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Thursday, January 09, 2003
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Timothy Wilken, MD writes: A very limited form of cooperation exists among some animals. We see it the hunting pride of lions and within the hyena pack. Human co-Operation is a much more powerful mechanism. Animals have no voice with which to negotiate an action in which they win. They have no voice to veto an action in which they lose. Their primitive cooperation is guided by instinct, and it is quick to breakdown into the fighting and flighting of the adversary way. We humans share the animal body, to survive we must also eat. We are omnivores. We meet our basic needs and survive by eating both plants and animals. Physiologically, we humans are also a dependent class of life. So adversary behavior comes to humans legitimately. But we humans are much more intelligent than the animals and that intelligence gives us the synergic option to avoid fighting or flighting. True co-Operation – working together, teamwork, joint effort, alliances – these are only possible to a life form with symbolic intelligence – to a life form with a voice and with language – to a life form able to negotiate and veto. On earth, synergic relationships are only available only to humans. Synergic relationship means sometimes I depend on other and sometimes other depends on me. Synergic relationship makes humans the interdependent class of life – interdependent on each other. (01/08/03) | |
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Vandana Shiva writes: The notion Earth Democracy comes from a very ancient category in Indian thought. Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human—we are a continuum. When the issue of the patenting of life emerged, for example, there were two levels of response from those opposing this practice in India. The one level was resistance: “This is immoral. Life is not an invention. Life cannot be a monopoly. You cannot sell us the seeds you stole from us, and you cannot charge us royalties for the product of nature’s intelligence and centuries of human innovation.” The second level was the reclaiming of democracy: people claimed the right to look after their biodiversity and use it sustainably. This came out of discussions among the movements we’ve been building at the grassroots. I remember one meeting of 200 villagers who had been involved in seed saving and seed sharing with Navdanya, the trust that I founded to save seeds and promote organic agriculture. These 200 villagers gathered on World Environment Day in 1998 and declared sovereignty over their biodiversity—not sovereignty to rape and destroy, sovereignty to conserve. These 200 villagers, gathered in a high mountain village near a tributary of the Ganges, said, “We’ve received our medicinal plants, our seeds, our forests from nature through our ancestors; we owe it to them to conserve it for the future. We pledge we will never allow their erosion or their theft. We pledge we will never accept patenting, genetic modification, or allow our biodiversity to be polluted in any form, and we pledge that we will act as the peoples of this biodiversity.” (01/08/03) | |
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Kevin Kelly writes: Thank you for your confidence in me. Here are the three things you should encourage; these are neglected by our current science policy: 1) Develop Long Term Science, 2) Foster a Global View, and 3) Fund Blue Sky Work. (01/08/03) | |
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BBC Science -- An Australian power company is planning to build the world's tallest structure - a solar tower - in the middle of the outback. The project is part of a global campaign to encourage the use of more renewable energy. Enviromission says the tower, at a proposed height of 1,000 metres (3,300 ft), will be more than twice the size of the world's current tallest freestanding building, the Canadian National Tower in Toronto. The one billion Australian dollar (US $0.56 bn) project is being backed by the Australian Government, and is expected to be completed in 2006 in the remote Buronga district in New South Wales. If successful, the structure could provide enough electricity for 200,000 homes. It will save more than 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases which may otherwise have been emitted by coal- or oil-fired power stations. (01/08/03) | |
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New York Times: Science -- In a test critical to theories of cosmology, scientists have for the first time measured the speed at which the force of gravity moves. And, once again, it appears that Einstein has been proved right, scientists announced today at a meeting here of the American Astronomical Society. "Newton thought that gravity's force was instantaneous," said Dr. Sergei Kopeikin, a physicist at the University of Missouri. "Einstein assumed that it moved at the speed of light, but until now, no one had measured it." By observing a slight "bending" of radio waves when Jupiter passed nearly in front of a more distant cosmic object, scientists said they determined that gravity's propagation speed is equal to the speed of light. They said their finding was within an accuracy of 20 percent, which they considered good enough to conclude that gravity's velocity is probably indeed equal to the speed of light. (01/08/03) | |
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New York Times -- A branch of the Danish Research Agency has concluded that Prof. Bjørn Lomborg , an author whose upbeat analysis of environmental trends has been embraced by conservatives, displayed "scientific dishonesty" in his popular book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist." --Recently, this young and profoundly naive young anti-environmentalist has risen to popularity. He tells us all is well. The Earth is fine. Overpopulation is a myth. Pollution is not a problem. We need more development not less. Unfortunately, this fool has been attracting a lot of undeserved attention. A statistician, Bjørn Lomborg blatantly distorted the evidence by systematically selecting statistics to support his claims that global welfare is generally improving and environmental policy is unnecessary. In spite of its numerous errors and biases, "the Lomborg scam" (as leading biologist E.O.Wilson aptly calls it) had been welcomed by gullible or like-minded journalists and politicians. Finally, scientific sense has prevailed! (01/08/03) | |
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Steve Pinker writes: Your father called himself "the education president," and you have promised new educational policies in which "no child is left behind." These affirmations of the centrality of education in a modern democracy are admirable. As our economy comes to depend increasingly on technology, and as modern media present us with unprecedented choices – in our lifestyles, our workplaces, and our political commitments – a child who cannot master an ever-increasing body of skills and knowledge will be left farther and farther behind. Unfortunately, the goals of the Presidents Bush are not being realized. Most debates about education in this country focus on issues of administration: vouchers, charter schools, class size, teachers’ unions, budgets, high-stakes testing. Fewer have focused on the actual process of education: how events in the classroom affect the minds of the pupils. This is an area in which science – in particular, the sciences of mind – can make crucial contributions. Your immediate predecessor was enthusiastic about applying research on the brain to education and child development. But as exciting as the field of basic neuroscience is, I suspect it will provide few insights into the process of education. All learning must change the brain, but the changes at the level of brain cells are pretty much the same in all complex organisms -- including mice, which don’t learn to read, write, or add. It is the patterns of changes across billions of neurons that determine the distinctively human forms of learning that face us in the classroom, and to understand them we need to understand how intact human beings perceive, think, and act. These topics are the province of the sciences of mind, particularly cognitive science, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral genetics, and evolutionary psychology, must be brought to bear on education in a more systematic way than has happened so far. (01/07/03) | |
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Hilkka Pietilä writes: Finland has gone from being a poor country early in the 20th century to ranking tenth in the world in life expectancy, education, and income. The common belief is that a country must first become rich, and then it can provide welfare for its people. The history of the Nordic societies tells a different story; here, wealth has been built by building welfare for people. This success was built on a notion of welfare entirely different from welfare as understood in the United States. In the US “being on welfare” is humiliating, and welfare benefits often depend on the recipient’s relationship to something or someone else. What is radically different about the Finnish system is that here welfare benefits and services are rights that everyone living permanently in the country is individually entitled to. Finnish people have economic, social, and political citizenship. For women, it has proved particularly important that social benefits and services belong to everyone without distinction as to sex, marital status, employment, race, or nationality. Thus Finnish women are entitled to enjoy their social entitlements whether or not they are married or employed. ... As Finland’s economy grew, the welfare system grew, so that today, everyone is entitled to a minimum salary or unemployment benefit, child-support allowances for all children, paid parental leave for 44 weeks, pensions, free education up to university level, free school meals to all pupils in public comprehensive schools, highly subsidized public health services, day care services for all children under school age, and subsidized care for the aged. The government also provides good public transport, free universities in 10 cities around the country, high-quality public primary and secondary schools and vocational training, a comprehensive adult education system, excellent public libraries all over the country, and highly subsidised theatre, music, and arts in all cities.The welfare system here is a lifelong social insurance, a guarantee that whatever may happen, children will not lose access to education, people will not be left at the mercy of relatives or charity organizations, no one will be abandoned in case of illnesses, accidents, unemployment, or bankruptcy, and everyone will have old-age income and care no matter what. Open poverty and misery are almost nonexistent. (01/07/03) | |
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FBI -- A new method of monitoring your computer activities has been developed to keep America safe.. This new system is not intrusive and should not even be noticed by those being monitored. (01/07/03) | |
11:08:05 PM 
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© TrustMark
2003
Timothy Wilken.
Last update:
2/2/2003; 7:50:34 AM.
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