[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Space Photos This Week: Cosmic Dragon, "Fireworks," More
- [National Geographic News]
A star cluster sparkles, a new map reveals ancient light, a "dragon" emerges from a nebula, and more in the week's best space pictures.
- Flowchart to lifelong happiness
- [FlowingData]
The secret to lifelong happiness. If only it were so easy.
- Marmot meltdown averted: Vancouver Island species on the brink of extinction regaining social bonds
- [Scientific American]
Biologists in Canada are encouraged that critically endangered Vancouver Island marmots ( Marmota vancouverensis ) are once again learning how to be marmots–a tough task since the species's population had crashed so far that the animals almost lost the knowledge of how to exist as a society.
- All Things Not Being Equal
- [Our Bodies Our Blog]
The danger of using male bodies to represent all bodies became very clear once again last week when Northwestern Medicine in Chicago announced a new formula for figuring out a women’s maximum heart rate, considered a critical number in constructing an optimum workout.
The traditional formula (subtract a person’s age from 220) has led some women to experience frustration and exhaustion from workouts that should have been exhilarating, writes Tara Parker-Pope. The new formula for women, based on new research, is 206 minus 88 percent of age.
The new formula will also more accurately predict the risk of heart-related death during a stress test.
“Now we know for the first time what is normal for women, and it’s a lower peak heart rate than for men,” said Martha Gulati, MD, assistant professor of medicine and preventive medicine and a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine and lead author of a study published June 28 in the journal Circulation. “Using the standard formula, we were more likely to tell women they had a worse prognosis than they actually did.”
- Fear and involuntary manslaughter: what is justice for Oscar Grant?
- [Pandagon]
"I want to focus for a moment on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. To convict on the higher charge of voluntary manslaughter, the prosecution would have had to prove that Mehserle’s fear of Grant and his friends was 'unreasonable.' It decided the crime was involuntary. In other words, Mehserle’s fear? That was reasonable."
…We have to explore that fear for what it is, rather than assign guilt for feeling it in the first place. You cannot let go of internalized racism (that is reinforced by our culture) without first owning it and peeling the layers back.
- The Kids Are All Right
- [Women & Hollywood]
You would have to be living under a rock not to know that there is a serious battle for gay rights going on in this country. The long awaited new film The Kids Are All Right directed by Lisa Cholodenko (High Art) is timed perfectly to the debate, and shows just how far the issue has come to real people living it each and every day while legal and political factions still duke it out in the public arena.
I do believe that films can effect culture. They seep in to our culture’s soul and over time, make people think about things differently. This funny and accessible film starring Annette Bening and Julianne Moore as two long time married spouses who happen to be gay is one of those films. Here we have two pretty major female movie stars playing lesbians moms in a way we have never seen before in a mainstream movie. That alone is extremely exciting…
The Link(s): Fri, Jul 9th, 7am by Lee Salazar, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Terms and conditions beyond the scope of this license may be available at leesalazar.com.