"God has something to say to you!"

clipped from scienceblogs.com God has something to say to you!

Health: Reduce High-glycaemic food intake

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk A diet rich in potatoes, white bread and white rice may be contributing to a "silent epidemic" of a dangerous liver condition. "High-glycaemic" foods - rapidly digested by the body - could be causing "fatty liver", increasing the risk of serious illness. The study, carried out at Boston Children's Hospital, looked at the effect of diets with precisely the same calorific content, but very different ingredients when measured using the glycaemic index (GI). After six months on the diet, the mice weighed the same, but those on the high GI diet had twice the normal amount of fat in their bodies, blood and livers. The researchers say that because the processed carbohydrates are absorbed so quickly, they trigger the release of more of the chemical insulin, which tells the body to lay down more fat.

NASA: Near Earth Object Program

clipped from neo.jpl.nasa.gov The following table lists potential future Earth impact events that the JPL Sentry System has detected based on currently available observations. Click on the object designation to go to a page with full details on that object. Recently Observed Objects (within past 60 days) Object Designation Year Range Potential Impacts Impact Prob. (cum.) Vinfinity (km/s) H (mag) Est. Diam. (km) Palermo Scale (cum.) Palermo Scale (max.) Torino Scale (max.) 2007 RU9 2013-2071 16 4.4e-06 16.18 20.8  0.234 -2.57 -3.00 0 2007 RY19 2014-2092 752 1.7e-05 9.76 21.9  0.142 -3.03 -3.87 0 2007 RX19 2021-2107 53 5.4e-08 21.30 18.7  0.622 -3.81 -4.54 0 2007 RA20 2016-2107 64 4.6e-08 13.22 19.9  0.362 -4.60 -5.15 0 2007 RT9 2028-2107 33 7.9e-08 9.61 19.9  0.357 -4.61 -5.20 0 2007 RV9 2011-2107 8 7.8e-09 15.22 19.9  0.358 -5.23 -5.56 0

Greenspan: Clinton Good, Bush Bad

clipped from www.washingtonpost.com Alan Greenspan, who served as Federal Reserve chairman for 18 years and was the leading Republican economist for the past three decades, levels unusually harsh criticism at President Bush and the Republican Party in his new book, arguing that Bush abandoned the central conservative principle of fiscal restraint. While condemning Democrats, too, for rampant federal spending, he offers Bill Clinton an exemption. The former president emerges as the political hero of "The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World," Greenspan's 531-page memoir, which is being published Monday. Greenspan, who had an eight-year alliance with Clinton and Democratic Treasury secretaries in the 1990s, praises Clinton's mind and his tough anti-deficit policies, calling the former president's 1993 economic plan "an act of political courage."

NYC: Scooters a congestion solution?

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk Scooter riders say the small but sometimes noisy vehicles are the best answer to a dreary subway commute or, even better, to the traffic congestion that chokes New York streets. "But it's fun, I'm outside, it's great and quicker than being stuck in a traffic jam." "Think of the money I'm saving by riding this - to fill it up costs $5 and it lasts for a month." He adds: "We asked a company to do a study for us to find out what would happen if we replaced 20% of the cars in Manhattan with scooters. "We found that every single driver in Manhattan would save 100 hours a year that are currently lost in traffic - that's huge."

China: Environmental Cost of Rapid Growth

Grim.

Pollution has made cancer China’s leading cause of death, the Ministry of Health says. Ambient air pollution alone is blamed for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Nearly 500 million people lack access to safe drinking water.

Environmental woes that might be considered catastrophic in some countries can seem commonplace in China: industrial cities where people rarely see the sun; children killed or sickened by lead poisoning or other types of local pollution

clipped from www.nytimes.com Choking on Growth clipped from www.nytimes.com

Drop Foreseen in Median Price of U.S. Homes

clipped from www.nytimes.com The median price of American homes is expected to fall this year for the first time since federal housing agencies began keeping statistics in 1950.

Getting Shrill?

Clinton? Obama? Edwards?

Nope, Newt Gingrich

clipped from talkingpointsmemo.com "We're about to enter the seventh year of this phony war...and we're losing." "How can we tolerate systems more likely to send young Americans to prison than college?" "Republicans have this maniacally dumb idea of Red versus Blue. They say, Detroit is a blue place, so we're not going to go there." "We have to have a national energy strategy, which basically says to the Saudis, 'We're not going to rely on you.'" "Republican political doctrine has been a failure," "Look at New Orleans. How can you say that was a success? Look at Baghdad... I don't think you can look around and say that was a great success."

Failed Bridges & Failed Presidents

What link is there between the two bridges in the pictures above? The one on the top is the bridge that crosses the Mississippi in Minneapolis that suddenly collapsed, the other is a bridge that crosses the Tigris in Baghdad. What is the link you ask? Failure of leadership is the link.

Our government is going heavily into debt yet that debt isn't even being spent on "capital", on the infrastructure needed to maintain and build the future economy, it is being wasted on a war. A war that was predicted to turn out the way it did but a prediction that leadership ignored in their planning because they didn't like it. While we are distracted, losing our young and creative and our treasury to a pointless war of choice, others gather their strength (1,2,3).

The enemies of America have placed a mole in our midst. This mole's actions have lead what was the world's only superpower to the edge of failure. May George W. Bush go down in infamy. He is not pro-American in any sense.


Technorati Tags: bush, politics, china, iraq, war

Powered by ScribeFire.

Raw Material

Ah the raw material. The blank page. I can create a universe here! One where I get to be king (if I were so ego inclined that is.) But what is wrong with the ego? One issue with the ego-centric world is the approach to nature and the environment. With ego-centrism one builds an internal me versus the world structure of thinking. From that structure follows an “us versus nature” battle.

Still writing. Still finishing. I must finish finishing. But I feel very close to the end. And i am jazzed.

Taking sides as a team

I remember walking down the curved street DC on my way to work. I remember during the election of 1984 how I used to put up Reagan stickers and some other person kept replacing them with Mondale stickers. I would in turn replace them with Reagan stickers. I also remember how I used to think it was funny the way that the Mondale stickers, when exposed to sunlight, would turn red. But what I really liked was the sort of camaraderie that was instilled somehow. Though we were on two different sides of an issue, in this case a presidential election, there was still a level at which we were doing the same thing, playing the same game and thus had an alliance. Of course that is what I felt. It could well have been that the other person couldn’t stand what I was doing and just reviled me. But I’ll go with my feeling. It is so much better.

WikiMindMap

An actual, useful web2.0 tool. Imagine that.

clipped from communicationnation.blogspot.com WikiMindMap 1. It's a mind map program 2. It's 100% online 3. It searches any term on Wikipedia and automatically creates a mindmap Yes it's true and it's very cool. Check it out. clipped from www.wikimindmap.org

Stunning Photo of Saturn Backlit By the Sun

clipped from www.edge.org SATURN BACKLIT BY THE SUN Steven Pinker One of these days, Edge may want to run this photo, which planetary scientist Carolyn Porco, leader of the Imaging Team for the Cassini mission to Saturn, showed us at the TED Conference: Saturn backlit by the sun, with the Earth appearing as a tiny dot in upper left (shown in the inset blowup). It is not only perhaps the most stunning photograph ever taken, but the fact that it has not appeared on the cover of Time, New York Times, etc., is a sign of our culture's indifference to science. This is truly awe-inspiring — not just visually beautiful, but a mind-boggling technical achievement, and a way to depict the finiteness and fragility of the planet in a way that we haven’t experienced since the famous "Earthrise" photo from the Apollo program in the late 1960s. — Steve Pinker

Criminal Animal-Rights Activists: Terrorists?

If the action of the person was driven by the desire to intimidate others with the threat of physical harm, is that not terrorism?

Yet, not one of these actions have resulted in the physical harm of anybody.

Yet.

clipped from www.nature.com Equating animal-rights activism with terrorism increases the penalties for offenders and will please many of their victims. But it is not in the interests of science. Terrorist is not a word you throw around lightly. And it is certainly not a word you apply to anyone with whom you would like to have a civil conversation. They are criminals, to be sure. Their arson cost millions of dollars and destroyed scientific work in progress. But although some of their more knuckleheaded actions could easily have accidentally hurt someone, their ethos was to damage property, never to hurt or kill. many people have personally felt terrified by the actions of the most extreme. But 'terrorist' is a word so debased and loaded by political use that, if it has any meaning at all, it is counterproductive. We should avoid building an unbreachable wall between criminal activists and their victims We must all speak more objectively and calmly.

Darwin Sceptic: 'views cost tenure'

clipped from www.nature.com He's a young astronomer with dozens of articles in top journals; he has made an important discovery in the field of extrasolar planets; and he is a proponent of intelligent design, the idea that an intelligent force has shaped the Universe. It's that last fact that Guillermo Gonzalez thinks has cost him his tenure at Iowa State University. But other researchers think that the department's decision was entirely justified. "I would have voted to deny him tenure," says Robert Park, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park. "He has established that he does not understand the scientific process." The 43-year-old astronomer is also a deeply religious evangelical Christian, and his faith has shaped his views on science. "The Universe is designed for scientific discovery." But Park says that a researcher's views on intelligent design cannot be divorced from the tenure decision. But not all scientists agree. "intelligent design was not a major or even a big factor in this decision."

If I Had My Life to Live Over

by Erma Bombeck

clipped from www.ookingdom.com I would have talked less and listened more. I would have taken the time to listen to my grandfather ramble about his youth. I would have sat on the lawn with my children and not worried about grass stains. I would have cried and laughed less while watching television, and more while watching life. There would have been more “I love you’s.” More “I’m sorry’s.” But mostly, given another shot at life, I would seize every minute… look at it and really see it… live it… and never give it back. Stop sweating the small stuff. Don’t worry about who doesn’t like you, who has more, or who’s doing what. And what we are doing each day to promote ourselves mentally, physically, emotionally, as well as spiritually. Life is too short to let it pass you by. We only have one shot at this and then it’s gone.

'Childhood Origins of Adult Resistance to Science'

clipped from www.sciencemag.org Resistance to certain scientific ideas derives in large part from assumptions and biases that can be demonstrated experimentally in young children and that may persist into adulthood. In particular, both adults and children resist acquiring scientific information that clashes with common-sense intuitions about the physical and psychological domains. Additionally, when learning information from other people, both adults and children are sensitive to the trustworthiness of the source of that information. Resistance to science, then, is particularly exaggerated in societies where nonscientific ideologies have the advantages of being both grounded in common sense and transmitted by trustworthy sources.

'The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology'

...

clipped from www.sciencemag.org People are selfish, yet morally motivated. Morality is universal, yet culturally variable. Such apparent contradictions are dissolving as research from many disciplines converges on a few shared principles, including the importance of moral intuitions, the socially functional (rather than truth-seeking) nature of moral thinking, and the coevolution of moral minds with cultural practices and institutions that create diverse moral communities. I propose a fourth principle to guide future research: Morality is about more than harm and fairness. More research is needed on the collective and religious parts of the moral domain, such as loyalty, authority, and spiritual purity.

Marijuana: Where there is no smoke...

clipped from www.nature.com Vaporizing cannabis leaves instead of burning them can release the drug's active ingredient just as effectively — while avoiding the harmful toxins inhaled through smoking the drug, according to a pilot study. The active ingredient in cannabis leaves is in oils on the surface of leaf 'hairs'. The potential benefits of marijuana include pain relief for multiple-sclerosis sufferers, a treatment for glaucoma, as an appetite stimulant for AIDS patients and an anti-nausea agent for people on chemotherapy. Rather than smoking, some use the leaves to make tea or cakes for consumption. But this means that the active agents are metabolized by the liver rather than entering the bloodstream unaltered. the pace of research has been slow, partly because there is only one source of research-approved marijuana in the United States the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) which critics accuse of dictating research along a political agenda.

MS Font maker

clipped from www.metacafe.com Hidden Program In Windows XP Go to Start > Run > and type in eudcedit - this will open up a font editor - allowing you to design your own custom fonts and characters to be used in things like MS Word. MS Microsoft Word Font Character Hidden Secret Program Windows XP Tags: