Thursday, November 08, 2007

Speedlinking 11/8/07

Quote of the day:

"To believe is to know you believe, and to know you believe is not to believe."
~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Image of the day:


BODY
~ A Beautiful Snatch -- "Whether you're a bodybuilder, strength athlete, or football player, learning the snatch can take you to a whole new plane of development. This article is chock-full of helpful videos that will have you snatching in no time."
~ Personal Best: Pregnant Exercisers Test Limits -- "Advice on when, how long and how much to train is all over the map." I've trained two women through eight months, and each was back to their pre-pregnancy weight within a couple of weeks of giving birth.
~ High Fat Diet Changes The Body Clock -- "US researchers have discovered that a high fat diet can change a mammal's body clock and thereby disrupt a range of behavioural and physiological processes, including those controlled by genes that switch on and off at certain times to keep the body's metabolism, storage and use of energy in balance."
~ Ostrich, and the 7 other foods you should be eating -- "We've heard it all before — eat your spinach, your broccoli, your whole-grain pastas. But there are a whole host of other good-for-you foods that most of us aren't eating."
~ Caveman diet found to be the best choice to control diabetes -- "Now, in the first controlled study of a Paleolithic (stone age) diet in humans, Lund University, Sweden, heralds the simple diet of the caveman as the “best choice to control diabetes 2”."
~ Exercise Away Heart Failure -- "Exercise can spur the growth of new cells to mend weakened muscles and spur the growth of blood vessels in people with heart failure, according to two new studies."
~ Experts play the heavy on news of chubby perks -- "Being overweight may not kill you, but it could lead to obesity, U.S. health experts cautioned on Wednesday in response to research suggesting that being a bit heavy does not raise the risk of death."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Addicted to love? -- "Experts continually debate whether sexual addiction is a real problem. Some argue that there is no such thing, and that terms like "sexual addiction" and "porn addiction" are unhelpful at best, dangerous at worst."
~ Do You Have a Deeply Fulfilling Career? -- "If you’re already on a stable or semi-stable career path, this article will help you determine whether your current career is really the right one for you, using a very simple assessment process."
~ Amygdala Abnormalities Linked to Violent Aggression -- "Patients struggling with uncontrolled aggressive urges often appear irrational and frightening to the victims of their impulsive rages as well as anyone who happens to witness them in action. Such behaviors are most commonly seen among teenagers and young adults, and experts have long suspected abnormal brain functions to be at least partly responsible for their seeming inability to restrain themselves."
~ The Borderline Parent -- "Moving beyond a bad parent."
~ Domestic Drama: Prickly Pere -- "What are your obligations to a bad parent?"
~ Sounds Like Music Therapy -- "Check out these emotional, spiritual and physical effects of music therapy. Music helps with the grieving process and can teach stroke victims to walk again."
~ Researchers Examine Social Interactions in Anorexia Nervosa -- "Dr. Zucker noticed that individuals with anorexia notoriously failed to comply with treatment, and often this failure was coupled with a failure to establish a healthy relationship with a treating therapist."
~ Susan Smalley: Meditation: The Seat Belt Of Mental Health -- "We all know that the road of life is bumpy with unexpected drop-offs, accidents, and only the occasional smooth-sailing highway. I believe that meditation -- a practice for increasing awareness -- is truly a seat belt of mental health, a protection for us on the hazardous road of life."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ Secular Fundamentalists -- "Ninety percent of Americans claim to believe in God, church attendance is higher than in any other Western nation, and political leaders still invoke divine blessing at the end of major addresses. But in the past three years, six books touting atheism have reached the New York Times’s bestseller list. Features in Newsweek, a fawning Nation cover, and endless TV appearances followed."
~ Holy communion -- "It's not been a good year for God. Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’s God is Not Great have been riding high in the international bestseller lists, while in the US Sam Harris has addressed his Letter to a Christian Nation and Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell has explored the question of how to explain the irrationality of religious belief. Michel Onfray’s In Defence of Atheism has added a distinctively French tone to the assault, and AC Grayling’s latest collection of elegant English essays is Against All Gods. It’s not surprising that cultural commentators have identified a cultural wave, and given it a label: “The New Atheism”."
~ Asia's Hottest Modern Painters -- "Five of Asia's hottest artists talk to TIME about their lives, influences and art."
~ Musharraf's Emergency -- "Pervez Musharraf claims he imposed martial law because of a rising tide of Islamic extremism and a politicized judiciary. He lied. Graham Usher reports from Islamabad on the forces behind Pakistan's slide into chaos."
~ Was Radiohead's download experiment a failure? (Crazed by the Music) -- "Radiohead’s radical “pay what you like” experiment for their In Rainbows album shook up the industry and is already one of the biggest music biz stories of the year. But after some number crunching, reports are coming back (see this Comscore article) that the vast majority of people who downloaded the record didn’t pay squat for it."
~ Welcome to the 700 Club, Rudy -- "Pat Robertson's endorsement could be both a blessing and a curse for Rudy Giuliani."
~ Kerouac exhibit sheds new light on Beat writer -- "The name "Kerouac" typically evokes a sense of hip, cool, rebellion, exploration and of course "Beat," as in voice of the Beat Generation."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ How The Physiological Effects Of Poverty On Young Children Takes Its Toll On Health -- "Scientists have known for years that people living in poverty have poorer health and shorter life spans than the more affluent. Now, Cornell University researchers have identified several key mechanisms in 13-year-olds that may help explain how low socio-economic status takes its toll on health."
~ Biofuels Are No Cure for Climate Change -- "Sigh. Another day, another inane strategy to fight global warming. The bee in my bonnet this time is biofuels. They're nothing new, but governments and corporations are pushing biofuels with a renewed ferocity as the panacea for our ailing planet."
~ Primates in Peril -- "A gallery of the World Conservation Union's list of the most endangered primates."
~ Genetically Modified Foods Unsafe? Evidence that Links GM Foods to Allergic Responses Mounts -- "Genetically modified (GM) foods are inherently unsafe"
~ Yellowstone Is Rising on Swollen "Supervolcano" -- "Yellowstone National Park is rising. Its central region, called the Yellowstone caldera, has been moving upward since mid-2004 at a rate of up to three inches (seven centimeters) a year—more than three times faster than has ever been measured."
~ Scientists link mysterious highest-energy cosmic rays with violent black holes -- "Scientists of the Pierre Auger Collaboration announced today (Nov. 8) that active galactic nuclei are the most likely candidate for the source of the highest-energy cosmic rays that hit Earth. Using the Pierre Auger Observatory in Argentina, the largest cosmic-ray observatory in the world, a team of scientists from 17 countries found that the sources of the highest-energy particles are not distributed uniformly across the sky. Instead, the Auger results link the origins of these mysterious particles to the locations of nearby galaxies that have active nuclei in their centers."
~ Locals lose out to sexy aliens -- "Globalisation has led to an increase in invasions by new species around the world and this is costing agriculture and the environment dearly."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ More on “Paideia In America” -- "America is certainly famous for its pragmatism — of needing to understand some sense of possible effects of undertaking an action or project. We are a young country, with no native tradition of fine art or “high culture”, as Camille Paglia rightly reminds us. We are known for rugged entrepreneurship. We are known for the American Dream, and its material rewards. These all lead one towards a conclusion that Americans, in a general sense, are not particularly suited to the temperament required for a classical education. But is that a truly earned conclusion? I don’t think so."
~ Can Buddhism become American? -- "By this, I’m not asking about whether Buddhism can mesh with American values or whether American culture can or will grow to accept Buddhism. These are worthy questions but not for today, at least for me. What I am asking about is whether Buddhism can become American in the sense of its organizations, teachers, and adherents."
~ Announcing: The Second Global Integral International Development Meeting in Istanbul, Turkey -- "The focus for this second global Integral International Development meeting is on "The Integral Practitioner" - with a particular emphasis on what Integral governance includes in today's complex world. Practitioners, consultants, coaches, social change agents, activists, scholars, and all those involved in 'Integral Praxis' are invited to discuss many important global issues...."
~ Death and what continues -- "A quick look at death and what continues.... First the obvious one: Our human self, with its personality and quirks, dies. It is gone forever. At most, some of its influences on others and society continues for a while, but then that is gone too."
~ Ngawang Tenzin Rinpoche Visits Portland to Teach the Mystery of Vajra and Dorje -- "According to Wagner University, Holiness Ngawang Tenzin is a high reincarnation of the Drukpa Kagyu Lineage of Buddhism in Bhutan. He is regarded as one of the most revered teachers of the Drukpa Kagyu lineage in Bhutan. He is the reincarnation of Drubthop Chenpo Jinpa Gyeltshen Rinpoche who was alive in the 18th century."


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