• Entering the Temporary Art Zone with Hakim Bey
  Published: June 22, 2010
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  Hakim Bey has of late been involved in a number of time-based art installation events in New York State. One such event is covered on the band the Loss of Eden’s blog. The artwork happened simply. There was...
• New Bill Would Give the President an Internet 'Kill Switch' [Politics]
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• 2010 Dietary Guidelines: Same Old $#@%
  Published: June 17, 2010
  Source: Fat Head
  I started reading the USDA’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines this week.  For those of you who hoped the federal government would finally wise up and dump the high-carb/low-fat nonsense … come on, you didn’t real...
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• Entering the Temporary Art Zone with Hakim Bey
  Published: June 22, 2010
  Source: Technoccult
  Hakim Bey has of late been involved in a number of time-based art installation events in New York State. One such event is covered on the band the Loss of Eden’s blog. The artwork happened simply. There was...
• New Bill Would Give the President an Internet 'Kill Switch' [Politics]
  Published: June 18, 2010
  Source: Gizmodo
  A new bill in the US Senate would, if passed, create a "kill switch," allowing for the government to shut down or control parts of the internet. There's no way...
• 2010 Dietary Guidelines: Same Old $#@%
  Published: June 17, 2010
  Source: Fat Head
  I started reading the USDA’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines this week.  For those of you who hoped the federal government would finally wise up and dump the high-carb/low-fat nonsense … come on, you didn’t real...
• See all shared items

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Courtesy of NASA

This is just mind-bogglingly awful.

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Photo by Gayle Lindgren

Unfairness. Vengeance. Retaliation. Justice.

Recently, I came face-to-face with these emotions, and I found myself in a spiral of repetitive thoughts. In the big picture, the triggering events were not that terrible, but in the process of working through my reaction, I had a breakthrough that I want to share with you.

Wanting to “get even” is one of the most powerful emotions. A its core burns a sense of justification that can trump even the best of intentions.

If you agree, like me, that we need to change our consciousness to end war, suffering, and the selfishness that supports bad business and poverty, then we can be sure that these emotions have to be the first to go. They are at the root. Every extremist, fundamentalist, warmonger and greedy businessperson believes that what their beliefs and actions are justified. At the core, it’s self-based and survival-based.

So, how is this change possible?

Every spiritual text has divine truth if you know how to see it, and this line from the Bible came to me in a new way:

Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.

Matthew 5:16 (KJV)

This is viewed by many Christians as a “commercial for God.” Show people what a good Christian you are and you will convert more people. When we consider that Jesus was not a Christian, nor was he trying to convert anyone, we can see what this line really means:

Act through your highest state of consciousness so that when people see your actions and interact with you, they will recognize the universal divinity that exists even within themselves.

This is the key to effecting transformation: you must create that state within yourself, no matter what the circumstances, so that your intention resonates and awakens that state within others. To do this, you have to change your intention in your actions.

It truly clicked for me as was listening to an interview with an author named Dr. Srikumar S. Rao who tells us how to do this with each person we interact with:

“Recognize that this is a human being who is stuck in his or her predicament, and: I silently wish that person every blessing under the sun. And you do it with casual encounters like the cab driver, the person you buy a newspaper from, the waitress, the checkout cashier, and you do it with important relationships like your colleague at work, members of your work team, or whatever.

“Silently, simply say, ‘I wish you every blessing under the sun, and what can I do to be of service?’ That’s the thought phrase with which [you] enter [the interaction]. And many have reported huge–dramatic–changes in the nature of the interaction, the depth of the conversation, and the closeness of the bonds that are forged.”

– Dr. Srikumar S. Rao

[Source: Sounds True: Insights at the Edge podcast, hosted by Tami Simon.]

I can attest to the powerful results that this creates. The secret lies in the feelings that the thought-phrase invokes: “I wish you every blessing under the sun…” sets you up with sense of compassion and generosity. The second half, “what can I do to be of service?” takes you out of a “me-centered” state, and it’s like saying, “what can I bring to this experience to help you reach your highest state of consciousness?”

Every interaction with every being, no matter the circumstance, becomes an opportunity to raise the consciousness of the world.

Let your light so shine.

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The Cake is a Lie

Scientists fed a control group of rats low-calorie, high-nutrient rat chow, and a separate group of rats all junk food consisting of various foods such as bacon, cheesecake, and Ho-Hos.  The “junk food” group developed compulsive eating habits and became obese.

Further, just like an drug, the junk food rats ate more food the fatter they got, because they developed a tolerance to the pleasure “high” produced by the food.

The most surprising part of the study was near the end:

“To see how strong the drive to eat junk food was, the researchers exposed the rats to a foot shock when they ate the high-fat food. Rats that had not been constantly exposed to the junk food quickly stopped eating. But the foot shock didn’t faze rats accustomed to the junk food — they continued to eat, even though they knew the shock was coming.

‘What we have are these core features of addiction, and these animals are hitting each one of these features,’ Kenny says.”

[Source: The End of Overeating, by David Kessler.]

And guess what? Major restaurant chains and food manufacturers know all about this. Look at your local Wal-Mart some time: at both the entrance and the exit, they line the sides with junk–chips, cookies, and candy bars. They know that your heroin–I mean junk food–addiction will win out a certain percentage of the time and you’ll make them a little extra money.

No one cares about your health but you.  Learn about good nutrition and take control of your food intake.

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A recent study at Princeton University discovered that HFCS causes even greater weight gain than table sugar, even when the overall caloric intake is the same.  Long-term consumption leads to abnormal abdominal fat accumulation and an increase in blood fats (triglycerides), even at levels well below what is found in soda.

More on HFCS: http://planetgreen.discovery.com/food-health/highfructose-cornsyrup-weight-gain.html

GE Foods
No, not General Electric–genetically engineered foods. Over 45% of corn an 80% of soybeans in the United States are genetically engineered (and almost all by Monsanto). Corn and soy are used as fillers or the main ingredient in a large amount of processed foods. Almost all cereals includes corn and/or soy, and soy is included as a filler or protein additive in candy bars, breakfast bars, baby formula, and many other foods.

There have not been many studies on the effects of these foods on human consumption, but we know this much: Genetically engineered foods get their custom DNA traits added through the use of modified viruses. Besides the engineered DNA, the plant cells also receive some of the base viral DNA.  DNA does not always break down in the digestive tract, and the gut bacteria can take up some of that DNA and mutate or gain the resistances that have been engineered into the crop.

There is also not enough known about other effects that the engineered DNA has on the crops which could increase the rate of allergic reactions or toxicity.  When GE crops took off in 1995, they had one or two genetically modified traits in them. This year, GE crops have up to 10 engineered traits. No one has any idea what the long term effects of eating this type of food will have. GE crops are already seen as a possible cause of the honeybee die-offs (Colony Collapse Disorder) that continue to devastate the honeybees all over the US.

More on GE crops: http://www.actionbioscience.org/biotech/pusztai.html

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Cup of Tea

Dopamine also regulates energy and motivation, so sipping a bit of caffeine before a task really does help motivate and focus you.

There are studies showing that caffeine is excellent to take before a workout, because it can give you an extra bump of energy to push through that extra repetition, or to hold your speed through that last quarter-mile of running.

Caffeine even has long-term benefits for brain and heart health, including reduction of cardiovascular stress and prevention of Parkinson’s disease.*

So, now that you’re ready for your daily dose, take a moment to take a look at these caffeine sources and their cost-per-miligram. The list goes from cheapest to most expensive. (Note that many of the more expensive caffeine sources are worth avoiding anyway, if only for their sugar content.)

Let us know your favorite sources in the comments. (Mine is lightly sweetened black tea.)

No Doz (0.0008 cents per mg)

Tetley’s Black Tea (0.0011 cents per mg

Excedrin Extra Strength (0.0015 cents per mg)

Starbucks Grande Coffee (0.0056 cents per mg)

Starbucks Grande Iced Coffee (w/o Ice) 0.0059 cents per mg)

Mountain Dew (0.0090 cents per mg)

Starbucks Grande Iced Coffee (w/ Ice) (0.0097 cents per mg)

Diet Coke/Tab (Tie) (0.0104 cents per mg)

Dr. Pepper (0.0111 cents per mg

Midol Maximum Strength (0.0113 cents per mg)

Sunkist Orange Soda (0.0116 cents per mg)

Pepsi (0.0129 cents per mg)

Starbucks Double Espresso (0.013 cents per mg)

Coke (0.0140 cents per mg)

Monster Energy Drink (0.0149 cents per mg)

Full Throttle Energy Drink (0.0159 cents per mg)

A & W Cream Soda (0.0169 cents per mg)

Starbucks Grande Latte/Single Espresso (Tie) (0.0200 cents per mg)

Barq’s Rootbeer (0.0213 cents per mg)

Starbucks Grande Tazo Chai Tea Latte (0.0355 cents per mg)

Rockstar Energy Drink (0.0374 cents per mg)

Snapple Iced Tea (0.07 cents per mg)

List Source: WiseBread

*You can read more about the health benefits of caffeine at Men’s Health.

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Raven's Matrix - Photo via Wikipedia

Raven’s Matrices, sometimes referred to as matrix games or matrix tests, are tests of abstract reasoning developed by Dr. John C. Raven in 1936. Figuring out the patterns in these matrices  tests (and boosts) your fluid intelligence, increasing creativity and broadening perception.

Matrix IQ brain teasers via HighIQPro

(Answers here.)

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• I just pay someone to repair it–I don’t know how it works.
• The doctor says this pill will fix me.
• The government didn’t do enough for me.
• I’ll have to ask my spouse first.
• My parents wouldn’t approve of that.

We can all relate to these moments. Each one of us has either consciously or unconsciously placed authority for our own lives outside ourselves. This state is like sleepwalking through life–we allow ourselves to be guided along to various experts, products, or institutions that supposedly know what is best for us.

Photo by Ali Farid

When we allow those agreements to become absolutes, we misplace authority over our own lives and become accustomed to searching for change outside ourselves. Take a look at this example:

A patient visits a psychologist for mood swings. The doctor assess her condition and determines a diagnosis from the DSM-IV, the standard book of psychological disorders. He prescribes her Zoloft, an anti-depressant, and tells her to come back in two weeks.

There are a couple of ways our patient could approach this. The majority of people will say to themselves, “this man has a Ph.D., he’s been in practice for several years, and he’s telling me this drug is safe. I’m just going to take it.”

The alternative approach comes from an awakened state–a recognition of the self-responsibility in every choice:

The patient listens carefully to the doctor’s explanations. She probes him for more details when something is not understood. She receives his knowledge, but she recognizes that it is not an absolute. Science changes with every new experiment, and what he was taught in medical school could be less relevant now and possibly skewed toward drug company profit-making.

In any case, taking any drug into her body is an important event. The diagnosis is not perceived as an order from an authority, but rather a conversation between two equal human beings, one having different information than another.

When she goes home, she recognizes that the prescription is a recommendation, not a requirement. She researches the drug and its side effects. She searches for websites where people discuss their success on the drug. And she looks for non-drug therapies that may assist her without the ingestion of a brain-altering chemical.

She may call the doctor and let him know that she is going to talk to a counselor instead of taking the drug, or taking up meditation so that she can explore her own mental constructs that are causing her problems. Or she may choose to try the prescription for a while and see if it works. But that choice would be fully hers, and not the result of blindly following a prescription.

Your power is reclaimed when you recognize that everything you see as an external authority or control factor over your life only has that power because you gave it to them at some point. Take it back and consciously make your own choices. The power has always been in your hands.

You are born alone, you live your life alone, and you die alone. Your loved ones can support you, but only you are living your life. You, alone, will experience the effects of your choices, whether you were awake or asleep when you made them.

Let me know your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

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