Quote of the day:
"Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted than when we read it in the original author?"
~ Philip G. Hamerton
Image of the day (Alessandro Zocchi):
BODY
~ Training to Hit a Homer -- "In all the years I played baseball, I never hit a ball over the fence. When I started playing slow pitch softball, I figured it was only a matter of time. The fields were smaller, the ball was slower, and I was much stronger then I ever was as a kid. Boy was I wrong."
~ 5 Things You Need to Know About Every Exercise -- "You may know the name of a particular exercise, but do you know what the agonists in the movement are? How about the synergists? Hrrummpph! And you call yourself a weightlifter!"
~ 30 New Ways to Build the Body You Want -- "We traveled the nation to find America's Best Gyms. Then we asked their experts for advice to help you build your best body, whether you train at an upscale health center or at home."
~ Shredded in 6 Days -- "Ever wonder how competitive bodybuilders get extra shredded for a show or photo shoot? Well, here's the complete how-to guide to becoming extra shredded. Get the camera ready, because it's only temporary." This is good -- too many people think the Men's Health cover models always look like that -- they don't.
~ Common Exercise Misconceptions Part 2 -- "Finally, some ammo to use against those putzes who insist on benching with their feet in the air. Craig also makes the case that chin-ups are a better lat exercise than pull-ups. Let the arguments begin!"
~ Top 10 Reasons You’re Not Building Any Muscle -- "Check the following 10 factors against your current lifestyle to ensure you’re not making some fundamental errors."
~ Whole grains help deflate belly rolls -- "Cutting calories helps people lose weight, but doing so by filling up on whole grains may be particularly heart-healthy, new research suggests."
~ Hypoglycemia Alert Dogs Offer Assistance To People With Diabetes -- "Glucose monitors, test strips, and lancets: people with diabetes are all too familiar with the equipment used to test their blood glucose (sugar) levels. Now some people are adding a different kind of aid to their diabetes management regimen." Beats getting stuck with a needle.
~ 13 Scientifically Proven Health Benefits Of Exercise -- "Nowadays you can't check out at the grocery store or do much of anything without being reminded that us mortal humans need to exercise. Still, we persist, procrastinate and eventually complain that we're overweight, sick, dying, etc."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Fascinating split brain behavioral experiments -- "To reduce the severity of his seizures, Joe had the bridge between his left and right cerebral hemisphers (the corpus callosum) severed. As a result, his left and right brains no longer communicate through that pathway. This is an extraordinary insight into the machinary of the mind. Here’s what happens as a result...."
~ Panic-Focused Psychodynamic Psychotherapy -- "Both cognitive-behavioral1-3 and pharmacological treatments for panic disorder have been found to be effective over the short term. Not all patients, however, can tolerate or fully respond to these approaches, and the effectiveness of these interventions over the long term remains unclear."
~ This Wednesday: Six questions to help you stay serene -- "Every Wednesday is Tip Day. This Wednesday: Six questions to help you stay serene. Or, at the very least, to keep from losing your temper in an angry fit."
~ Has Idealism Been Refuted? -- "So, I have been having a very nice and informative discussion with Brandon about Berkeley’s so-called “Master Argument” which got me to thinking. Has immaterialism been refuted? It seems to me not. Here is a brief, and no doubt sketchy, survey of some of the better known ‘refutations’."
~ Serotonin, Violence and Prozac -- "A lot has been written in the past week guessing as to whether Prozac, a commonly-prescribed 20-year-old antidepressant, had any connection to the violence that Steven Kazmierczak (the NIU murderer) perpetrated. Kazmierczak was reportedly previously taking Prozac (usually prescribed for depression), but had stopped taking it 3 weeks prior to the murders."
~ How the Consistency Bias Warps Our Personal and Political Memories -- "What were your political views a decade ago? How good was your relationship last year? Studies show we often assume things haven't changed, when in fact they have."
~ 10 Steps to Handle Relationship Conflicts -- "Every relationship experiences some conflict. Some experience more than others, some are playful, and some are hateful. Then there are those that are never ending patterns of conflict that seem impossible to break."
~ Technology Exployed By Neuroscientists To Trace Source Of Emotions In Brain -- "First came direct marketing, then focus groups. Now, advertisers, with the help of neuroscientists, are closing in on the holy grail: mind reading. At least, that's what is suggested in a paper published in the journal Human Brain Mapping authored by a group of professors in advertising and communication and neuroscience at the University of Florida."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The Principle of Complementarity in Bohr's Quantum Mechanics and Vico's Historicism -- "Vico was acutely aware that to treat real concrete moments of Man’s history as mere moments of something higher is not to take them very seriously. Indeed, this was Hegel flaw: by absorbing the concrete historical situation into a higher theoretical scheme he in effect distorted the reality of their contingency."
~ In Intervals: Robert Pinsky and Tom Sleigh in Conversation -- "Tom Sleigh conducted the following interview with United States Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky on October 1, 1997, in West Newton, Massachusetts."
~ Covering Reality with Gold Leaf -- "IT’S THIS RECOGNITION of complexity and uncertainty that has been the key to the success of the West. An inductive, pragmatic mindset underpinned the economic expansion that led the West out of the long stagnation of the Middle Ages. It underpinned the development of science and technology (after a millennium where technology had essentially stagnated at Roman levels)."
~ Nietzsche’s Deeper Truth -- "At the outset of On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche reports that his polemical book of pseudo-history, pseudo-anthropology, and pseudo-psychology is an exercise in knowing ourselves. We cannot simply investigate morality and Christianity, as if these were topics we could entertain with dispassionate detachment as we do biological specimens or mathematical equations. No, according to Nietzsche, our commitment to a moral frame of reference penetrates to the depths of our soul."
~ Barack’s Rock -- "She's the one who keeps him real, the one who makes sure running for leader of the free world doesn't go to his head. Michelle's story." Good timing, considering the non-story about her remarks everyone is fixated on.
~ Interview: Alain Robbe-Grillet -- "Alain Robbe-Grillet occupies that paradoxical position not uncommon to avant–garde writers: He is both famous and obscure; his ideas are well known but his work much less so. Nevertheless, he remains a major figure in the landscape of postwar French letters and film."
~ Can we teach people to be happy? -- "Anthony Seldon and Frank Furedi set out their arguments before the first of a series of live public debates on educational issues."
~ Human culture subject to natural selection, Stanford study shows - "Scientists at Stanford University have shown for the first time that cultural traits affecting survival and reproduction evolve at a different rate than other cultural attributes. Speeded or slowed rates of evolution typically indicate the action of natural selection in analyses of the human genome."
~ MIT: No easy answers in evolution of human language -- "The evolution of human speech was far more complex than is implied by some recent attempts to link it to a specific gene, says Robert Berwick, professor of computational linguistics at MIT."
~ Evolution Wins as Creationists Inadvertently Switch Sides in Florida -- "A decision by the Florida Board of Education to approve a curriculum referring to "the scientific theory of evolution" has an unintended side effect: It embeds evolution in the curriculum for the first time. It also will require teaching kids what a "scientific theory" is."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Study shows where new diseases may arise (AP) -- "New infectious diseases have been appearing more often, says a study that suggests "hot spots" where the next new germs are most likely to appear."
~ America Has Too Many Stores -- "In January, Liz Claiborne said it would shutter 54 Sigrid Olsen stores by mid-2008. Ann Taylor announced that 117 of its 921 stores would be closed over the next three years, and Talbots axed the Talbots Mens and Talbots Kids concepts and 22 Talbots stores. (Those muffled screams you hear are Connecticut preppies trying to suppress their rage.) Even Starbucks has scaled back its yearslong saturation-bombing campaign."
~ Ecotopias Aren't Just for Hippies Anymore — and They're Sprouting Up Worldwide -- "In the 1970s, environmental idealists had a vision of Ecotopia: Everyone recycled, there was no pollution, and we all worshipped trees and co-ops. Today's eco-communities are less crunchy and a lot more high tech. In addition to using renewable energy sources, these projects aim to limit their impact on surrounding ecosystems by building with green materials, promoting earth-friendly transportation, and recycling water and waste."
~ Tonight's Lunar Eclipse: Last Chance Until 2010 -- "There will be a full lunar eclipse tonight, starting at 8:43 pm Eastern time, with the moon totally obscured between 10:01 pm and 10:51 pm."
~ Managing Uncertainty Important In Ecological Balance -- "The balance of nature looms prominently in the public mind these days. Climate change, genetically modified plants and animals, and globally declining fish stocks are but a few of the issues that remind us that ours is a fragile world. Or is it? It depends on whom you ask one professor specializing in biology and society."
~ African Dust Storms May Cool Atlantic, Lessen Hurricanes -- "Every year, storms over West Africa disturb millions of tons of dust and strong winds carry those particles into the skies over the Atlantic. According to atmospheric scientists, this dust from Africa directly affects ocean temperature, a key ingredient in Atlantic hurricane development."
~ Antarctic Life Hung By A Thread During Ice Ages -- "The extreme cold and environmental conditions of past Ice Ages have been even more severe than seen today and changed life at the Antarctic, forcing the migration of many animals such as penguins, whales and seals, researchers argue. Understanding the changes of the past may help scientists to determine how the anticipated temperature increases of the future will work to further transform this continent."
~ Microsoft Opens Game Development -- "Microsoft Corp. says it will make Xbox 360 video games developed by players available for download through the console's online service."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ 2008 Blogisattva Awards Nominees Announced -- "The Blogisattva Organization is pleased to announce the nominees for the 2008 Blogisattva Awards honoring English-language Buddhism blogging during calendar year 2007. This is the third annual iteration of the awards which are given wholly for merit, and not as a measure of blogs’ popularity."
~ Lucy -- "It’s good, at least once in our lives, to call our parents by their names, not mom and dad but Janice and Steven or whatever their names happen to be. It’s not absolutely necessary to do this in their presence; some of us were brought up on customs that would make it easier to cut out our tongues than to address our parents by their legal names."
~ Not Spiritual -- "An interview with Ethan Nichtern, Founder and Director of the Interdependence Project (The ID Project) in New York City and author of the new book "One City: A Declaration of Interdependence". Good stuff!"
~ Would You Have Sex With Someone You Can Reboot? - "Apparently, a few decades from now, David Levy thinks that people would welcome the idea of having sex with robots. Check out this Q&A interview with David Levy, author of Love and Sex with Robots, in Scientific American. Here are some key quotes."
~ Integral Education Seminar 2008 -- "Next Step Integral has announced its 2008 Integral Education seminar called “From Cradle to Kosmos”, taking place August 1–6, 2008, at the Whidbey Institute on Whidbey Island, in Washington State. Integral education is an emerging field, propelled by people who seek to push the envelope of what education can be."
~ Deepak Chopra Comes to Beliefnet -- "To kick off the spiritual teacher's new blog with his son and daughter, watch this exclusive video clip in which he explains how to tell if you're "plugged into" Spirit--or not."
~ Kosmos Magazine Up and Running -- "Last week was our university's club week. Good news for anyone following the development of Fordham's first integral magazine: 30 signups in one day! We were a little weak with the table design, but the Alex Grey paintings seemed to really draw in the crowd."
~ The Joys of Devotional Buddhism -- "Westerners, having come from a Judao-Christian-Islamic background, sometimes like to frown upon devotional Buddhism and hold up meditation as the end-all-be-all of Buddhism. I have had to explain myself a number of times to non-Pure Land Buddhists, and it can be frustrating. The last straw for me occurred this evening when I found this quotation on a Tricycle Blog article (the author is quoting someone from a Buddhist forum, these are not the author’s words)...."
~ Emergence in Palestine and the Arab World -- "At the outset of the February 2, 2008 Nation Building Conference in Bethlehem, Palestine, Elza Maalouf spoke to the nearly 700 Palestinian community leaders from all over the West Bank addressing societal emergence in Palestine and the Arab world."
~ Back from hiatus -- "As my handful of regular readers know by now, I’ve been on hiatus (except for the occasional post on presidential politics) for the past few months. I have been taking some personal time as well as focusing on my screenplay project. While I still have other pressing projects on my plate, I’m going to be returning to posting at Until on a regular basis."
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