Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Speedlinking 3/21/07

Today is the first full day of spring. Which means, in Tucson, that the temperatures will soon be unbearably hot.

Quote of the day:

"Technology is a way of organizing the universe so that man doesn't have to experience it."
~ Max Frisch

Image of the day:


BODY
~ 10 Keys to the Lean & Sexy Look, Part I -- From T-Nation -- "Why, if you follow Jen's 10 Keys, you'll be lean and sexy by the time you finish reading the article! Working out will be almost a formality. Well, not exactly, but these 10 keys are a damn good start to getting the look you want."
~ Having a ball with fitness -- "I thought just in case someone reading this post is thinking of what they could do to use their fitness ball better that I can point people in some kind of healthy direction."
~ Belly Fat May Drive Inflammatory Processes Associated With Disease -- "As scientists learn more about the key role of inflammation in diabetes, heart disease and other disorders, new research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that fat in the belly may be an important promoter of that inflammation."
~ Artificial Enzyme That Mimics The Body's Internal Engine Created By Researchers -- "The protein cytochrome c oxidase (CcO) is the ultimate enzyme responsible for all aerobic life on Earth, from bacteria to people. It is also a crucial component of the cellular machinery that generates energy in our body. With such impressive credentials, you might expect that scientists would have a clear understanding of how CcO works. But they don't, according to James P."
~ Exercise can help elderly avoid falls -- "In 2004, the most recent year statistics are available, almost 15,000 people 65 and older died from falls and about 1.9 million were treated for injuries in emergency rooms." My 85 year-old client who came to me because he was falling hasn't fallen once in the 15 months we have been working out.
~ Soy Found Protective Against Localized Prostate Cancer Only -- "The largest study examining the relationship between the traditional soy-rich Japanese diet and development of prostate cancer in Japanese men has come to a seemingly contradictory conclusion: intake of isoflavone chemicals, derived largely from soy foods, decreased the risk of localized prostate cancer but increased the risk of advanced prostate cancer." Emphasis added -- men should not eat soy.
~ Aging muscles become hard of hearing -- "As people age, neurons have to yell louder at the body's muscles to whip them into action, according to a new study, but exercise could reverse the aging effect."
~ Secret to slim kids? Just a little running around -- "Just 15 minutes a day of kicking around a ball or swimming might be enough to keep children from becoming obese, British and U.S. researchers said on Monday."


PSYCHE
~ Schizophrenia may be linked to inflammation: study -- "The key to schizophrenia may be found in a gene region thought to play a role in inflammation and autoimmune disorders, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday."
~ Fears Learned By Observing Others Are Similar To Those Learned From Direct Experience -- "Humans acquire fears using similar neural processes whether they've personally experienced an aversive event or only witnessed it, according to a study by researchers at New York University's Departments of Psychology. This is the first study examining the brain basis of fears acquired indirectly, through the observation of others."
~ Erasing the Pain of the Past -- "Scientists Are Developing Drugs That Could Eliminate Traumatic Events From Our Memories." Sounds like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
~ Stephen Colbert was right: "Guts" actually do affect our emotional response [Cognitive Daily] -- "The relationship between the gastrointestinal system and the brain is particularly complex, but little research has explored whether there is a direct link between our physical "guts" and our emotional responses."
~ Psychodynamic Therapy Effective for Panic Disorder -- "The most common treatments for the disorder are applied relaxation training (ART), cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and medication of the anti-depressant and anti-anxiety varieties, but new studies indicate that a less popular form of emotion-based therapy may be a more effective response."
~ Dieting: Baby Steps to Grown-Up Control -- "Flex your willpower muscle in everyday life." See also: Weight Loss: Shades of Gray -- "An all-or-nothing mind-set can be self-defeating."
~ Brain fends off distractions -- "Dutch researcher Harm Veling has demonstrated that our brains fend off distractions. If we are busy with something we suppress disrupting external influences. If we are tired, we can no longer do this."
~ Why some people almost always are successful -- "Here are some of the thoughts on success that I´ve come up with from reading/watching documentaries throughout the years about people such as Michael Jordan, Thomas Edison, Eleanor Roosevelt and Henry Ford. The following factors of success are just a few and I´m quite sure there are a lot more."


CULTURE
~ Baby Names: Unusual or Popular? -- "Would you rather give your child a name that lots of other children have, or a more unique moniker? Here are some thoughts on common versus unusual baby names."
~ 'Born-Again Virginity' in the Age of Girls Gone Wild -- "Born-again virginity has been debunked by research, but serious proponents of it -- from mature single women to evangelicals -- continue embrace the chastity pledge, for strikingly different reasons."
~ WH Offers Rove, Miers to Congress -- "The White House offered Tuesday to make political strategist Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Miers available for interviews - but not under oath."
~ The rise and fall of Smokey Bear -- "Click the launch module to the left for a slide-show essay on how animals and comic characters are deployed as pedagogical aids, and what they have to teach us."
~ Attack of the zombie brands II -- "At the end of last week's article about zombie brands (the Ford Taurus, Tab soda, Life magazine), I asked readers to nominate other products, presumed dead, that have returned to the shelves. Judging by the volume of responses—more than 250—there are enough zombies among us that I'm thinking of buying a shotgun and barring the doors of my house."
~ Unconscious of a Conservative -- "FNB [see article for explanation] politics can be tricky to write about, and to pin down, because it relies on surfacing deep-seated anxieties and archetypes that, when revealed to the light of day, appear ridiculous."
~ Campaign Matters: Hillary on Anti-Hillary Video (And The New Anti-Obama Video...) -- "Hillary speaks out in favor of the anti-Hillary 1984 video, as a new anti-Obama video rockets to the top of YouTube."
~ The critical buzz on South by Southwest -- "The Austin indie festival best known for its music came to a close Sunday, and a few bands left much more famous than they were a week before—though none emerged the clear favorite."
~ The President's oh-so-noble reliance on "executive privilege" -- "There are glaring weaknesses and inconsistencies in the President's refusal to allow White House aides to testify under oath."


HABITATS/TECHNOLOGY
~ Drug firm money not always disclosed by MDs -- "Laws that mandate the disclosure of payments to physicians by pharmaceutical companies provide limited public information, according to a new report."
~ The fate of indie music as we know it -- "Even at the new rate of $.0008 per performance, applied retroactively to 2006, Pandora is on the hook for "millions and millions" of dollars in royalty payments to SoundExchange, Westergren told Salon -- far more than the company took in as revenue." Sounds like we are going to lose Pandora, the coolest music site on the web.
~ Tribe Opens Skywalk at Grand Canyon -- "The Skywalk, officially being unveiled Tuesday, is being touted as an engineering marvel. The glass-and-steel horseshoe extends 70 feet beyond the canyon's edge with no visible supports above or below." You couldn't pay me enough to walk out on that thing.
~ James Hansen Testifies to Climate Science Meddling -- "The Bush administration once again faces charges from James Hansen, a foremost climate scientist, of interfering with science in order to downplay global warming. Hansen is director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, and was one of the first experts to warn of the threat of climate change."
~ Wolf Population Grows in Three States -- "The number of wolves in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming continues to grow, with at least 1,300 in the three states at the end of 2006, federal officials say."
~ The UK Will Require Carbon Footprint Labels on Products -- "You used to be able to count only the calories in your snacks owing to diet-friendly product labeling, but soon it might be just as easy go on a carbon diet—that is, if you live in the United Kingdom."
~ Poetry in Nature [Chaotic Utopia] -- "Looking at the rhythmic repetition of forms in nature, it is easy to imagine the influence of some creator, a poet who fixes each line with exact meter and measure. Yet, upon closer examination, we can see how these forms are self-creating, born from simplicity. Nature writes its own poetry."


INTEGRAL/BUDDHIST
~ Miscommunication -- From Will at Think Buddha -- "There is a curious little story from the Ariyapariyesana Sutta that has long appealed to me, a story concerning the ascetic Upaka. Upaka was apparently the first person that the Buddha met after his awakening and, if the commentaries are to be believed (which, I rather suspect, they are not), the only reason that the Buddha walked from the Bodhi Tree to Sarnath, the place of what became his first sermon, and chose not to fly as Buddhas are apparently accustomed to do, was to meet this particular character along the way."
~ What Kind of World Do You Want? -- From ~C4Chaos.
~ Once Charmed -- From Umguy at Still Seeking.
~ No God -- A follow-up to yesterday's post over at The Buddha Diaries.
~ Wright and Hirsh -- From CJ Smith -- "A fantastic Bloggingheads between Robert Wright and Newsweek's Michael Hirsh. For foreign policy nerds like themselves, this is ambrosia."
~ What it comes down to: seeing what is already more true -- From Per at Mystery of Existence.


No comments: