10.15.05
Ten To Go

1) Blackwater Down
(Backdoor for Israeli military in US; pg. 2/para. 2)

2) Proposal for military to take lead in disasters raises concerns

3) Experts Unlock Clues to Spread of 1918 Flu Virus

4) Bush Considers Military Role In Flu Fight

5) Dutch Set To Expand Euthanasia Guidelines

6) New blood-pressure guidelines pay off — for drug companies

7) Physics from Wholeness

8) Missouri May Track Cell Phones For Traffic Data

9) Ghosts of Science Past

10) Wafer-thin Color Displays

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6.1.05
QuizDojo: Stems and Idols

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00:05:00

question 1 Consider the following quote on stem cell research scenarios from the New York Times article "The Other Stem-Cell Debate" (Jamie Shreeve, April 10, 2005): (1) (2) (3) "Francoise Baylis, a bioethicist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and a co-author of Canada's stem-cell guidelines, squirms not at a percentage of human cells but at the place where awareness begins. 'We have to be sure we are not creating beings with consciousness'." Contrast the next quotes with the above: ALUN ANDERSON (Editor-in-Chief, New Scientist --- from the Edge) 'Strangely, I believe that cockroaches are conscious. That is probably an unappealing thought to anyone who switches on a kitchen light in the middle of the night and finds a family of roaches running for cover. But it's really shorthand for saying that I believe that many quite simple animals are conscious, including more attractive beasts like bees and butterflies.'" DONALD HOFFMAN (Cognitive Scientist, UC, Irvine; Author, Visual Intelligence) "I believe that consciousness and its contents are all that exists. Spacetime, matter and fields never were the fundamental denizens of the universe but have always been, from their beginning, among the humbler contents of consciousness, dependent on it for their very being." Evaluate the folowing sentences

A	Baylis' comment doesn't represent the mindset of a true bioethicist, but that of a zookeeper.
True False
B	Bitch - consciousness may be present at the cellular level...
True False
C	Everything Dr. Bayliss said is correct.
True False
D	Dr. Baylis' curriculum vitae is interesting, if not actually revealing.
True False
E	I have to go check out that Edge section!
True False

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question 2 Paula Abdul's [ ] aside, the 2005 American Idol was most interesting because of [ ]. Bo lost because[ ], but it was [ ], and he should wind up [ ].

------------------------------------- ditsy behavior AND possible drug use drug use endearing ditsyness ------------------------------------------------------ none of the above Cowell openly hitting on one of the female contestants The Sex Thing Randy's transcendent use of the word 'dawg' --------------------------------------------------------------------- he went to the 'microphone stand in the air' trick one too many times the hippie hair The Alabama Effect ----------- just unfair astonishing ------------------------------------------------------ making that album w/Clive Davis anyway breaking up w/his band and flipping burgers in Alabama f---ing Carrie 1 and 3

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Note for Question 1: I remember when I was about six years old, and taken to my first circus. Everything was fairly typical, until the elephants were brought out to perform. Suddenly, I could hear a male voice saying quite clearly, "We don't want to be here! This repeated several times over a minute, followed by "Can't someone hear us?! Why doesn't someone answer us?!!". After scanning the crowd, and a bit of hesitation, I yelled mentally "I hear you!". The elephant turned his head, searching for the source and asked "Who said that?!" I responded, "I did! "Stand up!, the elephant demanded. I did; he turned to me, and trumpeted, almost trampling a handler in the process. "Help us", the elephant demanded. Tears flowing, I pleaded with the trainers in the ring to release the elephants; they laughed. But my emotional state was soon transmitted to the other children around me. They began crying for the elephants' release, and pulling at their parents and screaming. Circus management and security followed, and I was kicked out. More stories about trees, ants, cats, dogs, bathroom shower mold, etc., to follow.

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3.19.05
Back In The Saddle

Prescient quote from last week, _humongously_ overlooked-by-bloggers:

"The scientific community may be on the cusp of discovering methods for sending particles into previously unperceived dimensions, said world-renowned physicist Brian Greene at the Rhode Island School of Design Thursday.
'The one lesson I hope you will take away is that in the last 150 years or so, physics has basically taught us that there is so much to the universe that isn't apparent to our human senses.'"

[Physicist: Inability to see other dimensions evolutionary /
By Jonathan Sidhu / Brown Daily Herald / Friday, March 11, 2005]

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3.26.05
Insights Into "The Hollow Men"

I know squat about Gore Vidal. Never read the guy's works, only saw blips of him on cable as I surfed over the years...he never really caught my attention. Until I read " The Undoing of America --- Gore Vidal on war for oil, politics-free elections, and the late, great U.S. Constitution".
This article contains some of the most brutally honest and accurate comments on the state of the nation that I've seen to date (especially from a man in his 80s ). Some of my favorites:

"The Congress has ceded--which it cannot do--but it has ceded its power to declare war. That is written in the Constitution. It's the most important thing in the Constitution, ultimately. And having ceded that to the Executive Branch, (Bush) can declare war whenever he finds terrorism. Now, terrorism is a wonderful invention because it doesn't mean anything. It's an abstract noun. You can't have a war against an abstract noun; it's like having a war against dandruff. It's meaningless."
"So they will be forever putting--what they do is put us all at risk. You and I and other civilians are going to be the ones who are killed when the Moslems get really angry and start suicide-bombing American cities because of things the Bush/Cheney junta has done to them. We will be the ones killed. Bush/Cheney will be safe in their bunkers, but we're going to get it. I would have thought that self-interest--since Americans are the most easily terrified people on earth, as recently demonstrated over and over again-- we would be afraid of what was going to befall us. But I think simultaneously we have no imagination, and certainly no sense of cause and effect. If we did have that, we might know that if you keep kicking somebody, he's going to kick you back. So there we stand, ignoring the first rule of physics, which is that there is no action without reaction."

In 1972, during an impromtu speech at my high school graduation (!), I raised the issues contained in the preceeding last three sentences - and was met with hostility (with vast socio-economic ramifications) which has still not abated some 33 years later.
Must have hit a "nerve"...

"There used to be all those talk shows back in the '50s and '60s, when I was on television a great deal. People would talk about many important things, and you had some very good talkers. They're not allowed on now. Or they're set loose in the Fox Zoo, in which you have a number of people who pretend to be journalists but are really like animals. Each one has his own noise--there's the donkey who brays, there's the pig who squeals. Each one is a different animal in a zoo, making a characteristic noise. The result is chaos, which is what is intended. They don't want the people to know anything, and the people don't."
"There is no Democratic Party. We hope that something might happen with the governor of Vermont, and maybe something will or maybe it won't. But we are totally censored, and the press just follows this. It observes what those in power want it to observe, and turns the other way when things get dark. Then, when it's too late sometimes, you get some very good reporting. But by then, somebody's playing taps."
"I put the case that Bush was never elected--not in 2000, and not in 2004. This is a new game in the world. Through the magic of electronic voting, particularly through Mr. Diebold and friends, you can take a non-president and make him president. But how to keep the people, including the opposition who should know better, so silent, this introduces us to a vast landscape of corruption which I dare not enter."

To bring Vidal's accuracy full circle, I posit that the incredible, unprecedented number of school shootings in America reflect an epidemic of autism.
That autism has a biological cofactor with environmental ties.
That the lack of empathy and altruism evident in the (overwhelmingly male) teen shooters represents one part of the spectrum of this New Autism.
Further, that this Autism has a milder form which will go largely undetected in society, but by which society will continue to be negatively transformed.

As we go deeper down the rabbit hole, generations will continue to lose the ability to _recognize_ the journey of which Mr. Vidal speaks, along with the travel agents and conductors responsible.

The "vast landscape of corruption" has a major paranormal component. Without Divine Intervention, it truly will all end "not with a bang, but with a whimper".



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