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

[giovonni]

42 easily confused English terms that make global travelers look ridiculous



Although I try to always use the correct term, I know I frequently fail to do so. This is a very useful essay on differentiating common geopolitical terms that are often misused, or mixed up.

Jake Flanagin - Quartz

Geography is hard. Even for those of us who grew up eating every meal over a Rand McNally world map placemat, there are a lot of terms to remember. And confuse. Often, it seems people may not be aware they are using a specific term incorrectly—hence the overwhelmingly positive reception to Terry Blas’s recent illustration explaining the difference between “Hispanic” and “Latino.”

As such, Quartz has compiled this handy dictionary of commonly misused and mixed-up geographical terms. Never get caught confusing “Guyana” and “Guinea” again!

More here

[giovonni]

The science of forgiveness: “When you don’t forgive you release
all the chemicals of the stress response”



There is a reason most genuine spiritual paths stress forgiveness, and this essay explains
an important part of why this is true.

Megan Feldman Bettencourt - Salon

The Burn Surgeon: How Anger Can Impede Healing

In 1978, Dr. Dabney Ewin, a surgeon specializing in burns, was on duty in a New Orleans emergency room when a man was brought in on a gurney. A worker at the Kaiser Aluminum plant, the patient had slipped and fallen into a vat of 950-degree molten aluminum up to his knees. Ewin did something that most would consider strange at best or the work of a charlatan at worst: He hypnotized the burned man. Without a swinging pocket watch or any other theatrical antics, the surgeon did what’s now known in the field of medical hypnosis as an “induction,” instructing the man to relax, breathe deeply, and close his eyes. He told him to imagine that his legs—scorched to the knees and now packed in ice—did not feel hot or painful but “cool and comfortable.” Ewin had found that doing this—in addition to standard treatments—improved his patients’ outcomes. And that’s what happened with the Kaiser Aluminum worker. While such severe burns would normally require months to heal, multiple skin grafts, and maybe even lead to amputation if excessive swelling cut off the blood supply, the man healed in just eighteen days—without a single skin graft ... Read here

[giovonni]

New Schools, Less Crime: Colorado Sees Benefits Of Marijuana Legalization


Matthew Huron examining a marijuana plant in his grow house.
Credit: Ed Andriesk/APi

I keep monitoring marijuana legalization, and this report is the latest. At the personal level, living in a state where it is legal, my individual subjective experience is that like the jeremiads about gay marriage loudly proclaimed by conservatives marijuana legalization is an issue without any actual negative substance. Gay marriage has not had any effect on heterosexual marriage, just as marijuana legalization has had no important negative effects on society. In both instances rather the contrary. From my perspective except for some new marijuana shops that have popped up, and some job creation there is no there, there.

The truth is the hysteria of the Right about these issues is principally a commentary on their own prejudices, hate, and ignorance.

Kit O'Connell - Mint Press News

DENVER — Colorado’s successful experiment in marijuana legalization is bringing in millions of dollars of revenue per month while simultaneously benefiting schools and contributing to a drop in crime rates.

Colorado reached over $50 million dollars in recreational cannabis sales in June, breaking the state’s previous record, according to Ricardo Baca, a staff writer for Denver Post’s The Cannabist. In addition, medical sales reached $25 million.

Based on the state’s various taxes on marijuana sales, Baca reports that the state has earned over $60 million dollars in marijuana tax revenue so far this year.

Along with legalization, Colorado voters approved a 15 percent excise tax on wholesale marijuana sales that is only to be used for school construction. According to another recent report from Baca, Colorado schools have earned $13.6 million in just the first five months of 2015, a sharp increase over 2014, when the tax generated a total of $13.3 million for the whole year. Putting that figure in perspective, Baca quoted a local Colorado school superintendent, who said that $40 million would fund the construction of “two well-equipped elementary schools, or one well-equipped middle school with an athletic field" ... Read more

[giovonni]

The 2015 National Military Strategy: A Serious Flaw

I don’t think anyone who makes assessments based on facts would disagree that the U.S. geopolitical and military strategies are and have been for several decades deeply dysfunctional. Our place in the world, how we are viewed by the rest of the world, the results of our choices have produced nothing but calamity, violence, and death. John Alexander’s essay is an excellent assessment of this.

John B. Alexander, Ph.D - The Huffington Post

The National Military Strategy is periodically published to enunciate the overarching goals and objectives for the Department of Defense (DOD). Based on a changing and challenging geopolitical environment, this document outlines the military’s missions in the broadest terms. That directly impacts force structure, or how the DOD is organized. In the latest two versions an egocentric addition has emerged–universal values. Portending hubris, that concept is both wrong and potentially dangerous to our position in the world. It is wrong because there are no agreed upon “universal values” and dangerous because it reinforces concerns professed by many people around the world that the United States holds itself to be the supreme judge of moral authority and arbiter of global power ... Read more

[giovonni]

and i wonder why ...

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The Number Of People With Dementia Is Exploding, New Report Says



Dementia, as this reports explains, is exploding across the world, rates of occurrence are sharply higher than they have been in the past. Much more research is needed because this appears to be an environmentally mediated problem that “Researchers say… will (otherwise) double every 20 years.”

Sam P.K. Collins - Think Progress

Instances of dementia exploded in the last five years, bringing the current number of people affected worldwide to more than 46 million, a new report shows.

The report, titled “World Alzheimer Report 2015,” says nearly 60 percent of those with dementia live in underdeveloped countries. By 2050, half of those with the disease will live in Asia. Researchers from Alzheimer Disease International, a global coalition of Alzheimer-focused organizations, expect the numbers to rise with the identification of more cases and greying of the population ... Read more

[giovonni]

Circular economy inspires young people to change the world


The circular economy presents a chance for young people to take
charge of their lives by being creative, innovative and resourceful.

Here's some excellent and optimistic news about university education. Not just another program for greed sponges. Most of it is happening outside of the U.S. but at least it is happening and it offers promise for innovation and new solutions.

Maxine Perella - The Guardian (U.K.)

“So many of my classmates and other friends say ‘I want to change the world’. The amazing thing is that most of us believe we can.” Max Hornick, a 26-year-old student at Western Michigan University, is reflecting on how the circular economy is inspiring young people to work for the social good.

Together with a team of four other students at WMU, Hornick recently won the 2015 Wege Prize for sustainable thinking with Local Loop Farms, an aquaponics food production concept that has since evolved into a community agricultural start-up.

“One of the biggest struggles we are facing as the global population grows is finding a way to feed everyone,” Hornick says. “In a circular economy, you have hyper-local food systems that allow the nutrients in organic wastes to be upcycled back into the food chain. This allows people to invest their food dollars in their communities and enjoy fresh, accessible food. People feel good knowing where their food comes from.”

This type of systems thinking and redesign, which models itself on a more utopian world, has wide appeal in the UK as well. Carrie Gray, a drama teacher at Paisley Grammar School in Renfrewshire, says the circular economy presents an opportunity for the younger generation to re-engage with their future ... More here

[giovonni]

This Year’s Wildfires May Change Western Forests Forever—and Not for the Good


This hillside in north-central Washington was burned in the Okanogan Complex, a massive wildfire that has burned more than 400 square miles and killed three firefighters. It is the largest wildfire in state history, breaking the record set in 2014 by the Carlton Complex.
Credit: David Ryder/Reuters

I would go out of my front door and even though the fires were 180 miles away for days a pall of smoke hung in the air and filled our nostrils. As this report describes, this year wild fires have taken on a new dimension and the fabled woods of the Pacific Northwest may never be the same. Another result of the climate change the Republican Party will not acknowledge exists, and whose remediation the Congress which that party controls will not fund.


Emily J. Gertz - Takepart

Temperature hikes driven by global warming have helped make this summer’s wildfire season in North America one for the history books. Now experts are beginning to wonder if Western forests, which evolved over aeons in a cooler, wetter world to coexist with seasonal fire, may be fundamentally changed as a result.

In Alaska, unusually low snow and rain fall over the winter of 2014–15 combined with remarkably hot spring temperatures in excess of 90 degrees Fahrenheit to create the second-biggest wildfire season on state record. About 8,000 square miles of Alaskan forest were scorched before late summer’s traditional climate cool-down helped firefighters curb the worst burns ... Read more

[giovonni]

Why a Mediterranean diet is good for your brain



I think you should take this diet article quite seriously. A mammal-free modified Mediterranean diet is what Ronlyn and I eat. I think the data is very clear this is the way to go. This report an improved replication of earlier studies.

Dina Fine Maron - Salon

Whenever the fictional character Popeye the Sailor Man managed to down a can of spinach, the results were almost instantaneous: he gained superhuman strength. Devouring any solid object similarly did the trick for one of the X-Men. As we age and begin to struggle with memory problems, many of us would love to reach for an edible mental fix. Sadly, such supernatural effects remain fantastical. Yet making the right food choices may well yield more modest gains ... Read more

[giovonni]

China’s Communist-Capitalist Ecological Apocalypse




This is a view of China with which you may not be familiar. American corporate media just don’t focus on much beyond the superficial. Amazing really inasmuch as the Chinese economy and culture are changing the world. I think you will find information here which may change your perspective.

Richard Smith - truthout

"This article seeks to explain why China's environmental crisis is so horrific, so much worse than "normal" capitalism most everywhere else, and why the government is incapable of suppressing pollution even from its own industries. I begin with an overview of the current state of China's environment: its polluted air, waters, farmland and the proximate causes, including overproduction, overdevelopment, profligate resource consumption, uncontrolled dumping and venting of pollutants. I then discuss the political-economic drivers and enablers of this destruction, the dynamics and contradictions of China's hybrid economy, noting how market reforms have compounded the irrationalities of the old bureaucratic collectivist system with the irrationalities of capitalism resulting in a diabolically ruinous "miracle" economy. I conclude with a précis of the emergency steps the country will have to take to take to brake the drive to socio-ecological collapse, with dire implications for us all" ... Read more

[giovonni]

The decline of play in preschoolers — and the rise in sensory issues



My wife Ronlyn spent nearly two decades as a Waldorf teacher, a pedagogy that stresses that it is the business of childhood to play and exercise imagination. Failure to do this results in what this story describes. The research is clear about why children need to play use their imaginations so the question is: Why isn’t this overwhelming research put into practice in American public schools?

Anglea Hanscom - The Washington Post

Here is a new post from pediatric occupational therapist Angela Hanscom, author of a number of popular posts on this blog, including “Why so many kids can’t sit still in school today,” as well as “The right — and surprisingly wrong — ways to get kids to sit still in class” and “How schools ruined recess.” Hanscom is the founder of TimberNook, a nature-based development program designed to foster creativity and independent play outdoors in New England ... Read the rest

[giovonni]

Canada clears way for case against Chevron over ‘Amazon Chernobyl’


Canadian Supreme Court

The Canadian Supreme Court has cleared the way for a trial against Chevron, one of the world’s major petroleum polluters, and it could have billion dollar consequences.

I guess I hardly need to mention this story has near zero coverage in American corporate media.

Renee Lewis - Aljazeera America

Canada’s Supreme Court ruled Friday that Ecuadorian villagers and indigenous communities could sue Chevron Corporation in the Canadian province of Ontario over a decades-long contamination that environmentalists have dubbed the “Amazon Chernobyl.”

The plaintiffs, who include about 30,000 villagers and indigenous people, decided to go after the energy giant’s assets in Canada, Brazil and Argentina after the company contested a ruling by Ecuador’s highest court to pay $9.5 billion to clean up the contamination site ... Read more

[giovonni]

Solar Power Windows Ready For Production


photovoltaic window glass.
Credit: Solaria; Solar Window Technologies

I have always considered solar panels to be a clunky intermediate step in photovoltaics, believing that buildings
would soon have PV generating power built into the technology of the house. It’s coming. And soon.

Stephen Hanley - Planetsave

Imagine if every building in the world had solar power windows that could generate a small amount of electricity from the sun. The technology exists. It has been tested and it is ready for production. In Manhattan alone, there are 47,000 buildings with over 10,700,000 windows, according to a 2013 estimate from The New York Times ... Read more

[giovonni]

America’s decline in wages can be traced to the George W Bush era



The thing about history is that over time it clarifies responsibility by washing away immediate emotion. And as the sifting of history works we can see two evolutions at work. It is showing what a dreadful president George Bush was. This report describes one aspect of what this has meant. In contrast time is showing that Jimmy Carter was far better as President than anyone gave him credit for being at the time. Bush is the personification of a government being overtaken by the uber-rich.

Phillip Inamn - The Guardian (U.K.)

One of the statistical touchstones for left-leaning economists is the run of figures showing that US workers have suffered three decades of flat wages. There is no better way to illustrate how capitalism, marching to its own tune, fails most of America’s 160 million workers than wage data that hardly moves from year to year after inflation is taken into account.

Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and best-selling economist Thomas Piketty often characterise the 1980s and 1990s, as well as the 2000s until the financial crash, as periods of stellar growth that bypassed the average worker. This story of workers slaving, only for corporations to reap the benefits is allied to Piketty’s history of wealth accumulation, which puts a figure on the astounding riches in property and savings amassed by the most affluent 1% in recent years ... Read more

[giovonni]

America’s silent-but-deadly billionaires: How our tight-lipped
overlords are waging stealth campaigns against the middle class



Anyone who bothers to spend half an hour on the net knows that a handful of billionaires are literally buying the American government one congressman, judge, or mayor at a time. Here is a good exposition of what I mean.

Sean McElwee - Salon

Teddy Roosevelt famously argued that, when it comes to foreign policy, one should “Speak softly, and carry a big stick.” Similarly, an apt summation of the political inclinations of billionaires might be, “Speak softly, and carry a big check" ... Read the rest

[giovonni]

Poison in Arctic and human cost of ‘clean’ energy


View of Lake Melville from Rigolet, a Nunatsiavut community
on the far eastern edge of the lake.

Here is another unintended consequence of climate change; one nobody saw coming.

Leah Burrows - Harvard Gazette

Colonial New Delhi had a cobra infestation. To get rid of it, the government offered bounties for dead cobras, inadvertently turning cobra breeding into a thriving business. When the government got wise and canceled the program, thousands of then worthless cobras were released into the city streets.

Today, the cobra effect means making a problem worse by attempting to solve it.

Arctic regions don’t have a poisonous snake problem; they have a poison problem.

The amount of methylmercury, a potent neurotoxin, is especially high in Arctic marine life but until recently, scientists haven’t been able to explain why. Now, research from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health suggests that high levels of methylmercury in Arctic life are a byproduct of global warming and the melting of sea-ice in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions ... Read more

[giovonni]

50 Percent Of Adults In U.S. Have Diabetes Or Pre-Diabetes, Study Finds


An obese woman, left, walks in New York, Monday, July 13, 2015.
Credit: Mark Lennihan/AP

Our diet — and this says nothing about the safety of the food — is literally killing us. And it grows worse year by year, we don’t seem to be able to get control of what is going on. It is, of course, incredibly profitable for Big Pharm and other elements of the illness profit system.

Robert Glatter, MD - Forbes

A national wake up call to intensify efforts to control the obesity crisis with added focus on diet, exercise and monitoring blood sugar ... Read the rest

[giovonni]

How Much Harm Can Sugar Do?



Here is the latest on sugar and what it does to your health.

Michael Specter - The New Yorker

If you want to wage a war, you have to have an enemy. By almost any measure—scientific reports, documentaries, government announcements, and nearly thirty million Google results—we have been waging a War on Obesity for many years. It is not going well. The most comprehensive recent data, from the 2012 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, found that sixty-eight million Americans qualified as obese, and sixty-five million more were overweight. Smaller but more recent studies show no easing of these numbers, which clearly amount to a public-health crisis ... Read more

Related film ...

The Truth About Sugar Documentary 2015

Source: https://youtube.com/watch?v=-1cCXH-XGhI

[giovonni]

Radioactive Texas Waste Dump Threatens Key US Water Resource


Radioactive spoils of nuclear power plants from 36 states have been dumped in a designated hole in Texas on a regular basis.
Are we currently living through a radioactive version of the gold rush, funded by taxpayers?

Radioactive waste is going to haunt us for decades, maybe centuries. It is one of those issues that will have enormous consequences but no one is willing to talk about it. When was the last time you heard a Presidential candidate talk about what he/she will do about radioactive waste pollution? Never you say. That’s right, nobody will touch it.

Paul DeRienzo - Nation of Change

In a remote place in the desert of West Texas, outside the small town of Andrews, something dirty has been going on which threatens the water supply of nearly a third of America’s farmland (and perhaps the millions of people who eat the food grown using that water).

The highly radioactive spoils of nuclear power plants from 36 states — as well as other seriously toxic or carcinogenic substances, such as PCBs dredged from the Hudson River — are being dumped there on a regular basis, and this will continue until the designated hole in the ground is filled ... Read the rest

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California drought: Sierra Nevada snowpack falls to 500-year low


The Sierra Nevada snowpack is a key
source of water for California.

The future is being revealed quicker than anyone believed possible.

Suzanne Goldenberg - The Guardian (U.K.)

The Sierra Nevada snowpack that is a critical water source for California fell to a 500-year low last winter – far worse than scientists had estimated and underlining the severity of the current drought, according to new research.

The snow accumulation in the mountains was just 5% of what is normal, inflating the risk of wildfires, drying up wells and orchards, and pushing communities into water rationing ... Read the rest

[giovonni]

Hitler’s World May Not Be So Far Away


Over 700,000 prisoners were killed at the Nazi concentration camp
at Treblinka, Poland. Photograph: Ira Nowinski/Corbis

In light of the mass of migrants leaving the Middle East and trying to enter Europe, recognizing this is only the beginning of an age of migrations, I began to think about the Holocaust. As this excellent essay demonstrates I am not the only one thinking in this way.

Timothy Snyder - The Guardian (U.K.)

It was 20 years after I chose to become a historian that I first saw a photograph of the woman who made my career possible. In the small photograph that my doctoral supervisor, her son, showed me in his Warsaw apartment, Wanda J radiates self-possession, a quality that stood her in good stead during the Nazi occupation. She was a Jewish mother who protected herself and her two sons from the German campaign of mass murder that killed almost all of her fellow Warsaw Jews. When her family was summoned to the ghetto, she refused to go. She moved her children from place to place, relying upon the help of friends, acquaintances and strangers. When first the ghetto and then the rest of the city of Warsaw were burned to the ground, what counted, she thought, was the “faultless moral instinct” of the people who chose to help Jews ... Read the rest