 | "There's Justice In The Universe" |
| Posted 11/21/2010 5:44 PM CST People who sweat more are far more likely to participate in politics by contacting their government official or by voting. People who get worked up more easily sweat more / which correlates with higher rates of political activity. The people who sweat the most are twice as likely to do so. [Maybe that's why Bristol Palin's doing "so well" on "Dancing With The Stars". Her mother's politics, her attire and reputation are eliciting some extra heavy sweating - 'er' - I mean 'voting'. The Week; 10-29-2010 http://tinyurl.com/2es9j2j |
| Posted 11/20/2010 12:14 PM CST Kids who watch TV or are on the computer for more than two hours daily are more likely to have emotional, social, concentration problems than those with less than two hours daily exposure. Spending time outdoors does not mitigate the effect. So, it's not the sedentary nature of TV/computer time -- it's likely something about the content, experience, or perhaps even the electronic screens themselves. My Comment: Perhaps it's these particular individuals who are more drawn into a world of vicariousness? http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/126/5/e1011 http://www.fox10tv.com/dpps/health/pediatrics/screen-time-hurts-even-active-kids_3608977 |
| Posted 11/16/2010 12:50 PM CST Regularly smoking marijuana 'before age 16' causes changes in the brain that 'impairs' the ability to focus and make informed decisions, to learn from mistakes and self-correct, and to think abstractly. The making of the same errors over and over is called "cognitive inflexibility". http://www.statesman.com/news/nation/early-pot-habit-hurts-teen-brains-study-shows-1050222.html As a career teacher of troubled secondary level students, I was aware of this --- and developed a simple rule for them to apply to their lives: "Don't lie; don't steal; and, always learn from your mistakes." There were various corollaries to this. My favorite was: "All thieves are liars --- and all liars are thieves, even if it's just to steal your trust." Though I used other expressions such as: "You can't have your cake and eat it, too" and "everyone pays the piper sooner or later", I found that these were generally too abstract for most students with drug problems. For them, my concrete behavior management program was what was required for socialization skills to be increased. Note: "Fetal alcohol syndrome" and drug induced "cognitive inflexibility" are so endemic in our society, they barely register as a blip on our radar. It's only when we see these individuals later in life being incarcerated or suffering from 'end stage liver disease', etcetera that we begin to realize the really really long term consequences of failure to "learn from our mistakes". |
| Posted 10/14/2010 8:56 PM CDT Not too long ago, I'd posted a blog entitled "Greatest Shortcoming Of The Human Race" http://tinyurl.com/23dv2ac As I see it, us Earthlings are ever increasingly interdependent and, therefore, a decreasing average of international intelligence levels is not encouraging. Inability to understand applications of basic exponential functions (as illustrated by proportions shown in the video links) are an example of such. Contemporary topics broached in these videos are well worth considering, just as the following illustrates what was worthy of consideration 2000 years ago: The concept of a spherical Earth (contradicting the general belief in a flat earth) dates back to ancient Greek philosophy from around the 6th century BC / but remained a matter of speculation until the Greek, Eratosthenes, not only proved that the Earth was not flat, he was able to calculate the size of the Earth sphere using sticks and human observation. Having learned of a deep well at Syene (near the Tropic of Cancer) where sunlight only struck the bottom of the well on the summer solstice, Eratosthenes knew that this proved that the world was round / he then determined that (with this starting point), he could discover the circumference of the earth. [Note: Scholars had already known that the earth was indeed a sphere]. To calculate the circumference, Eratosthenes needed two things. He knew the approximate distance between Syene and Alexandria. He then measured the angle of the shadow in Alexandria on the solstice. By taking the angle of the shadow (7°12') and dividing it into the 360 degrees of a circle (360 divided by 7.2 yields 50), Eratosthenes could then multiply the distance between Alexandria and Syene by 50 to determine the circumference. Remarkably, Eratosthenes determined the circumference to be 25,000 miles, just 100 miles over the actual circumference at the equator (24,901 miles). Hellenistic astronomy thus established the spherical shape of the earth as a physical given (the proof of which most uneducated peoples generally could not conceptualize). The Greek paradigm was gradually adopted, however, becoming the dominant concept of modern times. The final, practical demonstration of Earth's sphericity was achieved by Ferdinand Magellan expedition's circumnavigation Video (06:30) http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/noonday/index.html http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/sizing-up-the-earth/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eratosthenes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_Earth http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/eratosthenes.html http://morriscourse.com/elements_of_ecology/images/eratosthenes_calc.gif http://www.wired.com/images/article/full/2008/06/circumference_eratosthenes_500px.jpg |
| Posted 10/11/2010 1:35 PM CDT Sometimes no commentary is needed. Simply watch this video from Military.com: Nerves of Steel / Climbing Tower http://tinyurl.com/24st5y4 http://shock.military.com/Shock/videos.do;jsessionid=754115CBE42B9FF47E4EEF75ADF86147?displayContent=221103&page=1 |
| Posted 10/7/2010 11:20 AM CDT Down through the ages, the expression "History is written by the victors" is well illustrated in many ways. In the current American Culture Wars, the fundamentalists in Texas have won a victory by holding the majority of the Texas State Board of Education seats. A skewing to the political right is occurring as curriculum is being rewritten. "For example, under the new standards, Thomas Jefferson, because he authored the notion that a “wall of separation” exists between church and state, would be dropped from the list of primary figures in the nation’s founding, and become a minor figure.... Slavery, under the new standards, would no longer be described as America’s original sin, and would become “the Atlantic triangular trade”—a relic of British colonialism that America struggled to cast off." [Evidently there will be no more of this 'darkness' talk of Indian massacres, interventionist foreign policy, paying attention to the struggles of women and minorities, etc.] http://theweek.com/article/index/207395/the-great-textbook-wars Meanwhile, in China, their textbooks have been written to show Japan's defeat as being due solely to the heroic Chinese resistance. Omitted is such things as the U.S. (and Russian) military campaigns and the dropping of two atomic bombs. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qehi22f54IQ&feature=related And Japan has kept their atrocities out of their textbooks. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7EjWCVXfzA&feature=related In Russia, the historical image of bloody dictator Josef Stalin is suddenly being recast in a more positive light. Example, only one paragraph is being given to the subject of the Great Famine caused by his deliberate agricultural policies. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor In short, even when we write history to please both sides, everybody loses (even the Nimrods like 'Bucky'): Read Oct.4, 5, 6th - http://news.yahoo.com/comics/get-fuzzy Note: Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. When he penned the words "All men are created equal", it far surpasses the ability of 'knobby kneed cretins' who want to diminish his historical significance because he wisely saw the dangers posed to a Democratic Republic by government endorsed religions. Dangers which we see currently manifest in the theocracies of the Middle East. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_men_are_created_equal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_forms_of_government http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theocracy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodemocracy What's especially sad is that Wikipedia is generally more accurate than our textbooks. These same 'nimrods' are probably unaware of elements of our nation's less than illustrious dark side / every nation has one. Fortunately, however, the internet allows students who are genuinely interested in history to read for themselves what really happened. For example, take the almost mythical story of John Smith and of Pocahontas... the truth is much more interesting than the school children's version - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith_%28explorer%29#Early_adventures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocahontas "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." |
| Posted 10/5/2010 10:36 AM CDT The American 'Indian Wars' were a series of conflicts between the colonial or federal government and the native people of North America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Wars Now today, as we slog our way through a "war" reminiscent of the Vietnam War (aka 'police action') , we need to remind ourselves of what was long ago observed by one American official who remarked during the American Indian Wars that "it takes ten good soldiers to wage successful war against one Indian". [And before anyone thinks I'm disparaging of Indians, let me point out that almost every treaty made with the Indians was broken by us.] http://tinyurl.com/2dxkud3 As the war in the Middle East grinds on against belligerents (or 'insurgents'), we are forced to once again ask ourselves, "What have we gotten ourselves into?". In addition, as the cost in money, lives, etcetera mounts, "How much longer can we afford to stay?". The Muslims we financed in their resistance against the Soviet Union are now our enemies / and remember that the Russians 'broke their teeth' in Afghanistan, just before they collapsed in part due to economic stresses. As we ponder this, it's helpful to review the meaning of several key concepts: An 'insurgency' is an armed rebellion against a constituted authority (for example, an authority recognized as such by the United Nations) when those taking part in the rebellion are not recognized as 'belligerents'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belligerent 'Terrorism' is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism 'Conventional warfare' is an attempt to reduce an opponent's military capability through open battle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conventional_warfare 'Unconventional warfare' is an attempt to achieve military victory through acquiescence, capitulation, or clandestine support for one side of an existing conflict. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconventional_warfare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymmetric_warfare 'Police action' is a euphemism for a military action undertaken without a formal declaration of war. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_action Wars are generally classified by which of the above elements predominate. And often, it's based on which side of the fence you're on. Note: I know that I'm stating the obvious; but, sometimes that's where you have to start when you're re-evaluating your position. My Comment: The conflict in the Middle East is all of the above in bits and pieces. It's a bloody nightmare that we can't just turn and walk away from. We need to stay the course as best we can in regards to our commitment to stabilizing the region while steadily reducing the overall number of our troops. No matter what we do, it won't end well / simply because of their growing overpopulation of increasingly desperate conservative fundamentalists and our increasingly desperate dependence on oil as an energy source. |
| Posted 10/1/2010 8:42 AM CDT ....is perhaps our 'inability to understand' the Exponential Function. It has application to banking, population growth, etcetera: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&p=6A1FD147A45EF50D&index=1&feature=BF It's broken into 8 parts about 9 minutes each. Watch at least the first part of part one (of eight). We all can afford a few minutes to stimulate the brain. Maybe even watch a different one each day until it completely sinks in. #1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY&feature=channel #2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb3JI8F9LQQ&NR=1 #3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFyOw9IgtjY&NR=1 #4 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQd-VGYX3-E&NR=1 #5 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-X6EpvWWu8&NR=1 #6 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3y7UlHdhAU&NR=1 #7 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyseLQVpJEI&NR=1 #8 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoiiVnQadwE&NR=1 |
| Posted 9/21/2010 12:36 PM CDT 'Colonial powers' are nothing new in Afghanistan. However, "iodine deficiency disorders" (IDD) are ancient there. Illiteracy rates are 90%++ & problems associated with poverty are firmly entrenched along with cultural mores that are regressive. Nothing will change if their general population's cognitive levels aren't boosted. If we can spend billions on military expenses, I think we could spend some on iodized salt before we leave. http://www.statesman.com/sitelife/?newspaperUserId=5790037&plckPersonaPage=BlogViewPost&plckUserId=5790037&plckPostId=Blog%3a5790037Post%3aa01484b3-ab1f-48e8-9f1a-0692d40e1263&plckController=PersonaBlog&plckScript=personaScript&plckElementId=personaDest http://www.iccidd.org/index.php http://www.iccidd.org/pages/help-iccidd.php http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071212201453.htm |
Posted 9/15/2010 5:30 PM CDT
Phytoplankton (unicellular plankton which obtain energy by photosynthesis 'aka' microscopic algae) which are the base of the marine food chain & capture CO2 (generate as much oxygen as land based plant life) are in decline. As ocean temperatures increase there is less movement of rich nutrients from deep in the sea to the surface, thus limiting the growth of phytoplankton.
http://www.ercim.eu/publication/Ercim_News/enw65/huisman.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10781621
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Global-Warming/New-Research-on-The-Oceans-and-Carbon-Dioxide-Release.html
http://www.ercim.eu/publication/Ercim_News/enw65/huisman.html
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10781621
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Global-Warming/New-Research-on-The-Oceans-and-Carbon-Dioxide-Release.html
