"A superstition is a premature explanation that overstays its time."
~ Georges Iles
Image of the day:
BODY
~ 4 Days in 15 Minutes: A Summary of the 2007 Health & Fitness Summit by Chris Shugart at T-Nation.
~ How To Maintain Healthy Blood Sugar Levels -- "A recent report linked high blood sugar levels with cancer in women. This highlighted again the problem of high blood sugar levels, even below the level found in diabetes, as they also increase people's chances of getting heart disease and full-blown diabetes."
~ More Muscle, Less Hassle: Build big power with this whole-body, two-dumbbell plan -- These three moves aren't going to make you big, but they're a good basic quick routine when you have no other options.
~ Johns Hopkins Researchers Examine Why People Eat The Foods They Do -- "People purchase foods based on their income level, their belief in a food's health benefit and cost. However, ethnicity and gender also impact people's food choices, according to researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health."
~ A New Walking Study Encourages Overweight Americans To Step Up To Better Health -- "What if someone told you, you could walk your way to better health? With 65 percent of American adults considered to be overweight or obese, walking may be one way to battle the bulge. However, if you lack motivation, a prescription to walk may be just what the doctor ordered."
~ Hormone therapy safe for younger women -- "Younger women may be able to safely take hormone replacement therapy to treat menopause symptoms based on a new analysis of a big U.S. study that had raised alarms about health risks and driven down sales of treatment drugs, according to a report released on Tuesday."
~ Drug That Mimics 'good' Cholesterol Has Mixed Effect On Coronary Atherosclerosis -- Diet and exercise are still the best options.
~ Eggs will raise your cholesterol, and other myths -- "Avoid eggs. Drink 8 glasses of water a day. Eating carbs will make you fat. Nutritional advice such as this has been touted for years -- but is it accurate?" This article is a step in the right direction, but still wrong. I agree that eggs are harmless. However, changing and reducing the kinds of carbs we eat willl help us lose weight and keep it off. And the more water you drink, the less your body holds and the easier it flushes toxins. And we do need to supplement with vitamins because the food we eat in nutritionally depleted.
~ 'Functional Foods': Healthy or Hype? -- "The line between the supermarket and drug store keeps getting fuzzier. Television commercials for Danone's "Activia" line of yogurts claim it's just the thing for folks struggling with what gastroenterologists call "slow transit time." Switch the channel, and ads for sterol-enriched Becel margarine trumpet its cholesterol-lowering goodness."
PSYCHE
~ Are Antidepressants Ever Necessary? -- "Interesting how the evidence is growing that antidepressants provide no meaningful benefit, particularly in light of a study released today that argues the incidence of depression may NOT be as common as you have been led to believe." I would seriously disagree with the assessment that antidepressants don't help.
~ Criteria for depression are too broad -- "Up to 25 percent of people in whom psychiatrists would currently diagnose depression may only be reacting normally to stressful events such as a divorce or losing a job, according to a new analysis that reexamined how the standard diagnostic criteria are used." With this, however, I am in full agreement.
~ COMMENT: It's interesting how someone with an agenda (Dr. Mercola) can use a fairly even-handed study to push his point of view.
~ Self-regulation Abilities, Beyond Intelligence, Play Major Role In Early Achievement -- "Although intelligence is generally thought to play a key role in children's early academic achievement, aspects of children's self-regulation abilities-including the ability to alternately shift and focus attention and to inhibit impulsive responding--are uniquely related to early academic success and account for greater variation in early academic progress than do measures of intelligence."
~ One reason the movie's never as good as the book [Cognitive Daily] -- "It makes some sense: if we've gone to the trouble of creating a visual environment, why not use the part of our mind that's designed to handle visual information -- the visual perception system itself? Wouldn't it be more convenient to do it that way instead of clumsily describing visual representations using words?"
~ A Neural FPGA? Dynamic Task-Relevant Code in Prefrontal Cortex [Developing Intelligence] -- "How does the brain exert flexible control over behavior? One idea is that high-level areas of the brain self-organize representations that lead to reward in a certain task, in a sense by "programming" or "executing" a pattern of activity that controls activity in more posterior and domain-specific regions (i.e., sensory or motor cortex)."
~ Exercise boosts mind, brain and mood -- Mind Hacks reviews the info in the new issue of Newsweek on exercise and the brain.
~ School Achievement, Perceptions Of Ability And Interest Change As Children Age -- "Children in early grades may like a subject in which they don't feel very competent, or they may feel competent in a subject in spite of poor grades. But by the end of high school, children generally feel most interested in subjects in which they feel they are the strongest.Those are the findings of a new study published in the March-April 2007 issue of the journal Child Development."
~ How we remember each other -- "Researchers at McGill University`s Douglas Mental Health University Institute, in collaboration with a French team at the University of Paris, have used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to identify the part of the brain that stores our memories of meetings, parties, arguments, fun and the myriad other social interactions that color our daily lives."
CULTURE
~ Bush plays chicken with Congress -- "George W. Bush faces a real predicament over the congressional challenges to the war in Iraq, and it is one entirely of his own making."
~ McCain Lags in Early Money -- "With Rudy and Romney outpacing him in fundraising, the onetime G.O.P. front-runner now faces the first crucial test of his young campaign
~ Kerry: McCain Approached Me About Being on Dem Ticket in 2004 -- "Building on the "McCain approached Tom Daschle to inquire about leaving the GOP" story, John Kerry now says that McCain's people approached his campaign about being the vice president on Kerry's 2004 ticket. If that's true, wow. We still don't have an explanation from McCain on all this, just a simple denial that none of it is true."
~ John Paul II: How Fast to Sainthood? -- "All is relative in the Vatican, and Benedict XVI has actually slowed down the policy on canonization. But the cause of the last pope may mean a (relatively) speedy ascent."
~ Romney Jumps To GOP Fundraising Lead -- With less than 3% support? Strange, that.
~ Where does all that campaign money go? -- "One way to think of the $26 million Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign raised in the first three months of 2007 is as insurance against any mishap that might strike next winter when the presidential contest begins with the Iowa caucuses."
~ ABC News' bizarre "scoop" on Iran's nuclear program -- Glenn Greenwald wonders "How did ABC's hysteria-producing article make it past a single editor?
~ Gonzales the Cipher -- "Sometimes, as often seems true with Gonzales, the details eluded him. Clearly, those details could have made the difference between life and death -- or, given the realities of the Texas system, death and a remote chance of a reprieve. But since Bush was not likely to temporarily block any execution or even to raise his voice in mild objection to a particularly heinous railroading, Gonzales kept his death penalty memos short and to the point. Almost always, the point was that the execution should proceed."
~ MySpace plans virtual US presidential primary vote -- "MySpace announced Tuesday it will hold the first virtual US presidential primary election at its youth-oriented social networking website."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Forecasters Call For Nasty Hurricane Season -- Again -- "Here's the good news, if you can call it that: This year's hurricane season isn't going to be as bad as 2005, when Hurricane Katrina wiped out New Orleans."
~ What if coal is running out too? -- "Virtually everyone involved in energy discussions takes for granted that there's plenty of coal waiting to be burnt. The typical claim is that the U.S. has "200 years" worth of domestic energy in its coal reserves."
~ How did life on Earth originate? -- "Did life arrive from space? Rather than developing here, could the first life forms have been catapulted to Earth on a chunk of rock from outer space? Investigations show that microbes are capable of surviving just such a journey."
~ Weighing the financial risks of nuclear power -- "Enticed by the gleam of government subsidies, many companies are rushing to invest in nuclear power, expecting that new technology and safer reactors will make them as good an investment as other types of power plants." Dumbasses.
~ Controversial Seal Hunt Delayed 2nd Year Due to Ice Breakup -- "Thin ice has again pushed back the start of Canada's annual harp seal hunt while causing thousands of seal pups to drown." Looks like global warming is good for seals.
~ Hubble Captures Dazzling Galaxy -- "The barred spiral galaxy features clusters of young blue stars."
~ NASA: Arctic Meltdown Threatens Ice Cap's Stability -- "Perennial sea ice in the Arctic is melting faster each summer than it can be replaced during winter, a new study confirms."
~ Power and Sexual Harassment: Men and Women See Things Differently -- "In the hands of the wrong person, power can be dangerous. That's especially the case in the workplace, where the abuse of power can lead to sexual harassment."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHISM
~ John Craig, of Craig Photography, has opened an online retail site for his fine photos. Check it out.
~ The Wilderness vs The City = Sacred vs Profane? -- "The bastardization and idealization of the wilderness is invisible to most people, I think. It certainly was invisible to me until recently, and this excerpt really crystallized it."
~ Relationship Intelligence from Gary at Integral in Seattle. See also: 3 Stages of Sexual Relationship.
~ Altitude revisited from Ed at Open Integral.
~ ebuddha posts a link to a discussion of integral relationship over at the I-I: An Integral Institute Thread on Integral Relationships.
~ Getting Hooked on the Present Moment -- Buddhist Geeks interview urchinTracker ('/outbound/article/leighbrasington.com');">Leigh Brasington.
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