Quote of the day:
"Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again."
~ Mike Myers
Image of the day (Tristan Campbell):
WEIGHT TRAINING
~ More Bang for Your Buck: 7 Most Effective Exercises -- "One of the most important aspects of exercise is that you put forth some extra effort. However, experts agree that not all exercises are created equal. A recent article from WebMD discusses 7 of the most effective exercises you can do, and fitness experts explain how and why they are important for your workout."
~ Exercise Misconceptions -- "Most personal trainers couldn't pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were printed on the heel, so when it comes to squats and deadlifts, their advice is usually dead wrong."
~ Lift More Weight: Strengthen Your Shoulders -- "The smaller, less noticeable muscles in your shoulders are just as important as the bigger muscles for benching heavy loads or performing the overhead press. The primary purpose of the rotator cuff muscles is to stabilize and support the shoulder."
~ Bodyweight Training vs Weight Training: A Martial Artist’s Perspective -- "The martial arts camp promotes the usage of bodyweight exercises to develop the strength required to adequately perform a given martial art. This same camp states that weight training makes the muscles bulky and ultimately slows a person down. In addition, the added mass is not “functional” muscle, and therefore is not as useful to a martial artist as lean, explosive muscles are."
HEALTH
~ “Those” Days - The Psychological Benefits of Exercise -- "We have all had “those” days… You know what I am talking about. One of those days you just want to end, even though it just began 20 minutes ago. You are extra busy at work, but time doesn’t fly, it just snails along. You try to forget about things, put on your headphones, ignore everyone and everything and just rock out until the end of the day, but it never comes."
~ Weight Is Easier Gained Than Lost When Exercise Is Inconsistent -- "Weight gain caused by inconsistent exercise cannot be lost by simply resuming a previous exercise routine, suggests a study published in the February 2008 issue Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise®, the official scientific journal of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM)."
~ Knee Cartilage Repair: Will it Work for You? -- "The ends of bones are soft, so they must be covered with a thick white gristle called cartilage. Once damaged, cartilage can never heal. When knee cartilage is damaged, the person spends the rest of his life losing more cartilage until it is completely gone and the knee hurts 24 hours a day."
~ Marijuana withdrawal rivals that of nicotine -- "Quitting marijuana can cause withdrawal symptoms as severe as those from quitting tobacco, a small study suggests."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ 6 Practical Tips to Live a Lifestyle of Value -- "Do you want to get the most out of your life? If your answer is yes, then living a lifestyle of value is essential."
~ How tool use is encoded in the brain -- "Most movements involving tools involve the complex manipulation of objects in space, and it is possible that they could represented in the brain in this way -- i.e. as objects in space. On the other hand, the purpose of tools is to extend the range of motions available to the body, so it is also possible that tool use could be encode as an extension of the body representation onto the tool."
~ How to Create Positive Thought Rhythms -- "There is no such thing as perfect happiness because it varies widely. That’s the beauty of honing your ability to enjoy life. It strengthens your mind to adapt to new ideas."
~ 5 Languages That Can Improve Your Ability To Communicate With Others -- "Have you ever thought you were being utterly clear in your communication with someone - and yet somehow they still managed to misunderstand, get the wrong message or completely miss your point?"
~ Therapy Watch: Full Disclosure -- "When a therapist reveals too much."
~ The Private Lives of Shrinks -- "Should therapists share their personal lives?"
~ Lessons of Transformation in Groundhog Day -- "This one movie contains everything you need to know about positive thinking, personal growth and happiness. And it’s very funny too. So on the 15th anniversary of its release, and in the spirit of the Groundhog Day ceremony on February 2, I would like to show how you can leave winter behind and discover the joys of spring!"
~ Claiming Responsibility For the Self -- "One thing is to be responsible out there in the world, as described above, and another thing is to claim responsibility for the self. Both types of responsibility form part of responsible behavior, but the latter is much less understood, and even less implemented in an individual's life."
POETRY
~ In-Verse Thinking -- Q&A Charles Simic.
~ Galway Kinnell: A Question of Life or Death -- "Over the past half century since composing those first poems included in his premiere volume, Galway Kinnell has proven his initial passion for the art form and his dedication to writing poetry were well-placed investments leading toward a lifetime of poetic achievement."
~ Geoffrey Young- The Riot Act -- "I’ve been reading Geoffrey Young’s The Riot Act very slowly. It’s one of those delicious books that you never want to end."
~ Spotlight Essay: The Elements and Function of Poetry -- "The stuff of language is words, and the sensuous material of words is sound..."
POLITICS
~ The Choice -- " The question then becomes this: which of the two Democratic candidates is more likely to bring to fruition a new progressive majority? I believe, passionately and deeply, if occasionally waveringly, that it's Barack Obama."
~ The Unlikely Comeback of John McCain, Maverick Warmonger -- "Assuming McCain didn't implode in the 2008 race, his main competition was always going to be the slick, managerial blue-state governor Mitt Romney, with his sunny corporate optimism; and the snarling, managerial blue-state mayor Rudy Giuliani, with his bomb-'em-all World War IV talk. For McCain to beat out his ideological soulmate Giuliani — who has called McCain his "idol"— the maverick senator needed an early lead, so as to look more electable by the time Rudy got around to his late-state strategy this week in Florida." Ok - last week.
~ How Obama could win over the white working class -- "Barack Obama has the vigor, charisma, and grace of John and Robert F. Kennedy, and their extraordinary ability to stir young people and generate adoring, enthusiastic crowds. Which is why Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama seemed like a natural. But both JFK and RFK counterbalanced their idealism with a toughness (some said a ruthlessness) currently associated more with Hillary Clinton than with Obama."
~ Confessions of a young Hillary Clinton supporter -- "I'm a young male Democrat, and I support ... Hillary Clinton. I may be the loneliest man at Georgetown University, where I'm practically a social pariah. Supporting Hillary on a college campus this year is like being a Yankees fan at a Red Sox game, a Barry Manilow lover at a Radiohead concert."
~ The Fight for the Latino Vote -- "Super Tuesday has brought the power of the Latino vote to the forefront of the campaign. Clinton and Obama are once again sparring over a slice of the demographic pie."
More Later . . . .
OK, it is now later.
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ Steve Whitmire on Integral Naked - The Art of Integral Puppetry -- "Steve Whitmire, the performer of the word's most beloved frog, discusses the impact the Integral vision has had upon his own life, career, and creativity, and opens the door to a possible future of explicitly Integral puppetry…"
~ The Development of Dialectical Thinking as an Approach to Integration -- "In this article, Basseches offers a description of dialectical thinking as a particular kind of psychological phenomenon that reflects adult intellectual development. While relating this "psychological phenomenon" to various dialectical philosophical perspectives, Basseches moves on to reconceptualize dialectical thinking as a relatively independent mode of human thinking...."
~ The "Soul Hypothesis" (Part 4) -- "Most people relegate matters of the soul to their religion, which is a comforting choice. It's been said that religion is about someone else's experience while spirituality is about your own. The experiences of a Jesus or Buddha were exalted and holy. Attaching yourself to them feels safer than exploring the unknown by yourself. But there are reliable guides to the domain of the soul. As we saw in the previous post, the first step is to go beyond the five senses, venturing into the domain of intuition, insight, and subtle emotions."
~ Dharma Overground -- "Here the members of the Dharma Underground may share their visions of how things could be and try to promote the kind of dharma they want to see in the world without having to risk full disclosure if they don't want to."
~ No More Either / Or -- "However distinct our local features may be, however singular our attributes, the Emptiness that houses them is One. Emptiness is the native endowment of all that has ever been, is, or will be. The Infinite Synonym is elaborated in an impossible variety of form (with inner and outer characteristics). "
~ Top 4 Writers Who Should be In Classrooms -- "So, what if education were to begin to assist students in self-knowledge, and explore different worldviews that radically contrast, perhaps at surface level, traditional western values? What if east and west met? And then, what if east, west, north and south all found a congregation in the classroom, providing a mirror of both self-reflection and knowledge in the classroom? Man, we'd have one bad-ass educational system. Don't you think?"
~ Does Time Exist? Part 2 -- "Although no physical experiment can be performed to establish the existence of time, science has devised atomic clocks to measure time with an unparalleled accuracy down to nanoseconds. Our everyday experience of time reinforces the feeling that it is an absolute reality rather than a relative (temporal) reality or a stubborn illusion, as Einstein characterized it."
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