water quality is too bad for people, so let's lower our standards!!! Then it will be good enough for everyoneCleaner Rivers - On Paper: "TAMPA - Governments label the Hillsborough and Palm rivers 'impaired,' a way of saying they aren't suitable for swimming or fishing.
That unflattering description could be lifted soon - but not because the rivers are getting cleaner. Instead, state environmental officials may reduce required levels of dissolved oxygen - one component of a healthy river - to a point some scientists view as bad for fish, crabs and bottom-dwelling critters.
In other words, the state lowers the bar, and the rivers no longer are considered polluted.
Some environmental groups say changing the rules is a way for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to avoid setting pollution limits for the state's impaired waters, as required by the federal Clean Water Act. The limits are unpopular among polluters such as agriculture, paper mills and cities with sewage plants."
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Sex Survey 'Eye-Opening' For Local Parents
Morals here In USA, since when... aren't our children taught about sex by the TV... certainly non one else teaches MoralsSex Survey 'Eye-Opening' For Local Parents: "The spring survey of more than 5,000 randomly selected Hillsborough students revealed other risky behaviors.
Among student-reported activity from four thick survey volumes compiled by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
�Nearly one-third of high school students said they were propositioned to buy or bought or sold drugs while at school.
�Condom use decreases with age, dropping from 78 percent in eighth grade to 61.4 percent for high school seniors.
�More male high school students - 16 percent - reported being physically hurt by their significant others than female students, at 11.8 percent.
�More than 9 percent of male and nearly 12 percent of female high school students said they were physically forced to have sex.
'I know that is happening, because my son constantly gets letters from girls who want to do sexual things to him,' said Paula Thomas, mother of five children ages 9 to 16. 'It starts in the sixth or seventh grade.'
At school, the Citrus Park mother said, 'They know to stay out of certain hallways because of the girls.'"
Among student-reported activity from four thick survey volumes compiled by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
�Nearly one-third of high school students said they were propositioned to buy or bought or sold drugs while at school.
�Condom use decreases with age, dropping from 78 percent in eighth grade to 61.4 percent for high school seniors.
�More male high school students - 16 percent - reported being physically hurt by their significant others than female students, at 11.8 percent.
�More than 9 percent of male and nearly 12 percent of female high school students said they were physically forced to have sex.
'I know that is happening, because my son constantly gets letters from girls who want to do sexual things to him,' said Paula Thomas, mother of five children ages 9 to 16. 'It starts in the sixth or seventh grade.'
At school, the Citrus Park mother said, 'They know to stay out of certain hallways because of the girls.'"
Friday, November 25, 2005
New Scientist Premium- How life shapes the brainscape - News
New Scientist Premium- How life shapes the brainscape - News: "How life shapes the brainscape
25 November 2005
Helen Phillips
Magazine issue 2527
From meditation to diet, life experiences profoundly change the structure and connectivity of the brain
OUR brains form a million new connections for every second of our lives. It is a mind-blowing statistic, and one that highlights the amazing flexibility of our most enigmatic organ. While the figure emphasises how much we still have to learn about brain structure, it also reveals the huge importance of our everyday experiences in making our brains what they are.
Anatomy, neural networks and genes are yesterday's hot topics. Today, neuroscientists are increasingly concentrating on how the way we live our lives creates profound and often long-lasting changes in the structure and connectivity of our brains. They are focusing on how influences as diverse as our emotions, environment, social interactions and even our spiritual lives help make us tick.
To reflect this shift, the Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC last week invited a leading religious figure to open its annual meeting for the first time. The Dalai Lama "
25 November 2005
Helen Phillips
Magazine issue 2527
From meditation to diet, life experiences profoundly change the structure and connectivity of the brain
OUR brains form a million new connections for every second of our lives. It is a mind-blowing statistic, and one that highlights the amazing flexibility of our most enigmatic organ. While the figure emphasises how much we still have to learn about brain structure, it also reveals the huge importance of our everyday experiences in making our brains what they are.
Anatomy, neural networks and genes are yesterday's hot topics. Today, neuroscientists are increasingly concentrating on how the way we live our lives creates profound and often long-lasting changes in the structure and connectivity of our brains. They are focusing on how influences as diverse as our emotions, environment, social interactions and even our spiritual lives help make us tick.
To reflect this shift, the Society for Neuroscience in Washington DC last week invited a leading religious figure to open its annual meeting for the first time. The Dalai Lama "
Thursday, November 24, 2005
Central Doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism
Auxilary to this?? Maybe it is that the emptiness mearly implies existance is based on the cooperation of all things. The only definition and separtion of one thing to the next is caused simply by all these things Being here. Mab has chosen to be separate. The nothingness of the mind, where we hold onto no particular reality creates the "space" for allowing other things to be, and subject their beingness onto the mind.... whereby we can know all things. So the nothingness brings the beingness of everything into us.... So "what we do an think in our own lives becomes of extreme importance as it affects everything we are connected to."*
Central Doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism: "The philosophical outlook of all four Schools of Tibetan Buddhism is the Mahayana doctrine of emptiness. On this view, all things and events are said to be devoid of any intrinsic and absolute existence. They come into being due to the aggregation of multiple causes and conditions. Not only is their material existence dependent upon other factors, even their very identity as they are is contingent upon other factors, such as language, thought and concepts that together make up worldly convention. This absence of intrinsic existence and intrinsic identity is what is referred to as 'emptiness' and is considered to be the ultimate truth of all things and events. One of the most profound implications of this theory of emptiness is that it suggests that all things and events come into being only by means of a process of dependent origination. They are dependent upon other factors, and this fundamental truth about the nature of reality is understood best through a language of interdependence and interrelationship of things."
*Lama, D., H.H. (2005). The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (1 ed.). New York: Morgan Road Books.
Central Doctrines of Tibetan Buddhism: "The philosophical outlook of all four Schools of Tibetan Buddhism is the Mahayana doctrine of emptiness. On this view, all things and events are said to be devoid of any intrinsic and absolute existence. They come into being due to the aggregation of multiple causes and conditions. Not only is their material existence dependent upon other factors, even their very identity as they are is contingent upon other factors, such as language, thought and concepts that together make up worldly convention. This absence of intrinsic existence and intrinsic identity is what is referred to as 'emptiness' and is considered to be the ultimate truth of all things and events. One of the most profound implications of this theory of emptiness is that it suggests that all things and events come into being only by means of a process of dependent origination. They are dependent upon other factors, and this fundamental truth about the nature of reality is understood best through a language of interdependence and interrelationship of things."
*Lama, D., H.H. (2005). The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (1 ed.). New York: Morgan Road Books.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
New Horizons for Learning: Transforming Education
New Horizons for Learning: Transforming Education: "The Power of Mindful Learning
by: Ellen J. Langer
Perseus Publishing, 1998
ISBN: 0201339919
Take everything you have ever been taught about education, and throw it out. Look at everything in a new light, a mindful state.
If the basics become second nature, then true learning stops taking place. Learners become so conditioned to seeing things a certain way, the ?right? way, that they don?t learn, don?t challenge, don?t question. Real learning takes place in a ?mindful? environment, one that provides a context for the subject we are studying and allows us to bring something of ourselves into the process.
When speaking about her book to teachers in the Edmonds School District this fall, Langer told the story of watching someone set the table and put the fork on the right. The RIGHT? What was that person thinking? Everyone knows that the fork belongs on the left; then, she stopped herself. She had overlearned this fact and no longer doubted that sacred place of the fork on the table. Why did it belong on the left? There could be benefits to placing the fork on either side of the plate. Langer argues that teachers must teach facts conditionally to allow for doubt and more learning to take place.
She further illustrates this point with a study of two groups of piano students, one taught through repetition and memorization of scales, while the other encouraged to respond to their own thoughts and emotions. The second group ended up being more competent and more creative. Langer challenges educators to use this knowledge to rethink teaching.
"
by: Ellen J. Langer
Perseus Publishing, 1998
ISBN: 0201339919
Take everything you have ever been taught about education, and throw it out. Look at everything in a new light, a mindful state.
If the basics become second nature, then true learning stops taking place. Learners become so conditioned to seeing things a certain way, the ?right? way, that they don?t learn, don?t challenge, don?t question. Real learning takes place in a ?mindful? environment, one that provides a context for the subject we are studying and allows us to bring something of ourselves into the process.
When speaking about her book to teachers in the Edmonds School District this fall, Langer told the story of watching someone set the table and put the fork on the right. The RIGHT? What was that person thinking? Everyone knows that the fork belongs on the left; then, she stopped herself. She had overlearned this fact and no longer doubted that sacred place of the fork on the table. Why did it belong on the left? There could be benefits to placing the fork on either side of the plate. Langer argues that teachers must teach facts conditionally to allow for doubt and more learning to take place.
She further illustrates this point with a study of two groups of piano students, one taught through repetition and memorization of scales, while the other encouraged to respond to their own thoughts and emotions. The second group ended up being more competent and more creative. Langer challenges educators to use this knowledge to rethink teaching.
"
Monday, October 10, 2005
Rational Spirituality
Rational Spirituality: "The Natural Systems Thinking Process (NSTP) is a methodology in applied ecopsychology. Webstring Science is a hypothesis of the attraction relationships that underlie the interconnected structure of reality. Webstring Science provides a framework for how the natural universe communicates its multi-sensory intelligence through the Web of Life. The scientific underpinnings are drawn from both current and ancient thought in the physical, natural and social sciences, and held together with current thinking in systems science.
When one examines the results of evidence from the above fields, the inescapable conclusion is that attraction relationships hold everything from sub-atomic particles to ecosystems to economic systems together.
The basis of the concept of Love on a Universal scale is that love starts as allurement, which is a form of attraction. This basic binding energy is found everywhere in reality. It is, for example, the beginning of the attraction sense of love of community. The activity of attraction is both the creation of being and the enhancement of life.
Attraction relationships can be seen as the manifestations of a 5th Force within quantum mechanics, what Ervin Lazslo refers to as the subtle field. This subtle energy field that guides the cosmological evolutionary lifeforce is a Nameless, Intelligent, Attraction Love known by its acronym NIAL within the NSTP. Webstrings, taken from the experiential Web of Life model used by environmental educators, are the attraction relationships that bond quarks and biosystems. NIAL is the underlying field itself.
As a method of psychologically therapeutic healing NSTP can have an extremely consciously profound effect and may even become a life altering experience for an individual. Some people express their experiences with Nature as a mental well-being with increased measures of self worth and esteem, others as a spiritual awakening or appreciation of Nature, of finding or sensing their Higher Power. Some people talk about experiencing a personal wholeness or a meaningful fulfillment in honoring the integrity and the unity of Nature. Others say they've learned that the greatest good can be simply to enjoy life and cause no undue harm, and then perhaps to take the next step: to constructively contribute to the community of all life in a harmonious actualization of balanced co-creative evolution."
When one examines the results of evidence from the above fields, the inescapable conclusion is that attraction relationships hold everything from sub-atomic particles to ecosystems to economic systems together.
The basis of the concept of Love on a Universal scale is that love starts as allurement, which is a form of attraction. This basic binding energy is found everywhere in reality. It is, for example, the beginning of the attraction sense of love of community. The activity of attraction is both the creation of being and the enhancement of life.
Attraction relationships can be seen as the manifestations of a 5th Force within quantum mechanics, what Ervin Lazslo refers to as the subtle field. This subtle energy field that guides the cosmological evolutionary lifeforce is a Nameless, Intelligent, Attraction Love known by its acronym NIAL within the NSTP. Webstrings, taken from the experiential Web of Life model used by environmental educators, are the attraction relationships that bond quarks and biosystems. NIAL is the underlying field itself.
As a method of psychologically therapeutic healing NSTP can have an extremely consciously profound effect and may even become a life altering experience for an individual. Some people express their experiences with Nature as a mental well-being with increased measures of self worth and esteem, others as a spiritual awakening or appreciation of Nature, of finding or sensing their Higher Power. Some people talk about experiencing a personal wholeness or a meaningful fulfillment in honoring the integrity and the unity of Nature. Others say they've learned that the greatest good can be simply to enjoy life and cause no undue harm, and then perhaps to take the next step: to constructively contribute to the community of all life in a harmonious actualization of balanced co-creative evolution."
Official Site of Dr. Bruce Lipton, cellular biologist and acclaimed speaker
Official Site of Dr. Bruce Lipton, cellular biologist and acclaimed speaker: "Author Dr. Bruce Lipton is a former medical school professor (University of Wisconsin) and research scientist (Stanford University School of Medicine).His experiments, examining in great detail the molecular mechanisms by which cells process information, have revealed that genes do not in fact control our behavior, instead, genes are turned on and off by influences outside the cell.
These influences include our perceptions and beliefs. He shows that our beliefs, true or false, positive or negative, affect genetic activity and actually alter our genetic code. Dr. Lipton's profoundly hopeful work, being hailed as one of the major breakthroughs in the New Sciences, shows how we can retrain our consciousness to create healthy beliefs, and by doing so create a profoundly positive effect on our bodies and our lives."
These influences include our perceptions and beliefs. He shows that our beliefs, true or false, positive or negative, affect genetic activity and actually alter our genetic code. Dr. Lipton's profoundly hopeful work, being hailed as one of the major breakthroughs in the New Sciences, shows how we can retrain our consciousness to create healthy beliefs, and by doing so create a profoundly positive effect on our bodies and our lives."
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