Aquamarine Hug Machine

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Wed Jul 15

“ For many dieters, “the pursuit of thinness as a dream is a place holder,” said Deb Burgard, a clinical psychologist in Los Altos, Calif., specializing in eating disorders. “It gets in the way of asking, ‘What is it I am dreaming of?’ “ A dieter may think, “ ‘If I could just lose weight, all that will take care of itself,’ so they don’t invest in getting what they want,” she said. Instead, she said, “they invest in weight loss. Skin Deep - Skin Deep - Throwing out the Diet and Embracing the Fat - NYTimes.com

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“ In order for pasture-based livestock to become a significant part of the meat industry, we need to eat more of its meat, not less,” Hamilton writes. “So if you want to use your food choices to impact climate change, by all means follow Dr. Pachauri’s suggestion for a meatless Monday. But on Tuesday, have a grass-fed burger—and feel good about it. Eating Meat for the Environment

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It's hot! It's sexy! It's ... marriage! | Salon Life

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Tue Jul 14

“ In an interview in the March 2008 newsletter to the Grant Study subjects, Vaillant was asked, “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant’s response: “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people. What Makes Us Happy? - The Atlantic (June 2009)

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“ At the bottom of the pile are the unhealthiest, or “psychotic,” adaptations—like paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania—which, while they can serve to make reality tolerable for the person employing them, seem crazy to anyone else. One level up are the “immature” adaptations, which include acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy. These aren’t as isolating as psychotic adaptations, but they impede intimacy. “Neurotic” defenses are common in “normal” people. These include intellectualization (mutating the primal stuff of life into objects of formal thought); dissociation (intense, often brief, removal from one’s feelings); and repression, which, Vaillant says, can involve “seemingly inexplicable naïveté, memory lapse, or failure to acknowledge input from a selected sense organ.” The healthiest, or “mature,” adaptations include altruism, humor, anticipation (looking ahead and planning for future discomfort), suppression (a conscious decision to postpone attention to an impulse or conflict, to be addressed in good time), and sublimation (finding outlets for feelings, like putting aggression into sport, or lust into courtship). What Makes Us Happy? - The Atlantic (June 2009)

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“ Vaillant explains defenses as the mental equivalent of a basic biological process. When we cut ourselves, for example, our blood clots—a swift and involuntary response that maintains homeostasis. Similarly, when we encounter a challenge large or small—a mother’s death or a broken shoelace—our defenses float us through the emotional swamp. And just as clotting can save us from bleeding to death—or plug a coronary artery and lead to a heart attack—defenses can spell our redemption or ruin. Vaillant’s taxonomy ranks defenses from worst to best, in four categories. What Makes Us Happy? - The Atlantic (June 2009)

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Mon Jul 6

“ . It is physiologically wrong. It makes no allowance for the relative proportions of bone, muscle and fat in the body. But bone is denser than muscle and twice as dense as fat, so a person with strong bones, good muscle tone and low fat will have a high BMI. Thus, athletes and fit, health-conscious movie stars who work out a lot tend to find themselves classified as overweight or even obese. Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus : NPR

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Sat Jul 4

That Mitchell and Webb Look: Homeopathic A&E (via gudbuytjane)

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Op-Art - Strands of American History - Interactive Graphic - NYTimes.com

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Wed Jul 1

ZooBorns: Otter Twins in Auckland - Handfuls of Fluff