Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal

Thursday, March 3, 2016

SEX, DRS, and EDM (video)

Allison Aubrey (NPR.org); Ashley Wells, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; PRI.org

We shouldn'tve smoked that herb because now I'm starving for a snack after the show.

A new study finds that too little sleep boosts a signal in the body that may drive a stronger desire to eat. It's the latest evidence linking sleep...

Smoking weed/sleeplessness lead to "munchies"

Allison Aubrey

(NPR) There's lots of evidence that getting too little sleep is associated with overeating and an increased body weight.

The question is, why? Part of the answer seems to be that skimping on sleep can disrupt our circadian rhythms. Lack of sleep can also alter hunger and satiety hormones.

Now, a new study finds evidence that sleep deprivation (getting less than five hours of sleep per night) produces higher peaks of a lipid in our bloodstream known as an endocannabinoid that may make eating more pleasurable.

So what's an endocannabinoid [internal-cannabis]? Look at the word closely for a clue. The prefix endo means inner, or within. And cannabinoid is what it looks like, cannabis.

Sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll is bad for you, so don't do it. But sex, Drs, and EDM? No.

Dude! Oh, man, is that why it's harder to resist snacks when I'm hungry? It's science.

Our bodies produce compounds that seem to act on the same parts of the brain as marijuana does. We've all heard of the marijuana munchies, right?

The new study, based on blood samples, documents a novel finding: The daily rhythm of a particular endocannabinoid, known as 2-AG, is altered by a lack of sleep.

And these changes "could be driving intake for more palatable foods," Erin Hanlon, a neuroscientist at the University of Chicago Medical Center, told us. She's an author of the new study, published in the journal Sleep.

"We found that sleep restriction boosts a signal that may increase the hedonic aspect of food intake," says Hanlon. In other words, being sleep deprived may produce a stronger desire to eat.

To study how sleep influences appetite and eating, Hanlon and her colleagues recruited 14 healthy, young adults to take part in an experiment at the university's sleep lab.

After the pot-smoking comes the insatiable hunger. Just ask James Franco and Seth Rogen's weed-loving characters in Pineapple Express.

How weed hijacks brain = munchies

"These were all people who were...normal sleepers," says Hanlon. They typically slept about eight hours a night.

How marijuana hijacks brain, leads to munchies (The Salt)

The study was divided into two parts, each lasting four days. For one session, the participants were allowed to follow a normal sleep schedule, about 8.5 hours per night.

But during the other session, they agreed to a crazy schedule. They went to bed at 1:00 am and were woken up at 5:30 am, so that they got a maximum of just 4.5 hours of sleep per night.

In both sessions, study participants were offered buffet-style meals and plenty of snacks, including candy and chips.

"They were given way more food than they could ever eat," says Hanlon.

It turned out that when participants were sleep deprived, they ate about 400 more calories from snacks. That's "a lot more," Hanlon says.

Deeply split Supreme Court wrestles with abortion case after Scalia joins babies (AP)

Generally, circulating levels of 2-AG rise slowly during the day and peak in early afternoon. But this study found that when people were sleep deprived, their 2-AG levels peaked higher and stayed elevated longer.

And that peak "corresponds to the same time of day when [the participants] said they were feeling hungrier, or their desire to eat was stronger," Hanlon told us.

Frank Scheer, a chronobiologist at Harvard Medical School, wrote a commentary on the new study that also appears in the journal Sleep.

"The idea is that when the levels of endocannabinoids are higher, food [is] more appealing," Scheer explains.

He says this paper makes an important contribution. "We did not know whether there would be an effect of sleep restriction on endocannabinoids, so this is really the first study to nicely show that," Scheer says.

Scheer says the new findings fit with brain-imaging studies of sleep-deprived people. These studies have found "that the brain areas involved in reward show increased activity when people [see] images of food" -- especially salty, sugary, and fatty snacks.

There's still a lot to learn about all the ways that sleep can influence our appetites and eating behaviors, but these findings serve as a reminder of the importance of getting a good night's sleep. More

She's 23. Here's why she's biking around the world

Raves Survive a Possible Los Angeles County Ban (L.A. Weekly) Raves survived a possible ban from Los Angeles County-run venues, but serious hurdles remain.
LA County chooses not to ban raves, EDM music festivals... The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors declined today to ban music raves outright, voting instead to move forward with an ordinance ...
LA county supervisors vote to study a ban on raves after latest deaths ...The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on [Aug. 4, 2015] to study a ban on raves at county facilities after two women...
ER doctors: Drug-fueled raves too dangerous and should be banned When raves occurred at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and....They said officials should go further and ban them because of the risk to...
Following Teens' Deaths, Ban on Raves Proposed in Los Angeles... An L.A. County supervisor is proposing a temporary ban on raves in Los Angeles following the deaths of two teens who attended the HARD...
Los Angeles County task force wants more water, police and... (Pasadena Star News) L.A. County's Electronic Music Task Force will not ask the Board of Supervisors to ban rave-like festivals on public land, according to...

How Marijuana Hijacks Your Brain To Give You The Munchies... ...Researchers have been probing different parts of the brain looking for the root cause of the marijuana munchies for years. Now, a team of...
The Science of Munchies: Why the Scent of a flesh burger gives some a high ...Skipping a meal triggers the munchies in a way similar to marijuana, a study in mice finds. And it works, at least in rodents, by boosting...
Winter Munchies: Do we eat more in colder months? (NPR) It seems like the minute the weather turns colder, we crave more to eat. But why? Some experts say it's vestiges of biology -- chipmunk...
Way Beyond Brownies: VICE launches a marijuana cooking show... (Dec. 17, 2014) ...It's the first episode in a new series called Bong Appetit from Munchies, Vice Media's food channel. Vice is the media company that aspires to...
Traces of anxiety drugs may make fish act funny Small amounts of the chemical pharmaceuticals (legal drugs) people take end up in wastewater and then in streams and rivers. It's usually not enough to harm the health of...

Stories from PRI's "The World" (pri.org)

French police begin a partial demolition of the "Jungle" in Calais, sparking unrest

When the beach was synonymous with tar on my feet

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

Afghan WTF? "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" (video)

"The World" (PRI.org/BBC); Tina Fey; Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

American military and hegemony take hold in formerly Buddhist Afghanistan, the Scythian "Shakya Land" where the Buddha was born that is now becoming a kind of "Skateistan" as war grinds Buddhist Bamiyan, Mes Aynak, and Kabul into dust (zeroanthropology.net/WQ).

When it was published in 2011, investigative reporter Kim Barker had no idea how big her book “The Taliban Shuffle” would become.

This story is based on a radio interview: Listen to the full interview.

As of December, it had sold fewer than 11,000 copies. Within a month, trailers for a film based on Barker’s book received nearly 5 million YouTube views.

Playing Barker in the movie adaptation, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot,” is comedian Tina Fey.

In a March 2011 review Michiko Kakutani, chief book critic at the New York Times, depicted Barker “as a sort of Tina Fey character who unexpectedly finds herself addicted to the adrenaline of war.”

REVIEW: "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" inside war reporting (AP)

What was remarkable, Kakutani wrote, was that Barker's "account of her experiences covering Afghanistan and Pakistan that manages to be hilarious and harrowing, witty and illuminating, all at the same time."

Nicholas Braun portrays Tall Brian (left); Tina Fey portrays Kim Baker in "WTF" (Frank Masi/Paramount Pictures and Broadway Video/Little Stranger Productions via AP).

Reaction to that Tina Fey reference was swift, Barker says. “Within two weeks, Tina read the book and pushed Paramount to option the book on her behalf," she says.

Barker’s book uses gallows humor in chronicling her time reporting in Afghanistan and Pakistan for the Chicago Tribune between 2004 and 2009.

“I was simply using myself as a vehicle to tell the story of intervention in Afghanistan in the five years that I was over there,” says Barker. “It’s a memoir and I felt like I wanted to tell it in a darkly comic, absurd way."

Tina Fey made a splash as "Caribou Barbie" (Alaska Governor Sarah Palin) on SNL.

“It’s about a reporter that has no experience covering conflict, or covering anything overseas, finding herself in Afghanistan and falling in love with covering the story there and the country. And as she’s doing so journalism is undergoing crisis, there’s war fatigue in the States and nobody really wants to hear what’s going on over there,” says Barker.

As excited as she is about the film, Barker admits she was nervous about how accurately the film would portray her story.

"It’s like in any of these things. When Hollywood gets a hold of something, they can do what they want. My biggest fear was probably 'Anchorman' in Afghanistan -- and it’s not that, which makes me very happy,” says Barker.

Statue at Bamiyan pre-2001

Though not taking the outrageous "Anchorman" approach, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” condenses Barker's story and did take creative liberties. The film's most significant change? Depicting Barker and her colleagues as broadcast journalists, while they largely worked in print. Also, in the book, she travels between two countries, but the film focuses on Afghanistan. Still, Barker says she’s pretty happy with how the film has turned out.

“I think they did a pretty good job keeping it as authentic as Hollywood has ever kept a movie about Afghanistan, for sure,” says Barker.

Bamiyan statues after CIA/Taliban came in

“I think the trailer makes it look like it’s -- haha, like laugh-out-loud funny all the time, and certainly there are very funny parts to it. But there’s also just this seriousness to it and a bit of a darkness and grimness to it, which I was really happy about because it is war,” says Barker.

“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” premieres on Friday [Feb. 4, 2016]. More

More from "The World" (PRI)

How is the world getting both a) warmer and b) snowier in some places? Here's how (PRI's The World, Feb. 11, 2015 UPDATED) Global temperatures are going up but that doesn't necessarily mean less snow. Here's a brief explainer of what seems like a contradiction.

Mothers fear having babies at hospital once hailed for promoting Israeli, Palestinian coexistence (PRI's The World, Feb. 29, 2016)

Here's how OK Go made that zero-G music video (Science Friday, Feb. 28, 2016)

Edible underwear was never meant to be eaten, say its creators (Studio 360, 2-29-16)

Sex among sea creatures is sexier than you might imagine (Living on Earth)

It’s not just Ke$ha. Women face demands for transactional sex all over the world (PRI's The World, Feb. 29, 2016)

Sexual assault in American sports: Callie Crossley of the NFL has an "UnSuper" sexual assault record (WGBH News, Feb. 29, 2016)

They've spent 30 years fighting for diversity in the arts — in gorilla masks

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Trump: "Last Week Tonight" (comedy video)

Brent Johnson (nj.com, 2-29-16); John Oliver; Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly

Rattled Republicans seek last ditch strategy to dump authoritarian Trump

Who is Donald Drumpf (Americanized to Trump)?

Johnson

John Oliver ripped into Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for 22 minutes on his HBO show Sunday night -- even launching a new campaign, "Make Donald Drumpf Again," to derail his bid for the White House.

Oliver, the host of "Last Week Tonight," called Trump, a former Atlantic City casino tycoon, everything from a "litigious serial liar" to a "bullsh*t artist" to a "baby with evil, smaller fingers."

"Donald Trump is America's back mole," Oliver said. "It may have seemed harmless a year ago, but now that it's gotten frighteningly bigger, it's gotten hard to ignore it."

Mocked in "Producer's": a hilarious 5-minute parody has Bialystock and Bloom teaming up as political hacks to run the presidential candidacy of a sure-fire dud named Trump.

World considers Trump presidency, shudders

The British comedian -- a former "Daily Show" anchor who has become a leading voice in American political comedy over the last year -- aired the segment two days before Super Tuesday, when 12 states hold their nominating contests in the presidential race.

Trump is expected to win many of the states, and Oliver noted that every candidate who has done so since 1988 has won their party's nomination.

Funny John Oliver criticizes Donald Trump.

That, Oliver said, is why he finally teed off on the real estate mogul Sunday. Oliver stressed a lot of the arguments that Trump's detractors have made: that his has few clear policy platforms, that he is a bully and a racist.

He also criticized Trump's Twitter feed, how he puts his name on everything he sells, and that not everything he's s old has been great -- that is, Trump University, Trump Steaks, and so on.

And then there's Donald Drumpf.

"...and you're fired!" (jensorensen.com)

At the end of the segment, Oliver noted that one Trump biographer wrote how the businessman's family name was once "Drumpf" before it was changed.

With that in mind, Oliver launched the #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain campaign, complete with a website and red hats similar to the ones Trump and his supporters wear.

"We cannot keep being blinded by the magic of his name," Oliver said.

"Mr. Drumpf, I await your lawsuit in the morning," the comedian added. More

Trump failed the easiest test
(Stephen Colbert) What about Trump on the eve of Super Tuesday?

Native American botany: plants are wise (audio)

SUNY Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer (Center for Native Peoples and the Environment), host Krista Tippett (onbeing.org, 2-25-16), Xochitl, Dhr. Seven, CC Liu (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Native American botanist Dr. Kimmerer says science can study beauty (Vern/onbeing.org).

The Intelligence in All Kinds of Life

“Why is the world so beautiful?” This is a question Native American botanist Prof. Robin Wall Kimmerer pursues as a plant researcher and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.

She writes, “Science polishes the gift of seeing; indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language.”

An expert in moss -- a bryologist -- she describes mosses as the “coral reefs of the forest.”

Her work opens a sense of wonder and humility for the intelligence in all kinds of life we are used to naming and imagining as “it” when “inanimate” would do better to describe all nonhuman living beings.

Prof. Kimmerer says that as our knowledge about plant life unfolds, human vocabulary and imagination must adapt.