Caution: It is vitally important not to make connections. When you see pictures of rubble like this week’s shots from Joplin, Mo., you should not wonder: Is this somehow related to the tornado outbreak three weeks ago in Tuscaloosa, Ala., or the enormous outbreak a couple of weeks before that (which, together, comprised the most active April for tornadoes in U.S. history). No, that doesn’t mean a thing.
Night Owl Special
May 30, 2011
This is just a reminder that I will be the featured guest on George Noory’s Coast to Coast AM show:
Eastern ….. 2 a.m. – 5 a.m. Wednesday June 1
Central ….. 1 a.m. – 4 a.m. Wednesday June 1
Mountain ….. midnight - 3 a.m. Wednesday June 1
Pacific ….. 11 p.m. Tuesday May 31 – 2 a.m. Wednesday June 1
Tune in to see if I can put together a coherent sentence at 2 a.m.
TED and Hans Rosling – educational and entertaining
May 27, 2011
I’ll tell you, the combination of high-speed internet, and TED talks (http://www.ted.com/), and especially Hans Rosling, is a time-absorber of major proportions. Not a time-waster, at all, because it’s highly educational (and entertaining) — but it’s so addictive!
Then there is Rosling’s own site, www.gapminder.org. Try these.
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/ted-and-reddits-10-questions-to-hans-rosling/
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-asias-rise-ted-india/
http://www.gapminder.org/videos/hans-rosling-ted-talk-2007-seemingly-impossible-is-possible/
Connecting all those dots
May 26, 2011
Via a friend, from The Washington Post, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-link-between-climate-change-and-joplin-tornadoes-never/2011/05/23/AFrVC49G_story.html?wpisrc=xs_sl_0001
A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never!
By Bill McKibben, Published: May 23
The best stats you’ve ever seen
May 26, 2011
This video really does live up to its name. One of the remarkably interesting TED videos of intelligent fascinating speakers with important messages. This one is so hopeful ! So many people seem to think that the world is getting worse. That isn’t what the data shows.
Hans Rosling shows the best stats you’ve ever seen
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html
Unsuspected shared ancestries
May 25, 2011
Interesting technique; interesting results, via SchwartzReport
A sample:
“A new study by Harvard researchers casts new light on the intermingling and migration of European, Middle Eastern and African and populations since ancient times.
“In a paper titled “The History of African Gene Flow into Southern Europeans, Levantines and Jews,” published in PLoS Genetics, HMS Associate Professor of Genetics David Reich and his colleagues investigated the proportion of sub-Saharan African ancestry present in various populations in West Eurasia, defined as the geographic area spanning modern Europe and the Middle East. While previous studies have established that such shared ancestry exists, they have not indicated to what degree or how far back the mixing of populations can be traced.”
Population genetics reveals shared ancestries in http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/hms-pgr052411.php
The Strange Organism That Could Destroy Monsanto
May 24, 2011
It’s just unbelievable, and keeps getting worse. The agricultural equivalent to nuclear snake-oil is genetic modification of crops, complete with little or no consideration of inconvenient facts that are dismissed as “side effects” or, more frequently, are left unrecognized, are denied, or are covered up.
This from Japan Today indicates that the tide is finally turning on the ridiculously unsafe and uneconomic use of nuclear power to boil water to produce electricity.
This was so obvious, so many decades ago, except to those whose rice bowl depended upon it not being obvious. This changed attitude would be a case of locking the barn door after the horse was stolen, if there weren’t all those other horses…
Worldwide we have hundreds of the damned things to close, either at the end of their natural lives, or after the foreseeable accidents still to take place — and in either case, there is the totally unsolved problem of how to safely dispose of those mountains of radioactive waste. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, not mountains, just hills, but deadly is deadly.
Very good news globally
May 24, 2011
Whereas the economic and political policies instituted within this country in the past 30 years have uniformly acted to build up the rich and grind down the middle class and the poor, overseas in what used to be called the Third World, the middle class is growing exponentially, and is projected to reach as much as five billion people in just a few years.
As difficult as this global transition is for the west, and particularly for the US, so accustomed to thinking itself the center of the universe, this is still massively good news. Who wants to live as one of the rich few among oceans of the poverty-stricken? Much better for us to come into the world on a more level playing field.
I repeat, this is very good news. A Christian Science Monitor report via Schwartzreport.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2011/0517/Surging-BRIC-middle-classes-are-eclipsing-global-poverty
Coast to Coast AM radio, Tuesday night
May 23, 2011
I’m very pleased to announce that I’m going to be talking about my latest book, The Cosmic Internet, on “Coast to Coast AM” with George Noory. This should introduce a lot of people to the ideas behind the book, and, assuming that I don’t make a total fool of myself, should provide us with the fast start that is so helpful in making a book a success. Let’s hope it is only the first piece of good news in a long string.
Air time is
Pacific time: 11 p.m. May 31 to 2 a.m. June 1.
Eastern time: 2-5 a.m. June 1.
Not prime commuting time, but this show is very popular, and has been since back when it was the Art Bell show.
I am well aware that I owe this to the efficient efforts and widespread professional contacts of Sara Sgarlat of Sgarlat Publicity. If you’ve got a book to publicize, she’s the one to go to. (She’s also a former Hampton Roads Publishing company employee; what other endorsement do you need?)
‘I Want a Quiet Revolution’
May 23, 2011
Winfried Kretschmann, 62, the new governor of Baden-Württemberg and the first-ever leader of a German state from the Green Party, talks to the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel about redefining economic growth, his plans to make industry more environmentally friendly and the future of nuclear power in Germany.
Found via SchwartzReport. As editor Schwartz remarks, “Compare Kretschmann’s views with those of the willfully ignorant political prostitutes who litter our national landscape.”
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,763512,00.html
