Making an Asana of Myself
I am off to a naked yoga class, having decided if I am going to write a column on the burgeoning phenomenon, I sure better experience it firsthand. I have no idea what to expect, but I know for sure my bag is lighter that usual.
B.K.S, Iyengar, in his book, Light on Yoga says, “The word Yoga [means] to bind, join, attach and yoke, to direct and concentrate one’s attention on, to use and apply. It also means union and communion. It is the true union of our will with the will of God.”
For most of us, we understand Yoga to be a series of physical postures, designed to enhance strength and flexibility; to foster union between body, mind and spirit; to increase peace and well-being and decrease the physical and mental stress of daily life. Most of us, whether we do it or not, understand why yoga. But not all of us understand why naked.
The Hole Story
Feeling depressed? Lethargic? Shell-shocked by life’s little bombardments? You could try meditation. Or yoga. Or color therapy. Or herbal remedies. Or, if you prefer drastic measures, you could drill a hole in your head.
The practice of making a hole in the skull, known as trepanation, has been around since the Stone Age. Along with circumcision it’s one of our oldest surgical procedures — archaeologists have found trepanned skulls dating back to 3000 B.C. Hippocrates, in his classic medical text “On Injuries of the Head,” endorsed trepanation for the treatment of head wounds. During medieval times, the procedure was thought to liberate demons from the heads of the possessed and, later on, Europeans did it to cure a hodgepodge of maladies ranging from meningitis to epilepsy.
The procedure, from a technical standpoint, is simplicity’s model. An instrument called a trepan is used to make the hole. Throughout history, the trepanning tool has developed dramatically, evolving from a crude hunk of sharpened flint in prehistoric times to a hand-cranked auger in the first century to, nowadays, an electric drill. Anyway, the trepan goes into your skull and a chunk of bone is extracted. You bandage yourself up and eventually the skin heals over, leaving only a small indentation to show for the hole in your head.
Cancer-resistant Mouse Developed By Adding Tumor-suppressor Gene
Cancer-resistant Mouse Developed By Adding Tumor-suppressor Gene
A mouse resistant to cancer, even highly-aggressive types, has been created by researchers at the University of Kentucky. The breakthrough stems from a discovery by UK College of Medicine professor of radiation medicine Vivek Rangnekar and a team of researchers who found a tumor-suppressor gene called “Par-4″ in the prostate.
The researchers discovered that the Par-4 gene kills cancer cells, but not normal cells. There are very few molecules that specifically fight against cancer cells, giving it a potentially therapeutic application.
Rangnekar’s study is unique in that mice born with this gene are not developing tumors. The mice grow normally and have no defects. In fact, the mice possessing Par-4 actually live a few months longer than the control animals, indicating that they have no toxic side effects.
10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies
Why We do Dumb or Irrational Things: 10 Brilliant Social Psychology Studies
“I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?” –Philip Zimbardo
Like eminent social psychologist Professor Philip Zimbardo, I’m also obsessed with why we do dumb or irrational things. The answer quite often is because of other people – something social psychologists have comprehensively shown.
Over the past few months I’ve been describing 10 of the most influential social psychology studies. Each one tells a unique, insightful story relevant to all our lives, every day.
The Pigeon Police
Pity the New York City pigeon. He finds a place where natural predators are few, and where bread crumbs—note that stooped woman clutching a plastic bag—are bountiful, and yet his life expectancy is just three to four years, compared with fifteen for his cousins in captivity. So life is short: he stuffs himself before he mistakes an office window for open sky. Or maybe he has the misfortune of needing to relieve himself—perhaps more than once—near a subway stop in the district of the Honorable Simcha Felder, councilman from Brooklyn. Felder steps in the guano—he calls it a “puddle” of excrement—and becomes enraged, commissioning a report from his staff: “Curbing the Pigeon Conundrum.” Soon after, Christine Quinn, the City Council Speaker, refers to pigeons as “flying rats.” Now there’s talk of implementing the report’s Recommendation No. 5: “Create Pigeon Czar.” The czar’s responsibilities would include reducing the food supply, promoting birth control (via oral contraceptives disguised as crumbs), and supervising a pilot program called “dovecoting,” which involves confiscating pigeon eggs and replacing them with decoys.
Man Who Helped Start Stem Cell War May End It
Man Who Helped Start Stem Cell War May End It
If the stem cell wars are indeed nearly over, no one will savor the peace more than James A. Thomson.
Dr. Thomson’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin was one of two that in 1998 plucked stem cells from human embryos for the first time, destroying the embryos in the process and touching off a divisive national debate.
And on Tuesday, his laboratory was one of two that reported a new way to turn ordinary human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without ever using a human embryo.
Pirate Bay faces Prince pressure, private investigators in foreign cars
Pirate Bay faces Prince pressure, private investigators in foreign cars
Prince loves sticking it to the man—this is the guy who changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and performed with the word “slave” written on his face when he was unhappy about his recording contract. But when “the man” is Prince himself and the one doing the sticking is BitTorrent search site The Pirate Bay, Prince reaches for the lawyer stick. He has declared himself out to “reclaim the Internet,” and The Pirate Bay is at the top of his list (fan sites appear to be on the list as well).
Peter Sunde, a Pirate bay admin, tells Ars that the Purple One’s legal team has already started leaning on some advertisers to drop support for the site. “We’re not even worried, since the Internet is too big for morally upset people to get it their way,” Sunde said in an e-mail. “I’m just sad that Prince—whose music I really like—can’t understand that he’s the new Metallica versus Napster. And we all know who lost that…”