Prickles and Goo
Appling
Thanks to Trey Parker and Matt Stone for these great videos.
Tags:
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Two More Animations of Alan Watts Lectures
Found at Penguin Feathers.
Prickles and Goo
Appling
Thanks to Trey Parker and Matt Stone for these great videos.
Prickles and Goo
Appling
Thanks to Trey Parker and Matt Stone for these great videos.
Speedlinking 8/22/07
Quote of the day:
"Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo."
~ Robert Byrne
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Lean and Mean Cookin' -- "How to Eat Right, Get Full, and Woo Women -- Contrary to popular belief, Texan Chris Shugart doesn't just eat the lean parts of armadillos. Well, he used to, but now he's figured out some simple, manly style dishes that he uses to put women into salivary overdrive."
~ Targeted Mobility -- "I caught a video clip of a strength coach going through a series of hip mobility drills and stretches designed to increase hip range of motion to improve squat performance. I applaud his intent but question the effectiveness his exercise technique."
~ Combination Training For The Best Of Both Worlds - Adding Variety! -- "There is no one best program, as no program will produce results forever. Eventually, you will adapt... To make better progress here is what I propose: add some variety right off the bat with 5x5, 3x3, HIT, sample regimen, and more right here!"
~ Injuries more likely if you have only one sport -- "Triathletes are injured only about one third as often as marathon runners even though they do far more work in their program of swimming, cycling and running. Training intelligently for three sports is less likely to injure you than training very hard for one."
~ Study Shines More Light On Benefit Of Vitamin D In Fighting Cancer -- "A new study looking at the relationship between vitamin D serum levels and the risk of colon and breast cancer across the globe has estimated the number of cases of cancer that could be prevented each year if vitamin D3 levels met the target proposed by researchers."
~ Low glycemic load diet may help fight acne -- "Avoiding high glycemic load foods could help acne sufferers clear up their skin, the results of a new small study suggest."
~ Older adults with low selenium have weaker muscles -- "Older adults with low levels of the mineral selenium may be lacking in muscle strength, a new study suggests."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Sexed-up seniors do it more than you'd think -- "An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky — willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush."
~ A Better Life -- "Thoughts can only be formed in the present moment. And thoughts can only exert effects in the present moment. If you can grasp these two concepts, you’ll be able to discard some forms of delusional thinking and craft much more effective intentions."
~ Self-Reported Vividness of Imagery and the Cortex -- "In 2002, I published an article critical of the generally weak-to-nonexistent relationships between self-reported vividness of imagery and performance on tasks psychologists have often thought to involve imagery, such as mental rotation tasks and tests of visual memory and visual creativity. Differences in subjective report about imagery, I suggested, may relate only poorly to real differences in imagery experience. This fits with my general skepticism about the trustworthiness of our reports about our own conscious experience."
~ What is Courage? -- "Positive psychology research asks whether experiencing fear is a central component of courage."
~ 7 Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone and Live a More Exciting Life -- "But if you want to improve your life you’ll sooner or later need to step out of that zone. Because it’s there you’ll find all those new and exciting experiences. Where you’ll find freedom from boredom. Here are 8 ideas that can help you get out of your comfort zone. Some are ways to make the process easier. Some are ways you may not have thought of (or forgotten)."
~ Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment -- "In our daily lives, we often rush through tasks, trying to get them done, trying to finish as much as we can each day, speeding along in our cars to our next destination, rushing to do what we need to do there, and then leaving so that we can speed to our next destination."
~ After Talk, When’s the Time to Take Action? -- "Laura Sessions Stepp has a nice article in today’s Washington Post about when men and women decide to stop talking and start doing something about the issues in their lives. Because although there’s a time to listen, there’s also a time to eventually take action."
~ Yoga And Breathing For Stress Management -- "While the various asanas or exercises are the basic building blocks of the practice of yoga, the breath is its very essence of it. Some go so far as to say, “If you can breathe, you can do yoga.” One of the main reasons for this is that one of the main goals of yoga is to teach you to still and quiet your mind through the use of your breath."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The Literature Network -- "We offer searchable online literature for the student, educator, or enthusiast. To find the work you're looking for start by looking through the author index. We currently have over 1900 full books and over 3000 short stories and poems by over 250 authors. Our quotations database has over 8500 quotes."
~ Where you fall in poll of U.S. reading habits -- "One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices." One in four read no books? That's horrible.
~ White House Seeks to Keep Emails Secret -- "The Justice Department said Tuesday that records about missing White House e-mails are not subject to public disclosure, the latest effort by the Bush administration to expand the boundaries of government secrecy."
~ The Trouble with Anonymity on the Web -- "Pundits of the Internet age are fond of excoriating the Web because anyone can post on it anonymously. Andrew Keen, whose recent book Cult of the Amateur is a good primer on why people hate the Web, highlights the horrors of anonymity in his work, contrasting the millions of unnamed Web scribblers with honorable, properly identified writers of yesteryear. Keen's point is that people who don't put their names on what they've written don't feel responsible for it; therefore they feel little compunction about lying or misrepresenting their chosen subjects."
~ Bush to CIA: 'Leave No Marks' -- "With no sign of torture on a prisoner, then it didn't happen, right?"
~ No coffee -- "For Jürgen Habermas, the coffeehouse is a place where bourgeois individuals can enter into relationships with one another without the restrictions of family, civil society, or the state. It is the site of a sort of universal community, integrated neither by power nor economic interests, but by common sense."
~ Why Max Roach was jazz's greatest drummer - "Max Roach's death last Wednesday, at age 83, marks another step toward the end of the modern jazz world's greatest generation. Only a few remain among the giants who were present alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as they created the harmonically adventurous, rhythmically turbulent postwar music called bebop."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Fossils belong to new great ape -- "The 10 million-year-old fossils belong to an animal that has been named Cororapithecus abyssinicus by the Ethiopian-Japanese team. This new species could be a direct ancestor of living African great apes, say the researchers."
~ The Fight to Green the Eco-Unfriendly Skies -- "Aviation's contributions to climate change are slowly being acknowledged. But efforts to curb emissions are being hampered by industry and government foot-dragging."
~ U.S. Told to Issue Global Warming Plans -- "A federal judge ordered the Bush administration to issue two scientific reports on global warming, siding with environmentalists who sued the White House for failing to produce the documents."
~ U.S. Records Yet Another Trade Deficit in Technology Product Markets -- "U.S. technology product imports exceeded exports for the first time in 2002 starting a trend that left a $38.3 billion trade deficit in 2006 after reaching a high of $44.4 billion in 2005."
~ Pinging Photons without Destroying Them -- "It sounds like a simple task: Count the number of photons or particles of light in a light beam without destroying them in the process. But in fact, it took 17 years to accomplish the feat, researchers report this week in Nature."
~ Google Sky Turns Computer Into Telescope -- "The heavens are only a few mouse clicks away with Google Inc.'s latest free tool."
~ Hurricane Planet: Is the Worst Yet to Come? -- "Hurricanes will only get stronger and more frequent as the climate warms, say scientists."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Buddhism and Your Brain Health? -- "Anyone keenly interested in either the topics of Neuroplasticity or the intersection between Buddhism and science may already be familiar with Sharon's book, but the topics and implications discussed in the book go far beyond these areas -- so much so that found ourselves continually reading between the lines, pausing and thinking, 'wait a minute...this means that I could get rid of that old bad habit of mine while making huge progress and becoming more productive, just by focusing thought on x, y and z'."
~ An Epiphany: My Spiritual Awakening and Path Toward Forgiveness -- "Taking a nod from Peter I decided to write about an epiphany in my life. This is the epiphany of my spiritual awakening. I had just returned from a difficult, trying, scary, confusing and exhausting two year Mormon mission from Cote D'Ivoire, West Africa where my world had been turned upside down. My unflinching commitment to the Mormon faith was unraveling by the day as I began to do some research into what were the opposing views. You see, I had been taught to not question the veracity of the church let alone read a different viewpoint on the history and teachings of the Mormon faith."
~ A Challenge to Wake Up -- "So why am I writing about 9/11 conspiracy theories, not-so-secret plans for world domination by the military industrial complex, etc., etc.? All you have to do is look at history to thoroughly support "so what's new?" Things simply have not changed that much, and still the majority of us aren't conscious enough to know or care. We have our drugs of choice, happily supplied by those who would dominate us."
~ The Universal Religion: Part 1 -- "To bring an understanding of Zen to Europe, Master Deshimaru talked as much in terms of 'God' as he talked about 'Buddha'. Yet, this wasn't a belief in a literal creator being or personal God - he was using the concept as a metaphor for 'the universal' or the fundamental principle of reality, not unlike the way that scientists like Einstein and Stephen Hawking use the concept."
"Everything is in a state of flux, including the status quo."
~ Robert Byrne
Image of the day:
BODY
~ Lean and Mean Cookin' -- "How to Eat Right, Get Full, and Woo Women -- Contrary to popular belief, Texan Chris Shugart doesn't just eat the lean parts of armadillos. Well, he used to, but now he's figured out some simple, manly style dishes that he uses to put women into salivary overdrive."
~ Targeted Mobility -- "I caught a video clip of a strength coach going through a series of hip mobility drills and stretches designed to increase hip range of motion to improve squat performance. I applaud his intent but question the effectiveness his exercise technique."
~ Combination Training For The Best Of Both Worlds - Adding Variety! -- "There is no one best program, as no program will produce results forever. Eventually, you will adapt... To make better progress here is what I propose: add some variety right off the bat with 5x5, 3x3, HIT, sample regimen, and more right here!"
~ Injuries more likely if you have only one sport -- "Triathletes are injured only about one third as often as marathon runners even though they do far more work in their program of swimming, cycling and running. Training intelligently for three sports is less likely to injure you than training very hard for one."
~ Study Shines More Light On Benefit Of Vitamin D In Fighting Cancer -- "A new study looking at the relationship between vitamin D serum levels and the risk of colon and breast cancer across the globe has estimated the number of cases of cancer that could be prevented each year if vitamin D3 levels met the target proposed by researchers."
~ Low glycemic load diet may help fight acne -- "Avoiding high glycemic load foods could help acne sufferers clear up their skin, the results of a new small study suggest."
~ Older adults with low selenium have weaker muscles -- "Older adults with low levels of the mineral selenium may be lacking in muscle strength, a new study suggests."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Sexed-up seniors do it more than you'd think -- "An unprecedented study of sex and seniors finds that many older people are surprisingly frisky — willing to do, and talk about, intimate acts that would make their grandchildren blush."
~ A Better Life -- "Thoughts can only be formed in the present moment. And thoughts can only exert effects in the present moment. If you can grasp these two concepts, you’ll be able to discard some forms of delusional thinking and craft much more effective intentions."
~ Self-Reported Vividness of Imagery and the Cortex -- "In 2002, I published an article critical of the generally weak-to-nonexistent relationships between self-reported vividness of imagery and performance on tasks psychologists have often thought to involve imagery, such as mental rotation tasks and tests of visual memory and visual creativity. Differences in subjective report about imagery, I suggested, may relate only poorly to real differences in imagery experience. This fits with my general skepticism about the trustworthiness of our reports about our own conscious experience."
~ What is Courage? -- "Positive psychology research asks whether experiencing fear is a central component of courage."
~ 7 Ways to Break Out of Your Comfort Zone and Live a More Exciting Life -- "But if you want to improve your life you’ll sooner or later need to step out of that zone. Because it’s there you’ll find all those new and exciting experiences. Where you’ll find freedom from boredom. Here are 8 ideas that can help you get out of your comfort zone. Some are ways to make the process easier. Some are ways you may not have thought of (or forgotten)."
~ Peaceful Simplicity: How to Live a Life of Contentment -- "In our daily lives, we often rush through tasks, trying to get them done, trying to finish as much as we can each day, speeding along in our cars to our next destination, rushing to do what we need to do there, and then leaving so that we can speed to our next destination."
~ After Talk, When’s the Time to Take Action? -- "Laura Sessions Stepp has a nice article in today’s Washington Post about when men and women decide to stop talking and start doing something about the issues in their lives. Because although there’s a time to listen, there’s also a time to eventually take action."
~ Yoga And Breathing For Stress Management -- "While the various asanas or exercises are the basic building blocks of the practice of yoga, the breath is its very essence of it. Some go so far as to say, “If you can breathe, you can do yoga.” One of the main reasons for this is that one of the main goals of yoga is to teach you to still and quiet your mind through the use of your breath."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ The Literature Network -- "We offer searchable online literature for the student, educator, or enthusiast. To find the work you're looking for start by looking through the author index. We currently have over 1900 full books and over 3000 short stories and poems by over 250 authors. Our quotations database has over 8500 quotes."
~ Where you fall in poll of U.S. reading habits -- "One in four adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and seniors were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices." One in four read no books? That's horrible.
~ White House Seeks to Keep Emails Secret -- "The Justice Department said Tuesday that records about missing White House e-mails are not subject to public disclosure, the latest effort by the Bush administration to expand the boundaries of government secrecy."
~ The Trouble with Anonymity on the Web -- "Pundits of the Internet age are fond of excoriating the Web because anyone can post on it anonymously. Andrew Keen, whose recent book Cult of the Amateur is a good primer on why people hate the Web, highlights the horrors of anonymity in his work, contrasting the millions of unnamed Web scribblers with honorable, properly identified writers of yesteryear. Keen's point is that people who don't put their names on what they've written don't feel responsible for it; therefore they feel little compunction about lying or misrepresenting their chosen subjects."
~ Bush to CIA: 'Leave No Marks' -- "With no sign of torture on a prisoner, then it didn't happen, right?"
~ No coffee -- "For Jürgen Habermas, the coffeehouse is a place where bourgeois individuals can enter into relationships with one another without the restrictions of family, civil society, or the state. It is the site of a sort of universal community, integrated neither by power nor economic interests, but by common sense."
~ Why Max Roach was jazz's greatest drummer - "Max Roach's death last Wednesday, at age 83, marks another step toward the end of the modern jazz world's greatest generation. Only a few remain among the giants who were present alongside Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie as they created the harmonically adventurous, rhythmically turbulent postwar music called bebop."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Fossils belong to new great ape -- "The 10 million-year-old fossils belong to an animal that has been named Cororapithecus abyssinicus by the Ethiopian-Japanese team. This new species could be a direct ancestor of living African great apes, say the researchers."
~ The Fight to Green the Eco-Unfriendly Skies -- "Aviation's contributions to climate change are slowly being acknowledged. But efforts to curb emissions are being hampered by industry and government foot-dragging."
~ U.S. Told to Issue Global Warming Plans -- "A federal judge ordered the Bush administration to issue two scientific reports on global warming, siding with environmentalists who sued the White House for failing to produce the documents."
~ U.S. Records Yet Another Trade Deficit in Technology Product Markets -- "U.S. technology product imports exceeded exports for the first time in 2002 starting a trend that left a $38.3 billion trade deficit in 2006 after reaching a high of $44.4 billion in 2005."
~ Pinging Photons without Destroying Them -- "It sounds like a simple task: Count the number of photons or particles of light in a light beam without destroying them in the process. But in fact, it took 17 years to accomplish the feat, researchers report this week in Nature."
~ Google Sky Turns Computer Into Telescope -- "The heavens are only a few mouse clicks away with Google Inc.'s latest free tool."
~ Hurricane Planet: Is the Worst Yet to Come? -- "Hurricanes will only get stronger and more frequent as the climate warms, say scientists."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Buddhism and Your Brain Health? -- "Anyone keenly interested in either the topics of Neuroplasticity or the intersection between Buddhism and science may already be familiar with Sharon's book, but the topics and implications discussed in the book go far beyond these areas -- so much so that found ourselves continually reading between the lines, pausing and thinking, 'wait a minute...this means that I could get rid of that old bad habit of mine while making huge progress and becoming more productive, just by focusing thought on x, y and z'."
~ An Epiphany: My Spiritual Awakening and Path Toward Forgiveness -- "Taking a nod from Peter I decided to write about an epiphany in my life. This is the epiphany of my spiritual awakening. I had just returned from a difficult, trying, scary, confusing and exhausting two year Mormon mission from Cote D'Ivoire, West Africa where my world had been turned upside down. My unflinching commitment to the Mormon faith was unraveling by the day as I began to do some research into what were the opposing views. You see, I had been taught to not question the veracity of the church let alone read a different viewpoint on the history and teachings of the Mormon faith."
~ A Challenge to Wake Up -- "So why am I writing about 9/11 conspiracy theories, not-so-secret plans for world domination by the military industrial complex, etc., etc.? All you have to do is look at history to thoroughly support "so what's new?" Things simply have not changed that much, and still the majority of us aren't conscious enough to know or care. We have our drugs of choice, happily supplied by those who would dominate us."
~ The Universal Religion: Part 1 -- "To bring an understanding of Zen to Europe, Master Deshimaru talked as much in terms of 'God' as he talked about 'Buddha'. Yet, this wasn't a belief in a literal creator being or personal God - he was using the concept as a metaphor for 'the universal' or the fundamental principle of reality, not unlike the way that scientists like Einstein and Stephen Hawking use the concept."
Tags:
Richard Dawkins: Enemies of Reason, Both Episodes
Enjoy!
In general, Dawkins seems like an overly rational reductionist to me. But this show, I think, serves a good purpose in exposing the pre-rational magical thinking that so many people engage in. When he attacks ALL religion as worthless, I have to object. But this series is useful. I found it pretty entertaining, especially since I have had similar conversations with people who believe in astrology, homeopathy, or various other irrational systems.
Episode One:
Episode Two:
Via: VideoSift
In general, Dawkins seems like an overly rational reductionist to me. But this show, I think, serves a good purpose in exposing the pre-rational magical thinking that so many people engage in. When he attacks ALL religion as worthless, I have to object. But this series is useful. I found it pretty entertaining, especially since I have had similar conversations with people who believe in astrology, homeopathy, or various other irrational systems.
Episode One:
Episode Two:
Via: VideoSift
Tags:
22 Secrets to Discovering Your Dream and Living It
From the dumb little man blog, some tips for creating meaningful work.
Go to the blog to see the 22 tips.
One of the most important rules of happiness in life is to do what you love. But discovering that dream job and what you are meant to do in life isn't always so easy.
Take a look at the happiest, most successful people on this planet: they are all doing something they love, creating something they believe in, living a life of purpose and passion. Do that, and it doesn't matter how much money you make.
But what do you do if you don't know what you want to do? If you don't know what your dream is? This is a common problem, and many people wander through much of their life without discovering their passion, and go from job to job, unfulfilled and miserable.
If that's you, don't give up. What follows is a list of suggestions that will help you discover your dream, and start on the road to living that dream. They're things that have worked for me and many others I've studied, talked to, interviewed and admired.
While you don't need to do every step below, they are all ways for your to spend time thinking about your passion in life, your dreams, and how to accomplish them. If you spend time thinking about your dreams, you are taking the first step towards making them a reality.
Go to the blog to see the 22 tips.
Tags:
Satire: FDA Approves Seconds
From The Onion:
FDA Approves Seconds
WASHINGTON, DC—In a surprising reversal of its longtime single-helping policy, the Food and Drug Administration announced its approval of seconds Tuesday, claiming that an additional plateful of food with every meal can greatly reduce the risk of hunger as well as provide an excellent source of deliciousness.
Enlarge ImageThe Department of Agriculture has revised its old food pyramid to reflect the new guidelines.
Addressing what it calls a "growing epidemic of cravings and hankerings," the federal agency recommended redesigning food labels to prominently display extra-serving sizes and pledged to better educate consumers on how to make informed additional-portion choices at home and in restaurants.
"There's plenty to go around," FDA commissioner Andrew von Eschenbach said between spoonfuls of mashed potatoes during a benefit luncheon at the Clean Plate Club in Washington. "We've found that eating seconds is essential for keeping up the country's strength."
"Besides, with people starving in other parts of the world, it would be an absolute shame to let our nice food supply all go to waste," the commissioner added.
Once restricted to the head of the household, on Thanksgiving, or to those who had been extra good, seconds will now be made available to the general public in over-the-kitchen-counter form. However, FDA officials warn that those with a history of health problems should consult their doctor first.
"Seconds may not be suitable for everyone," von Eschenbach said. "Especially those who suffer from heart disease, those at risk for diabetes, people trying to lose weight, and women."
Enlarge ImageUneaten potential seconds, like those seen in this file photo, could soon become a thing of the past.
The FDA also recommended moderation in consuming seconds. Researchers in the seconds field have noted occasional side effects, such as hardly being able to get up from the table, pants-loosening, drowsiness, and the feeling that one "might explode" if one eats just one more bite.
A report commissioned by the Las Vegas–based International Brotherhood of Buffet Owners revealed that 75 percent of undereating occurs in those afflicted by a rare disorder in which their eyes are smaller than their stomachs, preventing them from taking advantage of all-you-can-eat opportunites. Picky eating habits and an unwillingness to stuff oneself are considered the leading preventable causes of scrawniness among Americans.
"Growing boys represent the greatest at-risk group, as unprecedented numbers of them are wasting away," registered dietician and grandmother of six Irma Jacobs said. "They'll just turn into skin and bones before our very eyes unless we make a concerted effort to get them to eat, eat, eat up."
Other nutritionists suggest that the need for seconds could be eliminated by an initial very large, or "heaping," helping.
"Larger portions could entirely eliminate the need to reach over, pass dishes, or get out of a chair," said clinical nutritionist Gary Bergen of Los Angeles' Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, who estimates that millions of calories and thousands of hours of eating time are wasted annually by making unnecessary second-serving trips. "I find it ironic that the FDA has approved seconds, yet still hasn't standardized the dollop."
Despite months of work and the purchase of several new wardrobes, FDA researchers say their study of the consumption of thirds and fourths has been inconclusive, but they suggest a possible link between these additional servings and tummy aches.
Tags:
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
New Poem: Dissolving
Dissolving
I drink until
there is no more self
impenetrable walls
crumble in the darkness
a cherry tree grows
from my chest
hummingbirds flit
within the hollow skull
where once were toes
bamboo shoots sprout
from dust to dust
everything is so clear
I hear wine called enlightenment,
and they say murky wine is like wisdom:
once you drink enlightenment and wisdom,
why go searching for gods and immortals?
~ Li Po
I drink until
there is no more self
impenetrable walls
crumble in the darkness
a cherry tree grows
from my chest
hummingbirds flit
within the hollow skull
where once were toes
bamboo shoots sprout
from dust to dust
everything is so clear
Tags:
Gratitude 8/21/07
Some things I am grateful for today:
1) I just watched The Matrix for the first time -- and I'm probably the last geeky white guy in America to see it. That was fun -- now I've got to see the other two.
2) My Zaadz friend Cree made me smile big today -- much needed, and I am grateful.
3) Just when I thought things were going to be rough as a result of the First Magnus fall-out, I picked up two new clients today at the gym. It's a new experience for me to relax into things and let them happen, trusting I will be taken care of (not that it doesn't take work), but I'm learning.
What are you grateful for today?
1) I just watched The Matrix for the first time -- and I'm probably the last geeky white guy in America to see it. That was fun -- now I've got to see the other two.
2) My Zaadz friend Cree made me smile big today -- much needed, and I am grateful.
3) Just when I thought things were going to be rough as a result of the First Magnus fall-out, I picked up two new clients today at the gym. It's a new experience for me to relax into things and let them happen, trusting I will be taken care of (not that it doesn't take work), but I'm learning.
What are you grateful for today?
Tags:
Speedlinking 8/21/07
Quote of the day:
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
~ Susan Ertz
Image of the day:
BODY
~ 12 Truths About Bodybuilding Training -- "Dr. Clay Hyght is a bodybuilder through and through; he couldn't care less about how much he can bench or squat. As such, he has a refreshingly logical perspective when it comes to packing on muscle."
~ Rise of the kettlebell -- "In an ever-changing world, there are some things you can count on: seasons will change, rich people will complain about taxes and Geri Halliwell will change shape. Unlike her last transformation, though - when she shrunk to near-emaciation - Halliwell is now looking healthy and strong and has been parading her six-pack around the south of France in a selection of fetching bikinis. And, if you believe the hype, her new look is all down to the latest fitness craze: kettlebells."
~ Mike Robertson's Words of Wisdom -- "Mike Robertson is the mechanic, the guy who not only fixes the machine, but the guy who knows how to soup it up, too, regardless of whether you need the machine to jump higher, run faster, lift more weight, or just get bigger."
~ 10 No-Nonsense Nutrition Rules To Get You On The Right Track NOW! -- "First things first, understand that even if you workout in a gym, no matter how hard you train, you simply cannot out-train a lousy diet. Here are ten great tips on getting on the right track to meet your fat loss goals!"
~ Yoga A Calming Influence In Israel -- "It seems a bit incongruous: the non-stop hustle bustle of life in Israel and the calm serenity of yoga. But during the last few years the two have found a way to coexist in harmony and in the process Israelis are becoming less stressed. Israel isn't a den of Zen just yet but there's always hope. Yoga is catching on with increasing popularity as exemplified by the opening last month of the country's largest yoga center in Kfar Saba."
~ High blood pressure often undiagnosed in U.S. kids -- "High blood pressure among children and adolescents, a growing problem linked to increasing juvenile obesity, often goes undiagnosed in the United States, according to a study published on Tuesday."
~ More activity improves recovery from knee surgery -- "The more frequently a person plays sports after having surgery to restore damaged knee cartilage, the better he or she will fare long-term, German researchers report."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Redefining And Treating 'Internet Addiction' -- "Is your first craving in the morning for your computer mouse? Do you obsessively check email in the middle of the night? If so, you may be among the ten percent of all Internet surfers afflicted with "Internet addiction disorder," a pathological condition that can lead to anxiety and severe depression."
~ Psyschologists Study Loneliness And Its Effect On Health -- "Two University of Chicago psychologists, Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo, have been trying to disentangle social isolation, loneliness, and the physical deterioration and diseases of aging, right down to the cellular level. The researchers suspected that while the toll of loneliness may be mild and unremarkable in early life, it accumulates with time."
~ Animal Kingdom: Head of the Pack -- "Animals are smarter than you think."
~ US psychologists snub CIA but scrap total ban -- "After much debate at the American Psychological Association conference a resolution was passed that condemns torture, bans psychologists from taking part in certain abusive activities, but still leaves significant grey areas for participation in contested CIA interrogation techniques." Cowards -- What happened to "Do No Harm"? See also: What does a psychologist do at a detainee interrogation?
~ The cognitive science of magic -- "The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness invited some of the world's best stage magicians along to their June conference to demonstrate how the conscious mind can be manipulated. The New York Times has just published a fantastic article on the conference and the cognitive science of magic."
~ New Approach To Delaying Onset Of Alzheimer's Disease -- "Scientists working on a cure for Alzheimer's disease find it hard to develop drugs that will pass through the highly selective blood-brain barrier. That may be why a Tel Aviv University researcher decided to take an alternate route -- through the nose."
~ Behavior: To Reap Psychotherapy’s Benefits, Get a Good Fit -- "If the outcome may be months or years away, how can a person tell whether his psychotherapy is any good?"
~ Area responsible for 'self-control' found in the human brain -- "The area of the brain responsible for self-control—where the decision not to do something occurs after thinking about doing it—is separate from the area associated with taking action, scientists say in the August 22 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Pink for a girl and blue for a boy - and it's all down to evolution -- "Women's fondness for the colour pink is so deeply embedded that it may have been shaped by evolutionary history, according to scientists whose study of colour preferences is published today. Rather than marking a girlie approach to home decoration or cake-icing, the trait's roots are more likely to lie in the struggle to find food in hunter-gatherer days, the researchers suggested."
~ Rovian Ways -- "Most politicians find the cult of the political consultant annoying, but George W. Bush always seemed to find it very annoying. When he began running for President, he insisted, as candidates rarely do, that all his top advisers work only for him. So Karl Rove sold the business he had spent his adult life building up, went to work for Bush as an employee...."
~ The Anxiety of Influence -- "As the saying goes, a museum is only as good as its collection. So it must follow that the Museum of Modern Art stacks up as the world's best. But does it? A museum can't be better than its contents, but can it be worse?"
~ The Politics of God -- "Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin."
~ Officials Admit Having Wiretap Papers -- "Lawyers for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asked the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday for more time to respond to subpoenas involving a wiretapping program."
~ SCOTT HORTON—Words of Wisdom -- "Who wrote the Great American Novel? As readers of No Comment know, I award that honor with no hesitation, to Harper Lee of Monroeville, Alabama, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. And yesterday in Montgomery, Harper Lee broke many years of public silence, uttering the most important words spoken in Alabama in many decades. . . ."
~ Editors: Sub-Prime Numbers -- "The Bush administration has demonstrated admirable restraint, resisting calls to let troubled mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge into the market and increase their holdings."
~ Interview with William Gibson -- "The Washington Post calls Spook Country "a devastatingly precise reflection of the American zeitgeist....Gibson takes another large step forward and reaffirms his position as one of the most astute and entertaining commentators on our astonishing, chaotic present." In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls it "one of Gibson's best." And they're right; if you haven't read William Gibson before, Spook Country might be the ideal place to start."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Greatest Mysteries: Where is the Rest of the Universe? -- "Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem—the vast majority of it is missing."
~ Seeing the Unseeable -- "Within the confines of the ordinary, vision is the most reliable tool we have. But some of the most extraordinary parts of nature, those that lie at the frontiers of science, can't be seen at all."
~ Safeway trucks switch to biodiesel fuel -- "Safeway Inc. today is scheduled to unveil its truck fleet's conversion to B20 biodiesel fuel during an official announcement that includes state and legislative leaders. For the last 30 days, the company has worked to convert all 79 of its Arizona trucks to fuel that is 20 percent biodiesel made from domestically manufactured virgin soybean oil."
~ Reusable water bottles you'll actually want to use -- "Unless you're stationed in the rapidly disappearing Arctic, you've probably heard about the evils of bottled water these past few months. I've watched this whole slow-news-season "controversy" unfold with great interest, as it spoke to my own fraught love-hate relationship with bottled water."
~ MTV, RealNetworks Challenge Apple Music -- "Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks and digital media company RealNetworks announced Tuesday a digital music joint venture that will compete with Apple's dominant trinity of the iTunes store, iPod player and iPhone."
~ New Report Lists “Top Ten” Threats to Oceans and Coasts in South America -- "The Nature Conservancy released an unprecedented study highlighting the top ten threats to marine conservation in South America. Citing over-fishing as the number one threat, compounded by intense development pressures and numerous environmental challenges."
~ Hiking by Transit -- "Many of us would love to get rid of our cars (or at least cut down on the number of cars our family owns), if we could find a sensible alternative. That time may not be far off; increasingly a combination of good urban planning, new technology and more flexible models of ownership is making car-free life not only possible, but alluring."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Love Is A Verb -- "Love is action. It's clear, it's kind, it's effortless, and it's irresistible." A nice quote from Byron Katie over Cree's blog.
~ The Four Initiations: Introduction -- "I want to talk about four key initiatory thresholds that define 21st Century Spirituality in the realms of Body, Mind, Shadow and Spirit. (There is a tie-in here with Integral Theory and the Integral Life Practice Kit.) In order for spirituality to be substantive it has to include both a theoretical and an experiential component - and those two components have to be in an evolving dialog of inquiry."
~ Does religious faith depend upon magical thinking? -- "That is that claim, or premise, of John Derbyshire (whose work I generally enjoy) made in this book review. But leave aside the book in question, and Derbyshire’s review (not one of his best, if you ask me). I read the sentence — that religious faith depends upon magical thinking — and it gave me great pause. Mainly because while it is a common sort of thing to say (especially by atheists, of which Derbyshire is one), I think it is complete balderdash."
~ Epiphanies -- "Thanks to Robin over at the Dharma Bums for the invitation to recall a moment of epiphany--one of those moments when the sign is clear that it's time to change one's life. Rather than take up too much space in the comment column of her blog, I decided to post mine here instead. It's the short version of a longer story, which I'll tell you more about at the end. Here goes ...."
~ How To Use Your Awareness To Keep You From Crashing -- "It takes a shift in focus to be aware of what’s happening in you as you do that job, make that call, write that report, or hammer that nail. When you make that shift, however, a world of possibilities opens up to you."
~ Staying power (3) -- "The only way to really understand the effects and benefits of meditation is through direct experience. According to the Tibetan oral tradition (*B. A. Wallace), among those who are well qualified to enter shamatha training, "those of sharpest faculties may be able to achieve all ten stages within three months; those with medium faculties may take six months; and those with dull faculties may require nine months". Of course, this assumes a contemplative environment and full-time devotion to training, while the "faculty" refers to the natural talent and ability in sustained attentional balance, ability in using mindfulness and intelligence."
~ Zizek on Western Buddhism -- "Slavoj Zizek has a generous critique of Western Buddhism."
"Millions long for immortality who don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."
~ Susan Ertz
Image of the day:
BODY
~ 12 Truths About Bodybuilding Training -- "Dr. Clay Hyght is a bodybuilder through and through; he couldn't care less about how much he can bench or squat. As such, he has a refreshingly logical perspective when it comes to packing on muscle."
~ Rise of the kettlebell -- "In an ever-changing world, there are some things you can count on: seasons will change, rich people will complain about taxes and Geri Halliwell will change shape. Unlike her last transformation, though - when she shrunk to near-emaciation - Halliwell is now looking healthy and strong and has been parading her six-pack around the south of France in a selection of fetching bikinis. And, if you believe the hype, her new look is all down to the latest fitness craze: kettlebells."
~ Mike Robertson's Words of Wisdom -- "Mike Robertson is the mechanic, the guy who not only fixes the machine, but the guy who knows how to soup it up, too, regardless of whether you need the machine to jump higher, run faster, lift more weight, or just get bigger."
~ 10 No-Nonsense Nutrition Rules To Get You On The Right Track NOW! -- "First things first, understand that even if you workout in a gym, no matter how hard you train, you simply cannot out-train a lousy diet. Here are ten great tips on getting on the right track to meet your fat loss goals!"
~ Yoga A Calming Influence In Israel -- "It seems a bit incongruous: the non-stop hustle bustle of life in Israel and the calm serenity of yoga. But during the last few years the two have found a way to coexist in harmony and in the process Israelis are becoming less stressed. Israel isn't a den of Zen just yet but there's always hope. Yoga is catching on with increasing popularity as exemplified by the opening last month of the country's largest yoga center in Kfar Saba."
~ High blood pressure often undiagnosed in U.S. kids -- "High blood pressure among children and adolescents, a growing problem linked to increasing juvenile obesity, often goes undiagnosed in the United States, according to a study published on Tuesday."
~ More activity improves recovery from knee surgery -- "The more frequently a person plays sports after having surgery to restore damaged knee cartilage, the better he or she will fare long-term, German researchers report."
PSYCHE/SELF
~ Redefining And Treating 'Internet Addiction' -- "Is your first craving in the morning for your computer mouse? Do you obsessively check email in the middle of the night? If so, you may be among the ten percent of all Internet surfers afflicted with "Internet addiction disorder," a pathological condition that can lead to anxiety and severe depression."
~ Psyschologists Study Loneliness And Its Effect On Health -- "Two University of Chicago psychologists, Louise Hawkley and John Cacioppo, have been trying to disentangle social isolation, loneliness, and the physical deterioration and diseases of aging, right down to the cellular level. The researchers suspected that while the toll of loneliness may be mild and unremarkable in early life, it accumulates with time."
~ Animal Kingdom: Head of the Pack -- "Animals are smarter than you think."
~ US psychologists snub CIA but scrap total ban -- "After much debate at the American Psychological Association conference a resolution was passed that condemns torture, bans psychologists from taking part in certain abusive activities, but still leaves significant grey areas for participation in contested CIA interrogation techniques." Cowards -- What happened to "Do No Harm"? See also: What does a psychologist do at a detainee interrogation?
~ The cognitive science of magic -- "The Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness invited some of the world's best stage magicians along to their June conference to demonstrate how the conscious mind can be manipulated. The New York Times has just published a fantastic article on the conference and the cognitive science of magic."
~ New Approach To Delaying Onset Of Alzheimer's Disease -- "Scientists working on a cure for Alzheimer's disease find it hard to develop drugs that will pass through the highly selective blood-brain barrier. That may be why a Tel Aviv University researcher decided to take an alternate route -- through the nose."
~ Behavior: To Reap Psychotherapy’s Benefits, Get a Good Fit -- "If the outcome may be months or years away, how can a person tell whether his psychotherapy is any good?"
~ Area responsible for 'self-control' found in the human brain -- "The area of the brain responsible for self-control—where the decision not to do something occurs after thinking about doing it—is separate from the area associated with taking action, scientists say in the August 22 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience."
CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Pink for a girl and blue for a boy - and it's all down to evolution -- "Women's fondness for the colour pink is so deeply embedded that it may have been shaped by evolutionary history, according to scientists whose study of colour preferences is published today. Rather than marking a girlie approach to home decoration or cake-icing, the trait's roots are more likely to lie in the struggle to find food in hunter-gatherer days, the researchers suggested."
~ Rovian Ways -- "Most politicians find the cult of the political consultant annoying, but George W. Bush always seemed to find it very annoying. When he began running for President, he insisted, as candidates rarely do, that all his top advisers work only for him. So Karl Rove sold the business he had spent his adult life building up, went to work for Bush as an employee...."
~ The Anxiety of Influence -- "As the saying goes, a museum is only as good as its collection. So it must follow that the Museum of Modern Art stacks up as the world's best. But does it? A museum can't be better than its contents, but can it be worse?"
~ The Politics of God -- "Today, we have progressed to the point where our problems again resemble those of the 16th century, as we find ourselves entangled in conflicts over competing revelations, dogmatic purity and divine duty. We in the West are disturbed and confused. Though we have our own fundamentalists, we find it incomprehensible that theological ideas still stir up messianic passions, leaving societies in ruin."
~ Officials Admit Having Wiretap Papers -- "Lawyers for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asked the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday for more time to respond to subpoenas involving a wiretapping program."
~ SCOTT HORTON—Words of Wisdom -- "Who wrote the Great American Novel? As readers of No Comment know, I award that honor with no hesitation, to Harper Lee of Monroeville, Alabama, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird. And yesterday in Montgomery, Harper Lee broke many years of public silence, uttering the most important words spoken in Alabama in many decades. . . ."
~ Editors: Sub-Prime Numbers -- "The Bush administration has demonstrated admirable restraint, resisting calls to let troubled mortgage buyers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge into the market and increase their holdings."
~ Interview with William Gibson -- "The Washington Post calls Spook Country "a devastatingly precise reflection of the American zeitgeist....Gibson takes another large step forward and reaffirms his position as one of the most astute and entertaining commentators on our astonishing, chaotic present." In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls it "one of Gibson's best." And they're right; if you haven't read William Gibson before, Spook Country might be the ideal place to start."
HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Greatest Mysteries: Where is the Rest of the Universe? -- "Scientists trying to create a detailed inventory of all the matter and energy in the cosmos run into a curious problem—the vast majority of it is missing."
~ Seeing the Unseeable -- "Within the confines of the ordinary, vision is the most reliable tool we have. But some of the most extraordinary parts of nature, those that lie at the frontiers of science, can't be seen at all."
~ Safeway trucks switch to biodiesel fuel -- "Safeway Inc. today is scheduled to unveil its truck fleet's conversion to B20 biodiesel fuel during an official announcement that includes state and legislative leaders. For the last 30 days, the company has worked to convert all 79 of its Arizona trucks to fuel that is 20 percent biodiesel made from domestically manufactured virgin soybean oil."
~ Reusable water bottles you'll actually want to use -- "Unless you're stationed in the rapidly disappearing Arctic, you've probably heard about the evils of bottled water these past few months. I've watched this whole slow-news-season "controversy" unfold with great interest, as it spoke to my own fraught love-hate relationship with bottled water."
~ MTV, RealNetworks Challenge Apple Music -- "Viacom Inc.'s MTV Networks and digital media company RealNetworks announced Tuesday a digital music joint venture that will compete with Apple's dominant trinity of the iTunes store, iPod player and iPhone."
~ New Report Lists “Top Ten” Threats to Oceans and Coasts in South America -- "The Nature Conservancy released an unprecedented study highlighting the top ten threats to marine conservation in South America. Citing over-fishing as the number one threat, compounded by intense development pressures and numerous environmental challenges."
~ Hiking by Transit -- "Many of us would love to get rid of our cars (or at least cut down on the number of cars our family owns), if we could find a sensible alternative. That time may not be far off; increasingly a combination of good urban planning, new technology and more flexible models of ownership is making car-free life not only possible, but alluring."
INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Love Is A Verb -- "Love is action. It's clear, it's kind, it's effortless, and it's irresistible." A nice quote from Byron Katie over Cree's blog.
~ The Four Initiations: Introduction -- "I want to talk about four key initiatory thresholds that define 21st Century Spirituality in the realms of Body, Mind, Shadow and Spirit. (There is a tie-in here with Integral Theory and the Integral Life Practice Kit.) In order for spirituality to be substantive it has to include both a theoretical and an experiential component - and those two components have to be in an evolving dialog of inquiry."
~ Does religious faith depend upon magical thinking? -- "That is that claim, or premise, of John Derbyshire (whose work I generally enjoy) made in this book review. But leave aside the book in question, and Derbyshire’s review (not one of his best, if you ask me). I read the sentence — that religious faith depends upon magical thinking — and it gave me great pause. Mainly because while it is a common sort of thing to say (especially by atheists, of which Derbyshire is one), I think it is complete balderdash."
~ Epiphanies -- "Thanks to Robin over at the Dharma Bums for the invitation to recall a moment of epiphany--one of those moments when the sign is clear that it's time to change one's life. Rather than take up too much space in the comment column of her blog, I decided to post mine here instead. It's the short version of a longer story, which I'll tell you more about at the end. Here goes ...."
~ How To Use Your Awareness To Keep You From Crashing -- "It takes a shift in focus to be aware of what’s happening in you as you do that job, make that call, write that report, or hammer that nail. When you make that shift, however, a world of possibilities opens up to you."
~ Staying power (3) -- "The only way to really understand the effects and benefits of meditation is through direct experience. According to the Tibetan oral tradition (*B. A. Wallace), among those who are well qualified to enter shamatha training, "those of sharpest faculties may be able to achieve all ten stages within three months; those with medium faculties may take six months; and those with dull faculties may require nine months". Of course, this assumes a contemplative environment and full-time devotion to training, while the "faculty" refers to the natural talent and ability in sustained attentional balance, ability in using mindfulness and intelligence."
~ Zizek on Western Buddhism -- "Slavoj Zizek has a generous critique of Western Buddhism."
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Dzigar Kongtrul: "It's Up to You" Book Release Talk
I really enjoyed this book when I read it. Be patient as they move through the ritual chanting at the beginning (this is a part of Buddhism I find out-dated).
Dzigar Kongtrül was born in Northern India, the son of the highly respected Buddhist lama Neten Choling Rinpoche. After being recognized as a reincarnation of the nonsectarian master Jamgön Kongtrül Lodro Thaye, he received extensive traditional training in all aspects of Tibetan Buddhist doctrine.
In 1990, he began a five-year tenure as a professor of Buddhist philosophy at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He also founded Mangala Shri Bhuti, his own teaching organization, during this period. He has established a mountain retreat center, Longchen Jigme Samten Ling, in southern Colorado. When not guiding students in long-term retreats and not in retreat himself, Rinpoche travels widely throughout the world teaching and furthering his own education.
It's Up to You, The Practice of Self-Reflection on the Buddhist Path, By Dzigar Kongtrul, Foreword by Pema Chodron.
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Michael Hedges - Cello Suite #1 in G Major (Bach)
Michael Hedges performs Bach's first cello suite (BWV 1007, the prelude), on the harp guitar, played as intended in G major. 8/1/87 performance at the Maheavy Theater in Great Barrington, MA.
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Daily Dharma: Don't Forget Where You Came From
This was Saturday's Daily Dharma -- not sure how I missed this one, because it's good.
Don't Forget Where You Came FromIt is helpful in learning to appreciate and develop your ability to change to think about how you have changed over time. You are not the same person you were ten years ago. How are you different? What were you like before? Would your present self and past self be friends if they met? What would they like and dislike about each other? How did you come to be the person you are now? Your ideals, thoughts, and opinions have changed; what has replaced the old ones and why? By reviewing the changes that have occurred, you can savor the growth and progress you have made, and appreciate the benefits the process of change has brought to your life. When you notice how much you have changed and developed even without consciously trying, you can see how much you could grow if you made a real effort to change.
~ Tarthang Tulku in Skillful Means, from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book
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