reasons to start...."
~ Psychotic Illness Can Be Predicted In Up To 80 Percent Of High-Risk Youth -- "Youth who are going to develop psychosis can be identified before their illness becomes full-blown 35 percent of the time if they meet widely accepted criteria for risk, but that figure rises to 65 to 80 percent if they have certain combinations of risk factors, the largest study of its kind has shown."
~ Reacting to External Things -- "Here's a great quote I have been carrying around with me for several decades: If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment ~ Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (from Meditations) What are things that are external to you that may stress you?"
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Smoking in Movies Linked to Kids Lighting Up (HealthDay) -- "Young people who start smoking may be influenced to do so by movies they saw in early childhood, new research suggests."
~ Experts chide Dr. Phil over Spears drama -- "Dr. Phil’s public brand of tough love sometimes makes him tough to love, particularly among mental health professionals who are accusing television’s self-help guru of making an uncalled-for house call on Britney Spears this week. "
~ Campaign Therapy -- "The French deconstructionists taught us that, sometimes, the best way to understand something is to look not front and center but at some small, seemingly insignificant detail on the very fringe. In that spirit, perhaps the best way to understand the upcoming year of presidential campaigning is to look at the candidates who do not stand a snowball’s chance in hell, who will probably never generate the slightest name recognition and may, indeed, be certifiably insane."
~ The Power of Being Influenced -- "Sometimes an idea spreads through society like a newly-mutated cold virus zooming through a class of first-graders. Other times, a good idea never seems to take hold. What makes the difference? Scientists want to know, and marketers want to know even more, since they make their living spreading ideas about their products."
~ Art as spectacle -- From India -- "Despite increasing interest, the autonomy and subversive potential of art seem threatened. This ‘dumbing down’ is particularly lethal for the arts because the discourse about arts in the media is brought on par with the language of selling soap or toothpaste."
~ Art without the artist -- "Like any museum of contemporary art, the Institute of Contemporary Art. is full of works built by somebody other than the artist, from Kelly Sherman's Foster Prize-winning "Wish Lists," a collection of personal wish lists gathered from the Internet, to "Cell (Hand and Mirror)," a mysterious Louise Bourgeois piece featuring a pair of carved marble hands in the center of miniature room."
~ Is Bush Inventing Another Constitutional Power? -- "Instead of issuing a regular or return veto, which returns the bill to the house of origin, and therefore provides for the opportunity of congressional override, Bush stated that he needed to pocket veto the bill, arguing that "the adjournment of the Congress has prevented my return" of the bill to it. Unlike a regular veto, pocket-vetoed bills die; no congressional override is possible. But here's the anomaly: in this case, Bush did, in fact, return the bill to Congress, doing so, according to his veto message, "to leave no doubt that the bill is being vetoed." Bush's actions - a pocket veto claim combined with the act of return - not only create doubt, but grab a power for the president that the Constitution's framers emphatically and repeatedly denied the office: a nearly unlimited absolute veto."
~ The Online Beat: Ten Questions In Search of Answers From New Hampshire -- "Who drops out? Who changes strategy? Who gets picked for vice president? And will Fox News declare their guy Romney the winner even if he tanks?"
~ The FundamentaList (No. 15) -- "Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney jockey for the support of the Christian base."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ ActNow!: How Green is Your Candidate? -- "Grist details the candidates' environmental plans."
~ Clockwork in Orange and Black -- "Monarch butterflies navigate using an internal compass and a mammal-like clock."
~ Indian Farmers Poison 50 Rare Jackals -- "At least 50 rare jackals were poisoned to death in northern India by farmers angry over alleged attacks on children and damage to crops blamed on the animals, a forest official said Tuesday."
~ MP3s Are Still A Crime to RIAA, Despite Post Correction -- "The music industry still believes that ripping CDs into MP3s is illegal, despite successfully getting The Washington Post to issue a correction to the contrary. Rippers aren't likely to be sued unless they share tracks on the internet, but the music industry still thinks its customers with iPods are thieves."
~ Deliciously Over-Engineered Gadgets Loom on the Horizon -- "Cruising through the booths on the CES show floor, a few things catch our eye, though most are on the horizon, not available yet. A fuzzy keyboard, Dick Tracy "watch" and a sci-fi keyboard with mouse should be fun."
~ Apple's Tower of Power: New Mac Pro Has 8 Processor Cores Standard -- "It's got eight -- count 'em -- eight core processors. The new Mac Pro comes standard with up to 3.2-GHz and can drive up to eight 30-inch displays."
~ New Blueberry Bushes Offer High Yields Of Plump, Phytonutrient-rich Fruit -- "Combining tenacity with taste, Agricultural Research Service scientists have bred three new blueberry cultivars that can take the heat of growing in the South while offering high yields of plump, phytonutrient-rich fruit."
~ US Ranks Last Among Other Industrialized Nations On Preventable Deaths, Report Shows -- "The United States places last among 19 countries when it comes to deaths that could have been prevented by access to timely and effective health care, according to new research. 101,000 fewer Americans would die annually if the US improved its preventable death rate to that of the 3 top performing nations."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ Virtual Zen: Dropping Here and There -- "Jundo Cohen, student of Gudo Wafu Nishijima Roshi, and abbot of the almost completely virtual Treeleaf Zendo joined us to discuss his virtual sangha. Jundo formed the community to meet the needs of those people who were living in highly isolated situations, or were too sick or elderly to continue to sit with a local Sangha. Using technological tools such as Skype, U-Stream, and Operator 11 Jundo has found a way to do daily sittings, ceremonies, and even retreats online. Listen in and find out more about this ground-breaking endeavor."
~ Blind Compassion -- "I have been working to understand compassion and learn how to apply it in my work and life for the past several years. Recently, however, I’ve been looking at compassion from a different perspective. When does compassion not really look like compassion - or how we have been led to believe compassion should look? When is it more compassionate to be fierce? To say no? To hold another accountable for their actions? And how can we use true compassion to effectively serve another?"
~ We all Contribute to the Beauty and Prosperity of the World -- "If we focus on the bigger picture we can see that just like pixels on a big screen television which on there own seem tiny and insignificant but when seen as a whole create a profound, beautiful and vibrant reality. So too our seemingly small and limited life when seen as apart of a bigger essence is suddenly seen as critical to this grand project we call existence."
~ Green Hermeticism -- "In order to create a greener, sustainable world, we must engage with Nature as a living, breathing (through prana yo), intelligent being that deserves our respect and adulation. Furthermore, Hermeticism's famous maxim, "As above, so below," also known as the law of the Macrocosm and Microcosm, is essentially non-dual."
~ Hydras, Sybil, I Am That I Am -- "The personality of Katherine reasserted itself with a vengeance, and Life helpfully met it with many hard walls to break itself upon. It has been quite the lightbulb to witness how sharp the boundaries are between the sub-personalities. There seem to be four that are left...." Great post on the nature of struggling with our parts.
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