Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Speedlinking 2/13/08

Quote of the day:

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future
~ Niels Bohr

Image of the day (John Craig):



BODY

~ How to Build The Habit of Eating Breakfast -- "You wake up. Kick off the day with a coffee. Then don’t eat until lunch time. For some of you this will sound familiar. Which is a shame because breakfast remains the king of meals." Ideally, one-third of the day's calories should come at breakfast.
~ Are You Man Enough for this Workout? -- "Think you have what it takes to be a Marine? Watch their intense combat training program and learn the 4 rules of building a strong, powerful body that's ready for any challenge."
~ Burn Fat With The Thermic Effect of Food -- "When it comes to losing fat and building muscle, eating less food is not the answer to getting lean and cut. Others will try to tell you that losing excess fat is simply a matter of using more calories than you eat. What they don’t tell you is that eating less will slow your metabolism." This is why the high-protein diets work.
~ One Drink Of Red Wine Or Alcohol Is Relaxing To Circulation, But Two Drinks Are Stressful -- "One drink of either red wine or alcohol slightly benefits the heart and blood vessels, but the positive effects on specific biological markers disappear with two drinks, say researchers at the Peter Munk Cardiac Centre of the Toronto General Hospital."
~ Why Care? Take Care Of Your Heart Now! -- "It's been scientifically proven that there are certain activities, super foods and supplements that you can do and or take on a daily basis to increase your heart health quality. Learn more."
~ 4 Ways Alcohol Hinders Muscle Growth -- "My last article focused on how alcohol will seriously impede your fat loss goals. Here, I’ll give you the skinny on alcohol’s affects on muscle growth, and it ain’t pretty."
~ Recovery Methods 101 -- "Dan John's been dragging his calloused butt across Terra Firma for a relatively long time, but he only recently realized he'd been wasting a lot of time on assistance exercises and aerobics."
~ Scientists see promise in new way to fight viruses -- "Scientists have discovered a promising new method to fight a range of diseases by boosting the body's natural defenses against viruses."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ I Love You, but You Love Meat -- "In an age when many people define themselves by what they will eat and what they won’t, dietary differences can put a strain on a romantic relationship." ~C4Chaos responds.
~ Gals make passes at guys who wash glasses -- "A guy who pulls his own weight around the house isn’t just hot, he’s a boon for his lady’s health and happiness."
~ Neurocognitive Impairment in Borderline Personality Disorder? -- "Borderline personality disorder (BPD) has been described as bordering on 3 DSM classifications: schizophrenia and the psychoses, mood disorders, and impulse control disorders."
~Are 'soul mates' real? -- "Are "soul mates' real? Now there's an interesting question on the day before Valentine's Day! And my happy answer is: Yes!" OK, this is a little left of center, but it's Valentine's Day, so loosen up.
~ 6 kinds of love -- "we’re all familiar with eros – the heady, emotional high of romance, sexual love and infatuation. it makes the world go round; or, more specifically, it twirls the world in a spin...."
~ 20 Things I'm Glad Life Taught Me -- "How many times have you heard someone say, "Hindsight is always 20/20"? If you are like me, you hear it a lot and think it a lot more. Last year Jay wrote an article listing things he wished he'd known earlier. It got me thinking that the most crucial lessons in life and success aren't taught in books or written on blogs, but they are found by living life itself."
~ You Remind Me of Me -- "Trying to decode the subtle cues that lead to human rapport, scientists have trained their focus on mimicry."
~ A Sense of Scarcity: Why it seems like all the good ones are taken -- "Singles’ bars, classified personals and dating websites are a reflection, not only of the common human desire to find a mate, but of the sense of scarcity that seems to surround the hunt. Many people participate in dating activities in the hopes of finding that special someone, yet feel as though it is an impossible task. However, thanks to an international team of psychologists, the solution may be closer than we think -- within ourselves, to be exact."
~ Review - Coercion as Cure -- "In Coercion as Cure, Szasz covers an extensive history of the use of coercion throughout psychiatry, including the early use of various mechanical restraints (e.g. the tranquilising chair), moral treatment, the 'resting cure', insulin shock therapy, ECT, lobotomy, and finally the development of modern-day drug therapies. He maintains throughout that each one of these breakthrough 'discoveries' in psychiatric medicine are simply a reworking of old ideas, all share in common the act of coercion, that is, the depriving of innocent persons of liberty."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Government, Bound or Unbound? -- "This paper is a sequel of an article I wrote twenty years ago that I now think can be put more tightly and clearly.[1] That early paper was born of the irritation I felt, and continue to feel, at much of the classical liberal discourse about limited government. At least since Locke, that discourse sets out a normative ideal of government: the protector of “rights” its citizens are in some fashion endowed with, and the guarantor of liberty that ranks above rival values. Such government uses coercion only to enforce the rules of just conduct."
~ What Life Says to Us · Stephen Burt on Robert Creeley -- "For a spell during the 1960s, Robert Creeley's 'I Know a Man' may have been the most often quoted, even the most widely known, short poem by a living American. Written around 1954, the poem got wide notice after For Love (1962), Creeley's first trade collection, and it is not hard to see why."
~The Coming American Matriarchy: The fairer sex gets ready to take over -- "The number 1.5 is, in this case, a ratio. According to projections by the National Center for Education Statistics, in 2017 half again as many women as men will earn bachelor's degrees. In the early 1990s, six women graduated from college for every five men who did so; today, the ratio is about 4-to-3. A decade from now, it will be 3-to-2—and rising, on current trends."
~ Robert Scheer: Aboard the Condoleezza Rice -- "Clearly, what's good for big oil isn't good for most Americans. So why are the interests of oil companies mistaken for those of the nation?"
~ Paul Loeb: Behind Obama's Wave of Victories: The More They Know Him..... -- "But as Obama began winning, voters who'd been paying only peripheral attention have started taking him seriously. The more familiar they've become with him, the more they've liked his message and chances, while their reservations about Clinton have only grown. Now, she and her surrogates are in a position of trying to rationalize eight straight Obama wins, including his 29-point Virginia victory in a state where she was up by 24 points less than four months ago, and her-23 point loss in Maryland, which she also led by roughly the same margin."
~ Gary Hart: Politics as Transcendence -- "Periods of transformation require experimentation, innovation, and daring. America is a nation much more conservative than it thinks itself to be. Thus, its default position is to resist a forward leap even while applauding itself for its creativity. Al Capone said it best: "We don't want no trouble." But transformation is trouble in the best sense of the word, trouble that causes us to adapt to new conditions and circumstances and create new ways of governing."
~ Obama Sells His Narrative -- "The accolades for Obama couldn’t have scaled higher heights last night. At one point on CNN, Donna Brazile pronounced him “a metaphysical force in American politics.” Praise was heaped upon praise, and it’s no wonder. As the race has narrowed, it’s impossible not to be struck by the contrast between an Obama speech and the geriatric grumblings of McCain...."
~ The Senate offers amnesty to the telecom companies -- "Republicans scored a victory yesterday—with the help of many Democrats and independent Joe Lieberman—with the Senate's spy bill. The legislation would give retroactive immunity to telecom companies who have shared customer data with the government in violation of the law, and it would expand the government's ability to spy on Americans' international phone calls without court oversight. Conservatives were ecstatic." Uh, privacy, anyone?
~ Editors: Truce! -- "Conservatives and McCain should neither pretend that we have no differences nor obsess about those differences. We should instead work on the common task of building a center-right majority in this election year and future ones...."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ The Preservation Predicament -- "Conservation organizations that work to preserve biologically rich landscapes are confronting a painful realization: In an era of climate change, many of their efforts may be insufficient or beside the point."
~ Better Biofuels: The Short Story and the Long Story -- "Before we need more biofuels, writes Alex Farrell in an op-ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle, we need better biofuels. Two articles appeared in Science last week suggesting that the "use of U.S. croplands for biofuels increases greenhouse gas emissions from land use changes." Farrell explains the basics...."
~ World's Largest Science Gathering Promises New Discoveries, Global Impacts -- "Thousands of scientists will spend five days in Boston discussing global climate change, disease and the future of the developing world. It's the world's largest general science conference."
~ Is the Government Pushing Ethanol Too Aggressively? -- "The government says we must use 9 billion gallons of ethanol this year. Some lawmakers worry federal ethanol mandates are 'taking the biofuels industry backward rather than pushing it ahead.'"
~ Dramatic Declines In Wild Salmon Populations Linked To Exposure To Farmed Salmon -- "Comparing the survival of wild salmonid populations in areas near salmon farms with unexposed populations reveals a large reduction in survival in the populations reared near salmon farms. This study shows evidence on a global scale illustrating systematic declines in wild salmon populations that come into contact with farmed salmon."
~ Use of Rogue DNS Servers on Rise -- "They're called "servers that lie." Mendacious machines controlled by hackers that reroute Internet traffic from infected computers to fraudulent Web sites are increasingly being used to launch attacks, according to a paper published this week by researchers with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Google Inc."
~ The need for fossil fuels will last for decades, according to BP's chief scientist -- "The world is almost certainly going to remain hooked on fossil fuels—oil, coal, natural gas—for decades to come, despite our best efforts to cut back, the chief scientist for British Petroleum said during a recent campus talk."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ The trap and the dream of freedom -- "'The Trap' by Adam Curtis, or "What happened to our dreams of freedom" (for info, see detailed entry at Wikipedia, from which descriptions below are taken). On liberty, individual freedoms, illussions, control, and politics. Watch at Google video, links for each of the three programs below. Each program 1 hour. Enjoy!"
~ What I Like About Polysemy -- "Great conversation, Polysemy plants seeds for great discussion. Artists spend too much time in the woodshed. You show me an artist that spends 8 to 10 hours a day practicing alone and I will show you an artist who cannot communicate. Art is a language; a language is only of use if it communicates."
~ Trusting and Opening -- "Your loving is an art that deepens as your life grows through phases. Sometimes your masculine directionality will step to the fore, perhaps when you decide to cultivate your career. Sometimes your feminine force of love-energy’s hugeness will move you. Since you are composed of both masculine and feminine aspects, you will naturally demonstrate different parts of yourself at different times throughout your life."
~ Wonder -- "For you nerds out there (I guess - is a sociologist considered a nerd?) I'd just like to take a moment to reflect on my chosen major - Sociology. I have been taking classes for about two semesters now, and hopefully am gaining somewhat of an idea of what it's all about. What is it, essentially? The study of the human collective. It's psychology, plural."
~ OSCAR WILDE: THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE -- "Ever since our remotest ancestors began to cover the walls of the caverns they inhabited with their primitive paintings, beautiful as they were in their simplicity, Life and Art have had at best an uneasy relationship."
~ Change your thoughts and change your life – The Art of Cognitive Reframing -- "We never, ever, see the world as it is. Our awareness – our beliefs, past conditionings, upbringing, the list goes on – these distort everything we see. They creep into every interpretation and misinterpretation."


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