Health

What Are Family Values?

September 29, 2007

A few years ago, I remember seeing a sign during the election season with the campaign slogan, “I’m for the Family”. I thought it was funny because I had never met anyone that was against the family? What do these strange appeals for “family values” mean? The seem vacuous to me. Wouldn’t family values include excellent, free education and healthcare for children – not just for the rich kids. Wouldn’t family values mean valuing families? Yesterday I was asked to sign a petition to tell Congress that they should make insurance for children mandatory. A petition. How insane is it that a petition is required to convince the morons on Capitol Hill that insurance for children is a good idea?

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Placebos and Mind-Body Relationships

September 9, 2007

Rupert has just returned back home from Hollyhock in British Columbia in Canada. The popular retreat hosted the most recent trialogue with Rupert Sheldrake, Andrew Weil and Ralph Abraham on the topic of “Placebos and Mind-Body Relationships”. Most of modern medicine and science deny the power of the of mind to heal – yet everyone accepts that placebos are often as effective as the “real thing”. How is it that a simple sugar pill can have an effect on the body’s ability to heal? Head over to Sheldrake’s site to listen to the audio from the discussion:

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Parapsychology and The Skeptics

September 6, 2007

Sheldrake has written the Forward for a new book, Parapsychology and The Skeptics, by Chris Carter (not the X-Files Chris Carter), on the history of dogmatic skepticism and parapsychology. The book opens with a very interesting anecdote from the seventeenth century – when people believed that balls of fire came hurtling to Earth from space – believers called these “meteorites”. However, because there was not a theory that could accommodate rocks falling from space, the experts agreed that it was obviously a mass delusion. Of course, this still happens today. If the facts don’t fit the theory, to hell with the facts.

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CMS Review: Bricolage

August 17, 2007

Moving a great story from concept to content requires inspiration, a little creativity, a lot of proofreading, and publication – or as they say in the newsroom, “Copy!” A good web content management system (WCMS) makes this happen seamlessly for the content creator. In the newspaper business where a quick content turnaround equals revenue, the last thing software should do is stand in the way.

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The Fall of America

August 14, 2007

From the Financial Times: The US government is on a “burning platform” of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned. David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”. read more…

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Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die

July 25, 2007

A field study released Monday by the University of North Carolina School of Public Health suggests that Iraqi citizens experience sadness and a sense of loss when relatives, spouses, and even friends perish, emotions that have until recently been identified almost exclusively with Westerners.

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Interesting Internet

July 9, 2007

The Philosophical Foundations of Jyotish

Universe mostly forgets its past during cosmic rebirth

Winding Through “Big Dreams” Are the Threads of Our Lives

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Very Interesting Internet

June 24, 2007

The Greatest and Most Unusual Travel Photo of All Time? – Everything about the image is just so amazing: The poof-y shapes of the clouds in the background…

100-foot deep Andes lake disappears – A five-acre glacial lake in Chile’s southern Andes has disappeared — and scientists want to know why…

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