Friday, January 25, 2008

Speedlinking 1/25/08

Quote of the day:

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."
~ Isaac Newton

Image of the day (Dennis Walton):



BODY
~ Injury Center: What Ails You? -- "Our new tool explains what's hurting, how to treat it, and how to avoid a repeat."
~ Get A Muscle Mass Fix With Scientific Muscle Morphing! -- "3D Positions of Flexion (POF) is a simple concept based on real science that attacks all the layer of muscle growth with precision. Use the following clues and techniques to build amazing gains in less time!"
~ Why Is Broccoli Good For You? -- "Broccoli has high levels of antioxidants "Eating steamed broccoli reduces the risk of a heart attack by boosting the body's ability to fight off cell damage", The Daily Telegraph reported.New research suggests that a mechanism involving antioxidants found in the Brassicaceae family of vegetables (cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts) prevents the build-up of free radicals. Excessive production of free radicals can harm cells and even trigger cancers."
~ Drinking heavily in youth puts heart at risk -- "People who drink heavily in their youth may have a higher risk of developing a collection of risk factors for heart disease and stroke, new research suggests."
~ Four Green Foods You Need -- "Detox diets are mostly bunk, but here are some super foods that fight carcinogens and are great for your whole system. And yes, they're all green in color."
~ Is it safe to eat sushi? -- "Concerns about the safety of eating sushi were raised this week after reports about the high levels of mercury found in raw tuna. Is it safe to eat sushi? Msnbc.com nutrition columnist Elisa Zied, R.D. explains."
~ Vitamin D ups calcium's bone-building effect -- "In elderly women, adding vitamin D to regular calcium supplements produces long-term improvements in hip bone density, researchers report."
~ Visceral fat linked to heart attacks, strokes -- "We already know that having a beer belly is bad for your heart. Now, we might also know why. New research shows a direct link between inflammation around deposits of visceral fat, or fat that forms around major organs...."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Detecting Psychological Disorders -- "Four factors commonly establish psychological disorders. Here's how to tell if people like Britney Spears, Howard Hughes, or Hitler are immature, eccentric, or insane."
~ How Strong is the Research Support for Neurofeedback in Attention Deficits? -- "We are honored to present the thoughts of Duke University's Dr. David Rabiner, a leading authority on the field, on that important issue. As a bonus, you will enjoy his detailed description and suggestions of how to design a high-quality scientific study."
~ Clinical Use of MDMA, Part 2 [DrugMonkey] -- "As a follow to the prior post on MDMA clinical trials, I wanted to delve down into the MDMA dosing specifics. One major problem I have with the MAPS efforts to pursue clinical trials is the expansion of dosing as the trials continue. As mentioned in the prior post, the director of the longest running clinical trial Dr. Michael Mithoefer seems to be under the impression that MDMA has been proven to be safe in the clinical setting and refers to other risky "settings" as if environmental conditions were the sole source of an interactive risk."
~ Convey Risks of Effexor to Better Inform Patients -- "However, when discontinuing the use of Effexor, patients commonly experience withdrawal symptoms, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, anxiety, anorexia, impaired coordination, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, depressed mood, nightmares, vertigo and sensory disturbances that can feel like electric shocks. These symptoms can be severe, and many patients have difficulty getting off Effexor because of the symptoms they experience."
~ Avoid Sham Advice on Living 'The Good Life': Sizing Up The Science of Happiness -- "A new and blossoming field of psychology - positive psychology - has begun to uncover fascinating, evidence-based answers to these questions. Over the past few months I've been sizing up these findings to reveal the emerging science of happiness."
~ Dream Symbols 23: Fire -- "Fire is a great nature element, which evokes - even today in our 21st Century - something of that feeling of awe that must have struck mythological man when he stole fire from the gods in order to force it into his own service and advancement. Fire stands at the birth of all human culture and this primordial creation value can be discerned through the red glow of a fire dream."
~ Negative Thoughts: Is Life a Battle? -- "I'm quite a sucker for "how to" posts about positive thinking. But sometimes the underlying tone seems more aggressive than positive. I don't have a problem with being a winner in a genuinely competitive situation, but I don't see my life as a war, either with myself or with the rest of the world!"
~ Tragedy as a Motivator -- "Sometimes tragedies, losses, or terminal illnesses really galvanise us into action, make our priorities crystal clear, and give us a strength we did not know we had..."
~ Move On: Adieu to All That -- "How to end things gracefully."
~ Goodbye for Good -- "Letting go of your ex, and his stuff."
~ Research Suggests That We Don't Worry But Strive For Moderate Happiness -- "Could the pursuit of happiness go too far? Most self-help books on the subject offer tips on how to maximize one's bliss, but a new study suggests that moderate happiness may be preferable to full-fledged elation.The researchers, from the University of Virginia, the University of Illinois and Michigan State University, looked at data from the World Values Survey, a large-scale analysis of economic, social, political and religious influences around the world."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ In the Garden with the Guru -- "I was awestruck. My God, I thought, I must be the only person in the world at this moment listening to what looks like a tag team reading Finnegans Wake. Later I learned I had been witness to a regular occurrence. Eric McLuhan and his father, Marshall, were reading at each other."
~ For Sale: Big Ideas About Humanity -- "Have you ever wondered how people develop trust and live together peacefully? Michael Shermer's new book uses psychology and evolution to examine the root of these human achievements. He notes that the original environment in which people evolved, namely the small groups in hunter-gatherer societies, helped people develop altruism and cooperative behavior."
~ The atonal century -- "1n 1908, after being lambasted in the press and cuckolded by his wife, Arnold Schoenberg reinvented classical music. We're still trying to figure out what comes next."
~ Should We Allow Performance Enhancing Drugs in Sports? -- "Let me start by saying that I believe private sports organizations should be able to set their own rules, and that they should be free to discipline in any manner they see fit the players who break those rules. I don’t think Congress should forcibly allow performance enhancing substances in sports any more than I think Congress should prohibit them."
~ Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy: Life and the Last God -- "Or, to put the point less extremely: how can we interpret this text without entering so deeply into the thought-world and language of Heidegger that we interpret him exclusively through his own ideas and words? The other pole of interpretation would, of course, be to re-frame Heidegger's questions so as to translate them exhaustively into non-Heideggerian English. But can such a thing be done?"
~
The essential critic -- "Great novelists, says Wood, such as Flaubert or Henry James or Saul Bellow, offer their readers a world in which "reality" is not a mirror of the "real" world but of their manufacture. Bad writers do not appreciate this, for "they assume that the world can be described"."
~ The unfulfilled promise of Obama's response to the Clintons -- "Gen. Obama is stuck in his tent. His spats with the Clintons are happening too fast to score, but it feels like the Dynastic Duo is getting the better of the combat. Obama is fighting back, but even when he's winning, he's fighting back on Clinton turf—squabbling about who hit whom first and whether quotes are being taken out of context. Obama is also letting the Clintons pick the turf—the sound bite and the debate stage. Somehow, he's keeping his best weapon sheathed. Obama's strength, and the entire message and promise of his campaign, has been his ability to shift the paradigm when confronted with the old style of politics to get voters to see things in a new way and rally them behind that. So, why has he been unwilling or unable to do this in his own defense?"
~ Can Black Women Save the Liberal Coalition? -- "Black women are the Democrats' most loyal voters. In a primary where race runs head-on with gender, can they save liberals from themselves?"
~ Analysis Shows Possible Pattern in Missing White House Emails -- "Since last Spring, the White House has repeatedly told the press and Congress about a potential problem involving millions of missing emails. But last Thursday the story changed: An administration spokesman told reporters 'we have no way of showing that any emails at all are missing.'"


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Environment: Will Coffee Be a Casualty of Climate Change? -- "Coffee farmers in South America don't need to read the latest IPCC reports; they already know." DON'T mess with my coffee, damn it.
~ Loss of Amazon Jungle Prods Brazil to Act -- "With illegal deforestation mounting, officials say they'll increase their vigilance."
~ Wireless Spectrum Auction 101 -- "Yesterday, the Federal Communications Commission began auctioning off licenses to a portion of the 700 MHz band of the radio frequency spectrum. The decisions of companies that win those national licenses will determine the shape of wireless communications in the United States for years to come."
~ The Medium: Children’s Crusade -- "How does a computer designed for kids in poor countries connect to us?"
~ They Shrunk My Firefox! Mozilla Shows Off Touch-Sensitive Mobile Mockups -- "The open-source Firefox browser is headed to a mobile device near you. New mockups released by Mozilla show that mobile Firefox, due later this year, is being designed with the latest touch screen handhelds -- possibly including the iPhone -- in mind."
~ Join the Navy, Kill Some Whales -- "With an environmental waiver from President Bush, the Navy begins testing a sonar system off the coast of San Diego, despite the acknowledged harm to ocean mammals." The irony involved in Bush sanctioning the death of mammals smarter than him is painful.
~ Supercool, and Strange -- "Scientists tracking H2O's highs and lows are finding new clues as to how and why the familiar substance is so odd. Recent research, for example, suggests that water may exist in two distinct liquid phases at ultralow temperatures."
~ Mayan sacrifices were likely male -- "The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men, not virgin girls as previously believed, archaeologists said earlier this week."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST BLOGS
~ Biopsychosocial Model Thirty Years Later -- "The dominant model of disease today is, as 30 years ago, still biomedical, with molecular biology being the basic scientific discipline. However, there is evidence for the role of stressful life events and repeated or chronic environmental challenge in modulating individual vulnerability to illness."
~ loving kindness for our unknown neighbours -- "i was astonished and pleased to hear that something similar to what i have been practicing on and off was also recommended there as metta practice. you see, part of the magic of metta is that one extends good will to people one does not really know. however, there can be a bit of a difficulty with this because opening one’s heart to someone who you don’t know can feel a little flat and academic."
~ Deepak Chopra: The "Soul Hypothesis" (Part 2) -- "Spirituality for many modern people has become a forced choice. Either one accepts a fixed belief system (organized religion or a New Age alternative), or one rejects belief for some variety of doubt (skepticism or atheism). What this forced choice overlooks is the possibility of progress, which means going beyond any fixed belief. The soul doesn't have to be a matter of faith or doubt; it could become an experience."
~ Karma and reincarnation as teaching strategy -- "What do we know about life, death and what continues? Well, we know for sure that this human self dies. It is gone. Never to come back. So if we take this human self, with its particular personality, to be “I”, then “I” will surely die and be gone forever, reincarnation or not."
~ What to do when there is nothing to attain? -- "I once tried to write about why, then, there is any point to practice if there is nothing to attain. Ironically, the way some advocates of Shin seem to describe their faith, there is no point. But I think it might be more accurate to say that there is no point to do practices intended to accomplish or done with the objective of "obtaining enlightenment". Otherwise, I might agree with the notion that once you have realized something like "shinjin" you are better off not getting into "practices" such as seated meditation."
~ Taboo versus Revolution -- "After recommending the video with Dean Radin from the GoogleTech Talks series, the next one I wish to draw your attention (if you haven't seen it already) is Alan B. Wallace's "Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences", embedded below."
~ An instinct for beauty? -- "Do animals other than humans have the capacity to appreciate beauty? I’d be surprised if they didn’t. There are, after all, elephants who have learned to paint, which seems to be simply an extension of a natural impulse to draw...."
~ Spiritual expression in the peer to peer era (1) -- "I posted the draft of an essay entitled “The Next Buddha will be a collective: spiritual expression in the peer to peer era." This is what is is about..."
~ Julian Walker: Simply put #1, Simply put #2, Simply put #3: Some wisdom from Julian.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

thank you so much for linking to the loving kindness article!