Clipmarks | Human nature Clips

New evidence of Global Warming

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 16:59:54 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: For all the denialists--more fodder for your insanity

ScienceDaily (Sep. 2, 2008) — Researchers confirm that surface temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere were warmer over the last 10 years than any time during the last 1300 years, and, if the climate scientists include the somewhat controversial data derived from tree-ring records, the warming is anomalous for at least 1700 years.

"We looked at a much expanded database and our methods are more sophisticated than those used previously," says Mann. In today's (Sept. 2) online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers note, "Conclusions are less definitive for the Southern Hemisphere and globe, which we attribute to larger uncertainties arising from the sparser available proxy data in the Southern Hemisphere."

study shows that, with caveats, tree-ring data can be used, but that even without including that data, it is clear that the anomalous nature of recent warmth, which most scientists believe to be a result of human impacts on climate, is a reality.

People misunderstand what paganism is about

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:35:58 GMT

clipped by: wiccantexan

Clip Source: www.canada.com

It takes a lot to surprise me when it comes to human nature, but last night I met a woman in her 60s at a coffee shop who warned the people at our table about a 'devil' that was going to be at Departure Bay today.

At first I thought she was joking but she said no, she was serious there was going to be a group of devil worshippers gathering there today. She said groups from all the churches were gathering to protest. I asked her if it was the Pagan Pride festival and when she said yes' I said, 'well, my daughter is Wicca and I'm proud of her."

She had nothing to say to that. I really thought that self-righteous people like her had disappeared in the era when witches were being burned.

It's religious fanatics like her who cause destruction in this world because of the fervour of the their beliefs.

I had one daughter become a Catholic and one daughter become Wicca and I'm proud of both of them for making choices that were right for them (I'm Anglican).

Tags: pagan, witch, witchcraft, church, wicca, religion, belief

-Are Humans Destroying the Planet's Web of Life?

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 16:33:28 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: Very sobering, disturbing article. Just put global climate disruption aside and think about what we humans are doin to the life in the oceans and the air and land, the forests, the over fertilizing, the plastics...it's abominable and has to be changed or we die.

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

“Humanity doesn’t need a moon-base or a manned trip to Mars. We need an expedition to planet Earth, where probably fewer than 10 per cent of species are known to science, and fewer than 1 per cent of those have been studied beyond a simple anatomical description and a few notes on natural history. At the same time, we are engaged in a genocide against those species, known and unknown; the sixth mass extinction has begun."

E.O. Wilson, Harvard evolutionary biologist and author of "The Creation."

n the 200 years since French naturalist Georges Cuvier first floated the concept of extinction, after examining fossil bones and concluding "the existence of a world previous to ours, destroyed by some sort of catastrophe", we have slowly begun to recognize a potentially lethal threat to our planet and human existence.

forget about life's origins and focus on the fact that while nature achieves "sustainability through complexity," human activities are driving myriad species into extinction

Aribeth

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 21:40:03 GMT

clipped by: abailart
clipper's remarks: Aribeth appeared on CM the other day. Hiya, Aribeth!

Clip Source: www.sassart.com

Clip Source: vidian-elenidar-wolf.blog.onet.pl

Clip Source: www.thieves-guild.net

Moon elves are both the most common of elves on this world, and the variety most often seen by non-elves. Silver elves remain a race whose inquisitive nature, curiosity and hunger to see and to know has led them to be wanderers and explorers, and also to be the elves most in contact with the other races. Many silver elves lives in nomadic groups made up of ten or more extended families that wander Faerun and seldom settle in one place for long. However this is measured in elven terms and many a town or city may see moon elves living there for much of a human’s short life span.

Clip Source: www.archlordonline.com

Clip Source: www.gamebanshee.com

Clip Source: lukvalentain.ltalk.ru

Clip Source: members.aol.com

Tags: aribeth, moonelf

Ten Futures

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 23:55:00 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: interesting reading

Clip Source: static-p3.fotolia.com

Clip Source: www.we-magazine.net

This is a bit linear, but has the virtue of identifying future trends, not things that are around today.

1. The Pragmatic Web

is all about context. Your tools know who you are, what you’re doing, who you’ve been talking to, what you know, where you want to go, where you are now, and what the weather is like outside.

2. Global Intelligence

The global mind is the sort of thing that raises questions about the meaning of live, the value of ethics, and the nature of knowledge.

3. Extended Reality

The physical world and the virtual world will act as one

4. Mobility

moving in tribes and herds through society, grazing on energy and information inputs as they become available.

5. The Human Grid

6. Smart Objects

7. Holoselves

No person can be in two places at once, of course, but one’s avatar can travel one place while you travel to another

8. Living Ar

we will create complex multi-faced forms of expression

9. Global (Non-)Government

10. Cyborgs

Film Reveals CIA's 'Most Secret Place on Earth'

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:42:36 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: This film's analysis sets it apart from other books and documentaries on the subject, most of which justify the conflict, lauding the CIA operatives and their Air America pilots as heroes.

The reality, as Alfred McCoy says towards the end of the film, was very different. "We destroyed a whole civilisation, we wiped it off the map. We incinerated, atomised human remains in this air war and what happened in the end? We lost."

The covert nature of the conflict meant that U.S. forces were able to ignore virtually all the rules of engagement operating in Vietnam. Every building was a potential target and the civilian toll was huge.

The situation grew worse in 1970 when U.S. President Nixon authorised massive B-52 bombing strikes on Laos, which remained classified information until many years later.

American planes dropped an average of one planeload of bombs on targets in Laos every eight minutes, 24 hours a day for nine years, making it the most heavily bombed country on earth

Clip Source: www.commondreams.org

A view of Long Chen. The most secret location in 'the secret war' against Laos was the former CIA air base of Long Chen, a place that remain off limits even today.

PHNOM PENH - It was known as the ‘secret war', a covert operation waged by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) throughout the sixties and early seventies against communist guerrillas in Laos.

A new film, ‘The Most Secret Place on Earth', to be released in cinemas across Europe later this year, explores this little known conflict.

"I first got the idea to do the film when I visited the Plain of Jars in Laos in 2002," recalled Marc Eberle,36, the German director in an interview with IPS.

Little is known about the Lao conflict despite the fact that it remains the largest and most expensive paramilitary operation ever run by the U.S.

"Laos was the progenitor of the way America fights wars in the 21st century," he says.

How do you look? well it depends...

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:52:04 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: Interesting study into how perception is influenced and shaped. What seems so natural and true, is relative and biased.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Face Recognition: Nurture Not Nature

Fixation biases for Western Caucasian (WC - red) and East Asian (EA - blue) observers are highlighted by subtracting WC and the EA Z-scored fixation distribution maps during WC and EA face learning, recognition and categorization by race. (Credit: Caroline Blais et al, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0003022.g002)

researchers at the University of Glasgow have discovered that cultural differences cause us to look at faces differently.

We found that Westerners tend to look at specific features on an individual's face such as the eyes and mouth whereas East Asian observers tend to focus on the nose or the centre of the face which allows a more general view of all the features.

Western societies are generally more individualistic, whereas East Asian societies are collectivistic

Westerners appear to think and perceive focally and Easterners globally.

external environment, including the society in which we develop, is very influential in basic human mechanisms

Tags: neuroscience, culture

Magpies, humans share a recognizable trait

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 23:23:49 GMT

clipped by: Kelika
clipper's remarks: "Study uses mirrors to show the birds join humans, chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants on a short list of beings that can identify themselves."

Clip Source: www.latimes.com

Recognizing ourselves in a mirror is one of the traits that make humans, well, human.

Now it appears that self-recognition also makes magpies magpies. Best known for stealing shiny objects, the black-and-white magpie is the first bird to join a short list of mammals shown to share this trait: humans, chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants.

Researchers marked the throats of five magpies -- where they couldn't see -- with either brightly colored or black adhesive dots.

Harvey and Lilly ignored the mirrors; like some of us, they apparently didn't care how they looked.

But Gerti, Goldie and Schatzi, when confronted by their refections, attempted to peck and scratch at their brightly colored dots.

The birds largely ignored the black dot, which blended into their black feathers, showing that they weren't merely responding to how the dots felt or smelled.

Prior said he would not be surprised if other members of that avian family could also pass the mark test.

Tags: nature

Unchain your dogs

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:38:23 GMT

clipped by: bignosemousie
clipper's remarks: Lots of information at the source. Photos that will break your heart.

Unchain your dog, please.

Clip Source: www.unchainyourdog.org

What is meant by "chaining" or "tethering" dogs?

These terms refer to the practice of fastening a dog to a stationary object or stake, usually in the owner's backyard, as a means of keeping the animal under control. These terms do not refer to the periods when an animal is walked on a leash.

Why is tethering dogs inhumane?

Dogs are naturally social beings who thrive on interaction with human beings and other animals. In the wild, dogs and wolves live, eat, sleep, and hunt with a family of other canines. Dogs are genetically determined to live in a group.

A chained animal is caught in a vicious cycle; frustrated by long periods of boredom and social isolation, he becomes a neurotic shell of his former self—further deterring human interaction and kindness. In the end, the helpless dog can only suffer the frustration of watching the world go by in isolation—a cruel fate for what is by nature a highly social animal.

Tags: animals need love and protection

Neo-Coms are the threat

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 13:32:28 GMT

clipped by: jatfla
clipper's remarks: This article makes so much sense!!

Clip Source: www.jpost.com

Neo-coms are the threat

After the Berlin Wall fell, many Western analysts thought the successor to the Soviet Union would willingly give up its satellite states and move inexorably toward democracy.

Then-president George H.W. Bush, who had been head of the CIA and ambassador to China, felt we were moving to "a new world order."

Many in the State Department, especially secretary of state James Baker, felt that the "end of the Cold War" meant an end to the special status of Israel in Middle Eastern affairs, not dreaming that the rise of radical versions of Shi'ite and Sunni Islam exported by Iran and the Saudis might make the country more valuable than ever.

But history does not move in straight lines or dialectical patterns to suit liberal social scientists or Marxist social theorists. Rather, it repeats itself or moves in cycles, based not only on economic factors but those of custom, culture, religion and human nature.

Antibodies still protect 1918 flu survivors

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 09:51:48 GMT

clipped by: pokkets
clipper's remarks: In those days, they sure knew how to make antibodies

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Maggie Fox

Antibodies from survivors of the 1918 flu pandemic, the worst in human memory, still protect against the highly deadly virus, researchers report.

The findings by a team of influenza and immune system experts suggest new and better ways to fight viruses - especially new pandemic strains that emerge and spread before a vaccine can be formulated.

These survivors, now aged 91 to 101, all lived through the pandemic as children.

Their immune systems still carry a memory of that virus and can produce proteins called antibodies that kill the 1918 flu strain with surprising efficiency, the researchers report in the journal Nature.

"It was very surprising that these subjects would still have cells floating in their blood so long afterward," says Dr James Crowe of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, who helped lead the study.

"The antibodies that we isolated are remarkable antibodies. They grab onto the virus very tightly and they virtually never fall off," says Crowe.

Scientists stop the ageing process

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 01:09:53 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Interesting results that may one day become the basis of 'age therapies'.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Scientists have stopped the ageing process in an entire organ for the first time, a study released today says.

Published in today's online edition of Nature Medicine, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City also say the older organs function as well as they did when the host animal was younger.

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Ana Maria Cuervo, blocked the ageing process in mice livers by stopping the build-up of harmful proteins inside the organ's cells.

The researchers say the findings suggest that therapies for boosting protein clearance might help stave off some of the declines in function that accompanies old age.

In experiments, livers in genetically modified mice 22 to 26 months old, the equivalent of octogenarians in human years, cleaned blood as efficiently as those in animals a quarter their age.

Our findings are particularly relevant for neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's," she says.

Tags: medicine, aging, molecular biology

Why Bogart's Kiss Is Your Kiss, His Soda Your Soda

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 21:23:16 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: Mirror neurons help explain how we connect to each others' emotions.

Clip Source: discovermagazine.com

Within the brains of humans, apes, and monkeys is a small set of neurons that simulate in real time the actions of others. When you see Humphrey Bogart lock lips with Ingrid Bergman, the same brain cells fire as when you kiss your honey. When you hear your coworker crack open a soda, in your brain it’s as if you’d opened the can yourself.

Since their discovery in monkeys less than two decades ago, mirror neurons have been called into service to explain just about everything that makes us human—from empathy and language to politics and pornography. Are these cells really the be-all and end-all of human nature? In one of the first books on the subject, neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni clearly explains what we do know (and how) and what we don’t know (or can’t). Want to learn what mirror neurons have to do with Super Bowl commercials, violent video games, autism, addiction, and even free will? This is your book. Watching someone else read

Clip Source: www.amazon.ca

SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 22:33:49 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: in the 1950s, showed signs of therapeutic potential or value in research into the nature of consciousness and sensory perception. “Human consciousness…is a function of the ebb and flow of neural impulses in various regions of the brain-the very substrate that drugs such as psilocybin act upon,” Schuster says. “Understanding what mediates these effects is clearly within the realm of neuroscience and deserves investigation.”

“A vast gap exists between what we know of these drugs-mostly from descriptive anthropology-and what we believe we can understand using modern clinical pharmacology techniques,” says study leader Roland Griffiths, Ph.D., a professor with Hopkins’ departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry and Behavioral Biology. “That gap is large because, as a reaction to the excesses of the 1960s, human research with hallucinogens has been basically frozen in time these last forty years.”

Clip Source: www.clusterbusters.com

Clip Source: rixonology.wordpress.com

HOPKINS SCIENTISTS SHOW HALLUCINOGEN IN MUSHROOMS CREATES UNIVERSAL “MYSTICAL” EXPERIENCE
Rigorous study hailed as landmark

Using unusually rigorous scientific conditions and measures, Johns Hopkins researchers have shown that the active agent in “sacred mushrooms” can induce mystical/spiritual experiences descriptively identical to spontaneous ones people have reported for centuries.

The resulting experiences apparently prompt positive changes in behavior and attitude that last several months, at least.

The agent, a plant alkaloid called psilocybin, mimics the effect of serotonin on brain receptors-as do some other hallucinogens-but precisely where in the brain and in what manner are unknown.

Cited as “landmark” in the commentary by former National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) director, Charles Schuster, the research marks a new systematic approach to studying certain hallucinogenic compounds

Tags: neuroscience, hallucinogenic mushrooms, brain, consciousness

The Technology of Mind and a New Social Contract

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:09:23 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "We need to prepare for these new technologies so that they change the world in ways we want rather than just stumbling into a world that we don't."

Clip Source: static-p3.fotolia.com

Clip Source: jetpress.org

Abstract

The progress of biology, neuroscience and computer science makes it clear that some time during the twenty- first century we will master the technologies of mind and life. We will build machines more intelligent than ourselves, and modify our own brains and bodies to increase our intelligence, live indefinitely and make other changes. We live together according to a social contract, consisting of laws, morals and conventions governing our interactions. This social contract is based on assumptions we rarely question: that all humans have roughly the same intelligence, that we have limited life spans and that we share a set of motives as part of our human nature. The technologies of mind and life will invalidate these assumptions and inevitably change our social contract in fundamental ways. We need to prepare for these new technologies so that they change the world in ways we want rather than just stumbling into a world that we don't.