////////////CULTURAL OLYMPICS
////////////////
Friday 30 January 2009
Thursday 29 January 2009
GRMPY OLD MN-GOM
/////////////////////HAWA II
///////////////////The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." (Albert Einstein)
////////////////////"You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time." (Albert Einstein)
///////////////////YOU CANT DANCE BEETHOVEN
///////////////////////////you should try everything once-except incest and folk dancing-fry
//////////////////
///////////////////The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." (Albert Einstein)
////////////////////"You cannot prevent and prepare for war at the same time." (Albert Einstein)
///////////////////YOU CANT DANCE BEETHOVEN
///////////////////////////you should try everything once-except incest and folk dancing-fry
//////////////////
Wednesday 28 January 2009
Il est interdit d'interdire.
Il est interdit d'interdire.
(It is forbidden to forbid.)
//////////////////MESOLITHIC CULTURE
The Mesolithic period coincides with the onset of milder climatic conditions with the commencement of the Holocene Period (10,000 BC), which is characteristic of warmer climatic conditions. With this swing towards warmer climatic conditions the face of the earth changed, and with it also affected were the flora (vegetation) and fauna (animals). Man too reacted positively to these changes for his survival. This resulted in 1) Modification of his tool equipment and 2) modification of his living pattern.
Till recently the very existence of the Mesolithic culture in India was in doubt because of the paucity of stratified evidence. But the discoveries in Belan valley, Chittor district, Shorapur doab in Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat have provided enough gleanings to reconstruct Mesolithic evidence in India.
Depending on the evidence from different sites, Mesolithic culture can be divided into four distinct phases.
1. non-geometric tools (epi-palaeolithic) 12,000-8,000 BC.
2. geometric pre-pottery stage (Early Mesolithic-I) 8,000-2,000 BC.
3. geometric tools with pottery (early Mesolithic-II) 5,000-1,500 BC;
4. smaller microliths with precision (Advanced Mesolithic or Proto-Neolithic)
2,000-1,000 BC.
The above division is based on the sequence observed primarily at Chopani Mando and attested at other places.
//////////////////THE TOOLS
The stone tools prepared in Mesolithic period are very small and hence known as ‘microliths’ meaning ‘tiny stones’. Some of the forms which could be identified amongst these tools are the blades, points, lunates, trapezes, scrapers, arrowheads, geometric and non-geometric tools. For the production of these tools fine-grained material like chert chalcedony, agate, jasper, etc was utilized. Often these microliths were used as combination tools by fixing several of them in curved wood or bone or to produce a barbed arrowhead.
LIFE AND SUBSISTENCE PATTERN:
Hunting and gathering vegetal foods are the two main occupations of the Mesolithic people. More and more dependence on the vegetal food was probably one of the reasons behind forcing the human communities to have fixed settlements from Mesolithic period onwards. In this connection the example of Mahadaha in the Ganga valley is worth mentioning. Here it was noticed that very large number of quern, muller, anvil, hammer, etc. have been found which indicate that the people exploited fully the vegetal products. The microlithic tools like blades and scrapers are well suited for processing vegetables. The presence of hearths in the habitations point to consumption of roasted food. The evidence points out that man depended more on vegetal food rather than on animal meat.
HUNTING METHODS
The use of composite tools revolutionized hunting, fishing and food gathering. The Mesolithic paintings at Bhimbetka throw interesting light on the contemporary hunting practices and the kinds of weapons used in hunting. The bow and arrow, barbed spears and sticks were used in hunting. Ring stones were used as stone clubs. Masks in the form of animal heads such as of rhinoceros, bull, deer and monkey were used as disguises to deceive the game. In one of the scenes animals are shown falling down a cliff. Probably animals were driven down a cliff and done to death. The paintings show men carrying dead animals suspended on a wooden bar.
DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS:
Animal bones have been reported from almost all the excavated sites of the Mesolithic settlements, and an analysis of these bones indicated that the bones of the domesticated varieties of animals like cattle, sheep and goat constitute nearly fifty percent.
AGRICULTURE:
The full-fledged agricultural activity witnessed in Neolithic period must have had its roots in the Mesolithic period itself. The storage pits of this period probably indicate some incipient form of agriculture. Seeds of wild variety of rice have been found embedded in the lumps of burnt clay at Chopani Mando.
STRUCTURAL ACTIVITY:
Evidence of structural activity in the form of hutments, paved floor or wind screens come from a number of Mesolithic sites. The houses were roughly circular or oval on plan with postholes around them. Some hutments had stone paved floors. Paved floors and wattle have been noticed at Bagor. The Mesolithic folk at Bhimbetka too made floors with flat stone slabs.
POTTERY:
Pottery has been reported from a number of excavated sites like Langhnaj, Bagor, Nagarjunakonda, Chopani Mando, etc. Pottery came to be associated with the Mesolithic culture after the introduction of geometric tools. At most of the sites the sherds were very small and it was very difficult to make out shapes. Shallow and deep bowls with featureless rim are the most popular types. Pottery was wholly hand-made and usually coarse grained with incised and impressed designs rarely.
CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTS:
The human figures in the rock shelter paintings are shown wearing a loin cloth. Some of the figures are elaborately decorated with ornaments, headgear, feathers and waistbands, shell, ivory and bone beads also are evident from sites.
RECREATION:
Mesolithic man in rejoicing moods is to be seen in the paintings at Bhimbetka. Some of the dances may be of ritual significance. The musical instruments depicted are the blowpipes and horns.
BURIALS AND SPIRITUAL ASPECTS:
The spiritual side of the Mesolithic man is very well represented by a rock-painting of a family mourning the death of a child at Bhimbetka. The dead were very carefully buried. At Langhnaj human skeletons were associated with quartzite pebbles which are not locally available. These were probably brought from the bed of Sabarmati 15 to 20 kms away.
Mesolithic burials have been excavated at Dorthy Dweep and Jambudweep Rock shelters in the Mahadeva hills in MP. Langhnaj, Baghai Khor and Lekhahia in the Mirzapur dt. UP and Sarai nihar Rai and Mahadaha UP. The evidence from different sites indicates that four types of burials were prevalent.
1. Extended burial; 2. Flexed (folded) burial;
3. Fractional (secondary) burial) 4. Double Burials.
Multiple burials were witnessed at Sarai Nihar Rai and Mahadaha. Mesolithic people interred objects like microliths, animal bones and beads along with the dead. Probably the double burials indicate the development of family units, consisting of male and female. In that case family set-up is one of the most important contributions of the Mesolithic period to the modern world.
AESTHETIC ACTIVITIES:
The Mesolithic folk had left behind good evidence of their artistic pursuits in the form of painted rock-shelters. Such rock paintings were noticed in the Mirzapur district UP. And at Bhimbetka near Hoshangabad in MP. The paintings deal primarily with animals which are shown standing, moving, running, grazing, etc. The paintings are generally executed in red ochre but sometimes bluish green, yellow or white color also have been used.
CONCLUSION:
From the above discussion, it is evident that the Mesolithic period represents the transformation of man from a savage to a civilized society.
(It is forbidden to forbid.)
//////////////////MESOLITHIC CULTURE
The Mesolithic period coincides with the onset of milder climatic conditions with the commencement of the Holocene Period (10,000 BC), which is characteristic of warmer climatic conditions. With this swing towards warmer climatic conditions the face of the earth changed, and with it also affected were the flora (vegetation) and fauna (animals). Man too reacted positively to these changes for his survival. This resulted in 1) Modification of his tool equipment and 2) modification of his living pattern.
Till recently the very existence of the Mesolithic culture in India was in doubt because of the paucity of stratified evidence. But the discoveries in Belan valley, Chittor district, Shorapur doab in Karnataka, Rajasthan and Gujarat have provided enough gleanings to reconstruct Mesolithic evidence in India.
Depending on the evidence from different sites, Mesolithic culture can be divided into four distinct phases.
1. non-geometric tools (epi-palaeolithic) 12,000-8,000 BC.
2. geometric pre-pottery stage (Early Mesolithic-I) 8,000-2,000 BC.
3. geometric tools with pottery (early Mesolithic-II) 5,000-1,500 BC;
4. smaller microliths with precision (Advanced Mesolithic or Proto-Neolithic)
2,000-1,000 BC.
The above division is based on the sequence observed primarily at Chopani Mando and attested at other places.
//////////////////THE TOOLS
The stone tools prepared in Mesolithic period are very small and hence known as ‘microliths’ meaning ‘tiny stones’. Some of the forms which could be identified amongst these tools are the blades, points, lunates, trapezes, scrapers, arrowheads, geometric and non-geometric tools. For the production of these tools fine-grained material like chert chalcedony, agate, jasper, etc was utilized. Often these microliths were used as combination tools by fixing several of them in curved wood or bone or to produce a barbed arrowhead.
LIFE AND SUBSISTENCE PATTERN:
Hunting and gathering vegetal foods are the two main occupations of the Mesolithic people. More and more dependence on the vegetal food was probably one of the reasons behind forcing the human communities to have fixed settlements from Mesolithic period onwards. In this connection the example of Mahadaha in the Ganga valley is worth mentioning. Here it was noticed that very large number of quern, muller, anvil, hammer, etc. have been found which indicate that the people exploited fully the vegetal products. The microlithic tools like blades and scrapers are well suited for processing vegetables. The presence of hearths in the habitations point to consumption of roasted food. The evidence points out that man depended more on vegetal food rather than on animal meat.
HUNTING METHODS
The use of composite tools revolutionized hunting, fishing and food gathering. The Mesolithic paintings at Bhimbetka throw interesting light on the contemporary hunting practices and the kinds of weapons used in hunting. The bow and arrow, barbed spears and sticks were used in hunting. Ring stones were used as stone clubs. Masks in the form of animal heads such as of rhinoceros, bull, deer and monkey were used as disguises to deceive the game. In one of the scenes animals are shown falling down a cliff. Probably animals were driven down a cliff and done to death. The paintings show men carrying dead animals suspended on a wooden bar.
DOMESTICATION OF ANIMALS:
Animal bones have been reported from almost all the excavated sites of the Mesolithic settlements, and an analysis of these bones indicated that the bones of the domesticated varieties of animals like cattle, sheep and goat constitute nearly fifty percent.
AGRICULTURE:
The full-fledged agricultural activity witnessed in Neolithic period must have had its roots in the Mesolithic period itself. The storage pits of this period probably indicate some incipient form of agriculture. Seeds of wild variety of rice have been found embedded in the lumps of burnt clay at Chopani Mando.
STRUCTURAL ACTIVITY:
Evidence of structural activity in the form of hutments, paved floor or wind screens come from a number of Mesolithic sites. The houses were roughly circular or oval on plan with postholes around them. Some hutments had stone paved floors. Paved floors and wattle have been noticed at Bagor. The Mesolithic folk at Bhimbetka too made floors with flat stone slabs.
POTTERY:
Pottery has been reported from a number of excavated sites like Langhnaj, Bagor, Nagarjunakonda, Chopani Mando, etc. Pottery came to be associated with the Mesolithic culture after the introduction of geometric tools. At most of the sites the sherds were very small and it was very difficult to make out shapes. Shallow and deep bowls with featureless rim are the most popular types. Pottery was wholly hand-made and usually coarse grained with incised and impressed designs rarely.
CLOTHING AND ORNAMENTS:
The human figures in the rock shelter paintings are shown wearing a loin cloth. Some of the figures are elaborately decorated with ornaments, headgear, feathers and waistbands, shell, ivory and bone beads also are evident from sites.
RECREATION:
Mesolithic man in rejoicing moods is to be seen in the paintings at Bhimbetka. Some of the dances may be of ritual significance. The musical instruments depicted are the blowpipes and horns.
BURIALS AND SPIRITUAL ASPECTS:
The spiritual side of the Mesolithic man is very well represented by a rock-painting of a family mourning the death of a child at Bhimbetka. The dead were very carefully buried. At Langhnaj human skeletons were associated with quartzite pebbles which are not locally available. These were probably brought from the bed of Sabarmati 15 to 20 kms away.
Mesolithic burials have been excavated at Dorthy Dweep and Jambudweep Rock shelters in the Mahadeva hills in MP. Langhnaj, Baghai Khor and Lekhahia in the Mirzapur dt. UP and Sarai nihar Rai and Mahadaha UP. The evidence from different sites indicates that four types of burials were prevalent.
1. Extended burial; 2. Flexed (folded) burial;
3. Fractional (secondary) burial) 4. Double Burials.
Multiple burials were witnessed at Sarai Nihar Rai and Mahadaha. Mesolithic people interred objects like microliths, animal bones and beads along with the dead. Probably the double burials indicate the development of family units, consisting of male and female. In that case family set-up is one of the most important contributions of the Mesolithic period to the modern world.
AESTHETIC ACTIVITIES:
The Mesolithic folk had left behind good evidence of their artistic pursuits in the form of painted rock-shelters. Such rock paintings were noticed in the Mirzapur district UP. And at Bhimbetka near Hoshangabad in MP. The paintings deal primarily with animals which are shown standing, moving, running, grazing, etc. The paintings are generally executed in red ochre but sometimes bluish green, yellow or white color also have been used.
CONCLUSION:
From the above discussion, it is evident that the Mesolithic period represents the transformation of man from a savage to a civilized society.
HUMN,MECH MISFIT
/////////////////AIR-FOOD TRAFFIC PROBLEM-RISK OF CHOKING-ADAPTN TRADE-OFF FR SPEECH
///////////////TED=WOODY NORRIS-FOCUSSING SOUND
///////////////////////GHORELU HINSA
//////////////////////////////////////////He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- Nietzsche
////////////////////HUMAN IMMUNE SYSTEM IS SUPERB
//////////////////DARWIN -MY ANCESTOR
////////////////SHREWSBURY
///////////////MORTY RATES HIGHEST IN INFANCY,REDUCES IN CHILDHOOD
///////////////MAGICAL THINKING
///////////////EVOLN OF LOVE,CHARITY,HONESTY-ONLY IN CONTEXT OF CLOSE KNIT TRIBE-KIN SELECTION,ALTRUISM
/////////////////VARIETY AND FECUNDITY OF NATR AWED DARWIN
///////////////You're only as sick as your secrets. ~Author Unknown
///////////////SO MUCH BEAUY CREATED FOR SO LITTLE PURPOSE-DARWIN
////////////////
A hunter of shadows, himself a shade. ~Homer
///////////////////
You purchase pain with all that joy can give, and die of nothing but a rage to live. ~Alexander Pope
///////////////////consequence-short film-the bullied boy with th epiggy bank turns bank robber-mrdrr
////////////////
///////////////TED=WOODY NORRIS-FOCUSSING SOUND
///////////////////////GHORELU HINSA
//////////////////////////////////////////He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
- Nietzsche
////////////////////HUMAN IMMUNE SYSTEM IS SUPERB
//////////////////DARWIN -MY ANCESTOR
////////////////SHREWSBURY
///////////////MORTY RATES HIGHEST IN INFANCY,REDUCES IN CHILDHOOD
///////////////MAGICAL THINKING
///////////////EVOLN OF LOVE,CHARITY,HONESTY-ONLY IN CONTEXT OF CLOSE KNIT TRIBE-KIN SELECTION,ALTRUISM
/////////////////VARIETY AND FECUNDITY OF NATR AWED DARWIN
///////////////You're only as sick as your secrets. ~Author Unknown
///////////////SO MUCH BEAUY CREATED FOR SO LITTLE PURPOSE-DARWIN
////////////////
A hunter of shadows, himself a shade. ~Homer
///////////////////
You purchase pain with all that joy can give, and die of nothing but a rage to live. ~Alexander Pope
///////////////////consequence-short film-the bullied boy with th epiggy bank turns bank robber-mrdrr
////////////////
GENE,MEME,TEME,NAME,LINGO
10 K YRS=300 GENERATNS
///////////////PENICILLIUM MOULD-FLEMING-1929
////////////////MAXM HUMN LF SPN HAS NOT GN UP-115 EVEN AFTR 100 YRS
///////////////////IGNOMONY OF 50 TH BDAY
//////////////////ALZH DIS GENE EVOLN CAUSES HIGHER IQ,BIGGER BRAIN IN YOUTH
////////////////AGING SLOWER IN PPL WITH GOUT?
////////////////////DTH BY HAYFLICK LIMIT
//////////////////////////What Is the Soul?
Bertrand Russell
1928
One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did. When I was young we all knew, or thought we knew, that a man consists of a soul and a body; that the body is in time and space, but the soul is in time only. Whether the soul survives death was a matter as to which opinions might differ, but that there is a soul was thought to be indubitable. As for the body, the plain man of course considered its existence self-evident, and so did the man of science, but the philosopher was apt to analyse it away after one fashion or another, reducing it usually to ideas in the mind of the man who had the body and anybody else who happened to notice him. The philosopher, however, was not taken seriously, and science remained comfortably materialistic, even in the hands of quite orthodox scientists.
Nowadays these fine old simplicities are lost: physicists assure us that there is no such thing as matter, and psychologists assure us that there is no such thing as mind. This is an unprecedented occurrence. Who ever heard of a cobbler saying that there was no such thing as boots, or a tailor maintaining that all men are really naked? Yet that would have been no odder than what physicists and certain psychologists have been doing. To begin with the latter, some of them attempt to reduce everything that seems to be mental activity to an activity of the body. There are, however, various difficulties in the way of reducing mental activity to physical activity. I do not think we can yet say with any assurance whether these difficulties are or are not insuperable. What we can say, on the basis of physics itself, is that what we have hitherto called our body is really an elaborate scientific construction not corresponding to any physical reality. The modern would-be materialist thus finds himself in a curious position, for, while he may with a certain degree of success reduce the activities of the mind to those of the body, he cannot explain away the fact that the body itself is merely a convenient concept invented by the mind. We find ourselves thus going round and round in a circle: mind is an emanation of body, and body is an invention of mind. Evidently this cannot be quite right, and we have to look for something that is neither mind nor body, out which both can spring.
Let us begin with the body. The plain man thinks that material objects must certainly exist, since they are evident to the senses. Whatever else may be doubted, it is certain that anything you can bump into must be real; this is the plain man's metaphysic. This is all very well, but the physicist comes along and shows that you never bump into anything: even when you run your hand along a stone wall, you do not really touch it. When you think you touch a thing, there are certain electrons and protons, forming part of your body, which are attracted and repelled by certain electrons and protons in the thing you think you are touching, but there is no actual contact. The electrons and protons in your body, becoming agitated by nearness to the other electrons and protons are disturbed, and transmit a disturbance along your nerves to the brain; the effect in the brain is what is necessary to your sensation of contact, and by suitable experiments this sensation can be made quite deceptive. The electrons and protons themselves, however, are only crude first approximations, a way of collecting into a bundle either trains of waves or the statistical probabilities of various different kinds of events. Thus matter has become altogether too ghostly to be used as an adequate stick with which to beat the mind. Matter in motion, which used to seem so unquestionable, turns out to be a concept quite inadequate for the needs of physics.
Nevertheless modern science gives no indication whatever of the existence of the soul or mind as an entity; indeed the reasons for disbelieving in it are very much of the same kind as the reasons for disbelieving in matter. Mind and matter were something like the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown; the end of the battle is not the victory of one or the other, but the discovery that both are only heraldic inventions. The world consists of events, not of things that endure for a long time and have changing properties. Events can be collected into groups by their causal relations. If the causal relations are of one sort, the resulting group of events may be called a physical object, and if the causal relations are of another sort, the resulting group may be called a mind. Any event that occurs inside a man's head will belong to groups of both kinds; considered as belonging to a group of one kind, it is a constituent of his brain, and considered as belonging to a group of the other kind, it is a constituent of his mind.
Thus both mind and matter are merely convenient ways of organizing events. There can be no reason for supposing that either a piece of mind or a piece of matter is immortal. The sun is supposed to be losing matter at the rate of millions of tons a minute. The most essential characteristic of mind is memory, and there is no reason whatever to suppose that the memory associated with a given person survives that person's death. Indeed there is every reason to think the opposite, for memory is clearly connected with a certain kind of brain structure, and since this structure decays at death, there is every reason to suppose that memory also must cease. Although metaphysical materialism cannot be considered true, yet emotionally the world is pretty much the same as I would be if the materialists were in the right. I think the opponents of materialism have always been actuated by two main desires: the first to prove that the mind is immortal, and the second to prove that the ultimate power in the universe is mental rather than physical. In both these respects, I think the materialists were in the right. Our desires, it is true, have considerable power on the earth's surface; the greater part of the land on this planet has a quite different aspect from that which it would have if men had not utilized it to extract food and wealth. But our power is very strictly limited. We cannot at present do anything whatever to the sun or moon or even to the interior of the earth, and there is not the faintest reason to suppose that what happens in regions to which our power does not extend has any mental causes. That is to say, to put the matter in a nutshell, there is no reason to think that except on the earth's surface anything happens because somebody wishes it to happen. And since our power on the earth's surface is entirely dependent upon the sun, we could hardly realize any of our wishes if the sun grew could. It is of course rash to dogmatize as to what science may achieve in the future. We may learn to prolong human existence longer than now seems possible, but if there is any truth in modern physics, more particularly in the second law of thermodynamics, we cannot hope that the human race will continue for ever. Some people may find this conclusion gloomy, but if we are honest with ourselves, we shall have to admit that what is going to happen many millions of years hence has no very great emotional interest for us here and now. And science, while it diminishes our cosmic pretensions, enormously increases our terrestrial comfort. That is why, in spite of the horror of the theologians, science has on the whole been tolerated.
/////////////////////SOCIAL TRUTH FRM A MELANCHOLIC EXPERIENCE
//////////////////////S FRY PODCASTS
///////////////////PATFALL IN THE AMZN
//////////////////NEVADA MISSMI-SOURCE OF THE AMZN
///////////////////ASHANICAS OF PRU
///////////////PENICILLIUM MOULD-FLEMING-1929
////////////////MAXM HUMN LF SPN HAS NOT GN UP-115 EVEN AFTR 100 YRS
///////////////////IGNOMONY OF 50 TH BDAY
//////////////////ALZH DIS GENE EVOLN CAUSES HIGHER IQ,BIGGER BRAIN IN YOUTH
////////////////AGING SLOWER IN PPL WITH GOUT?
////////////////////DTH BY HAYFLICK LIMIT
//////////////////////////What Is the Soul?
Bertrand Russell
1928
One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did. When I was young we all knew, or thought we knew, that a man consists of a soul and a body; that the body is in time and space, but the soul is in time only. Whether the soul survives death was a matter as to which opinions might differ, but that there is a soul was thought to be indubitable. As for the body, the plain man of course considered its existence self-evident, and so did the man of science, but the philosopher was apt to analyse it away after one fashion or another, reducing it usually to ideas in the mind of the man who had the body and anybody else who happened to notice him. The philosopher, however, was not taken seriously, and science remained comfortably materialistic, even in the hands of quite orthodox scientists.
Nowadays these fine old simplicities are lost: physicists assure us that there is no such thing as matter, and psychologists assure us that there is no such thing as mind. This is an unprecedented occurrence. Who ever heard of a cobbler saying that there was no such thing as boots, or a tailor maintaining that all men are really naked? Yet that would have been no odder than what physicists and certain psychologists have been doing. To begin with the latter, some of them attempt to reduce everything that seems to be mental activity to an activity of the body. There are, however, various difficulties in the way of reducing mental activity to physical activity. I do not think we can yet say with any assurance whether these difficulties are or are not insuperable. What we can say, on the basis of physics itself, is that what we have hitherto called our body is really an elaborate scientific construction not corresponding to any physical reality. The modern would-be materialist thus finds himself in a curious position, for, while he may with a certain degree of success reduce the activities of the mind to those of the body, he cannot explain away the fact that the body itself is merely a convenient concept invented by the mind. We find ourselves thus going round and round in a circle: mind is an emanation of body, and body is an invention of mind. Evidently this cannot be quite right, and we have to look for something that is neither mind nor body, out which both can spring.
Let us begin with the body. The plain man thinks that material objects must certainly exist, since they are evident to the senses. Whatever else may be doubted, it is certain that anything you can bump into must be real; this is the plain man's metaphysic. This is all very well, but the physicist comes along and shows that you never bump into anything: even when you run your hand along a stone wall, you do not really touch it. When you think you touch a thing, there are certain electrons and protons, forming part of your body, which are attracted and repelled by certain electrons and protons in the thing you think you are touching, but there is no actual contact. The electrons and protons in your body, becoming agitated by nearness to the other electrons and protons are disturbed, and transmit a disturbance along your nerves to the brain; the effect in the brain is what is necessary to your sensation of contact, and by suitable experiments this sensation can be made quite deceptive. The electrons and protons themselves, however, are only crude first approximations, a way of collecting into a bundle either trains of waves or the statistical probabilities of various different kinds of events. Thus matter has become altogether too ghostly to be used as an adequate stick with which to beat the mind. Matter in motion, which used to seem so unquestionable, turns out to be a concept quite inadequate for the needs of physics.
Nevertheless modern science gives no indication whatever of the existence of the soul or mind as an entity; indeed the reasons for disbelieving in it are very much of the same kind as the reasons for disbelieving in matter. Mind and matter were something like the lion and the unicorn fighting for the crown; the end of the battle is not the victory of one or the other, but the discovery that both are only heraldic inventions. The world consists of events, not of things that endure for a long time and have changing properties. Events can be collected into groups by their causal relations. If the causal relations are of one sort, the resulting group of events may be called a physical object, and if the causal relations are of another sort, the resulting group may be called a mind. Any event that occurs inside a man's head will belong to groups of both kinds; considered as belonging to a group of one kind, it is a constituent of his brain, and considered as belonging to a group of the other kind, it is a constituent of his mind.
Thus both mind and matter are merely convenient ways of organizing events. There can be no reason for supposing that either a piece of mind or a piece of matter is immortal. The sun is supposed to be losing matter at the rate of millions of tons a minute. The most essential characteristic of mind is memory, and there is no reason whatever to suppose that the memory associated with a given person survives that person's death. Indeed there is every reason to think the opposite, for memory is clearly connected with a certain kind of brain structure, and since this structure decays at death, there is every reason to suppose that memory also must cease. Although metaphysical materialism cannot be considered true, yet emotionally the world is pretty much the same as I would be if the materialists were in the right. I think the opponents of materialism have always been actuated by two main desires: the first to prove that the mind is immortal, and the second to prove that the ultimate power in the universe is mental rather than physical. In both these respects, I think the materialists were in the right. Our desires, it is true, have considerable power on the earth's surface; the greater part of the land on this planet has a quite different aspect from that which it would have if men had not utilized it to extract food and wealth. But our power is very strictly limited. We cannot at present do anything whatever to the sun or moon or even to the interior of the earth, and there is not the faintest reason to suppose that what happens in regions to which our power does not extend has any mental causes. That is to say, to put the matter in a nutshell, there is no reason to think that except on the earth's surface anything happens because somebody wishes it to happen. And since our power on the earth's surface is entirely dependent upon the sun, we could hardly realize any of our wishes if the sun grew could. It is of course rash to dogmatize as to what science may achieve in the future. We may learn to prolong human existence longer than now seems possible, but if there is any truth in modern physics, more particularly in the second law of thermodynamics, we cannot hope that the human race will continue for ever. Some people may find this conclusion gloomy, but if we are honest with ourselves, we shall have to admit that what is going to happen many millions of years hence has no very great emotional interest for us here and now. And science, while it diminishes our cosmic pretensions, enormously increases our terrestrial comfort. That is why, in spite of the horror of the theologians, science has on the whole been tolerated.
/////////////////////SOCIAL TRUTH FRM A MELANCHOLIC EXPERIENCE
//////////////////////S FRY PODCASTS
///////////////////PATFALL IN THE AMZN
//////////////////NEVADA MISSMI-SOURCE OF THE AMZN
///////////////////ASHANICAS OF PRU
Monday 26 January 2009
IND-60TH RPBLC DAY
/////////////////BLL GTS-HOW A GEEK CHNGD THE WRLD
//////////////////HLN AND DGLS HS CHRTY
//////////////////////
//////////////////HLN AND DGLS HS CHRTY
//////////////////////
WHY WE GT SCK
//////////////IDENTICAL TWINS-FERTLZD EGG DIVIDES TO 2 SIMILAR GENOTYPES-ASEXUAL REPRODN
//////////////NATURAL SELECTN DOES NOT SELECT FOR HEALTH,ONLY FOR REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS-EG HUNTINGTON,MANIFESTS AFTER 40,MDP-INCR SXL ACTY
/////////////Intaxication:
Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
/////////////SINO THE TIMES
/////////////IF A GENE INCR REPROD SUCCESS,BY WHATEVER MECH-IT WILL DO-EG MDP
///////////////AFRICAN AM HAVE LESS SICKL GENE COMPRD TO AFRICANS,LESS THAN EXPLAINED BY INTERRACIAL MARRG
/////////////Stephenie Meyer
"I was thinking about how disjointedly time seemed to flow, passing in a blur at times, with single images standing out more clearly than others. And then, at other times, every second was significant, etched in my mind."
///////////////G6PD PROTECTS AGNST MALARIA
////////////CF GENE-?PROTECTS AGNST DIARRHEAL DTHS?
//////////////TAY SACHS PROTECTS AGNST TB?
///////////////FRAGL -X INCR REPROD SUCCESS OF FEMALES
/////////////////DR3 GENE-FOR DM1-AND PKU GENE REDUCES RISK OF ABORTION
////////////////////PKU GENE EFFECTS CAN BE REDUCED BY ENVIRONMENTAL MANIPULN
////////////////////DAWKINS-BODY IS GENES WAY OF MAKING MORE GENES
//////////////////ELEVATION OF OURSELVES BEYOND OURSELVES
////////////////////SHERWIN NULAND,TED
///////////////////////LVING IN DESPAIR AND DISPARITY
//////////////////////HUMAN KIND NESS
//////////////////////HIPPOCRATES-2400 YA
/////////////////I JST SAY-FCK IT
///////////////////BPM =Chappelle & Diogenes: Fuck It!
Cynicism today doesn't mean what it used to when it was a respectable philosophical school of thought in ancient Greece. Cynicism represented a virtuous life predicated on the spiritual benefits of leading a simple life lived in accordance with nature. This simple way of life required the rejection of superficial social conventions and materialistic desires, for these represent distractions from true spiritual enlightenment, as well as create self-defeating expectations that preclude the possibility of achieving happiness.
The most famous of the cynics was Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub or a barrel and carried a lamp around during the day, claiming he was looking for an honest man. Diogenes famously asked Alexander the Great once to get out of his sunlight when the great conqueror told him he would grant him any wish he might have. If Alexander were not himself, he once declared, he would wish to be the philosopher Diogenes.
Now it seems Diogenes has created a partnership with Dave Chappelle to sing children's song and teach the little rascals some lessons about the simple life :)
/////////////////NETHERLAND
//////////////////SDM=DICKENSIAN CHLD CRUELTY
/////////////////////BARRATTS SHS CLSS DN
///////////////////
//////////////NATURAL SELECTN DOES NOT SELECT FOR HEALTH,ONLY FOR REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS-EG HUNTINGTON,MANIFESTS AFTER 40,MDP-INCR SXL ACTY
/////////////Intaxication:
Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
/////////////SINO THE TIMES
/////////////IF A GENE INCR REPROD SUCCESS,BY WHATEVER MECH-IT WILL DO-EG MDP
///////////////AFRICAN AM HAVE LESS SICKL GENE COMPRD TO AFRICANS,LESS THAN EXPLAINED BY INTERRACIAL MARRG
/////////////Stephenie Meyer
"I was thinking about how disjointedly time seemed to flow, passing in a blur at times, with single images standing out more clearly than others. And then, at other times, every second was significant, etched in my mind."
///////////////G6PD PROTECTS AGNST MALARIA
////////////CF GENE-?PROTECTS AGNST DIARRHEAL DTHS?
//////////////TAY SACHS PROTECTS AGNST TB?
///////////////FRAGL -X INCR REPROD SUCCESS OF FEMALES
/////////////////DR3 GENE-FOR DM1-AND PKU GENE REDUCES RISK OF ABORTION
////////////////////PKU GENE EFFECTS CAN BE REDUCED BY ENVIRONMENTAL MANIPULN
////////////////////DAWKINS-BODY IS GENES WAY OF MAKING MORE GENES
//////////////////ELEVATION OF OURSELVES BEYOND OURSELVES
////////////////////SHERWIN NULAND,TED
///////////////////////LVING IN DESPAIR AND DISPARITY
//////////////////////HUMAN KIND NESS
//////////////////////HIPPOCRATES-2400 YA
/////////////////I JST SAY-FCK IT
///////////////////BPM =Chappelle & Diogenes: Fuck It!
Cynicism today doesn't mean what it used to when it was a respectable philosophical school of thought in ancient Greece. Cynicism represented a virtuous life predicated on the spiritual benefits of leading a simple life lived in accordance with nature. This simple way of life required the rejection of superficial social conventions and materialistic desires, for these represent distractions from true spiritual enlightenment, as well as create self-defeating expectations that preclude the possibility of achieving happiness.
The most famous of the cynics was Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub or a barrel and carried a lamp around during the day, claiming he was looking for an honest man. Diogenes famously asked Alexander the Great once to get out of his sunlight when the great conqueror told him he would grant him any wish he might have. If Alexander were not himself, he once declared, he would wish to be the philosopher Diogenes.
Now it seems Diogenes has created a partnership with Dave Chappelle to sing children's song and teach the little rascals some lessons about the simple life :)
/////////////////NETHERLAND
//////////////////SDM=DICKENSIAN CHLD CRUELTY
/////////////////////BARRATTS SHS CLSS DN
///////////////////
STPHN FRY PDGRMS
//////////////IS LANGUAGE FTHR OF THOUGHT?
//////////////////LINGUIFY FOR A LIVING
//////////////////WAH WAH WAH
//////////////////MUCH ELSE BESIDES
/////////////////BRUTALISM-SOCIALISM-CAPITALISM
//////////////////Some autistic people say that the Internet has liberated them.
It's true. There is something exciting and reassuring about communicating over the Internet. There is no eye contact, and you aren't thrown off by the intricacies of body language because everything is written down.
SEVERE MALE BRAINNESS
//////////////////PINKER ON CHOMSKIAN IDEAS
////////////////////MIND COMES PRE-EQUIPPED WITH LANGUAGE
////////////////////LANGUAGE INSTINCT
///////////////////PARENTS DONT TEACH LANGUAGE-EG WASH,STAIRS
//////////////////Here's to the Crazy Ones
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round
pegs in the square holes - the
ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules and
they have no respect for
the status quo. You can praise
them, disagree with them,
quote them, disbelieve them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing that you
can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
- Jack Kerouac
quoted in an Apple Computer Ad, 1997
/////////////////DEVILS POOL.ZMBBWE
//////////////////HE TABLED THE MOTION AND CHAIRED THE MEETING
////////////////EVOLN-RESTLESS CONTINUOUS CHANGE
///////////////////WORDS ARE FREE AND CARRY HX OF EVOLN
///////////////LANGUAGE PRECEDED THOUGHT
/////////////////ONE NATION UNDER CCTV
/////////////////TECH HEAD
/////////////////
//////////////////LINGUIFY FOR A LIVING
//////////////////WAH WAH WAH
//////////////////MUCH ELSE BESIDES
/////////////////BRUTALISM-SOCIALISM-CAPITALISM
//////////////////Some autistic people say that the Internet has liberated them.
It's true. There is something exciting and reassuring about communicating over the Internet. There is no eye contact, and you aren't thrown off by the intricacies of body language because everything is written down.
SEVERE MALE BRAINNESS
//////////////////PINKER ON CHOMSKIAN IDEAS
////////////////////MIND COMES PRE-EQUIPPED WITH LANGUAGE
////////////////////LANGUAGE INSTINCT
///////////////////PARENTS DONT TEACH LANGUAGE-EG WASH,STAIRS
//////////////////Here's to the Crazy Ones
Here's to the crazy ones.
The misfits. The rebels.
The troublemakers. The round
pegs in the square holes - the
ones who see things differently.
They're not fond of rules and
they have no respect for
the status quo. You can praise
them, disagree with them,
quote them, disbelieve them,
glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing that you
can't do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
- Jack Kerouac
quoted in an Apple Computer Ad, 1997
/////////////////DEVILS POOL.ZMBBWE
//////////////////HE TABLED THE MOTION AND CHAIRED THE MEETING
////////////////EVOLN-RESTLESS CONTINUOUS CHANGE
///////////////////WORDS ARE FREE AND CARRY HX OF EVOLN
///////////////LANGUAGE PRECEDED THOUGHT
/////////////////ONE NATION UNDER CCTV
/////////////////TECH HEAD
/////////////////
LEAF OFFRING
Chapter IX: The Yoga of the Royal Science and Royal Secret
IX.26. PATRAM PUSHPAM PHALAM TOYAM YO ME BHAKTYAA PRAYACCHATI;
TADAHAM BHAKTYUPAHRITAMASHNAAMI PRAYATAATMANAH.
(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
Whoever offers Me with devotion and a pure mind (heart), a leaf, a
flower, a fruit or a little water-I accept (this offering).
IX.27. YATKAROSHI YADASHNAASI YAJJUHOSHI DADAASI YAT;
YATTAPASYASI KAUNTEYA TATKURUSHVA MADARPANAM.
Whatever thou doest, whatever thou eatest, whatever thou offerest
in sacrifice, whatever thou givest, whatever thou practiseth as
austerity, O Arjuna, do it as an offering unto Me!
//////////////////dreaded “triple class” resistance — that is, resistance to NRTIs, NNRTIs, and PIs.
///////////////////Warrior gene' predicts aggressive behavior after provocation
Published: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 10:15 in Psychology & Sociology
Learn more about: aggressive behavior london school of economics provocation rose mcdermott university of california santa barbara western populations
Individuals with the so-called "warrior gene" display higher levels of aggression in response to provocation, according to new research co-authored by Rose McDermott, professor of political science at Brown University. In the experiment, which is the first to examine a behavioral measure of aggression in response to provocation, subjects were asked to cause physical pain to an opponent they believed had taken money from them by administering varying amounts of hot sauce. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to McDermott, the research team included Dustin Tingley of Princeton University, Jonathan Cowden of the University of California–Santa Barbara, Giovanni Frazetto from the London School of Economics, and Dominic Johnson from the University of Edinburgh. Their experiment synthesized work in psychology and behavioral economics.
Monoamine oxidase A is an enzyme that breaks down important neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. The enzyme is regulated by monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA). Humans have various forms of the gene, resulting in different levels of enzymatic activity. People with the low-activity form (MAOA-L) produce less of the enzyme, while the high-activity form (MAOA-H) produces more of the enzyme.
Several studies have found a correlation between the low-activity form of MAOA and aggression in observational and survey-based studies. Only about a third of people in Western populations have the low-activity form of MAOA. By comparison, low-activity MAOA has been reported to be much more frequent (approaching two-thirds of people) in some populations that had a history of warfare. This led to a controversy over MAOA being dubbed the "warrior gene."
The PNAS paper is the first experimental test of whether MAOA-L individuals display higher levels of actual behavioral aggression in response to provocation. A total of 78 subjects took part in the experiment over networked computers (all were male students from the University of California–Santa Barbara). Each subject (A) first performed a vocabulary task in which they earned money. Then they were told that an anonymous partner (B), linked over the network, could choose to take some of their earnings away from them. The original subject (A) could then choose to punish the taker (B) by forcing them to eat unpleasantly hot (spicy) sauce — but they had to pay to do so, so administering punishment was costly. In reality, the "partner" who took money away was a computer, which allowed the researchers to control responses. No one actually ingested hot sauce.
Their results demonstrate that
* Low-activity MAOA subjects displayed slightly higher levels of aggression overall than high-activity MAOA subjects.
* There was strong evidence for a gene-by-environment interaction, such that MAOA is less associated with the occurrence of aggression in the low-provocation condition (when the amount of money taken was low), but significantly predicted aggression in a high-provocation situation (when the amount of money taken was high).
The results support previous research suggesting that MAOA influences aggressive behavior, with potentially important implications for interpersonal aggression, violence, political decision-making, and crime. The finding of genetic influences on aggression and punishment behavior also questions the recently proposed idea that humans are "altruistic" punishers, who willingly punish free-riders for the good of the group. These results support theories of cooperation that propose there are mixed strategies in the population. Some people may punish more than others, and there may be an underlying evolutionary logic for doing so.
Source: Brown University
MAO RELATED WARRIOR GENE
//////////////////
"The chains of my thoughts that bind me fall away leaving me in the peace and serenity of momentary time."
//////////////////Given the high error rate with “parent-reported wheeze” there is a need to reexamine the extensive literature on the epidemiology of wheeze in infants and young children, because parent-reported wheeze is unconfirmed by a clinician.
/////////////////Perceptions and Pathophysiology of Dyspnea and Exercise Intolerance
by Miles Weinberger, Mutasim Abu-Hasan
Dyspnea is a complex psychophysiologic sensation that requires intact afferent and efferent pathways for the full perception of the neuromechanical dissociation between the respiratory effort attempted and the work actually accomplished. The sensation is triggered or accentuated by a variety of receptors located in the chest wall, respiratory muscles, lung parenchyma, carotid body, and brain stem. The sensation of dyspnea is stronger in patients with higher scores for anxiety and has been reported in patients with anxiety disorders with no cardiopulmonary disease. These observations demonstrate the importance of cerebral cognition in this complex symptom. Ten cases are presented that illustrate different clinical manifestations of dyspnea.
/////////////////Jan 9, 2009 10:18 AM
Chest Pain and Chest Wall Deformity
by Janaki Gokhale, Steven M. Selbst
Chest pain and chest wall deformities are common in children. Although most children with chest pain have a benign diagnosis, some have a serious etiology for pain, so the complaint must be addressed carefully. Unfortunately, there are few prospective studies to evaluate this complaint in children. Serious causes for chest pain are rare, making it difficult to develop clear guidelines for evaluation and management. The child who appears well, has a normal physical examination, and lacks worrisome history deserves reassurance and careful follow-up rather than extensive studies. Multicenter studies are needed to better define this important symptom.
PCNA=
////////////////////Jan 9, 2009 10:18 AM
Recurrent Respiratory Infections
by Andrew Bush
The child who has recurrent infections poses one of the most difficult diagnostic challenges in pediatrics. The clinician faces a two-fold challenge in determining first whether the child is normal or has a serious disease, and then, in the latter case, how to confirm or exclude the diagnosis with the minimum number of the least invasive tests. It is hoped that, in the absence of good-quality evidence for most clinical scenarios, the experience-based approach described in this article may prove a useful guide to the clinician.
////////////////Acute Bronchiolitis and Croup
by Mark L. Everard
Croup and acute bronchiolitis are common forms of virally induced respiratory disease in infancy and early childhood. There is good evidence that corticosteroids can ameliorate disease severity and alter the natural history of symptoms in patients who have croup and that temporary symptomatic benefit can be obtained from the use of nebulized adrenaline. The principle weakness when reviewing therapeutic interventions for acute bronchiolitis is the lack of a clear diagnostic test or definition. Current evidence suggests that oxygen is the only useful pharmacologic agent for correcting hypoxia.
//////////////////FRIENDSHIP-THE SHIP THAT NVR SINKS
////////////////////Getting kids to eat vegetables
Several years ago, I did a study in graduate school to determine why some children like vegetables and many do not. Two findings emerged from my "research" with 6 and 7 year olds: Children who had opportunity to help grow and/or prepare vegetables liked to eat them. And even when moms prepared most of the meals, kids tended to copy how dad ate.
///////////////////KUDREMUNKH-BNGLOR FTHR SAGA-?1976
//////////////////New study provides further evidence that apple juice can delay onset of Alzheimer's disease
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that we can take steps to delay age-related cognitive decline, including in some cases that which accompanies Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
////////////////////////
IX.26. PATRAM PUSHPAM PHALAM TOYAM YO ME BHAKTYAA PRAYACCHATI;
TADAHAM BHAKTYUPAHRITAMASHNAAMI PRAYATAATMANAH.
(Krishna speaking to Arjuna)
Whoever offers Me with devotion and a pure mind (heart), a leaf, a
flower, a fruit or a little water-I accept (this offering).
IX.27. YATKAROSHI YADASHNAASI YAJJUHOSHI DADAASI YAT;
YATTAPASYASI KAUNTEYA TATKURUSHVA MADARPANAM.
Whatever thou doest, whatever thou eatest, whatever thou offerest
in sacrifice, whatever thou givest, whatever thou practiseth as
austerity, O Arjuna, do it as an offering unto Me!
//////////////////dreaded “triple class” resistance — that is, resistance to NRTIs, NNRTIs, and PIs.
///////////////////Warrior gene' predicts aggressive behavior after provocation
Published: Wednesday, January 21, 2009 - 10:15 in Psychology & Sociology
Learn more about: aggressive behavior london school of economics provocation rose mcdermott university of california santa barbara western populations
Individuals with the so-called "warrior gene" display higher levels of aggression in response to provocation, according to new research co-authored by Rose McDermott, professor of political science at Brown University. In the experiment, which is the first to examine a behavioral measure of aggression in response to provocation, subjects were asked to cause physical pain to an opponent they believed had taken money from them by administering varying amounts of hot sauce. The findings are published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In addition to McDermott, the research team included Dustin Tingley of Princeton University, Jonathan Cowden of the University of California–Santa Barbara, Giovanni Frazetto from the London School of Economics, and Dominic Johnson from the University of Edinburgh. Their experiment synthesized work in psychology and behavioral economics.
Monoamine oxidase A is an enzyme that breaks down important neurotransmitters in the brain, including dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin. The enzyme is regulated by monoamine oxidase A gene (MAOA). Humans have various forms of the gene, resulting in different levels of enzymatic activity. People with the low-activity form (MAOA-L) produce less of the enzyme, while the high-activity form (MAOA-H) produces more of the enzyme.
Several studies have found a correlation between the low-activity form of MAOA and aggression in observational and survey-based studies. Only about a third of people in Western populations have the low-activity form of MAOA. By comparison, low-activity MAOA has been reported to be much more frequent (approaching two-thirds of people) in some populations that had a history of warfare. This led to a controversy over MAOA being dubbed the "warrior gene."
The PNAS paper is the first experimental test of whether MAOA-L individuals display higher levels of actual behavioral aggression in response to provocation. A total of 78 subjects took part in the experiment over networked computers (all were male students from the University of California–Santa Barbara). Each subject (A) first performed a vocabulary task in which they earned money. Then they were told that an anonymous partner (B), linked over the network, could choose to take some of their earnings away from them. The original subject (A) could then choose to punish the taker (B) by forcing them to eat unpleasantly hot (spicy) sauce — but they had to pay to do so, so administering punishment was costly. In reality, the "partner" who took money away was a computer, which allowed the researchers to control responses. No one actually ingested hot sauce.
Their results demonstrate that
* Low-activity MAOA subjects displayed slightly higher levels of aggression overall than high-activity MAOA subjects.
* There was strong evidence for a gene-by-environment interaction, such that MAOA is less associated with the occurrence of aggression in the low-provocation condition (when the amount of money taken was low), but significantly predicted aggression in a high-provocation situation (when the amount of money taken was high).
The results support previous research suggesting that MAOA influences aggressive behavior, with potentially important implications for interpersonal aggression, violence, political decision-making, and crime. The finding of genetic influences on aggression and punishment behavior also questions the recently proposed idea that humans are "altruistic" punishers, who willingly punish free-riders for the good of the group. These results support theories of cooperation that propose there are mixed strategies in the population. Some people may punish more than others, and there may be an underlying evolutionary logic for doing so.
Source: Brown University
MAO RELATED WARRIOR GENE
//////////////////
"The chains of my thoughts that bind me fall away leaving me in the peace and serenity of momentary time."
//////////////////Given the high error rate with “parent-reported wheeze” there is a need to reexamine the extensive literature on the epidemiology of wheeze in infants and young children, because parent-reported wheeze is unconfirmed by a clinician.
/////////////////Perceptions and Pathophysiology of Dyspnea and Exercise Intolerance
by Miles Weinberger, Mutasim Abu-Hasan
Dyspnea is a complex psychophysiologic sensation that requires intact afferent and efferent pathways for the full perception of the neuromechanical dissociation between the respiratory effort attempted and the work actually accomplished. The sensation is triggered or accentuated by a variety of receptors located in the chest wall, respiratory muscles, lung parenchyma, carotid body, and brain stem. The sensation of dyspnea is stronger in patients with higher scores for anxiety and has been reported in patients with anxiety disorders with no cardiopulmonary disease. These observations demonstrate the importance of cerebral cognition in this complex symptom. Ten cases are presented that illustrate different clinical manifestations of dyspnea.
/////////////////Jan 9, 2009 10:18 AM
Chest Pain and Chest Wall Deformity
by Janaki Gokhale, Steven M. Selbst
Chest pain and chest wall deformities are common in children. Although most children with chest pain have a benign diagnosis, some have a serious etiology for pain, so the complaint must be addressed carefully. Unfortunately, there are few prospective studies to evaluate this complaint in children. Serious causes for chest pain are rare, making it difficult to develop clear guidelines for evaluation and management. The child who appears well, has a normal physical examination, and lacks worrisome history deserves reassurance and careful follow-up rather than extensive studies. Multicenter studies are needed to better define this important symptom.
PCNA=
////////////////////Jan 9, 2009 10:18 AM
Recurrent Respiratory Infections
by Andrew Bush
The child who has recurrent infections poses one of the most difficult diagnostic challenges in pediatrics. The clinician faces a two-fold challenge in determining first whether the child is normal or has a serious disease, and then, in the latter case, how to confirm or exclude the diagnosis with the minimum number of the least invasive tests. It is hoped that, in the absence of good-quality evidence for most clinical scenarios, the experience-based approach described in this article may prove a useful guide to the clinician.
////////////////Acute Bronchiolitis and Croup
by Mark L. Everard
Croup and acute bronchiolitis are common forms of virally induced respiratory disease in infancy and early childhood. There is good evidence that corticosteroids can ameliorate disease severity and alter the natural history of symptoms in patients who have croup and that temporary symptomatic benefit can be obtained from the use of nebulized adrenaline. The principle weakness when reviewing therapeutic interventions for acute bronchiolitis is the lack of a clear diagnostic test or definition. Current evidence suggests that oxygen is the only useful pharmacologic agent for correcting hypoxia.
//////////////////FRIENDSHIP-THE SHIP THAT NVR SINKS
////////////////////Getting kids to eat vegetables
Several years ago, I did a study in graduate school to determine why some children like vegetables and many do not. Two findings emerged from my "research" with 6 and 7 year olds: Children who had opportunity to help grow and/or prepare vegetables liked to eat them. And even when moms prepared most of the meals, kids tended to copy how dad ate.
///////////////////KUDREMUNKH-BNGLOR FTHR SAGA-?1976
//////////////////New study provides further evidence that apple juice can delay onset of Alzheimer's disease
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that we can take steps to delay age-related cognitive decline, including in some cases that which accompanies Alzheimer's disease, according to a study published in the January 2009 issue of the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease.
////////////////////////
NITI PULISH STRKS AT NNGLR
/////////////////DORUS JB CT
/////////////////8 TECTONIC PLATES IN EARTH
//////////////////Scientists to link virus to obesity fight
Jan 26 2009 By Emily Cook
ONE in three fat people could have "caught" obesity in much the same way as they might catch a cold, scientists will claim tonight.
The highly infectious cold-like virus, which causes coughs and sore throats, also attacks tissue and causes fat cells to multiply - leading to massive weight gain.
Spread by coughs, sneezes and dirty hands, the airborne virus may also cause stomach upsets and conjunctivitis.
Previous studies have shown that chickens and mice infected with AD-36 put on weight more quickly than uninfected animals - even when they don't eat any more food.
Studies show that almost a third of obese adults carry the virus, compared with 11 per cent of lean men and women.
Professor Nikhil Dhurandhar, who led the research, says AD-36 continues to add weight gain long after those infected recover from the more obvious symptoms it causes.
Dr Dhurandhar will make the claims on BBC2's Horizon.
////////////////365 DAZE
//////////////////HAWAII ,ICELAND LAVA-FROM TOP OF MANTLE-CRACKS IN THE CRUST
///////////////////I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do!. That is character."
– Theodore Roosevelt
//////////////////OUTER CORE-MOLTEN Ni,Fe-EARTH
////////////////brain fart (noun): an instance of forgetfulness or bad judgment
Example of use: I totally forgot her name, it was just a major brain fart.
//////////////////Smart Pills
by Nicholas Carr
In response to the flood of prescription brain stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall on college campuses, a group of academics from Stanford, Harvard, Cambridge, Penn, and other schools say the time has come to allow such drugs to be prescribed to healthy people for “cognitive enhancement.”
/////////////////////LONGFELLOW=Christmas Bells
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”
///////////////////Misprision (noun)
Pronunciation: [mis-'pri-zhên]
Definition: (1) Malfeasance or misconduct, especially in a public office; (2) failure to report or prevent a crime, as misprision of treason; (3) miscomprehension, mistaking something for something else or underestimating it.
Usage: Very few words carry warning labels but today's word indicates what you can expect if you carry out the activity it refers to: prison. In sense (3) above, this noun is related to the verb misprize "to mistake, misperceive, underestimate; to despise, scorn."
Suggested Usage: Today's word has been used in so many ways, it is difficult to sort them all out. Keep in mind the two meanings most widely used. The first relates to misconduct in public office: "It was difficult for Les Cheatham to comprehend why giving the building contract to his brother-in-law was seen as misprision by those in the school district." The second meaning is to mistake one thing for another or to underestimate it, "Cheatham's misprision of the school district's dissatisfaction with this behavior allowed him to repeat his error, which led to his downfall."
//////////////////INFO DIETING
//////////////////And then you happily proceed to NOT use any of those features ever again after the first time you try them. This shows you that you didn’t really buy the gadget for those features. You bought it because you had a rush of emotions and you really WANTED that gadget at the store. And when someone points out you made a silly decision there, you rationalize with all the features to show you actually made a GOOD decision. So there’s your first reason why we humans rationalize:
We rationalize to protect our ego.
/////////////////////Enjoy the journey as well as the destination
////////////////The world can be ruled by letting things run their course; it cannot be ruled by interfering. (Lao Tse)
LNTIOC
//////////////////LIG-TIE
LET IT GO-TK IT EASY
/////////////////////Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.
- Michelangelo
/////////////////////No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.
- Long, Lazarus
//////////////////////Jan 24, 2009 (2 days ago)
Vitamin D Linked With Cognitive Impairment
by Rick Nauert, Ph.D.
Researchers have identified a relationship between Vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin,” and cognitive impairment in a large-scale study of older people.
/////////////////////Improve Balance, Relieve Childhood Anxiety
by Rick Nauert, Ph.D.
Many of the 40 million American adults who suffer from anxiety disorders also have problems with balance.
As increasing numbers of children are diagnosed with anxiety, researchers have discovered that the link between balance and anxiety can be assessed at an early age and that something can be done about it before it becomes a problem.
///////////////////The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living beneath them; or as the Italian proverb says, "The man that lives by hope, will die by despair.".
~Joseph Addison~
/////////////////8 TECTONIC PLATES IN EARTH
//////////////////Scientists to link virus to obesity fight
Jan 26 2009 By Emily Cook
ONE in three fat people could have "caught" obesity in much the same way as they might catch a cold, scientists will claim tonight.
The highly infectious cold-like virus, which causes coughs and sore throats, also attacks tissue and causes fat cells to multiply - leading to massive weight gain.
Spread by coughs, sneezes and dirty hands, the airborne virus may also cause stomach upsets and conjunctivitis.
Previous studies have shown that chickens and mice infected with AD-36 put on weight more quickly than uninfected animals - even when they don't eat any more food.
Studies show that almost a third of obese adults carry the virus, compared with 11 per cent of lean men and women.
Professor Nikhil Dhurandhar, who led the research, says AD-36 continues to add weight gain long after those infected recover from the more obvious symptoms it causes.
Dr Dhurandhar will make the claims on BBC2's Horizon.
////////////////365 DAZE
//////////////////HAWAII ,ICELAND LAVA-FROM TOP OF MANTLE-CRACKS IN THE CRUST
///////////////////I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do!. That is character."
– Theodore Roosevelt
//////////////////OUTER CORE-MOLTEN Ni,Fe-EARTH
////////////////brain fart (noun): an instance of forgetfulness or bad judgment
Example of use: I totally forgot her name, it was just a major brain fart.
//////////////////Smart Pills
by Nicholas Carr
In response to the flood of prescription brain stimulants like Ritalin and Adderall on college campuses, a group of academics from Stanford, Harvard, Cambridge, Penn, and other schools say the time has come to allow such drugs to be prescribed to healthy people for “cognitive enhancement.”
/////////////////////LONGFELLOW=Christmas Bells
I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Till, ringing, singing on its way,
The world revolved from night to day,
A voice, a chime
A chant sublime
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
Then from each black accursed mouth
The cannon thundered in the South,
And with the sound
The carols drowned
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
It was as if an earthquake rent
The hearth-stones of a continent,
And made forlorn
The households born
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
And in despair I bowed my head;
“There is no peace on earth,” I said;
“For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!”
Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
“God is not dead; nor doth he sleep!
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men!”
///////////////////Misprision (noun)
Pronunciation: [mis-'pri-zhên]
Definition: (1) Malfeasance or misconduct, especially in a public office; (2) failure to report or prevent a crime, as misprision of treason; (3) miscomprehension, mistaking something for something else or underestimating it.
Usage: Very few words carry warning labels but today's word indicates what you can expect if you carry out the activity it refers to: prison. In sense (3) above, this noun is related to the verb misprize "to mistake, misperceive, underestimate; to despise, scorn."
Suggested Usage: Today's word has been used in so many ways, it is difficult to sort them all out. Keep in mind the two meanings most widely used. The first relates to misconduct in public office: "It was difficult for Les Cheatham to comprehend why giving the building contract to his brother-in-law was seen as misprision by those in the school district." The second meaning is to mistake one thing for another or to underestimate it, "Cheatham's misprision of the school district's dissatisfaction with this behavior allowed him to repeat his error, which led to his downfall."
//////////////////INFO DIETING
//////////////////And then you happily proceed to NOT use any of those features ever again after the first time you try them. This shows you that you didn’t really buy the gadget for those features. You bought it because you had a rush of emotions and you really WANTED that gadget at the store. And when someone points out you made a silly decision there, you rationalize with all the features to show you actually made a GOOD decision. So there’s your first reason why we humans rationalize:
We rationalize to protect our ego.
/////////////////////Enjoy the journey as well as the destination
////////////////The world can be ruled by letting things run their course; it cannot be ruled by interfering. (Lao Tse)
LNTIOC
//////////////////LIG-TIE
LET IT GO-TK IT EASY
/////////////////////Trifles make perfection, but perfection is no trifle.
- Michelangelo
/////////////////////No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.
- Long, Lazarus
//////////////////////Jan 24, 2009 (2 days ago)
Vitamin D Linked With Cognitive Impairment
by Rick Nauert, Ph.D.
Researchers have identified a relationship between Vitamin D, the “sunshine vitamin,” and cognitive impairment in a large-scale study of older people.
/////////////////////Improve Balance, Relieve Childhood Anxiety
by Rick Nauert, Ph.D.
Many of the 40 million American adults who suffer from anxiety disorders also have problems with balance.
As increasing numbers of children are diagnosed with anxiety, researchers have discovered that the link between balance and anxiety can be assessed at an early age and that something can be done about it before it becomes a problem.
///////////////////The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living beneath them; or as the Italian proverb says, "The man that lives by hope, will die by despair.".
~Joseph Addison~
Friday 23 January 2009
GM PLN
///////////////////////THIS IS THE KING-DO YOUR THING
///////////////////////////There is nothing sadder than a young pessimist.-twain
/////////////////No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.
/////////////////////////////t is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.
- Bennett, Arnold
//////////////////Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.
- Cicero, Marcus T.
////////////////////Researchers Try to Cure Racism
from What's Old Is New: 12 Living Fossils | Wired Science from Wired.com by Brandon Keim
Testfaces
As the first African-American president in United States history takes office, researchers have shown that it may be possible to scientifically reduce racial bias.
After being trained to distinguish between similar black male faces, Caucasian test subjects showed greater racial tolerance on a test designed to to measure unconscious bias.
The results are still preliminary, have yet to be replicated, and the real-world effects of reducing bias in a controlled laboratory setting are not clear. But for all those caveats, the findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that science can battle racism.
"Any time you can get people to treat people as individuals, you reduce the effect of stereotypes," said Brown University cognitive scientist Michael Tarr. "It won't solve racism, but it could have profound real-world effects."
Tarr's findings overlap with other results suggesting that the key to reducing racial bias — at least in a short-term, laboratory setting — is exposure to people in personalized ways that challenge stereotypes. This is hardly a new notion: it's the essence of the contact hypothesis, formulated in the mid-20th century and the basis of integrated schooling.
But unlike carefully structured social mixing, with precisely controlled conditions of interdependence and equality, Tarr and others raise the possibility of a a lab-based shortcut to bias reduction.
Underpinning this research is the Implicit Association Test, used by psychologists to measure deep-rooted, often unconscious biases. During the test, subjects are measured on the time it takes to associate faces with positive or negative words. If, for example, someone more quickly associates negative words with minority rather than white faces, they're likely to have a bias — a bias that translates into a tendency to hire same-race workers, choose same-race partners, and find minority defendants guilty.
If the bias can be changed, perhaps the behavior will follow.
"The entire idea of neural plasticity is a new one. We didn't think that the brain was capable of change as we now know it to be," said Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard University psychologist whose online Project Implicit has administered 4.5 million bias tests in the last decade. "The bias stuff we learn is heading in that direction, telling us that there is the ability to change."
"It's remarkable that our brain is so flexible that 10 hours of training will affect something that is the product of your whole life experience," said Tarr, who hopes his work will lead to race training for people working in potentially race-sensitive situations, such as police officers, social workers and immigration officials.
In a study published Tuesday in Public Library of Science ONE, Tarr's team put 20 Caucasian college students through ten hours of face-identification training, testing their ability to discern previously-seen from unknown faces. Students with the largest improvements in face memory also showed significant improvements on a variation of the Implicit Association Test.
According to Banaji, a brief talk about working for women suffices to reduce gender bias. City University of New York psychologist Curtis Hardin showed that having black experimenters administer a test produced lower bias scores among white subjects.
In one of the few attempts to measure bias change and brain activity, Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske simultaneously presented test subjects with pictures of black people and vegetables. When asked what the person in the picture liked to eat, activity in the amygdala — a brain region that modulates fear — subsided.
"Amygdala activation goes away as soon as you start to think of people as individuals," said Fiske.
These results are promising, but it's too soon to say whether they're long-lasting, or will translate to real-world improvements in behavior.
"Our biggest concern is that if we have participants come into a lab and do some exercises, then the context is so specific that it may only work if they see an African-American in a lab," said Bertram Gawronski, a University of Western Ontario cognitive scientist. "It's really important that it's done in different contexts, and that people are repeatedly bombarded with counter-attitudinal information."
For at least the next four years, however, the United States will collectively undergo a real-world experiment in stereotype defiance.
"The first black president — that's going to have a huge effect on things that come to mind," said Ohio State University psychologist Richard Petty. "Instead of just negative associations, there will be all sorts of positive associations."
Let's just hope they last.
//////////////////////Like a negative image of farmers breeding progressively larger chickens and cows, human hunters are making their prey become progressively smaller.
Animals hunted by humans are evolving faster than any other animals of their kind in the wild, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists.
By killing big percentages of the largest, sexually mature big-horn sheep or cod, humans can apply a withering selective pressure on huge numbers of animals. But it's not just that overall harvested animal numbers are shrinking — it's that the individuals themselves are shrinking, too, losing an average of 20 percent of their mass over mere decades.
///////////////////Why domestic animals changed coat
from Wild Biology News
A new study on pigs, published Jan. 16 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, reveals that the prime explanation for the bewildering diversity in coat color among our pigs, dogs and other domestic animals, is that humans have actively changed the coat color of domestic animals by cherry-picking and actively selecting for rare mutations. This process that has been going on for thousands of years.
///////////////////////There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t
/////////////////// “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms” ~Socrates
/////////////////
///////////////////////////There is nothing sadder than a young pessimist.-twain
/////////////////No storyteller has ever been able to dream up anything as fantastically unlikely as what really does happen in this mad Universe.
/////////////////////////////t is easier to go down a hill than up, but the view is from the top.
- Bennett, Arnold
//////////////////Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.
- Cicero, Marcus T.
////////////////////Researchers Try to Cure Racism
from What's Old Is New: 12 Living Fossils | Wired Science from Wired.com by Brandon Keim
Testfaces
As the first African-American president in United States history takes office, researchers have shown that it may be possible to scientifically reduce racial bias.
After being trained to distinguish between similar black male faces, Caucasian test subjects showed greater racial tolerance on a test designed to to measure unconscious bias.
The results are still preliminary, have yet to be replicated, and the real-world effects of reducing bias in a controlled laboratory setting are not clear. But for all those caveats, the findings add to a growing body of research suggesting that science can battle racism.
"Any time you can get people to treat people as individuals, you reduce the effect of stereotypes," said Brown University cognitive scientist Michael Tarr. "It won't solve racism, but it could have profound real-world effects."
Tarr's findings overlap with other results suggesting that the key to reducing racial bias — at least in a short-term, laboratory setting — is exposure to people in personalized ways that challenge stereotypes. This is hardly a new notion: it's the essence of the contact hypothesis, formulated in the mid-20th century and the basis of integrated schooling.
But unlike carefully structured social mixing, with precisely controlled conditions of interdependence and equality, Tarr and others raise the possibility of a a lab-based shortcut to bias reduction.
Underpinning this research is the Implicit Association Test, used by psychologists to measure deep-rooted, often unconscious biases. During the test, subjects are measured on the time it takes to associate faces with positive or negative words. If, for example, someone more quickly associates negative words with minority rather than white faces, they're likely to have a bias — a bias that translates into a tendency to hire same-race workers, choose same-race partners, and find minority defendants guilty.
If the bias can be changed, perhaps the behavior will follow.
"The entire idea of neural plasticity is a new one. We didn't think that the brain was capable of change as we now know it to be," said Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard University psychologist whose online Project Implicit has administered 4.5 million bias tests in the last decade. "The bias stuff we learn is heading in that direction, telling us that there is the ability to change."
"It's remarkable that our brain is so flexible that 10 hours of training will affect something that is the product of your whole life experience," said Tarr, who hopes his work will lead to race training for people working in potentially race-sensitive situations, such as police officers, social workers and immigration officials.
In a study published Tuesday in Public Library of Science ONE, Tarr's team put 20 Caucasian college students through ten hours of face-identification training, testing their ability to discern previously-seen from unknown faces. Students with the largest improvements in face memory also showed significant improvements on a variation of the Implicit Association Test.
According to Banaji, a brief talk about working for women suffices to reduce gender bias. City University of New York psychologist Curtis Hardin showed that having black experimenters administer a test produced lower bias scores among white subjects.
In one of the few attempts to measure bias change and brain activity, Princeton University psychologist Susan Fiske simultaneously presented test subjects with pictures of black people and vegetables. When asked what the person in the picture liked to eat, activity in the amygdala — a brain region that modulates fear — subsided.
"Amygdala activation goes away as soon as you start to think of people as individuals," said Fiske.
These results are promising, but it's too soon to say whether they're long-lasting, or will translate to real-world improvements in behavior.
"Our biggest concern is that if we have participants come into a lab and do some exercises, then the context is so specific that it may only work if they see an African-American in a lab," said Bertram Gawronski, a University of Western Ontario cognitive scientist. "It's really important that it's done in different contexts, and that people are repeatedly bombarded with counter-attitudinal information."
For at least the next four years, however, the United States will collectively undergo a real-world experiment in stereotype defiance.
"The first black president — that's going to have a huge effect on things that come to mind," said Ohio State University psychologist Richard Petty. "Instead of just negative associations, there will be all sorts of positive associations."
Let's just hope they last.
//////////////////////Like a negative image of farmers breeding progressively larger chickens and cows, human hunters are making their prey become progressively smaller.
Animals hunted by humans are evolving faster than any other animals of their kind in the wild, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scientists.
By killing big percentages of the largest, sexually mature big-horn sheep or cod, humans can apply a withering selective pressure on huge numbers of animals. But it's not just that overall harvested animal numbers are shrinking — it's that the individuals themselves are shrinking, too, losing an average of 20 percent of their mass over mere decades.
///////////////////Why domestic animals changed coat
from Wild Biology News
A new study on pigs, published Jan. 16 in the open-access journal PLoS Genetics, reveals that the prime explanation for the bewildering diversity in coat color among our pigs, dogs and other domestic animals, is that humans have actively changed the coat color of domestic animals by cherry-picking and actively selecting for rare mutations. This process that has been going on for thousands of years.
///////////////////////There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t
/////////////////// “The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms” ~Socrates
/////////////////
CDS -230109-NSC BS BDAY
////////////////
Obama included 'non believers' in his inaugural speech.
//////////////////ancient ind history is replete with instances of parricide
(in Magadha (bihar), Ajatashatru killing his father to become king);
fratricide (ashoka's killing of his brothers) and then the all important
savage war on kalinga in 261 BCE, in remorse to which he converted to
buddhism..
//////////////////In 585 B.C. the Greek philosopher Thales of Melitus calculated that on the 28th of May the Moon would pass between the Earth and Sun, blotting out the noonday Sun; it was the first solar eclipse to have been predicted. Thales used the occasion to make the most far-reaching observation of all time: every physical event is the result of a physical cause. Causality marked the birth of science, and Thales was immortalized as its father. Causality should also have marked the death of superstition, yet today, 90 percent of the people on Earth cling to supernatural beliefs. We will examine their beliefs and ask why.
////////////////////A Field Guide to Humans
The foraging style of Homo sapiens now verges on suicidal.
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» Most Popular on washingtonpost.com
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Who's Blogging
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Reviewed by Rebecca Skloot
Sunday, January 18, 2009; Page BW02
THE WELL-DRESSED APE
A Natural History of Myself
By Hannah Holmes
Random House. 351 pp. $25
Humans are strange creatures, biologically speaking. We're fixated on the topic of mating, though we're the only species that often makes the evolutionarily illogical choice to mate without reproducing. We're also the only creatures on Earth obsessed with analyzing themselves -- which is precisely the drive behind Hannah Holmes's new book, The Well-Dressed Ape, in which she explores herself (and her human mate) as if discovering a new species.
Biologists have long created fact sheets on other animals, organizing their traits into categories including physical appearance, habitat, behavior and reproduction. While researching her previous book, Suburban Safari, in which she explored the wildlife of her backyard, Holmes realized that no field description existed for Homo sapiens. She set out to create one, and the result is sometimes illuminating and often funny.
ad_icon
While examining herself for the Physical Description chapter, Holmes explains how extra food that isn't burned off as energy gets converted to oil stored in fat tissue. "Evidently I've done this a few times," she writes, "because cookies are too damned easy to capture." Her mate's nonfunctional male nipples are "useless as an eye on the bottom of a foot." And in the chapter on Reproduction, while discussing the length of time it takes to raise human offspring, she writes, "I've encountered legitimate and degree-holding theorists who argue that offspring need parental guidance and assistance for only their first ten years of life. Having been eleven years old myself, I respectfully disagree."
The Well-Dressed Ape is full of interesting facts, such as: "A male boxer in top condition can punch with a force of a thirteen-pound mallet swung at twenty miles an hour." Holmes covers hormones and brains, our use of tools, how we see, smell and hear, our tendency toward territoriality and our complicated relationship to food.
"Of all the human young that perish each year (twelve million)," she writes, "the failure to find food is the underlying cause for about half the deaths." At the same time, she points out, humans in developed countries often eat with a "foraging style" that "borders on suicidal." This is "an anomaly in the natural world," she notes, as is the preference for an impossibly thin female body. Cultures that "passionately prefer fat females to the hourglass ones" make more biological sense, she writes, since "reproducing is a primal drive, and it's fueled by fat."
Holmes touches briefly on such complicated and socially loaded topics as race, homosexuality and gender differences. At points, she does this with refreshing frankness. About race, she writes: "While one scientist has characterized racial variation in the genome as being 'scientifically and mathematically trivial,' these differences are certainly not ecologically trivial." Humans evolved different skin colors based on their proximity to the equator; regions with more sun produced darker people. Scientists have long thought this was to protect against skin cancer, Holmes writes, but some now believe it's for maintaining vitamin balance instead: Ultraviolet rays penetrating the skin break down folate, an essential vitamin, but also provide vitamin D. People with darker skin fared better in sunny climates because extra melanin in their skin prevented too much folate breakdown. Lighter skinned humans fared better in darker climates because their skin let in the right amount of vitamin D.
Holmes generally does a good job of conveying scientific ideas. But she dips into some large topics so briefly that the result is vague at best, scientifically skewed at worst. An example: After mentioning that men with ring fingers longer than their index finger may have high testosterone levels, Holmes provides "a list of traits you may be able to predict from a male's high-testosterone ring finger." These include being more likely "to be aggressive," "to mate with many females" and "to be gay." Then, in a move that may rile left-handed people, she lists traits correlated with being a leftie: autism, dyslexia, stuttering, deafness and homosexuality.
But research on finger length and such traits as sexuality and aggression has been dubbed pseudoscience by some experts. Studies linking similar traits with left-handedness also have been questioned because of small sample sizes. The connections Holmes lists aren't proven fact, and there is no agreement on what they might mean if they were. But the average reader wouldn't know that, because Holmes doesn't mention any criticisms of the studies. She sometimes goes for the laugh rather than the science, as in describing her ring finger as "a dipstick displaying the strength of the hormonal marinade that gave my brain its sexual slant."
Nevertheless, The Well-Dressed Ape is aimed at educating a general audience about human biology, and for the most part it succeeds. One essential point Holmes returns to several times is this: Many traits often touted as being uniquely human -- such as self-recognition, intelligence and complex communication skills -- actually exist in other animals. Biologically speaking, humans aren't as unusual as they might like to think. ·
Rebecca Skloot teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Memphis.
//////////////////
Obama included 'non believers' in his inaugural speech.
//////////////////ancient ind history is replete with instances of parricide
(in Magadha (bihar), Ajatashatru killing his father to become king);
fratricide (ashoka's killing of his brothers) and then the all important
savage war on kalinga in 261 BCE, in remorse to which he converted to
buddhism..
//////////////////In 585 B.C. the Greek philosopher Thales of Melitus calculated that on the 28th of May the Moon would pass between the Earth and Sun, blotting out the noonday Sun; it was the first solar eclipse to have been predicted. Thales used the occasion to make the most far-reaching observation of all time: every physical event is the result of a physical cause. Causality marked the birth of science, and Thales was immortalized as its father. Causality should also have marked the death of superstition, yet today, 90 percent of the people on Earth cling to supernatural beliefs. We will examine their beliefs and ask why.
////////////////////A Field Guide to Humans
The foraging style of Homo sapiens now verges on suicidal.
» Top 35 Arts & Living Articles
» Most Popular on washingtonpost.com
TOOLBOX
Resize
Yahoo! Buzz
Save/Share +
Digg
Newsvine
del.icio.us
Stumble It!
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No comments have been posted about this item.
Comments are closed for this item.
Discussion Policy
Your browser's settings may be preventing you from commenting on and viewing comments about this item. See instructions for fixing the problem.
Discussion Policy
CLOSE
Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.
Who's Blogging
» Links to this article
Reviewed by Rebecca Skloot
Sunday, January 18, 2009; Page BW02
THE WELL-DRESSED APE
A Natural History of Myself
By Hannah Holmes
Random House. 351 pp. $25
Humans are strange creatures, biologically speaking. We're fixated on the topic of mating, though we're the only species that often makes the evolutionarily illogical choice to mate without reproducing. We're also the only creatures on Earth obsessed with analyzing themselves -- which is precisely the drive behind Hannah Holmes's new book, The Well-Dressed Ape, in which she explores herself (and her human mate) as if discovering a new species.
Biologists have long created fact sheets on other animals, organizing their traits into categories including physical appearance, habitat, behavior and reproduction. While researching her previous book, Suburban Safari, in which she explored the wildlife of her backyard, Holmes realized that no field description existed for Homo sapiens. She set out to create one, and the result is sometimes illuminating and often funny.
ad_icon
While examining herself for the Physical Description chapter, Holmes explains how extra food that isn't burned off as energy gets converted to oil stored in fat tissue. "Evidently I've done this a few times," she writes, "because cookies are too damned easy to capture." Her mate's nonfunctional male nipples are "useless as an eye on the bottom of a foot." And in the chapter on Reproduction, while discussing the length of time it takes to raise human offspring, she writes, "I've encountered legitimate and degree-holding theorists who argue that offspring need parental guidance and assistance for only their first ten years of life. Having been eleven years old myself, I respectfully disagree."
The Well-Dressed Ape is full of interesting facts, such as: "A male boxer in top condition can punch with a force of a thirteen-pound mallet swung at twenty miles an hour." Holmes covers hormones and brains, our use of tools, how we see, smell and hear, our tendency toward territoriality and our complicated relationship to food.
"Of all the human young that perish each year (twelve million)," she writes, "the failure to find food is the underlying cause for about half the deaths." At the same time, she points out, humans in developed countries often eat with a "foraging style" that "borders on suicidal." This is "an anomaly in the natural world," she notes, as is the preference for an impossibly thin female body. Cultures that "passionately prefer fat females to the hourglass ones" make more biological sense, she writes, since "reproducing is a primal drive, and it's fueled by fat."
Holmes touches briefly on such complicated and socially loaded topics as race, homosexuality and gender differences. At points, she does this with refreshing frankness. About race, she writes: "While one scientist has characterized racial variation in the genome as being 'scientifically and mathematically trivial,' these differences are certainly not ecologically trivial." Humans evolved different skin colors based on their proximity to the equator; regions with more sun produced darker people. Scientists have long thought this was to protect against skin cancer, Holmes writes, but some now believe it's for maintaining vitamin balance instead: Ultraviolet rays penetrating the skin break down folate, an essential vitamin, but also provide vitamin D. People with darker skin fared better in sunny climates because extra melanin in their skin prevented too much folate breakdown. Lighter skinned humans fared better in darker climates because their skin let in the right amount of vitamin D.
Holmes generally does a good job of conveying scientific ideas. But she dips into some large topics so briefly that the result is vague at best, scientifically skewed at worst. An example: After mentioning that men with ring fingers longer than their index finger may have high testosterone levels, Holmes provides "a list of traits you may be able to predict from a male's high-testosterone ring finger." These include being more likely "to be aggressive," "to mate with many females" and "to be gay." Then, in a move that may rile left-handed people, she lists traits correlated with being a leftie: autism, dyslexia, stuttering, deafness and homosexuality.
But research on finger length and such traits as sexuality and aggression has been dubbed pseudoscience by some experts. Studies linking similar traits with left-handedness also have been questioned because of small sample sizes. The connections Holmes lists aren't proven fact, and there is no agreement on what they might mean if they were. But the average reader wouldn't know that, because Holmes doesn't mention any criticisms of the studies. She sometimes goes for the laugh rather than the science, as in describing her ring finger as "a dipstick displaying the strength of the hormonal marinade that gave my brain its sexual slant."
Nevertheless, The Well-Dressed Ape is aimed at educating a general audience about human biology, and for the most part it succeeds. One essential point Holmes returns to several times is this: Many traits often touted as being uniquely human -- such as self-recognition, intelligence and complex communication skills -- actually exist in other animals. Biologically speaking, humans aren't as unusual as they might like to think. ·
Rebecca Skloot teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Memphis.
//////////////////
Tuesday 20 January 2009
SCHOR CAT
In Schrödinger’s original thought experiment he describes how one could,
in principle, transform a superposition inside an atom to a large-scale
superposition of a live and dead cat by coupling cat and atom with the
help of a ‘‘diabolical mechanism.’’ He proposed a scenario with a cat in
a sealed box, where the cat's life or death was dependent on the state
of a subatomic particle. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen
interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until
the box is opened.
/////////////////////Heritability of traits and diseases may not be limited to DNA
January 20th, 2009 - 5:09 pm ICT by ANI - Send to a friend:
London, January 20 (ANI): A new study conducted by scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) suggests that DNA may not be the only carrier of heritable information, and that a secondary molecular mechanism called epigenetics may also account for some inherited traits and diseases.
The researchers say that their findings challenge the fundamental principles of genetics and inheritance, and potentially provide a new insight into the primary causes of human diseases.
A trait or disease is called heritable if genetically identical twins are more similar to each other than genetically different twins.
In molecular terms, heritability has traditionally been attributed to variations in the DNA sequence.
Dr. Art Petronis, head of the Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory at the CAMH, conducted a comprehensive epigenetic analysis of 100 sets of genetically identical and genetically different twins in the first study of its kind.
“We investigated molecules that attach to DNA and regulate various gene activities. These DNA modifications are called epigenetic factors,” said the lead researcher.
His study demonstrated that epigenetic factors acting independently from DNA were more similar in identical twins than their non-identical counterparts, suggesting that there was a secondary molecular mechanism of heredity.
The epigenetic heritability might help explain currently unclear issues in human disease, such as the presence of a disease in only one identical twin, the different susceptibility of males (e.g. to autism) and females (e.g. to lupus), significant fluctuations in the course of a disease (e.g. bipolar disorder, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis), among numerous others.
“Traditionally, it has been assumed that only the DNA sequence can account for the capability of normal traits and diseases to be inherited,” says Dr. Petronis.
“Over the last several decades, there has been an enormous effort to identify specific DNA sequence changes predisposing people to psychiatric, neurodegenerative, malignant, metabolic, and autoimmune diseases, but with only moderate success. Our findings represent a new way to look for the molecular cause of disease, and eventually may lead to improved diagnostics and treatment,” the researcher added.
The study has been published in the online edition of the journal Nature Genetics. (ANI)
//////////////////////Human Species Nearly Extinct 70,000 Years Ago -A Galaxy Insight
by Casey Kazan Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff
The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis by researchers at Stanford University. The estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age. Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA - which is passed down through mothers - have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "
Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA." Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal. The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.
The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.
Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently. Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction." Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Posted by Casey Kazan.
////////////////////BUY ELECTION-BY ELECTION
///////////////////////There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult."
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
//////////////////////Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always make you less than you are."
-- Malcolm Forbes, Author and Publisher
///////////////////Alchemy has its roots (in the Western world) in Ancient Egypt where it combined with metallurgy in a form of early science. The Egyptian alchemists discovered the formulas for making mortar, glass, and cosmetics. From Egypt it eventually spread to the rest of the Ancient world and led to modern alchemy in which men would try to turn metals into gold, to conjure up genies, and perform all manner of bizarre not-so-science-like activities. While it has contributed in some ways to modern science, the discipline of true science caused the death of alchemy which could not stand up to the rigorous testing of its pseudoscience.
////////////////Vitalism states that the functions of living things are controlled by a “vital force” and not biophysical means. Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies - and it has ties to the four humors. It is sometimes referred to as a “life spark” and even as the soul. In the Eastern traditions it is essentially the same thing as “qi” or “chi”, which is heavily tied in to oriental medicinal methods. The concept is (as can be expected) completely rejected by most mainstream scientists. In 1967, Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, stated “And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow.”
////////////////
Violence-loving high school dropout Quentin Tarantino has an IQ of 160.
/////////////////Steve Martin majored in Philosophy at Cal State and even considered becoming a professor at one time. His IQ is estimated to be about 142.
///////////////Geena Davis went to Sweden on a student exchange program and is now fluent in Swedish. Studied drama at Boston University, plays piano, flute, drums and organ and has an IQ of 140.
/////////////////Jodie Foster graduated as valedictorian from the French-speaking Lycee Francais de Los Angeles, after which she attended Yale and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in literature. Her reported IQ is 132.
///////////////////James Woods aced his SATs, got into MIT (but dropped out to pursue acting) and has a reported IQ of 180.
///////////////////The Black Death
1347 - 1351
The Black Death (also known as The Black Plague or Bubonic Plague), was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, widely thought to have been caused by a bacterium named Yersinia pestis (Plague), but recently attributed by some to other diseases. The origins of the plague are disputed among scholars. Some historians believe the pandemic began in China or Central Asia in the late 1320s or 1330s, and during the next years merchants and soldiers carried it over the caravan routes until in 1346 it reached the Crimea in southern Russia. Other scholars believe the plague was endemic in southern Russia. In either case, from Crimea the plague spread to Western Europe and North Africa during the 1340s. The total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75 million people, approximately 25–50 million of which occurred in Europe. The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 1700s. During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe.
//////////////////The word “slave” comes to us from Byzantine Greek “sklabos” which was the name for the Slavic people. The reason for this is that the Vikings used to capture the Slavs and sell them to the Romans as slaves. The term only dates back as far as 580 AD as the Latin word “servus” was more commonly used before that for all kinds of servants - enslaved or not.
///////////////////Liberia is a small nation on the west coast of Africa, surrounded by Sierra Leone, The Ivory Coast, Guinea, and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1822, Liberia was founded as a colony by American slaves who had been freed. So thankful were the slaves for the efforts of President James Monroe that they named their new capital city after him (Monrovia). The area was populated by various native ethnic groups and the American slaves had a tendency to look down on them as uncivilized. In 1847, the freed slaves declared independence and the nation was officially born. For its first 133 years, the country was a one-party state dominated by the Americo-Liberians. Ironically, the Americo-Liberians and their children were the only people considered citizens and allowed to vote. Liberia is currently the only (and first) African nation to have an elected woman (Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf) as its head. Liberian English (the official language in Liberia) is a transplanted variant of the English spoken by African American slaves in the 19th Century. The freed slaves turned Liberia into a replica of the cities they left in the United States - as can be seen by the now dilapidated Masonic Temple above which is in Monrovia.
///////////////////1ST PHOTOGRAPH EVER-1825
/////////////////World’s longest road
The Pan-American Highway is the longest motoring road in the world. It has replaced Yonge Street (in Toronto Canada) as the longest road since changes were made to the configuration of Highway 11 and Yonge Street in the 1990s. The Pan-American highway links the mainland nations of the Americas and is an amazing 48,000 kilometers (29,800 miles) long. The highway passes through 15 nations, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and El Salvador.
//////////////////World’s narrowest street
Parliament Street is in Exeter, England. It is the narrowest street in the world, measuring less than 0.64m (25″) at its narrowest point. It was originally called Small Street (for reasons that are obvious) but was renamed when parliament passed an act of law that expanded the representation of the people in the house of commons. The street dates from the 1300s and it is 50 meters long.
//////////////////World’s widest street
9 de Julio Avenue (meaning 9th of July Avenue - in honor of Argentina’s independence day) is the widest street in the world. It has six lanes in each direction and it spans an entire city block. There is a single building that sits on the Avenue (the former Ministry of Communications building) but there are many famous landmarks along the side - such as the old French Embassy, a statue of Don Quixote, and the famous obelisk (visible in the picture above) and Plaza de la República.
////////////////////World’s worst roundabout
Anyone who has been on the Internet for a while will recognize the Magic Roundabout - it has appeared in virtually every “funny picture” list you can find. The roundabout is a real roundabout in Swindon, England. It was built in 1972 and it includes 5 other smaller roundabouts. To make matters worse, you must travel anti-clockwise (the reverse of the normal situation on British roundabouts) when you enter the smaller central roundabout. The Swindon Junction has been voted the worst junction in Great Britain.
//////////////////Only street in Britain where you must drive on the right
As most of our readers will know, the British drive on the left (unlike Europe and the United States). But there is one exception to this rule: Savoy Court is the only street in Britain where cars must legally drive on the right. Apparently this dates back to the old Hackney Cabs - by driving on the right, the driver was able to open the backdoor without leaving the cab, allowing the passengers to alight on the sidewalk. This is allowed by a special act of parliament.
//////////////////
Almonds are one of the most useful and wonderful of seeds (it is not a nut as many people would have you believe). It has a unique taste and its excellent suitability for use in cooking have made it one of the most popular ingredients in pastry kitchens for centuries. The most flavorsome almonds are bitter almonds (as opposed to “sweet” almonds). They have the strongest scent and are the most popular in many countries. But there is one problem: they are full of cyanide. Before consumption, bitter almonds must be processed to remove the poison. Despite this requirement, some countries make the sale of bitter almonds illegal (New Zealand regretfully is one of them). As an alternative, you can use the pip from an apricot stone which has a similar flavor and poison content. Heating destroys the poison. In fact, you may not know that it is now illegal in the USA to sell raw almonds - all almonds sold are now heat-treated to remove traces of poison and bacteria.
/////////////////
in principle, transform a superposition inside an atom to a large-scale
superposition of a live and dead cat by coupling cat and atom with the
help of a ‘‘diabolical mechanism.’’ He proposed a scenario with a cat in
a sealed box, where the cat's life or death was dependent on the state
of a subatomic particle. According to Schrödinger, the Copenhagen
interpretation implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until
the box is opened.
/////////////////////Heritability of traits and diseases may not be limited to DNA
January 20th, 2009 - 5:09 pm ICT by ANI - Send to a friend:
London, January 20 (ANI): A new study conducted by scientists at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) suggests that DNA may not be the only carrier of heritable information, and that a secondary molecular mechanism called epigenetics may also account for some inherited traits and diseases.
The researchers say that their findings challenge the fundamental principles of genetics and inheritance, and potentially provide a new insight into the primary causes of human diseases.
A trait or disease is called heritable if genetically identical twins are more similar to each other than genetically different twins.
In molecular terms, heritability has traditionally been attributed to variations in the DNA sequence.
Dr. Art Petronis, head of the Krembil Family Epigenetics Laboratory at the CAMH, conducted a comprehensive epigenetic analysis of 100 sets of genetically identical and genetically different twins in the first study of its kind.
“We investigated molecules that attach to DNA and regulate various gene activities. These DNA modifications are called epigenetic factors,” said the lead researcher.
His study demonstrated that epigenetic factors acting independently from DNA were more similar in identical twins than their non-identical counterparts, suggesting that there was a secondary molecular mechanism of heredity.
The epigenetic heritability might help explain currently unclear issues in human disease, such as the presence of a disease in only one identical twin, the different susceptibility of males (e.g. to autism) and females (e.g. to lupus), significant fluctuations in the course of a disease (e.g. bipolar disorder, inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis), among numerous others.
“Traditionally, it has been assumed that only the DNA sequence can account for the capability of normal traits and diseases to be inherited,” says Dr. Petronis.
“Over the last several decades, there has been an enormous effort to identify specific DNA sequence changes predisposing people to psychiatric, neurodegenerative, malignant, metabolic, and autoimmune diseases, but with only moderate success. Our findings represent a new way to look for the molecular cause of disease, and eventually may lead to improved diagnostics and treatment,” the researcher added.
The study has been published in the online edition of the journal Nature Genetics. (ANI)
//////////////////////Human Species Nearly Extinct 70,000 Years Ago -A Galaxy Insight
by Casey Kazan Daily Galaxy Editorial Staff
The human population at that time was reduced to small isolated groups in Africa, apparently because of drought, according to an analysis by researchers at Stanford University. The estimated the number of early humans may have shrunk as low as 2,000 before numbers began to expand again in the early Stone Age. Previous studies using mitochondrial DNA - which is passed down through mothers - have traced modern humans to a single "mitochondrial Eve," who lived in Africa about 200,000 years ago.
"This study illustrates the extraordinary power of genetics to reveal insights into some of the key events in our species' history," Spencer Wells, National Geographic Society explorer in residence, said in a statement. "
Tiny bands of early humans, forced apart by harsh environmental conditions, coming back from the brink to reunite and populate the world. Truly an epic drama, written in our DNA." Wells is director of the Genographic Project, launched in 2005 to study anthropology using genetics. The report was published in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
The migrations of humans out of Africa to populate the rest of the world appear to have begun about 60,000 years ago, but little has been known about humans between Eve and that dispersal. The new study looks at the mitochondrial DNA of the Khoi and San people in South Africa which appear to have diverged from other people between 90,000 and 150,000 years ago.
The researchers led by Doron Behar of Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and Saharon Rosset of IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y., and Tel Aviv University concluded that humans separated into small populations prior to the Stone Age, when they came back together and began to increase in numbers and spread to other areas.
Eastern Africa experienced a series of severe droughts between 135,000 and 90,000 years ago and the researchers said this climatological shift may have contributed to the population changes, dividing into small, isolated groups which developed independently. Paleontologist Meave Leakey, a Genographic adviser, commented: "Who would have thought that as recently as 70,000 years ago, extremes of climate had reduced our population to such small numbers that we were on the very edge of extinction." Today more than 6.6 billion people inhabit the globe, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Posted by Casey Kazan.
////////////////////BUY ELECTION-BY ELECTION
///////////////////////There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult."
-- Rainer Maria Rilke
//////////////////////Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always make you less than you are."
-- Malcolm Forbes, Author and Publisher
///////////////////Alchemy has its roots (in the Western world) in Ancient Egypt where it combined with metallurgy in a form of early science. The Egyptian alchemists discovered the formulas for making mortar, glass, and cosmetics. From Egypt it eventually spread to the rest of the Ancient world and led to modern alchemy in which men would try to turn metals into gold, to conjure up genies, and perform all manner of bizarre not-so-science-like activities. While it has contributed in some ways to modern science, the discipline of true science caused the death of alchemy which could not stand up to the rigorous testing of its pseudoscience.
////////////////Vitalism states that the functions of living things are controlled by a “vital force” and not biophysical means. Vitalism has a long history in medical philosophies - and it has ties to the four humors. It is sometimes referred to as a “life spark” and even as the soul. In the Eastern traditions it is essentially the same thing as “qi” or “chi”, which is heavily tied in to oriental medicinal methods. The concept is (as can be expected) completely rejected by most mainstream scientists. In 1967, Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, stated “And so to those of you who may be vitalists I would make this prophecy: what everyone believed yesterday, and you believe today, only cranks will believe tomorrow.”
////////////////
Violence-loving high school dropout Quentin Tarantino has an IQ of 160.
/////////////////Steve Martin majored in Philosophy at Cal State and even considered becoming a professor at one time. His IQ is estimated to be about 142.
///////////////Geena Davis went to Sweden on a student exchange program and is now fluent in Swedish. Studied drama at Boston University, plays piano, flute, drums and organ and has an IQ of 140.
/////////////////Jodie Foster graduated as valedictorian from the French-speaking Lycee Francais de Los Angeles, after which she attended Yale and graduated magna cum laude with a degree in literature. Her reported IQ is 132.
///////////////////James Woods aced his SATs, got into MIT (but dropped out to pursue acting) and has a reported IQ of 180.
///////////////////The Black Death
1347 - 1351
The Black Death (also known as The Black Plague or Bubonic Plague), was one of the deadliest pandemics in human history, widely thought to have been caused by a bacterium named Yersinia pestis (Plague), but recently attributed by some to other diseases. The origins of the plague are disputed among scholars. Some historians believe the pandemic began in China or Central Asia in the late 1320s or 1330s, and during the next years merchants and soldiers carried it over the caravan routes until in 1346 it reached the Crimea in southern Russia. Other scholars believe the plague was endemic in southern Russia. In either case, from Crimea the plague spread to Western Europe and North Africa during the 1340s. The total number of deaths worldwide is estimated at 75 million people, approximately 25–50 million of which occurred in Europe. The plague is thought to have returned every generation with varying virulence and mortalities until the 1700s. During this period, more than 100 plague epidemics swept across Europe.
//////////////////The word “slave” comes to us from Byzantine Greek “sklabos” which was the name for the Slavic people. The reason for this is that the Vikings used to capture the Slavs and sell them to the Romans as slaves. The term only dates back as far as 580 AD as the Latin word “servus” was more commonly used before that for all kinds of servants - enslaved or not.
///////////////////Liberia is a small nation on the west coast of Africa, surrounded by Sierra Leone, The Ivory Coast, Guinea, and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1822, Liberia was founded as a colony by American slaves who had been freed. So thankful were the slaves for the efforts of President James Monroe that they named their new capital city after him (Monrovia). The area was populated by various native ethnic groups and the American slaves had a tendency to look down on them as uncivilized. In 1847, the freed slaves declared independence and the nation was officially born. For its first 133 years, the country was a one-party state dominated by the Americo-Liberians. Ironically, the Americo-Liberians and their children were the only people considered citizens and allowed to vote. Liberia is currently the only (and first) African nation to have an elected woman (Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf) as its head. Liberian English (the official language in Liberia) is a transplanted variant of the English spoken by African American slaves in the 19th Century. The freed slaves turned Liberia into a replica of the cities they left in the United States - as can be seen by the now dilapidated Masonic Temple above which is in Monrovia.
///////////////////1ST PHOTOGRAPH EVER-1825
/////////////////World’s longest road
The Pan-American Highway is the longest motoring road in the world. It has replaced Yonge Street (in Toronto Canada) as the longest road since changes were made to the configuration of Highway 11 and Yonge Street in the 1990s. The Pan-American highway links the mainland nations of the Americas and is an amazing 48,000 kilometers (29,800 miles) long. The highway passes through 15 nations, including the USA, Canada, Mexico, Peru, Argentina, and El Salvador.
//////////////////World’s narrowest street
Parliament Street is in Exeter, England. It is the narrowest street in the world, measuring less than 0.64m (25″) at its narrowest point. It was originally called Small Street (for reasons that are obvious) but was renamed when parliament passed an act of law that expanded the representation of the people in the house of commons. The street dates from the 1300s and it is 50 meters long.
//////////////////World’s widest street
9 de Julio Avenue (meaning 9th of July Avenue - in honor of Argentina’s independence day) is the widest street in the world. It has six lanes in each direction and it spans an entire city block. There is a single building that sits on the Avenue (the former Ministry of Communications building) but there are many famous landmarks along the side - such as the old French Embassy, a statue of Don Quixote, and the famous obelisk (visible in the picture above) and Plaza de la República.
////////////////////World’s worst roundabout
Anyone who has been on the Internet for a while will recognize the Magic Roundabout - it has appeared in virtually every “funny picture” list you can find. The roundabout is a real roundabout in Swindon, England. It was built in 1972 and it includes 5 other smaller roundabouts. To make matters worse, you must travel anti-clockwise (the reverse of the normal situation on British roundabouts) when you enter the smaller central roundabout. The Swindon Junction has been voted the worst junction in Great Britain.
//////////////////Only street in Britain where you must drive on the right
As most of our readers will know, the British drive on the left (unlike Europe and the United States). But there is one exception to this rule: Savoy Court is the only street in Britain where cars must legally drive on the right. Apparently this dates back to the old Hackney Cabs - by driving on the right, the driver was able to open the backdoor without leaving the cab, allowing the passengers to alight on the sidewalk. This is allowed by a special act of parliament.
//////////////////
Almonds are one of the most useful and wonderful of seeds (it is not a nut as many people would have you believe). It has a unique taste and its excellent suitability for use in cooking have made it one of the most popular ingredients in pastry kitchens for centuries. The most flavorsome almonds are bitter almonds (as opposed to “sweet” almonds). They have the strongest scent and are the most popular in many countries. But there is one problem: they are full of cyanide. Before consumption, bitter almonds must be processed to remove the poison. Despite this requirement, some countries make the sale of bitter almonds illegal (New Zealand regretfully is one of them). As an alternative, you can use the pip from an apricot stone which has a similar flavor and poison content. Heating destroys the poison. In fact, you may not know that it is now illegal in the USA to sell raw almonds - all almonds sold are now heat-treated to remove traces of poison and bacteria.
/////////////////
POTAATO-POTETO
////////////////////GENES-NS-SAR
////////////////////REPRODN MORE IMP THAN SURVIVAL FOR GENES
/////////////////////AVIAN VS NON AVIAN DINO
////////////////////////GENETIC FITNESS IS NO OF CHILDREN THEY CAN PRODUCE
//////////////////////////To know everything is to know nothing.
~Proverb, (Italian)~
////////////////////
The Nature of Knowing That We Know
by Duane Elgin
The word "consciousness" literally means "that with which we know." It has also been termed the "knowing faculty". To live more consciously means to be more consciously aware, moment by moment, that we are present in all that we do. [...] When we do the countless things that make up our daily lives, we remember the being that is involved in those activities. We remember ourselves (and to "re-member" is to make whole; it is the opposite of "dis-memberment"). To live consciously is to move through life with conscious self-remembering. […]
////////////////////GENETIC FITNESS RELATIVE TO EACH ENVIRONMENT
/////////////////////PHENOTYPE IS JUST A VESSEL FOR THE GENOTYPE
//////////////////SURVIVOR MENTALITY=
Cardiologist Michael Sabom studied survivors of near-fatal cardiac arrest. These patients feared death less, were more accepting of life’s ups and downs and became more religious.
And a more recent study, specific to the long-term effects of plane crashes, showed that survivors had significantly higher positive outlooks on life, greater self-esteem and, surprisingly, lower scores of emotional stress, than those who fly often but have never suffered a disastrous crash.
Gary Capobianco, the lead author, notes, however, that there is a correlation between the level of positive outlook and how much control survivors felt they had during the actual crash.
From the reports of those on board Flight 1549, it appears their brave and clear wits led to their immediate escape, and may have also put them in good stead for their long lives ahead.
—Christie Nicholson
//////////////////About two-thirds of Africa is in the Northern Hemisphere.
//////////////////Sri Sri Ravishankar said.. If something affects you, take action.
People who take action, become powerful. People who dont, only complain.
/////////////////////As you might be aware, portability of CRB between jobs is now very
much restricted. The CRB clearance which you got through this locum
agency wont be accepted by any NHS Trust or other locum agencies (
Thats the rule, although individual Trusts may be flexible).
/////////////////////GONDWANA-TREASURE OF DINO
///////////////////About 90% of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere.
//////////////////KIN SELECTION=Some organisms tend to exhibit strategies that favor the reproductive success of their relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction. The classic example is a eusocial insect colony, with sterile females acting as workers to assist their mother in the production of additional offspring. Many evolutionary biologists explain this by the theory of kin selection. Natural selection should eliminate such behaviors; however, there are many cases, such as, alarm calling in squirrels, helpers at the nest in scrub jays, and sterile worker castes in honey bees, in which these animals cooperate despite an obvious disadvantage to the donor.
///////////////////EVOLN IS ABT CHANCE,NOT DESIGN
///////////////////both politics and religion -- whatever their differences -- are similar technologies, designed to efficiently connect and manage any group of people.
///////////////////13 lac ppl MIGRATE TO CITY EVERY WEEK
/////////////////1BN PPL LIVE IN SLUMS=SQUATTER CITIES
/////////////////
What your sleeping position says about you ...
Foetus
Those who curl up in the foetus position are described as tough on the outside but sensitive at heart. They may be shy when they first meet somebody, but soon relax. This is the most common sleeping position, adopted by 41% of the 1,000 people who took part in the survey. More than twice as many women as men tend to adopt this position.
//////////////////////Green tea catechins improve exercise-induced abdominal fat loss
////////////////////TEME=TECHNOLOGY MEME
///////////////Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive
///////////////////////////GENE IS JUST INFO PACKAGE -DOES NOT CARE BUT JUST REPLICATE
///////////////////INFO COPIED BY VARIATION
/////////////////////Life is shit because I don’t have the money to do the things I want!
///////////////////MEMES ARE SELFISH INFORMATION
////////////////WE R ALL MEME MACHINES
////////////////////2 REPLICATORS-GENES AND MEMES
////////////////GENE MACHINE TURNED INTO MEME MACHINE
//////////////////////3RD REPLICATOR IS TEMES
///////////////////////////FRACTION OF UNIVERSE WHO GETS 1ST ,2ND AND 3RD REPLICATOR
///////////////////3RD REPLICATORS WILL SEND VON NEUMANNS PROBES
///////////////////BRAIN IS AN EXPENSIVE ORGAN TO RUN
/////////////////////TEMES MERGE US WITH TECHNOLOGY
///////////////////MCLWP TEME MACHINES
///////////////////3 DANGER POINTS OF EACH REPLICATOR COMING THRU
///////////////////3rd chimp with 3rd replicator in 3rd rock frm the sun
/////////////////////////
////////////////////REPRODN MORE IMP THAN SURVIVAL FOR GENES
/////////////////////AVIAN VS NON AVIAN DINO
////////////////////////GENETIC FITNESS IS NO OF CHILDREN THEY CAN PRODUCE
//////////////////////////To know everything is to know nothing.
~Proverb, (Italian)~
////////////////////
The Nature of Knowing That We Know
by Duane Elgin
The word "consciousness" literally means "that with which we know." It has also been termed the "knowing faculty". To live more consciously means to be more consciously aware, moment by moment, that we are present in all that we do. [...] When we do the countless things that make up our daily lives, we remember the being that is involved in those activities. We remember ourselves (and to "re-member" is to make whole; it is the opposite of "dis-memberment"). To live consciously is to move through life with conscious self-remembering. […]
////////////////////GENETIC FITNESS RELATIVE TO EACH ENVIRONMENT
/////////////////////PHENOTYPE IS JUST A VESSEL FOR THE GENOTYPE
//////////////////SURVIVOR MENTALITY=
Cardiologist Michael Sabom studied survivors of near-fatal cardiac arrest. These patients feared death less, were more accepting of life’s ups and downs and became more religious.
And a more recent study, specific to the long-term effects of plane crashes, showed that survivors had significantly higher positive outlooks on life, greater self-esteem and, surprisingly, lower scores of emotional stress, than those who fly often but have never suffered a disastrous crash.
Gary Capobianco, the lead author, notes, however, that there is a correlation between the level of positive outlook and how much control survivors felt they had during the actual crash.
From the reports of those on board Flight 1549, it appears their brave and clear wits led to their immediate escape, and may have also put them in good stead for their long lives ahead.
—Christie Nicholson
//////////////////About two-thirds of Africa is in the Northern Hemisphere.
//////////////////Sri Sri Ravishankar said.. If something affects you, take action.
People who take action, become powerful. People who dont, only complain.
/////////////////////As you might be aware, portability of CRB between jobs is now very
much restricted. The CRB clearance which you got through this locum
agency wont be accepted by any NHS Trust or other locum agencies (
Thats the rule, although individual Trusts may be flexible).
/////////////////////GONDWANA-TREASURE OF DINO
///////////////////About 90% of the world’s population lives in the Northern Hemisphere.
//////////////////KIN SELECTION=Some organisms tend to exhibit strategies that favor the reproductive success of their relatives, even at a cost to their own survival and/or reproduction. The classic example is a eusocial insect colony, with sterile females acting as workers to assist their mother in the production of additional offspring. Many evolutionary biologists explain this by the theory of kin selection. Natural selection should eliminate such behaviors; however, there are many cases, such as, alarm calling in squirrels, helpers at the nest in scrub jays, and sterile worker castes in honey bees, in which these animals cooperate despite an obvious disadvantage to the donor.
///////////////////EVOLN IS ABT CHANCE,NOT DESIGN
///////////////////both politics and religion -- whatever their differences -- are similar technologies, designed to efficiently connect and manage any group of people.
///////////////////13 lac ppl MIGRATE TO CITY EVERY WEEK
/////////////////1BN PPL LIVE IN SLUMS=SQUATTER CITIES
/////////////////
What your sleeping position says about you ...
Foetus
Those who curl up in the foetus position are described as tough on the outside but sensitive at heart. They may be shy when they first meet somebody, but soon relax. This is the most common sleeping position, adopted by 41% of the 1,000 people who took part in the survey. More than twice as many women as men tend to adopt this position.
//////////////////////Green tea catechins improve exercise-induced abdominal fat loss
////////////////////TEME=TECHNOLOGY MEME
///////////////Susan Blackmore studies memes: ideas that replicate themselves from brain to brain like a virus. She makes a bold new argument: Humanity has spawned a new kind of meme, the teme, which spreads itself via technology -- and invents ways to keep itself alive
///////////////////////////GENE IS JUST INFO PACKAGE -DOES NOT CARE BUT JUST REPLICATE
///////////////////INFO COPIED BY VARIATION
/////////////////////Life is shit because I don’t have the money to do the things I want!
///////////////////MEMES ARE SELFISH INFORMATION
////////////////WE R ALL MEME MACHINES
////////////////////2 REPLICATORS-GENES AND MEMES
////////////////GENE MACHINE TURNED INTO MEME MACHINE
//////////////////////3RD REPLICATOR IS TEMES
///////////////////////////FRACTION OF UNIVERSE WHO GETS 1ST ,2ND AND 3RD REPLICATOR
///////////////////3RD REPLICATORS WILL SEND VON NEUMANNS PROBES
///////////////////BRAIN IS AN EXPENSIVE ORGAN TO RUN
/////////////////////TEMES MERGE US WITH TECHNOLOGY
///////////////////MCLWP TEME MACHINES
///////////////////3 DANGER POINTS OF EACH REPLICATOR COMING THRU
///////////////////3rd chimp with 3rd replicator in 3rd rock frm the sun
/////////////////////////
Monday 19 January 2009
Saturday 17 January 2009
COMMUTE ACTIVE
# Make Your Commute Active
This isn't possible for everyone, but most of us can manage to get some exercise in during our commute to and from work. If you don't have far to go, can you walk or cycle and leave the car at home? (You'll save on gas and parking too.)
If you've got a long commute by train or bus, how about walking to the stop a little further from your house?
The big advantage of an active commute is that it fits seamlessly into your day without using up extra time. Cycling is often faster than driving during rush hour traffic, and walking can be too, if you don't have far to go.
///////////////////Hepatitis C may increase pancreatic cancer risk
A new study shows that infection with hepatitis C virus increases a person's risk for a highly fatal cancer of the biliary tree, the bile carrying pathway between the liver and pancreas.
http://www.curingdeath.com/research/Hepatitis_C_may_increase_pancreatic_cancer_risk.asp
///////////////////VS-EMPIRE OF LIBERTY
/////////////////DARWIN-EVOLN-ANTI-SLAVERY
/////////////////indy jones -CRYSTL SKLL
This isn't possible for everyone, but most of us can manage to get some exercise in during our commute to and from work. If you don't have far to go, can you walk or cycle and leave the car at home? (You'll save on gas and parking too.)
If you've got a long commute by train or bus, how about walking to the stop a little further from your house?
The big advantage of an active commute is that it fits seamlessly into your day without using up extra time. Cycling is often faster than driving during rush hour traffic, and walking can be too, if you don't have far to go.
///////////////////Hepatitis C may increase pancreatic cancer risk
A new study shows that infection with hepatitis C virus increases a person's risk for a highly fatal cancer of the biliary tree, the bile carrying pathway between the liver and pancreas.
http://www.curingdeath.com/research/Hepatitis_C_may_increase_pancreatic_cancer_risk.asp
///////////////////VS-EMPIRE OF LIBERTY
/////////////////DARWIN-EVOLN-ANTI-SLAVERY
/////////////////indy jones -CRYSTL SKLL
CLICK-WEBSCAPE
//////////////Chemical Warfare ~ Ancient Persian-style
Steve Connor
LONDON, Jan 16: The earliest example of chemical warfare has been unearthed at an archaeological site in the Syrian desert, where ancient Persian soldiers gassed a platoon of Roman troops in about 256 AD by asphyxiating them with the smoke from burning bitumen and sulphur.
A makeshift grave of 20 Roman soldiers in full battle armour was discovered at the site of the ancient city of Dura-Europos in the 1930s but it is only now that scientists have been able to figure out exactly how they died. It was known that they were killed while defending the city against a siege by digging tunnels to counter those being dug by the Sasanian Persian army under the walls of the city. New evidence suggests the Roman troops were deliberately gassed, said Dr Simon James, an archaeologist at Leicester University.
//////////////////100 YEARS AGO TODAY
THE MUNICIPAL VACCINATOR
To The Editor
SIR, ~ It is strange that Mr Ganguli’s complaint should appear in your paper exactly when I was going to write you on the same topic.
The vaccinator who came to my house last Monday struck a match and held the latest over the smoky flame, depositing as much soot as he could manage. He then blew upon the blade “to cool it,” wiped off the soot with a bit of filthy cotton wool, by courtesy called boric cotton , felt the edge of the instrument with his finger and said “all right”. Of course I refused to be operated on under such conditions, and compelled him to follow my own instructions. Vaccinators have a curious knack of blowing upon everything. They blow on the hot lancet to cool it, blow out the lymph from the capillary tube, and blow on the part to be vaccinated “to remove dust”, ~ apparently thinking their own breath to be as sterile as high pressure steam.
I submit these prepositions for the consideration of the authorities:-
(1) Every vaccinator should carry in his kit a clean spirit lamp, a supply of clean cotton-wool in a glass-stoppered bottle and a phial of rectified spirit or, better, etherial soap solution. The cost of such an equipment is not much.
(2) The part to be vaccinated should be cleansed thoroughly by rubbing with a hit of cotton wool soaked in the rectified spirit of etherial soap solution. The vaccinator should scrub his own hands with soap and water.
(3) The lancet must be held in the flame of the spirit lamp, which must be smokeless (for there are spirits which smoke) for a minute, and used without wiping. Blowing strictly forbidden.
(4) Why not abolish the ordinary lancet and use instead Dr Mareschals’ “Vaccinostyle Individual”? These resemble steel pens and can be used stuck on a penholder. One Vaccinostyle should be used but once and then thrown away. The price is not more than half an anna, which people will pay gladly. ~ Yours, etc., RAJSHEKHAR BOSE, Manager, Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works, Ld.
KOL STTSMN
////////////////SATYAM TRUE LIES-NDTV
////////////////
Steve Connor
LONDON, Jan 16: The earliest example of chemical warfare has been unearthed at an archaeological site in the Syrian desert, where ancient Persian soldiers gassed a platoon of Roman troops in about 256 AD by asphyxiating them with the smoke from burning bitumen and sulphur.
A makeshift grave of 20 Roman soldiers in full battle armour was discovered at the site of the ancient city of Dura-Europos in the 1930s but it is only now that scientists have been able to figure out exactly how they died. It was known that they were killed while defending the city against a siege by digging tunnels to counter those being dug by the Sasanian Persian army under the walls of the city. New evidence suggests the Roman troops were deliberately gassed, said Dr Simon James, an archaeologist at Leicester University.
//////////////////100 YEARS AGO TODAY
THE MUNICIPAL VACCINATOR
To The Editor
SIR, ~ It is strange that Mr Ganguli’s complaint should appear in your paper exactly when I was going to write you on the same topic.
The vaccinator who came to my house last Monday struck a match and held the latest over the smoky flame, depositing as much soot as he could manage. He then blew upon the blade “to cool it,” wiped off the soot with a bit of filthy cotton wool, by courtesy called boric cotton , felt the edge of the instrument with his finger and said “all right”. Of course I refused to be operated on under such conditions, and compelled him to follow my own instructions. Vaccinators have a curious knack of blowing upon everything. They blow on the hot lancet to cool it, blow out the lymph from the capillary tube, and blow on the part to be vaccinated “to remove dust”, ~ apparently thinking their own breath to be as sterile as high pressure steam.
I submit these prepositions for the consideration of the authorities:-
(1) Every vaccinator should carry in his kit a clean spirit lamp, a supply of clean cotton-wool in a glass-stoppered bottle and a phial of rectified spirit or, better, etherial soap solution. The cost of such an equipment is not much.
(2) The part to be vaccinated should be cleansed thoroughly by rubbing with a hit of cotton wool soaked in the rectified spirit of etherial soap solution. The vaccinator should scrub his own hands with soap and water.
(3) The lancet must be held in the flame of the spirit lamp, which must be smokeless (for there are spirits which smoke) for a minute, and used without wiping. Blowing strictly forbidden.
(4) Why not abolish the ordinary lancet and use instead Dr Mareschals’ “Vaccinostyle Individual”? These resemble steel pens and can be used stuck on a penholder. One Vaccinostyle should be used but once and then thrown away. The price is not more than half an anna, which people will pay gladly. ~ Yours, etc., RAJSHEKHAR BOSE, Manager, Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works, Ld.
KOL STTSMN
////////////////SATYAM TRUE LIES-NDTV
////////////////
CDS 160109-BHROMON-LETS GO
/////////////DOOARS
//////////////
"If you are to suffer, you should suffer in the interest of the country." - Jawaharlal Nehru
//////////////GREATER COMMON GOOD
///////////////DARWINIAN MECH TO MAINTAIN SAR OF SPECIES
///////////////NARMADA-JABALPUR-1978
Wednesday 14 January 2009
CDS 1401009-PRNTS ALNG CRSS-PRNTS MNY CRSS-DTR DZZY CRSS
///////////////JANMILEY MORITEY HOBEY,AMAR KE KOTHA KOBEY,
/////////////////GREEN SHOOTS OF RECOVERY
///////////////////Earn your TV time... for every hour you exercise
you can have an hour of TV time. (Or I might
suggest you use your TV time to exercise...
treadmill... stationery bike... etc,)
////////////////////////SOWING SEEDS OF DSPRTN
//////////////////////DTH=120K PER DAY-PLS HZA DTHS
//////////////////What is a Scanner?
Scanners love to read and write, to fix and invent things, to design projects and businesses, to cook and sing, and to create the perfect dinner party. (You'll notice I didn't use the word "or," because Scanners don't love to do one thing or the other; they love them all.)
A Scanner might be fascinated with learning how to play bridge or bocce, but once she gets good at it, she might never play it again. One Scanner I know proudly showed me a button she was wearing that said, "I Did That Already."
To Scanners the world is like a big candy store full of fascinating opportunities, and all they want is to reach out and stuff their pockets.
It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The problem is, Scanners are starving in the candy store. They believe they're allowed to pursue only one path. But they want them all. If they force themselves to make a choice, they are forever discontented. But usually Scanners don't choose anything at all. And they don't feel good about it.
////////////////////KAKA -90 MN PNDS TO MN CTY
//////////////////No surprise: Human predation exerts selection pressures on other species
///////////////////but natural
law is not self-explanatory – from whence it arises is a mystery
/////////////////
/////////////////GREEN SHOOTS OF RECOVERY
///////////////////Earn your TV time... for every hour you exercise
you can have an hour of TV time. (Or I might
suggest you use your TV time to exercise...
treadmill... stationery bike... etc,)
////////////////////////SOWING SEEDS OF DSPRTN
//////////////////////DTH=120K PER DAY-PLS HZA DTHS
//////////////////What is a Scanner?
Scanners love to read and write, to fix and invent things, to design projects and businesses, to cook and sing, and to create the perfect dinner party. (You'll notice I didn't use the word "or," because Scanners don't love to do one thing or the other; they love them all.)
A Scanner might be fascinated with learning how to play bridge or bocce, but once she gets good at it, she might never play it again. One Scanner I know proudly showed me a button she was wearing that said, "I Did That Already."
To Scanners the world is like a big candy store full of fascinating opportunities, and all they want is to reach out and stuff their pockets.
It sounds wonderful, doesn't it? The problem is, Scanners are starving in the candy store. They believe they're allowed to pursue only one path. But they want them all. If they force themselves to make a choice, they are forever discontented. But usually Scanners don't choose anything at all. And they don't feel good about it.
////////////////////KAKA -90 MN PNDS TO MN CTY
//////////////////No surprise: Human predation exerts selection pressures on other species
///////////////////but natural
law is not self-explanatory – from whence it arises is a mystery
/////////////////
Sunday 11 January 2009
CDS 110109
/////////////////DIETWALK-EAT BEAN CAMPAIGN
//////////////////FAJITA WRAP TRIAL
////////////////........You are only a true atheist when you stop worrying completely about religion, astrology and spirits, etc. If you still look at an astrology chart you are not an atheist. If you understand that you don't have to understand everything or find an immediate explanation for what you don't understand today than you are an atheist, a true one. That is the key, knowledge. If you don't understand or know it, study it.
/////////////////ACTING
/////////////////
//////////////////FAJITA WRAP TRIAL
////////////////........You are only a true atheist when you stop worrying completely about religion, astrology and spirits, etc. If you still look at an astrology chart you are not an atheist. If you understand that you don't have to understand everything or find an immediate explanation for what you don't understand today than you are an atheist, a true one. That is the key, knowledge. If you don't understand or know it, study it.
/////////////////ACTING
/////////////////
Thursday 8 January 2009
COSMOL
/////////////GUTH INFLATION WAS FASTER THAN LIGHT
////////////INFLATION HAPPND WHEN GRAVITY SPLIT OFF FRM GEWS
////////////INFLATION HAPPND WHEN GRAVITY SPLIT OFF FRM GEWS
CDS 081109-BOE-1694
////////////INT RTS FVCKD
///////////Dormitory = Dirty Room
//////////////ANAGRAM
//////////////HELIOCENTRISM HORRIFIED MEDIEVAL CRELIGN
////////////////PENZIAS-WILSON-NOBEL-1978
/////////////////LMAITRE-GAMOW-BB
/////////////////GUTH-INFLATION
////////////////?GRAVITY KICKSTARTED ARROW OF TIME,380 K YRS AFTR BB
//////////////////WMAP-NASA S BABY PICTR OF UNIVRS-380 K YRS AFTR BB
////////////////////EARLIER COSMOLOGY,MORE THEORY THAN DATA
//////////////////WMAP CHANGD IT ALL
////////////////GEWS
/////////////////INFLATION LOCKS IN UNIFORMITY OF UNVRS
////////////////////156 bn light yrs across-our universe
///////////////////"Answer is the betrayal of the open spirit of Question."
/////////////////////BIG RIP=KHELA BHANGAR KHELA
//////////////////////BIG RIP-EVEN ATOMS AND MATTER TORN APART
/////////////////////Urbane (adjective)
Pronunciation: [êr-'beyn]
Definition: Suave, polite, sophisticated.
Usage: This is a straight-forward word with no pitfalls to look out for: "His urbane manner impressed everyone at dinner."
Suggested Usage: Use this term to refer to people who are sophisticated as a result of education, travel, and intelligent experience: "Lucy's travels have left her an urbane commentator on world politics." "She also has urbane tastes in cuisine."
OPPOSITE OF GAWAR
///////////////////
///////////Dormitory = Dirty Room
//////////////ANAGRAM
//////////////HELIOCENTRISM HORRIFIED MEDIEVAL CRELIGN
////////////////PENZIAS-WILSON-NOBEL-1978
/////////////////LMAITRE-GAMOW-BB
/////////////////GUTH-INFLATION
////////////////?GRAVITY KICKSTARTED ARROW OF TIME,380 K YRS AFTR BB
//////////////////WMAP-NASA S BABY PICTR OF UNIVRS-380 K YRS AFTR BB
////////////////////EARLIER COSMOLOGY,MORE THEORY THAN DATA
//////////////////WMAP CHANGD IT ALL
////////////////GEWS
/////////////////INFLATION LOCKS IN UNIFORMITY OF UNVRS
////////////////////156 bn light yrs across-our universe
///////////////////"Answer is the betrayal of the open spirit of Question."
/////////////////////BIG RIP=KHELA BHANGAR KHELA
//////////////////////BIG RIP-EVEN ATOMS AND MATTER TORN APART
/////////////////////Urbane (adjective)
Pronunciation: [êr-'beyn]
Definition: Suave, polite, sophisticated.
Usage: This is a straight-forward word with no pitfalls to look out for: "His urbane manner impressed everyone at dinner."
Suggested Usage: Use this term to refer to people who are sophisticated as a result of education, travel, and intelligent experience: "Lucy's travels have left her an urbane commentator on world politics." "She also has urbane tastes in cuisine."
OPPOSITE OF GAWAR
///////////////////
Monday 5 January 2009
CDS 050109-CA CRSS-MSSNG CRSS
////////////////QUEERER THAN WE CAN SUPPOSE
////////////////THE BUCKET LIST
//////////////////GENESIS IN AN OCEAN OF NIRVANA
//////////////////Diet tied to breast cancer survival
(Reuters) UPDATED 2009-01-05
Researchers say weight loss isn't the only reason healthy eating should be on your New Year's resolution list: it may also decrease your risk of death if you have breast cancer. A study found that breast cancer patients who ate a "prudent" diet full of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and low-fat dairy were less likely to die over the course of eight years than cancer patients who ate a Western-style diet high in processed meats, white flour, sugar, and snack food. The study did not show that a healthy diet decreased the risk of death from cancer specifically, but it did decrease the risk of death from other causes. Read full story >
/////////////////Ad hominem argument is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem as abusive, sexist, racist, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.
//////////////////////////
////////////////THE BUCKET LIST
//////////////////GENESIS IN AN OCEAN OF NIRVANA
//////////////////Diet tied to breast cancer survival
(Reuters) UPDATED 2009-01-05
Researchers say weight loss isn't the only reason healthy eating should be on your New Year's resolution list: it may also decrease your risk of death if you have breast cancer. A study found that breast cancer patients who ate a "prudent" diet full of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and low-fat dairy were less likely to die over the course of eight years than cancer patients who ate a Western-style diet high in processed meats, white flour, sugar, and snack food. The study did not show that a healthy diet decreased the risk of death from cancer specifically, but it did decrease the risk of death from other causes. Read full story >
/////////////////Ad hominem argument is most commonly used to refer specifically to the ad hominem as abusive, sexist, racist, or argumentum ad personam, which consists of criticizing or attacking the person who proposed the argument (personal attack) in an attempt to discredit the argument. It is also used when an opponent is unable to find fault with an argument, yet for various reasons, the opponent disagrees with it.
//////////////////////////
Friday 2 January 2009
RBRT RDFRD
THE WAY WE WERE
//////////////////nsb=How much is a Nobel worth?
Posted: 01 Jan 2009 06:41 PM CST
Nobel laureates on the board bring in the bacon when it is time to capitalize a firm:
WHAT is a Nobel prize really worth? The market values it at $34m, according to a new NBER paper
///////////////Contumely (noun)
Pronunciation: [kên-'t(y)u-mê-lee or kên-'t(y)um-lee]
Definition: Rudeness whose roots are in arrogance; an arrogant remark or action.
Usage: 2. This is a noun that ends on a syllable [lee] that coincidentally happens to be an adverbial suffix in English. It is almost physically difficult to use as a noun but that is what it is! Questions of taste in aesthetic matters (music preferences, clothing favorites, and so on) often bring out contumely in people.
Suggested Usage: This word will require some struggle to restore but it is worth the effort. "Don't react with contumely to the answer after you asked me which fast food restaurant I like!" "She responded to my suggestion with such contumely that she was mistaken for the queen."
//////////////////////ns=Happiness is near
They also discovered that the effect is not the same with everyone you know. How susceptible you are to someone else's happiness depends on the nature of your relationship with them. For example, if a good friend who lives within a couple of kilometres of you suddenly becomes happy, that increases the chances of you becoming happy by more than 60 per cent. In contrast, for a next-door neighbour the figure drops to about half that, and for a nearby sibling about half again. Surprisingly, a cohabiting partner makes a difference of less than 10 per cent, which coincides with another peculiar observation about some social epidemics: that they spread far more effectively via friends of the same gender.
All this poses a key question: how can something like happiness be contagious? Some researchers think one of the most likely mechanisms is empathetic mimicry. Psychologists have shown that people unconsciously copy the facial expressions, manner of speech, posture, body language and other behaviours of those around them, often with remarkable speed and accuracy. This then causes them, through a kind of neural feedback, to actually experience the emotions associated with the particular behaviour they are mimicking.
////////////////////webscape-piclens-radiopaq-
////////////////
//////////////////nsb=How much is a Nobel worth?
Posted: 01 Jan 2009 06:41 PM CST
Nobel laureates on the board bring in the bacon when it is time to capitalize a firm:
WHAT is a Nobel prize really worth? The market values it at $34m, according to a new NBER paper
///////////////Contumely (noun)
Pronunciation: [kên-'t(y)u-mê-lee or kên-'t(y)um-lee]
Definition: Rudeness whose roots are in arrogance; an arrogant remark or action.
Usage: 2. This is a noun that ends on a syllable [lee] that coincidentally happens to be an adverbial suffix in English. It is almost physically difficult to use as a noun but that is what it is! Questions of taste in aesthetic matters (music preferences, clothing favorites, and so on) often bring out contumely in people.
Suggested Usage: This word will require some struggle to restore but it is worth the effort. "Don't react with contumely to the answer after you asked me which fast food restaurant I like!" "She responded to my suggestion with such contumely that she was mistaken for the queen."
//////////////////////ns=Happiness is near
They also discovered that the effect is not the same with everyone you know. How susceptible you are to someone else's happiness depends on the nature of your relationship with them. For example, if a good friend who lives within a couple of kilometres of you suddenly becomes happy, that increases the chances of you becoming happy by more than 60 per cent. In contrast, for a next-door neighbour the figure drops to about half that, and for a nearby sibling about half again. Surprisingly, a cohabiting partner makes a difference of less than 10 per cent, which coincides with another peculiar observation about some social epidemics: that they spread far more effectively via friends of the same gender.
All this poses a key question: how can something like happiness be contagious? Some researchers think one of the most likely mechanisms is empathetic mimicry. Psychologists have shown that people unconsciously copy the facial expressions, manner of speech, posture, body language and other behaviours of those around them, often with remarkable speed and accuracy. This then causes them, through a kind of neural feedback, to actually experience the emotions associated with the particular behaviour they are mimicking.
////////////////////webscape-piclens-radiopaq-
////////////////
JBS CRNAGE GS ON
/////////////////piffe=
If The Earth was A Village!
If we could shrink the earth's population to village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratio remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
*
57 Asians
*
21 Europeans
*
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
*
8 Africans
*
52 would be female
*
48 would be male
*
70 would be non-white
*
30 would be white
*
70 would be non-Christian
*
30 would be Christian
*
89 would be heterosexual
*
11 would be homosexual
*
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
*
80 would live in substandard housing
*
70 would be unable to read
*
50 would suffer from malnutrition
*
1 would be near death
*
1 would be near birth
*
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
*
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder...
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than many others. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Someone once said: What goes around comes around.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.
Author Unknown
/////////////////////There is something spiritual and magic about old book stores and libraries.
Maybe it is just the smell of old books bringing back forgotten childhood memories, or maybe there is a deeper spiritual connection I can’t explain, but every time I am in a library I feel connected to a higher wisdom and my creativity and inspiration take flight.
There was a public library by my apartment building where I would spend hours every day. I would take my stack of books, go outside in the park, lay down under a majestic eucalyptus tree and read until my back started hurting.
////////////////////////
Official 2012
Countdown
Get this 2012 countdown
timer only at the
Official2012Countdown
The Pole Shift / Reversal in 2012
source: www.howtosurvive2012.com by Patrick Geryl
Author Patrick Geryl came to the staggering conclusion that the Earth will soon be subjected to an immense disaster. The cause: upheavals in
the sun's magnetic fields will generate gigantic solar flares that will affect the polarity of the entire Earth. The result: our magnetic field will
reverse all at once, with catastrophic consequences for humanity.
Massive earthquakes will demolish all buildings on the planet, and instigate colossal tsunamis and intense volcanic activity. In fact, the Earth's
crust will shift, sweeping continents thousands of miles away from their present positions.
There is ample evidence in the literature of ancient civilizations that such disasters have occurred in the past and also clues that they knew
when another such calamity would occur. The Dresden Codex of the Maya for instance, contains the secrets of the sunspot cycle, about which
our modern astronomers know almost nothing!
In his books, Patrick Geryl continues his scientific analysis of the millennia-old codes of the Maya and Egyptians that refer to the coming
super-disaster. He determines that both cultures arose from an antediluvian civilization which was able to calculate the previous polar shifts
and that we should take very seriously their calculations that place the next reversal in 2012!
////////////////////summarizes 2008 it probably is 'Humanity in Crisis'.
./////////////////////Certainly neurones, hormones and other brain chemicals
play a role in all of our experience, and the brain as a physical system
allows experience to take place at all. But there are several other
layers of things involved in our experiences, from the physical world
itself, through the cultural schemas, models and languages through which
we cognize the world, to the structure of the brain, and finally the way
that neuronal structures are able to re-organize and re-model the world
in their own medium.
Judy writes: "Those who meditate increase blood flow to certain areas of
the brain and (probably reflexively) decrease it to other areas, so
perhaps it is all a matter of oxygenation, and there are no
brain-produced biochemicals involved at all."
Judy, this is so wrong it is hard to know where to start. Meditation is
about learning to create a space between stimuli and our response. When
we create that space, we free ourself from the automatic responses and
give ourselves room for a creative response. Within the space itself,
one experiences one's being as being, which allows one to experience
consciousness in its fullness. Whatever the relationship between
consciousness and blood and other chemicals is, we don't know, but
meditation is about consciousness, not blood and hormones.
Judy writes: "I think there are people who do have some sort of
experience of an Other of which I may be incapable. I'm pretty sure that
the accompanying conceptualizations bear almost no resemblence to
whatever may actually be out there."
If its all blood neurons and hormones, what is a self? What else could
the self be but an illusion, and if the self is an illusion, than the
truth is that all is otherness relative to that illusion. But of course,
it is not all blood, neurons, and hormones, and the self, like culture,
is composed of narratives. But beyond the narratives, there is no
essence -- the narrative is generated out of the otherness of nature and
culture. Through meditayion one gets beyond the narrative to the
otherness. Otherness is the tree in which the narrative "I" has its
nest. Further, the other is not "out there." The other is within, it
is the life of our life.
T
////////////////////////A supervolcano is one that explodes in (natch) supereruptions. Definitions vary, but usually we're talking a magnitude-eight (M8) eruption: one trillion metric tons of ash and other debris filling at least 100 cubic miles, typically upchucked over the course of about a week. Picture 1,000 Mount Saint Helenses, or 8 Tamboras. Besides causing regional devastation, supereruptions affect global climate. An Indonesian super 74,000 years ago kicked off a thousand-year drought that some contend caused a human population crash. One shudders to think what a similar blow would do now.
Yellowstone is both a supervolcano and a hotspot; the two don't always go together. A hotspot is the business end of what's known as a mantle plume, a stream of magma that rises hundreds of miles through a channel in the earth’s crust like the blob in a lava lamp. The Yellowstone plume head, 50 miles underground, is several hundred miles wide. Over time, the hot head melts the overlying crust, forming a smaller magma chamber. Yellowstone's magma chamber is just a few miles down and contains partially melted granite viscous enough to trap gas, allowing pressure to build. Periodically the pressure cracks the surface, explosively ejecting gas and disintegrated rock into the surface world. After about a tenth of the chamber's contents have erupted, pressure falls and the show's over. Reheat and repeat.
For more, see:
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2834/is-yellowstone-park-sitting-on-a-supervolcano-thats-about-to-blow
//////////////////What exactly causes ejaculation?
Perhaps surprisingly, that's a tough one -- the "exactly" part being the major sticking point. Scientists are pretty sure it has something to do with the spine and some muscles, but they're not sure how it all fits together. Part of the problem is a lack of careful research. Physiologist Roy Levin reviewed the literature in 2005 and discovered that, "of the four "e's" of male sexual function, excitation, erection, emission, and ejaculation, the mechanism that has been studied the least is the last." Standard Practice in Sexual Medicine (2006) says, "a detailed, non-disputed physio-anatomic description of the mechanism of human ejaculation has still to be produced." In other words, we don't know everything just yet -- we're still scratching our heads a bit. The fact that we don't know everything, of course, doesn't mean we know nothing.
For more, see:
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2835/how-does-ejaculation-work
//////////////////////New Anti-cancer Components Of Extra-virgin Olive Oil Revealed (December 27, 2008) -- Good quality extra-virgin olive oil contains health-relevant chemicals, 'phytochemicals', that can trigger cancer cell death. New research sheds more light on the suspected association between olive oil-rich Mediterranean diets and reductions in breast cancer risk. ... > full story
///////////////////Women Double Fruit, Veggie Intake With Switch To Mediterranean Diet Plan (December 31, 2008) -- Women more than doubled their fruit and vegetable intakes and dramatically increased their consumption of 'good' fats when they were counseled by registered dietitians and provided with a list of guidelines on the amount of certain foods they should eat each day. ... > full story
//////////////////////Berry Compound Reduces Aging Effect (December 30, 2008) -- Aged laboratory animals that ate a diet rich in the berry and grape compound pterostilbene performed better than those in a group that did not eat the enriched diet, scientists with the Agricultural Research Service have reported. Pterostilbene reversed measurable negative effects of aging on brain function and behavioral performance. ... > full story
////////////////////////////
If The Earth was A Village!
If we could shrink the earth's population to village of precisely 100 people, with all the existing human ratio remaining the same, it would look something like the following:
There would be:
*
57 Asians
*
21 Europeans
*
14 from the Western Hemisphere, both north and south
*
8 Africans
*
52 would be female
*
48 would be male
*
70 would be non-white
*
30 would be white
*
70 would be non-Christian
*
30 would be Christian
*
89 would be heterosexual
*
11 would be homosexual
*
6 people would possess 59% of the entire world's wealth and all 6 would be from the United States.
*
80 would live in substandard housing
*
70 would be unable to read
*
50 would suffer from malnutrition
*
1 would be near death
*
1 would be near birth
*
1 (yes, only 1) would have a college education
*
1 would own a computer
When one considers our world from such a compressed perspective, the need for acceptance, understanding and education becomes glaringly apparent.
The following is also something to ponder...
If you woke up this morning with more health than illness...you are more blessed than many others. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation...you are ahead of 500 million people in the world.
If you can attend a church meeting without fear of harassment, arrest, torture, or death...you are more blessed than three billion people in the world.
If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, a roof overhead and a place to sleep...you are richer than 75% of this world.
If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish someplace ... you are among the top 8% of the world's wealthy.
If your parents are still alive and still married ... you are very rare, even in the United States and Canada.
If you can read this message, you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world that cannot read at all.
Someone once said: What goes around comes around.
Work like you don't need the money.
Love like you've never been hurt.
Dance like nobody's watching.
Sing like nobody's listening.
Live like it's Heaven on Earth.
Author Unknown
/////////////////////There is something spiritual and magic about old book stores and libraries.
Maybe it is just the smell of old books bringing back forgotten childhood memories, or maybe there is a deeper spiritual connection I can’t explain, but every time I am in a library I feel connected to a higher wisdom and my creativity and inspiration take flight.
There was a public library by my apartment building where I would spend hours every day. I would take my stack of books, go outside in the park, lay down under a majestic eucalyptus tree and read until my back started hurting.
////////////////////////
Official 2012
Countdown
Get this 2012 countdown
timer only at the
Official2012Countdown
The Pole Shift / Reversal in 2012
source: www.howtosurvive2012.com by Patrick Geryl
Author Patrick Geryl came to the staggering conclusion that the Earth will soon be subjected to an immense disaster. The cause: upheavals in
the sun's magnetic fields will generate gigantic solar flares that will affect the polarity of the entire Earth. The result: our magnetic field will
reverse all at once, with catastrophic consequences for humanity.
Massive earthquakes will demolish all buildings on the planet, and instigate colossal tsunamis and intense volcanic activity. In fact, the Earth's
crust will shift, sweeping continents thousands of miles away from their present positions.
There is ample evidence in the literature of ancient civilizations that such disasters have occurred in the past and also clues that they knew
when another such calamity would occur. The Dresden Codex of the Maya for instance, contains the secrets of the sunspot cycle, about which
our modern astronomers know almost nothing!
In his books, Patrick Geryl continues his scientific analysis of the millennia-old codes of the Maya and Egyptians that refer to the coming
super-disaster. He determines that both cultures arose from an antediluvian civilization which was able to calculate the previous polar shifts
and that we should take very seriously their calculations that place the next reversal in 2012!
////////////////////summarizes 2008 it probably is 'Humanity in Crisis'.
./////////////////////Certainly neurones, hormones and other brain chemicals
play a role in all of our experience, and the brain as a physical system
allows experience to take place at all. But there are several other
layers of things involved in our experiences, from the physical world
itself, through the cultural schemas, models and languages through which
we cognize the world, to the structure of the brain, and finally the way
that neuronal structures are able to re-organize and re-model the world
in their own medium.
Judy writes: "Those who meditate increase blood flow to certain areas of
the brain and (probably reflexively) decrease it to other areas, so
perhaps it is all a matter of oxygenation, and there are no
brain-produced biochemicals involved at all."
Judy, this is so wrong it is hard to know where to start. Meditation is
about learning to create a space between stimuli and our response. When
we create that space, we free ourself from the automatic responses and
give ourselves room for a creative response. Within the space itself,
one experiences one's being as being, which allows one to experience
consciousness in its fullness. Whatever the relationship between
consciousness and blood and other chemicals is, we don't know, but
meditation is about consciousness, not blood and hormones.
Judy writes: "I think there are people who do have some sort of
experience of an Other of which I may be incapable. I'm pretty sure that
the accompanying conceptualizations bear almost no resemblence to
whatever may actually be out there."
If its all blood neurons and hormones, what is a self? What else could
the self be but an illusion, and if the self is an illusion, than the
truth is that all is otherness relative to that illusion. But of course,
it is not all blood, neurons, and hormones, and the self, like culture,
is composed of narratives. But beyond the narratives, there is no
essence -- the narrative is generated out of the otherness of nature and
culture. Through meditayion one gets beyond the narrative to the
otherness. Otherness is the tree in which the narrative "I" has its
nest. Further, the other is not "out there." The other is within, it
is the life of our life.
T
////////////////////////A supervolcano is one that explodes in (natch) supereruptions. Definitions vary, but usually we're talking a magnitude-eight (M8) eruption: one trillion metric tons of ash and other debris filling at least 100 cubic miles, typically upchucked over the course of about a week. Picture 1,000 Mount Saint Helenses, or 8 Tamboras. Besides causing regional devastation, supereruptions affect global climate. An Indonesian super 74,000 years ago kicked off a thousand-year drought that some contend caused a human population crash. One shudders to think what a similar blow would do now.
Yellowstone is both a supervolcano and a hotspot; the two don't always go together. A hotspot is the business end of what's known as a mantle plume, a stream of magma that rises hundreds of miles through a channel in the earth’s crust like the blob in a lava lamp. The Yellowstone plume head, 50 miles underground, is several hundred miles wide. Over time, the hot head melts the overlying crust, forming a smaller magma chamber. Yellowstone's magma chamber is just a few miles down and contains partially melted granite viscous enough to trap gas, allowing pressure to build. Periodically the pressure cracks the surface, explosively ejecting gas and disintegrated rock into the surface world. After about a tenth of the chamber's contents have erupted, pressure falls and the show's over. Reheat and repeat.
For more, see:
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2834/is-yellowstone-park-sitting-on-a-supervolcano-thats-about-to-blow
//////////////////What exactly causes ejaculation?
Perhaps surprisingly, that's a tough one -- the "exactly" part being the major sticking point. Scientists are pretty sure it has something to do with the spine and some muscles, but they're not sure how it all fits together. Part of the problem is a lack of careful research. Physiologist Roy Levin reviewed the literature in 2005 and discovered that, "of the four "e's" of male sexual function, excitation, erection, emission, and ejaculation, the mechanism that has been studied the least is the last." Standard Practice in Sexual Medicine (2006) says, "a detailed, non-disputed physio-anatomic description of the mechanism of human ejaculation has still to be produced." In other words, we don't know everything just yet -- we're still scratching our heads a bit. The fact that we don't know everything, of course, doesn't mean we know nothing.
For more, see:
www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2835/how-does-ejaculation-work
//////////////////////New Anti-cancer Components Of Extra-virgin Olive Oil Revealed (December 27, 2008) -- Good quality extra-virgin olive oil contains health-relevant chemicals, 'phytochemicals', that can trigger cancer cell death. New research sheds more light on the suspected association between olive oil-rich Mediterranean diets and reductions in breast cancer risk. ... > full story
///////////////////Women Double Fruit, Veggie Intake With Switch To Mediterranean Diet Plan (December 31, 2008) -- Women more than doubled their fruit and vegetable intakes and dramatically increased their consumption of 'good' fats when they were counseled by registered dietitians and provided with a list of guidelines on the amount of certain foods they should eat each day. ... > full story
//////////////////////Berry Compound Reduces Aging Effect (December 30, 2008) -- Aged laboratory animals that ate a diet rich in the berry and grape compound pterostilbene performed better than those in a group that did not eat the enriched diet, scientists with the Agricultural Research Service have reported. Pterostilbene reversed measurable negative effects of aging on brain function and behavioral performance. ... > full story
////////////////////////////
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