From futurist Stephan A. Schwartz - Trends That Will Affect Your Future …

[giovonni]

"The latest in the Homo Superiorus trend."

***********

Fertility landmark as scientists make sperm from stem cells

Cells taken from infertile men or women could be turned into 'germline' cells that give rise to sperm and eggs.

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Friday, 5 August 2011

Scientists have made sperm in a laboratory from converting stem cells, and used them to produce healthy offspring in mice, in technology that could be adapted to help infertile men.

It is believed to the the first time that sperm cells made in the laboratory with stem-cell techniques have been used to generate offspring free of any obvious physical or genetic defects that have grown up and reproduced normally, the researchers said.

Scientists took stem cells from the embryos of laboratory mice and converted them into mature sperm cells, then used them to fertilise eggs and produced the healthy, fertile offspring.

The technology may one day form the basis of a new approach to treating infertile women incapable of making their own egg cells, the scientists said.

One possibility is that skin cells taken from infertile men or women could be turned into stem cells and then converted into the "germline" cells that give rise to sperm and eggs. These sperm and egg cells could then be used in standard IVF procedures.

"This is the first study to create health and fertile offspring from germline cells generated from embryonic stem cells. Previous studies have not demonstrated the generation of such offspring," said Professor Mitinori Saitou, of Kyoto University, Japan, who led the study published in the journal Cell.

"In the future, it may be possible to treat infertile men with a reproductive technology based on our contribution, but there are still a lot – really a lot – of issues that need to be resolved for this purpose," Professor Saitou said.

The Japanese scientists used embryonic stem cells from mice to make primordial germ cells, which are present in the testes and produce a steady flow of sperm cells in fertile males. The scientists also made primordial germ cells from another type of embryonic cell that was converted into a stem cell by a genetic technique called induced pluripotent stem cells. "Primordial germ cells are the precursors both for oocytes [eggs] in females and sperm in males," Professor Saitou said.

Allan Pacey, a male fertility expert at the University of Sheffield, said: "This is a quite a step forward in developing a process by which sperm could be made for infertile men, perhaps by taking as a starting point a cell from their skin or from something like bone marrow. Clearly more work needs to be done, but it's hugely exciting."

Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/sc...s-2332157.html

[Dawn]

Here is a fun article and web site. In Greece they are now building a factory to mass produce free energy devices... Wouldn't that be wonderful. I've translated the site (which is in Greek) to English and here is the link in case you'd like to learn about this for yourself: http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate...rUrl=Translate

[giovonni]

Posted by The Abundant Traveler (here)
Here is a fun article and web site. In Greece they are now building a factory to mass produce free energy devices... Wouldn't that be wonderful. I've translated the site (which is in Greek) to English and here is the link in case you'd like to learn about this for yourself: http://babelfish.yahoo.com/translate...rUrl=Translate

Thanks Abundant Traveler
for posting this heads-up and update to this story which - was first posted on this thread earlier this year (January) here:
Italian scientists claim to have demonstrated cold fusion
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...ion#post106450

Also my friend Steven post it here not to long ago (June) here:
http://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...ergy-catalyser

Note ~ i am very happy to hear and read this outstanding news

Lets hope it can really happen now !

Blessings Gio

[giovonni]

Note - occasionally i will come across a newsworthy story that fits into the theme of this thread...This next item is very telling in regards to the ever changing evolutionary modes of modern human communication.

from giovonni

***********

Cultural Studies

Don’t Call Me, I Won’t Call You

By PAMELA PAUL

NOBODY calls me anymore — and that’s just fine. With the exception of immediate family members, who mostly phone to discuss medical symptoms and arrange child care, and the Roundabout Theater fund-raising team, which takes a diabolical delight in phoning me every few weeks at precisely the moment I am tucking in my children, people just don’t call.

It’s at the point where when the phone does ring — and it’s not my mom, dad, husband or baby sitter — my first thought is: “What’s happened? What’s wrong?” My second thought is: “Isn’t it weird to just call like that? Out of the blue? With no e-mailed warning?”

I don’t think it’s just me. Sure, teenagers gave up the phone call eons ago. But I’m a long way away from my teenage years, back when the key rite of passage was getting a phone in your bedroom or (cue Molly Ringwald gasp) a line of your own.

In the last five years, full-fledged adults have seemingly given up the telephone — land line, mobile, voice mail and all. According to Nielsen Media, even on cellphones, voice spending has been trending downward, with text spending expected to surpass it within three years.

“I literally never use the phone,” Jonathan Adler, the interior designer, told me. (Alas, by phone, but it had to be.) “Sometimes I call my mother on the way to work because she’ll be happy to chitty chat. But I just can’t think of anyone else who’d want to talk to me.” Then again, he doesn’t want to be called, either. “I’ve learned not to press ‘ignore’ on my cellphone because then people know that you’re there.”

“I remember when I was growing up, the rule was, ‘Don’t call anyone after 10 p.m.,’ ” Mr. Adler said. “Now the rule is, ‘Don’t call anyone. Ever.’ ”

Phone calls are rude. Intrusive. Awkward. “Thank you for noticing something that millions of people have failed to notice since the invention of the telephone until just now,” Judith Martin, a k a Miss Manners, said by way of opening our phone conversation. “I’ve been hammering away at this for decades. The telephone has a very rude propensity to interrupt people.”

Though the beast has been somewhat tamed by voice mail and caller ID, the phone caller still insists, Ms. Martin explained, “that we should drop whatever we’re doing and listen to me.”

Even at work, where people once managed to look busy by wearing a headset or constantly parrying calls back and forth via a harried assistant, the offices are silent. The reasons are multifold. Nobody has assistants anymore to handle telecommunications. And in today’s nearly door-free workplaces, unless everyone is on the phone, calls are disruptive and, in a tight warren of cubicles, distressingly public. Does anyone want to hear me detail to the dentist the havoc six-year molars have wreaked on my daughter?

“When I walk around the office, nobody is on the phone,” said Jonathan Burnham, senior vice president and publisher at HarperCollins. The nature of the rare business call has also changed. “Phone calls used to be everything: serious, light, heavy, funny,” Mr. Burnham said. “But now they tend to be things that are very focused. And almost everyone e-mails first and asks, ‘Is it O.K. if I call?’ ”

Even in fields where workers of various stripes (publicists, agents, salespeople) traditionally conducted much of their business by phone, hoping to catch a coveted decision-maker off-guard or in a down moment, the phone stays on the hook. When Matthew Ballast, an executive director for publicity at Grand Central Publishing, began working in book publicity 12 years ago, he would go down his list of people to cold call, then follow up two or three times, also by phone. “I remember five years ago, I had a pad with a list of calls I had to return,” he said. Now, he talks by phone two or three times a day.

“You pretty much call people on the phone when you don’t understand their e-mail,” he said.

Phone call appointments have become common in the workplace. Without them, there’s no guarantee your call will be returned. “Only people I’ve ruthlessly hounded call me back,” said Mary Roach, author of “Packing for Mars.” Writers and others who work alone can find the silence isolating. “But if I called my editor and agent every time I wanted to chat, I think they’d say, ‘Oh no, Mary Roach is calling again.’ So I’ve pulled back, just like everyone else.”

Whereas people once received and made calls with friends on a regular basis, we now coordinate such events via e-mail or text. When college roommates used to call (at least two reunions ago), I would welcome their vaguely familiar voices. Now, were one of them to call on a Tuesday evening, my first reaction would be alarm. Phone calls from anyone other than immediate family tend to signal bad news.

Receiving calls on the cellphone can be a particular annoyance. First, there’s the assumption that you’re carrying the thing at all times. For those in homes with stairs, the cellphone siren can send a person scrambling up and down flights of steps in desperate pursuit. Having the cellphone in hand doesn’t necessarily lessen the burden. After all, someone might actually be using the phone: someone who is in the middle of scrolling through a Facebook photo album. Someone who is playing Cut the Rope. Someone who is in the process of painstakingly touch-tapping an important e-mail.

For the most part, assiduous commenting on a friend’s Facebook updates and periodically e-mailing promises to “catch up by phone soon” substitute for actual conversation. With friends who merit face time, arrangements are carried out via electronic transmission. “We do everything by text and e-mail,” said Laurie David, a Hollywood producer and author. “It would be strange at this point to try figuring all that out by phone.”

Of course, immediate family members still phone occasionally. “It’s useful for catching up on parenting issues with your ex-husband,” said Ms. David, who used to be married to Larry David, the star of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” “Sometimes when you don’t want to type it all, it’s just easier to talk.”

But even sons, husbands and daughters don’t always want to chat. In our text-heavy world, mothers report yearning for the sound of their teenage and adult children’s voices. “I’m sort of missing the phone,” said Lisa Birnbach, author of “True Prep” and mother of three teenagers. “It’s warmer and more honest.”

That said, her landline “has become a kind of vestigial part of my house like the intercom buttons once used in my prewar building to contact the ‘servants quarters.’ ” When the phone rings, 9 times out of 10, it’s her mother.

There are holdouts. Radhika Jones, an assistant managing editor at Time magazine, still has a core group of friends she talks to by phone. “I’ve always been a big phone hound,” she said. “My parents can tell you about the days before call waiting.” Yet even she has slipped into new habits: Voice mails from her husband may not get listened to until end of day. Phone messages are returned by e-mail. “At least you’re responding!”

But heaven forbid you actually have to listen — especially to voice mail. The standard “let the audience know this person is a loser” scene in movies where the forlorn heroine returns from a night of cat-sitting to an answering machine that bleats “you have no messages” would cause confusion with contemporary viewers. Who doesn’t heave a huge sigh of relief to find there’s no voice mail? Is it worth punching in a protracted series of codes and passwords to listen to some three-hour-old voice say, “call me” when you could glance at caller ID and return the call — or better yet, e-mail back instead?

Many people don’t even know how their voice mail works. “I’ve lost that skill,” Ms. Birnbach said.

“I have no idea how to check it,” Ms. David admitted. “I can stay in a hotel for three days with that little red light blinking and never listen. I figure, if someone needs to reach me, they’ll e-mail.”

“I don’t check these messages often,” intoned a discouraging recorded voice, urging callers to try e-mail. And this is the voice-mail recording of Claude S. Fischer, author of a book on the history of the telephone and more recently, “Still Connected: Family and Friends in America Since 1970.”

“When the telephone first appeared, there were all kinds of etiquette issues over whom to call and who should answer and how,” Dr. Fischer, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told me when finally reached by phone. Among the upper classes, for example, it was thought that the butler should answer calls. For a long time, inviting a person to dinner by telephone was beyond the pale; later, the rules softened and it was O.K. to call to ask someone to lunch.

Telephones were first sold exclusively for business purposes and only later as a kind of practical device for the home. Husbands could phone wives when traveling on business, and wives could order their groceries delivered. Almost immediately, however, people began using the telephone for social interactions. “The phone companies tried to stop that for about 30 years because it was considered improper usage,” Dr. Fischer said.

We may be returning to the phone’s original intentions — and impact. “I can tell you exactly the last time someone picked up the phone when I called,” Mary Roach said. “It was two months ago and I said: ‘Whoa! You answered your phone!’ It was a P.R. person. She said, ‘Yeah, I like to answer the phone.’ ” Both were startled to be voice-to-voice with another unknown, unseen human being.

Source;
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/fa...pagewanted=all

Note:
Pamela Paul is an American journalist, an editor of the New York Times Book Review, and the author of three books. She is also a columnist for The New York Times.

[giovonni]

"Although there was a post in the colonial period, the post office as an entity tying the country together is a creation of Benjamin Franklin.
And now, like so much of our infrastructure, it is fading slowly away."

***********

US Postal Service warns it could default

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/0...could-default/

[giovonni]

"I think this is a pretty good assessment of the S&P situation."

***********

Credibility, Chutzpah And Debt

By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: August 7, 2011

To understand the furor over the decision by Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, to downgrade U.S. government debt, you have to hold in your mind two seemingly (but not actually) contradictory ideas. The first is that America is indeed no longer the stable, reliable country it once was. The second is that S.& P. itself has even lower credibility; it’s the last place anyone should turn for judgments about our nation’s prospects...
read more...http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/op...t.html?_r=2&hp

[giovonni]

"Corporations are spending as never before to keep their Congressional minions in line. However, the polls showing how even long serving incumbents are in trouble may trump the money. For the moment votes still are more important than money."

***********

GOP-leaning lobbying firms thrive despite declining K St. revenue


By Kevin Bogardus - 08/09/11

Business for Republican-leaning lobbying firms has grown this year, despite lobbying revenue declining for many on K Street.
Several shops with ties to GOP leadership in the House and Senate have signed up new clients and seen their revenue grow in the first half of the year. Lobbying has risen by almost half for some, nearly doubling for others.

Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock has reported making more than $5.2 million in lobbying fees so far this year, according to disclosure records. That's a 44 percent jump from the $3.6 million it had taken in at this point in 2010.

'A lot of it is new business combined with the existing book of business that has stayed with us,” said Mark Isakowitz, president of the firm, which has taken on at least eight new clients this year, including tech heavyweights Facebook, Apple and Oracle Corp., according to lobbying disclosure ...
read more
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbyi...e-k-st-decline

[giovonni]

"This use of social media presages a developing new trend that has profound social implications. It could be positive and useful, or it could turn us into a community of East German neighborhoods at the height of the Soviet era, in which, by some measures, a third of the population were informants."

***********

Britons use social networking sites to expose rioters

Agence France-Presse (France)

AFP - Britons took to social networking sites on Wednesday to expose the rioters who went on the rampage for four nights, posting photos of masked gangs looting and hurling missiles.

Much of the violence, which started in London but has since spread to other parts of the country, was captured on mobile phone cameras, video recorders or CCTV, and the images quickly found their way into cyberspace.

London's Metropolitan Police made a tentative attempt to use social media to track down suspects, putting up 25 photos of youths breaking into shops and lobbing missiles on photo-sharing site flickr.

But the official effort paled in comparison to the surge of activity by amateur web investigators.

One such project is a web page called "Catch A Looter", which has been set up on blog-hosting website tumblr and features dozens of photos from the London riots...

read more http://www.france24.com/en/20110811-...expose-rioters

[giovonni]

very timely...




***********

Electronic skin tattoo has medical, gaming, spy uses

Aug 11 03:43 PM US/Eastern

A hair-thin electronic patch that adheres to the skin like a temporary tattoo could transform medical sensing,
computer gaming and even spy operations, according to a US study published Thursday...
read more http://www.breitbart.com/article.php...show_article=1

[phimonic]

Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ovwSxcJdTE

July 30, 2011

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the University of Tokyo have developed 3D holograms that can be touched with bare hands. Generally, holograms can't be felt because they're made only of light. But the new technology adds tactile feedback to holograms hovering in 3D space.

Called the Airborne Ultrasound Tactile Display, the hologram projector uses an ultrasound phenomenon called acoustic radiation pressure to create a pressure sensation on a user's hands, which are tracked with two Nintendo Wiimotes. As the researchers explain, the method doesn't use any direct contact and so doesn't dilute the quality of the hologram. The researchers, led by Hiroyuki Shinoda, currently have the technology on display at SIGGRAPH 2009 in New Orleans.

"A retroreflective marker is attached on the tip of user's middle finger," the researchers explain on their website. "IR LEDs illuminate the marker and two Wiimotes sense the 3D position of the finger. Owing to this hand-tracking system, the users can handle the floating virtual image with their hands."

In the video, the researchers demonstrate how a user can dribble a virtual bouncing ball, feel virtual raindrops bouncing off their hand, and feel a small virtual creature crawling on their palm. The researchers hope that the technology will have applications in video games, 3D CADs, and other uses.

http://www.physorg.com/news168797748.html

[giovonni]

"We live in the middle of a biosphere, not on top or apart from it. We are part of it, not apart from it as a different order of being. We are subject to its cycles and trends; not their masters."

***********
From LiveScience

Earth's Surface 'Recycled' Surprisingly Quickly

Date: 11 August 2011


The volcanic islands of Hawaii are thought to be fueled by a plume of hot rock that moves upward from the lower portions of the Earth's mantle.

The ground we stand on seems permanent and unchanging, but the rocks that make up Earth's crust are actually subject to a cycle of birth and death that changes our planet's surface over eons. Now scientists have found evidence that this cycle is quicker than thought: 500 million years instead of 2 billion.

The tectonic plates that make up Earth's crust are constantly jostling against each other: brushing past one another in some places, moving apart in other areas, and butting head-on in still other places.

Where these head-on collisions occur, denser oceanic crust is shoved beneath lighter continental crust, causing it to melt in the ferocious temperatures and pressures of Earth's mantle. This oceanic crust gets mixed into the rest of the mantle, which because of its high temperature and pressure slowly flows and fuels the world's volcanoes.

Virtually all of the world's ocean islands are volcanoes. Several of them, such as the Hawaiian Islands, came from mantle plumes originating in the lowest part of the mantle. This geological process is similar to the movement of a Lava Lamp: hot rock that used to be part of the oceanic crust rises in cylindrical columns from a depth of nearly 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers). Near the surface, where the pressure on it is reduced, the rock melts and forms volcanoes.

Scientists had thought this process took about 2 billion years to complete, but new data suggest it could have happened in a quarter of that time.

Researchers came up with this speedier timeline by conducting a chemical analysis of tiny, glassy inclusions in olivine crystals from basaltic lava on Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii. The microscopic inclusions in the volcanic rock contain trace elements originally dissolved in seawater that was then soaked up by the oceanic rocks. This allowed the recycling process to be dated.

The age is revealed by the ratio of isotopes of the element strontium, a figure that changes with time. (Isotopes of a chemical element have different numbers of neutrons in their cores.)

These are olivine crystals from Mauna Loa volcano, Hawaii, with a width of less than 1 mm. The brown ovals are solidified, glassy inclusions trapped as droplets of melt by the growing olivine crystal. They contain strontium isotope ratios which are inherited from 500-million-year-old seawater.
CREDIT: Sobolev, Max Planck Institute for Chemistry


With a specially developed laser, scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, measured the strontium in the samples of Hawaiian lava and were surprised when the findings suggested the rock was less than 500 million years old.

"Apparently strontium from seawater has reached deep in the Earth's mantle and re-emerged after only half a billion years, in Hawaiian volcano lavas," said study team member Klaus Peter Jochum. "This discovery was a huge surprise for us."

Source;
http://www.livescience.com/15512-ear...ng-faster.html

[giovonni]

this is very revealing...and all comes no less from within the Fed itself...

***********

"As the result of a dinner conversation for about three months I have been looking for some research on exactly how much of consumer spending goes to "made in China" products. I finally found a trustworthy report, and it contains some major surprises. Click through to see the graphs the report references."
S A Schwartz

Galina Hale is a senior economist in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

Bart Hobijn is a senior research advisor in the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

References:

Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2010. "Inter-industry relationships (Input/Output matrix)."

U.S. Census Bureau. 2011. "U.S. International Trade Data."

Xing, Yuqing, and Neal Detert. 2010. "How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People's Republic of China." Asian Development Bank Institute Working Paper 257.



The U.S. Content of “Made in China”

By Galina Hale and Bart Hobijn

Goods and services from China accounted for only 2.7% of U.S. personal consumption expenditures in 2010, of which less than half reflected the actual costs of Chinese imports. The rest went to U.S. businesses and workers transporting, selling, and marketing goods carrying the "Made in China" label. Although the fraction is higher when the imported content of goods made in the United States is considered, Chinese imports still make up only a small share of total U.S. consumer spending. This suggests that Chinese inflation will have little direct effect on U.S. consumer prices.

The United States is running a record trade deficit with China. This is no surprise, given the wide array of items in stores labeled 'Made in China.” This Economic Letter examines what fraction of U.S. consumer spending goes for Chinese goods and what part of that fraction reflects the actual cost of imports from China. We ...

read more... http://www.frbsf.org/publications/ec...el2011-25.html

[giovonni]

"The next time someone tells you that raising the taxes of the rich will stop the creation of jobs, and similar arguments, tell them to read this."

***********
Buffett: I beg you to raise my taxes



From Politico

Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of about $80 billion, is demanding the U.S. government make the rich like him pay higher taxes and says they should no longer be protected like endangered 'spotted owls.”

In a New York Times op-ed on Monday, titled 'Stop Coddling the Rich,” Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway's chair and CEO, said he and his 'mega-rich” friends have been spared the 'shared sacrifice” the country's leaders have asked for as the country veers toward a double-dip recession.

'While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks,” he wrote.

'These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered ...

read more... http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61370.html

[giovonni]

"I think this is one of the best good news stories I have read in many months. Every train company in the world will watch what is going on in Belgium. This is not a theoretical solution; this is an operational reality."

Thanks to Sam Crespi.

***********

Solar power for trains dawns in rainy Belgium

* 16,000 solar panels on tunnel power Belgian trains

* Panels produce 3.3 GWh of electricity a year

SCHOTEN, Belgium, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Trains already have a reputation for being a very clean form of transport but Belgian commuters can now boast railways which are partially powered by solar energy.

A public-private consortium consisting of Belgian rail management company Infrabel and solar developer Enfinity has installed 16,000 solar panels on the roof of a 3.4 km (2.1 miles) long tunnel between Antwerp and the Dutch border, creating enough electricity to power 4,000 trains a year.

The unique feature of the project, which is designed to produce 3.3 gigawatt hours a year, is that the energy produced does not flow into the national grid but is used directly by the trains.

Enfinity says that by cutting out the middle man, the grid operator, it can offer electricity about 30 percent cheaper.

Infrabel benefits from being able to sell cheaper electricity to its customers, which include the Belgian railways and private high-speed operator Thalys.

Enfinity and the other investors, such as the councils of the towns of Brasschaat and Schoten which border the tunnel, expect to see a return on their joint investment of 15.7 million euros ($22.12 million) within nine years.

Enfinity says the solar panels used in the project are made by Chinese company Jinko Solar , which it said offered better returns than European competitors.

In terms of sunshine, the summer of 2011 has so far been a disappointing one, even by Belgian standards, with 20 days of rain in July and eight days of misery so far in August according to the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute.

Enfinity's marketing head Jurgen Van Damme told Reuters that bad weather was part of the calculation and that he still expected an average of 900 hours of sun each year.

"There are good wine years and there are good solar years," he said.

Infrabel said it was considering a project fuelled by wind power at another location in Belgium.

Passengers on a train entering the solar tunnel, which was inaugurated in June, reacted positively.

"We have solar panels at home so we know that it works and it's pleasant to see that we don't have to pay too much for electricity. So yes, I think it's a nice initiative," said passenger Els Krols on her way from Antwerp to the small town of Noorderkempen.

(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek; additional reporting by Marine Hass, editing by Paul Casciato)

($1=.7099 Euro)

(Created by Paul Casciato)

Source;
http://af.reuters.com/article/energy...110812?sp=true

[giovonni]

"Here is a little history to show that greed and real estate manipulation are as old as the nation, and we never seem to learn. All the Virginians got embroiled in land schemes."

***********

Real Estate and the American Revolution
A biography of Ethan Allen puts the spotlight on land greed.



By FRANÇOIS FURSTENBERG - Slate

Ethan Allen was at various times: reckless speculator, captain of the continent's largest paramilitary force, outlaw with a £100 bounty on his head, American Revolutionary commander, prisoner of war, best-selling author, radical Deist philosopher, and founding father of Vermont. Despite this remarkable life, and despite a time when biographies of America's Founding Fathers fall from the presses like rotten apples from a tree, in the last half-century only one full-length biography had been written about Ethan Allen. How could this be?

As Ethan Allen: His Life and Times, a new and frustrating biography by Willard Sterne Randall, shows, Allen is hard to write about. He poses a challenge not so much because he is different from more famous Founders like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin but because he resembles them perhaps a bit too much-in ways most Americans prefer not to think about.

Like Washington, Allen ...
read more here... http://www.slate.com/id/2300593/

[giovonni]

"Much of the wealth of the middle class has moved to the upper one per cent. As a result people have little money to spend and less confidence in the future -- a recipe for disaster throughout the course of history."

***********
Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth

DAVID DEGRAW - AlterNet

With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the robber barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern-day economic elite.

As American philosopher John Dewey said, 'There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”

In my report, The Economic Elite vs. the People, I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99 percent of the US population over the past generation. Since the mid-1970s, worker production and wealth creation has exploded. As the statistics throughout this report prove, the dramatic increase in wealth has been almost entirely absorbed by the economic ...
read more... http://www.alternet.org/economy/1520...h/?page=entire

[giovonni]

"It is very hard -- I think it arises from the religious belief that humans are a special order of creation with dominion over the earth -- to realize that we are really just high order mammals who live not on the earth but embedded within the earth's biosphere. I don't expect Creationists to believe this but, for those who care about facts, this is an important one."
***********

Magnetic Storms Affect Humans As Well As Telecommunications


YURY ZAITSEV - Space Daily/Novosti

MOSCOW -- It has long been established that magnetic storms not only affect the performance of equipment, upset radio communications, blackout radars, and disrupt radio navigation systems but also endanger living organisms. They change the blood flow, especially in capillaries, affect blood pressure, and boost adrenalin.

The young and fit couldn't care less, but those who are older, may develop problems. They have to consider the state of magnetosphere in their daily plans. Before, people were glued to weather forecasts. Now they are obsessed with the geomagnetic situation.

But what is a magnetic storm?

Shortly after the launch of the first satellites, mankind discovered the solar wind - a continuous flow of hot plasma from the solar corona. At a distance of 10-12 Earth's radii in the direction of the Sun, where the energy of the solar wind equals that of the Earth's magnetic field, solar wind ...read more... http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Ma...nications.html

[giovonni]

☯

"As I have said many times if you really want to change your life develop the daily practice of meditation. It has certainly changed my life, and the lives of all the other people I know who have developed the discipline, whatever protocol they chose. This report stresses a Buddhist form, but the truth is it is a circle of a thousand doors. It makes little difference which one you use to go through."

***********

How Meditation Makes You More Rational

MICHAEL HAEDERLE - MillerMcCune

A new study suggests that people who regularly practice Buddhist meditation make decisions in a more rational way.

It's no secret that humans are not entirely rational when it comes to weighing rewards. For example, we might be perfectly happy with how much money we're making - until we find out how much more the guy in the next cubicle is being paid.

But a new study suggests that people who regularly practice Buddhist meditation actually process these common social situations differently - and the researchers have the brain scans to prove it.

Ulrich Kirk and collaborators at Baylor Medical College in Houston had 40 control subjects and 26 longtime meditators participate in a well-known experiment called theUltimatum Game. It goes like this:

One person has a sum of money to split with another person. If the other person accepts the offer, they both walk away ... read more... http://www.alternet.org/health/15201..._more_rational

[giovonni]

"This is a significant social trend in Asia, and has to be seen, at least in China and India, in the context of gender selection -- creating a shortage of girls -- and China's One Child Policy."

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Asia's lonely hearts
Women are rejecting marriage in Asia. The social implications are serious

The Economist (U.K.)

Twenty years ago a debate erupted about whether there were specific 'Asian values”. Most attention focused on dubious claims by autocrats that democracy was not among them. But a more intriguing, if less noticed, argument was that traditional family values were stronger in Asia than in America and Europe, and that this partly accounted for Asia's economic success. In the words of Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister of Singapore and a keen advocate of Asian values, the Chinese family encouraged 'scholarship and hard work and thrift and deferment of present enjoyment for future gain”.

On the face of it his claim appears persuasive still. In most of Asia, marriage is widespread and illegitimacy almost unknown. In contrast, half of marriages in some Western countries end in divorce, and half of all children are born outside wedlock. The recent riots across Britain, whose origins many believe lie in an ...Read More - http://www.economist.com/node/21526350

[giovonni]

Note - i would hope those using this plant for medical issues should be able to get these assurances.

Gio

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"Here is the latest on the marijuana trend. It used to be people just tried to score some weed, whatever kind they could find. Now smokers want a particular kind, and could you make sure it was grown organically please. This is the surreal reality of marijuana usage in this country."
S. A. Schwartz

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Organic marijuana can't exist, which troubles growers


DONNA JONES - Los Angeles Times

WATSONVILLE, CA -- Want to buy organic carrots? No problem. Organic strawberries? Widely available. Organic honey? Try your local grocery store. But organic medical marijuana? Doesn't exist - at least not in an official sense.

Organic crops and products are certified by private agencies through the U.S. Department of Agriculture - a program developed after decades of advocacy by organic farmers and their allies. Pot - medicinal or otherwise - need not apply.

"What the USDA doesn't recognize as a legal crop, we can't certify because we're certifying to their standards," said Jane Wade, development specialist at Santa Cruz-based California Certified Organic Farmers, the largest organic certification agency in the country. "That leaves medical marijuana out in the cold."

It also puzzles consumers interested in making sure they're not ingesting pesticides or other toxins along with their chosen pain reliever.

Wade, who gets calls about organic ...

Read More - http://www.latimes.com/news/science/...obref=obinsite