Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Speedlinking 6/19/07

Quote of the day:

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
~ Steven Weinberg

Image of the day:


BODY
~ College Students Face Obesity, High Blood Pressure, Metabolic Syndrome -- "Obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and inactivity: they're not just your father's problems any more, University of New Hampshire research finds. New data on the widely unstudied demographic of college students indicates that this group of 18 - 24-year-olds are on the path toward chronic health diseases. Although limited, national data suggest the trend is not unique to UNH."
~ Everything Is About to Change -- "Our most fundamental belief concerning weight lifting may be wrong. It could very well be that we have it backwards. Let the controversy begin!" By Chad Waterbury.
~ Coffee Drinking Protects Against An Eyelid Spasm That Can Lead To 'Blindness' -- "People who drink coffee are less likely to develop an involuntary eye spasm called primary late onset blepharospasm, which makes them blink uncontrollably and can leave them effectively 'blind', according to a study published online ahead of print in the Journal of Neurology Neurosurgery and Psychiatry. The effect was proportional to the amount of coffee drank and one to two cups per day were needed for the protective effect to be seen." As if I need another reason to drink coffee.
~ America's Growing Problem -- "New Study Says Americans No Longer the Tallest in the World." It's all about nutrition, or the lack of it.
~ Elderly may benefit from balance training -- "With a special training program, elderly people can learn better balance control, which may lessen their risk of falling, according to a new report." Yep, I do this with my older clients.
~ Low 'energy density' foods aid weight loss -- "Foods that fill you up without packing a ton of calories can help in the battle of the bulge, results of a new study suggest." It took a study to figure that out?
~ Proper Diet Means Eating Healthy All Week -- "Also know that maintaining a proper diet means eating healthy all week long, not just for a couple of meals." Obvious, but useful advice.
~ Dietary calcium is better than supplements at protecting bone health -- "Women who get most of their daily calcium from food have healthier bones than women whose calcium comes mainly from supplemental tablets, say researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Surprisingly, this is true even though the supplement takers have higher average calcium intake."


PSYCHE
~ The Perks and Pitfalls of Pride -- "When feeling pride there is a fine line between deserved recognition and arrogant vanity, and researchers have uncovered the origins of both good and bad types of pride."
~ Study busts myth that women want less sex -- "Bachelors might have sex on their minds more than their single female counterparts, but once in a committed relationship, men and women have similar attitudes toward the act, a new study finds."
~ The pathologies of social rejection -- "Today's Washington Post has an article on the psychology of rejection in children's social circles and its possible long-term effects on behaviour and mental health."
~ Homosexuality in body, brain and behaviour -- "The New York Magazine has an in-depth article on the science of sexual orientation and whether the biological factors which may make someone more likely to be gay, also make them more likely to appear gay to others. There are now a range of established findings that suggest that gay men are likely to have a number of physical traits not shared by straight men (the findings on gay women are a lot less clear-cut it seems)."
~ Stop Staring at Me! -- "Continuing the weird psychology series, here's a couple of studies you can replicate yourself - if you've got the nerve. In the first you could be risking bodily harm from enraged motorists, while the second has a twist in the tail. They both show the power of staring at other people and they're both fantastically simple social psychology experiments."
~ Cut to the Chase - write about it! -- "This article could go by loads of names. You could call it my thang about counter-intuitive therapy, you could call it what finally worked for me. It could also be called "cutting to the chase." It could be called when I finally learned to quit running and get on with my ACCEPTANCE of anxiety."
~ CREATIVE BURNOUT - Prevention & Resolution Strategies -- "But how does burnout affect creative people - artists, writers, musicians, etc.? In my work as a psychotherapist, I often encourage my patients to find a creative outlet to deal with stress, anxiety and/or depression. But I also have a personal interest in this topic because in addition to being a therapist and writer, I'm also an artist. So I asked some creative types about their experiences with creative burnout."
~ Psychology: Humans Will Justify Almost Anything -- "A new generation of psychologists is exploring the way people change what they think and believe in order to achieve peace of mind. Happy birthday, 'cognitive dissonance.'"
~ More on Free Will and Criminal Responsibility -- "My colleague Brian Doherty's insightful article, "You Can't See Why on an fMRI," was published today online. The article deals with what, if anything, neuroscience has told us about moral responsibility, especially in the context of criminal responsibility. The vexed question at the heart of his article is, how can we hold people responsible for their behavior when we know that their actions are caused by a combination of genes and environmental influences?"
~ Brain's voluntary chain-of-command ruled by not 1 but 2 captains -- "A probe of the upper echelons of the human brain's chain-of-command has found strong evidence that there are not one but two complementary commanders in charge of the brain, according to neuroscientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis."


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ YouTube Debates -- "With the advent of the blogosphere and YouTube, citizen journalism is on the rise—and to some extent its future course (and fate) might be decided by the reviews of the CNN/YouTube/Google-sponsored Democratic and Republican presidential debates in July and September."
~ Paul Krassner: The War on Medical Marijuana -- "Anthropologists of the future will look back upon these times as incredibly barbaric. One such example is medical marijuana, which is already legal in a dozen states, yet prohibited -- and trumped -- by federal law."
~ Familiar Things Made Strange and New -- "Finally I have the opportunity to write a piece about “the most hated man in American poetry.” When Robert McDowell referred to William Logan this way in the Hudson Review, Logan adopted the phrase as a jacket blurb for his book of poems Night Battle (and I think he has used it on other books too). If I remember the piece correctly, McDowell couched the phrase in terms of praise. As many readers of American poetry of course already know, Logan has been awarded this reputation for his poetry reviews, which I shall not discuss here."
~ The critical buzz on the White Stripes -- "Critics love the indie duo's new album and its louder, more aggressive sound. Giving it an "A" in Entertainment Weekly, Neil Drumming explains: "There are basically two types of White Stripes fans"—obsessive indie nerds and casual listeners who know the band from its mainstream success."
~ Passionate Progressives -- "Addressing progressive activists in Washington, John Edwards and Barack Obama were passionate competitors on a common mission: to stop Hillary Clinton from claiming the soul of their party, David Corn reports."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Professor says certain home shapes and roofs hold up best in hurricane -- "Certain home shapes and roof types can better resist high winds and hurricanes, according to a researcher at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT)."
~ AT&T Launches Cell-To-Cell Live Video -- "AT&T Inc. on Tuesday launched what it said is the first service letting callers share live video between cell phones."
~ Virtual Qumran Sheds New Light on Dead Sea Scrolls Discovery Site -- "The mysterious archaeological ruins located paces from where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered 60 years ago served first as a fortress before being adopted by Jewish religious sect, two UCLA researchers contend."
~ Breaking: Senate fights off liquid coal -- "WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate today voted against two attempts to encourage the use of liquid coal, rejecting a pair of amendments to the energy bill that would have alternately mandated 6 billion gallons of liquid coal use annually by 2022 or provided $10 billion in loan subsidies to produce liquid coal."
~ Neanderthal Man Was An Innovator, Study Says -- "Neanderthal man was not as stupid as has been made out says a new study published by a University of Leicester archaeologist."
~ The car that diagnoses its own servicing needs -- "An intelligent system that could before long enable cars to tell mechanics which of their parts need servicing is being unveiled by engineers at the University of Cambridge."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Differences -- "It's amazing, isn't it, how one person's passionately held belief can seem so foolish and wrong-headed to another?"
~ Addressing the Question of Why Predominately "Buddhist Countries" Seem to be So Violent and Waring -- "I received an excellent question on one of my older posts regarding Buddhism and violence from Bangkokker. He wanted to know how Buddhists can explain the violence that one often sees in predominate "Buddhist countries." The following was my humble attempt to answer. Feel free to add your opinions in the comment section."
~ BLOG: Guest Blog: Plotinus - An Integral Thinker For His Time (by Mateusz Strozynski) -- "When I started to study Plotinus' writings, at some point I was amazed that he is sometimes more recognized by spiritual seekers (and Ken Wilber's fans) than by most graduates of humanities. Although he is widely recognized by scholars as one of the three greatest Greek thinkers, next to Plato and Aristotle, most of people know about the existence of Plato and Aristotle, but many have not heard about Plotinus."
~ More -- "Click below to listen to me talk about this film." Dan Allison looks at the film, More.
~ Big Love Integral Relationship Models Compared -- "In the work I'm doing developing and presenting my new workshop, Big Love Integral, Conscious Romantic Relationship in an Integral Context, I've developed a chart to compare six different relationship models so we can see how they compare to each other."
~ Spiritual Awakening -- "Experiencing a spiritual awakening is a life changing experience. Once you have a spiritual awakening your life is likely to change for the better and you will never think the way that you did before. Once you realize that the inner and outer are intertwined things will become so much clearer in life and you are on the road to enlightenment."
~ Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience -- "This week, Life Training Online is reviewing Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the sixteenth of fifty-two books in the 52 Personal Development Books in 52 Weeks series."


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