Potential neurotoxin in our food

Wired Science published an article a couple of days ago on PBDE, a neurotoxin that also found its way into found in our food.
PBDE (PolyBrominated Diphenyl Ethers) are compounds that are used as flame retardants and therefore can be found in a wide array of products, including building materials, electronics, furnishings, motor vehicles, airplanes, plastics, [...]

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Another geo-engineering gimmick: dumping lime into oceans

The following Guardian article talks about another one of those half-cocked geo-engineering fixes: liming the world’s oceans. The guy who promotes the idea is a former management consultant, which immediately raises the question: what makes him qualified to design climate change solutions?
Apart from that minor detail, this band aid, like all the other ones, makes [...]

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Programmed for the Pleistocene Age, our brains don’t grasp the dangers of climate change

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Our political system sometimes produces such skewed results that it’s difficult not to blame bloviating politicians. But maybe the deeper problem lies in our brains.
Evidence is accumulating that the human brain systematically misjudges certain kinds of risks. In effect, evolution has programmed us to be alert for snakes [...]

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On psychotherapy and the potential and limits of personal power

I don’t wanna raise the spectre of NLP here, but there could definitely be some poignancy in this hilarious “MadTV Bob Newhart/Mo Collins STOP IT” skit in regards to the relationship between clients and therapists: both sides for their own reasons very often depend on prolonging the journey. The latter for [...]

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Gaia or Medea: is Earth driven by maintaining life or fostering self-destruction?

(Image: Sarah Howell)
I don’t think it’s an either/or question but one of difficult to predict cycles with uncertain outcomes. Scientists nevertheless try to come up with simplistic explanation for highly complex systems evolutions; the Gaia hypothesis is one of those, and the New Scientists’ article below uses the Medea metaphor to coin what it considers [...]

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Bacteria produce network via nanowires

Microbes May Be More Networked Than You Are
Wired Science
By Yuri Gorby
When we think of networks, we think of humans and the cables we’ve run around the world to connect our species. Figuring out how to move electrons has transformed human society, but we are not the only species on earth that lives in a wired [...]

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A cosmological timeline

Visualisation of the Big Bang
I had this piece sitting on my ‘to-publish’ list for a couple of weeks now. It was created by a friend of mine, to be written into a 30m long brass spiral, which is the main feature of the floor for a ritual space she has created at her and her [...]

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Musical ability and social bonding genetically linked

It sounds warm, fuzzy and kind of uplifting: those with musical talents also have a strong desire for social bonds. The following New Scientist article points to two variants of a gene correlating with musical ability, a gene that also is linked to bonding, love and altruism. It’s important though to note the word “variants”; [...]

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US Association of Physicians calls for Moratorium on GMO Foods

The American Academy of Environmental Medicine (AAEM) has just issued a call for an immediate moratorium on Genetically Manipulated (GMO) Foods.
By F. William Engdahl
URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13701
Reposted from Global Research, May 22, 2009

In a just-released position paper on GMO foods, the AAEM states that ‘GM foods pose [...]

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Perfectionism shortens life

It’s not really surprising given the increase in stress levels: perfectionism and neuroticism are deemed to shorten people’s life span according to this report on a Canadian study (reposted from Miller-McCune):
Perfectionism, as a way of life, tends to be self-defeating. New research suggests it may also be deadly.
That’s the conclusion of a Canadian study of [...]

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Use your learning style to get more productive

It reminds me of the days of superlearning and learning to learn: Understanding how you process information to help you get organized (part 1+2) on the Unclutterer blog. It’s all about working out what your information processing modality is (step 0ne) and then applying some common sense helpers accordingly to make you use information more [...]

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Star Crust is ten billion times stronger than steel

Mark Thoma tweeted on an interesting article in National Geographic. New researching done by Indiana University involving computer modelling
suggests that the outer crusts of so-called neutron stars are the strongest known material in the universe.
To determine the breaking point of a neutron star’s crust, the team modeled magnetic field stresses and crust deformation for a [...]

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European early ancestor can serve as a model for racial integration

35,000-year-old skull fragments found in Romania are made flesh by scientists
By Steve Connor, Science Editor, The Independent
The face of the first anatomically-modern human to live in Europe has been revealed. It belonged to a man – or woman – who inhabited the ancient forests of the Carpathian Mountains in [...]

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Vivisection: European parliament confirms torturing animals is legal

It is shocking to read how much influence the animal testing industry has on law makers when it comes to sustaining the barbaric practices in research labs using animals. Vivisection is animal torture, and it is cruel and unnecessary, informed purely by greed and a perverted desire to control. The scientists involved in using animals [...]

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Post reflection how our press reported Mexico’s handling of the ’swine flu’ virus

Press in general likes to sensationalise, and in addition our Western press has bias tilted towards dormant racism. It often pops up its sleepy head when it comes to reporting on the behaviour of so-called developing countries (so-called because there’s not much to be proud of when using ‘our’ development model as a guiding principle). [...]

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Rats outperform humans in interpreting data

An interesting post in the context of data mining. William Easterly’s Maybe we should put rats in charge of foreign aid research posting on his Aid Watch blog does not only look at how much better rats do at correctly predicting random occurrences; he also reflects on the research practice of data mining. Data mining [...]

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Most Americans breathe polluted air

The following article was published by AboutMyPlanet:
Most Americans Breath Unhealthy Air
The American Lung Association’s 2009 State of the Air report was recently released and sheds light on the quality of air Americans are breathing on a daily basis. The report ranks pollution levels in U.S. cities and counties using levels reported between 2005 and 2007. [...]

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Latest study allays fears of thawing permafrost releasing large amounts of methane into the atmosphere

ScienceDaily reports that an expansion of wetlands and not a large-scale melting of frozen methane deposits is the likely cause of a spike in atmospheric methane gas that took place some 11,600 years ago. An international research team led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego determined that the amount of carbon-14 isotopes [...]

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What is cybernetics?

A friend of mine asked me whether I could tell her a bit about cybernetics, indicating expectations about my level knowledge that weren’t warranted at all: I knew nothing about the subject. I guess she assumed that me having some minor computer literacy automatically qualified me to enlighten her about cybernetics – after all, that [...]

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Geoengineering: Obama administration’s global dimming plans are dangeorus

The previous post looked at how different US government agencies, especially the DOE, are actively researching options of geo-engineering the planet to mitigate the effects of global warming. While these efforts took shape already under the Bush administration, Obama looks like he will continue with yet another unwholesome policy of his predecessor.
John Holdren, the new [...]

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