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Monday, May 12, 2003
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Alfred Korzybski writing in 1921 -- It is the aim of this little book to point the way to a new science and art-the science and art of Human Engineering. By Human Engineering I mean the science and art of directing the energies and capacities of human beings to the advancement of human weal. It need not be argued in these times that the establishment of such a science-the science of human welfare-is an undertaking of immeasurable importance. No one can fail to see that its importance is supreme. ... It is evident that, if such a science is to be established it must be founded on ascertained facts-it must accord with what is characteristic of Man-it must be based upon a just conception of what Man is-upon a right understanding of Man's place in the scheme of Nature. (05/12/03) | |
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Herschel Elliott & Richard D. Lamm write: What if global warming is a reality, and expanding human activity is causing irreparable harm to the ecosystem? What if the demands of a growing human population and an expanding global economy are causing our oceans to warm up, our ice caps to melt, our supply of edible fish to decrease, our rain forests to disappear, our coral reefs to die, our soils to be eroded, our air and water to be polluted, and our weather to include a growing number of floods and droughts? What if it is sheer hubris to believe that our species can grow without limits? What if the finite nature of the earth's resources imposes limits on what human beings can morally do? What if our present moral code is ecologically unsustainable? ... Every environment is finite. At a certain point, the members of an increasing population become so crowded that they stop benefiting each other; by damaging the environment that supports everyone, by limiting the space available to each person, and by increasing the amount of waste and pollution, their activity begins to cause harm... And if the population continues to expand, its material demands may so severely damage the environment as to cause a tragedy of the commons -- the collapse of both environment and society. (05/12/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Some animals can feel and think in ways not too dissimilar from us, welfare campaigners say. They say there is evidence of altruism, with some animals acting disinterestedly for the good of others. Animals which live in communities, they say, often exhibit signs of morality which resembles human behaviour. They say there is scientific backing for their claims, with huge implications for human use of animals. ... "There is evidence that some animals do have some level of morality and some concern over other animals. Living within a group requires a moral code of behaviour... Most animals that live in communities exhibit similar moral codes to humans. Zoologists who have spent their professional lives studying animal behaviour, either by observation or by experiments to test their mental capacities, believe that many animals feel and think." Joyce D'Silva, chief executive of CIWF, told BBC News Online: "The whole climate over whether to accept sentience has changed hugely in the last 15 years. " (05/12/03) | |
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Rebecca Aldworth writes: The commercial seal hunt is in full swing off Canada's East Coast. More than 224,000 pups have already been clubbed or shot to death; another 126,000 will likely be killed by mid-May. The seal nursery, one of the world's great wildlife spectacles, is once again soaked in blood. I grew up in Newfoundland. It was there I first saw the seal slaughter on CBC television; horrific black-and-white images of sealers clubbing baby seals. We lived in a small outport of 340 people. I had eaten seal meat, and my family knew sealers. But I had never seen a live seal. I had never truly understood - until I saw the agony in those pups' eyes - the brutal reality of this hunt. ... Moving towards the sealers, we passed giant pools of blood with trails leading back to the boats. Everywhere, carcasses stared up at us, left behind by the sealers. The pups left alive moved miserably through the carnage, bewildered and covered in blood. We got very close to the sealers, and could see and hear everything: The splatter of blood as the clubs hit, the cries of seals as they were struck. The killing methods were cruel. The sealer would club a seal, and it would lie still. He would begin to cut it open, but all too often, it would start to move. The sealer would react by clubbing the animal again. It would lie still, and the sealer would resume skinning. Again the seal would move. Usually the sealer would give up and finish skinning the still thrashing animal. The Marine Mammal Regulations require that sealers perform a simple test to ensure the seal is dead prior to skinning. It involves quickly touching the animals' eyeball and watching for a reaction. But almost none of the sealers did it. (05/12/03) | |
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New Scientist -- On a shelf sit three jars of peanut butter labelled "not for human consumption". These jars cost over $140 each and occupy a very special place in the pantheon of everyday objects - they have been studied with the greatest of precision. Not only are they of a precisely known weight, they come with a complete list of constituents measured as accurately as possible by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). This all-American food is the most recent and final addition to the NIST's set of standard reference materials (SRMs), which already includes spinach, baby food, oysters and dark chocolate. ... The standard foods are chosen because they fill a unique slot on the so-called food triangle. The three corners of the triangle represent the three basic nutrients: fat, protein and carbohydrate. The closer a food is to a corner, the more of that nutrient it contains. All foods fit somewhere into the triangle, but only a select few warrant the special status of a standard. NIST scientists at Gaithersburg, Maryland, chose peanut butter - which is bursting with amino acids, fatty acids, minerals and calories - because its unique combination of high protein, high fat and minerals fills an awkward gap. (05/12/03) | |
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New Scientist -- Time really does pass more slowly when you are gasping for cigarette, reveals a new study demonstrating that smokers who are deprived of cigarettes have an altered perception of time. US researchers found that when regular smokers gave up their habit, their perception of passing time was stretched by 50 per cent. They believe that this process is linked to underlying biological processes as well as psychological and behavioural ones. "People [who abstain] are pretty irritable and they feel like time is going by more slowly than it really is," said Laura Cousino Klein, a medical psychologist at Pennsylvania State Univerisity, Pennsylvania, who led the study. "It's like when you're trying to drive to work and the red light seems like it's on forever." She said the idea of time slowing was also linked to feelings of hostility and anger. "The time perception impairment that we observed in the abstaining smokers may be part of the reason they also reported feeling more stressed and unable to focus or be attentive," she said. (05/12/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Army ants, these days dispersed across the world, all came from a single source over 100 million years ago on the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana. A new study indicates the insects all share identical genetic markers that reveal a common ancestor. Many scientists believed that army ants originated separately on several continents relatively recently in Earth history. But the new research means that army ants join animals such as sharks and crocodiles that have remained relatively unchanged for many tens of millions of years. Army ants are unlike the ants found at family picnics. They are in general nomadic, foraging for prey without advance scouting, and their wingless queens can produce up to four million eggs in a month. ... "Biologists have wondered why army ants, whose queens can't fly or get caught up by the wind, are so similar all around the world," Sean Brady, a Cornell University, US, entomologist says. The answer is that "army ants have evolved only once and that was in the mid-Cretaceous period". (05/12/03) | |
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BBC Science -- Dozens of controversial GM trials taking place across the UK are due to end this summer. Public consultation will then follow on whether these cops should be grown commercially. The government is due to launch a £500,000 "public debate" in the coming weeks. ... The results of the GM crop trials will be published in the summer followed by a government-funded independently-run public debate in June. There will also be a scientific review of GM and a study by the prime minister's Strategy Unit into the overall costs and benefits of commercial GM cropping. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs website says the government is "neither pro nor anti GM crops... it recognises that they have both potential risks and benefits". (05/12/03) | |
5:09:29 AM 
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2003
Timothy Wilken.
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6/3/2003; 5:44:48 AM.
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