Monday, September 15, 2003

A Synergic Future Timothy Wilken, MD writes: If we humans are to solve our overpopulation/fossil fuel depletion/global warming crisis, it will require that we take action. We can expect no help from big government and big business. They created this crisis and they have no interest in solving it. Big government's only goal is to be re-elected so they can retain political power, and the only goal of big business is to make money. These two forces have combined to create the present law of society one dollar = one vote. If we humans with no political or economic power want to solve our problems, then we will have to take charge of our society. What is our authority for taking such action? We must begin by seizing the moral highground. And, taking the moral highground requires that we face the truth. ... If we humans synergically reorganized our world, we would all be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. Today in 2003, if we were to reclaim the gift of all the land and natural resources presently held on planet Earth as individual property. And if we were to further reclaim the gift of Progress from those few who control it today, and then divided these two gifts equally among the 6 billions of us living on the planet, we would discover to our surprise and amazement that every man, woman, and child is wealthy beyond their dreams. With synergic organization, and careful utilization of the planet’s total wealth for the benefit of all humanity, the carrying capacity of the Earth could be maximized to solve all our human problems and meet our all our needs. And this is without any need to damage the Earth, or degrade our environment. There would never be any need for humans to earn their livings again. Our livings have already been earned by all those humans who lived and died to give us the great gift of progess. Then all humans would be free to spend their time making their lives meaningful by creating more wealth to be gifted to living and future humanity.  (09/15/03) More Than an Entertainer John Nichols writes: In his remarkable 1997 autobiography, Cash reflected on a career that began with hit singles but eventually saw him searching for a proper record label -- a search that ended only when Rubin, a groundbreaking rock and rap producer, signed him to American Recordings and produced four starkly brilliant albums. When people wondered why a country singer was on his label, Rubin said, "A rock star is a musical outlaw and that's Johnny." Cash embraced that outlaw image, singing in his signature song, "Man in Black":  Well you wonder why I always dress in black/Why you never see bright colors on my back/And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone/Well there's a reason for the things that I have on/I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down/Livin' in the hopeless hungry side of town/I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime. Cash took sides in his own songs, and in the songs he chose to sing. And he preferred the side of those imprisoned by the law -- and by economics. ... Though he was not known as an expressly political artist, Cash waded into the controversies of his times with a passion. Like the US troops in Vietnam who idolized him, he questioned the wisdom of that war. And in the mid-1960s, at the height of his success, he released an album that challenged his country's treatment of Native Americans. That album, Bitter Tears, featured an powerful version of Peter LaFarge's "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow," a sad, angry rumination on the mistreatment of the Seneca tribe of the Iroquois nation, and of how the US government "broke the ancient treaty with a politician's grin." Years later, Cash would remember that, as he prepared Bitter Tears, "I dove into primary and secondary sources, immersing myself in the tragic stories of the Cherokee and the Apache, among others, until I was almost as raw as Peter. By the time I actually recorded the album I carried a heavy load of sadness and outrage; I felt every word of those songs, particularly 'Apache Tears' and 'The Ballad of Ira Hayes.' I meant every word, too. I was long past pulling my punches." (09/15/03) Newborn Smiles Sky News -- Pioneering scanning techniques have produced astonishing images from inside the womb which show babies apparently smiling and crying. Experts believe the breakthrough could lead to advances in baby health for a whole range of conditions, including Down's Syndrome. The pictures offer a new insight into foetal behaviour. The ultra-sound scanning techniques capture images which show the foetuses yawn, blink, suck their fingers and seem to cry and smile. Up to now, doctors did not think infants made such expressions until after birth and believed they learned to smile by copying their mother. The procedure has been pioneered by London obstetrician Professor Stuart Campbell at the Create Health Centre for Reproduction and Advanced Technology. His pictures reveal foetuses moving their limbs at just eight weeks. The new techniques, known as 3D and 4D scanning, allow for far more detailed examination of the foetus. ... Pictures reveal foetuses move limbs at eight weeks. From 15 weeks, they make complex finger movements, while at 20 weeks, they yawn. From 26 weeks, a whole range of more complex activities, such as blinking, finger sucking, smiling and crying can be seen. Professor Campbell said: "It is remarkable that a baby does not smile for about six weeks after birth. Before birth, most babies smile frequently." Also, he wonders, "Why does a fetus blink when we assume it's dark inside the uterus?" (09/15/03) Protecting Newborns from HIV BBC Science -- It is known that women who take anti-HIV drugs during labour significantly reduce their chances of passing the virus on to their babies. However, research by US and Ugandan doctors has found that taking a certain drug just once could offer protection. The move could prevent hundreds of thousands of infections each year, they write in the Lancet medical journal. The number of HIV positive pregnant women in Africa is estimated at three million - and there is a significant risk of the virus being passed on to the baby as it comes into contact with blood and body fluids during birth. To combat this, it is recommended that the mother, even if she is not regularly taking antiretroviral drugs, takes a course of therapy during labour, and the baby is given the same drugs early in life. The key is the number of times that the drug has to be given to the new baby. Other treatments, such as AZT, have to be given every day for at least a week after birth, as well as every three hours to the woman in labour. ... However, the researchers from Johns Hopkins University in the US and Makarere University in Kampala, Uganda, tested a new regime, involving a drug called nevirapine - also known as Viramune. Drug firm Boehringer is supplying the drug free to South Africa to help prevent HIV spread. The drug is given just once to the mother during labour, and just once to the baby once it is born. In tests, more than 600 babies and mothers were given either AZT or nevirapine. The transmission rate using nevirapine was lower - after six to eight weeks, 59 babies in a group given AZT were HIV positive, compared with only 36 in the nevirapine group. After 18 months, 75 babies in the AZT group and 47 in the nevirapine group were HIV positive. (09/15/03) Get Rid of Garden Pests with Garlic BBC Science -- Garlic could be the new way to drive slugs away from our lettuce without using pesticides. The smelly herb not only seems to keep vampires at bay, but scientists say it also drives slugs and snails out of the garden. Biologists from the University of Newcastle, UK, have found that a barrier of garlic oil repelled the molluscs. Dr Gordon Port, who heads the research project, described at the British Association's science festival in Salford, Greater Manchester, how exposure to refined garlic can even kill slugs. Garlic has been co-planted as an anti-pest control for hundreds of years. ... As more and more pesticides were withdrawn from sale, this common cooking ingredient might pose a viable, eco-friendly alternative, Dr Port said. An estimated £30m a year is spent in the UK to protect lettuce, Brussels sprouts, potatoes and winter wheat from slugs and snails. "Pesticide have been terrific at preventing pests and increase food availability." But amid growing awareness of their potential dangers, the number of pesticides available to gardeners and farmers had gone down in recent years, he explained. ... "We need to find new environmentally friendly and cost-effective ways of controlling molluscs, and garlic could be our answer," said Dr Port. (09/15/03) My World of Ought to Be Timothy Wilken, MD writes: In the past week I have talked about learning to "could" on each other. Now I would like to "could" on my readers. I will start by revealing an important secret. If you want to help make a world that works for all humanity, you must know this secret. It is the secret of making wholes — the secret of oneness.  You must live from the point of view of the whole.  You must identify with the whole. If you take care of the whole, the whole will take care of you. The following analogy may help you understand.  Think a moment of how our brain functions — the neurons of our human brain focus entirely on the needs of the whole body, and in turn discover the whole body takes care of them.  They have no concerns and give no attention to maintaining their own temperature, to acquiring their own nutrition, to oxygenating themselves, or even in protecting themselves from bacteria or virus. The neurons place their trust in survival of the whole.  By making decisions which keep the body healthy and safe, they  insure the body is capable of meeting all the needs of the neurons.  By serving the whole the neurons find themselves served. I have taught that humanity is evolving. We evolved from the animals. Animals are space-binders. Their lives are dominated by adversity. Early humans lives were dominated by adversity. Humans who commit to adversity could be called Adversans. I explained to escape the Adversary world, humans invented Captitalism and the Great Market. This is a Neutral mechanism. Humans who commit to Capitalism and the Market could be called Neutrans. I have explained that if humanity is to have a future that we must give up the hurting of Adversity — give up the ignoring of Neutrality, and embrace the helping of Synergy. Humans who commit to Synergy could be called Synergans. Now imagine that the Earth including all of life is a single organism — GAIA.  Further imagine the entire humans species  —  all of humanity — organized in a single Organizational Tensegrity. This evolved form of humanity could be called Synerganity.  Synerganity then could be the brain of GAIA.  Each human being functioning as a neuron within GAIA's brain. (09/12/03) Living Beyond the Earth's Means Lester R. Brown writes: Throughout most of human history, we lived on the earth's sustainable yield—the interest from its natural endowment. But now we are consuming the endowment itself. Our existing economic output is based in part on cutting trees faster than they grow, overgrazing rangelands and converting them into desert, overpumping aquifers, and draining rivers dry. On much of our cropland, soil erosion exceeds new soil formation—slowly depriving the land of its inherent fertility. We are taking fish from the ocean faster than they can reproduce. We are releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere faster than the earth can absorb it, creating a greenhouse effect. Rising atmospheric CO2 levels promise a temperature rise during this century that could match that between the last Ice Age and the present. ... Thus far the consequences of most excessive natural capital consumption, such as aquifer depletion, collapsing fisheries, and deforestation, have been local. But in sheer number and scale these events are now reaching a point where they may soon have a global effect. Food appears to be the economic sector most vulnerable to setbacks, largely because the impressive production gains of recent decades were partly based on overpumping and overplowing. Overpumping is historically recent because powerful diesel and electrically driven pumps have become widely available only during the last half-century or so. Aquifers are being overpumped in scores of countries, including China, India, and the United States, which together account for nearly half of the world grain harvest. Overpumping creates a dangerous illusion of food security because it is a way of expanding current food production that virtually ensures a future drop in food production when the aquifer is depleted. In the past, the effects of aquifer depletion on food production were confined to less-populated countries, like Saudi Arabia, but now they are becoming visible in China. After a remarkable expansion from 90 million tons in 1950 to its historical peak of 390 million tons in 1998, China's grain harvest dropped to 330 million tons in 2003. This drop of 60 million tons exceeds the grain harvest of Canada. Thus far China has offset the downturn by drawing on its vast stocks of grain. It can do this for perhaps another year or two, but then it will be forced to import massive quantities of grain. ... If grain shortfalls continue, they will lead to price rises that could destabilize governments and impoverish more people than any event in history.  (09/12/03) Working Together to Understand Weather BBC Science -- A massive worldwide online effort to predict how the global climate will change this century is being launched in the UK. Computer users anywhere on Earth can join by downloading a climate model from a website. The organisers say it will be the world's largest climate prediction experiment. They hope it will result in a much more robust picture of the probable future climate. The experiment is being launched on 12 September at the Science Museum in London and at the British Association science festival in Salford. It is the fruit of collaboration between the universities of Oxford and Reading, the Met Office, the Open University, the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, and a software company, Tessella Support Services. They expect it to generate "the world's most comprehensive probability-based forecast of 21st-century climate". Any computer user can take part by visiting the climateprediction website. Each will then run a unique version of the Met Office's climate model, simulating several decades of global climate at a time. The site says: "To take part in the challenge of the experiment you need to download some software which runs on your PC (whenever you are not using the processor for other jobs). "The software is a Windows-based version of a state-of-the-art climate model (courtesy of the Hadley Centre)." Dr Sylvia Knight is at the atmospheric, oceanic and planetary physics department at Oxford. She told BBC News Online: "Each model is slightly different in its starting conditions (the weather on the day the model is started), the fields it is forced with (for instance, different scenarios for how carbon dioxide develops this century), and most crucially in the approximations in the physics. "All climate models have to make approximations, because the climate is so complicated." The model will run as a background process on ordinary desktops without affecting other computing tasks. The results will go back to the organisers on the internet when the experiment ends. (09/12/03) 5:20:06 AM

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