This14U

Political correctness

2012-02-01T11:37:00.001Z

There is an annual contest at Texas A&M University calling for the most appropriate definition of a contemporary term.

This year's term was: "Political Correctness"

The winner wrote:

"Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional, illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a piece of shit by the clean end. "

Beauty and sacredness

2012-02-01T05:01:00.010Z

Where is beauty?

It is in a butterfly.

But when we chloroform it, lay it out on the dissecting table, and cut it apart, beauty is gone.

Beauty is in a poem.

But when we over-analyze the poem to find exactly what is beautiful about it, beauty disappears from that too.

Beauty is in a painting.

But can we reduce it to quantitative measures of color and proportion, and then apply these to the standardized production of beauty?

No.

Beauty is a relationship.

Not an objective property.
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And the mass-production of generic relationships produces, necessarily, an aesthetic that is equally phony, generic, and cheap.
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Where is sacredness?
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Following the same deep ideology as their scientific brethren.
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The religious authorities have sought to isolate sacredness as well.
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Limiting it to Bibles, crosses, and churches.
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The furthest extreme of this separation coincides in its genesis with its scientific counterpart, originating in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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The Protestant movement progressively excluded the divine from more and more of the human world.
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Earlier, the Catholic church had removed divinity from ordinary people.
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Now the Protestant reformers began to remove it from Mother Mary and the saints as well.
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So that all that was left of our original panentheistic world was a single, isolated mote of divinity embodied by Jesus Christ.
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Sorry state of affairs, not much left now.
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And yet and yet reductionism for that is what it is has reached it's end.
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Not too long now and humanity will understand this to be true.
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Reductionism has prevented us seeing the beauty of the whole, of relationships.
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It will not go without a fight.
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Never mind it is a fight worth engaging to bring back an understanding of the beauty and the sacred.

Superbroccoli'

2012-01-31T05:01:00.014Z

The vegetable looks the same as normal broccoli but contains boosted levels of a health-giving nutrient.

Research suggests the plant chemical, glucoraphanin, may protect the body against heart disease and some types of cancer.

The new broccoli, called Beneforte, contains two to three times more glucoraphanin than standard broccoli.

It will be sold at Marks & Spencer stores from today and make an appearance on the shelves of other supermarkets in the next few months.

Beneforte was developed by British scientists using conventional breeding techniques rather than genetic engineering.

Work on the project began after a wild broccoli variety was discovered in 1983 with naturally raised levels of glucoraphanin.

The nutrient is converted in the gut into the bioactive compound sulphoraphane, which circulates in the bloodstream.

Evidence indicates that sulphoraphane has beneficial effects such as reducing chronic inflammation.

Stopping uncontrolled cell division associated with early-stage cancer.

It also boosts the body's antioxidants.

Compared with normal broccoli, eating Beneforte broccoli raises sulphoraphane levels two to four times.

Broccoli is believed to protect against some cancers, especially bowel and prostate.

Studies have shown that men with broccoli-rich diets have a reduced risk of aggressive prostate cancer.

Other research suggests broccoli can help prevent heart attacks and strokes by reducing inflammation and keeping blood flowing freely through arteries.

Beneforte broccoli was developed at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) and John Innes Centre, both based in Norwich.

Professor Richard Mithen, from the IFR, said: ''Our research has given new insights into the role of broccoli and other similar vegetables in promoting health.

It has shown how this understanding can lead to the development of potentially more nutritious varieties of our familiar vegetables.

Now there will also be something brand new for consumers to eat as a result of the discoveries made.

Separate self

2012-01-30T04:32:00.002Z

The extent to which we identify ourselves with our bodies, possessions, and the domain of our control is also the extent to which we are afraid of death.
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I am speaking here not of the biological terror that drives any animal to struggle with a predator,
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But to an ambient dread that drives us to pretence and hiding.
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More than any other crisis, death is the intruder whose mere approach crumbles the fortress of the separate self.
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A personal brush with death, or even the passing of a loved one, connects us to a reality beyond the constructs of me and mine.
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Death opens our hearts.
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Death reminds us, with a clarity that trumps all logic, that only love is real.
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And what is love, but a melting of the boundaries between self and other?
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As many poets have understood, love too is a kind of death.
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To a person identified with tribe, forest, and planet, the death of the body and all it controls is far less frightening.
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Another way to describe such a person is that he or she is in love with the world.
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Love is antidote to fear of death.
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Because it expands one's boundaries beyond what can be lost.
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Conversely, fear of death blocks love by shutting us in and making us small.
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And fear of death is built into our ideology.
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The self-definition implicit in objectivist science.
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Money and property simply enforce this self-definition.
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They are concrete manifestations of the separate self.
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The self that is afraid of death and closed to love.
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Money, in its present form, is anti-love.
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But it is not the root of all evil.
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Just another expression of separation.
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Another piece of the puzzle.
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Other systems of money are possible that have the opposite effect of our present currency,
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Structurally discouraging the accumulation of me and mine.

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Charles Eisentstein

Solar time

2012-01-29T05:01:00.005Z

When the largest flare in four years erupted from the sun Feb. 14, sky watchers across the Northern Hemisphere braced themselves for a geomagnetic storm.

Space weather experts predicted that jets of charged particles smacking into the Earth’s magnetic field could disrupt navigation and communication systems, and spark a bonus of bright northern lights dancing across the ionosphere.

Instead, nothing much happened.

“There were some nice displays of aurora, but you had to live in Finland, northern Canada or Alaska to see them,” said Joe Kunches, a forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center.

“This one was the lowest storm category that we even pay any attention to.”

The storm was so weak because the flare’s magnetic field happened to be aligned parallel to the Earth’s.

When the sun sends a mass of hot plasma hurtling toward the planet in a coronal mass ejection, the plasma is imprinted with its own magnetic field separate from the sun’s.

Astronomers can’t predict the direction of the plasma’s magnetic field until the burst hits Earth.

If the plasma’s magnetic field is parallel to the Earth’s, the incoming charged particles are effectively blocked from entering Earth’s magnetosphere.

An identical flare with a perpendicular magnetic field would have triggered a much stronger storm.

“If the magnetic fields are parallel, then the shields are up.

We are well protected,” said space weather expert Juha-Pekka Luntama of the European Space Agency Feb. 19 at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington, DC.

But next time we might not be as lucky with alignment, and we can expect up to 1,700 more storms like last week’s in the coming months as the sun wakes back up.

NOAA ranks geomagnetic storms on a scale from G1, minor storms that spark auroras in Michigan and Maine, to G5, extreme storms that can shut down power grids and cause northern lights as far south as Florida.

The ranking is based on how much more active the local magnetic field is than a normal, quiet day.

The Feb. 14 storm turned out to be a G1, meaning “it wasn’t that big a deal,” Kunches said.

The storm was mostly notable for being the first of the new solar cycle, Kunches said.

The sun goes through periods of relative violence and calm every 11 years or so.

This last solar minimum was longer and quieter than astronomers expected.

Many predict that the ensuing solar maximum, when magnetic activity on the sun will cause more frequent and severe flares, will also be relatively serene.

But space-weather experts are more nervous about this solar maximum than ever before.

Since the last solar maximum in 2000, society has grown more dependent on systems that can be knocked out by a strong solar flare.

“Things have changed a lot since 2000,” Tom Bogdan, director of NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center, told reporters Feb. 19 at AAAS.

“What’s at stake are the advanced technologies that underlie our lives.”

A strong flare would send ultraviolet and X-ray radiation to the sunlit side of the Earth, ionizing the upper atmosphere and potentially shutting down GPS satellites.

Losing GPS would cause chaos in more than just car navigation systems, Bogdan said.

“GPS is involved in everything we do,” he said, including financial transactions.

Prices fluctuate so quickly that traders need a time stamp accurate to a millionth of a second every time they buy or sell something.

Every time you swipe your credit card at the gas station or buy a bag of oranges, Bogdan said, it goes through a GPS satellite.

Ten to 20 minutes after the flare, a burst of high-energy protons would enter the Earth’s magnetic field at the poles, causing processing errors in other satellites.

About half an hour later, the hot cloud of plasma that the sun spit out with the flare would bump into the Earth’s magnetic field.

If it’s strong enough, the plasma’s magnetic field can induce currents in electric transmission lines, which could cause widespread blackouts.

The most powerful solar flare in recorded history, the Carrington flare in September 1859, sent currents through telegraph wires and even set a few buildings on fire.

Bogdan noted that that storm and the next-strongest storm in 1921 both happened during particularly weak solar cycles.

Still, he said, “don’t panic.”

Many satellites and transmission lines are already fitted with shields to prevent the worst of the damage from a strong flare.

Others can be shut down preemptively.

Sun-observing satellites give space weather experts about 20 hours to come up with a plan to deal with an impending storm, during which NOAA sends out detailed alerts.

“This recent solar flare really illustrates that we need to pay attention to space weather,” said NOAA administrator Jane Lubchenco at the AAAS meeting.

“The watchword is, predict and prepare.”

Image: NASA/Solar Dynamics Observatory

Ah science!

2012-01-28T05:01:00.014Z

Galileo's excision of God from the world of matter mirrored the even more audacious banishment of subjective experiences from the domain of rigorous intellectual exploration.

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Not only their knowability was questioned, but even their reality.
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Science is the study of reality
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What is not measurable is not a valid subject of science.
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Therefore what is not measurable is not real.
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A century later, David Hume took up this position with great enthusiasm:
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Let us ask,
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Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?
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No.
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Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence?
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No.
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Commit it then to the flames; for it contains nothing but sophistry and illusion.
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Ironic indeed, then, is the present state of science,
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In which once again vast areas of inquiry are off-limits.
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In which experimental results that contradict orthodoxy are excluded from publication.
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In which knowledge is restricted to those initiated into the language of its abstruse texts.
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In which whole fields wallow in fruitless hyperspecialization.
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In which the public can only await the pronouncements of this new quasi-ecclesiastical hierarchy.
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Holder of the keys to the gates of knowledge.
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Can we say that we have not replicated the old world within the new?
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Upon the Scientific Method, which freed thought from the institutionalized, authoritarian superstition of the Middle Ages.
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We have built yet a new orthodoxy.
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More totalitarian, if more subtle, than the first.
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Charles Eisenstein

One liners

2012-01-27T05:01:00.005Z

Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have.
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When everything's coming your way, you're in the wrong lane and
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going the wrong way.
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If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you
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tried.
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A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
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Experience is something you don't get until just after you need
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it.
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For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism.
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Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of checks
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Never do card tricks for the group you play poker with.
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No one is listening until you make a mistake.
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Success always occurs in private and failure in full view.
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The hardness of butter is directly proportional to the softness
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of the bread.
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The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the
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ability to reach it.
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To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many
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is research.
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To succeed in politics, it is often necessary to rise above your
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principles.
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Monday is an awful way to spend 1/7 of your life.
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You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.
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Two wrongs are only the beginning.
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The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
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The sooner you fall behind the more time you'll have to catch
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up.
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A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.
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Change is inevitable except from vending machines.
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Get a new car for your spouse - it'll be a great trade!
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Plan to be spontaneous - tomorrow.
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Always try to be modest and be proud of it!
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If you think nobody cares, try missing a couple of payments.
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How many of you believe in telekinesis? Raise my hand...
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Love may be blind but marriage is a real eye-opener.
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If at first you don't succeed, then skydiving isn't for you.

Artificial leaf moves two steps closer to reality

2012-01-26T05:01:00.000Z

Two independent research teams report today in Science that they’ve taken key strides toward
harnessing the energy in sunlight to synthesize chemical fuels.
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If the new work can be improved, scientists could utilize Earth’s most abundant source of renewable energy to power everything from industrial plants to cars and trucks without generating additional greenhouse gases.
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Today, humans consume an average of 15 trillion watts of power, 85% of which comes from burning fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas.
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That massive fossil fuel consumption produces some nasty side effects, including climate change, acidified oceans, and oil spills.
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These problems are likely to grow far worse in coming years, as worldwide energy use is expected to at least double by 2050
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Renewable power sources, such as solar photovoltaics and wind turbines, aim to fill this demand, and they are making steady progress at providing electricity at ever cheaper costs.
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But electricity has a key drawback as an energy carrier.
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It’s difficult to store in large quantities, which means it can’t be used for most heavy industry and transportation applications, such as flying planes or driving heavy trucks.
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So researchers have long sought to use the energy in sunlight to generate energy-rich chemical fuels, such as hydrogen gas, methane, and gasoline, that can be burned anytime anywhere.
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And though they have demonstrated that this goal is possible, the means for doing so have been inefficient and expensive.
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That’s where the new advances come in.
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In the first, researchers led by Daniel Nocera, a chemist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, report that they've created an artificial leaf from cheap, abundant materials that splits water into molecular hydrogen (H₂) and oxygen (O₂), somewhat similar to the way plants carry out the first step in photosynthesis.
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The leaf consists of a thin, flat, three-layered silicon solar cell with catalysts bonded to both faces of the silicon.
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When placed in a beaker of water and exposed to sunlight, silicon absorbs photons of sunlight, generating electrons with enough energy to conduct through the silicon
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The process leaves behind positively charged electron vacancies called “holes” that can also move through the material.
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The holes migrate to a cobalt-containing catalyst painted on one face of the silicon cell, where they strip electrons from water molecules, breaking them into hydrogen ions (H+), and oxygen atoms.
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The catalyst then knits pairs of oxygens together to make O₂.
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Meanwhile, the H+ ions migrate to another catalyst on the opposite face of the silicon cell, where they combine with conducting electrons to make molecules of H₂.
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In principle, the H₂ can then be stored and either burned or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity
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In the second study, a team led by chemists Richard Masel of Dioxide Materials in Champaign, Illinois, and Paul Kenis of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, report that they’ve come up with a more energy-efficient approach to converting carbon Dioxide (CO2) into carbon monoxied (CO), the first step to making a hydrocarbon fuel.
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Other researchers have worked for decades to devise catalysts and the right reaction conditions to carry out this conversion.
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But converting CO₂ to CO has always required applying large electrical voltages to CO₂ to make the change.
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That excess voltage is an energy loss, meaning it takes far more energy to make the CO than it can store in its chemical bonds.
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But Masel, Kenis, and colleagues found that when they use a type of solvent for CO₂ in their setup called an ionic liquid, it reduces the extra voltage needed approximately 10-fold.
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Ionic liquids are liquid salts that are adept at stabilizing compounds such as CO₂ when they are given an extra negative charge, the first step in converting CO₂ to CO.
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And the Illinois researchers suspect that this added stability reduces the need for applying an external charge to do the job.
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These papers are nice advances, says Daniel DuBois, a chemist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Washington, who works on catalysts for both splitting water and re-energizing CO₂.
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But he cautions that neither solves all of their respective issues.
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The oxygen-forming catalyst in the artificial leaf, for example, remains slow, DuBois says.
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And the efficiency of the overall leaf is only 4.7% at most, and just 2.3% in its most simplest design.
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The catalyst in the CO₂ system is even slower.
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But DuBois says that because other researchers in the field now have a good examples of systems that work, they can now focus on designing improved catalysts to speed them up.
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By Robert F. Service - Science Now

Separation

2012-01-25T05:01:00.003Z

Separation is what defines modern man.

A view of himself as separate and distinct from others.

Making all relationships even the most intimate as separate or distinct from who we are

ourselves.

Relationships are groupings of discrete individuals.

This is separation of a high order.

Because relationships define who we are.

With life.

With others.

And by defining them all as separate from who we are we diminish ourselves.

Simply we reduce everything to you and me, nothing is us on deeper levels.

Under the delusion of the discrete and separate self, we see our relationships as extrinsic to who we are on the deepest level.
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We see relationships as associations of discrete individuals.

But in fact, our relationships—with other people and all life—define who we are
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And by impoverishing these relationships we diminish ourselves.
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We are our relationships.
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Charles Eisenstein

Flexible working

2012-01-24T05:01:00.002Z

The option
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For those that like the idea of flexible working there are plenty of options: part-time; flexi-time; job sharing; annualised hours; compressed hours; staggered hours and homeworking.
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In addition there are variations on these themes.

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Such as term-time working and school hours working.
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It all comes down to the relationship with the boss and how amenable they are to your demands.
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Going part-time means simply working less hours
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While flexi-time enables you to choose your hours, although there's usually a core period during which you are expected to work.
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Job sharing, meanwhile, sees you combining with someone else to do a job designed for one person.
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For example, each of you doing two-and-a- half days a week
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Annualised means your hours will be worked out over a year with the normal practice being a set number of shifts to which you add your own agreed hours.
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A compressed arrangement will see you working the same amount of hours but in a few days.
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While staggered involves having different starting and finishing times for employees in the same workplace.
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Finally there is homeworking, which does away with the commute.
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And the expense of having an employee in the office.
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As their job is done from the comfort of their own house.
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The hours spent dedicated to company business – or amount of work needed to be finished – will be down to an agreement struck with the boss.
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Your entitlement
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The good news is that anyone can ask their employer for flexible working arrangements and the law also provides a statutory right to make this request if you meet certain criteria.
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Such as having worked for the same firm for 26 continuous weeks
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If this is the case they can ask if, for example, they have parental responsibility for a child under 17-years-old (or a disabled child under 18 that receives Disability Living Allowance).
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Or they act as a carer for a relative.
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Or an adult that's unrelated but who lives at the same address.
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However, although the employer must seriously consider the application, they can decline it where there is a legitimate business ground.
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A good suggestion is anyone wanting to change their hours puts themselves into the manager's shoes and come up with a viable solution.
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Don't just say you want to change hours as all you're doing then is giving your manager a problem.
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Try to understand what your job means to the organisation.
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You know your job better than anyone else, and so are best placed to see a way of doing it differently.
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Work for yourself
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Of course, the ultimate flexibility is being your own boss.
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On the face of it you can set your own hours, decide how much to pay yourself and give yourself bonus days off when the sun is shining.
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But it's certainly not stress-free.
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As well as potentially being the passport to a more lucrative and enjoyable way of life, starting your own business can be one of the riskiest and stressful moves you can ever make.
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And is likely to require even more hours being put in until it's properly up and running.
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Other considerations
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For all these flexible options there are financial issues to consider.
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For example, if their new flexible working arrangement reduces the hours worked it will affect their income and probably their pension benefits.
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People need to consider what impact the new working arrangement will have on their finances in the short and the long term.
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People should do a budgeting exercise to see the true impact of any changes because it might change their ability to save for school fees
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University costs or deposits for a house move.
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Over the longer-term the main issue will be their pension.
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It is important that people take into account what reduced hours might mean for their pension benefits.
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It might mean that working less now will result in having to work later in life.
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Even if the finances are negatively affected, it is still important to balance this against the positive reasons for wanting a more flexible working arrangement.
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Such as getting to spend more quality time with your children and improving your quality of life
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There are, of course, other pros and cons of striking the perfect work-life balance.
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It's also good to keep family life separate but this isn't always possible.
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When the smartphone pings at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon and it takes all the willpower in the world not to go and check it in case it's something interesting!
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Of course there are other pros and cons however the main thing is to be honest with yourself.
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Do not get to forty something saying I wish I had done this or that
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You did or you didn't.
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That was you, your life that was.
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What will you do?

Alcohol damage

2012-01-23T05:01:00.000Z

What damage does alcohol do to our bodies?

Over time, it increases the risk of developing a long list of health conditions including breast cancer, oral cancers, heart disease, strokes and cirrhosis of the liver

Research shows that a high alcohol intake can also damage our mental health, impair memory skills and reduce fertility.

The direct link between alcohol and the liver is well understood

But what about the impact of alcohol on other organs?

Numerous heart studies suggest that moderate alcohol consumption helps protect against heart disease by raising good cholesterol and stopping the formation of blood clots in the arteries.

However, drinking more than three drinks a day has been found to have a direct and damaging effect on the heart.

Heavy drinking, particularly over time, can lead to high blood pressure, alcoholic cardiomyopathy, congestive heart failure and stroke.

Heavy drinking also puts more fat into the circulation of the body.

The link between alcohol and cancer is well established, says Cancer Research UK.

A study published in the BMJ this year estimated that alcohol consumption causes at least 13,000 cancer cases in the UK each year

About 9,000 cases in men and 4,000 in women.

Cancer experts say that for every additional 10g per day of alcohol drunk, the risk of breast cancer increases by approximately 7-12%.

A recent report in BioMed Central's Immunology journal found that alcohol impairs the body's ability to fight off viral infections.

And studies on fertility suggest that even light drinking can make women less likely to conceive while heavy drinking in men can lower sperm quality and quantity.

For bowel cancer, previous studies show that increasing alcohol intake by 100g per week increases the cancer risk by 19%.

Why alcohol has this negative effect on all elements of our health could be down to acetaldehyde - the product alcohol is broken down into in the body.

Acetaldehyde is toxic and has been shown to damage DNA.

Dr KJ Patel, from the Medical Research Council's laboratory of molecular biology in Cambridge, recently completed a study into the toxic effects of alcohol on mice.

His research implies that a single binge-drinking dose of alcohol during pregnancy may be sufficient to cause permanent damage to a baby's genome.

Foetal alcohol syndrome, he says, "can give rise to children who are seriously damaged, born with head and facial abnormalities and mental disabilities".

Alcohol is a well-established cancer causing agent, he says.

You cannot get a cancer cell occurring unless DNA is altered.

When you drink, the acetaldehyde is corrupting the DNA of life and puts you on the road to cancer.

One of most common genetic defects in man is our inability to counteract the toxicity of alcohol.

Dr Nick Sheron, who runs the liver unit at Southampton General Hospital, says the mechanisms by which alcohol does damage are not quite so clear cut.

The toxicity of alcohol is complex, but we do know there is a clear dose relationship.

With alcoholic liver disease, the greater the alcohol intake per week the greater the liver damage and that increases exponentially for someone drinking six to eight bottles or more of wine in that period, for example.

Over the past 20 to 30 years, Dr Sheron says, deaths from liver disease have increased by 500%, with 85% of those due to alcohol.

Only in the last few years has that rise slowed down.

Alcohol has a bigger impact than smoking on our health because alcohol kills at a younger age.

The average age of death for someone with alcoholic liver disease is their 40s.

'More harmful than heroin or crack'

Alcohol is undoubtedly a public health issue too.

Earlier this year, NHS figures showed that alcohol related hospital admissions has reached record levels in 2010.

Over a million people were admitted in 2009-10, compared with 945,500 in 2008-09 and 510,800 in 2002-03.

Nearly two in three of those cases were men.

At the same time the charity Alcohol Concern predicted the number of admissions would reach 1.5m a year by 2015 and cost the NHS £3.7bn a year.

Last year, a study in The Lancet concluded that alcohol is more harmful than heroin or crack when the overall dangers to the individual and society are considered.

The study by the Independent Scientific Committee on drugs also ranked alcohol as three times more harmful than cocaine or tobacco because it is so widely used.

So how much alcohol is too much?

What can we safely drink?

The government guidelines on drinking are being reviewed at present.

They currently say that a women should not drink more than two to three units of alcohol per day and a man three to four units a day.

But Paul Wallace, a GP and chief medical adviser of Drinkaware, says people are just not aware of the alcohol content of a large glass of wine.

Most of us don't realise what we're drinking and you can very easily slip beyond acceptable limits.

Katherine Brown, head of research at the Institute of Alcohol Studies, says the current guidelines and how they are communicated may be giving the public misleading information.

We need to be very careful when suggesting there is a 'safe' level of drinking for the population.

Rather, we need to explain that there are risks associated with alcohol consumption, and that the less you drink the lower your risk is of developing health problems.

We hope the government use this as an opportunity to help change perceptions about regular drinking being a normal, risk-free practice."

Dr Wallace wants the government to do a better job on the message it sends out by explaining the alcohol guidelines in units per week, rather than per day - no more than 21 units for men, 14 units for women per week.

Dr Sheron agrees: There is no such thing as a safe level, but the government has got to draw a line somewhere.

It's a balance.

People like having a drink, but they have to accept there's a risk-benefit ratio

Philippa Roxby - BBC

Coffee adiction

2012-01-22T05:01:00.001Z

Britain's caffeine boom:

Why can't we wake up without smelling the coffee?
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We now spend more on coffee in a year than we do on our energy bills
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And as the price of beans rises, we respond by becoming ever more fussy about our drinks.
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In the classic science-fiction novel "The Space Merchants" by Frederick Pohl and CM Kornbluth, published in 1952, an overpopulated Earth is run by giant multinational companies.
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The population is kept in ignorance of its parlous state by giant advertising agencies and the workforce is fed on slices of synthetic protein called Chicken Little, washed down by something called Coffiest.
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In this blandly zomboid future-world, everyone drinks Coffiest, day and night.
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It's mandatory.
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And it's addictive.
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Let the book's protagonist, Mitchell Courtnay, explain: "...each sample of Coffiest contains three milligrams of a simple alkaloid.
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Nothing harmful.
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But definitely habit-forming.
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After 10 weeks the customer is hooked for life.
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It would cost him at least five thousand dollars for a cure.
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So it's simpler for him to go right on drinking Coffiest – three cups with every meal and a pot beside his bed at night, just as it says on the jar.
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Can you imagine being so addicted to a warm beverage?
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So hooked that you drink it all the time, several times a day, at home, on the way to work, at the workplace, at lunchtime, at tea...?
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Oh no, hang on, we're doing just that already.
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We're now drinking coffee as never before.
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Every week, across the UK, we consume 511 millions cups of coffee.
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Almost half of them in the franchises that dominate the nation's high streets and shopping malls.
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A few years ago, Starbucks ran a TV commercial that encouraged coffee-lovers to think of their high street outlets as a second home.
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Somewhere to relax, read the papers, meet your partner or write a novel on your Vaio laptop.
.
Now the coffee lover has a second, third and fourth home in which to kick back.
.
If Starbucks loses its charm, he can transfer his laid-back allegiance to Caffè Concerto, Caffè Nero, Costa Coffee, Coffee Republic or Caffè Ritazza.
.
Visitors to Westfield, the giant shopping mall in west London, can choose between eighteen different outlets.
.
That include two Starbucks, a Ca'puccino, a Love Coffee, an Apostrophe and an Espressamente Illy.
.
You think there are too many?
.
The Commons Speaker's errant wife, Sally Bercow, recently went on Radio 4's Today programme to discuss the fate of high street clothing shops.
.
They should wake up and smell the coffee, she said, darkly, because they'll all end up being coffee franchises sooner or later.
.
How did we become so enslaved?
.
We all know people who proclaim that they cannot face the world, cannot think straight, cannot recognise elementary shapes, simply cannot operate until they've had their first hit of Taylor's Rich Italian Dark Roast in the morning.
.
We're used to seeing the Starbucks Claw phenomenon – the hand of an otherwise ordinary-seeming mortal, clutched around a carton of skinny latte (or whatever) as he or she wanders dazedly down the street, like a large baby unable to leave off sucking a teat.
.
I've lost count of the people on Desert Island Discs (Sir Simon Rattle was one, John Cale of the Velvet Underground another) who've asked for an Italian coffee machine and grinder as the greatest luxury they can think of.
.
Why do we queue at Starbucks for hot milky drinks which have only traces of caffeine in them?
.
Because we're addicted to the whole procedure behind the Costa bar; the steaming, the percolating, the drip-feed of richness, the warm milky smoothness of the result, the fugitive aromas of vanilla, caramel, honey, nuts and chocolate.
.
Like the Lotos-eaters in Homer's Odyssey, we enter an altered, milk-fed state, forgetful of friends, home and all sense of urgency
.
And we seem to be heedless of its alarming cost.
.
According to research, coffee gourmets spend £2,000 a year on the stuff, while merely everyday drinkers spend £450 a year – more than they shell out on the average person's domestic electricity bill.
.
And it's not just some yoof-culture phenomenon: the over-55s ladle an average of 15 cups a week down their gullets.
.
You'd think the mature drinker would know better.
.
But then, we've always been a bit excessive when it comes to Coffea arabica.
.
The first people who tried roasting coffee beans in liquid were Sufi mystics in 13th-century Yemen.
.
The wine they drank at religious ceremonies made them sleepy and they needed a substitute that kept them awake and able to handle the long hours of prayer: coffee was a perfect solution.
.
From Yemen it spread across the Middle East and North Africa, borne by Muslim pilgrims and dervishes.
.
English travellers in antique lands noted sourly its prevalence among the unwashed: Anthony Sherley wrote in 1599 about meeting "damned infidels drinking a certaine liquor, which they do call Coffe".
.
European historians have long disputed which country first played host to the noble bean.
.
According to Alan Davidson in The Penguin Companion To Food, France was the true pioneer.
.
The first coffee shops sprang up in Paris in 1672.
.
At the fabulous parties thrown in the late 1680s by the Turkish ambassador, the city's grandes dames were served "the choicest Mocha coffee in tiny cups of eggshell porcelain, hot strong and fragrant, poured out in saucers of gold and silver, placed on embroidered silk doylies fringed with gold bullion" by "the black slaves of the Ambassador..."
.
A far cry from Caffè Nero, isn't it?
.
The UK's first coffee house was opened in Oxford in 1650 by a Turkish Jew called Jacob.
.
The first of a million London coffee houses was opened two years later in the City of London by the east-European Pasqua Rosee.
.
The London Stock Exchange started life as Jonathan's Coffee House in Change Alley, where merchants and entrepreneurs used to meet to talk finance.
.
By 1675, there were 3,000 coffee houses in England – despite the hostility of King Charles II, who suspected they might be hotbeds of sedition and tried to remove their licences, but there was such an outcry, he was forced to withdraw his plans.
.
Now there are 14,022 coffee shops in the UK and they brought their owners £5bn last year.
.
That's a year-on-year increase of 12.9 per cent.
.
This trend can't continue, can it?
.
Oh yes it can.
.
More and more branded coffee franchises are scheduled to open.
.
There were 4,645 Costas and Starbucks and Republics and Ritazzas in the UK last year.
.
By the end of 2013, it is conservatively estimated that there will be 5,719 of them.
.
And there are two other trends that should give the everyday coffee drinker pause.
.
One is price and the other is sophistication.
.
The price of coffee beans has increased alarmingly and will continue to do so.
.
It virtually doubled in the last 12 months – and nobody quite knows why.
.
They're lost in the murky depths of global commodity markets.
.
Coffee drinkers (and growers) found they had an unlikely champion in the shape of Howard Schultz, chief executive of Starbucks, in May this year when he publicly denounced the price increase. "
.
The price of coffee is at a 34-year high," he told Channel 4. "
.
We're seeing a hundred per cent rise.
.
I could understand it if there were some supply and demand issue, or some climate problem, but we don't see any.
.
I've had conversations with people who grow and export coffee and it seems that what's driving these record prices is speculation.
.
We don't [know] which hedge funds and index funds have been engaged in this speculation because there's no transparency.
.
But there will be a ton of money made here and the people who most deserve to profit from it – the coffee farmers – won't get it."
.
Starbucks decided it would be harmful to its customers to raise prices across the board, so it didn't; then again, it is already charging £3.45 for a venti white caffè mocha.
.
But it knows it cannot hold out for long, because the world's demand for coffee is increasing.
.
Last year, global consumption went up by 2.5 per cent. It can only increase further, because of a crucial change in the world coffee market:
.
China and India have woken up and sniffed the Java.
.
The number of coffee houses in China will triple in the next three years.
.
Tea consumption in India has declined ever since the subcontinent's population discovered the lure of the bean, the roast and the cafetière.
.
As demand rises, traditional suppliers in Brazil and Columbia will struggle to match it – and the price to the coffee shops will consequently rise and rise.
.
The Costas and Starbucks which buy the beans won't be able to maintain their old prices without cutting into their profits, so the cost to coffee drinkers will rise exponentially.
.
We will, in other words, pay much more for our caffeine-based addiction in the future.
.
And will we cut down on our coffee consumption?
.
Will we hell.
.
John Walsh

Control is not working

2012-01-21T05:01:00.002Z

Watching people pretend that they have things under control is interesting.
.
Sometimes really amusing because if there is one thing for certain in this world it is that we do not have things under control.

.
For short periods of our lives we might believe this to be possible

But then watch those you know trying to live a life ruled by reason and logic.
.
A scientific life if you will.
.
No way!
.
Life cannot be run as a piece of machinery however much this might appeal to you.
.
A life where control and certainty prevail.
.
Many have tried and many more will.
.
However life does not allow such mechanistic pleasures to prevail.
.
Sooner or later nature steps in and shakes things up.
.
And this has never been more true than the period we are in now.
.
For a period of time humanity thought that the 60's through the 90's were the norm in terms of nature's behaviour.
.
Now we are learning the hard way that they were not.
.
The period we are in now with it's more brutal weather.
.
More disasters.
.
More uncertainty.
.
This is probably the norm.
.
And the sooner we get used to this idea the sooner we face reality.
.
The Global Warming game was a great idea to tax us further.
.
However it was a con so many of those scientists making their living from Global Warming quickly moved on to Climate Change.
.
So much easier because with Climate Change you can explain away anything.
.
Thus totally ignoring the fact that this planet has always undergone Climate Change.
.
Change well documented by more honest scientists not so involved in pretending that this is something new.
.
What is so great about Climate Change is that you can keep right on taxing the masses while excusing your lack of understanding about what is really going on.
.
Brilliant we now have endless crisis and uncertainty in our weather both locally and globally.

And that is just the weather

All other aspects of our lives are becoming more uncertain too

Thanks to an imploding financial system.

In our own lives change is opposed by endless rules and regulations.

Barriers to entry everywhere in everything.

Looking around it is the same conflicting interests of modern politics cancelling out any meangingful change.

Add in of course all the other special interest groups and other institutions that thwart any purposeful transformation.

They leave us helpless, buffeted by forces beyond our control.

Be it the weather, our own private lives, our economy whatever, all is seemingly beyond our control.

Or is it?

Notice how our own efforts at control do not really work, over time

So to the best efforts of government and large corporations to control do not work either, over time.

And into our current parlous situation arrive these clear observations.

Leaders with no clue what to do except same old, same old ideas.

Ever more controls.

Won't work, they know it we know it.

Notice new initiatives emerging over the last few months.

People are beginning to wake up to the mess around them.

Slowly realising that our leaders are a major part of the problem.

.
Leaders too easily influenced by the rich, the bankers, the special interest groups of corporations and others who prevail upon them to do their bidding.
.
That for change to come people everywhere must now get involved.
.
Change is upon us anyway faster and faster each year.
.
How it turns out is up to us
.
Being a spectator in one of the most important periods of our history does not do it.
.
Everyone has a voice
.
Let everyone use theirs in the way best suited to their skills.
.
Become involved in those aspects of your life where you can make a difference.

Quotes on more things

2012-01-20T05:01:00.001Z

Love

We come to love not by finding a perfect person, but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.
- Sam Keen, from To Love and Be Loved
.
We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love.
- Mother Teresa
.
Love is the only freedom in the world because it so elevates the spirit that the laws of humanity and the phenomena of nature do not alter its course. ~
-Kahlil Gibran
.
Love is like a beautiful flower which I may not touch, but whose fragrance makes the garden a place of delight just the same.
-Helen Keller
.
For every beauty there is an eye somewhere to see it. For every truth there is an ear somewhere to hear it. For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.
-Ivan Panin
.
Love has the power of making you believe what you would normally treat with the deepest suspicion.
-Mirabeau
.
Peace
.
A smile is the beginning of peace.
- Mother Teresa
.
Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
.
Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
.
If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.
-Moshe Dayan
.
If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.
- Mohandas Gandhi
.
Success
.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
.
You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.
-Wayne Gretzky
.
It is better to fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than to succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail.
-Peter Marshall
.
The most important single ingredient in the formula for success is knowing how to get along with people.
-Theodore Roosevelt
.
We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
-Aristotle
.
Moderation is a fatal thing.
Nothing succeeds like excess.
-Oscar Wilde
.
In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.
-Albert Einstein
.
Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
-Winston Churchill
.
I’m a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
-Thomas Jefferson
.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
.
Truth
.
The cruelest lies are often told in silence.
- Adlai Stevenson
.
A lie has speed, but truth has endurance.
-Edgar J. Mohn
.
Truth is such a rare thing, it is delightful to tell it.
-Emily Dickinson
.
The truth is more important than the facts.
- Frank Lloyd Wright
.
Wisdom
.
The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority.
The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority.
The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.
—A. A. Milne
.
A wise man gets more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends.
—Baltasar Gracian
.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
—Aristotle
.
The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.
-Mark Twain
.
Other
.
To the man who only has a hammer, everything he encounters begins to look like a nail.
—Abraham Maslow
.
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.
—Erica Jong
.
Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
-Albert Einstein
.
You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.
-Abraham Lincoln

Having

2012-01-19T05:01:00.000Z

Notice how we use the word having
.
Have a cigarette
.
Have a drink
.
Have something to do.

.
It is as if by having that we can find a stronger security.

.
Whether this is of a material nature.
.
By having possessions.

Even where others are concerned we will say "having sex".
.
No matter how much you have.
.
You are still alone.
.
You still are left to deal with being alone.
.
Never mind how much you have now you were born alone.
.
Will die alone.
.
Lets face it having is a poor substitute for strong relationships.

Having is an illusion because at any moment all that you have can be taken away.

At this point you might realise that you never really had anything.

Might, but there again you might not, so pervasive is the use of the idea of owning.

Which we so casually express by saying we have something.

Having!

When we stop and really think about it we can find that we already have everything.

It's just not a thing though.
.
It's all on the inside
.
Being a part of nature.
.
Having on the other hand is being separate from whatever it is you think you have..
.
Get it?
.
Having is on the outside and anything on the outside is not yours to have.
.
On the inside on the other hand you can have it all.
.
Do already did you but know it.

Long way round

2012-01-18T05:01:00.045Z

Once upon a time................

We all were hunter gatherers and had no larder.
.
Not much storage either.
.
Only what you could carry

Eating whatever was available that day.

Just like all the other animals around us.

Living on what was available.

Often moving with the herds, maybe with some for a whole season.

With others for certain times of the year.

And then along came the idea of farming or agriculture.

Maybe it started with putting down a few seeds to help things along.

Whatever the intent the result was profoundly seismic.

It changed humanity like nothing has before or since.

Maybe bigger than relativity or the earth being round or the sun being the center of things and not us.

Anyway you look at it the biggest single change in our evolution.

What do we mean?

Simply this it altered our relationship to nature.

It altered our consciousness.

Instead of being at one with everything.

Instead of seeing everything as spiritual a gift from nature.

Instead of everything being part of God if that is how you see it

We became separate

We saw things through new eyes

Us and them

Me and you

Separation

The single biggest step on our journey

Things and nature no longer sacred
.
No longer use only what you need
.
No longer respect
.
No longer replace just use and throw away.
.
And today?
.
Nearing the end of this illusion.
.
For that is what it is an illusion.
.
Most probably will not be a pretty ending.

Giving up our lies and deceit.

Must happen though.

No way to continue pretending we are conquering nature.

We can only live in and with nature.

We are part of nature
.
Not apart from nature.
.
Taken some time to get to this point, might take a while longer yet.
.
There is no other way.
.
We are one.
.
And once we accept this we can start repairing the damage we have caused.
.
Will we have time.
.
Will we have the will power.
.
We will see.

What might be

2012-01-17T05:01:00.015Z

As a result of the freedom to create?

Learning to create

Learning to create on our own

Learning to create on our own in childhood

Is now in the West a skill or faculty lost

This imagining of a possibility that did not exist before.

In modern times the imagining is done for us.

Prefabricated images accompany our stories.

Little is left to our imagination.

Storybooks, television, games all come packaged for us "ready to go".

Is it any wonder that so many children are depressed and frustrated by a pre built world filled with images of how to dress, how to look, how to think, what to think and the rest.

As adults they are rendered incapable of conceiving anything other than the life that is presented to them.

Add in manipulation, lies, distortion and we can see how young adults have a challenge facing them.

As a first step towards legitimate health, learning to imagine comes near the top of the list.

Learning to see what might be.

Seeing and exploring for themselves.

Letting go ersatz imagery taking the time to wonder at nature and the world around them.
.
And how do we teach this?
.
Some organisations do so by their very nature.
.
For most though these life skills are never learnt.
.
Led by the nose from cradle to grave.
.
Told what to buy.
.
What to think.
.
What to wear.
.
What to eat.
.
Where to go.
.
Come to think of it what is left?
.
Nothing very much if you have never developed that curiosity as a child.
.
You have been programmed to consume.
.
Grazing your life away.
.
Not too hot
.
Not too cold.
.
Just comfortably numb.
.
Fortunately for humanity many are still able to imagine.
.
Not only this the age of feeding and controlling minds is unlikely to last much longer.
.
Pity though that so many never had the chance to imagine for themselves.

Image is all

2012-01-16T05:01:00.011Z

The whole thing could easily be done in a movie studio.

We live in a world in which nothing is real and everything is staged.

A world in which every action is calculated.

Every encounter scripted according to how it will look.

The inauthenticity is palpable as everyone obsess about their image.

Uttering silly words such as Change. Leadership. Strength.

Infantile concepts that mean nothing.

On an individual level, we tend to be obsessed with appearances.

With projecting an acceptable image of ourselves to the world.

I'm not just talking about the superficialities of fashion.

But of the subtle masks and poses we wear as shields in a world filled with strangers.

The unreality of the modern world projects onto our faces,

Into our voices,

Into our thoughts;

Hence the mounting desire to "get real"
.
The search for authenticity.

Just as words are losing their meaning.

So also have images lost their power and mystique.

No language has ever before had the number of words that exist in English.
.
The profusion of precise technical terms for increasingly fine divisions of reality.
.
Yet true meaning recedes all the further.

The most graphic cinematic images of violence leave us unmoved.

Because we know that despite their near-perfect verisimilitude, they are not real.

Nothing is, in a world of images.
.
Hence that thirst for reality.
.
Anything real.
.
No worries!
.
Look over your shoulder there is a lot of reality headed our way.

Biometric security

2012-01-15T05:01:00.006Z

Thanks to gangster movies, cop shows and spy thrillers, people have come to think of fingerprints and other biometric means of identifying evildoers as being completely foolproof.

In reality, they are not and never have been.
.
And few engineers who design such screening tools have ever claimed them to be so.

Yet the myth has persisted among the public at large and officialdom in particular.

In the process, it has led—especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001—to a great deal of public money being squandered
.
And, worse, to the fostering of a sense of security that is largely misplaced.

Authentication of a person is usually based on one of three things:
.
Something the person knows, such as a password.
.
Something physical the person possesses, like an actual key or token
.
Or something about the person’s appearance or behaviour.

Biometric authentication relies on the third approach.

Its advantage is that, unlike a password or a token, it can work without active input from the user.

That makes it both convenient and efficient.
.
There is nothing to carry, forget or lose.

The downside is that biometric screening can also work without the user’s co-operation or even knowledge.

Covert identification may be a boon when screening for terrorists or criminals
.
But it raises serious concerns for innocent individuals.

Biometric identification can even invite violence.

A motorist in Germany had a finger chopped off by thieves seeking to steal his exotic car, which used a fingerprint reader instead of a conventional door lock.

Another problem with biometrics is that the traits used for identification are not secret.
.
But exposed for all and sundry to see.

People leave fingerprints all over the place.

Voices are recorded and faces photographed endlessly.

Appearance and body language is captured on security cameras at every turn.

Replacing misappropriated biometric traits is nowhere near as easy as issuing a replacement for a forgotten password or lost key.

In addition, it is not all that difficult for impostors to subvert fingerprint readers and other biometric devices.
.
So no biometric devices are not fool proof.
.
Nor are they the answer to many security issues.

'Global warming is.................

2012-01-14T05:01:00.002Z

This is not new however it is worth a read, and we must note that Global Warming has now morphed into Climate Change.

......................the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life
.
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
.
Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society.
.
Anthony Watts describes it thus:
.
This is an important moment in science history.
.
I would describe it as a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the Wittenburg church door.
.
It is worthy of repeating this letter in entirety on every blog that discusses science.
.
It’s so utterly damning that I’m going to run it in full without further comment. (H/T GWPF, Richard Brearley).
.
Dear Curt:
.
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).
.
Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that.
.
The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists.
.
As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists.
.
We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time.
.
We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach.
.
I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere.
.
In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides.
.
What greater tribute could there be?
.
How different it is now.
.
The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs.
.
For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.
.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave.
.
It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.
.
Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.)
.
I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion.
.
I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.
.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge?
.
It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:
.
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses.
.
In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose.
.
No more.
.
Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate
.
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them.
.
So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it.
.
One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one.
.
In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.)
.
In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original.
.
The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe.
.
It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is.
.
This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.
.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world.
.
It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity.
.
Effect on the APS position: none.
.
None at all.
.
This is not science; other forces are at work.
.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation.
.
I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list.
.
We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.<
.
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment.
.
You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.)
.
There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.)
.
The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims.
.
Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives.
.
This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it.
.
Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue.
.
I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago.
.
There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club.
.
Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst.
.
When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise.
.
As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.
.
Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety

Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

Telegraph - James Delingpole

Over to you big Pharma

2012-01-13T05:01:00.002Z

The medical establishment is having more and more trouble hiding the fact that, with the sole exception of emergency medicine, forty years of "advances" have had little impact on human health and mortality.
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Consider the overall effect of the successes.
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Organ transplants were a real breakthrough, but their effect is limited to a few thousand patients annually.
.
Most of the new pharmaceuticals merely control symptoms
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Often with severe side-effects.
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Hormone replacement therapy is turning out to be a disaster.
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The same for cholesterol-lowering medication, anti-depressants, and many of the painkillers.
.
When a new medicine is unveiled, a "twenty percent improvement in outcomes among a significant group of patients" is considered a great success.
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Despite decades of huge investment, it appears that the age of dramatic cures is over.
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There has been no "cure" for any of the poster child diseases such as muscular dystrophy and breast cancer.
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Certainly no major disease has been wiped out since we conquered the great killers of the nineteenth century.
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Coronary artery disease has retreated little, if at all, in thirty years.
.
Cancer is doing just fine, thank you.
.
Arthritis is just as devastating as ever
.
Strokes nearly as common
.
Alzheimer's disease on the rise.
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Meanwhile a host of formerly uncommon conditions, for which conventional medicine can offer palliative remedies at best, have grown into epidemics
.
Diabetes
.
Autism
.
Allergies
.
Multiple sclerosis
.
Lupus
.
Obesity
.
Chronic fatigue
.
Fibromyalgia
.
Multiple chemical sensitivities
.
Inflammatory bowel syndrome
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Chronic fungal infections, and many others.
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Not only have formerly rare diseases become epidemic, but entirely new diseases such as AIDS have appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
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Finally, to add insult to injury, some of the "conquered" diseases of the past such as tuberculosis seem to be making a comeback, usually due to antibiotic resistance.
.
This state of affairs constitutes a great unspoken crisis in medicine.
.
Despite unprecedented billions of dollars in pharmaceutical research, medicine seems to be losing ground in the "battle against disease." .
.
Typically, the response is more technology
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More precise control at the genetic and molecular level.
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A continued search for the "cure".

Charles Eisenstein - The ascent of Humanity

Reason, time to let it go?

2012-01-12T05:01:00.011Z

Cultural prejudice says that reason is a distinguishing quality of the male sex.

Often we hear this prejudice in articles, talk shows and other media.
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Men were supposed to be more rational.
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Women are stated to be more emotional.
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And also to be more intuitive.
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Women were thought closer to their biology.
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More subject to periodic fluctuations of hormones.
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While aspects of this are true for many humans others most certainly do not fit these stereotypes
.
And so?
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The gravity of this subject is that it implies that reason is more important, more serious, more critical
.
And because we are trained to think this way it implies the male to be more important than the female.
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And this we know today to be a silly way of thinking about the sexes.
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Neither is more important than the other.
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Both need each other, are part of the other.
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Time to let go of these stereotypes they do more harm than good.
.
Men tend to use reason in more situations than do women and perhaps therein lies a big problem
.
Many subjects are better approached, evaluated, and acted upon from our other senses.
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Feminine senses.
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Those feminine senses available to the feminine in both men and women.
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Women and the feminine give men the chance to go beyond reason which is often inappropriate in many situations.
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To reconnect with nature.

.
Reason has now been found out.
.
Reason is no longer an answer to many if not most of our problems.
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If indeed it ever was.
.
Time for other senses to come into play.

History of Muslim hadith

2012-01-11T05:01:00.035Z

Traditions of the life of Muhammad and the early history of Islam were passed down mostly orally for more than a hundred years after Muhammad's death in AD 632.

Muslim historians say that Caliph Uthman ibn Affan (the third khalifa (caliph) of the Rashidun Empire, or successor of Muhammad, who had formerly been Muhammad's secretary), was the first to urge Muslims to write the Qur'an in a fixed form, and to record the hadith.

Uthman's labours were cut short by his assassination, at the hands of aggrieved soldiers, in 656.

No sources survive directly from this period so we are dependent on what later writers tell us about this period.

By the 9th century the number of hadiths had mushroomed.

Hadith are narrations concerning the words and deeds of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.

Hadith are regarded by traditional Islamic schools of jurisprudence as important tools for understanding the Qur'an and in matters of jurisprudence.

Hadith were evaluated and gathered into large collections mostly during the reign of Umar ibn AbdulAziz during the 8th and 9th centuries.

These works are referred to in matters of Islamic law and history to this day.

The two main denominations of Islam, Shi'ism and Sunnism, have different sets of Hadith collections.

The wide acceptance that many of these traditions were fabricated stimulated the development for assessing Hadith.

Scholars of the Abbasid period were faced with a huge corpus of miscellaneous traditions, some of them flatly contradicting each other.

Many of these traditions supported differing views on a variety of controversial matters.

Scholars had to decide which hadith were to be trusted as authentic and which had been invented for political or theological purposes.

To do this, they used a number of techniques which Muslims now call the science of hadith.

And so we have yet another religion where the teachings are not agreed.

Where interpretations are the norm.

Where they vary considerably from place to place.

A faith in transition.

Like so many before it

The danger is that fanatics take their particular hadith literally and use this as a means of advancing their power and authority.

Again nothing new here many have done this before.

Where these teachings clash with reasonable civil and human rights of the modern world we have trouble.

Education has been found to be one of the only ways out of this barrier to evolution.

Not just evolution but the reasonable right of women to a fairer life.

Educate the women of a country and this tends to promote positive change.

Unfortunately conservative Muslim countries have no intention of educating their women

For some reason many Muslim clerics seem set against any freedom or rights for women.

Funny when all humans come from a mother.

Difficult to believe that time will not change this.

Fortunately for women and others who would see change there are stirrings of unquiet at some of the more extreme interpretations of hadith.

The past

2012-01-10T05:01:00.004Z

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.
.
A quote from whom I do not remember, however one that says something important.
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Too often in life people insist on looking back.
.
Their thoughts anchored in the past.
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No good comes of this.
.
What has gone has gone.
.
Look forward to the future.
.
And live in the present.
.
A present which is different today than it was when you were young.
.
Time has changed our experience of each day, it is shorter.
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It takes all our energy to keep up with the things we have to do each day.
.
For this if for no other reason focus on the here and now.
.
Only look back to learn.
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Apart from this why would you look back?
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Why live in the past looking back?
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Do you think ''if only''
.
If only I had done this or that.
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If I had not said this or that.
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If only she had this or that.
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Well they didn't and neither did you.
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So let it go.
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Move into the future, focus your eyes and thoughts on what you want to move towards.
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Besides people who live in the past become very boring.
.
Boring to themselves and their friends.
.
Apart from which your energy instead of being here and now is elsewhere.
.
We need our energy here in the present with us.
.
Let the past go it has gone.

Whoops!

2012-01-09T05:01:00.000Z

We are being brought up short in so many ways.
.
Our vaunted technology is failing to answer many of our more pressing problems.
.
Not being unkind but one could observe that our technology has consistently created more and not less problems over the course of our history.
.
This might not matter however as we have mastered more we have also increased the scope of greater destruction and potential disasters.
.
And if not greater destruction then the increased risks of unexpected side effects.
.
When those risks go global then this matters a lot.
.
Today we have several candidates for global impact.
.
Electronic devices held to ears, are we are told, not harmful.
.
I beg to differ over time this behaviour must impact our brains.
.
Because of the casual use of ever stronger antibiotics we are soon into an era analogous to the 1920's before they had antibiotics.
.
Simply because we have no further magic answers left in the laboratories.
.
Check out for yourself how people died at that time from simple things such as colds or flu.
.
GM anything pose great dangers because the long term and side effects are not known.
.
What is known is that it is impossible to contain the spread of these products, possibly with devastating consequences.
.
Pollution of all kinds is an issue of increasingly global proportions.
.
Water issues are going global.
.
With over seventy five percent of the globe covered in water one might wonder how we could arrive at this point.
.
Bad management, over population in urban areas and the rest.
.
Soil erosion is becoming a major issue as top soil disappears or blows away.
.
How are we going to feed those soon to be seven billion of us?
.
The global financial system is out of control, unstable and likely to destruct.
.
No new model is possible with those who have unwilling to share or give up their wealth
.
Likely conflict as those without become desperate.
.
Special interest groups are wreaking untold damage through their narrow concerns.
.
Sitting in a train heading for the abyss is the fate of most modern humans.
.
This is not something way out there in the future.
.
This is where we are now.
.
No it is not for the next generation.
.
It is our time now.
.
We can just ignore things until they hit us personally and many maybe most will do this.
.
You can inform yourself though about a way out.
.
Which you might even want to get involved with.
.
Want a good read that is positive on our future?
.
Then get hold of "Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition" by Charles Eisenstein.

How it was last time

2012-01-08T05:01:00.004Z

A Frost Fair on the Thames at Temple Stairs by Abraham Danielsz Hondius (Abraham de Hondt), circa 1684. Oil painting. This fair, one of several built on the frozen Thames in London during severe winters, was exceptional in that it lasted from December 1683 until 4th February 1684. Photograph: Corbis

The "little ice age", evidence of which was first recorded around 1300.
.
And which extended through to the mid 1800s, was the coldest interval over the Northern Hemisphere for one thousand or so years.
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Periodic plagues and famines ravaged Europe and glaciers descended from the Alps to engulf a number of villages.

One influence may have been a drop in solar energy.
.
Isotopes of carbon in tree rings and beryllium in ice cores show a drop-off in solar radiation during much of the period.
.
Moreover, sunspot observations that began around 1610 show a near-absence of reported sunspots between 1645 and 1715.
.
However, recent studies have brought down the relative importance of this solar effect on the little ice age.

Also in the mix are volcanoes, which seem to have erupted more frequently after 1500 than during the so-called medieval warm period that preceded it.
.
The 1815 eruption of Indonesia's Tambora – one of the most violent ever recorded on Earth – led to a disastrously cold summer across much of the globe in 1816.
.
That "year without a summer" brought crop failures to northern Europe as well as snows in Vermont as late as early June.

Like the medieval warm period, the little ice age appears to have been strongest over the Northern Hemisphere's continents.
.
Although it's hard to completely eliminate geographic bias from these early records.
.
And there's little evidence from the tropics and southern hemisphere to say what actually happened there.
.
Some researchers argue that both phenomena were primarily regional events, as opposed to the global-scale warming under way now.
.
Robert Henson

E D A B M F T W D

2012-01-07T05:01:00.000Z

Or spelt out it is

.
"Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die"
.
This was a saying in the Roman Legions.
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Some do not like this expression because they felt it was a selfish exhortation to grab all you can while you can.
.
I see it very differently as let go of all fear and enjoy the moment for what comes will come.
.
In a modern context we might say I am going to lose my job.
.
I have no money.
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I cannot pay my bills.
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I am going to lose my house.
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Even if none of the above were going to happen modern man still stresses.
.
Modern man stresses unbelievably worrying about everything.
.
It does not help much that his media pile on the agony with stories of doom every day, everywhere.
.
He is though a creature of his times.
.
Times fraught with potential and real disaster.
.
And does this change the bills?
.
Does it stop the morning arriving?
.
No.
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And does it help him in any way shape or form.
.
No.
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I would suggest that on the contrary that it just drives him closer to breakdown.
.
Closer to panic.
.
And the bills are still there unpaid.
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But if he follows a different more Roman approach and lets go.
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Not spending money he hasn't got or being stupid.
.
Just appreciating what he has got.
.
What is good in his life.
.
Then he might just might notice a way out.
.
Being tense and driven by fear is not the best way to find solutions.
.
Being tense reduces our ability to see things around us, our only thought and vision being of doom and disaster scenarios.
.
We see nothing of life being too self absorbed in our worries.
.
Letting those worries be there unattended allows us to feel better about life.
.
To smell the roses as it were or to see other positive aspects of life.
.
It is our life, so why waste precious life time and energy when you could be finding enjoyment from the moment?
.
While some might find this a funny way to look at life I would suggest that it is key to experiencing modern life in a worthwhile and fulfilling way.
.
How else to keep your balance when everything piles upon you?
.
Self pity and booze do not work for very long.
.
Finding ways to relax and enjoy the moment work better.

Words and their devaluation

2012-01-06T05:01:00.003Z

We use words to express many things.

Many things that words are fundamentally incapable of expressing.

Notice how many words mean nothing at all.

Many have changed and continue to change.

This is said to be the evolution of language.

Really?

Or is something else going on?

Take the word bad in England this word means not good.

In many parts of the US it means really good.

So as they say context is all.

Notice also today how advertising is often non verbal.

Marketing and Public Relations people have trivialised so many words that they mean nothing at all.

New - Luxury - Amazing - Fantastic - Limited offer - Sale - Half price - Fair - Honestly speaking - Sincerely - Super - Mega - Truth.

Most of us have learned to switch off under this barrage of lies.

Young people are turning increasingly to music and other modes of non verbal communication.

Where verbal communication is used it is often short and textually of a private expression.

Twitter, Facebook, utube, even Linkedin where the move is towards music, voice , video anything to expand often trite textual communication.

Music is free as far as the young are concerned, however they will pay for live performances where there is a community of experience, something that adds warmth and community.

Meanwhile the spinners and liars continue to bombard us with exhortations to buy, consume and believe in their stories.

Their words becoming more devalued by the day.

Interesting journey the devaluation of words.

Where to next?

Not clear yet, however words as abused today are losing their value that's for sure.
.
And where we can no longer trust words.
.
Can no longer trust.

Maybe this is why so many people rely more and more on the advice and knowledge of their friends.

At least with your friends you can trust them.

Their words still have some power.
.
Words have become ear candy.
.
Just noise.
.
Sound bites.
.
Twisting, trivialising.
.
Poor words.
.
Poorer us.

Airbrush lessons

2012-01-05T05:01:00.001Z

Young people are being set an impossible standard by the images they are confronted with on a daily basis from the media and advertising.

.
And there is evidence to suggest this has a negative impact on self esteem.
.
We want children to recognise from an early age that their value is worth so much more than just their physical appearance

The teaching pack, which can be downloaded by school staff from Friday, was developed by a not for profit organisation called Media Smart
.
Which says it is “funded by the advertising business in the UK and is supported by the UK and EU governments”.

It consists of 14 PowerPoint slides showing well-known magazine adverts and posters, together with a set of notes for teachers to explain.
.
The role of media and advertising in influencing young people’s perceptions of body image.
.
The slides start with pictures of fashion models, some just in underwear, to show “aspirational characteristics” of some brands.
.
But the lesson also highlights the United Colors of Benetton and Dove ad campaigns, famed for using people of different races and “ordinary” women.
.
The pupils are then shown images that have been digitally enhanced, including one of Keira Knightley’s bust
.
And told how airbrushing is used to “create a flawless image” or “give a model a more aspirational body”.
.
One of the slides shows a natural picture of Britney Spears in a swimsuit next to an airbrushed version in which her legs are far slimmer and smoother
.
Which the singer herself distributed to highlight the extent to which photos are manipulated.
.
The teaching plan states: “Encourage pupils to think about why celebrities might want images of themselves to be airbrushed.
.
Will looking more attractive help their career?”
.
The lesson ends in a discussion of “the importance of personal attributes and human values over physical beauty”.
.
The writer Susie Orbach, who has led a body image campaign, said: “Enabling children, their parents and teachers to recognise how images in the media and advertising are altered and the often negative impact this has on all of our self esteem is crucial.
.
Giving primary school children the tools which allow them to see the differences between the real and the fantastical is part of helping them develop a sense of self worth and confidence from an early age.