Self Evolving Minds & Machines

How the Universe Works: Black Holes

2010-05-03T00:27:00.016-04:00

Here are five incredible things about black holes that may blow your mind:

(1) A new black hole is discovered every day from telescopes on Earth, making it appear that black holes are actually not rare, and that there are billions of them scattered across the cosmos. (How do we see "black" holes in deep dark space? We see gamma ray bursts and quasars, the two most powerful concentrations of energy and light in the universe, and infer from their existence the presence of black holes.)

(2) Because the gravity beyond the event horizon (the threshold between a black hole and the rest of space) becomes exponentially more immense, if you were to fall in feet first, your toes (the part closest to the black hole) would get stretched must faster than the rest of you (the parts farthest from the hole). This would turn you into an odd looking disproportionate piece of spaghetti (not to mention resulting in a medieval style demise).

(3) The sands of time become suspended as if in glass once you have crossed the event horizon. So, from the perspective of the outside observer, nothing is ever actually consumed by a black hole. That is, whatever is moving into the hole just freezes in perpetuity at the event horizon. But, from the perspective of the object entering the hole, although time technically stops, it keeps moving into a world of which we know absolutely nothing.

(4) When a black hole sucks in tons of gas and star dust and the like, where does it go exactly? Some physicists are now speculating that on the other side of black holes are "white holes" that burst out all of the matter and energy which are flooding into the black hole at any given moment. So, if you could somehow place this entire process in a single image, you might see a black hole gobbling up matter on one side, while spewing it out at unfathomable speeds on the other. If this is true, it might mean that there are as many independent universes existing as there are black holes (look back to number 1)! Even more compellingly, it may suggest that the Big Bang which begat our universe might be a white hole, and thus our flesh and blood may originate from a black hole in another universe possible inaccessible and unknowable to us.

(5) The moon revolves around the earth, the earth revolves around the sun...and the sun revolves around? Yes, you guessed it - our sun, and our solar system for that matter, spin around a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Scientists now maintain that many of the galaxies out there contain at their hearts a black hole of some size (from 20 miles across to millions of times the mass of our sun), which is also the progenitor of the galaxy itself.

So, are black holes the builders or the destroyers of our reality? It would appear that actually they are both, murdering all matter within their sphere of influence, while sporadically breathing vitality into old dead star particles in perhaps both this universe and the next.

Sources and related reading:

How the Universe Works, Discovery TV series
Life inside a black hole
Black holes: Dark and deadly
Universe is not a black hole

The Crux Upon which Free Speech in America Depends

2009-03-27T00:10:00.002-04:00

Looking IS Healing: Nature

2009-02-25T04:34:00.008-05:00

"Demonstrating that we have a biologically programmed positive response to nature is more difficult, because we don’t respond as dramatically to something that’s not a threat.

But numerous studies since the 1970s suggest the subtle power of natural scenery to heal both body and mind. Texas A&M researcher Roger Ulrich, for instance, has shown that people who watch a calming nature video after a stressful experience have markedly lower muscle tension, pulse, and skin conductance activity after less than five minutes. This translates into significant medical benefits.

Ulrich monitored patients after gallbladder surgery and found that those assigned to a room looking out on trees needed far fewer painkillers than patients in rooms that faced a brick wall.

Heart surgery patients in rooms with nature scenes on the wall experienced less anxiety and smoother recoveries than patients with blank walls or abstract art.

Likewise, cosmonauts confined for months in outer space quickly lose interest in video programs and other diversions. They prefer to stare out the window at the untouchable Earth."

Source: The Natural History of Art

Over Half the World Now Considered Middle Class

2009-02-13T03:12:00.003-05:00

“We expect a lot from the middle classes,” say Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, of the Poverty Action Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following the historical examples of Britain and America, they are expected to be the dominant force in establishing or consolidating democracy. As a group, they are meant to be the backbone of the market economy. And now the world looks to them to save it from depression. With the global economy facing the biggest slump since the 1930s, the World Bank says that “a new engine of private demand growth will be needed, and we see a likely candidate in the still largely untapped consumption potential of the rapidly expanding middle classes in the large emerging-market countries.”

In practice, emerging markets may be said to have two middle classes. One consists of those who are middle class by any standard—ie, with an income between the average Brazilian and Italian. This group has the makings of a global class whose members have as much in common with each other as with the poor in their own countries. It is growing fast, but still makes up only a tenth of the developing world. You could call it the global middle class.

The other, more numerous, group consists of those who are middle-class by the standards of the developing world but not the rich one. Some time in the past year or two, for the first time in history, they became a majority of the developing world’s population: their share of the total rose from one-third in 1990 to 49% in 2005. Call it the developing middle class.

Using a somewhat different definition—those earning $10-100 a day, including in rich countries—an Indian economist, Surjit Bhalla, also found that the middle class’s share of the whole world’s population rose from one-third to over half (57%) between 1990 and 2006. He argues that this is the third middle-class surge since 1800. The first occurred in the 19th century with the creation of the first mass middle class in western Europe (see chart 1). The second, mainly in Western countries, occurred during the baby boom (1950-1980). The current, third one is happening almost entirely in emerging countries. According to Mr Bhalla’s calculations, the number of middle-class people in Asia has overtaken the number in the West for the first time since 1700.

At a certain stage it starts to boom. That stage was reached in China some time between 1990 and 2005, during which period the middle-class share of the population soared from 15% to 62%. It is just being reached in India now. In 2005, says the reputable National Council for Applied Economic Research, the middle-class share of the population was only about 5%. By 2015, it forecasts, it will have risen to 20%; by 2025, to over 40%.

Homi Kharas, of the Brookings Institution, a think-tank in Washington, DC, argues that the point at which the poor start entering the middle class in their millions is the “sweet spot of growth”. It is the moment when poor countries can get the maximum benefit from their cheap labour through international trade, before they price themselves out of world markets for cheap goods or are able to compete with rich countries in making high-value ones. It is also almost always a period of fast urbanisation, when formerly underemployed farmers abandon what Marx called “the idiocy of rural life” for the cities to work in manufacturing, boosting their productivity many times over. Eventually this results in a lessening of income inequalities because the new middle class sits somewhere between the rich elite and the rural poor.

Marx on the Phenomena of the Middle Class:

"Historically it has played a most revolutionary part. The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations…It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts and Gothic cathedrals…The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country…All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life-and-death question for all civilised nations…In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes…National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures there arises a world literature. The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation."

Source: Burgeoning bourgeoisie
--

Implications

The great rising of the middle class as now the dominate class worldwide, and no longer the poor is indeed one of humanity's most profound triumphs. The progress which an achievement highlights is ever-more intriguing in noting its exponential nature.

Now that they world is more middle class than ever before, more people than ever are getting BAs, MAs and even PhDs. What impact is this Intellectualization having on social activism, art,

More and more people now know more and more...what is done with all of this, to what end...just to get paid more, go skiing every other weekend and have a vacation spot in the topics?

Is this monumental social mobility creating anything other than just more superficial, mindless pleasure seekers...sybarites? If not why, and will it eventually?

If so, WHAT is emerging...for it is this very EMERGING that will define human progress for many decades to come...and studying this may lead to some great research that helps humans understand what's happening in this vast almost imperceptible flash of change, and as a result, learn to harness the goods and make them great.

Also, is all of this sustainable, or are we just reaching this burgeoning point that will cause the collapse as modern society and capitalism as the world's fulcrum??

And then what?

Turning Brilliance into Barbarism

2009-02-07T03:13:00.011-05:00

Utilities Turn Their Customers Green, With Envy

2009-01-31T16:00:00.004-05:00

Stickers for Green Behavior

A frowny face is not what most electric customers expect to see on their utility statements, but Greg Dyer got one.

He earned it, the utility said, by using a lot more energy than his neighbors.

“I have four daughters; none of my neighbors has that many children,” said Mr. Dyer, 49, a lawyer who lives in Sacramento. He wrote back to the utility and gave it his own rating: four frowny faces.

Two other Sacramento residents, however, Paul Geisert and his wife, Mynga Futrell, were feeling good. They got one smiley face on their statement for energy efficiency and saw the promise of getting another.

“Our report card will quickly get better,” Mr. Geisert wrote in an e-mail message to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

The district had been trying for years to prod customers into using less energy with tactics like rebates for energy-saving appliances. But the traditional approaches were not meeting the energy reduction goals set by the nonprofit utility’s board.

So, in a move that has proved surprisingly effective, the district decided to tap into a time-honored American passion: keeping up with the neighbors.

Last April, it began sending out statements to 35,000 randomly selected customers, rating them on their energy use compared with that of neighbors in 100 homes of similar size that used the same heating fuel. The customers were also compared with the 20 neighbors who were especially efficient in saving energy.

Customers who scored high earned two smiley faces on their statements. “Good” conservation got a single smiley face. Customers like Mr. Dyer, whose energy use put him in the “below average” category, got frowns, but the utility stopped using them after a few customers got upset.

Does it work?

When the Sacramento utility conducted its first assessment of the program after six months, it found that customers who received the personalized report reduced energy use by 2 percent more than those who got standard statements — an improvement that Alexandra Crawford, a spokeswoman for the utility, said was very encouraging.

The approach has now been picked up by utilities in 10 major metropolitan areas eager to reap rewards through increased efficiencies, including Chicago and Seattle, according to Positive Energy, the software company that conceived of the reports and contracts to produce them. Following Sacramento’s lead, they award smiley faces only.

The Motivation: Competition over Common Sense

Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist at Arizona State University, studies how to get Americans — even those who did not care about the environment — to lower energy consumption. And while there are many ways, Dr. Cialdini said, few are as effective as comparing people with their peers.

In a 2004 experiment, he and a colleague left different messages on doorknobs in a middle-class neighborhood north of San Diego. One type urged the residents to conserve energy to save the earth for future generations; another emphasized financial savings. But the only kind of message to have any significant effect, Dr. Cialdini said, was one that said neighbors had already taken steps to curb their energy use.

“It is fundamental and primitive,” said Dr. Cialdini, who owns a stake in Positive Energy. “The mere perception of the normal behavior of those around us is very powerful.”

Source: Utilities Turn Their Customers Green, With Envy

Hunet S Thompson Interviews Keith Richards

2009-01-25T14:53:00.001-05:00

"...there'd be no Stones without the Beatles..."

Have the Courage to Use your Own Understanding

2009-01-21T00:54:00.001-05:00

When a man starts to learn, it happens very slowly—bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.
— And what can he do to overcome fear?

The answer is very simple. He must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule! And a moment will come when his first enemy retreats. The man begins to feel sure of himself. His intent becomes stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task.

(Carlos Castaneda)

CONVERGING while Expanding

2009-01-18T16:03:00.003-05:00

Take our pills and drive our cars and
shut the fuck up.
But I'm getting ahead of myself,

bang
expansion
clustering and
gravity, mass and
fusion, star birth and
supernovas, planet vs. planet,
restoring tabula rasa, cooling,
acid rain, ocean, php balance, single
cells, mitosis, photosynthesis, fish, feet,
dinosaurs, mammals, upright, opposable thumbs, big brain,
religion, agriculture, bartering, wheels, seamen, Mesopotamia, Money,
Greece, Jesus, Rome, Medieval Ages, printing press, DaVinci, 1492, Williams
Shakespeare, heliocentrism, Cartesian Doubt, Newton's apple, electricity, life,
liberty, pursuit of, honest Abe, Evolution, light blub, unconscious, E=MC2, crash, TV, Potato
Head blues, Hitler, Nagasaki, fall out zones, tv dinners, 1984, suburbs, ARPA, Howl, Beatles, the
moon, million man march, Berlin, video games, PC, mobile, iPod, 9/11, Deoxyribonucleic acid, CERN, Obama -

YOUR MIND NOW.

the whole of 13.7 billion years evolution
weighing on our 3 lbs brain at this very moment
simultaneously...
...an unfathomable lapse of
time condensed into
one set
of neural firings that gives us
January 18th 2009 4:01AM...

The Extended Mind

2009-01-17T03:51:00.007-05:00

Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?

The mind appears to be adapted for reaching out from our heads and making the world, including our machines, an extension of itself.

This concept of the extended mind was first raised in 1998, right around the time Google was born, by two philosophers, Andy Clark, now at the University of Edinburgh, and David Chalmers, now at the Australian National University. In the journal Analysis, they published a short essay called “The Extended Mind” in which they asked a simple question: “Where does the mind stop and the rest of the world begin?”

Most people might answer, “At the skull.”

But Clark and Chalmers set out to convince their readers that the mind is not simply the product of the neurons in our brains, locked away behind a wall of bone. Rather, they argued that the mind is something more: a system made up of the brain plus parts of its environment.

Clark and Chalmers asked their readers to imagine a woman named Inga. Inga hears from a friend that there’s an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. She decides to go see it. She thinks for a moment, recalls that the museum is on 53rd Street, and starts walking that way. She accesses her belief that MOMA is on 53rd Street from its storage place in her brain’s memory network.

Now imagine a man named Otto, who has Alzheimer’s. His memory is faulty, and so he keeps with him a notebook in which he writes down important details. Like Inga, Otto hears about the museum exhibit. Since he can’t access the address in his brain, he looks it up in his notebook and then heads off in the same direction as Inga.

In the view of Clark and Chalmers, Inga’s brain-based memory and Otto’s notebook are fundamentally the same. Inga’s mind just happens to access information stored away in her brain, while Otto’s mind draws on information stored in his notebook.

The notebook, in other words, is part of his extended mind. It doesn’t make any difference that Otto keeps his notebook tucked away much of the time. After all, Inga tucks the memory of MOMA’s address out of her conscious awareness most of the time too.

Clark and Chalmers concluded that real people are actually more like Otto than like Inga: We all have minds that extend out into our environments.

Accepting Wall-less Minds as Natural

Eleven years later, this argument continues to trigger fierce debate among philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. There is no doubt that the extended mind is a weird concept.

One reason it seems so strange is that our minds feel as if they are really totally self-contained. We innately believe, for example, that as we walk down a street, we are continuously filming a detailed movie of our surroundings and using that mental movie to decide what to do next. But like many beliefs we have about ourselves, this movie is an illusion. Our awareness is, in fact, remarkably narrow.

One of the most spectacular demonstrations of how oblivious we can be was carried out by psychologists Daniel Simons of the University of Illinois and Christopher Chabris at Harvard University.

They asked people to watch a video of students weaving around each other and passing a basketball. Half the students wore white shirts, the other half black. The subjects had to keep track of how many times the ball was passed by members of one of the teams. In the middle of the game, a gorilla (rather, a student in a gorilla costume) sauntered through the scene.

Many subjects later reported that they never saw the gorilla; their brains discarded it as extraneous.

Inside our heads, instead of making a perfect replica of the world, we focus our attention on tiny snippets, darting our eyes from point to point. We extract only the information we need for whatever task is at hand, whether we’re sorting the laundry or climbing a mountain.

What’s even more remarkable about our brains is that they actually search for new things to make part of this feedback system.

Imagine you are poking a stick into an animal’s burrow. As you poke away, you are aware of what the far end of the stick is touching, not the end you’re holding in your hand. This kind of extended sensation appears to be the result of a reorganization of the brain.

Scientists have found that when test monkeys spent five minutes learning how to use a rake, some of the neurons in their hands began behaving in a new way. They began to fire in response to stimuli at the end of the rake, not on the monkey’s hand. Other neurons, in the brain, respond to things that appear to lie within arm’s reach. Training the monkeys to use the rakes caused these neurons to change—reacting to objects lying within rake’s reach rather than arm’s reach.

Natural-Born Cyborgs

The eagerness with which the brain merges with tools has made it possible to create some stunning mind-machine interfaces.

For instance, Miguel Nicolelis of Duke University and his colleagues put electrodes in the brains of monkeys to link them to a robot arm. The monkeys quickly learned how to move the arm around with pure thought; their neurons reorganized, establishing a new feedback loop between brain and robot arm.

Humans are proving just as good at this merger of mind and machine.

The U.S. Navy has developed a flight suit for helicopter pilots that delivers little puffs of air on the side of the pilot’s body as his helicopter tilts in that direction. The pilot responds to the puffs by tilting away from them, and the suit passes those signals on to the helicopter’s steering controls. Pilots who train with this system can learn to fly blindfolded or to carry out complex maneuvers, such as holding the helicopter in a stationary hover.

The helicopter becomes, in effect, part of the pilot’s body, linked back to his or her mind.

Results like these, reveal a mind that is constantly seeking to extend itself, to grab on to new tools it has never experienced before and merge with them.

Some people may be horrified by how passionately people are taking to their laptops and GPS trackers. But if you think about it, it would be surprising if we didn’t.

We are “natural-born cyborgs.”

Conclusions

The extended mind theory doesn’t just change the way we think about the mind. It also changes how we judge what’s good and bad about today’s mind-altering technologies.

There’s nothing unnatural about relying on the Internet—Google and all—for information. After all, we are constantly consulting the world around us like a kind of visual Wikipedia. Nor is there anything bad about our brains’ being altered by these new technologies, any more than there is something bad about a monkey’s brain changing as it learns how to play with a rake.

Neuroscientists will soon be able to offer fresh ways to enhance our brains, whether with drugs or with implants. To say that these are immoral because they defile our true selves—our isolated, distinct minds—is to ignore biology.

Our minds already extend out into the environment, and the changes we make to the environment already alter our minds.

Source: I edited How Google is Making us Smarter
—
Questions left to Answer

As a result of advanced machine-brain connecting technologies, will more people embrace minds as completely unbounded entities encouraging the Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution?

When the mind and the internet fully unite as THE Extended Mind, do we become Ubermenschen?

Is the mind really only what the brain does, and in context of this article, employs? Or is it more?

Music as Morphine?

2009-01-16T02:55:00.004-05:00

Recent research suggests there is some evidence that playing music for patients who've undergone painful medical procedures may help mitigate their sensation of pain.

The problem in the research comes in identifying the kind of music to play. Some researchers have focused on finding the ideal type of music for all patients -- "anxiolytic" music that is supposed to reduce anxiety and relax patients.

But different people have different music preferences. Music that Jim finds relaxing seems obnoxious and grating to me. Music that I find relaxing seems obnoxious and grating to Greta.

People nowadays are used to creating their own personal audio environment on their iPods. Wouldn't it make sense to let them choose their own music as a way of distracting them from medical pain?

A team led by Laura Mitchell recruited 80 people to bring their favorite song to the laboratory, where they would be paid to dip their hands in frigid water for as long as they could tolerate it. The musical selections they chose ranged from works by Johnny Cash, to The Verve, to Rancid.

The volunteers first dipped their hand in warm water to bring it to a consistent 32°C. Then they held it in a circulating cold water bath at 5°C -- close to freezing! This was repeated three times -- once while listing to their favorite song, once while staring at a blank wall, and once while looking at a work of art they selected from 15 chosen by the experimenters.

They were told to hold their hand in the water as long as they could stand it, or five minutes, whichever came first. Did listening to the music affect their ability to tolerate pain?

Here are the results:

As you can see, people held their hands in the water significantly longer while listening to the music and they also perceived significantly less pain. Viewing the artwork had no effect on these results -- the difference between pain ratings for art-viewing and no-distraction conditions was not significant.

But the artwork did have one interesting effect. The participants were also asked to rate how well they were able to distract themselves from the pain. Now the effect of viewing art was significant:

While listening to music was best, participants who viewed the artwork rated their ability to distract themselves from the pain as significantly higher compared to when there was no distraction (again, on a scale of 0-100).

The researchers also point out that there are some limitations to their study. If you undergo a surgery procedure or are experiencing chronic pain, there's no way to escape it. If you're a real patient, you can never just remove your hand from the frigid water to remove the pain, and in these circumstances music may have a different effect.

But in any case, it seems clear that allowing patients to choose their own music while experiencing pain does indeed go a long way toward mitigating that pain. For it certainly makes intuitive sense that putting patients in a pleasant environment where they have some degree of control would be a good start to helping reduce their experience of pain.

Source: Music, Art & the Perception of Pain

Classic Donovan & Bob Dylan

2009-01-15T02:55:00.001-05:00

God is a Verb

2008-12-19T15:26:00.003-05:00

Here is God's purpose-
for God, to me, it seems,
is a verb
not a noun,
proper or improper;
is the articulation
not the art, objective or subjective;
is loving,
not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated;
is knowledge dynamic,
not legislative code,
not proclamation law.
not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon.
Yes, God is a verb,
the most active,
connoting the vast harmonic
reordering of the universe
from unleashed chaos of energy.
And there is born unheralded
a great natural peace,
not out of exclusive
pseudo-static security
but out of including, refining, dynamic balancing.
Naught is lost.
Only the false and nonexistent are dispelled.

-Buckminster Fuller-

The Auto Engine of the Future?

2008-12-13T12:51:00.007-05:00

Why not make it a condition for the Big Three to have to invest a certain percentage of their income to ideas such as these which show real promise and are already set for testing?
--
Brickley Engine, The

By CLIVE THOMPSON

The auto industry worldwide is scrambling for ways to make cars consume less gas, but mostly it pursues the same few concepts — like making cars lighter and smaller, using alternative fuels or creating hybrid designs that use electricity. Mike Brickley has another idea: why not rethink the internal-combustion engine itself?

Five years ago, Brickley, a self-taught “engine inventor” in Austin, Tex., decided to give it a try. He realized that one of the biggest drags on engine efficiency is friction: whenever two parts interact with each other, they generate heat and drain energy out of the system. So he began designing a new type of engine that reduced friction by doing away with several traditional parts. In the Brickley Engine — as he calls it — there are no piston skirts and several fewer crankshaft and crankpin bearings.

Thomas Porostocky

What’s more, the cylinders are connected through a pinned joint that rotates a comparatively small amount. The resulting device has a curious, flattened appearance: two sets of pistons face away from each other and punch in opposite directions, joining in the center to drive the engine’s shaft.

This configuration produces 35 percent less friction than a regular engine. Brickley projects that this would give the engine up to 20 percent better mileage than a regular car.

If you were to burn diesel fuel in the Brickley Engine, it would use almost 50 percent less fuel than a normal gas-powered engine, with greatly reduced emissions. “It’ll work in anything that burns fuel — trains, tractors, automobiles, you name it,” he says.

A nation of Brickley-equipped vehicles could satisfy the Kyoto Protocol’s demands for greenhouse-gas reduction several years in advance.

Brickley received a patent for the engine last year and this year began working on a prototype to place in a compact car — to prove that his design performs as well as his calculations predict

But one big question remains: Can Detroit really embrace such a weird new engine — especially when the Big Three are collapsing? “It’s not great timing,” Brickley admits. In the quest for fuel efficiency, the real engineering challenges may not be physics but politics.

Source: Year in Ideas 2008

A Bright Future? What to Expect from the Next 40 Years on Earth

2008-12-09T03:01:00.009-05:00

A brief summary of ideas laid out in a new futurist book, Technology’s Promise: Expert Knowledge on the Transformation of Business and Society, by William E. Halal:

2010: The World Online. The decade should continue to focus on intelligent advances in information systems and e-commerce. The world in 2010 is almost certain to be smarter, faster, and fully wired, setting the stage for the breakthroughs to come.

2020: High-Tech Arrives. This decisive period should see major breakthroughs in high tech. Green business, alternative energy, and other practices are likely to ensure ecological sustainability. AI should permeate life, and the next generation of quantum/optical computing will permit huge advances in telemedicine, virtual education, and e-government. Biotech should mature, providing personalized medicine, genetic therapy, cancer cures, and other advanced health care.

2030: Crisis of Maturity. Industrialization will reach most developing nations at this point, with as many as 5 billion people living at modern levels of consumption. Although technological powers will be vast, intercultural conflict, weapons of mass destruction, and threats of environmental collapse are likely to grow into such challenges that they force a global shift in consciousness.

2040-2050: Global Order. Civilization has withstood the Fall of Rome, World Wars I and II, and threats of nuclear holocaust, and it will probably survive globalization. The challenges facing civilization are likely to be resolved to form a modernized, fairly harmonious globe, somewhat like a far larger and more diverse version of the United States or European Union. Local wars, ecological disasters, and other mishaps will continue, of course, but limited to the normal dysfunctions of any social system.

Source: Will Technology Create a Wiser World?

What you Don't Know about Money

2008-12-07T15:06:00.044-05:00

Money is government issued fiat currency.

It is supposed to represent a resolution of both public and private debts.

However, since it is not redeemable for gold, silver, or anything else which actually exists, but rather for itself only - 95% of the money in circulation DOES NOT REPRESENT ANYTHING.

A mere 5% of money on the planet represents value.

Money gains its power through its consideration as legal tender by the courts. That is, the law will not enforce other forms of debt resolution, if money has been offered.

By removing currency from a gold standard format, money has now become the representation of debt, and thereby synonymous with debt. Money is debt and debt is money.

Money therefore only represents money other people owe banks or the government because they are the only ones who can issue debt.

And, since governments and banks are the sole lenders, they therefore are the sole producers of money.

People are used to hearing about the government printing money, but the banks in practice do the same thing millions of times every day.

Moreover, how much money (debt) can be issued, that is, if it is entirely in the hands of the government and banks to do so?

Well, if there is nothing tangible, like the amount of gold it has to be based on, even loosely - what could the limits be?

Furthermore, the amount of money in the world is never the same at any given moment because if money is debt, then every time someone takes out a loan or opens up a credit card account, creating debt, more money is generated - yes from nothing.

There are thus no limits to the amount of money that can be issued.

As a result, the calculable number of money in existence is in constant flux, always on the rise whether lending occurs or loans are defaulted (except when no lending occurs across the board. But, this has never happened because central government banks are always lending, even when banks are hard-pressed).

This places the world economy is an incredibly unstable position.

For, this means that 95% of the loans which are issued by banks are based solely on promises of other borrowers to pay back their loans - and it is THIS promise that the entire world economy depends on for its survival.

The wormhole continues.

An important result of this is that when people are asking for loans, and banks are lending them, a lot of money is being created (albeit out of thin air). More money grows the economy and when the economy grows people's quality of life improves.

In this scenario, the modern day money system seems quite brilliant. We are simply growing prosperous out of our own will to become prosperous!

However, there are three fundamental flaws in an economy where money is debt and debt, money.

For our modern-day economy to exist people cannot pay off all their debts.

This is because the debt is used as leverage to produce loans and credits that are the core source of money. If no one had debt, the economy would shrink to only 5% of its current size (remember that 95% of all current money represents debt). Without debt - there would be virtually no money.

However counterintuitive this may be, because shedding debt is good for personal finances - this is not the case for the economy as a whole.

The second flaw is people cannot pay off zero of their debt either.

If everyone defaulted on their loans, banks would replace borrower's debt with lender's debt. It is not sustainable for money to be manufactured by the bank on the basis of money the bank owes itself. It cannot be leveraged to create loans. Banks wouldn't be able to lend and the government could only last so long on its own. New money would effectively disappear (though the demand for it certainly would not).

The final flaw is our economy cannot sustain itself unless people are lending and consuming debt, perpetually and at an ever-increasing rate - and sometimes this just doesn't happen.

People deposit their money in the bank under the belief that it will be safe at all times. But, if other people who the bank is lending to cannot pay back their loans, this threatens the the banks liquidity, or cash reserves, which although the federal government covers up to $250,000 of deposits, can eventually leave banks unable to lend without risking their very existence and directly impeding economic growth.

Now, it is inevitable that at some time large numbers of people will both default on loans and yank their money from the bank.

This leaves banks with little to no issuable debt, and because debt is money, little to no money.

When vast sums of money vanish in a matter of days banks cannot lend and the economy is left in tatters.

Ergo, it seems, to have a profitable economy a magic balance must be stuck between some debt being paid, some debt not being paid, and there being an extraordinary faith that consumers can cover and bankers can issue more debt than the day before, and way more debt than could ever be paid off at once, everyday.

To add salt to the wound, it is worth noting that most debt carries with it interest as well as the principal balance.

Since the amount of money in existence is only based on the principal, new debt must be manufactured to pay for the interest off the old debt.

This has to occur because without interest, banks could not cover operating costs, and could not lend.

So debt is created to pay for debt. And because that debt ALSO carries with it interest, the cycle never ends. It is incessant.

Our position is thus an ever precarious one: Debt or Poverty.

Or, in the words of the Credit Manager of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta Georgia:

This is a staggering thought.

We are completely dependent on the Commercial Banks. Someone has to borrow every dollar in circulation, cash or credit. If the banks create ample synthetic money, we are prosperous; if not, we starve.

We are, absolutely without a permanent money system. When one gets a complete grasp of the picture, the tragic absurdity of our hopeless position is almost incredible, but there it is.
--
For more watch this: What Money Is.

Dream for Computers to Process at the Speed of Light Renewed by Brazilian Beetle

2008-05-22T00:51:00.005-04:00

"Researchers have been unable to build an ideal 'photonic crystal' to manipulate visible light, impeding the dream of ultrafast optical computers. But now, University of Utah chemists have discovered that nature already has designed photonic crystals with the ideal, diamond-like structure: They are found in the shimmering, iridescent green scales of a beetle from Brazil.

'It appears that a simple creature like a beetle provides us with one of the technologically most sought-after structures for the next generation of computing,' says study leader Michael Bartl, an assistant professor of chemistry and adjunct assistant professor of physics at the University of Utah. 'Nature has simple ways of making structures and materials that are still unobtainable with our million-dollar instruments and engineering strategies.'

Researchers are seeking photonic crystals as they aim to develop optical computers that run on light (photons) instead of electricity (electrons). Right now, light in near-infrared and visible wavelengths can carry data and communications through fiberoptic cables, but the data must be converted from light back to electricity before being processed in a computer.

The goal -- still years away -- is an ultrahigh-speed computer with optical integrated circuits or chips that run on light instead of electricity.

'You would be able to solve certain problems that we are not able to solve now,' Bartl says. 'For certain problems, an optical computer could do in seconds what regular computers need years for.'"1
--
When computers gain the ability to process data at 186,00 miles per second, the question then becomes:

Will we have reached the roof of the speed at which anything can travel, atom or AVI?

Or, will we manifest a schema for breaking Einstein's cosmic constant, the speed of light, bringing humanity to a level of interaction beyond the known laws of today's physics?

1Diamond-Like Crystals Discovered In Brazilian Beetle Solve Issue For Future Optical Computers

What Happen's When a Crocodile, Herd of African Buffalo, and 6 Lions Tussle?

2008-05-14T23:03:00.005-04:00

Battle at Kruger is one of the most popular videos on Youtube, with 31,750,375 views to date, but if you have not seen it, it is most certainly worth your eight minutes. Such extraordinary interspecies battles are seen, if one is lucky, once in a lifetime. Enjoy.

You Think it is Bad Now...

2008-05-13T23:48:00.004-04:00

The New York Times reports that "Oil prices have nearly doubled in a year," and furthermore, "As demand continues to outpace the growth in oil supplies, analysts expect little relief in prices. A shortfall in supplies over the next two years will probably send oil to $150 to $200 a barrel, Goldman Sachs said in a new report.

Analysts’ forecasts for the price of gasoline over the next few years run as high as $7 a gallon."

This sounds pretty ominous. I am praying that they are overestimating. But, I know in my heart analysts, economists, and reporters typically underestimate these numbers. One can only hope that this time we experience the exception rather than the rule.

However, evidence for such positivity is scarce. For according to the above quoted NY Times article published just six days ago, "the government said it expected gasoline prices to peak at a national average of $3.73 a gallon in June, just as the summer driving season kicks off." And yet, we're barely half way through May and we've already hit that mark.

The Times also reports that "Some private analysts have gone beyond the Energy Department’s forecasts, predicting that gasoline will surpass $4 a gallon this summer." But at the rate we're currently going, I think we're primed to be there before summer even begins (June 21st)!

I think I have chosen the most expensive summer to travel across America...smart.

Read the NY Times article

See the AAA's national gas estimates

McDonalds hamburger & fries virtually unchanged since they were served 4 years ago!

2008-05-13T04:07:00.003-04:00

Wow this is grotesque. I may never have fast food again...or at least for a very very very long time.

Is there TOO Much Freedom of the Press?

2008-05-13T01:32:00.008-04:00

"In a 'State of the First Amendment Survey' conducted by the University of Connecticut in 2003, 34 percent of [high school-age] Americans polled said the First Amendment 'goes too far'; 46 percent said there was too much freedom of the press; 28 percent felt that newspapers should not be able to publish articles without prior approval of the government; 31 percent wanted public protest of a war to be outlawed during that war; and 50 percent thought the government should have the right to infringe on the religious freedom of 'certain religious groups' in the name of the war on terror."

This is pretty horrifying.

Have teenagers missed the unequivocal point that without freedom of speech and press there is no freedom at all. For I know teenagers of all people value independence and liberty...I mean isn't that what those hectic years are all about, liberating oneself from one's parents?

So why this disconnect?

Exactly what America have these teens grown up in that could allow for this myopic and inane comprehension of the relationship between freedom, human rights, and communication on such a massive scale to exist, and, persist?

Is this a sign of a tired, weak, mindless parental populace drifting to institutions like the government to tell them and their children what to know, say, and do, so they don't have to breech the perceived security of their ignorance and think for themselves?

Whatever it is, if there is any war worth fighting, it is the battle to preserve/augment the quality of the minds of a future America against fecklessness, dogma, idiocy and indolence.

What kind of parent are you, or are you going to be? Don't become one of these. Don't become yet another member of humanity that slows down the healthy evolution of our species because you're too scared to push the static boundaries of your psychic comfort for truth and intelligence.

(Incidentally, if you are a parent and this is the first time you have really thought about this, it may already be too late for you.)

Read the rest of Gore Vidal's article in the Huffington Post: President Jonah
More on the survey itself: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6888837/

The 100,000-Man Strong Private Army is Setting up Shop in California

2008-05-12T20:31:00.006-04:00

A 100,000+ privately contracted company has been operating beyond any rule of law for several years now in Iraq. Their dead (perhaps around 800+ people) aren't counted. And when they kill innocents and "friendlies" they are not adjudicated, so they pay no penance and are thus awarded more contacts. This inevitably leads to more deaths of harmless women and children that incite the hatred which breeds new insurgents. And so, you can see, the cycle is fecklessly perpetuated, a cycle mind you, that pays some in spades.

No one even knew half of the war was being fought by companies that are essentially corporate mercenaries whose primary obligation is to their shareholders. That is, until Blackwater showed up on the news all the sudden because one of these wrongful deaths got out on tape to the world media at large. Since then, they have been under fire in US courts and under long senate investigations related to wrongful deaths, gang rape and other such horrors. Yet, few know more about them and these wrongful death incidents now, than a year ago - and they are opening a "training camp" facility in the hills of North California.

The immunity and elusiveness of gun-for-hire like entities such as Blackwater begs all sorts of ominous questions.

Is this the army of the future? And if so, will America be safer, held of higher esteem abroad, and make new friends and new ground in the so-called "war on terror" as a result?

I don't think so. When the government dubs massive, cutting edge weapon-equipped, ex-Navy Seal-stocked super-armies immune to law, the more violent - and more deadly - the places they operate in become, for friend and foe, at home and abroad. For, who has control over them?

If you assess this analysis as overstating important truths and facts - please let me know. But, at least watch this video first:

"Computer Game's High Score Could Earn The Nobel Prize In Medicine"

2008-05-10T03:03:00.007-04:00

"A new game, named Foldit, turns protein folding into a competitive sport. Introductory levels teach the rules, which are the same laws of physics by which protein strands curl and twist into three-dimensional shapes -- key for biological mysteries ranging from Alzheimer's to vaccines.

After about 20 minutes of training, people feel like they're playing a video game but are actually mouse-clicking in the name of medical science. The free program is at http://fold.it/.

'We're hopefully going to change the way science is done, and who it's done by,' said Popovic, who presented the project today at the Games for Health meeting in Baltimore. 'Our ultimate goal is to have ordinary people play the game and eventually be candidates for winning the Nobel Prize.'

Proteins, of which there are more than 100,000 different kinds in the human body, form every cell, make up the immune system and set the speed of chemical reactions. We know many proteins' genetic sequence, but don't know how they fold up into complex shapes whose nooks and crannies play crucial biological roles.

Computer simulators calculate all possible protein shapes, but this is a mathematical problem so huge that all the computers in the world would take centuries to solve it. In 2005, Baker developed a project named Rosetta@home that taps into volunteers' computer time all around the world. But even 200,000 volunteers aren't enough.

'Long-term, I'm hoping that we can get a significant fraction of the world's population engaged in solving critical problems in world health, and doing it collaboratively and successfully through the game,' David Baker, a UW professor of biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, said. 'We're trying to use the brain power of people all around the world to advance biomedical research.'

Foldit includes elements of multiplayer games in which people can team up, chat with other players and create online profiles. Over time the researchers will analyze people's moves to see how the top players solve puzzles. This information will be fed back into the game's design so the game's tools and format can evolve."

(A sample of protein folding variations)

Source: Computer Game's High Score Could Earn The Nobel Prize In Medicine

Will Oil be Replaced by Photosynthesis

2008-05-10T01:50:00.010-04:00

“'This is really the first detailed picture ever obtained of the molecular mechanism behind the regulation of light harvesting energy,' Fleming said. 'We believe we will soon be in position to build a complete model of the flow of energy through the photosynthetic light harvesting system that will include how the flow is controlled. This model could then be applied to the engineering of artificial versions of photosynthesis.'”

And why would humans want to control photosynthesis?

ScienceDaily answers, "Through photosynthesis, green plants are able to harvest energy from sunlight and convert it to chemical energy at an energy transfer efficiency rate of approximately 97 percent. If scientists can create artificial versions of photosynthesis, the dream of solar power as the ultimate green and renewable source of electrical energy could be realized."

Interestingly, plants have a photon sensitivity so acute that according to Graham Fleming, the lead researcher in this study, plants "will even respond to the passing of clouds overhead.”

This is remarkable, however, it has been one of the main obstacles in the way of utilizing photosynthesis to quell vast energy consumption demands. That is, we cannot base our world on a system that's energy capacity would fluctuate with the presence and density of cloud cover, or on the other hand would overheat on really hot days - power delays and outages would be widespread.

So, the idea is by learning how the exceedingly efficient process of photosynthesis occurs with enough detail to successfully replicate it and compensate for the affects of weather fluctuations, we may be able to harness the power of the sun as plants have done for 1,300 million years.

This would virtually wipe out the global energy crisis, and impede new torrents of human created carbon dioxides from cooking Earth much further.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/08

"with each broken shoelace out of one hundred broken shoelaces, one man, one woman, one things enters a madhouse"

2008-05-06T23:09:00.004-04:00

"The Shoelace"

a woman, a
tire that’s flat, a
disease, a
desire: fears in front of you,
fears that hold so still
you can study them
like pieces on a
chessboard…
it’s not the large things that
send a man to the
madhouse. death he’s ready for, or
murder, incest, robbery, fire, flood…
no, it’s the continuing series of small tragedies
that send a man to the
madhouse…
not the death of his love
but a shoelace that snaps
with no time left …
The dread of life
is that swarm of trivialities
that can kill quicker than cancer
and which are always there -
licence plates or taxes
or expired driver’s license,
or hiring or firing,
doing it or having it done to you, or
roaches or flies or a
broken hook on a
screen, or out of gas
or too much gas,
the sink’s stopped-up, the landlord’s drunk,
the president doesn’t care and the governor’s
crazy.
lightswitch broken, mattress like a
porcupine;
$105 for a tune-up, carburetor and fuel pump at
sears roebuck;
and the phone bill’s up and the, market’s
down
and the toilet chain is
broken,
and the light has burned out -
the hall light, the front light, the back light,
the inner light; it’s
darker than hell
and twice as
expensive.
then there’s always crabs and ingrown toenails
and people who insist they’re
your friends;
there’s always that and worse;
leaky faucet, christ and christmas;
blue salami, 9 day rains,
50 cent avocados
and purple
liverwurst.

or making it
as a waitress at norm’s on the split shift,
or as an emptier of
bedpans,
or as a carwash or a busboy
or a stealer of old lady’s purses
leaving them screaming on the sidewalks
with broken arms at the age of 80.

suddenly
2 red lights in your rear view mirror
and blood in your
underwear;
toothache, and $979 for a bridge
$300 for a gold
tooth,
and china and russia and america, and
long hair and short hair and no
hair, and beards and no
faces, and plenty of zigzag but no
pot, except maybe one to piss in
and the other one around your
gut.

with each broken shoelace
out of one hundred broken shoelaces,
one man, one woman, one
thing
enters a
madhouse.

so be careful
when you
bend over.

by Charles Bukowski

More Bukowski:

- "The Crunch"
- "So you want to be a writer?"

Of Mice and Men

2008-05-03T15:40:00.007-04:00

Of Mice and Men at 16

At 16, I was not able to appreciate the unmistakable harshness of what really is the average human's life. That is to say, I knew people starved to death half way across the world, I knew there were dictators, and so on. But these are the extremes.

I did not recognize small silent suffering. For I didn’t know the man who spends his whole life toiling to no tangible end – working to work. I did not recognize wretched solitude. For I did not know he who spends his existence hopelessly drifting through the mass of humanity unable to connect with another – living only for himself.

These experiences being so far from the life of a middle class high school student enjoying himself and his youth, I first understood the story of Of Mice and Men as a comedy, albeit tragic at times.

Of Mice and Men at 23

Reading it a second time, however, a year after graduating from college, months after working in Child Inpatient Psychiatric Services, and hundreds of hours of studying international affairs, my perception of this book has notably changed.

This time, I also laughed. But instead of laughing at misery, I laughed at hope, that is, Lennie’s dogged hope to beat work and live off the fat of the land. For even after killing Curly’s wife with his bare hands, Lennie pressed George to tell him about how they were going to have their own piece of land where they would be their own bosses and where he could tend the rabbits. Such indefensible optimism tickled my funny bone. At 16, I appreciated such seemingly impervious positivity.

So at 16 I found misery amusing and hope serious, while at 23 I found misery serious and hope amusing – interesting.

Ergo, it appears on the second go-around I understood Steinbeck’s work as a tragedy, though not without comedy.

The Ice-axe and the Mirror

Kafka said “A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul,” and I agree with this notion. But after a second read, years and years later, a book may become a mirror through which to observe and survey the ever-evolving nature of our thawing and unfrozen seas, illuminating the very reverberations of the axe’s stroke.
--
This is one of my favorite character descriptions in Of Mice and Men (see if you can figure who it is):

“There was a gravity in his manner and a quiet so profound that all talk stopped when he spoke...His ear heard more than was said to him, and his slow speech had overtones not of thought, but of understanding beyond thought.”

(It's Slim, "the jerk line skinner")

"Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government" - and if they are not?

2008-05-02T23:35:00.024-04:00

"Delusion Dwellers" by Laurie Lipton

Popular Delusions

Reading the February/March 2008 edition Scientific American Mind, I ran into a rather illuminating piece, called "Popular Delusions," on the prevalence of misconceptions the American masses seem bound to behold.

If we are to ever evolve past this limited and disadvantageous plateau of human understanding, identifying the source is the first step. Once identified, we are considerably more likely to move out of the dank tunnels of ignorance and into a place where we see ourselves as we actually are.

"According to polls conducted in 2003 and 2007, Americans held several misperceptions about the war in Iraq. For example:

In March 2003, only 35 percent of Americans correctly perceived that most people in the world at large were opposed to the decision to go to war with Iraq.

In May 2003, 22 percent of Americans said that Iraq had actually used chemical or biological weapons against U.S. troops.

In September 2003, 24 percent of Americans believed that the U.S. has found evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

In 2007, 33 percent of Americans still believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the 9/11 attacks."1

Although these are all unnerving, I would have to say the last one is the worst. Can you really believe that just last year, fours years since the invasion, a third of America still believed Saddam had a hand in 9/11 - even though the only evidence given to public has been the statements by Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell and Cheney which have all been falsified?

If you still would like to refute this, read the following quote and then click here: "On April 29, 2007, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet said on 60 Minutes, 'We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al-Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America, period.'"2

The Source of our Delusions

The most illustrative and flabbergasting part of this Scientific American Mind article is that "Among those who used Fox News as their primary news source, 80 percent held one such erroneous view." In comparison," 55 percent of CNN watchers, 47 percent of print newshounds and only 23 percent of the PBS-NPR audience believed in at least one such myth."

I think the facts are indisputable here and suggest that unless one genuinely diversifies their news intake, especially with at least one publicly-funded body, they may find that up to 80% of what they believe on a specific issue is total farce.

Is Ignorance Bliss?

It makes one wonder how many people who have been doped by these misperceptions are going to vote in the upcoming election and what that means for the quality of life in America.

For, let us not forget the infamous words of Thomas Jefferson: "Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government,"3 and if they are not?

We are likely to end up in more and ever-worse debacles than the Iraq War - Iraq may in fact be just a piece of the result of a generally ignorant American people and politicos.

1 "Popular Delusions."February/March 2008. Scientific American Mind.
2 Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda
3 Thomas Jefferson Quotes

Are our Emotional & Physiological States Wirelessly Communicated through our Sweat Glands?

2008-04-30T00:57:00.008-04:00

"Scientists at the department of Applied Physics of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered a method for remote sensing of the physiological and emotional state of human beings.

The key is in the surprising shape of human sweat ducts. Professors Yuri Feldman and Aharon Agranat together with Dr. Alexander Puzenko, Dr. Andreas Caduff and PhD student Paul Ben-Ishai have discovered that the human skin is structured as an array of minute antennas that operate in the 'Sub Terahertz' frequency range.

This discovery is based on investigations of the internal layers of the skin that were undertaken using a new imaging technique called 'Optical Coherent Tomography.' Images produced by this technique revealed that the sweat ducts, which are the tubes that lead the sweat from the sweat gland to the surface of the skin, are shaped as tiny coils. Similar helical structures with much larger dimensions have been used widely in as antennas in wireless communication systems. This made the investigators consider the possibility that the sweat ducts could behave like tiny helical antennas as well.

In a series of experiments, the team measured the electromagnetic radiation reflected from the palm skin at the frequency range between 75GHz and 110GHz. It was found that the level of the reflected intensity depends strongly on the level of activity of the perspiration system. In particular, it was found that the reflected signal is very different if measured in a subject that was relaxed, and if measured in a subject following intense physical activity.

In a second set of measurements it was found that during the period of return to the relaxed state, the reflected signal was strongly correlated with changes in the blood pressure and the pulse rate that were measured simultaneously.

The researchers believe the discovery could theoretically help remotely monitor medical patients, evaluate athletic performance, diagnose disease and remotely sense the level of excitation – which could have significant implications for technology in the biomedical engineering, anti-terror and security technology fields.

The initial results of the research were published last week in the prestigious scientific journal The Physical Review Letters. The publication aroused significant interest among scientists, physicians and science writers."1

1"'Tiny Radio Antennas' Under Skin Could Act As Remote Sensors Of Humans' Emotional, Physiological State"

"In Lean Times, Biotech Grains Are Less Taboo"

2008-04-27T03:03:00.009-04:00

"With food riots in some countries focusing attention on how the world will feed itself, biotech proponents see their chance. They argue that while genetic engineering might have been deemed unnecessary when food was abundant, it will be essential for helping the world cope with the demand for food and biofuels in the decades ahead.

In Japan and South Korea, some manufacturers for the first time have begun buying genetically engineered corn for use in soft drinks, snacks and other foods. Until now, to avoid consumer backlash, the companies have paid extra to buy conventionally grown corn. But with prices having tripled in two years, it has become too expensive to be so finicky.

'We cannot afford it,' said a corn buyer at Kato Kagaku, a Japanese maker of corn starch and corn syrup.

The main reason some Japanese and South Korean makers of corn starch and corn sweeteners are buying biotech corn is that they have dwindling alternatives. Their main supplier is the United States, where 75 percent of corn grown last year was genetically modified, up from 40 percent in 2003.

In the United States, wheat growers and marketers, once hesitant about adopting biotechnology because they feared losing export sales, are now warming to it as a way to bolster supplies. Genetically modified crops contain genes from other organisms to make the plants resistance to insects, herbicides or disease. Opponents continue to worry that such crops have not been studied enough and that they might pose risks to health and the environment.

'I think it’s pretty clear that price and supply concerns have people thinking a little bit differently today,' said Steve Mercer, a spokesman for U.S. Wheat

The group, which once cautioned farmers about growing biotech wheat, is working to get seed companies to restart development of genetically modified wheat and to get foreign buyers to accept it.

Even in Europe, where opposition to what the Europeans call Frankenfoods has been fiercest, some prominent government officials and business executives are calling for faster approvals of imports of genetically modified crops. They are responding in part to complaints from livestock producers, who say they might suffer a critical shortage of feed if imports are not accelerated.

Whatever importance biotechnology can play in the long run, food shortages are making it harder for some buyers to avoid engineered crops."

--

The tone of the original NY Times article does not read as this post does, I simply rearranged the order of paragraphs and cut a few others out because I felt the original merely brushed by what is critical in this discussion.

For the question is not if genetic food will broach feedstock barrels, grocers, and restaurants, or when, because this has been happening for years already (remember: 75% of US corn is GM) - it is what - what are the consequences to food markets, the hungry, our environment, and our bodies, when someday soon 75% or more of what we consume is made of "DNA from one organism, modified in a laboratory, and then inserted it into the target organism's genome to produce new genotypes or phenotypes."

Furthermore, as long as men, women, and children are allowed to die of starvation when there is extraordinarily more than enough food to feed every human on Earth - the primary agricultural issue should be radically rearranging our heinous world food system to stop this from happening, 'less we chalk up human society as a failure.

Alive...after 250 million years

2008-04-27T01:28:00.006-04:00

"Ancient bacteria trapped in a state of suspended animation for 250 million years are the world's oldest living things, claim US scientists.

The microbes are ten times older than any previously discovered living organism and may reopen the debate about the origins of life on Earth.

The bacteria were found in salt crystals buried almost 609 metres (2,000 feet) below ground at a cavern in south-east New Mexico, US.

The bacterium lived millions of years before the dinosaurs

Until now, the world's oldest living survivors were thought to be 25-40-million-year-old bacterial spores discovered in a bee preserved in amber.

Bacteria are known to adapt to harsh conditions by forming resistant structures called spores.

They can exist in a state of suspended animation for long periods.

Dr Russell Vreeland, from West Chester University, Pennsylvania, and colleagues, made the latest discovery.

'There are a lot of people who believe that organisms can survive long-term, particularly the spores themselves,' Dr Vreeland told BBC News Online. 'We have provided the strongest evidence that in fact these things could survive for extremely long periods of time.'

'We're 250 million years and counting as far as the survival of an organism goes in a crystal.'

Origins of Life

The crystals were in a drill sample taken from an air intake shaft at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), the world's first underground dump for radioactive waste left over from making nuclear weapons.

When they were extracted from the crystals in a laboratory and placed in a nutrient solution, the micro-organisms revived and began to grow.

The bacterium, known as Bacillus strain 2-9-3, resembles modern-day Bacillus organisms found in the Dead Sea.

The bacterium also raises questions about how life began on Earth.

It has re-opened an old debate: whether it is possible for life in the form of DNA or dormant microbes can be carried by asteroids or comets, or drift in interstellar clouds, to fall and colonise suitable planets such as the Earth.

Travelling at the speed of light, the nearest star to the Earth would take 4.2 years to reach and the nearest galaxy 2.2 million years.

But even huge distances like these might be within reach for bacteria that live for 250 million years.

'Once you're out to that distance then you are easily within the time period necessary for a rock to be blown off Mars, for instance, or even from a planet on a nearby star, and for that rock to travel to the Earth,' said Dr Vreeland.

He said his personal belief was that life did start on Earth, but the discovery meant it was theoretically possible for life to travel between planets."

Read the full article: Alive...after 250 million years

"A blood vessel exploded in the left half of my brain

2008-04-25T13:19:00.004-04:00

And I lost my balance and I'm propped up against the wall. And I look down at my arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can't define where I begin and where I end. Because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy. Energy. And I'm asking myself, 'What is wrong with me, what is going on?' And in that moment, my brain chatter, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote control and pushed the mute button and -- total silence."

Hear the whole unbelievable story:

Galaxies in our Biology Books & The Cosmic Food Chain

2008-04-24T22:08:00.014-04:00

Galaxies are Living Things Too

One of the things I find most fascinating about the interstellar realm is how much its nature can mirror a single living organism on Earth. For one could maintain that galaxies qualify, even in a biologist terms, as living things.

Galaxies are born, and move and grow, and eat, and excrete, and reproduce, and attain a level of homeostasis, evolve, and inevitably die.

So why don't we see galaxies in our biology books? Just because they are not made of organic cells?

Some definitions of life include viruses and they are acellular. Plus, viruses don't metabolize either. Perhaps then, someday, we will see galaxies in 10th grade biology textbooks.

We are Not Alone

Nevertheless, doesn't this reclassification of taxonomy have the potential to drastically alter our self-perceptions as individuals as well as a species?

Don't we become the ants and the galaxies the humans when we examine the cosmos in this fashion?

And furthermore, don't we answer one of the most insatiable and fundamental questions to ever exist: Are we alone?

For if we consider galaxies to be living things, then not only are we sure we're not alone anymore, but we know that we actually live within, on, and amongst billions of other living things.

Cosmic Cannibals

Some evidence toward this theory is that galaxies eat.

Did you know that our cosmic crib, the Milky Way, is eating another galaxy as we speak, churning up its stars and dust and gases, making itself full with delicious space objects and accessing the energy within them, as say, me with pizza?

If you really think about it, this means we live amidst, or more accurately, inside the belly of a cannibal. In fact, the final frontier is really just a cannibal's firepit.

Top of the Food Chain?

That said, where on the cosmic food chain are we exactly?

According to ScienceDaily.com, "it looks as if our Milky Way will be subsumed into its giant neighbour, the Andromeda galaxy, resulting in an elliptical galaxy, dubbed 'Milkomeda,' the new home for the Earth, the Sun and the rest of the Solar System in about two billion years time. The two galaxies are currently rushing towards each other at approximately 500,000 kilometres per hour."1

Therefore, interestingly, when viewing galaxies as living systems, not only are humans removed from the top of the biological food chain, but so is the galaxy in which we reside.

Note: I understand that this post is a stretch and may anger biologists as well as astrophysicists, but as a curious person I found this supposition way too interesting and metaphorically rich to not at least purpose in non-technical terms to whoever may stumble upon my blog.

The Best Way to Impede Climate Change: Eat Eco-Friendly

2008-04-24T01:44:00.022-04:00

Changing one's diet to local, organic, vegetarian, and/or vegan are by far the most effective ways for an individual to lessen their eco-footprint, more so than driving hybrid cars, carrying reusable grocery bags, or purchasing energy-saver light bulbs (although everything helps of course).

This is particularly clear when one notes that, per year, a typical American puts 4.4 tones of CO2 in the air with their motor vehicle, while they put a whopping 60 tones of CO2 into the atmosphere with their food consumption.

However, a food's eco-friendliness appears ever-more complex. That is, it turns out based on a comprehensive study by the US Food & Drug Administration, it may be better for one to buy food from a little farther away if the production of that food is more carbon-neutral than your local offering. This is because 83% of the CO2 put out by food consumption is not how far it travels, which is about 11%, it is what it takes from start to finish to grow/raise it.

Let us play devil's advocate here. Say you are trying to lead a green life and yet you know your local farmers use crude oil to run every instrument and aspect of their farming facility while they don't recycle at all, and the next closest farm which uses biofuels and recycles much of its waste is too far away to make it environmentally sensible. What do you do?

OnEarth.org suggests a solution in its article, "Must I Throw Out the Whole Hog?"

To wit:

"A relatively small dietary shift can accomplish about the same greenhouse gas reduction as eating locally. Replacing red meat and dairy with chicken, fish, or eggs for one day per week reduces emissions equal to 760 miles per year of driving. And switching to vegetables one day per week cuts the equivalent of driving 1160 miles per year."

Deciding if and how to eat ecologically can be considerably confusing and frustrating, but this post and these few tips may make it somewhat easier to swallow changing your diet for our planet. Bonappetit!

More info on eco-eating:
"Food Footprint: Minimizing Greenhouse Gases"

Source:"Do Food Miles Matter"

"If left unchecked, global world food shortages could set the world back seven years in the fight against extreme poverty"

2008-04-24T01:06:00.010-04:00

It's being called the "Silent Tsunami." In three years, prices for the basic staples that feed the world—wheat, rice and corn—have risen by a staggering 83%. For people in the developing world, affording enough food to eat is becoming a daily struggle for survival.

The New York Times is reporting that in

Haiti

, people are eating cakes made of mud mixed with a little sugar and oil to try and beat the hunger pangs. Without action to stop the upward spiral of food prices, 100 million people around the world will face deeper poverty and hunger, and hundreds of thousands will confront famine and starvation.

In the face of this suffering, we cannot be silent.

Last week, I asked you to send a message to President Bush and urge him to make solving this hunger crisis a priority on the G8's poverty-fighting agenda at its summit this July in

Japan

. Your response matched the urgency of the moment, and we smashed through our initial goal of 30,000 petition signers.

Just yesterday, we learned that Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda has sent a letter to the other seven leaders of G8 nations adding the hunger crisis on the agenda for the G8 summit. It's a critical first step and shows that our concern is being heard. Now we need to hear from President Bush and work to keep the focus on this ongoing crisis.

Help us reach our new goal of 100,000 ONE members urging President Bush to rally the G8 to take emergency action against hunger and to invest in agricultural productivity in the developing world.

Click the link below to send the following petition to President Bush:
http://www.one.org/hungercrisis/o.pl?id=297-3789065-vbrsxB&t=2

Will the Internet Destroy Itself?

2008-04-23T02:23:00.022-04:00

Faster, Broader, but Less Deep

"What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua...that's the only name I can think of for it...like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, this America, the one that we are now in, an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer.

The Chautauquas were pushed aside by faster-paced radio, movies and TV, and it seems to me the change was not entirely an improvement. Perhaps because of these changes the stream of national consciousness moves faster now, and is broader, but it seems to run less deep. The old channels cannot contain it and in its search for new ones there seems to be growing havoc and destruction along its banks.

There are eras of human history in which the channels of thought have been too deeply cut and no change was possible, and nothing new ever happened, and 'best' was a matter of dogma, but that is not the situation now.

Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum."1

The Internet: Too Much Too Fast

It appears that perhaps the most substantial problem with man's greatest modern invention, the internet, is its potential to overstimulate and mire our individual minds, and thus, counties, states, countries, continents, and world, in a meaningless directionless morass.

Isn't this almost exactly the threat to human significance and evolutionary coherence Robert Persig is talking about above, 34 years ago, except with the more primitive mediums of radio and t.v.? For even then, the question of placing to much power, faith, and focus in one single form of media capable of monopolizing human communications and perceptions of knowledge was recognized.

Doesn't the internet pose to perhaps splinter human advancement at least in as much of a way as it mirrors the ever-complexer labyrinth of websites which is currently regarded as spearheading that advancement?

Self-Destruction or Hyper-Evolution?

Will we be subsumed by our greatest creation, losing our identity and value in the process?

We may very well become the internet. And if/when we do, it may be left to Google's algorithm's to become the unifying and directing force of humankind.

But what kind of people, body, entity would humanity be then? A spider trapped in its own obscenely intricate web?

Moreover, one may be able to someday credit the internet with the destruction of an intelligent human civilization, and thus perhaps, eventually, itself.

On the other hand, we may employ the same insatiable curiosity and immense ingenuity which created the internet to harness its power and shepherd us towards a discernible, focused, and advantageous future, where possibly the fruits of a Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution are realized.

Why does any of this matter?

These possible outcomes of the confluence of man and internet are obviously extremes, and maybe sweeping generalizations of those extremes, but as Moore's Law becomes one of the most influential force's in the human world, the human clock has no chance at keeping pace with the technological clock - that is - unless we thoughtfully speculate far ahead into possible futures to help compensate - right?

Related Reading
"In Korea, a Boot Camp Cure for Web Obsession"
"Technoslave"
Source
1 "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

The Truth Edited In

2008-04-21T22:56:00.000-04:00

Have Scientists Found the Tree of Man - Alive?

2008-04-21T20:44:00.019-04:00

Oldest Tree Discovered

Recently, a seemingly puny looking spruce tree was discovered in the Dalama province of Sweden that has been carbon-14 dated at around 9,550 years of age. In total, there are about 20 trees in this upper mountainous region of Sweden, all of which are approximately over 8,000 years old.

The oldest known trees prior to this discovery were bristle cone pines in North American estimated to be 4500 years old. Although still at about two thousand years older than the Great Pyramid of Giza, they are only half as old as their Swedish counterparts.

4500 year old Bristlecone Pine of North America.

9,550 and Still Going

So how is it possible for a tree to continue to live after 9,550 years?

According to ScienceDaily, "these trees have survived harsh weather conditions [as well as any human interference they may have encountered in the remote mountains of Sweden] due to their ability to push out another trunk as the other one died."

In other words, when these spruce trees are decaying and dying they employ their remaining energy to grow another trunk as an alternate for when the main one is fully dead, and it is with this other trunk the tree remains. Continually repeating this process has allowed these extraordinarily resilient trees to survive over nine and a half millennia.

The Tree of Man?

To give you some context here, the last Ice Age ended around 10,000 years ago, and, sometime around then human beings invented crop cultivation and the domestication of animals.

Noting this period, formally called the Neolithic Revolution, is consistently regarded as the seed of human civilization - it appears the oldest known tree on the planet has subsisted to see the germination of non-nomadic human society and witness the Digital Age which persists today.

Ergo, couldn't we, fairly, dub this tree: the Tree of Man, or perhaps: the Tree of Civilized Man?

"This 9,550 year old spruce has been discovered in Dalarna, Sweden. A favourable climate has produced an upright trunk since the beginning of the 1940s."

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/08

'We have broken speed of light'

2008-04-18T19:26:00.018-04:00

Instantaneous Travel

"A pair of German physicists claim to have broken the speed of light - an achievement that would undermine our entire understanding of space and time," reports Telegraph.co.uk.

The article continues, "According to Einstein's special theory of relativity, it would require an infinite amount of energy to propel an object at more than 186,000 miles per second.

However, Dr Gunter Nimtz and Dr Alfons Stahlhofen, of the University of Koblenz, say they may have breached a key tenet of that theory.

The pair say they have conducted an experiment in which microwave photons - energetic packets of light - travelled 'instantaneously' between a pair of prisms that had been moved up to 3ft apart.

Being able to travel faster than the speed of light would lead to a wide variety of bizarre consequences."

A Universe Beyond the Speed of Light

"For instance, an astronaut moving faster than it would theoretically arrive at a destination before leaving.

The scientists were investigating a phenomenon called quantum tunnelling, which allows sub-atomic particles to break apparently unbreakable laws.

Dr Nimtz told New Scientist magazine: 'For the time being, this is the only violation of special relativity that I know of.'"

Source:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?

"Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" - To be "largest U.S. opening of any documentary film ever"

2008-04-15T02:32:00.009-04:00

“'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,' will boast the largest U.S. opening of any documentary film ever.Scheduled for release in 1,000 theatres, 'Expelled' will be hotter than 'Farenheit 9/11,' which debuted on 868 screens, and much more convenient to see than 'An Inconvenient Truth,' which I was surprised to find opened on only four screens nationwide despite all the hype, peaking at 587 before its appeal melted."

"'Expelled' calls attention to the plight of highly credentialed scholars who have been forced out of prestigious academic positions because they proposed Intelligent Design as a possible alternative to Charles Darwin’s 150-year-old theories about the origins of life. Instead of entertaining a debate on the merits of competing theories, the scientific establishment has moved to suppress the ID movement in a 'systematic and ruthless' way at odds with America’s founding principles, the film asserts."

Regardless of one's belief systems, anti-belief systems, or lack of belief systems, Ben Steins documentary coming out this Friday seems way too curious, and perhaps important, than one can turn their back to. Just watch some of the clip below.

Source: http://expelledthemovie.com/blog/

THE Greatest Crime of the Ancient World?

2008-04-15T01:36:00.000-04:00

Herein Lies the Seeds of a Post-Apocalyptic Human World?

2008-04-14T18:46:00.010-04:00

Freezing 100 Million Seeds

"We now understand that along with international movements to save endangered species and the rainforests of the world, it is just as important for us to conserve the diversity of the world's crops for future generations," says Wangari Maathai.

Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning environmentalist, continues,"The significant public interest in the seed vault project indicates that collectively we are changing the way we think about environmental conservation."

The "seed vault project" to which Maathai is referring is the construction of "The Svalbard Global Seed Vault." The purpose of the Seed Vault is to protect the livelihood of crops and food on Earth by preserving the agricultural biodiversity of hundreds of millions of seeds from hundreds of countries 130 meters deep in an arctic mountain.

WHY?

But, why go to such lengths for biodiversity of seeds? Why do we care if tens, or hundreds, or even thousands of seed genus dissolve into extinction?

We care because biodiversity in seed germs is vital to sustaining the fundamental foodstuffs humanity relies on for its ever-increasing sustenance needs. The fewer types of seeds or seed families within the basic human crop repertoire, the lesser the chance of their survival. This is particularly true during harsh seasons, when facing rapidly evolving diseases, and in the midst of various insect and pest swarms - all which, one might point out, are on the rise.

One of the primary reasons lack of biodiversity is a major blow to seeds, crops, and the foods we consume, is, as with humans, seeds are more robust when they breed across families, as opposed to within their own. Little holes or gaps in one family's DNA that are bound to occur from time to time during DNA replication can be filled in by the DNA of another family that does not possess such gaps, and vice versa. However, by allowing seed family populations to dwindle we will also limit the possibilities of this DNA fix - leaving crops more susceptible to the ills of nature and man, and with it, man to the ills of nature and man.

In addition, according to the Executive Director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, Cary Fowler, "Crop diversity will soon prove to be our most potent and indispensable resource for addressing climate change, water and energy supply constraints, and for meeting the food needs of a growing population" - all present and worsening threats to human life on a global scale.

Herein Lies the Seeds of a Post-Apocalyptic Human World?

ScienceDaily points out that the Seed Vault not only protects biodiversity for the present day but that "the vault could also prove indispensable for restarting agricultural production at the regional or global level in the wake of a natural or man-made disaster."

That is, in the event of a nuclear holocaust, dino-size meteorite, or supermassive volcano - it is from these very seeds being planted in an iced-over mountain in the Arctic Circle today - a second chance for humankind may one day spring.

Source:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/02/

Xiabalba: "Road to Awe" or "Place of Fright"

2008-04-10T00:45:00.020-04:00

"First father, he was the very first human. He sacrificed himself to make the world. The tree of life burst out of his stomach. His body became the trees roots. They spread and formed the earth. His soul became the branches, rising up forming the sky. All that remained was first father's head. His children hung it in the heavens creating Xiabalba."

This is the story of Xiabalba (pronounced Shhbulba) according to the movie The Fountain, by Darren Aronoskfy. This concept of Xiabalba led to a, if not the, central notion/message of his movie - "Death is the road to awe."

It sounds splendid, angelic, but it is farce. History tells us a very different story.

(Mayan depiction of Xiabalba)

In fact, Xiabalba is actually the Mayan underworld, ruled by two gods called, Hun Caquix, "One Death," and Vucub Caquix, "Seven Deaths." Furthermore, Xiabalba, when translated, means something akin to, "place of fright." This is not a likely title for the pearly gates is it?

This Xiabalba is clearly not the Mayan heaven Aronofsky presents.
Though, interestingly, according to Mayan historians, "Life in Xibalbá was similar to life on earth. Like humans, the death gods had wives and children, they feasted, played ball and conducted business. In their council house, One Death and Seven Death presided over a host of death gods whose names reflected the manner in which they killed people. Adjacent to the council house were a number of buildings known as the Six Houses.”

(Xiabalba Death Gods)

It is here, however, that the normal life on earth comparison dissolves. For in each of the Six Houses is a different test one may face in the underworld.

Maya scholars have gleaned from ancient texts, murals, and engravings that the Six Houses are, "The Darkness House, Shivering House, Jaguar House, Bat House, Blade House and Fire House." Each I'm sure is grueling in its own right. And for those who have to face all of the Six Houses - the horror can be no less than unfathomable.

When you die which Xiabalba do you want waiting for you...The Road to Awe or The Place of Fright?

--
Note: This is not a review of the movie The Fountain. To see such a review click here.

Sources:
Text transcribed from The Fountain
http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_religion.htm

Within Leaves of Grass

2008-04-09T00:08:00.008-04:00

There is much to be found about human existence within leaves of grass.

"This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your Soul."

The text above is from Walt Whitman's masterly poetic titan, Leaves of Grass. You do not have to like poetry to enjoy Whitman's work here. In fact, you can even despise poetry and have this work flood your mind with unexpected triumphs and cyclonic epiphanies.

The Moment Our New Evolution Began

2008-04-08T01:37:00.006-04:00

"The lunar landing was equal in importance to the moment
in evolution when aquatic life came crawling up on the land."

-Wernher von Braun-

The Greatest Hits of Humankind: Volume II?

2008-04-07T23:20:00.008-04:00

“The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space. But the launching of this bottle into the cosmic ocean says something very hopeful about life on this planet.”1

In the fall of 1977, two Voyager spacecraft were released into the stars to explore the contents and activities of the cosmos and relay such data back to NASA. Upon those spacecraft, was a golden disc intended to present humankind to any would-be extra-planetary life of notable intelligence.

It was filled with music, earthly sounds, pictures, scientific and biological diagrams, mathematical equations, and greetings in over 50 languages, including one from US President Jimmy Carter.

What Earthly soundscapes and musical compositions did Carl Sagan and his prestigious panel at Columbia University chose to represent all of humanity?

Music:

Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F, "Gavotte en rondeaux," and The Well-Tempered Clavier, Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," Navajo Indians Night Chant, Mozart's The Magic Flute, Queen of the Night aria, no. 14, Azerbaijan, Louis Armstrong and his Hot Seven's "Melancholy Blues," Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, First Movement, and String Quartet No. 13 in B flat, a Peru wedding song, an India raga,"Dark was the Night" by Blind Willie Johnson, and...see the full list.

The record is actually quite good, except, because it was in its nascence in 1977, one of today's most popular musical forms worldwide, Hip-Hop, was not included. That's not all the Golden Record is missing.

It has nothing about what are now the greatest human inventions: the Personal Computer and the Internet. There are now over 6.4 billion of us as opposed to 4 billion in 1975.2 We have found at least a few other extremely Earth-like planets. We can grow functional human organs in a laboratory.3 Plus, Pluto is not even a planet anymore!

Therefore, I purpose that perhaps its is time to update Mankind's message to deep space with current scientific knowledge, technology, culture, and human developments.

For does the original disc really accurately represent the human species as fully as it should anymore?

Sources:
1 http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html
2 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
3 http://www.popsci.com/popsci/flat/bown/2006/innovator

Space Collective

2008-04-07T22:43:00.006-04:00

From void to sky to sea to land, where is the 3.8 billion year old evolution of life on Earth headed, as its 6.4 billion 75-trillion-celled organisms coalesce their curious minds in cyber-reality?

Diamons on the Soles of Her Shoes

2008-04-06T17:00:00.002-04:00

Paul Simon performing a wonderful piece from Graceland called "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" live in Zimbabwe in '87. Enjoy.

The Shins

2008-04-06T16:25:00.005-04:00

In case you haven't heard of the Shins - they are an exceptional band. But don't take my word for it, click below and find out for yourself.

The song is "Australia" from their latest album
Wincing the Night Away.

Who's in Imminent Danger from Whom?

2008-04-05T20:17:00.002-04:00

Elephant Paints Self Portrait

2008-04-05T03:31:00.004-04:00

Although this is likely the result of training and memorization, not the free expression of extra-species artistic creativity - I am flabbergasted and this is still unbelievable.

The Most Popular Websites Ever

2008-04-05T02:11:00.014-04:00

I simply assumed Google would be number 1 - I mean how could it not be? But to my grave surprise it didn't even make the top 3! Yahoo!, Windows Live, and YouTube beating the Goliath Google - WOW.

Furthermore, I can't believe YouTube was as close to the most visited website as any other website in history - that's just craze. I guess its like TV on steroids. And who could contend for the masses attention better than that?

Blogger didn't even make the top 10 (it was 11).

Plus, where is Amazon and Craigslist in all of this?

A distant 45 and 66. Damn.

I think it shouldn't be especially surprising that 4 of the top 10 websites ever graced by the human eye were social networking sites, but it is considerably interesting nonetheless.

I think this was the case because, really when it comes down to it, the average person's favorite pastime is to talk about/promote themselves as often and in as many ways as possible to other people. Thus, the most effective and popular sites which serve this function were bound to dominate Internet Traffic.

Source: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_sites?ts_mode

P.S. The US list makes way more sense to me.

The Course of the Nerves

2008-04-04T04:49:00.003-04:00

From Charles Bell, "A Series of Engravings Explaining the Course of the Nerves", London, 1803

"Charles Bell was an English surgeon who did his own engravings together with his brother John, who was also a surgeon."

The Future?

2008-04-04T04:38:00.004-04:00

Alexander Ramsay: Flap-illustration, early 19th century.

"Early 1800's flap-illustration by Alexander Ramsay made for his lectures in New England, Southern USA and Canada. a hundred years before Schwitters and Dada."

USG: Supporting Troops in Theatre But Not at Home?

2008-04-04T03:04:00.004-04:00

Go here to show your support.

Hanging On

2008-04-04T02:19:00.008-04:00

[Image by Dad]

It seems although, officially, Spring has been here (CT) since March 21st, Winter is still hanging on with its cold dead hands.

I have to go turn the heat up, my fingers and toes are numbing.

But time is on my side.

We can save 16,000 lives every day!

2008-04-02T02:16:00.001-04:00

HIV/ AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria are devastating entire communities and economies. Poor countries are losing their teachers, doctors and nurses. Businesses are losing their workers. Governments are losing their civil servants. Families are losing their breadwinners.

The internationally agreed upon goal is to halt and begin to reverse the spread of HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis (TB) and Malaria.

Based on current estimates, meeting this goal would result in approximately 16,000 lives saved every day.

U.S. leadership in fighting these three diseases must continue through a coordinated approach that utilizes both bilateral and multilateral tools. The ultimate goal should be to provide 1/3 of the global funding requirements for HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria and achieve universal access to prevention, care and treatment for all three diseases by 2015.

Proven, cost-effective strategies can prevent and treat these diseases

Antiretroviral medication used to treat people living with HIV/AIDS costs as little as $140 per patient per year, down from nearly $10,000 a year less than 10 years ago.

TB can be fully cured with effective treatment that costs as little as $16 per person for the full treatment course (six to eight months) with a success rate of up to 80% in the poorest countries. TB treatment is also one of the best ways to find those who are HIV positive and keep them alive.

Malaria can be all but eliminated through four highly successful interventions: insecticide treated bed nets, indoor residual spraying, preventative treatment for pregnant women, and treatment for those already infected. It costs as little as $2 to purchase the most effective malaria treatments.1

Click here to help with a simple phone call (it'll take you less time than it takes to check your myspace or facebook accounts).

Source:
1 http://www.one.org/aids_poverty

Garbage Warrior: A much needed spark

2008-04-02T00:36:00.007-04:00

"What do beer cans, car tires and water bottles have in common?

Not much unless you're renegade architect Michael Reynolds, in which case they are tools of choice for producing thermal mass and energy-independent housing.

For 30 years New Mexico-based Reynolds and his green disciples have devoted their time to advancing the art of 'Earthship Biotecture' by building self-sufficient, off-the-grid communities where design and function converge in eco-harmony.

However, these experimental structures that defy state standards create conflict between Reynolds and the authorities, who are backed by big business. Frustrated by antiquated legislation, Reynolds lobbies for the right to create a sustainable living test site. While politicians hum and ha, Mother Nature strikes, leaving communities devastated by tsunamis and hurricanes.

Reynolds and his crew seize the opportunity to lend their pioneering skills to those who need it most. Shot over three years and in four countries, Garbage Warrior is a timely portrait of a determined visionary, a hero of the 21st century."1

A much needed spark

Garbage Warrior is a powerful and never more timely documentary.

The vast social infrastructure changes required to sustain the livelihood of the average human life, amidst the Age of Environmental Dismemberment, are thoughtfully presented in the microcosm of Reynold's story.

This film elicits hope in the most disenfranchised of minds that humans will do what they can and always have done to survive - ADAPT.

I mean if Michael Reynolds can "pick bananas in the living room from the sewage system," genuine progress must be at hand.2

Go see it.

Watch the trailer below and an interview with Reynolds on the Colbert Report here.

Sources:
1 http://www.garbagewarrior.com/about.html
2 http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos

Directionless

2008-03-31T01:07:00.006-04:00

By Volker Stock

day of the dead

2008-03-31T01:04:00.002-04:00

By Dacian Groza

What is America/Who is America?

2008-03-31T00:42:00.008-04:00

Allen Ginsberg answers with a poem.

I love not man the less, but Nature more

2008-03-30T22:26:00.003-04:00

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods

THERE is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.

poem by Lord Byron
picture by Courtney Harper

Marbled Sky, Wistful, Still Lonely

2008-03-29T06:27:00.005-04:00

Pictures By Simone Byrne

Tease

2008-03-29T06:22:00.003-04:00

Tease By Coreesi

Heavenly

2008-03-29T06:20:00.003-04:00

Heavenly By Simone Byrne

Atmosphere: God's Bathroom Floor

2008-03-29T01:54:00.003-04:00

This is one of the most profound, warm, and spellbinding hip-hop songs I have ever heard.

If you love music and can at least tolerate hip-hop artists, then please listen to this - you'll thank me for it.

One note on the video below played with the song: It is from the movie Trainspotting and has some graphic scenes.

If you type "god loves ugly" in youtube you'll find alternate versions that are less offensive so you can still relish in this sublime piece of music without the visual repugnance of a drug-dominated reality.

Listen below:

Here's another song by the magnificent Atmosphere:

Zero House

2008-03-28T20:47:00.004-04:00

I think I would like to call this beautifully original structure home. As long as it is surrounded by lakes and mountains and trees like this one.

"Ever dreamed of owning a completely self-sufficient home that produces its own energy, water, and is completely customizable? New York architect Scott Specht has the answer to all of our zero-energy prefab dreams with the new ZeroHouse™. This completely self-sustaining prefabricated house generates its own power, collects its own water, processes its own waste and is 100% automatic. Versatile, durable and site-sensitive, ZeroHouse can be erected in almost any location in one day with steel frame components and a helical-anchor foundation system that requires no excavation."

Read the rest:

PREFAB FRIDAY: ZeroHouse Shows Nothing is Everything
by Cate Trotter.

"Bear Stearns is Fine!" - Hilarious

2008-03-28T19:18:00.006-04:00

As those who watched or read the news last week know, Bear Stearns, "one of the largest global investment banks and securities trading and brokerage firms in the world," was on the verge of a meltdown.1

Stearns was to become the next victim of the "credit squeeze," which has resulted from pervasive predatory lending by countless sub-prime mortgage lenders across America.

The investment banking giant was bailed out by the FED, the US federal bank. The FED in a plan to help JP Morgan Chase, once Bear Stearn's greatest competitor, acquire Bear Stearns, offered to buy up to 29 billion dollars of its debt if necessary.2

In fact, yesterday, in a sign that hope for an upswing in Bear Stearn's stock value is at abysmal levels, James Cayne, Chairman of Bear Stearns Cos Inc., sold "5.66 million shares" worth a total of "$61.3 million."3

If the captain abandons the ship, things are most certainly not good.

However, perhaps the most abysmal, and illustrative, part of this story is that just one year ago, Cayne could have sold the same amount of stock for "about $1 billion."4

He must be livid.

And who did this dreadful financial development surprise the most (other than Cayne)?

Watch the clip below to find out (and to have a good laugh):

Jim Cramer: "Bear Stearns is Fine!" Tues, 3/11/08

Sources:
1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bear_sterns
2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7319413.stm
3 http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSN...
4 see footnote 3

Is the Post-Surge Honeymoon Over?

2008-03-28T02:04:00.009-04:00

Renewed Fighting in Basra

"American-trained Iraqi security forces failed for a third straight day to oust Shiite militias from the southern city of Basra on Thursday, even as President Bush hailed the operation as a sign of the growing strength of Iraq’s federal government," reported the New York Times today.

The stated reason that Iraqi security forces are in Basra and other Mahdi Army strongholds in the south is to restore order and peace there. The central Iraqi government cites increased levels of criminal activity and violence, purportedly caused by people splintering from those loyal to the Mahdi army, as having significantly destabilized the region.

It's worth noting that provincial elections are coming up in Iraq and many Iraqi citizens see this move by the central Iraqi government as a means to undermine one of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's most potent political rivals, the head of the Mahdi Army, Muqtada al-Sadr.

The Battle for Basra: A Turning Point

It is important to recognize that this mission in Basra is the Iraqi Armed Forces' first major solo mission. Iraqi soldiers are not backed by US or other Coalition troops.

It seems, however, this precedent of the Iraqi government standing up on its own to face its own foes is becoming mired in its failure to achieve the mission's clearly stated goals as each day passes.

The New York Times underscores the crucial nature of this Iraqi-force-led mission in determining if the reduction from abysmal to excessive violence throughout Iraq this past year will remain much longer. It will likewise dictate if US troops who currently have an average of a 15 month tours of duty in Iraq, get to see any reduction in their elongated stays.

"The violence underscored the fragile nature of the security improvements partly credited to the American troop increase that began last year," the Times reports, "Officials have acknowledged that a cease-fire called by Mr. Sadr last August has contributed to the improvements. Should the cease-fire collapse entirely, those gains could be in serious jeopardy, making it far more difficult to begin bringing substantial numbers of American troops home."

So it seems, the battle for Basra may mark a substantial turning point in the situation for those on the ground in Iraq.

What will it mean?

Is the Post-Surge Honeymoon Over?

With at least 100 dead and 500 wounded after only a few days of somewhat restricted fighting (Madhi Army soldiers are under orders by al-Sadr to fire only in self-defense), is it fair to say that Basra may tip the scale back towards abysmal, rather than excessive levels of bloodshed?

Is this flair up fighting in Basra the cold reality of the post-surge honeymoon ending?

One sign the answer may be yes, comes from the oil pipelines in southern Iraq.

The oil lines in Iraq's southern regions, as in the rest of the country, have become chaos barometers.

That is, when the pipelines in a particular area in Iraq are constantly being shot at, blown up, and rendered non-functional - it is fair to say the area is not stable. Whereas, when oil pipelines in a specific enclave can go weeks or months functioning without issue - it is reasonable to claim such places are controlled.

That said, the New York Times reports, "a major oil pipeline near Basra was struck with a bomb around 10 a.m. on Friday [March 28th], igniting a huge fire, said Sameer al-Magsosi, a spokesman for the Southern Oil Company. Before the recent security gains, the southern pipelines had been frequent targets of insurgents, smugglers and militias, but few strikes had been recorded in the past year."

Another indicator the Iraqi government is losing more influence in the Iraqi south, rather than cementing control as was the aim of their mission, is the rising number of American deaths even in the robustly fortified Green Zone.

The Times reports, "In Baghdad, where explosions shook the city throughout the day, American officials said 11 rockets struck the Green Zone, killing an unidentified American government worker, the second this week."

Moreover, the battling seems not to be limited to the city of Basra, though Iraq's Prime Minister intended for their mission to be staged there only.

According to the Times, attacks also occurred in the cities and towns of "Kut, Hilla, Amara, Kirkuk, Baquba and other cities."

What is Plan B?

At this point one must ask, what does the US and the Iraqi governments plan to do if the relative achievements of "the surge" disintegrate and violence again reins obscene?

The slim mention, let alone response to this question, is troubling. It gives reason for anyone whose fates are intertwined with the welfare of Iraq (the majority of the world) to be ominously concerned.

Source:
Militias Resist Iraqi Forces in Fighting for Basra

Watch more on these developments in southern Iraq:

China: The Killing of Tibetan Protestors, Censorship, & Arming the Darfur Conflict

2008-03-26T21:44:00.022-04:00

Scores of Tibetans Killed Protesting

According to an Associated Press (AP) article, "exiled Tibetan rights groups say 140 Tibetans have died in the crackdown across western China." This crackdown was in response to what Chinese State television is calling the "3-14 beating, smashing, looting and burning incident," but it was really just Tibetans responding to decades of pervasive repression by the government of China on the 49th anniversary of a failed but memorable uprising.

The same article points out that the Chinese government website claims only 22 Tibetans have died since the largest freedom protest staged in Tibet in over two decades took place. The Chinese government also claims that the majority of those 22 killed were "innocents" attacked by who they call "rioters."

These stories couldn't be more different. But deciding who to believe is pretty straightforward.

Censorship

The Chinese State is not known for its freedom of the press, while it is infamous for its disinformation campaigns and streamlining of information resources. Indeed, there are very few media and news outlets that aren't significantly censored or influenced by the central government and its "version" of China's history (see Internet Censorship of the People's Republic of China, and Media Censorship in China) .

A relatively recent example of this is when Google agreed to filter out the search results for certain key terms entered by users in China. This was after the Chinese government offered Google an ultimatum: censor with our guidelines or get out before we sue you for breaking our domestic information laws.

China's legal argument was that the results a user, say in the US, would get for keywords such as "Tiananmen Square," may display information which could be considered anti-government propaganda and potentially riot-inciting. Such information is illegal to create or distribute within China's borders. (In defense of Google, if Google just decided to pull out all together the flow of information in the country would have become significantly more restricted than it already was).

A BBC story on the Google censorship also points out, "the BBC news site is inaccessible [to Chinese internet surfers], while a search on Google.cn [the Chinese version of Google] for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement directs users to a string of condemnatory articles."

If this is not blatant and unjustifiable censorship I don't know what is.

Foreign Journalists Allowed a Brief & Rare Peek

Lhasa saw the first group of foreign journalists in almost two weeks after the large protests occurred on its streets. It was only for a brief visit that was supervised by state officials nearly the entire time.

It is such an extremely rare event for foreign journalists to be allowed in Tibet that it is clear China was only trying to cover up its grave human rights record while it continued to commit rights abuses. This was backed up by the personal testimony of two Lhasa residents interviewed by the foreign press.

"Two Tibetan teachers drinking in a nearby bar said they were enjoying a first night out after nighttime curfews kept them at home eating mainly tsampa — roasted barley — since the day after the March 14 riot." The AP continues, "One reason the curfew was loosened, they said, was the foreign media visit."

China Delisted from Rights Abuse List while Arming Genocide

The US State Department recently took China off its primary human rights violator list, though China has displayed no particular changes in policy nor any new good will towards addressing the heap of legitimate grievances leveled against it. However, the timing is suspiciously close to the 2008 Olympics, exactly 123 days in fact.

If anything, China's place on the US human rights abuse list should have worsened.

A recent report published by a U.S.-based nonprofit group, Human Rights First, states, according to Reuters, "Chinese sales of assault rifles and other small arms to its ally Sudan have grown rapidly during the Darfur conflict despite a U.N. arms embargo." The report also said that "China sold Sudan $55 million worth of small arms from 2003-2006 and provided 90 percent of Sudan's small arms since 2004 when a U.N. arms embargo took effect."

So it is clear. China stepped in to fill the weapons gaps created by a UN embargo on arms to Darfur for the specific purpose of slowing the mass murdering taking place there. Though the numbers are not particularly accurate (since few are counting the dead consistently), the Janjuweed and other militias are responsible for displacing over 2.5 million Darfurians and killing over 200,000 people, most of whom are innocent women and children.

China arms Darfurian genocide and yet they are taken off the US human rights transgressor list?

Image Above Freedoms & Fates

It seems that whether a Darfuri woman mowed down by AK-47 fire while fetching drinking water, or a Tibetan monk beaten to death protesting for the right to protest - China only cares about the freedoms and fates of those who can influence their image before the upcoming Olympics in Beijing.

Unfortunately for them, more and more of those with such influence are becoming the very people China abuses and whose abuse they profit from.

Sources:
Foreign Reporters Watched on Tibet Tour
Google censors itself for China
US Delisting of China Upsets Rights Activists
US report links China arms sales to Darfur Carnage

When it lies on the other side of the fence

2008-03-26T01:49:00.010-04:00

Not only are the fences along the US-Mexican border like putting a band aid on a shotgun wound, but they are going to separate the only male Jaguars in North America from the females who lie in the northern mountain ranges of Mexico.

The Jaguar is likely the rarest creature on the North American Continent.

The Jaguar is American Wilderness.

I wish the gods would step in and tell the US Gov NO - NOT this time.

How many times makes too many times?

They don't listen - and I am left to wonder:

How will America speak of its Natural Splendor
when it lies on the other side of the fence?

(Perhaps the only Jaguar photographed in North America)

See the full story here.

"The Crunch"

2008-03-25T18:22:00.007-04:00

He wrote about 12 poems a day for decades and decades and so has a grand ocean of poetry waiting in libraries. I have read a lot of Bukowski poems. More than anyone else's poetry its fair to say. It's for the rare discovery like this that I sift through millions of words, thousands of sentences, and hundreds of poems, reading reading reading reading.

And I will continue flipping the pages at 4 in the morning semi-interested in the written words & woes of other men - but I will really just be passing time waiting for another one like this.

Is this not life? Is life just not years and years and years of traveling on a lone fast train through a deep fog, accidentally stumbling upon transient moments where the greatest poetry of god and life read clear like laughter?

The Crunch

too much too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody.

laughter or
tears

haters
lovers

strangers with faces like
the backs of
thumb tacks

armies running through
streets of blood
waving winebottles
bayoneting and fucking
virgins.

an old guy in a cheap room
with a photograph of M. Monroe.

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.
people are not good to each other.

I suppose they never will be.
I don't ask them to be.

but sometimes I think about
it.

the beads will swing
the clouds will cloud
and the killer will behead the child
like taking a bite out of an ice cream cone.

too much
too little

too fat
too thin
or nobody

more haters than lovers.

people are not good to each other.
perhaps if they were
our deaths would not be so sad.

meanwhile I look at young girls
stems
flowers of chance.

there must be a way.

surely there must be a way that we have not yet
thought of.

who put this brain inside of me?

it cries
it demands
it says that there is a chance.

it will not say
"no."

"Kevin didn't know he was shot. The iPod was how he found out."

2008-03-25T01:39:00.004-04:00

I found this crazy story through StumbleUpon at Flickr.

The following is the tale from the person who posted the picture.

"The armor stopped the bullet.

The iPod was how Kevin Garrad found out he was shot. This is the real story.
Kevin said he got into the fight with the insurgent and afterwards he did not know he was even shot. He said he returned to his bunk after the patrol, put on his earbuds and began to clean his weapon.

He said: “you get into a ritual out there.”

No music came on. He dug around in the pockets where he kept the iPod and pulled out the twisted hunk of metal that is in the pictures. He said that was how he found out that he had been shot during the fight. He was happy that his armor worked.

He said the upgraded armor he was wearing could stop the AK-47 round. It was not the newest armor that is in Iraq now, but it was an upgrade. This was his second iPod that he had brought to Iraq. The first had been damaged earlier and the store would not replace it, even with the additional warranty he purchased.

The pictures are what happens when an AK-47 bullet hits an iPod.

He’s talked to Apple and is happy that they sent him another iPod. He’s gone through two already. If any others send him iPods he’ll put them in care packages back to friends in his unit who don’t have them."

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tiki/445618364/in/pool-appleusers/

The Not So Good Shepherd

2008-03-24T21:02:00.000-04:00

I finally saw The Good Shepherd last night. I had high hopes for a movie about the history of the CIA directed by Robert De Niro with an all-star cast of Joe Pesci, Alec Baldwin, Robert De Niro, Angelina Jolie, Michael Gambon, John Turturro, and Matt Damon.

Unfortunately, the trailer was considerably better than the movie (watch it below).

The particular failings are too numerous and would be a waste of time to expound here. But the key flaw in The Good Shepherd was that there were really three plots going on simultaneously, .i.e., the history of the CIA, the story of Edward Wilson - both retrospectives - all the while pieces of a current plot were unraveling.

I understand the idea was to show different perspectives of the CIA at different times in its evolution and tie them together with Edward Wilson. However De Niro did not achieve this effectively.

The plots instead of supporting each other and flowing together to create a multi-dimensional tale, clashed with one another, fragmenting and ultimately canceling out the most interesting and potent aspects of the movie. It lacked a much needed constant from which the meandering events could resolve themselves into an intelligent whole.

If De Niro tried to tackle just the history of the CIA, or just the life of Edward Wilson, or just a cutting-edge spy tale - something more valuable may have come from the Good Shepherd project. But De Niro was overambitious. He overextended the limits of the story. He overextended the normal human tolerance for a lengthy non-sequential motion picture (it was about 3 hours long).

If you haven't seen this movie don't look at the following quotes. They are better heard than read.

These were my favorite lines in the movie.

Richard Hayes: I remember a senator once asked me. When we talk about "CIA" why we never use the word "the" in front of it. And I asked him, do you put the word "the" in front of "God"?
--
Joseph Palmi: Let me ask you something... we Italians, we got our families, and we got the church; the Irish, they have the homeland, Jews their tradition; even the niggers, they got their music. What about you people, Mr. Wilson, what do you have?

Edward Wilson: The United States of America. The rest of you are just visiting.

The Trailer

"Coolest Bird Ever"

2008-03-24T04:21:00.000-04:00

That bird can do more tricks than my dog!

Gazing into the Abyss

2008-03-24T04:08:00.000-04:00

by marioegaralldo

Don't Shoot

2008-03-24T04:03:00.001-04:00

Mantis by Lawraa

Beauty

2008-03-24T03:43:00.001-04:00

Infinite Staircase

2008-03-24T03:32:00.000-04:00

KPMG building in Munich

No Barriers

2008-03-24T03:20:00.001-04:00

This is a sketch of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X by etchasketchist.

No color barriers in the world of the EtchASketch.

iBoy?

2008-03-24T03:16:00.000-04:00

Never thought I'd see this.

A Bodacious Bovine, a Hippie's Hippie, & A Question on the Designation of Rights

2008-03-23T19:23:00.001-04:00

In February of 2002 on a slaughterhouse farm in Ohio, there was one cow who was determined not to become a happy meal.

The story goes that a crew of slaughterhouse workers were out on their lunch breaks and while they were shooting the breeze a cow now named "Cinci Freedom" leaped over a six foot fence in a remarkable attempt to spare its existence from the chopping block.

As if this was not a curious enough feat in itself, Cinci was able to elude capture for eleven whole days. Imagine - a cow on the lamb? One has to wonder what that liberty-crazed cow was doing to shirk its bounty hunters and what was going through its head during the whole ordeal.

Saved by the Hippie's Hippie

Upon hearing the story of Cinci Freedom, the artistic paragon of 1960s and 1970s psychedelia, Peter Max, proclaimed, "This little girl's will—facing the end of her life, being so frightened, then taking the risk of all risks to live, to be free—touched me so deeply. It was so inspiring. I knew I had to try to preserve that wonderful spirit."

Max then donated over $180,000 worth of his paintings and artwork to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. His contribution ensured a spot for the bodacious bovine at one of their New York sanctuaries where it now lives out its days.

Ethical Implications

I believe this extraordinary cow provokes a rather interesting ethical consideration concerning the determination of a living creature's rights and the moral implications such judgments bear.

If a cow is able to make the decision to jump a six foot fence to save itself from execution, and also evade capture for almost two weeks - thus seemingly demonstrating a recognition of liberty and life as preferable to captivity and death - what legitimate moral claim can one make to defend the detention and butchery of such a creature?

How can one credibly justify the slaying of a being that possesses the capacity and the propensity to free itself from the slaughterhouse?

I am not a member of PETA and I do not consider myself an animal rights activist.

However, I do think this story pushes the inquisitive amongst us to a closer examination of why the basic ethical principals of humankind are accepted as self-evident truths, and yet, are not so when it comes to other species even when some of those species demonstrate discernible levels of higher-intelligence.

When it comes to recognizing what entities possess the rights to life and liberty - why doesn't Cinnci make the cut?

Cut Your Own Way Through the Jungle

2008-03-23T14:23:00.000-04:00

The following images and illustrations were done by a friend of a friend whose art I am usually surprised by and enjoy. To see more click here.

Where are the wealthy patrons of the Arts today?

2008-03-22T21:48:00.000-04:00

Of all things, this picture is of the exterior of a parking garage!

Why aren't there more original buildings like this?

Why have beautiful and intelligent structures become more and more a minority in an ocean of eyesores and blase buildings, boring the optics of the masses, making the insipid destinations of man's routines all the more feckless?

Money.

A result of Capitalism, unfortunately, is the degradation of art, culture, and novel ideas. Because if it isn't economical and lucrative, it does not get thought of, and even if it makes it that far, it is not manifested for fear of it becoming another failed investment.

Such work relies on patrons, as has a lot of great art throughout human history.

My question is, when they are needed perhaps more than they have ever been in human history, where are the wealthy patrons of the Arts?

If I were to become wealthy (see Chris Rock's distinction between "rich" and "wealthy") I would spend my days traveling to exotic libraries, temples, mountains, springs, parks, breweries, restaurants, help One.org eliminate starvation and poverty, and fund projects like the creation of this building.

That's what I want to be - Patron of the Arts/Traveler/Philanthropist.

Blow Your Mind

2008-03-16T17:25:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately I was unable to embed this awesome video.

It takes you from hundreds of millions of light years away to the quarks inside a tree leaf on Earth, step by step, frame by frame, with a clear visual of everything in between.

It makes one wonder:

Where does the universe end and where does it begin...or is it ever expanding, growing infinitely bigger on the macro scale and infinitely smaller on the micro scale as you read this...?

Either way, isn't it spellbinding to think that our 3 lb. universes (brains) are able to exist in this vast space and realize with absolute delight, the supreme significance that they can come to such a realization?

You can blow your mind by clicking the link below...

http://www.micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceoptic

The Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution

2008-03-15T18:24:00.001-04:00

This post was inspired by Space Collective -
one of the most fascinating websites I have seen in recent years.

The following is an excerpt from a post by rene entitled,
"SpaceCollective’s Grand Narrative."

"According to Kahle [Brewster Kahle runs the Internet Archive], there are roughly 26 million books in the library of congress, the largest print library in the world. This may seem like a lot of books, but in the digital age it doesn’t represent that many data. On the web, for example, an equivalent amount of information as is printed in the total number of books is posted online every two months.

When you consider that at the moment it takes one person a year to scan 3000 books, it means that all 26 million titles can be scanned by the population of Detroit in the course of one long weekend. In terms of computer storage the entire content of a book on average takes up only one megabyte. Twenty six million megabytes translates into 26 terabytes, which can easily be stored in a box that comfortably fits on one small shelf.

Thus, the Wisdom of the Ages which was once verbally passed on from one campfire to the next, then copied in long hand, published in print and now made available online, is bound to lose some of its mythical aura, just like Paul Brooks’ [neurologist and author of Into the Silent Land] speculations about the detrimental impact the mapping of our brains might have on the sacred myth of our selfhood and souls."

The Hyper-Evolution of Knowledge

This Space Collective posting makes it abundantly clear that the amount of information at the fingertips of anyone with internet access far surpasses the capacity of even the most exhaustive house of knowledge planted in physical-reality.

In fact, this ever-growing power of cyber-reality has thrust mankind into a kind of epistemological overdrive, what one could call, The Hyper-Evolution of Knowledge. For there is now a very real possibility for anyone at any time and in almost anyplace to know virtually anything he or she so desires. And as access and usage spread, more and more people are fulfilling this Grand Potential.

This is a quantum leap in human evolution.

Such premises entail the only limitation remaining between human beings and mass superintelligence as the circumscriptions of our imaginations. Giving credence to the idea that the human imagination appears unbounded, it seems fair to say we are already in a period one could call the Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution (though this is just the beginning).

Questions of Consequence

This Hyper-Evolution of Self-Evolution is set to shatter the bones and frames of everyone and everything we know today.

This is good because to exceed one's own expectations of themselves as well as the human race, to propel each other to even greater glories, past perceptions/inclinations/realities must be dispelled. Old and decrepit branches of the Tree of Man must break off for the trunk to support the crown as it extends into the heavens.

But will we become mired in billions of terabytes of data, losing sight of the blade of grass in the prairie - will each piece of information become less important as the pool of knowledge floods the human world?

Or will the average person become capable of understanding more about that blade of grass in a matter of minutes, than even the great Walt Whitman himself was able to comprise in an entire lifetime of brillance (see Leaves of Grass)?

The Question Answering Itself?

Interestingly, as man's greatest tool, the Internet brims with galaxies of data that address this very phase in human evolution. And so, the understanding required for mankind to maximize the potential of this evolutionary upswing is likely to come from the very thing that triggered the evolutionary upswing.

In a sense, the Internet seems to provide both the question and the answer - both the challenge and the resolution.

Self-Evolving

In conclusion, as we hyperspeed into a world where human advancement will grow by leaps and bounds at an ever-increasing pace, transforming everything known, we remain as we have, self-evolving creatures limited only by our minds.

See the full post Space Collective post here.

See an updated version of this post here.

GW Bush leads in 2006 AP villain poll

2008-03-15T16:11:00.000-04:00

Yes this is real.

Jason "Megatron" Burrows

2008-03-15T16:03:00.000-04:00

I found this picture through stumbling upon at Flickr.

So apparently this guy legally changed his middle name to Megatron...hilarious.

Here Jason Megatron's caption:

It's official. My name has been changed from Jason Michael Burrows to Jason Megatron Burrows, effective today.

Here's the story of my trip to the courthouse:

The Judge came in about 15 minutes late & apologized, then said that she'd be hearing name changes first, The first lady got up & changed her last name to honor her birth family. Next, a family went up, and the mom & dad both said that their daughter would like her name changed to Jessica, so the judge signed that order.

Then it was my turn... I walked to the front, where she had me raise my right hand to swear that I would tell the truth, whole truth & nothing but the truth. She asked if my name change was to defraud creditors, I said no. She asked if it would be detrimental to anyone else, I said no. She Then asked if I was indeed changing my middle name to that of my childhood hero, I smiled & said "Yes Ma'am." She said, "Then I do order & decree that your name be changed from Jason Michael Burrows to Jason Megatron Burrows" with a HUGE grin. There were quite a few chuckles from the courtroom... I was handed the paperwork & I split. =)

The Fountain

2008-03-15T03:25:00.000-04:00

I just watched Darren Aronofsky's masterful film "The Fountain."

This was my second viewing and I appreciated its depth considerably more this time around. Though optically sublime, on the first viewing of the film I left the theater somewhat puzzled, wondering what exactly was the primary assertion or epiphany.

Moreover, I think the first time I was so consumed by the unbelievably stunning cinematography that I had minimal mental capacity left for insight.

For cinematography, this film may be my top pick.

My Interpretation

Let me precursor any thoughts here by saying one of the most attractive parts of this film is it's interpretational multiplicity.

That said, I think it presents three roads to eternal salvation. In fact, the most common ones pursued by man, i.e., honor/bravery, pure faith, and modern science. However, I think it makes clear that the only legitimate road to the eternal life is through acceptance of death.

Once dead, one is free to be reborn.

Death is itself a piece, a division, a branch of the Tree of Life. And like any tree, some branches must eventually decay, break, and fall so that the trunk can remain healthy. Then, the tree is able to grow a new branch of life. The death of a branch is a small sacrifice for eternal existence of the tree.

When people pass away, their life energy released in death goes back into the Tree of Life and it is precisely that energy which produces new creations and beings.

According to the characters of The Fountain,

"Death is the road to awe."

Aging Poinsettia

2008-03-14T21:53:00.000-04:00

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

2008-03-14T21:33:00.000-04:00

Just Stumbling & Found Beauty

2008-03-14T21:21:00.000-04:00

by dgoodin

Physiomorphise

2008-03-14T20:34:00.000-04:00

I've heard of the notion anthropomorphise before, or to ascribe human form or attributes to non-human things.

But this picture seemingly shows the inverse.

That is, non-human things imitating the human form or its attributes.

After looking up the Greek word for nature, "physis," I came up with a term for this interesting phenomenon.

Physiomorphise

I would like to make this some kind of theme if I discover more evidence of such rare events.

Best TV Show Theme Song?

2008-03-14T20:18:00.000-04:00

This is the Boondocks series theme song - short but tight and deep.

The lyrics:

I am the stone that the builder refused
I am the visual, the inspiration...that made Lady sing the blues
I'm the spark that makes your idea bright.
The same spark that lights the dark so that you can know your left from your right.
I am the ballot in your box,
the bullet...in the gun,
the inner glow that lets you know to call your brother son.
The story that just begun.
The promise of whats to come.

And I will remain a soldier until the war is won.

"I think democracy functions much better in sunlight than in the dark"

2008-03-14T14:53:00.000-04:00

Congress Holds Secret Sessions

Last evening, if you happened to be watching C-Span, you would have seen something unexpected, something troubling take place.

You would have seen nothing.

That is, the window which is an essential component of making American "democracy" what it is, i.e., transparency of legislative proceedings in Congress, broadcast 24/7 on the C-Span channels, had a shade over it.

Apparently, if there is a vital matter of national security at hand that must be dealt with exigently, and would disclose sensitive information, Congress can declare a "secret session" take place.

Such secret sessions of Congress have only occurred five times in 183 years.

Being that such an event is so rare - what was the grave national security concern triggering this cloaked meeting?

Should the American people be scared?

Backpedaling

The former democratic presidential candidate and Ohio Senator, Dennis Kucinich, explained, "one of the Republican leaders said that he had some secret information that he had to communicate with rest of Congress, and so he asked the Congress to go into secret session."

The Senator continued, "I went to the floor of the House in that preliminary session and pointed out that this hasn’t happened but five times in 182 years, and I said that there should be a very high bar that has to be passed before we go into secret session. As soon as I said that, the member of Congress who asked for it started to backpedal."

"Backpedal?"

Why would the members of Congress call such a drastic and rather undemocratic measure to be taken, and then proceed to backpedal in their justification for it?

If this really was as important as to call a secret session of Congress wouldn't its rationalization be unquestionable?

If it wasn't a burning security issue, what was it?

Secret Session Employed as Political Tool?

Was this secret session really just political positioning?

Sen. Kucinich answers, "I’m thinking that yesterday there really was an attempt to try to basically use the procedure of a secret meeting to ratchet up the pressure to pass FISA."

FISA, or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, had been recently expanded by the Bush administration to allow warrantless wiretapping, email monitoring, and internet traffic surveillance of the American public.

FISA has been expired for weeks now as President Bush added to the bill a clause that grants full and retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who have greatly helped the FBI, CIA, and NSA spy without court oversight on Americans.

According to the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, Lamar Smith,"Ninety-eight percent of America's communications technology is owned by private sector companies," and so he warned, "without immunity telecommunication companies may stop helping defend the United States."

It seems Congressional Democrats foresaw the real intent of this secret session. Most Republican members attended the secret session while there were very few Democrats.

This is interesting because it is the Republicans in Congress pushing for telecom spying immunity, and it is the Democrats that are preventing it from being passed.

In fact, House Democrats passed a bill today, though it will be vetoed by the President, reserving the right of private citizens to seek legal redress against telecom companies for a violation of their right to privacy.

Repercussions for abuse of secret meetings?

Sen. Kucinich says, "we’ll see if anything was produced in that meeting, because, actually, at any time Congress can vote to release the transcripts, make them public."

Assuming this happens and it is exposed what can happen?

"And if that happens and it wasn’t a serious enough matter, there could be really extreme political repercussions," Kucinich continued, " because we shouldn’t be going into secret session. I mean, there’s a reason why you don’t. You have a House of Representatives; it’s the people’s House. Transparency, it’s essential for a democracy. It’s very dangerous to have these things."

"I think democracy functions much better in the sunlight than in the dark" he said.

Sources:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/14/house_hold_rare_secret

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSWAT00914020080314

Miles Davis Live

2008-03-14T01:17:00.001-04:00

MadV: A YouTube Legend

2008-03-13T23:12:00.000-04:00

I just discovered MadV - a YouTube legend.

I have smiled through 17 videos and about 36 minutes.

MadV just made me realize that a smile is the best thing anyone can give another human.

Wonderful.

I guess he's gone, but I'm glad he was here.

There is no spoon?

2008-03-13T23:07:00.000-04:00

MadV has not yet ceased to amaze me.

One World

2008-03-13T23:05:00.000-04:00

One of the most beautiful videos I know.

Go to Hell

2008-03-13T01:26:00.000-04:00

Is a new and promising music scene actually brewing in the Elm City?

It very well may be. And if this thing does take off, as I suppose it might, it is not likely to mimic any local music/art culture development I have seen here before.

I'm looking forward to the first show which is actually this coming Saturday, the 15th.

Here is some info from Hell's project website:

Located on 325 East Street New Haven, CT Hell has been around for 11 years and is currently gearing up for a new series called "Go To Hell!!!" Saturdays featuring the best local indie talent and guest DJ's.

Hell has until this point been a lounge and is now establishing itself as a new music venue for people of the open-minded arts community.

On the first, third, and fourth saturdays of every month, Hell will feature inspiring local talent and DJ's that don't spin your average records. This is a place that welcomes all people who are open-minded and want to expose themselves to new music and meet like-minded people.

Our goal is to bring people together through new music and art.

Stay tuned for band info and information on our upcoming summer festival that will be held outside the club in a fenced in area. There will be many bands over a two day festival which will also feature a graffiti wall and local visual artists.

If you would like to contribute to our summer festival, send your ideas.

Spread the word.

Kick off party Saturday March 15, come out and see what happens here for yourself!

One.org: The Potential is Astounding

2008-03-12T21:21:00.001-04:00

What Can be Done

Never before could one so easily help to alleviate the unjustifiable
suffering that is so rampant throughout the world.

With just a few clicks one can give power to one of the most
effective philanthropic organizations to ever exist.

The following is a One.org email I received today.

Please read it and then go to www.one.org.

The email:

Dear James,

The momentum around the international affairs budget has shifted in the last 24 hours. Now, rather than fending off a devastating cut to poverty-fighting funding in 2009, we are poised to achieve a huge victory. But we need your help.

Late last night, Senators Biden (D-DE) and Lugar (R-IN) introduced a new amendment.

This amendment would restore the $2.6 billion we have been working toward, but also would add an additional $1.5 billion to the international affairs budget.

It is worth noting that the Bush administration has requested, and is likely to receive, $647 billion for the defense budget.

It's going to take everything that we've got to get this amendment over the top. If there was ever a moment to pick up the phone and call your senators, this is it.

Call your senators today and tell them to support this critical amendment.

To find out your senators' contact information click here or call 202-224-3121.

While speaking to your senators' staff, make sure to tell them:

1. You are a constituent and a ONE member.
2. You want them to support the Biden-Lugar amendment to restore $4.1 billion to the international affairs budget, to match the president's budget request.

Budgets are written through a series of choices, and those choices have consequences. When they vote on this amendment, senators will be making a choice that can mean life or death for millions of people around the globe. Call your senators and urge them to make the right choice [bold & added].

THANK YOU FOR BEING A GOOD HUMAN.