skip to main |
skip to sidebar
A mind reading machine is a step closer to reality after scientists discovered a way of translating people's thoughts into words.Fantastical thoughts and theories are becoming concrete and real at an amazing rate these days. If this rate of technological advancement continues, where will we be in another 10 years? I'm not sure we can realistically envision the furthest advances, as we probably won't have enough information to form Context.
Another alteration to the world's official history. In the last several years, archaeologists have found large pyramids and/or ancient urban centers in Central and South America, Africa, and now, Europe. Experts are dating these pyramids 12 to 26 thousand years old, which begs the question: Where is the rest of this history? Was Bosnia the world's seat of power, or one of many more, yet to be discovered pyramids?
During the course of several different conversations with friends who garden(or know those who do), there seems to be a consensus regarding the declining output in their respective harvests. Nothing is producing like it has in years past. Firsthand, I agree. This might be my first year of flying solo, but dad has tended large gardens for well over 50, maybe close to 60 years, and so my "consultant" has a vast storehouse of knowledge and technique he's imparted to me over the last several years. Our vines(The ones not destroyed or repeatedly maimed by a family of groundhogs) didn't come close to last year's yield, and won't. Same with the peppers. Nothing is producing like years past.This might be why. Excerpts:Researchers have found that pollination levels of some plants have dropped by up to 50 per cent in the last two decades.The "pollination deficit" could see a dramatic reduction in the yield from crops.The research, carried out in the Rocky Mountains, Colorado, is the first to show that the effect is real and serves as a "warning" to Britain which if anything has seen an even greater decline in bees and pollinators.And:"I believe that this is the first real demonstration that pollination levels are getting worse. I believe it is a significant decline. I believe the pollination levels have dropped by as much as 50 per cent."Bee numbers may have declined at our research site, but we suspect that a climate-driven mismatch between the times when flowers open and when bees emerge from hibernation is a more important factor."And:It is estimated bees are responsible for one in three mouthfuls of our food, and that insect pollinators contribute £440 million to the British economy through their role in fertilising crops.For the latest study, Prof Thomson carried out a 17-year examination of the wild lily in the Rocky Mountains.It is one of the longest-term studies of pollination ever done.It reveals a progressive decline in pollination over the years, with particularly noteworthy pollination deficits early in the season.And:"Early in the year, when bumble bee queens are still hibernating, the fruiting rates are especially low," he says."This is sobering because it suggests that pollination is vulnerable even in a relatively pristine environment that is free of pesticides and human disturbance but still subject to climate change."So whether or not "Global Warming" is real or not, the effects of "Climate Change" continue to manifest in non, "can't be global warmin' cuz it's cold outside" ways.. How much more information or consequences will it take to sway people's opinions, how do we stop this, and how do we immediately proceed? And how quickly will circumstances degenerate into something much, much worse?
Belgium might be breaking up with itself.. Excerpts: One of Belgium's top politicians has warned the country's citizens to "get ready for the break-up of Belgium," as King Albert II seeks to relaunch knife-edge coalition talks.And:Albert II tasked late on Saturday the respective speakers of the French-speaking Wallonia and Dutch-speaking Flanders state parliaments to try once more to navigate seven-party talks aimed at securing some form of government, other than the existing day-to-day formation.And:Belgium, which holds the administrative chair of the European Union until the end of the year, adding a further layer to the pressure on the sovereign, has not been able to point to a stable government since June 2007.
This is the first I've heard regarding any political turmoil in Belgium. So, to recap.. The King thinks the country could break up, the previous seven weeks of seven party talks(so politically doomed..) were unsuccessful, the Belgian Parliaments form their government on a day to day basis(!!), and they haven't had a stable government in three years. Oh, yeah, and the whole Administrative Chair of the EU thing.. Will Belgium indeed split up? Will it remain peaceful, or will there be unrest during any "reorganization" of the country? If there is violence, just how violent will the situation become? Having no background whatsoever in Belgian politics, I don't know what the best outcome is, I only hope it is the one undertaken..
Nice. It's always good to have another choice of cancer fighting superfoods, correct?Excerpts: "Black rice - revered in ancient China but overlooked in the West - could be the greatest 'superfoods', scientists revealed today. The cereal is low in sugar but packed with healthy fibre and plant compounds that combat heart disease and cancer, say experts...Anthocyanins provide the dark colours of many fruits and vegetables, such as blueberries and red peppers. They are what makes black rice 'black'.Research suggests that the dark plant antioxidants, which mop up harmful molecules, can help protect arteries and prevent the DNA damage that leads to cancer.Food scientist Dr Zhimin Xu said: 'Just a spoonful of black rice bran contains more health promoting anthocyanin antioxidants than are found in a spoonful of blueberries, but with less sugar, and more fibre and vitamin E antioxidants."
"Mount Sinabung in North Sumatra had been inactive for more than 400 years. It had been classified as inactive by the Center for Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation."While this is rather insignificant in the whole USA or Northern or Western Hemisphere scheme of things, it does procedurally fit into a number of alternative theories regarding Earth changes, manifesting from forces originating from space(several different locations), from within the earth, and from some of humanity's creations. This post should be more developed, but I have very little follow through, at the moment. Apologies.
We've entered into a new, scary era regarding space weapons technology.. Excerpts:But the additional presence of large fuel tanks and a rocket motor allows it to change orbit, as evidenced by the latest sudden change of course.According to the The Register, this is a key component of its surveillance-related capabilities, along with the fact it can land in a much more versatile fashion than other shuttles.Using its "cross-range" wings, it can duck off elsewhere once its entered the Earth's atmosphere rather than follow its oribital track to a pre-specified landing pad.This means the X-37B can get up and down from space in one orbit, as its wings allow it to compensate for the slight turn in the Earth and bend it back to its original launch pad.Theoretically, it could drop a spy satellite on one run, then pick it up on the next without the satellite having ever been detected."
From io9. With pictures! I think, as cool as these pictures may be, I prefer the bleached marble look. Maybe I'm just used to it..
He's alone in the Brazilian Amazon, but for how long? Excerpts:
The most isolated man on the planet will spend tonight inside a leafy palm-thatch hut in the Brazilian Amazon. As always, insects will darn the air. Spider monkeys will patrol the treetops. Wild pigs will root in the undergrowth. And the man will remain a quietly anonymous fixture of the landscape, camouflaged to the point of near invisibility.
That description relies on a few unknowable assumptions, obviously, but they're relatively safe. The man's isolation has been so well-established—and is so mind-bendingly extreme—that portraying him silently enduring another moment of utter solitude is a practical guarantee of reportorial accuracy.
He's an Indian, and Brazilian officials have concluded that he's the last survivor of an unconnected tribe. They first became aware of his existence nearly 15 years ago and for a decade launched numerous expeditions to track him, to ensure his safety, and to try to establish peaceful contact with him. In 2007, with ranching and logging closing in quickly on all sides, government officials declared a 31-square-mile area around him off-limits to trespassing and development.
And:
History offers few examples of people who can rival his solitude in terms of duration and degree. The one that comes closest is the "Lone Woman of San Nicolas"—an Indian woman first spotted by an otter hunter in 1853, completely alone on an island off the coast of California. Catholic priests who sent a boat to fetch her determined that she had been alone for as long as 18 years, the last survivor of her tribe. But the details of her survival were never really fleshed out. She died just weeks after being "rescued."
Certainly other last tribesmen and -women have succumbed unobserved throughout history, the world unaware of their passing. But what makes the man in Brazil unique is not merely the extent of his solitude or the fact that the government is aware of his existence. It's the way they've responded to it.
Advanced societies invariably have subsumed whatever indigenous populations they've encountered, determining those tribes' fates for them. But Brazil is in the middle of an experiment. If peaceful contact is established with the lone Indian, they want it to be his choice. They've dubbed this the "Policy of No Contact." After years of often-tragic attempts to assimilate into modern life the people who still inhabit the few remaining wild places on the planet, the policy is a step in a totally different direction. The case of the lone Indian represents its most challenging test.
And:
He eats mostly wild game, which he either hunts with his bow-and-arrow or traps in spiked-bottom pitfalls. He grows a few crops around his huts, including corn and manioc, and often collects honey from hives that stingless bees construct in the hollows of tree trunks. Some of the markings he makes on trees have suggested to indigenous experts that he maintains a spiritual life, which they've speculated might help him survive the psychological toil of being, to a certain extent, the last man standing in a world of one.
And:
But how long can his isolation last? I get Facebook updates telling me what people half a world away are eating for breakfast. Corporations and governments are pushing deeper and farther than ever in search of bankable resources. How can it be that no one has flushed this man out already? In 2010, can anyone realistically live off the grid?
We all inhabit multiple universes simultaneously, even at this moment. Your connections and experiences are at once uniquely personal, yet can also be viewed through the larger lenses of family, friends, neighborhoods, towns, etc.., combining and overlapping with other universes just by the act of associating with others. Think about a single string in a piece of cloth; over, under, crossing paths to create something.. Larger.
This man, however, has almost no connections. He truly is "a world of one." His Universe is so far removed from ours that neither he, nor we have much in common aside from sharing the same planet. This "uncontacted" man must be on a much higher spiritual path, with a humble existence, flowing with nature and natural patterns, introverted behavior(and the probability of non-verbal stasis) for great spans of time, if not the majority of his life.
Upon further thought(and if you believe in re-incarnation-which I do), "higher spiritual path" should also include the possibility of reward. Communing with nature and having pure, un-interrupted thought for a large portion of your life sounds like a reward to me. The Buddhists believe in the elimination of Desire, in all its forms. A solitary life committed to nature and thought sounds like a majority of Desire has been eliminated and that a higher plateau has been achieved.
BP’s 22-Mile-Long Monster. Excerpts:"What they found was like dipping a drinking cup repeatedly into Loch Ness and coming up with enough body parts to infer the existence of a monster: there is a continuous, unbroken plume of hydrocarbons about 3,300 feet down, stretching southwest from the well for some 22 miles. The scientists suspect it is even longer, but they had to stop sampling when Hurricane Alex blew in. Still, said Camilli, “we’ve shown conclusively not only that a plume exists, but also defined its origin and ... structure. Until now, these have been treated as a theoretical matter”—especially by BP and even the government, which for weeks denied the existence of the plumes. (In late June and again in late July, however, the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration released results of subsurface monitoring by several of its research vessels, finding a “cloud of diffuse oil at depths of 3,300 to 4,600 feet near the wellhead.”)"And:The plume has “persisted for months without substantial biodegradation,” the scientists report in an account of their discovery in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Science. The plume measured 650 feet high and, in certain places, more than 1.2 miles wide.
This catastrophe is beyond huge. If Florida or some other predominantly white, U.S. or U.K. aligned country were to disappear underwater, you KNOW there'd be a stink.. Make no mistake, in a year(so far..) filled with big-ass disasters, this one is Top 3, for sure, behind Haiti, and maybe more significant than the oil spill. Later, these floods may prove to be much deadlier than Haiti. Watch this video too. The intensity of this flood is really scary, as it's not only water coming at you, (the full force of this monster is really bad enough), but debris carried in this torrent(from completely scouring previously neighboring towns) is thick, sharp, dense, heavy, and mostly unseen. Sadly, many more people will die.I'm shocked this isn't everyone's Top Story for weeks to come. Blago? 9/11 mosque vs. The First Amendment? Dina Lohan? Pakistan is drowning and no one cares.
Meet the Fake Steven Slater Who Pretends to Be a Hero for Free Beer at Parties. 2010 is turning really strange. And it's almost two thirds over. And accelerating..
Damning column from David Stockman on how the Republicans "destroyed" the economy. A pretty good analysis of the article here. Who's David Stockman? Only the man called "The Architect" of Reagan's Supply Side Economics Mega-Disaster that's presently collapsing around our ears. No one, really..To sum up: Republicans presided over the four economic deformations that combined to position us exactly where we are today: Dead, but still walking. The man who helped author and drove United States Economic Policy in the direction it has ultimately headed(although he still says while Supply Side's original tax-cuts-in-some-circumstances philosophy was good, .."But when you make it a religion, when you make it a catechism and you say you cut taxes no matter what the circumstance, what the season, what the condition, then I think the whole idea has been perverted."), now says his party has destroyed the economy. Food for thought there, "Fiscal Conservatives." THE economic advisor to your HERO says the current Republicans are wrong about Economics. Wrong. Wrong. Wroooooooong.Haven't seen too much of this story in that "Liberal Media," have you?
Asia Flooding Is Now Massive Humanitarian Crisis. Floods Have Affected Over 13M People, More Than 2004 Tsunami, 2005 Kashmir Quake and 2010 Haiti Quake Combined. Pictures of Pakistan here.Pictures of China here.But, as always, there's nothing wrong with the weather..
Posts
