Article: Blood Transfusion Standards (Boston.com)

Full Article

Excerpt:

"a government advisory committee is calling for national standards on when a transfusion is needed — and how to conserve this precious resource."

England vs. UK vs. Britain vs. Commonwealth vs. Common Knowledge

Wow...I did not know all this Geography. What a tangle for British children to learn in school.

"As a rule, city life seems to generate mental illness" - Wired Blog

Visiting New York City is usually a traumatic experience for me...even if I'm able to hold it together just fine and leave sane. Wired has a good blog post [FULL ARTICLE] on some new research from Germany in a field that already has been studied with conclusive results before.  Here are some key quotes:

"Compared to their rural counterparts, city dwellers have higher levels of anxiety and mood disorders. The schizophrenia risk of people raised in cities is almost double."

"Too much stress may ultimately alter the brain, leaving it ill-equipped to handle further stress and prone to mental illness."

"The city kids displayed heightened levels of activity in two brain regions: the amygdala, which is central to processing emotion and stress, and the perigenual anterior cingulate cortex, which regulates the amygdala. In short, city brains had disproportionately amplified responses to social stress. They’d become sensitized."

"[Nebraska] Nuclear Plant...suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling”"

US orders news blackout over crippled Nebraska Nuclear Plant

         "A shocking report prepared by Russia’s Federal Atomic Energy Agency (FAAE) on information provided to them by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) states that the Obama regime has ordered a “total and complete” news blackout relating to any information regarding the near catastrophic meltdown of the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Plant located in Nebraska.
          According to this report, the Fort Calhoun Nuclear Plant suffered a “catastrophic loss of cooling” to one of its idle spent fuel rod pools on 7 June after this plant was deluged with water caused by the historic flooding of the Missouri River which resulted in a fire causing the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) to issue a “no-fly ban” over the area."

Rut rhoh george....

Deleting, not deactivating your facebook account

I just deleted my Facebook account.

I thought I did this initially, when Facebook allowed me to Deactivate my account...but this does not delete the personal information. It just stores it in case I ever want to go back to it. If you want to delete your account rather than deactivate it, you'll need to follow this link:

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account

FB to the ground...Peace.

This one's for you facebook:

No One's Safe...

"People Argue Just to Win, Scholars Assert" (NYTimes.com)

LINK: People Argue Just to Win, Scholars Assert - NYTimes.com

Obviously, I don't think we "evolved" rationality, but it is interesting how many people use this gift of reason today. The conclusions drawn are more a reflection of our society and civilization's mental health...hurt, defensive, insecure, and/or selfish.

Excerpt:

   "For centuries thinkers have assumed that the uniquely human capacity for reasoning has existed to let people reach beyond mere perception and reflex in the search for truth. Rationality allowed a solitary thinker to blaze a path to philosophical, moral and scientific enlightenment.

   Now some researchers are suggesting that reason evolved for a completely different purpose: to win arguments. Rationality, by this yardstick (and irrationality too, but we'll get to that) is nothing more or less than a servant of the hard-wired compulsion to triumph in the debating arena."

Chinese, Iranian presidents discuss friendly cooperation, nuclear issue

Chinese, Iranian presidents discuss friendly cooperation, nuclear issue

Excerpt:

"Hu called on both countries to push forward pragmatic cooperation by maintaining the momentum in bilateral trade and economic cooperation.

He said that the two countries should expand cultural exchanges and encourage the two peoples to increase contact so as to let the China-Iran friendship take root deep in the hearts of the two peoples.

Hu said the two sides need to strengthen communication on international affairs, so as to promote peace and stability in the region and the whole world."

Quote from "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace"

   “It is fashionable to suggest that cyber-space is some island of the blessed where people are free to indulge and express their individuality, this is not true. I have seen many people spill out their emotions - their guts - online and I did so myself until I began to see that I had commodified myself.

   Commodification means that you turn something into a product which has a money value. In the 19th Century, commodities were made in factories, by workers who were mostly exploited. But I created my interior thoughts as commodities for the corporations that owned the board I was posting to - like Compuserve or AOL - and that commodity was sold onto other consumer entities as entertainment.

   Cyber-space, is a Black Hole; it absorbs energy and personality and then re-presents it, as an emotional spectacle. It is done by businesses that commodify human interaction and emotion - and we are getting lost in the spectacle.”

---Carmen Hermosillo

Link: The first episode on Vimeo.

How the 'ecosystem' myth has been used for sinister means | Environment | The Observer

A fascinating evaluation and critique of self-organizing systems...conclusion, they are a fantasy.

How the 'ecosystem' myth has been used for sinister means | Environment | The Observer

Excerpt

"Biosphere 2 was a giant sealed world. Eight humans were locked in with a mass of flora and other fauna, and a balanced ecosystem was supposed to naturally emerge. But from the start it was completely unbalanced. The CO2 levels started soaring, so the experimenters desperately planted more green plants, but the CO2 continued to rise, then dissolved in the 'ocean' and ate their precious coral reef. Millions of tiny mites attacked the vegetables and there was less and less food to eat. The men lost 18% of their body weight. Then millions of cockroaches took over. The moment the lights were turned out in the kitchen, hordes of roaches covered every surface. And it got worse – the oxygen in the world started to disappear and no one knew where it was going. The 'bionauts' began to suffocate. And they began to hate one another – furious rows erupted that often ended with them spitting in one another's faces. A psychiatrist was brought in to see if they had gone insane, but concluded simply that it was a struggle for power."