Did you understand what you read?

85% fat free
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15% fat
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We eat it or we do not
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If using our logical senses and our rules of good diet we do not eat it because it is not good for us period
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If on the other hand we use our emotional side we eat it because it is only 15% fat and we want it and we find excuses, justifications
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We use nuances to make our decision
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Nuances that are often based on illusions
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So let us look at what goes on in our brains
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With the rule determined part of our brains
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Rule determined behaviour though does not require nuances
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Either you kill your neighbor or you do not
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Intermediate sentiments are either useless or downright dangerous
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Our emotions jolt us into action because it does not understand or accept nuances
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For a long time or even today most of us think that we are endowed with a beautiful machine for thinking and understanding things
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The problem with thinking is that it cause you to develop illusions
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And thinking may be a waste of energy
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Who needs it?
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You do not have everything you know in your mind at all times so you retrieve what you need in a piecemeal fashion when you need it
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Which puts these retrieved chunks in their local context
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This means that you have an arbitrary reference point forgetting that you are only looking at the differences from that particular perspective of the local context not the absolutes
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This can help us understand our behaviour
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Like eating that cake

Active denial system or ADS

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The Active Denial System or ADS, recently deployed for the first time in Afghanistan is shwon above 
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'It was as if some invisible jet impinged upon them… I saw them staggering and falling, and their supporters turning to run.”
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Since the first appearance of the “heat-ray” in H G Wells’s The War of the Worlds, ray guns have been a staple feature of science fiction
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The classic sign of overwhelming technological superiority.
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But they are no longer fiction.
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Last month, Lt Col John Dorrian admitted that the US military’s brand-new Active Denial System (ADS) had been shipped to Afghanistan
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The first time it has been present in an active theatre of war.
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According to the top brass, it is a “non-lethal, directed-energy, counter-personnel weapon”.
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Among the troops, however, its favoured description is rather shorter: “the pain ray”.
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Compared with most military vehicles, the device looks relatively harmless – like one of the broadcasting trucks you see outside big sporting events
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An anonymous-looking military transport with what appears to be a square satellite dish mounted on top.
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But it contains an extraordinary new weapon, capable of causing immense discomfort from half a mile away without – its makers claim – doing any lasting damage.
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The ADS works by projecting a focused beam of 3.2mm wave electromagnetic radiation at a human target.
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This heats the water and fat molecules on the skin, causing their temperature to rise by up to 50C.
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Philip Sherwell, a Sunday Telegraph reporter who tried out the ADS in 2007, describes it as “unbearably uncomfortable, like opening a roasting hot oven door”.
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The immediate instinct is to escape the beam and seek cover – at which point the effect subsides.
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In some quarters, the ADS has been hailed as the future of crowd control.
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Kelley Hughes, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), which oversaw its development, says that “the ADS provides our troops with our most advanced, non-lethal escalation-of-force option.
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It will support a full spectrum of operations ranging from non-lethal methods of crowd and mob dispersal, checkpoint security, area denial and clarification of intent.
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Although its operational parameters are classified, the JNLWD says that the ADS has a range of up to 500m,
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10 times greater than current non-lethal weapons such as rubber bullets.
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The technology has been in development for two decades, and has cost well in excess of $60 million.
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Each device costs $5 million, and safety testing has been ongoing for 12 years.
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Mindful of the terrible publicity Tasers and other crowd-suppression techniques have received, the JNLWD has been at pains to stress its emphasis on testing.
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There have been more than 11,000 exposures, on over 700 volunteers
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There have been six independent reviews.
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It has completed formal legal and treaty compliance laws.
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There is an 80-hour training course for using it.
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Despite this, the journey to the battlefield has been far from smooth.
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In 2007, with the situation in Iraq at its most volatile since the invasion, US forces requested the presence of the ADS.
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It was never sent.
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Indeed, The Daily Telegraph has learnt that it has now been recalled from Afghanistan, without being fired in anger.
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A spokesman said that “no decision had been made” as to its future deployment
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Even though it seems unlikely that the Pentagon would have shipped a new weapon to an active war zone if it didn’t mean to use it at some point.
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What are the problems?
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Well, Dr Jürgen Altmann, an expert in non-lethal weapons from the University of Dortmund, has observed that although the Army’s test subjects were permitted 15-second intervals between exposure, this might not be the case in real life.
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The ADS,provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree.
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If incurred over more than 20 per cent of the body, these are potentially life-threatening, and require intensive care in a specialised unit.
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Without a technical device that reliably prevents re-triggering on the same subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death.
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Other problems come from the limitations of the device itself.
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Rain, snow and fog hamper its effectiveness
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And it can be blocked by highly reflective materials such as aluminium foil.
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In many situations – particularly in busy crowds – working out the right range will be complicated
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And there is also the possibility of targets finding themselves unable to move out of the path of the beam.
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Hughes offers an uncertain defence:
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The target includes sensors to see the whole beam path.
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An operator would immediately see if a person was unable to move out of the way.
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Yet even if the ADS falls short, the ongoing pressure to keep the civilian body count to a minimum has made the development of similar weapons a top priority for Western forces.
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The ADS is only one of a raft of new non-lethal measures the US has been developing, under varying levels of secrecy
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Others rely on bright lights and loud noises to blind or disorientate
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Or use radio waves to disrupt car engines.
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It is difficult to draw conclusions until such weapons are used in combat
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Especially given the psychological effect they would have on those already suspicious of Western forces.
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But people who have seen the ADS in use seem to be reservedly enthusiastic.
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It’s extremely intimidating, says Sherwell.
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It makes no sound, and you can’t see anything.
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But if it’s used according to correct procedures, and if it doesn’t do lasting harm, and if there are no burns or blisters – if all those ifs are correct, then it seems a great idea to me.
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Ed Cumming - Daily Telegraph

So many 'ifs' and we all know that once this gets out some will be killed in short order

Then we have the usual investigation which concludes operator error

Quiet silence as the operator is moved then nothing until the next time

How many more ways does man need to find to maim and kill his fellow man?

How many more billions will be spent?

When can we learn that the money spent globally on such weapons is not what humanity needs despite what the arms salesmen are undoubtedly saying  

One day, one day we might have the courage to say enough

Enough on spending outrageous sums of money on finding ever more ways of killing and maiming people

Until then nasty regimes everywhere will soon have yet another way to kill and maim

Guess where?

A bridge in Moscow is where

On a cold and clear day

Nothing odd about that

Just a day for walking and keeping warm

It does not really matter where we are

What does matter is where our heads are

We can be anywhere

And if we are not happy with ourselves then the beach does nothing much to help

Nor the pretty garden

But then again images affect our mood

So if we know how to find anywhere we happen to be beautiful then we win

We find a smile a pleasure for ourselves

And our smile or pleasure can then go to others

So work on seeing beauty

It is contagious

Even where people do not smile much

Like on a bridge in Moscow on a cold day

Hidden Stonehenge 'sister'

Found after 4,000 years: the lost wooden 'sister' of Stonehenge
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Stonehenge had a previously unknown wooden "twin" just 900m to its north-west, according to remarkable new archaeological investigations.
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Using the ground-penetrating equivalent of an X-ray, scientists have discovered what appears to have been a circle of massive timber obelisks, constructed more than 4,200 years ago.
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The newly discovered "henge" would have been visible from Stonehenge itself – and seems to have been part of a wider prehistoric ritual and religious landscape.
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Roughly 25m in diameter, it was almost the same size as the central part (the circle of standing stones) at Stonehenge itself.
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The newly discovered monument – almost certainly some sort of Neolithic temple – is thought to have consisted of 24 wooden obelisks, each around 75cm in diameter and therefore potentially up to 8m high.
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The circle of obelisks was enclosed by an inner ditch and probable outer bank.
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Of potential significance is the fact that the newly found henge "mirrors" a similar monument (this time long known to archaeologists) on the other side of Stonehenge – 1,300m south-east of the famous monument.
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Like the newly discovered site, it is in direct line of sight of Stonehenge and had two entrances.
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All three monuments would have been roughly aligned.
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The discovery of the site north-west of the stone circle suggests that the Stonehenge landscape was even more complex than people have thought – and archaeologists are now keen to find further unknown elements of it.
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The archaeologists – from Birmingham, Bradford, St Andrews and Vienna Universities – are trying to map the unknown aspects of the Stonehenge landscape without digging a single hole.
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Instead of conventional excavations, they are using X-ray-style systems which look beneath the ground surface.
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The techniques – including magnetometry, ground-penetrating radar, electrical imaging and resistivity – are likely to yield huge amounts of previously unknown information about what the Stonehenge landscape looked like 40 to 50 centuries ago.
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Over the next four years the survey, led by Professor Vince Gaffney of Birmingham University's Institute of Archaeology and Antiquity, is likely to produce hundreds of millions of pieces of information from 14 sq km of countryside which will then be collated and analysed to produce a detailed map.
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Some 90 per cent of the Stonehenge landscape is still terra incognita.
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Our survey will hopefully begin to remedy our current lack of knowledge," explained Professor Gaffney.
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The discovery will significantly change the way we think about the landscape around Stonehenge."
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The newly discovered prehistoric temple was found using the subsurface archaeological detection system known as magnetometry, which measures the differences in interaction with the Earth's magnetic field produced by different layers or deposits of earth or rock.
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Detecting variations in the strength of the magnetic field revealed the existence of the enclosure ditches and the pits believed to have held the timber obelisks at the newly discovered henge.
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David Keys - Independent

In India today

Recently a court gave it's ruling on punishment for those responsible for the terrible disaster at Phopal in December 1984, yes that is 26 years ago, Indian justice moves slowly and seems to favour some over others.

Nothing to say others have said what they think about the justice or injustice of that verdict and so I will not add more here

Chemical and Agricultural multinationals are since that time playing an increasing role in Indian agriculture

So here is a comment about the mutation of Indian agriculture from using few pesticides at the time of Phobal to the present time where global multinationals are introducing ever more products

For example the old pesticide industry is mutating into the biotechnology and genetic engineering industry.

While genetic engineering is being promoted as an alternative to pesticides, Bt cotton was introduced to end pesticide use.

But Bt cotton has failed to control the boll-worm and has instead created major new pests, leading to an increase in pesticide use.
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The high costs of genetically-modified (GM) seeds and pesticides are pushing farmers into debt, and indebted farmers are committing suicide.

If one adds the 200,000 farmer suicides in India to the 25,000 killed in Bhopal, we are witnessing a massive corporate genocide - the killing of people for super profits.

To maintain these super profits, lies are told about how, without pesticides and genetically-modified organisms (GMOs), there will be no food.

In fact, the conclusions of International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, undertaken by the United Nations

Shows that ecologically organic agriculture produces more food and better food at lower cost than either chemical agriculture or GMOs.

This is also true of course elsewhere on the planet, however in India where most farmers are not wealthy the coercion to buy GMO's must rank as cynical at best and genocide at worst

These comments are about India and yet all of us who consume genetically modified anything have no idea what this is doing to our personal systems

Unfortunately we will probably only find out when it is already too late to do anything about it

The US and UK

Lead the way in locking up their citizens

Over the years politicians have found cheap votes by being tough on crime

Ever more strident demands for tougher sentences have created a ridiculous situation where politicians, prosecutors, lawyers and prison unions prosper at the expense of society

Society does not benefit when it costs $50,000 to keep one prisoner for one year in a Californian prison 

It does not have to be this way.

In the Netherlands, where the use of non-custodial sentences has grown, the prison population and the crime rate have both been falling

Britain’s new government is proposing to replace jail for lesser offenders with community work.

This without looking at drug laws which are responsible for so many incarcerations in both the UK and US 

Both countries prefer to ignore the experience of others who have decriminalised their drug laws

There are though some parts of America that are bucking the national trend.

New York cut its incarceration rate by 15% between 1997 and 2007

This while reducing violent crime by 40% over the same period.

California is considering changing it's drug laws

This is welcome, but deeper reforms are required.
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America needs fewer and clearer laws

So that citizens do not need a law degree to stay out of jail.

Acts that can be regulated should not be criminalised.

Prosecutors’ powers should be clipped

Most white-collar suspects are not Al Capone, and should not be treated as if they were.

Mandatory minimum sentencing laws should be repealed

Alternatively they should be replaced with guidelines.

The most dangerous criminals must be locked up

But states could try harder to reintegrate the softer cases into society

By encouraging them to study or work

And by ending the pointlessly vindictive gesture of not letting them vote.
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It seems odd that a country that rejoices in limiting the power of the state should give so many draconian powers to its government

Yet for the past 40 years American lawmakers have generally regarded selling to voters the idea of locking up fewer people as political suicide.

An era of budgetary constraint, however, is as good a time as any to try.

Sooner or later American voters will realise that their incarceration policies are unjust and inefficient

Politicians who point that out to them now may, in the end, get some credit.

In the UK government has not yet got around to addressing the ills so manifest in society it being easier to focus on knives or drugs or binge drinking rather than the failure of society to educate and create a just society

Locking people up might seem a cheap and easy way to get votes, however one day it could  prove to be anything but and that day is closer than some politicians might think

Not very easy

To get through those first two years of your child's life

Not easy on the parents that is

Modern parents typically living on their own with their children have to make it on their own

Traditionally there would have been grandparents and other family members around to help

Today not so often

And the outcome of this is stress and more stress

Why?

Because most parents get less than four hours uninterrupted rest a night because of crying offspring.
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They suffer a huge sleep debt

Leading to mood swings

Depression

Arguments

And even relationship break-ups.
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Most adults need at least five hours of uninterrupted sleep every 24 hours to function properly

Many need as much as eight hours.
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But almost two thirds of parents with babies and under-twos get just three-and three-quarters hours, according to recent studies 
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That's just 75% of the minimum recommended length of uninterrupted sleep.
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And some very unlucky parents - 12% of those surveyed - get less than two-and-a-half hours of uninterrupted sleep per night.
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Over the course of two years, and even accounting for regular power-naps, that means the majority of mothers and fathers miss out on six months sleep.
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Add to this the other stresses associated with bringing up very young children and you have a potential for long term damage to the relationship
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More often the experience leads to long term changes in the relationship
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Changes that fix perceptions of each other in a new light

A light that is often less favourable than the one you had before your baby arrived

What to do?

Time and honesty

Time to recover

Honesty to discuss and review behaviour and habits that are unacceptable

Yes most young parents learn a lot more about each other through the arrival of a child than they knew before

Good and bad

The more open they are with each other the better the relationships chances for the future

Provided of course that they are prepared to compromise

Compromise being a central part of any successful relationship

Will you?

Can you?

Without compromise and and adjustment those weakness and faults seen during those early parenting months can fester and lead to greater problems later on

Focus on the good things seen

Make appreciation of the other known to your partner

Meanness

Life at the bottom is nasty, brutish and short.
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For this reason, heartless folk might assume that people in the lower social classes will be more self-interested and less inclined to consider the welfare of others than upper-class individuals, who can afford a certain noblesse oblige.
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A recent study, however, challenges this idea.
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Experiments by Paul Piff and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, reported this week in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, suggest precisely the opposite.
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It is the poor, not the rich, who are inclined to charity.
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Give us a break please!
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Do we really, any of us, doubt that the rich tend to be mean?
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In our work we see all kinds of people from mega rich to amazingly poor
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In India working in villages we would often be given a banana or a bowl of rice
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Amazing generosity given that the person doing the giving had nothing
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Nothing, no home, house, money, food nothing
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While in Marbella we were given a handful of low denomination bank notes and a half empty bottle of whiskey (we do not drink) after working for ten days on the seriously impaired son of the family
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A family of several multi millionaires no less
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Extreme examples?
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Not really
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Over and over we have found the rich to be mean and calculating
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The poor spontaneous and generous
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We do not ask for anything so are always happy to receive whatever we are given
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Noticing meanness is sometimes difficult to avoid when often we are begged for help by those with so much, who then respond with so little
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Want to know something?
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One of the reasons these rich people need help is because of their meanness
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Literally when a human is mean
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Selfish and suspicious, paranoid even
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Then their health must suffer
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Ironic how many wealthy people have to spend so much of their money on health care in later life!
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Trying to stave off cancer, heart attacks and other assorted illnesses
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A few would listen and begin to understand how things really work
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To do the simple things we would suggest
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Guess what, their health would improve
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A few might show gratitude
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The majority would put their improvement down to anything but our intervention
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Why?
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Because the last thing they want to remember is that we were privy to their innermost secrets
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That we saw and know what they had done or not done in their lives to induce the onset of whatever it was that ailed them
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Sad people
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Guess what?
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While their health improved temporarily it must then sooner or later deteriorate again
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Why?
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Because they did not truly accept responsibility for their own karma or health
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Nature will not be denied
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Karma cannot be cheated or avoided
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Sad people
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So yes Dr Piff and colleagues your findings are indeed the way it is

The rich tend to be meaner than the poor

However why not take your research another step forward and research how frightened the rich and poor are

Yes look at the level of fear in both groups

You might be in for another surprise

It all unfolds

What does?

Life

It has a funny way of doing so if you let it

So often we are trying to force things to go as we want them to, trying to make things happen

Sometimes this is fine and the correct way to behave

Other times though a little patience and nature shows us a better way

Difficulty is to know which is which for many people

So what to do?

Learn what distinguishes one from the other that's what

What is it that distinguishes a time to force things and a time to let them unfold?

Context is one

Feeling is another

Perspective

History

Precedent

Timing

Scale even

A whole range of things that make up the picture

Things we do automatically when considering our options

Without thinking we do many of them

Some we need to think about

Others we need to get advice and more input on

And often we try to reduce risk

To reduce exposure or imagined dangers

And we could go on and on however that would be to miss the point we want to make

And that is?

If your input is poor then there is a high chance that the outcome will not be as you want

If your judgement is skewed by your predjudices then the outcome will be skewed by them as well
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If your perceptions are skewed as well then double trouble

The clearer your knowledge of yourself the better you are likely to make better decisions

The more accurate your perceptions the better your decisions
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Then we come to letting it unfold

If we are all full of fear then we feel we must do something

If on the other hand we are chilled about life and whatever comes our way then letting things unfold is easier

Conversely being stressed does not allow us to wait, to watch
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Stress drives us, makes us blind to options
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Causes us to take actions that are premature, rushed

Way out?

Learn all you can about situations

Gather inputs from everywhere

Talk once you have information to those who can give you valuable objective inputs

Make decisions only where they are clearly necessary

Otherwise let events unfold

Let things show you the way forward

Fructose

Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same.
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Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.
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They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.
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"These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation," Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote.
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"They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth."
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Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods.
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Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.
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Too much sugar of any kind not only adds pounds, but is also a key culprit in diabetes, heart disease and stroke, according to the American Heart Association.
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Several states, including New York and California, have weighed a tax on sweetened soft drinks to defray the cost of treating obesity-related diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
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The American Beverage Association, whose members include Coca-Cola and Kraft Foods have strongly, and successfully, opposed efforts to tax soda. [ID:nN12233126]
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The industry has also argued that sugar is sugar.
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Heaney said his team found otherwise.
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They grew pancreatic cancer cells in lab dishes and fed them both glucose and fructose.
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Tumor cells thrive on sugar but they used the fructose to proliferate.
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Importantly, fructose and glucose metabolism are quite different
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I think this paper has a lot of public health implications.
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Hopefully, at the federal level there will be some effort to step back on the amount of high fructose corn syrup in our diets," Heaney said in a statement.
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Now the team hopes to develop a drug that might stop tumor cells from making use of fructose.
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U.S. consumption of high fructose corn syrup went up 1,000 percent between 1970 and 1990, researchers reported in 2004 in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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Reuters US Online Report Health News

Too little sleep

A lie-in at the weekend does not counter ill-effects of lack of sleep during the week, a study suggests.
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In tests on 159 adults, US researchers found that a 10-hour "recovery" snooze was not sufficient to make up for a few nights of four hours of sleep.
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Participants still scored poorly in measures of attention span and reaction times, the journal Sleep reported.
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It means several nights of extra sleep may be needed for those who have been burning the candle at both ends.
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Individuals in the laboratory study had two nights of 10 hours in bed.
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The bottom line is that adequate recovery sleep duration is important for coping with the effects of chronic sleep restriction on the brain
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They were then restricted to sleeping between 4am and 8am for five nights in a row.
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After that they were allowed a recovery sleep of differing lengths.
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Starting first thing in the morning on each day they completed a series of tests every two hours.
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A small group of 17 patients were allowed 10 hours' sleep every night so their functioning could be compared with those who were sleep-deprived.
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A night of recovery sleep did help improve test scores and the more sleep people had the better they did.
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But even in those who had 10 hours of sleep, reaction times, lapses of attention and levels of fatigue did not return to normal.
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Study leader Dr David Dinges, a sleep expert at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, said that with severe sleep restriction, a long night's rest was not enough to catch up.
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Lifestyles that involve chronic sleep restriction during the work week and during days off work may result in continuing build-up of sleep pressure and in an increased likelihood of loss of alertness and increased errors
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The bottom line is that adequate recovery sleep duration is important for coping with the effects of chronic sleep restriction on the brain.
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In previous research, Dr Dinges has found that sleeping six hours a night or fewer for two weeks has the same negative effects as two nights of total sleep deprivation.
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Dr Chris Idzikowski, director of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre, said the study counters the currently held view that there is "tremendous recovery" in just one night's sleep.
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What the research shows is that this is not entirely accurate, it depends on precisely how much sleep loss has accumulated.
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It implies that if you haven't slept enough during the week, then to recover properly you need at least two night's sleep to recover.
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Dr David Dinges

Cats vs Dogs

http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/cats-vs-dogs/

Rivers in the sea

Above is a 3-D radar image, using false colour, of the undersea river channel where it enters the Black Sea from the Bosphorus Strait.
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University of Leeds Researchers working in the Black Sea have found currents of water 350 times greater than the River Thames flowing along the sea bed, carving out channels much like a river on the land.
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The undersea river, which is up to 115ft deep in places, even has rapids and waterfalls much like its terrestrial equivalents.
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If found on land, scientists estimate it would be the world's sixth largest river in terms of the amount of water flowing through it.
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The discovery could help explain how life manages to survive in the deep ocean far out to sea away from the nutrient rich waters that are found close to land, as the rivers carry sediment and nutrients with them.
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The scientists, based at the University of Leeds, used a robotic submarine to study for the first time a deep channel that had been found on the sea bed.
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They found a river of highly salty water flowing along the deep channel at the bottom of the Black Sea, creating river banks and flood plains much like a river found on land.
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Dr Dan Parsons, from the university's school of earth and environment, said: The water in the channels is denser than the surrounding seawater because it has higher salinity and is carrying so much sediment.
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It flows down the sea shelf and out into the abyssal plain much like a river on land.
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The abyssal plains of our oceans are like the deserts of the marine world, but these channels can deliver nutrients and ingredients needed for life out over these deserts.
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This means they could be vitally important, like arteries providing life to the deep ocean.
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The key difference we found from terrestrial rivers was that as the flow goes round the bend, the water spirals in the opposite way to rivers on land.
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The undersea river discovered by Dr Parsons and his colleagues, which is yet to be named, stems from salty water spilling through the Bosphorus Strait from the Mediterranean into the Black Sea, where the water has a lower salt content.
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This causes the dense water from the Mediterranean to flow like a river along the sea bed, carving a channel with banks around 115 feet deep and 0.6 of a mile wide.
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It is the only active undersea river to have been found so far.
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Scientists have long suspected they can form, after sonar scans of the sea bed have revealed meandering channels in many of the world's oceans, although none have been found before to be have currents of water flowing through them.
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Among the largest of these channels is off the coast of Brazil where the Amazon enters the Atlantic Ocean.
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Most are believed to have formed when sea levels were much lower and the channels have been found to be up to 2,500 miles long and be several miles wide.
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The channel in the Black Sea, although much smaller, is the only one to be found still flowing and proves that these mysterious channels are formed by underwater rivers.
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Unlike ocean trenches, which are geological formations that form at the deepest parts of the ocean due to movements of the tectonic plates, the undersea river channels meander like rivers on land and form banks in the same way by eroding the silt from the bottom of the channel and building it up at the edges.
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Dr Parsons found that the Black Sea river is flowing at around four miles per hour with 22,000 cubic metres of water passing through the channel every second
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350 times greater than the flow of the Thames and 10 times greater than Europe's biggest river, the Rhine.
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The Black Sea river flows only for around 37 miles until it reaches the edge of the sea shelf and dissipates into the deep sea.
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Dr Parsons said data from the research will also be important for oil companies looking to drill in areas where these rivers exist.
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This is the first time we have been able to show that there is a flow through a natural channel system and take direct measurements of what the flow is like and how that is linked to the shape and morphology of the channel.
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Richard Gray

Escalating bullshit

Modest two bedroom apartment

Nice two bedroom apartment

Excellent two bedroom apartment

Superb two bedroom apartment

Stunning two bedroom apartment

From real estate to cars to anything else in our modern world

The hype has steadily escalated over the years

Is still escalating

Was a time when things meant what they said

Hype reigns supreme today

When a tatty dirty little apartment gets labelled as 'stunning', when the only stunning thing about it is the balls of the real estate agency to describe it that way we know we are in trouble

We are in trouble because we can have no way of knowing the truth

The truth of what is being said or described gets totally lost in a welter of hype which is almost or sometimes is disinformation

And the hype is still growing

We do what we can though

We try to see behind the hype to get a glimpse of reality

Not easy when it is your government lying

When it is your well known newspapers

Your favourite TV channels

Not easy but necessary because many things in life are too important to be left to governments or the media

We all need to be cognisant of what is really going down as best we can

9/11 in New York do you believe what you were told?

And July 7/2005 in London?

And is the Afghan government really worth supporting?

We do need to feel for the truth of things

So beware the escalating bullshit............

Now you know

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Researchers found women who regularly wore high heels for extended periods suffered more aches because their muscles were overstretched and could not relax.
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They found that wearing a pair of shoes shortened fibres in their calve muscles as the heel of the foot was elevated.
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The scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University then discovered the Achilles' tendon became thicker and stiffer meaning it was harder to stretch the feet out to walk.
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They said it could explain why women could wear high heels for hours but experience feet aches after removing them.
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In their study, published in the Journal of Experimental Biology, the team used volunteers aged between 20 and 50 who had regularly worn 5cm high heels for two years or more.
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They tested a final group of 11 who felt uncomfortable walking without their heels and recruited a second group of women who did not wear high heels.
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Using ultrasound to measure the length of muscle fibres in the women's calf muscles, they found high heel wearers were 13 per cent shorter than those who wore flat shoes.
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This confirmed the hypothesis that when you place the muscle in a shorter position, the fibres become shorter, said Prof Marco Narici, who led the study.
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It was found that the Achilles' tendon was the same length in the two groups, but in women who wore high heels it was much thicker and stiffer, making it harder for them to stretch their feet out when they were on the flat.
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But this problem can be overcome by doing simple stretching exercises throughout the day.
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If the wearer stands on tip toes and lowers their heels up and down again it will stretch out the tendons making it easier to walk without heels,.
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If this is done about 20 times a day it should be sufficient to prevent this happening.
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Andrew Hough - Telegraph
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This of course is ignoring the architecture of the shoe being worn............
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Some of which defy logic in terms of their shape and form
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Never mind women will seemingly endure great discomfort to achieve a certain look

Be brave

Sometimes bravery is required of us

Not just by soldiers fighting in a war

The need for bravery is something most of us will confront at some point in our lives

How we face it can determine the rest of our lives

If we fall short then we will have to live with this knowledge for the rest of our lives

And this can cripple us

The knowledge that we ran away

We ducked it

We failed to face it

Others might not know but you do

If you failed and let yourself and others down then face this fact

Acknowledge this

You cannot undo what you did

You cannot change that fact

But you can change the rest of your life

Deciding to let it go

Decide to acknowledge to the others involved

No more excuses

Admit your failure

Make amends if this is possible

Decide to test your self again

Face your fear

Overcome it

Where you need help find it

Move to confront your fear and failure

Doing this will save you from a life of frustration and guilt

This is by far the more desirable course of action

Hiding might seem attractive at the time however as life goes on it scars you

And no you cannot run away from yourself

You know what you did or didn't do

Be brave now sort it

The difference

Between getting by and being fulfilled is in one word

Altruism

Yes those who derive most from life are those who understand this simple idea

Serving others

Putting the interests of others before self

In a word altruism

Or not me but we

This is the one thing that separates the frustrated from the fulfilled

For many this might seem to be counter intuitive

Like the ski instructor who tells you to lean out from the mountain

Yet several things in life are counter intuitive

And when we find them we go 'of course'

Often wishing that someone had told us earlier

Earlier, so that we would not have wasted so much time believing rubbish

Rubbish as we now understand our previous understanding to have been

Yet so many are sold on the idea of the self, my self being the beginning, middle and end of life

As they say why should I help others when I have so many needs myself?

This orientation drives their lives

Self, me, my needs, my self

And that is indeed the point, the reason

Those who focus on themselves and their own needs are more and more likely to wind up frustrated and unhappy

Why?

Because total self interest has a price, a very high price

It turns everything into an analysis of gain or loss

Gain or loss to oneself

Mentally evaluating everything experienced as a win lose propostion

This creates an inability to feel or care for others

Because there is only me and what this did for me

Did I win or lose?

Did you get more than me?

Did I win?

The I being governed by mind

No real feelings just judgement

The mind being that instrument of judgement

Over the years you can experience nothing else

Only me and my needs

All experienced through mind

This creates a great big separation

You out there and me in here

The only reality is me

You are either supporting me in what I want and need or you are opposing me in what I want or need

Seen this way no trust or love can evolve because everything is experienced as a gain or loss to myself

Heart is not invovled because heart is we
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Heart is giving, sharing, caring
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For the selfish one nothing else is felt just gain or loss to myself
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And naturally I want more for me because this is the only way I know life
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My gain or loss
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Experienced this way life is reduced to a simple numbingly dumb series of repetitions
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Endless preoccupation with the limited self of mind
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An inward downward spiral if you will
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And this spiral by the time you are sixty or so is usually irreversible
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Too late to change
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And yet still another twenty years or so to go
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A private hell for many
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Desperately seeking amusements to avoid the hell of being alone
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Being alone with this selfish creature devoid of feeling for anything or anyone other than self
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This creature that is your own creation
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Just another sad old man dying of cancer and............................as Pink Floyd once sang
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For the others who choose another path where the feelings and the well being of others is paramount
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Life is very different
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Putting others interests and needs before our own powerfully broadens the experience of life
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It broadens the experience of life taking it beyond mind into the realm of love
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Doing things for others not for reward or gain
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Doing them because it just feels right
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Just feels like the right thing to do
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Wanting to bring pleasure to another
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Wanting to support and bring growth in another
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Wanting to help
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Care and compassion are natural components of this emerging human
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Many women experience this through having children
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It is difficult, although not impossible, to be selfish when bring up children
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No
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Lets make a distinction women who truly love their children do not put their own interests first
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For them doing what is best for their children is natural
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Those women for whom a child is an accessory
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A toy, a plaything they do not experience an expansion of love and life in the same way as those who put their children interests above their own
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For those men and women for whom the needs of others are as or more important than their own life broadens
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Expands into new dimensions of satisfaction and fulfillment
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So we come back to that one word altruism
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For this is what separates us
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Those who find those last twenty years fulfilling and those who experience the fear and pain of loneliness
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Just for the record hell is not out there somewhere
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It is here and now
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In this life here on Earth
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Hell is what you create through your own choices
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Choices that are yours even as you read this
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A spiral down into oblivion or a spiral of expansion out into the light
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Choices you are making now determine how your future will be
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Choose altruism
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Light is so much nicer than darkness and despair

How do they do it?

Anyone who has seen flocks of birds or schools of fish is familiar with this phenomenon of large numbers of individuals in a fast-moving group appearing to move in a co-ordinated way, and it's not immediately clear how they coordinate themselves, said Dora Biro, a zoologist at Oxford University.
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Our question was, how do groups like flocks of pigeons make decisions about what to do and where to go?
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The GPS backpacks carried by the pigeons enabled the scientists to precisely monitor the birds' movements, relative to each other, every 0.2 seconds of their journey from the point where the scientists released them to their home loft in Budapest, 15km away.
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Previously, people had assumed democratic decisions, where every bird's preferences are somehow averaged out, and that's what the group ends up doing.
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Or there might be a single leader or a small number of leaders that everyone follows
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But what we were able to do by tracking these birds with individual GPS units was to resolve the leader-follower relationship within the flock.
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What we found was a more sophisticated and refined mechanism for how the decisions are made
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There wasn't a single leader, nor was there a kind of egalitarian decision-making where everyone had an equal vote.
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Instead, each bird did have a vote, but the weight that each vote carried differed between birds.
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It represented a kind of hierarchy where the decisions of some birds near the top of the hierarchy carried more weight in terms of what the birds did than the birds lower down the hierarchy, who were still influential but to a lesser degree, said Dr Biro, who carried out the study with Tamás Vicsek of Eötvös University in Budapest.
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Whether such effects come from some individuals being more motivated to lead, or being inherently better navigators perhaps with greater navigational knowledge, is an intriguing question we don't yet have an answer to
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The loft of pigeons in the study consisted of 10 birds whose every movement was recorded as they flew in a flock from one location to another.
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The analysis, published in the journal Nature, described how each bird moved in relation to its neighbours, with some individuals leading more than others.
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It's neither a completely democratic system, where everybody gets the vote, nor [one with] a single leader or a few leaders responsible for the decisions.
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But in fact every individual gets a kind of input into what the group as a whole should do," Dr Biro said.
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If this was honed by evolution, if there was a selective advantage for individuals in the group to make decisions in this way, then it might represent a particularly efficient form of group decision making...
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It is possible that the mechanism we saw in these pigeons generalises to other species and to other group decision-making contexts, even in humans," Dr Biro said.
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Dr Biro

Some story

Here is a true story someone found regarding exams at Cambridge University.
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It seems that during an examination one day a bright young student popped up and asked the proctor to bring him Cakes and Ale.
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The following dialog ensued:
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Proctor: I beg your pardon?
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Student: Sir, I request that you bring me Cakes and Ale.
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Proctor: Sorry, no.
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Student: Sir, I really must insist. I request and require that you bring me Cakes and Ale.
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At this point, the student produced a copy of the four hundred year old Laws of Cambridge
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Written in Latin and still nominally in effect, and pointed to the section which read (rough translation from the Latin):
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``Gentlemen sitting examinations may request and require Cakes and Ale.''
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Pepsi and hamburgers were judged the modern equivalent, and the student sat there, writing his examination and happily slurping away.
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Three weeks later the student was fined five pounds for not wearing a sword to the examination.

Just some little thoughts

Watch your thoughts; they become words.
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Watch your words; they become actions.
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Watch your actions; they become habits.
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Watch your habits; they become character.
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Watch your character; for it becomes your destiny.
Upanishads
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Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.
Buddha
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Laugh as much as you breath and love as long as you live.
Anonymous
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We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
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And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count.
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It's the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln
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How can you think and hit at the same time?
Yogi Berra
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Worrying about something is like paying interest on a debt you don't even know you owe.
Mark Twain
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One of the most beautiful compensations of this life is that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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The smallest good deed is better than the greatest intention.
Anonymous
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The strength of a tree lies in it's ability to bend.
Zen Proverb
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If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
Jack Kornfield
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Half an orange tastes as sweet as a whole one.
Chinese Proverb
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I hear and I forget.
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I see and I remember.
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I do and I understand.
Confucius
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If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.
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If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.
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If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
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If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.
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If you want to be given everything, give everything up.
Tao Te Ching
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We have never arrived.
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We are in a constant state of becoming.
Bob Dylan
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A windmill's true power is revealed only when it faces the wind 
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A person's only when he faces diversity.
Zen Proverb
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Eat less, taste more.
Chinese Proverb
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Mind like a parachute - only function when open!
Charlie Chan
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Love what you do, do what you love.
Zen Proverb
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May we live like the lotus, at home in muddy water.
Buddha
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We must be the change we wish to see in the world.
Gandhi