Have you ever started a new habit with a lot of enthusiasm and built up some great momentum? Maybe you were able to work out 3 times a week for an entire month. It feels great, and every day you st…
Source: How to Stop Skipping Workouts for Good ‹ Hello Healthy
My Comments: This is really great advice, it absolutely works!
Does this sound like your typical day? Sit down to breakfast, and sit in your car to get to work just to sit in an office chair all day. Then you sit again for your commute home before sitting down…
Source: The 5-Minute Remedy for Sitting All Day ‹ Hello Healthy
My Comments: I will incorporate this in my scheme
It’s hard to keep track of everything we’re supposed to get done in one day much less an entire week. Between work, school, kids, eating right, and regular chores, hitting the gym and the sack tend to get the short end of the stick. So which is more important to focus some time on? Here’s a little insight from Greatist on which is more important – exercise or sleep.
Source: Which is More Important: Sleep vs Exercise – MapMyFitness Blog
My Comments: Pretty good article from Greatist
(Life by DailyBurn) — Anyone who makes fitness a priority has experienced that moment when a slight tummy rumble comes along just as you head out to the gym. But do you grab more »
Source: Should You Eat Before a Workout? – MapMyFitness Blog
My comments: Pretty ok article on the topic.
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has unveiled in stunning detail a small section of the Veil Nebula – expanding remains of a massive star that exploded about 8,000 years ago.
Called the Veil Nebula, the debris is one of the best-known supernova remnants, deriving its name from its delicate, draped filamentary structures. The entire nebula is 110 light-years across, covering six full moons on the sky as seen from Earth, and resides about 2,100 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan.
Source: Veil Nebula Supernova Remnant
My Comment: Awesome beauty!
Politicians are suddenly eager to disown failed policies on American prisons, but they have failed to reckon with the history. Reconsidering Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s report on “The Negro Family,” 50 years later.
“lower-class behavior in our cities is shaking them apart.”
By his own lights, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ambassador, senator, sociologist, and itinerant American intellectual, was the product of a broken home and a pathological family. He was born in 1927 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but raised mostly in New York City. When Moynihan was 10 years old, his father, John, left the family, plunging it into poverty.
Source: 50 Years After the Moynihan Report, Examining the Black Family in the Age of Mass Incarceration
My Comments: Thank you so much Ta-Nehesi for these labor of love for our people. Thank you for these consciousness raising pieces that brings to the fore the numerous inequities suffered by the people called blacks. With deep sadness in my heart – thank you.
African American and Hispanic students disproportionately earn more bachelors degrees in low-paying majors, putting them at higher risk for financial instability after graduation, according to a new study from Young Invincibles, an advocacy group.
Source: Racial disparities in college major selection exacerbates earnings gap
My Comments: Very important information…
Black employees at the tech giant are building their own community in an industry known for its lack of diversity.
It’s a challenge for African Americans working in California’s Silicon Valley to have a sense of community. Clennita Justice has worked for several technology companies there over the past 25 years.
Source: What It’s Like to Be Black at Google – The Root
My Comments: Very interesting and telling piece. I see strong parallels here to some of my experiences.
The powers of a good sweat are well-documented: Regular physical activity can help lower your blood pressure and cholesterol levels, help you achieve and maintain a healthy weight, and reduce your risk of depression, heart disease, stroke, and cancer.
Source: Exercise Hormones to Know About
My Comments: Pretty good article…
The arrangement of the spiral arms in the galaxy Messier 63, seen here in an image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, recall the pattern at the center of a sunflower.
Discovered by Pierre Mechain in 1779, the galaxy later made it as the 63rd entry into fellow French astronomer Charles Messier’s famous catalogue, published in 1781. The two astronomers spotted the Sunflower Galaxy’s glow in the small, northern constellation Canes Venatici (the Hunting Dogs). We now know this galaxy is about 27 million light-years away and belongs to the M51 Group — a group of galaxies, named after its brightest member, Messier 51, another spiral-shaped galaxy dubbed the Whirlpool Galaxy.
Source: Hubble Sees a Galactic Sunflower
My Comments: Just simply amazing…
The shortest walk through African-American history shows that the white American response to any kind of Black Power flexing has always been the same, regardless of century or tone.
What has made the 21st century so interesting is that, perhaps for the first time in American history, the right people are being studied. Examining “race in America,” now in vogue, used to be called grappling with “The Negro Problem.” Black leadership and luminaries were ignored when they repeatedly said during the last century’s white supremacist flare-ups: it’s white Americans that are beyond due for the collective, public microscope.
Source: History Repeats Itself With Backlash Against Black Empowerment
My Comments: Awesomely put Mr. Burroughs. It is so so very refreshing to see the like of you and others like Ta-Nehisi are bearing witness in eloquent words to the world for us. Thank you sir.
Give us your age and gender, and we’ll tell you when you’ll die, using math!
The last Friday of the summer season is now upon us. As the days shorten and the leaves change and the year staggers toward its frigid terminus in the dead of winter, we at Wonkblog have been thinking about the inevitable conclusions of our own lives, and wondering how much of our potential we’ve squandered already.
So naturally, we made a fun little calculator to find out.
Source: Statistically speaking, when are you going to die? Come find out!
My Comments: Very interesting…
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows Messier 96, a spiral galaxy just over 35 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). It is the nearest group containing both bright spirals and a bright elliptical galaxy (Messier 105).
Source: Hubble Peers into a Galactic Maelstrom
My Comments: The wondrous beauty of the universe…Amazing!
Doing so undermines the cause of racial equality in general and the pursuit of equitable treatment in the criminal justice system in particular.
After shutting down a Bernie Sanders speech at a Seattle rally for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, Black Lives Matter activist Marissa Johnson declared to MSNBC’s Tamron Hall that she was motivated by a desire to hold liberal candidates accountable.
Source: Liberals Are Wrong to Separate Race from Class
My Comments: Very good article; well worth a read.
On tennis and black excellence.
There is no more exuberant winner than Serena Williams. She leaps into the air, she laughs, she grins, she pumps her fist, she points her index finger to the sky, signaling she’s No. 1. Her joy is palpable. It brings me to my feet, and I grin right back at her, as if I’ve won something, too. Perhaps I have.
Source: The Meaning of Serena Williams – The New York Times
My Comment: In the spirit of Bonaly; a star above all others. Go ahead gurl in all your beauty and greatness.
Parenting doesn’t stop at Freshman Week.
All across the United States, people are weeping. They are sobbing, sputtering, sniveling and mewling because they are in the process of saying goodbye to their little baby boy or little baby girl who somehow has passed through the larval stage to emerge suddenly as this new creature called a college freshman.
Source: At college drop-off weepfest, remember these three words
My Comments: My day is coming and I would be lying if I didn’t say I dread it. As much as I want my boy to go out in the world and thrive, I know I will miss him greatly. As I write this, today is the first day of his senior year in high school. A year from now he will likely be off to come college. I get reflective even now as I think about it.
He was a revolutionary.
Those who knew him best also describe Julian Bond as a civil rights icon, a pioneer, a poet and a national treasure.
Bond, who was a founding member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a chairman of the NAACP, passed away at his home in Florida on Saturday, August 15, 2015.
A true activist, he was known for fighting for causes that were not easily winnable. He organized sit-ins as a student at Morehouse College in the late 1950s. He passionately opposed the Vietnam War. And as NAACP chairman emeritus and board member, he advocated for marriage equality and LGBT rights. Julian Bond was a constant campaigner for the liberation of all people, and it was not only this belief but his actions that followed which will have him remembered forever as a leader in the broader human rights struggle.
In 1966, when Bond should have been sworn in as a state representative, his white colleagues in the Georgia General Assembly barred him from taking his seat because of his opposition to the Vietnam War. When a reporter asked him to explain his previous statements on the war, Bond said, “[It is] hypocritical for us to maintain that we are fighting for liberty in other places and we are not guaranteeing liberty to citizens inside the continental United States.”
This show of determination and commitment to justice is why we will hold fast to Julian Bond’s memory. His reach extends far beyond his own generation’s advocacy for civil rights and continues to motivate us to work to amplify the voices of Black people. As the SNCC communications director turned movement leader, he helped build the foundation of the civil rights movement on which all justice-oriented organizations, including ColorOfChange, are able to organize today.
Congressman John Lewis said in a recent interview about his late colleague and friend, “Julian must be remembered as one who inspired another generation of young people to stand up, to speak up and speak out.” We are part of the generation that he inspired to fight racism and oppression. As we remember Julian Bond, will you join us?
He will be laid to rest on Saturday, August 22, 2015 by his wife Pam Horowitz; sons Horace Mann Bond II, Jeffrey and Michael; daughters Phyllis Jane Bond McMillan and Julia Louise Bond; sister Jane; brother James; and eight grandchildren.
What a spectacular sight
Here we see the spectacular cosmic pairing of the star Hen 2-427 — more commonly known as WR 124 — and the nebula M1-67 which surrounds it. Both objects, captured here by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope are found in the constellation of Sagittarius and lie 15,000 light-years away.
Source: A Hubble Cosmic Couple | NASA
My Comments: What confounding sights from the heavens; where did all this come from…I wonder?
Even when asked about the same student, black teachers have higher expectations for black students than white teachers do.
When black teachers and white teachers are asked to sum up black high school students’ potential, white teachers are much less likely to see black students as college material.And that’s true even when they’re discussing the same students.
A new study exploring how race influences teachers’ perception of their students’ abilities found that those expectations are racially biased.
Source: Racism in the classroom: the “soft bigotry of low expectations…
My Comments: This simply why I will never give up educating my kids to these racist F’kers!
A list of resources from around the Web about or by Christopher Hitchens as selected by researchers and editors of The New York Times.
The New York Times Reviews of Books by Christopher Hitchens
– ‘Imperial Spoils: The Curious Case of the Elgin Marbles’ (1989)
– ‘The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice’(1996)
– ‘Letters to a Young Contrarian’(2001)
– ‘Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays’ (2005)
– ‘Thomas Jefferson: Author of America’ (2005)
– ‘God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’ (2005)
– ‘Hitch-22: A Memoir’ (2010)
– ‘Arguably’ (2011)
(more…)
It takes a lot of hard work to stay in shape, which is why it’s important to exercise on a regular basis. But it’s not always possible to remain active, and sometimes a few days off can turn into a more… extended hiatus. Here’s what happens to your body when you suddenly stop exercising.
Source: This is What Happens to Your Body When You Stop Exercising
My Comments: A bit of a disheartening piece, but it is right on point and timely indeed. Just took off 45 days; time to get back on track.
The 6-foot 2-inch, 330-pound Atlas robot is the brainchild of Google Inc. subsidiary Boston Dynamics, which has received contracts from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Pentagon’s research arm, to develop the technology for potential use in disaster relief and other tasks.
Source: DARPA-Funded Humanoid Runs Through the Woods | Defense Tech
My Comments: Just simply amazing!
Source: The Back-Flipping Black Figure Skater Who Changed the Sport Forever | The New Republic
My Comments: Surya is truly one of the bravest and most wonderful person of our life time. At the end of the day she played by her rules and we (I) love her for it.
And a radical idea for what to do about it.
The poverty that poor African Americans experience is often different from the poverty of poor whites. It’s more isolating and concentrated. It extends out the door of a family’s home and occupies the entire neighborhood around it, touching the streets, the schools, the grocery stores.
Source: Black poverty differs from white poverty
My Comment: Legacy of senseless hatred…what a sad world.
My Comments: Recently came across this poem alluded to in a post. It rings so true in so many ways in the lives of us all, especially brothers and sister of the darker hue. Dunbar’s poem travel through time today as in his time. How long will we have to bear the burden of such guile…how long?
“It’s unusual because you need a spacecraft that has gone beyond the moon to get a picture of the moon like this,” he said. “This was taken around one million miles from Earth. We don’t normally get that perspective.“Because of its mission, this spacecraft is in a sweet spot directly in the direction of the sunlit Earth, meaning it’s seeing a completely sunlit moon, too. You get a whole new perspective on the moon. It looks very different from the side we see from Earth.”
Source: Dark side of the moon captured by Nasa satellite 1 mil miles from Earth
My Comment: WoW!
Some of the most breathtaking views in the Universe are created by nebulae — hot, glowing clouds of gas. This new NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the center of the Lagoon Nebula, an object with a deceptively tranquil name, in the constellation of Sagittarius. The region is filled with intense winds from hot stars, churning funnels of gas, and energetic star formation, all embedded within an intricate haze of gas and pitch-dark dust.
Source: Stormy Seas in Sagittarius | NASA
My Comments: I am just awed by the magnificence of what the HST allows us to see in deep space.
Everyone has regrets, but what do people regret the most? Learn what they are and make sure not to allow them in your life.
Life is full of choices, and many of them come with uncertainty. We can never know what might have been if we had chosen differently.
No life will ever be completely clear of opportunity for regret. Failed relationships, missed opportunities, poor judgment calls. Some choices seem easy at the time and later turn out to have been poorly informed; others are difficult from the beginning.
But some regrets are more fundamental, greater in scope. They tend not to focus on a single moment or area, but how life is lived.
Here are a dozen potential regrets to make sure you’re keeping far away.
Source: 12 Things People Regret the Most Before They Die
My Comments: Pretty robust list!
Experts untangle the relative risks and benefits of each activity.
At Vox, I sit next to health reporter Sarah Kliff, who trains for half-marathons and triathlons with a casualness most people reserve for grocery shopping. But in the year I’ve known Sarah, she’s suffered plantar fasciitis and a stress fracture. She’s hobbled around in running shoes for months because everything else hurt too much, and she’s currently sporting a big blue brace on her left leg to help cushion the tiny cracks in the bones of her foot brought on from too much wear and tear.
Source: Should you walk or run for exercise? Here’s what the science says.
My Comments: Pretty interesting read.
Seven-year study of adults in China matches regular consumption of spicy foods, such as chilli peppers, to 14% reduced risk of death
People who request an extra kick to their curry could also be adding years to their life, according to a large study which linked frequent consumption of spicy food to longevity.
Researchers examining the diets of almost 500,000 people in China over seven years recorded that those who ate spicy foods one or two days a week had a 10% reduced risk of death compared with those who ate such meals less than once a week. The risk was 14% lower for those who ate spicy food between three and seven days a week
Source: Frequent spicy meals linked to human longevity
My Comments: I luvs my foods spicy
