Wednesday, October 03, 2007

Speedlinking 10/3/07

[An abbreviated speedlinks today -- and the last one this week.]

Quote of the day:

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time."
~ Edith Wharton

Image of the day:


BODY
~ At what intensity should endurance athletes train? -- "One question that some endurance runners ask themselves is how much of their training they should be dedicating towards higher intensity runs and how much of their training is better off at low intensity."
~ 5 Things That Drive Me Nuts -- "Speedskater Eric Heiden had 28-inch thighs, yet he only squatted 205 pounds. Of course, he squatted it for 300 reps! Maybe lifting heavy isn't always necessary, but that's just one of the things that drives Scott Abel nuts."
~ Know Five to Stay Alive -- "Learn the top 5 ways to help prevent 5 common health conditions such as breast cancer, colon cancer and heart disease."
~ Creatine Combined With Resistance Exercise Boosts Strength In Older Adults -- "If you are an 'older adult' and take creatine as well as doing exercise you may well enjoy greater benefits than just doing the exercise, say researchers from McMaster University, Canada. One of the common consequences of growing older is an increase in body fat and lowering of muscle mass, say the researchers. You can slow down the loss of muscle mass by doing exercise, say the scientists." This is true for ALL adults. In fact, men over 60 need creatine to support weight training.
~ Dietary Calcium Could Possibly Prevent The Spread Of Breast Cancer To Bone -- "A strong skeleton is less likely to be penetrated by metastasizing cancer cells, so a fortified glass of milk might be the way to block cancer's spread, according to researchers at the ANZAC Research Institute in Concord, Australia. Using a mouse model of breast cancer metastasis, the researchers found that a calcium deficiency may increase the tendency of advanced breast cancer to target bone."


PSYCHE/SELF
~ Chocolate Craving When Depressed: A Personality Marker -- "People who crave chocolate when they are depressed are more likely to have a 'neurotic' than an 'introverted' type of personality, a new study from Australia has found. Over half of the depressed people surveyed reported food cravings, nearly all of them specifically craving chocolate. More women than men craved chocolate when depressed."
~ What is Wrong with the Psychology of Decision-Making? -- "In psychology textbooks, decision-making figures most of the time in the last chapters. These chapters usually acknowledge the failure of the Homo economicus model and propose to understand human irrationality as the product of heuristics and biases, that may be rational under certain environmental conditions."
~ Feeling Fat Thinking Thin -- "Stop comparing your body to the next person."
~ All-Day Vitality: How to Fight Fatigue Morning, Noon, and Night -- "You’re so predictable. Every day, you run out of steam, lose juice, or otherwise hit the wall at nearly the exact same times. And it happens to everyone. In fact, it’s like clockwork, which actually makes sense, because your body clock is part of the problem — when your internal chronometer is out of whack, you feel wiped out."
~ 7 Ways to Overcome the Fear of Failure -- "The fear of failure is perhaps the strongest force holding people below their potential. In a world full of uncertainty, a delicate economy, and countless misfortunes that could happen to anyone, it’s easy to see why most people are inclined to play it safe."
~ 5 Things I learned about Personal Growth by Moving -- "Did you ever have a learning experience after a major change in your life that made you realize you could have learned that same lesson without having gone through the major change?"


CULTURE/POLITICS
~ New contender for world's worst poem -- "William McGonagall is under the direst threat today in his apparently unassailable position as author of the world's worst poem."
~ War on Iraq: Blackwater: The U.S.'s Trigger-Happy Guardians -- "Why did the U.S. State Department tolerate -- and pay to conceal -- the wanton murder of Iraqis committed by Blackwater?"
~ Soldiers Hunt Dissidents in Burma -- "Soldiers announced that they were hunting pro-democracy protesters in Burma's largest city Wednesday, and the top U.S. diplomat in the country said military police were pulling people out of their homes during the night."
~ Inuit Culture on the Brink -- "While their land melts underfoot, Arctic natives look to save their traditions and make their voices heard."
~ The Notion: The Moral Dangers of Adventure Tourism -- "One travel writer weighs the ethics of peddling faux thrills in "exotic" destinations to his affluent American readers."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Is a 'naked singularity' lurking in our galaxy? -- "Could a naked singularity, the bare core of a black hole, be sitting at the centre of our galaxy? A new study shows how astronomers could detect such a brazen object – which is so dense it would shred the known laws of physics."
~ Tobacco: An Environmental and Occupational Drag -- "Before smokers ever light up, tobacco has already wreaked havoc on the environment and damaged workers' health."
~ Tasmanian devils face extinction -- "Australian scientists say the ongoing fight to save Tasmanian devils from extinction may be doomed."
~ U.S. urges using compact fluorescent bulbs -- "The U.S. Department of Energy launched its "Change a Light, Change the World" 2007 campaign Wednesday during a Salt Lake City ceremony."
~ Black holes, galaxies young and old visible in massive mapping of the night sky -- "Color images documenting the past 10 billion years of galactic evolution were distributed online this week as part of the first public release of data from a massive project to map a distant region of the universe that combines the efforts of nearly 100 researchers from around the world, including the University of Pittsburgh."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ No Expectation & No Arrival -- "Lately, the practice of meditation (and really in every activity) has become quite subtle. There is a sense of an empty watcher or witness simply observing the birth and death of identity. The watcher turns back in on itself at times, but mostly it is simply resting in the empty flow of reality, which isn’t so much a flow."
~ Experience a New, Integral and (R)evolutionary Form of Relationship Meditation in Just Minutes! -- "There really is something (r)evolutionary under the meditation sun. It is called Integrative Relationship Meditation (IRM.) It can be used in same denomination or mixed denomination groups of meditators. Because some things are just “too good not to share” and our organization forwards an open source version of an integral spirituality please find below our first release of 'How to do Integrative Relationship Meditation.'"
~ Expectations and Disillusionment -- "If we have a job, we expect to have a job tomorrow. If we have a relationship, we expect that relationship will continue as it has been going (whether good or bad and usually somewhere in between) and that our significant other will act the same way tomorrow as he or she did yesterday. But life has a way of throwing curve balls."
~ Abandon any Hope of Fruition -- "I thought I'd just share this teaching from Pema Chodron on one of the slogans of the 7 Point Mind Training. This one cuts really deep for me, and has had a profound influence on my practice."
~ Announcing the Integral Life Award scholarship program! -- "The Integral Institute is very proud to offer the Integral Life Award, an annual merit-based award of $10,000 for new students in either the Integral Theory Certificate or Master's programs at John F. Kennedy University or Fielding Graduate University."


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