Archives for October 2015

Happy Historical Halloween!

October 29, 2015 by

It’s that time of year again. When all the good ghouls and gobblers take to the street, unless they live in a large city – then they take to nearest shelter, to enjoy the camaraderie of others, or not as the case may be, and celebrate the circle of life by acknowledging death. Last year I put together the definitive history of the holiday, as best I could. Since some people get confused by the search results but wanted to share this with their loved ones, I’m reposting it. I’ve updated it to include links to all the holiday variations that are listed at the bottom so you can enjoy them too. If you see something you think I missed please use the link below to email me directly and I’ll look into it.

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I loved Halloween as a kid and have kept right on loving it as the years have gone by. Once, in a pinch for a last minute costume, I wore a black body suit with some white tape pieces placed in even rows and a couple of toy cars attached using Christmas ornament hangers. That’s right, I went as a parking lot. Another year, since I happened to be at a nudist colony, I went as a pull toy. That proved popular and I’ll just leave the rest to your imagination. That being said, Halloween has become many things to many people. From Trick or Treating for Unicef to Tricks and Treat there are many variations. The latter is when kids have to tell you a joke to get candy. It was implemented to stop the violence of Devil’s Night a/k/a Mischief Night, etc. It’s been very successful in Des Moines and St. Louis. Not so much so in Detroit where Devil’s Night is treated as some sort of Constitutional right.

But most people, when asked, tend to think of it as a relatively young holiday. It’s far from it. The nice folks at History.com have done a great job of piecing the whole thing together.

Straddling the line between fall and winter, plenty and paucity, life and death, Halloween is a time of celebration and superstition. It is thought to have originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, when people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off roaming ghosts. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory III designated November 1 as a time to honor all saints and martyrs; the holiday, All Saints’ Day, incorporated some of the traditions of Samhain. The evening before was known as All Hallows’ Eve and later Halloween. Over time, Halloween evolved into a secular, community-based event characterized by child-friendly activities such as trick-or-treating. In a number of countries around the world, as the days grow shorter and the nights get colder, people continue to usher in the winter season with gatherings, costumes and sweet treats.

ANCIENT ORIGINS OF HALLOWEEN
Halloween’s origins date back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts, who lived 2,000 years ago in the area that is now Ireland, the United Kingdom and northern France, celebrated their new year on November 1. This day marked the end of summer and the harvest and the beginning of the dark, cold winter, a time of year that was often associated with human death. Celts believed that on the night before the new year, the boundary between the worlds of the living and the dead became blurred. On the night of October 31 they celebrated Samhain, when it was believed that the ghosts of the dead returned to earth. In addition to causing trouble and damaging crops, Celts thought that the presence of the otherworldly spirits made it easier for the Druids, or Celtic priests, to make predictions about the future. For a people entirely dependent on the volatile natural world, these prophecies were an important source of comfort and direction during the long, dark winter.

To commemorate the event, Druids built huge sacred bonfires, where the people gathered to burn crops and animals as sacrifices to the Celtic deities. During the celebration, the Celts wore costumes, typically consisting of animal heads and skins, and attempted to tell each other’s fortunes. When the celebration was over, they re-lit their hearth fires, which they had extinguished earlier that evening, from the sacred bonfire to help protect them during the coming winter.

By 43 A.D., the Roman Empire had conquered the majority of Celtic territory. In the course of the four hundred years that they ruled the Celtic lands, two festivals of Roman origin were combined with the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain. The first was Feralia, a day in late October when the Romans traditionally commemorated the passing of the dead. The second was a day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol of Pomona is the apple and the incorporation of this celebration into Samhain probably explains the tradition of “bobbing” for apples that is practiced today on Halloween.

On May 13, 609 A.D., Pope Boniface IV dedicated the Pantheon in Rome in honor of all Christian martyrs, and the Catholic feast of All Martyrs Day was established in the Western church. Pope Gregory III (731–741) later expanded the festival to include all saints as well as all martyrs, and moved the observance from May 13 to November 1. By the 9th century the influence of Christianity had spread into Celtic lands, where it gradually blended with and supplanted the older Celtic rites. In 1000 A.D., the church would make November 2 All Souls’ Day, a day to honor the dead. It is widely believed today that the church was attempting to replace the Celtic festival of the dead with a related, but church-sanctioned holiday. All Souls Day was celebrated similarly to Samhain, with big bonfires, parades, and dressing up in costumes as saints, angels and devils. The All Saints Day celebration was also called All-hallows or All-hallowmas (from Middle English Alholowmesse meaning All Saints’ Day) and the night before it, the traditional night of Samhain in the Celtic religion, began to be called All-hallows Eve and, eventually, Halloween.

HALLOWEEN COMES TO AMERICA
Celebration of Halloween was extremely limited in colonial New England because of the rigid Protestant belief systems there. Halloween was much more common in Maryland and the southern colonies. As the beliefs and customs of different European ethnic groups as well as the American Indians meshed, a distinctly American version of Halloween began to emerge. The first celebrations included “play parties,” public events held to celebrate the harvest, where neighbors would share stories of the dead, tell each other’s fortunes, dance and sing. Colonial Halloween festivities also featured the telling of ghost stories and mischief-making of all kinds. By the middle of the nineteenth century, annual autumn festivities were common, but Halloween was not yet celebrated everywhere in the country.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, America was flooded with new immigrants. These new immigrants, especially the millions of Irish fleeing Ireland’s potato famine of 1846, helped to popularize the celebration of Halloween nationally. Taking from Irish and English traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition. Young women believed that on Halloween they could divine the name or appearance of their future husband by doing tricks with yarn, apple parings or mirrors.

In the late 1800s, there was a move in America to mold Halloween into a holiday more about community and neighborly get-togethers than about ghosts, pranks and witchcraft. At the turn of the century, Halloween parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day. Parties focused on games, foods of the season and festive costumes. Parents were encouraged by newspapers and community leaders to take anything “frightening” or “grotesque” out of Halloween celebrations. Because of these efforts, Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones by the beginning of the twentieth century.

By the 1920s and 1930s, Halloween had become a secular, but community-centered holiday, with parades and town-wide parties as the featured entertainment. Despite the best efforts of many schools and communities, vandalism began to plague Halloween celebrations in many communities during this time. By the 1950s, town leaders had successfully limited vandalism and Halloween had evolved into a holiday directed mainly at the young. Due to the high numbers of young children during the fifties baby boom, parties moved from town civic centers into the classroom or home, where they could be more easily accommodated. Between 1920 and 1950, the centuries-old practice of trick-or-treating was also revived. Trick-or-treating was a relatively inexpensive way for an entire community to share the Halloween celebration. In theory, families could also prevent tricks being played on them by providing the neighborhood children with small treats. A new American tradition was born, and it has continued to grow. Today, Americans spend an estimated $6 billion annually on Halloween, making it the country’s second largest commercial holiday.

TODAY’S HALLOWEEN TRADITIONS
The American Halloween tradition of “trick-or-treating” probably dates back to the early All Souls’ Day parades in England. During the festivities, poor citizens would beg for food and families would give them pastries called “soul cakes” in return for their promise to pray for the family’s dead relatives. The distribution of soul cakes was encouraged by the church as a way to replace the ancient practice of leaving food and wine for roaming spirits. The practice, which was referred to as “going a-souling” was eventually taken up by children who would visit the houses in their neighborhood and be given ale, food, and money.

The tradition of dressing in costume for Halloween has both European and Celtic roots. Hundreds of years ago, winter was an uncertain and frightening time. Food supplies often ran low and, for the many people afraid of the dark, the short days of winter were full of constant worry. On Halloween, when it was believed that ghosts came back to the earthly world, people thought that they would encounter ghosts if they left their homes. To avoid being recognized by these ghosts, people would wear masks when they left their homes after dark so that the ghosts would mistake them for fellow spirits. On Halloween, to keep ghosts away from their houses, people would place bowls of food outside their homes to appease the ghosts and prevent them from attempting to enter.

HALLOWEEN SUPERSTITIONS
Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery, magic and superstition. It began as a Celtic end-of-summer festival during which people felt especially close to deceased relatives and friends. For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table, left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road and lit candles to help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world. Today’s Halloween ghosts are often depicted as more fearsome and malevolent, and our customs and superstitions are scarier too. We avoid crossing paths with black cats, afraid that they might bring us bad luck. This idea has its roots in the Middle Ages, when many people believed that witches avoided detection by turning themselves into cats. We try not to walk under ladders for the same reason. This superstition may have come from the ancient Egyptians, who believed that triangles were sacred; it also may have something to do with the fact that walking under a leaning ladder tends to be fairly unsafe. And around Halloween, especially, we try to avoid breaking mirrors, stepping on cracks in the road or spilling salt.

But what about the Halloween traditions and beliefs that today’s trick-or-treaters have forgotten all about? Many of these obsolete rituals focused on the future instead of the past and the living instead of the dead. In particular, many had to do with helping young women identify their future husbands and reassuring them that they would someday—with luck, by next Halloween—be married. In 18th-century Ireland, a matchmaking cook might bury a ring in her mashed potatoes on Halloween night, hoping to bring true love to the diner who found it. In Scotland, fortune-tellers recommended that an eligible young woman name a hazelnut for each of her suitors and then toss the nuts into the fireplace. The nut that burned to ashes rather than popping or exploding, the story went, represented the girl’s future husband. (In some versions of this legend, confusingly, the opposite was true: The nut that burned away symbolized a love that would not last.) Another tale had it that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction made out of walnuts, hazelnuts and nutmeg before bed on Halloween night she would dream about her future husband. Young women tossed apple-peels over their shoulders, hoping that the peels would fall on the floor in the shape of their future husbands’ initials; tried to learn about their futures by peering at egg yolks floating in a bowl of water; and stood in front of mirrors in darkened rooms, holding candles and looking over their shoulders for their husbands’ faces. Other rituals were more competitive. At some Halloween parties, the first guest to find a burr on a chestnut-hunt would be the first to marry; at others, the first successful apple-bobber would be the first down the aisle.

Of course, whether we’re asking for romantic advice or trying to avoid seven years of bad luck, each one of these Halloween superstitions relies on the good will of the very same “spirits” whose presence the early Celts felt so keenly.

Halloween around the world brings us everything from the custom of hiding knives in Germany (to keep the dead from injuring themselves), to leaving out food with all the lights turned on bright in Austria (to help the dead see and grab a snack. They really care for the dead in this part of the world), to staring into a dark mirror in the UK and parts of the US (turn off the lights, look into a mirror and see your future spouse. If you see a skull you gonna DIE!!!!), to the fortune telling Barmbrack cake in Ireland to the fortune telling apple peels in Scotland (lots of fortune telling in that area), to Dios de la Muerte in Mexico where they invite their dead ancestors home for a snack and some tequila. That holiday concludes with a family picnic on the 3rd day at a graveyard.

So whether you’re dressing up as a Sexy Ebola Nurse (God help us) or a parking lot, have a safe and Happy Halloween.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Circus of Death

October 28, 2015 by

When I was a kid the highlight of my fall was to go to the circus. The big one, Barnum and Bailey. There you could see the clowns clowning, the acrobats acrobatting and the elephants elephanting. The lion and tiger tamers would thrill and scare you and the announcer made it all seem larger than life. Plus there was popcorn, cotton candy and all the glorious smells. Circuses were rank with musk and I loved it. As time passed I grew away from the circus and went on to other entertainments. Music, theater, arts, and so on. If I did think of the circus I did so fondly. Like a half remembered kiss. When I got older I would occasionally hear about people who wanted to ban circuses, or at least the animal acts. That struck me as silly at the time. Who wants to ban a kiss or a happy memory? People who were less self absorbed than me it turns out.

The ASPCA (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) recently updated its website to specifically deal with the way circus animals, especially elephants, are treated. More importantly, to the human-centric among you, how those treatments can lead to human deaths.

The Animals

Although the issues regarding circus cruelty have gained much-needed attention in recent years, circus animals still suffer from lives of confinement, social deprivation and violent methods of training.

In many circuses, animals are trained through the use of intimidation and physical abuse. Former circus employees have reported seeing animals beaten, whipped and denied food and water, all to force them to learn their routines. Animals are taught that not obeying the trainer will result in physical abuse. In the United States, no government agency monitors animal training sessions.

Traveling from town to town is also inherently stressful for circus animals—they are separated from their social groups and intensively confined or chained for extended periods of time with no access to food, water, and veterinary care. It’s no surprise that many animals suffer psychological effects. Swaying back and forth, head-bobbing and pacing are just some of the stereotypical behaviors associated with mental distress displayed by animals in the circus.

Public Safety Concerns

Animals in circuses are also a threat to public safety. There have been hundreds of incidents involving circus animals attacking and escaping—often resulting in property damage, injuries and death.

Furthermore there is a risk of disease. Some elephants used in circuses have been found to carry a human strain of tuberculosis, which can be easily passed on to humans.

ASPCA in Action

In the year 2000, the ASPCA—along with The Fund for Animals, Born Free USA and the Animal Welfare Institute—filed a federal lawsuit against Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. The lawsuit contended that the circus’s treatment of its Asian elephants violates the federal Endangered Species Act. Unfortunately, on December 30, 2009, the case was decided on behalf of the defense (Ringling’s owners, Feld Entertainment) based on lack of standing of the plaintiffs.

On March 5, 2015, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that it will phase out the show’s elephants from its performances by 2018. This is a tremendous victory for the elephants of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, as well as for everyone who fought for this change, including many advocates and lawmakers in cities around the country. We continue to oppose using elephants or any wild or exotic animals in circuses, carnivals and other traveling animal shows because of resulting stress and cruelty, as well as inevitable physical, social and psychological deprivations.

The nice people at Do Something have put together a well researched and frightening top 11 list pertaining to circus animals. Click on the link to see all their source documents.

Circus animals have the right to be protected and treated humanely under the Animal Welfare Act.
Tigers naturally fear fire, but they are still forced to jump through fire hoops in some circuses and have been burned while doing so.
Circuses are repeatedly cited by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Animal Welfare Act for trailers that have splintering wood and sharp, protruding metal pieces near animals’ cages.
Trainers use whips, tight collars, muzzles, electric prods, bullhooks and other painful tools of the trade to force animals to perform.
In more than 35 dangerous incidents since 2000, elephants have bolted from circuses, run amok through streets, crashed into buildings, attacked members of the public, and killed and injured handlers.
Every major circus that uses animals has been cited for violating the minimal standards of care set by the United States Animal Welfare (AWA).
11 months a year they travel over long distances in box cars with no climate control; sleeping, eating, and defecating in the same cage.
Virtually 96% of a circus animal’s life is spent in chains or cages.
Since 1990, there have been more than 123 documented attacks on humans by captive large cats in the United States, 13 of which resulted in fatal injuries.
During the off-season, animals used in circuses may be housed in small traveling crates. Such confinement has harmful psychological effects on them. These effects are often indicated by unnatural behavior such as repeated swaying, and pacing.
Lack of exercise and long hours standing on hard surfaces are major contributors to foot infections and arthritis, the leading causes of death among captive elephants.

Keep in mind that they are only working from documented accounts. What happens behind the scenes that doesn’t require police intervention is unknown. But the pattern is disturbing nonetheless.

Okay, you say, but progress is being made. The elephants are being phased out and films go above and beyond the call of duty to protect our friends in the animal kingdom.

Eh, not so much.

While elephants are being phased out of one circus there are others who will still use them. Plus exotic cats and other animals are barely discussed. And, sadly, that whole film safety thing is looking more and more like a sham.

Ryan Gorman, at the Daily Mail (UK), tells a scary tale.

The American Humane Association (AHA) is charged with protecting animals during movie shoots, but a staggering new report out claims it puts more effort into covering up animal harm than preventing it.

Some of the biggest-name productions in Hollywood have seen animals die on-set or suffer near-death experiences but still received the ubiquitous AHA stamp of approval, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Some of the more egregious incidents include dozens of marine animals washing ashore during the filming of a Pirates Of The Caribbean film, the deaths of 27 animals during the filming of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and four horses dying during filming for HBO’s Luck.

Not even the tiger star of Life Of Pi, who almost drowned, was safe from being covered up.

The tiger, known in the film as Richard Parker, was tasked with swimming to the side during a scene and became disoriented. A trainer had to lasso him with a rope and pull him to safety.

In an email obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, AHA monitor Gina Johnson allegedly wrote to a colleague: ‘I think this goes without saying but DON’T MENTION IT TO ANYONE, ESPECIALLY THE OFFICE! I have downplayed the f*** out of it.’

The award-winning box office smash still received the ‘No Animals Were Harmed’ credit familiar to all moviegoers.

Several dozen marine animals, including fish and squid, washed ashore during the filming of Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl.

They died after uncontrolled explosions were set off in the water for special effects, a rep from the AHA present during filming told The Hollywood Reporter.

The AHA declined to comment regarding the allegation.

The more than two dozen animals that fell victim to The Hobbit included sheep and goats that died from dehydration, exhaustion or drowning during a filming hiatus.

The AHA cobbled together the following certification for the big-budget blockbuster saying it ‘monitored all of the significant animal action. No animals were harmed during such action.’

During the filming of Failure To Launch a squirrel was somehow crushed to death by the film crew.

These allegations are seen as proof that the animal safety watchdog has a relaxed relationship with the film industry.

A former LA animal protection officer was quoted as saying: ‘It’s fascinating and ironic: From being the protectors of animals they’ve become complicit to animal cruelty.’

The now-retired agent said production staff at one film even once ‘told animal control to f*** themselves’ after agents were sent to investigate the deaths of two horses.

Even with the ability to issue citations and arrest production staff for harming animals, the crew of HBO’s horse racing drama Luck escaped unscathed despite four horses dying during production.

The AHA half-heartedly admitted that Ms Johnson’s objectivity might have been compromised because of her relationship with a Life Of Pi movie executive.

But the former animal control officer said: ‘This is worse than doing nothing. This is like a cop not just ignoring a crime but helping cover it up.’

An unnamed AHA employee agreed, saying ‘the moral compass of the entire place is off the hook’.

The Hollywood Reporter article, cited above, written by Gary Baum, paints an even bleaker picture.

Once a distinctly outsider entity, which had to fight for its right to independently monitor productions in the first place, today the AHA has transformed itself into an entrenched industry insider. The organization undeniably has improved the care and safety of animals used in Hollywood. But interviews with six AHA employees and an extensive review of internal AHA documents, including incident logs, emails, meeting minutes, audit assessments and more, strongly suggest that the organization’s fundamental work — protecting animals through credibly neutral on-set oversight — today is inadequate.

These employees allege, and available AHA internal evidence supports their claims, that the organization distorts its film ratings, downplays or fails to publicly acknowledge harmful incidents and sometimes doesn’t seriously pursue investigations. The AHA staffers agreed to speak because they say they have lost hope in the potential for meaningful reform unless outside pressure is brought to bear. (They all have insisted on maintaining their anonymity for fear of retribution.)
More recently, the organization — whose other nationwide animal efforts range from rescue and shelter services following large-scale disasters to a cage-free certification program for meat, poultry, egg and dairy producers — has faced conflicts of interest stemming from its desire to be a part of the industry it’s meant to regulate.

Exhibit A: On Oct. 1, 2011, the Hallmark Channel premiered Love’s Everlasting Courage, a TV movie about pioneer-era America that was monitored by the AHA. That same evening, the AHA presented its inaugural Hero Dog Awards, attended by the likes of Whoopi Goldberg, Betty White and Hayden Panettiere, at the Beverly Hilton. Hallmark subsequently broadcast the Hero Dog Awards gala, just as it’s done each year since. It was a natural fit — after all, the network’s head, Crown Media CEO Bill Abbott, sat on the AHA’s Film & TV Unit advisory board (he would join the AHA’s full national board just after the 2011 Hero Dog Awards event).

The symbiotic relationship between the two organizations is important in light of an incident that occurred June 9, 2010, during the filming of Courage. That day, a horse named Glass — known for his gentle demeanor, one blue eye and a distinctive white blaze of mane set against a shimmering black coat — was fatally injured when a “runaway” wagon really did lose control and the carriage’s crossbar broke (think of a pencil snapping), impaling the animal’s left hindquarter. “He then went into shock from extreme blood loss and the vet decided it would be more humane to euthanize him than allow him to suffer,” according to an internal AHA report.

If you have the time, and a strong stomach, please read Gary’s article in its entirety. It is a lengthy, and documented, listing of nightmare after nightmare. Including, my favorite, setting off explosives in a marine environment just so Johnny Depp could look cool. Yes, that little bit of whimsy killed thousands of fish and squids.

All for no reason.

The thing of it is people like seeing animals perform. God knows they made this kid happy. But selling popcorn and cotton candy shouldn’t require that animals be tortured.

Think of if this way, you don’t have to stab your pet every day to house train it. There are better ways. And, yes, caring for animals properly can be expensive. So be it. Being cheap doesn’t justify sadism.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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Catching Up on Science

October 22, 2015 by

It’s been an interesting week. With the Cubs in the playoffs, and a World Series win predicted by Back to the Future II (i.e., what passes for science education in Texas), a large portion of the media spent an incredible amount of time trying to figure out what the movie got right or wrong. Side note, in Norway the word texas (all small letters) is slang for crazy and/or stupid. In line with that comment I should let you know that one right wing blog claimed that the movie proved there is a liberal oligarchy in Hollywood since there was no mention of Benghazi. No I am not making this up but nor am I linking to them. This site doesn’t promote stupid. For the most part though it was harmless fun. If you want a complete list of every prediction in the movie and how each panned out just click here and feel your work day slip away. Before you fire off the angry email about the article saying there are no flying cars, there really aren’t. There are several in various stages of production but none commercially available. The one upshot of all this is that it got people thinking about real science too.

So let’s take a look at some of that.

Leukemia is the disease that killed my mom so I tend to carefully read any articles on it. And, no, grapefruit doesn’t cure it. Quit reading your emails. Anyway, Robin Andrews says there is an unlikely new candidate to kill leukemia cells, leukemia cells themselves.

No, she’d not drunk.

Leukemia, a group of cancers affecting the bone marrow and blood, is notoriously difficult to treat, often relapsing and becoming resistant to treatment. But a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could offer hope, revealing that it’s possible to make leukemia cells kill each other.

More accurately, the researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have construed a technique that convinces the leukemia cells to transform into leukemia-killing immune cells, rewriting their biological programming. The key, so to speak, is an extremely rare human antibody. But where did the researchers find it, and how does it work?

Antibodies are proteins produced naturally by the human body’s immune system. They act as the “handcuffs” to the white blood cells’ “police,” sticking to foreign invaders like microbes and either directly neutralizing them or tagging them for destruction.

Recently, the scientists were attempting to find antibody therapies to treat people with immune cell deficiencies in which the bone marrow doesn’t produce enough white blood cells. They hoped that they could find antibodies that would activate receptors on immature bone marrow cells that would cause them to change into mature cells. Over the last few years, they have succeeded in doing this. What they didn’t expect to see, however, was that a handful of these growth-induced antibodies turn immature bone marrow cells into completely different types, such as cells normally found in the nervous system.

Speaking of mysterious stuff in your body, have you ever had the feeling you lived in a previous time? Maybe that you were reincarnated? The World News Desk over at Soul Surfing says there might be a very logical reason for that. It appears that memories can be transmitted genetically.

New research from Emory University School of Medicine, in Atlanta, has shown that it is possible for some information to be inherited biologically through chemical changes that occur in DNA. During the tests they learned that that mice can pass on learned information about traumatic or stressful experiences – in this case a fear of the smell of cherry blossom – to subsequent generations.

According to the Telegraph, Dr Brian Dias, from the department of psychiatry at Emory University, said: ”From a translational perspective, our results allow us to appreciate how the experiences of a parent, before even conceiving offspring, markedly influence both structure and function in the nervous system of subsequent generations.

“Such a phenomenon may contribute to the etiology and potential intergenerational transmission of risk for neuropsychiatric disorders such as phobias, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.”

This suggests that experiences are somehow transferred from the brain into the genome, allowing them to be passed on to later generations.

Obviously there needs to be a ton more research conducted but many scientists are calling this early evidence compelling and are willing to look into it further. Some even think that we may, one day, be able to access our ancestors’ memories. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. What if you could only access the sexy time your grandparents had?

Ewwww!

Another thing that sounds kind of crazy but could be a real boon for mankind, not a cancer curing boon but still cool, is a material that can’t get wet. Caroline Reid has the story.

Objects that are kept underwater eventually succumb to the inevitable decay associated with being submerged – metal rusts, wood rots and human hands go all wrinkly. These effects could be delayed in the future by a new type of rough coating that “deflects” water.

The material uses the same strategy as water-walking insects such as water striders. Both bug and material take advantage of protrusions on their rough surfaces to resist water and stay dry. As long as the gaps between the grooves on the material (or hairs on the insect) are less than a micrometer apart, then it has the ability to stay dry when in contact with water.

The team exploited the fact that water can be prompted to evaporate using the right combination of surface roughness and chemistry. The little pockets of water vapor that form are trapped in the framework of the material. They act as a first line of defense against liquid water drops, deflecting them to keep the surface dry.

In fact, the rough surface kept material samples dry for up to four months when constantly submerged in water. It could be longer, but the test will have to run for a longer period of time to know for sure what the time limit is. The research can be found in Scientific Reports.

The commercial possibilities are staggering. Bridges could last hundreds of years as long as they were structurally sound. The same for water pumps, sewage plants and anything else that needs to work under water.

Oh, and of course, you’d never need to worry about your Versace getting ruined by that nasty old weather stuff.

In another cool development, not foreseen in BTTF II, you may soon get your internet service from a lightbulb. Pavlos Manousiadis, Graham Turnbull and Ifor Samuel tell us all about it and, no, none of them were drunk either.

Visible light spectrum has huge, unused and unregulated capacity for communications. The light from LEDs can be modulated very quickly: data rates as high as 3.5Gb/s using a single blue LED or 1.7Gb/s with white light have been demonstrated by researchers in our EPSRC-funded Ultra-Parallel Visible Light Communications programme.

Unlike Wi-Fi transmitters, optical communications are well-confined inside the walls of a room. This confinement might seem to be a limitation for Li-Fi, but it offers the key advantage that it is very secure: if the curtains are drawn then nobody outside the room can eavesdrop. An array of light sources in the ceiling could send different signals to different users. The transmitter power can be localised, more efficiently used, and won’t interfere with adjacent Li-Fi sources. Indeed the lack of radio frequency interference is another advantage over Wi-Fi. Visible light communications is intrinsically safe, and could end the need for travellers to switch devices to flight mode.

A further advantage of Li-Fi is that it can use existing power lines as LED lighting so no new infrastructure is needed.

This technology could hit the market sooner than you think. If it does the only change in your home system, or business, would be to have a line run from your router to each room so it would have a dedicated signal. It would also eliminate the need for a password since no one outside of a room could access the signal.

I should also note that it will be cheaper than the current methods.

Speaking of light, Michigan State University has developed transparent solar panels. You replace your windows with them and you have free power forever.

Here’s what it looks like.

It’s not commercially available yet but could be in a year or so.

Here’s an interesting bit for you to chew on; Paul Devaney posits that humans may not be the most intelligent creatures on the planet. Before you laugh think about how we define intelligence and how it could be defined.

Cetologists observe, document, and decipher evidence that points to a profound intelligence dwelling in the oceans. It is an intelligence that predates our own evolution as intelligent primates by millions of years. – Paul Watson

I had a profound experience while kayaking in Hawaii this past winter with friends. We were visited by a whale and there is no doubt that this majestic being was coherent, aware of us, and enjoying our company as much as we were enjoying his. We put our snorkeling masks on and jumped in and could easily see the whale gently make eye contact with each of us. With one thrust of his tail he could have left in an instant but he stayed with us for over an hour. A mammal with a brain bigger than ours and complex migration songs that change every year, I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of thoughts could be going through his mind. The recent piece by Dawn Agnos on UPLIFT about a conversation with a horse shows that emotional intelligence and empathy are a language that many animals understand. It was only recently that terms like emotional intelligence emerged and it is interesting to consider that there are many different kinds of intelligence. Paul Watson of Sea Shepherd makes a good argument in a recent Facebook post that perhaps humans concept of intelligence is anthropocentric and lacking in breadth.

Watson starts early in his essay with the bold assertion that, “Biological science is provoking us to shatter our image of human superiority.” Though indigenous wisdom has always considered humans a part of the circle of life rather than above it, that sentiment has almost been completely destroyed by generations of colonial indoctrination. The very roots of colonial indoctrination not only conclude that humans are superior to all other life forms, it also considers some humans as superior to others. Social Darwinism, a myth, was an effort to use science to validate the behavior of employing superior weaponry to oppress other humans. Though we owe much respect to western science we must also understand the cultural and religious backdrop from which this discipline emerged. We must also be willing to explore the assumptions within science if we are to evolve it.

If technology is not the true measure of intelligence then our search for life in the cosmos just got more interesting.

And it is with that thought that I bring you this one.

Have we already discovered an alien civilization?

The short answer is “maybe” with a high probability of “no.”

LA Blake over at ABC television has the story.

Take it away LA!

A recent conundrum about a star 1,500 light years away discovered by the Kepler Space Telescope has extraterrestrial enthusiasts crying “alien” as an explanataion, but scientists studying the star are saying “not so fast.”

The strange nature of the star, KIC 8462852, was brought to public attention by the citizen scientists of the Planet Hunters program, ABC News reports. The program enlists the public’s help in studying dips in light from the 150,000 stars discovered by Kepler, usually caused by planets passing in front of them. With KIC 8462852, though, the light pattern has irregular, large dips — not like those of a planet– and scientists aren’t sure why.

The explanation that some jumped to? Large alien spacecrafts. The dips in light are caused by the alien megastructure periodically crossing between Kepler and the star, the theory goes.

The alien theory fire was further fueled when Jason Wright, an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, mentioned that aliens might provide a possible explanation in a paper, saying that “Kepler would be able to detect large alien megastructures via anomalies like these.”

After the theory went viral, Wright wrote a blog post to clarify that “we didn’t have anything ready to show our professional colleagues so that they can give reporters informed takes on it” and recommending, “You should reserve the alien hypothesis as a last resort.”

Instead, Wright says he’s pondering the theory of Tabetha Boyajian, who published a paper about the star in the Monthly Notes of the Royals Astronomical Society. Though the Yale University astronomer said the star had her scratching her head, she said the most likely scenario was that the strange light pattens could have been caused by a group of comets from a nearby star.

“I would put low odds on that being the right answer, but it’s the best one I’ve seen so far,” Wright wrote, “(and much more likely than aliens, I’d say).”

Yes, logically, the answer should be that the results are caused by an array of comets caught in a gravity well or the remains of a planet that was destroyed.

But hundreds of stationary solar panels fueling a planet as it passes by also works. That’s why they’re looking into it more deeply.

And how do we do that?

We hang out in China.

Tom Hale tells us why.

China is in the final stages of building the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. The state-owned China Central Television has released drone footage showing their progress, as well as the vertigo-inducing size of it.

The Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST) is being built deep in the misty mountains of Pingtang County, located in the Guizhou Province of southwest China. Construction has been going on since 2011. When completed in 2016, the FAST will become the largest radio telescope on the planet – at 500 meters (1,640 feet) in diameter, its dish will trump Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, which is 300 meters (984 feet) wide.

Wu Xiangping, the director-general of the Chinese Astronomical Society, said to Xinhua News, “Having a more sensitive telescope, we can receive weaker and more distant radio messages. It will help us to search for intelligent life outside of the galaxy and explore the origins of the universe.”

Here’s a look at this sucker.

The fact is that searching for alien life in space is hard. A civilization too advanced for us may be undetectable. Likewise, anyone that’s evolved but not past its industrial age may as well be invisible. Keeping in mind that any such detectable transmissions will have to travel for hundreds or millions of years to get to us and you see the problem. They might be our equals now but a million years ago they would have been excited by pointy sticks.

CYMATICS: Science Vs. Music – Nigel Stanford from Nigel Stanford on Vimeo.

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG (FOX! Sports) every Friday around 9:10 AM.
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One Man’s Trash

October 16, 2015 by

Don't mind me, I'm just walking my trash. — Don’t mind me, I’m just walking my trash.

WHO TOOK THE TRASH OUT? WOOT WOOT WOOT WOOT-WOOT! Would not have been a popular song. Trash is not sexy no matter what you try to say, or sing, about it. Taking out the trash is a phrase that can apply to everything from traditional waste to soon-to-be exes. It is never thought about in a good way. You never hear anyone say “Have you met Bob? He’s got some sexy trash.” And there’s a reason for that. Ignoring your soon-to-be ex for the moment, trash can encourage the growth of molds, fungi, diseases and attract insects and rodents, among other forms of unwanted fauna. None of those are good things for those of you who are new to this planet. If you are new, look me up and bring vodka. I’ll be happy to catch you up on what’s going on. The problem with the prevailing point of view on trash is that it’s vitally important. Unchecked it can do tremendous harm. And there’s no way to eliminate all of it so we need to figure out something.

While the U.S. suffices with landfills, for the most part, other countries have been trying something different. In Germany they instituted Der Grüne Punkt (Green Dot) program. They did this in response to their 1991 packaging ordinance which put limits on how much packaging a product could have.

The Ordinance focused on improving three categories of packaging:

Transport packaging (crates and shipping boxes)
Secondary packaging (non-essential boxes, such as around bottles of vitamins)
Primary packaging (casings that come in contact with the product, such as toothpaste tubes)

Earth 911 says it’s working better than anyone could have predicted.

Many companies had a difficult time complying with all the new standards and recycling laws introduced by the Packaging Ordinance.

They decided that they needed to better organize themselves, and so the non-profit organization Duales System Deutschland GmbH (Dual System Germany, or DSD) was created.

Manufacturers pay a fee to become a member of the DSD and are then permitted to print Der Grüne Punkt (the Green Dot) trademark on all their packaging.

Fees are decided based on the material, the weight and the number of items. The DSD also takes into consideration what it will cost to collect, sort, treat and recycle the different materials.

Recycling companies guarantee to accept any and all materials displaying the Green Dot, because the trademark is a symbol that the product’s manufacturer has paid to become a DSD member and promises to comply with Germany’s recycling laws.

Currently, the Green Dot system is used by more than 130,000 companies in 25 European countries (20 EU members and four candidate countries – Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia, as well as Norway). PRO Europe, the umbrella organization for European packaging waste management systems, reports that 3.2 million tons (U.S. tons) of Germany’s commercial packaging waste was recovered in 2007. That’s more than 88 percent of all the packaging produced in Germany that year!

But wait, there’s more. DSD reports that the country’s recycling efforts in 2008 not only kept waste out of landfills, but it also avoided an estimated 1.4 million tons of CO2 emissions.

According to a municipal solid waste report by the EPA, in 2007, the U.S. was able to recover only about 43 percent of all the containers and packaging produced that year.

Since 1996 they’ve reduced their overall net waste by over 36 tons per year. Put it all together and you have a much cleaner country to live in.

However, as Zi-Ann Lum reports, by Swedish standards, they’re rank amateurs.

There’s a “recycling revolution” happening in Sweden – one that has pushed the country closer to zero waste than ever before. In fact, less than one per cent of Sweden’s household garbage ends up in landfills today.

The Scandinavian country has become so good at managing waste, they have to import garbage from the UK, Italy, Norway and Ireland to feed the country’s 32 waste-to-energy (WTE) plants, a practice that has been in place for years.

“Waste today is a commodity in a different way than it has been. It’s not only waste, it’s a business,” explained Swedish Waste Management communications director Anna-Carin Gripwell in a statement.

Every year, the average Swede produces 461 kilograms of waste, a figure that’s slightly below the half-ton European average. But what makes Sweden different is its use of a somewhat controversial program incinerating over two million tons of trash per year.

It’s also a process responsible for converting half the country’s garbage into energy.

“When waste sits in landfills, leaking methane gas and other greenhouse gasses, it is obviously not good for the environment,” Gripwell said of traditional dump sites. So Sweden focused on developing alternatives to reduce the amount of toxins seeping into the ground.

At the core of Sweden’s program is its waste-management hierarchy designed to curb environmental harm: prevention (reduce), reuse, recycling, recycling alternatives (energy recovery via WTE plants), and lastly, disposal (landfill).

Before garbage can be trucked away to incinerator plants, trash is filtered by home and business owners; organic waste is separated, paper picked from recycling bins, and any objects that can be salvaged and reused pulled aside.

By Swedish law, producers are responsible for handling all costs related to collection and recycling or disposal of their products. If a beverage company sells bottles of pop at stores, the financial onus is on them to pay for bottle collection as well as related recycling or disposal costs.

Rules introduced in the 1990s incentivized companies to take a more proactive, eco-conscious role about what products they take to market. It was also a clever way to alleviate taxpayers of full waste management costs.

According to data collected from Swedish recycling company Returpack, Swedes collectively return 1.5 billion bottles and cans annually. What can’t be reused or recycled usually heads to WTE incineration plants.

WTE plants work by loading furnaces with garbage, burning it to generate steam which is used to spin generator turbines used to produce electricity. That electricity is then transferred to transmission lines and a grid distributes it across the country.

In Helsingborg (population: 132,989), one plant produces enough power to satisfy 40 per cent of the city’s heating needs. Across Sweden, power produced via WTE provides approximately 950,000 homes with heating and 260,000 with electricity.

Recycling and incineration have evolved into efficient garbage-management processes to help the Scandinavian country dramatically cut down the amount of household waste that ends up in landfills. Their efforts are also helping to lower its dependency on fossil fuels.

“A good number to remember is that three tons of waste contains as much energy as one ton of fuel oil … so there is a lot of energy in waste,” said Göran Skoglund, spokesperson for Öresundskraft, one of the country’s leading energy companies.

So if Sweden burns approximately two million tons of waste annually, that produces roughly 670,000 tons worth of fuel oil energy. And the country needs that fuel to operate its well-developed district heating networks which heat homes in Sweden’s cold winters.

This is why the country has taken advantage of the fact a number of European nations don’t have the capacity to incinerate garbage themselves due to various taxes and bans across the EU that prevent landfill waste. There’s where Sweden comes in to buy garbage other countries can’t dispose of themselves at a reasonable cost.

But trash burning isn’t without controversy. Some critics claim the process as anything but green because it sends more pollution and toxins into the air.

According to a study in the journal of Environmental Science and Technology, more than 40 per cent of the world’s trash is burned, mostly in open air. It’s a process markedly different from the regulated, low-emission processes Sweden has adopted.

Start-up costs for new incineration plants can get pricey and out of reach for some municipalities depending on the integration of processes used to filter ash and flue gas byproducts. Both contain dioxins, an environmental pollutant.

The incineration process isn’t perfect, but technological advancements and introduction of flue-gas cleaning have reduced airborne dioxins to “very small amounts,” according to the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

Unless manufacturers stop making products with materials that can’t be reused or tossed into incinerators, a 100 per cent recycling rate is unlikely to be achieved in our lifetime. Goods that are or contain tile, porcelain, insulation, asbestos, and miscellaneous construction and demolition debris can’t be burned safely; they have to be dumped in landfills.

“The world needs to produce less waste,” explained Skoglund.

Sweden’s success handling garbage didn’t come overnight — the latest results are the fruits of a cultural shift decades in the making.

“Starting in the ‘70s, Sweden adopted fairly strict rules and regulations when it comes to handling our waste, both for households and more municipalities and companies,” Gripwell told HuffPost Canada, referring to the country’s “waste hierarchy” now ingrained in Swedish society.

“People rarely question the ‘work’ they have to do,” she said.

In fact Sweden’s program is so freaking successful that they now import hundreds of thousands of tons of other countries’ trash. For a nominal fee, of course.

By comparison, Americans recycle less than 35% of all goods and waste over 50% of all food products and export none of our waste for processing. That means it all stays here to fester in landfills.

There has been some, reluctant, progress starting to be made in the U.S. as some grocery stores and restaurants are looking at donating unsold, but still healthy, food to charities. That program is already popular in Europe and has had many unforeseen advantages. My favorite is that people who are given access to healthy foods tend to get sick less and live better, thus reducing the country’s health care costs.

Nevertheless, ‘starting to look at’ is not the same as ‘doing’ so there’s a long way to go.

One cool thing is something I wrote about on August 15. A young man named Boyan Slat invented a device that sits in the ocean and collects trash as it floats by. Since 2013 he has raised over $2 MIL in crowdfunding and worked with over 100 engineers to turn this into a reality.

Laura Willard defines the problem and the need.

The plan is to deploy The Ocean Cleanup near Tsushima, an island between Japan and South Korea, and let it do its thing for two years. Then the next step is to use all the plastic junk it collects as an alternate energy source.

Talk about killing two birds with one stone. (Although, this is quite the opposite of killing birds, so … bad metaphor).

Unfortunately, the ocean is suuuper polluted.

A lot of that pollution is plastic trash — 8 million tons of plastic end up in the ocean every single year.

Right now, about 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic are floating around the ocean.

And pollution, as we know, causes many environmental, economic, and health problems. For example, plastic kills over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 marine mammals every year.

********************

Plastic pollution is expensive! Plastic in the oceans costs companies across the world over $13 billion a year and the U.S. government hundreds of millions in coastal cleanup efforts.

Additionally, the traditional method of dragging nets behind ships is wildly ineffective and kills fish. Since Boyan’s contraption is passive, it lets the waves bring the trash to it, it has zero environmental impact.

Also, it’s over 70% cheaper to use than current methods.

By the way, this is what it looks like. Click on the image for a larger picture.

All righty then, now you’ve got fuck tons of trash collected (yes, that’s the proper mathematical term) so what do you do with it?

Well, you can certainly send some to Sweden. And, as noted in Boyan’s project, you can use it for alternative fuels. But I like this idea better.

Robert Goodway says you can send it to Italy and they can build someone a house.

Clay – not the most advanced building material, or so you might think. The World’s Advanced Saving Project, or WASP, has just unveiled a giant 3D printer that – rather like a real wasp – can build a house out of the stuff.

The 3D printer, called BigDelta, works much like any other you may have seen – layering up a material into a pre-determined structure. The difference is that it stands 12 meters (40 feet) tall and claims to be the world’s biggest.

It was unveiled this weekend at the three-day “Reality of Dream” rally in Italy, where BigDelta was made. In a statement, WASP proposes that its technology could help meet the rising demand for housing, citing a UN calculation that over the next 15 years there will be an average daily demand for 100,000 new housing units.

It is thought the technology would be of most use in disaster or war zones, where the speed of production could help those who have become displaced. The use of natural materials could also benefit the environment by reducing cement – a major contributor to carbon dioxide emissions.

Yes, they’re using clay now but any processed waste product will work too.

Imagine the next time you take out the trash you could be helping someone get a home. Not a bad thing to have happen to your Hungry Man packages.

Or a music video. You can always make a music video and then send it to Italy.

GARBAGE – "PUSH IT" – andrea giacobbe from Giacobbe Andrea on Vimeo.

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A Healthier You

October 15, 2015 by

If you play your cards right "'Til Death Do Us Part" could be a long time away. — If you play your cards right “‘Til Death Do Us Part” could be a long time away.

People who buy unsalted pretzels are evil. I say this to inform you of two things; (1), I am not the paragon of all things good and holy when it comes to health, and; (2), I have stared into the face to pure evil and laughed. I’m tough that way. That said, I should also share something else with you. On February 13, 2013, I began a dietitian approved diet. No fads, no cool paleo, nothing that would make me part of this week’s internet meme. Before I did that I went to a doctor and got all my fluids tested. He then gave the results to my dietitian and she was able to design a diet that worked for me. Fun note here, had I gone on the Atkins Diet I would have been dead in a month or so. My body had problems the internet couldn’t see and seeing a doctor first saved my life. You can cheer or boo as you wish, that doesn’t make it any less true. What this little story should do is remind you to see a medical professional before embarking on any life changing diet or exercise programs. We’ve grown fond of most of you and would hate to see you disappear.

As to the rest of you …. meh.

So let’s set about making the world a healthier place. Just like any good pet I’ve had all my shots. Which means if I cough around you I will not give you polio. Sadly, those like me are a diminishing breed which has led to hilarious results like measles, which was wiped out in 2000, coming back at fatal levels all over the country. In an effort to justify ignoring the decades of successful science behind vaccinations a group of non-scientists hired a group of scientists, and paid them buckets of money, to prove science wrong.

As Josh Davis reports, this went about as well as you’d expect.

The overwhelming majority of scientists agree: Vaccinations do not cause autism. Study after study has shown this, and even the original research used to peddle this myth was eventually retracted due to falsified data. But this hasn’t stopped many anti-vaccination groups from still trying to create data that says otherwise, often by commissioning studies that they hope will support their ideologies.

But for one group at least, this method of funding scientific studies to prove their point seems to have backfired. A six-year study looking into the effect that vaccinations have on the neurological development and social behavior of rhesus macaque infants, funded in part by the anti-vaccination and autism advocacy group SafeMinds, concluded that there was no evidence at all for such a link.

Way back in 1796, or twenty years after America became a country, a dude name Dr. Edward Jenner discovered that he could cure smallpox, which was killing millions, by injecting people with cow pox, which was just annoying. The latter disease produced the necessary antibodies for the body to survive the former. He got shit for that too.

Jenner was widely ridiculed. Critics, especially the clergy, claimed it was repulsive and ungodly to inocculate someone with material from a diseased animal. A satirical cartoon of 1802 showed people who had been vaccinated sprouting cow’s heads. But the obvious advantages of vaccination and the protection it provided won out, and vaccination soon became widespread. Jenner became famous and now spent much of his time researching and advising on developments in his vaccine.

Trivia: Vaccine is based on the Latin word Vacca, which means …. you guessed it, cow.

Do vaccines have side effects. Yes. Do they have them for everyone? No. A majority? No again. A sizable minority? Not even close. There’s a lovely video by Penn and Teller that you can watch which explains the odds of your kid dying, or suffering a permanent illness, after being vaccinated versus not being vaccinated. If you haven’t got a minute or so allow me to summarize thusly, get your shots if you want to live.

Our pal Josh also reports, on a related note, that scientists are part way to a cure for Malaria. Not a big deal in Chicago but absolutely huge for the rest of the world. All quinine treatment does is ameliorate the symptoms. The disease is permanent and life debilitating.

Also, as Robbie Couch reports, Dr, Robert Gallo, the dude who discovered HIV and its relationship to AIDS, has developed a vaccine that appears to be a total cure for the disease. It’s in human trials now.

All right then, now that we have you disease free, let’s get to feeding you. As of this writing there are approximately 800 MIL people who are going hungry. I don’t mean they need a Snickers, I mean they may not have eaten anything in days. And that number includes an astonishing number of Americans.

Before we get distracted by food waste, corporate greed or political corruption or indifference, let’s take a clear eyed look to see if there’s anyway we can afford to feed all these people without bankrupting the planet.

Jack Choros says the answer is a resounding yes.

Let’s talk about the joys of floating farms.

1. They could open up a lot of space for farming
In places like Singapore, land is hard to come by. Roughly 5.5 million people live in the island city.

Considering Singapore measures approximately 277 square miles, that means about 20,000 people inhabit the city for every square mile of available space. That doesn’t leave much room for farming.

The good news is that this cutting-edge smart floating farm technology is scalable and replicable, which means that as the world’s needs grow, so too can production levels.

According to the firm, 25 of the world’s 35 largest cities (New York being one of them) have nearby access to bodies of water, so these farms could theoretically be built to serve metro areas around the world.

2. They are self-regulating
These water-based farms don’t need soil to grow plants. They would use water that is already infused with vitamins and minerals, a process known as hydroponics. Of course, the plants couldn’t survive on saltwater — freshwater would be pumped into the grow facility and then sprayed evenly on plants through a mechanical system.

According to the plan, the entire farming system would be built in three levels on huge barge-like containers, with the first level housing a solar-powered energy facility and the second level using that energy to grow crops (no soil required). On the third level, you could raise fish, which would survive on the waste products from the farm.

This top to bottom system allows the sun to be used for energy, crops to grow without being harmed by saltwater, and fish to be fed and farmed. Genius!

3. They are cost effective and greener
If these farms were built near major cities, it would cost less to transport food to grocery stores. A self-sustaining ecosystem could also mean less maintenance and lower manufacturing costs, too.

And even though these techniques would be used in bodies of water, they can be applied in the air, too. Singapore-based company Sky Greens builds skyscrapers filled with plants that rotate up and down between water and sunlight, allowing vegetation to be grown 10 times more effectively than traditional forms of agriculture would allow. As a result, food is cheaper, more accessible, and more abundant.

There’s hope for the future.

These types of innovations have the potential to help regions around the world cope with the need for more food, even if they have less space.

Here’s what one of those bad boys looks like. Click on the pick for a larger image.

What do we do with all these new-found veggies? Only in America would the answer be “make a cheeseburger.” Anthony Joseph has the story.

A California-based that calls itself Impossible Foods, which has been around for approximately four years, now takes on the challenge of creating the world’s best vegetarian burger by 2016; one that looks, tastes, and even smells like an actual all-beef cheeseburger and is made from 100% plant material.

The firm has raised over $108 million in funds to support the cause. Among those investing in the cause is Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who is a well-known philanthropist that donates to good causes, such as this one. Google’s Tony Fadell is also on-board with the cause.

The company essentially has to create food substitutes that can still mimic the tastes of meat and dairy, which has been done before, but the goal is to improve on the flavor while keeping the healthy aspect of the vegetarian burger in mind.

“We start with plants – such as grains, greens and beans – and separate proteins, fats, and other nutrients from each one, selecting those that give our foods desirable flavors and textures,” Impossible Foods explains. “We then combine these proteins with vitamins, amino acids, and fats, all from plants, to make our meats and cheeses.”

Unlike many hybrid vegetarian burgers that exist today, which are a plant/meat combo with reduced caloric intake and grease, Impossible Foods will produce a cheeseburger that is made completely from plants that are broken down into the essential components, and other resources will be used to simulate flavors.

For example, unrelated to this current experiment, nuts have been used in the past to simulate dairy taste without actually using milk, which has led to a type of non-dairy cheese that can be used as a healthier alternative to actual cheese, or even for people who are lactose intolerant.

The benefits of a truly vegetarian burger that looks, tastes, and even smells like the real thing will become quickly apparent.

Yep, fewer calories, more soluble proteins and mass and, ta-daa, you’re on your way to a healthier, well fed, you. A friend of mine, who’s a cattle rancher, went to one of their demonstrations and pronounced the resulting burger “pretty damn good.” A side bonus is that these burgers are very cheap to produce compared to meat so the price will be very affordable. That means the number of people who need meat, or meat protein, in their diets but can’t afford it (around 15% of all Americans) will now be able to get it easily. It also means that people who want to eat healthier but hate food that tastes like cardboard will now have options.

“But Bill,” you whine, “I didn’t climb to the top of the food chain not to eat dead things.”

I can understand that, which is why I’m happy to report that Kate Bratskeir has good news for you.

It sounds like an ancient proverb, but it’s actually a scientific finding: In a battle of little insect versus big cow, insect wins.

A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition compared the healthfulness of edible insects with more traditional protein like beef, pork and chicken, finding that the bugs beat out the mammals in terms of nutritional value.

Researchers at the University of Oxford used two different metrics of nutritiousness: The first, the Ofcom model, appoints a score from one to 100 based on a food’s calorie, sodium, sugar and saturated fat content per 100 grams of weight. The second, Nutrient Value Scores, offers a similar score to Ofcom, but includes vitamin and mineral values.

The Ofcom test didn’t show any significant differences between bugs and livestock. But when vitamins and minerals were taken into account for the NVS evaluation, crickets, palm weevils (beetles), honeybees and larvae scored much higher than chicken and beef in particular.

While bugs have yet to make it into mainstream American cuisine, insects are often included in meals in countries like China, Mexico and Thailand. But insect-infused products like cricket protein powders and bars are starting to creep up on U.S. store shelves, too.

Insect-eating advocates say that bugs should become the millennium’s preferred protein. One perspective argues that if vegans replaced plants with insects, they’d harm fewer animals. Others say that eating insects could solve world hunger, citing sustainability benefits and bugs’ high protein content.

If you can get past the creepy-crawler factor (hey, lobsters were once perceived as nasty sea creatures fit only for the poor), your dinner options could become a lot more interesting — and vitamin-packed!

A moment of journalistic transparency here. I have eaten many bug related dishes, including peeling a live grub worm off a tree and eating it alive. It tasted like honey. In other words, this article isn’t preaching to me.

And BONUS! Bugs are completely fine for Kosher or Halal diets. The nice people over at Insects Are Food have some simple recipes to get you started. Here’s one I’ve had before that’s absolutely delicious.

Cricket Pad Thai
Serves 6 – 8
Ingredients:
8-10 oz dried rice stick noodles
6 tablespoons fish sauce
2 tablespoons soy sauce
6 tablespoons lime juice
4 tsp. organic sugar (Turbinado, etc)
4 tablespoons peanut oil
1 cup crickets (prepared properly)
3-4 cloves garlic
3 eggs – lightly beaten
½ cup scallions, finely chopped
2 cups bean sprouts
¼ cup crushed peanuts
½ cup fresh cilantro
1 lime (cut into wedges to serve to each person)
Directions:
Combine the fish sauce, soy sauce, lime juice and organic sugar in a bowl and blend well.
Pour oil into a wok or skillet, and cook the crickets over medium-high heat.
Push crickets to one side and scramble the eggs on the other side of the wok or skillet. Remove crickets and eggs and set aside in bowl or on plate.
Add garlic and scallions and fry until soft.
Add sauce mixture, crickets and eggs back into the wok or skillet, and warm thoroughly.
Cook rice noodles for about 10 minutes in boiling water.
Remove and drain noodles, and add to wok or skillet.
Add in bean sprouts and toss thoroughly, being careful not to break the noodles. Top with peanuts, cilantro, and garnish with a lime wedge.
This dish goes great with Vietnamese spring rolls.

Yes it does. It also can be served with a dipping dish filled with your favorite Asian hot sauce.

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Joining the Green Gang

October 6, 2015 by

When I was a kid my grandmother, a devout Catholic, had an interesting phrase she used to say. “Nature takes its own.” It was her, slightly pagan, take on the whole “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust” thing from Genesis. It also served as a reminder of her second favorite phrase, “The bible says the world is without end. It says nothing of man.” While her theology might have been a little skewed it worked for her. One thing she did harp on is that we were supposed to be custodians of the Earth. Being top of the food chain meant we had a great responsibility to all around us. I can honestly think of worse philosophies. She kept a garden, raised flowers, bred dogs and, with my grandfather, fed and kept squirrels and bees. Because of them I never grew up with a fear of nature. That had its good points and bad.

Let’s start by taking a look at a few of the bad things that man is doing right now. There is an unsubtle irony that rising waters are going to render NASA, the home of climate research, useless in a few decades if the trend isn’t reversed. The walls that some are trying to have built around Miami and other places in Florida are short term stop gaps, at best.

But, as my granny would say, God does have a sense of humor. Which is why, the home of the constant obfuscation and denial when it comes to climate change, Washington D.C., is sinking.

John Johnson tells us all about it.

It sounds like a metaphor but is geological reality: Washington, DC, is sinking. In fact, researchers led by a team at the University of Vermont predict that the ground will drop another six inches by the end of the century, reports UPI. The cause isn’t man-made: It’s the result of an age-old geologic process that will continue to unfold for thousands of years. But it’s presenting the DC region with a dangerous double-whammy—the ground is sinking at the same time that sea levels are rising because of warming temperatures, say the UV researchers. The study confirms a long-held theory on why sea levels around DC are rising faster than any other stretch along the coast, reports the Washington Post.

“Right now is the time to start making preparations,” says lead study author Ben DeJong. “Six extra inches of water really matters in this part of the world.” He and his team drilled dozens of boreholes around the Chesapeake Bay to figure out what’s happening. The culprit is an ancient ice sheet that covered much of North America, then retreated, and the land is oh-so-slowly settling back into place. DC was actually in an area just outside the sheet and “bulged upward,” as the Post puts it. “It’s a bit like sitting on one side of a water bed filled with very thick honey,” says DeJong. “Then the other side goes up. But when you stand, the bulge comes down again.”

At least that one’s not our fault. Just bad planning. Although rising water levels due to warming could exacerbate the problem in unforeseen ways. Swimming at the Smithsonian anyone?

But one that is our fault is happening in the wonderfully backwards state of Arizona. Rob Quinn says that the state is literally fracking Phoenix into a pit.

Researchers say that while there’s no need for residents of Phoenix to panic, parts of their city are slowly and unstoppably sinking into the ground. Land subsidence caused by the extraction of huge quantities of groundwater over the decades is to blame, and the Arizona State University researchers say it’s causing some parts of the metropolitan area to sink by roughly 0.75 inches a year, Sonoran News reports. Residents may not notice much change year to year, the researchers say, but over time, the problem will affect things like canals, utility lines, and sewers and, eventually, the foundations of buildings. The depletion of groundwater has changed the sediment under the area, so the drop is irreversible.

The lead researcher tells the Arizona Republic that the subsidence has “the potential to cause costly structural damages, and is something to keep an eye on.” The sinking is happening at an uneven rate—with some areas actually rising a little—meaning floodwaters could cause major problems in affected areas. Another problem, the lead researcher warns, is that the sediment changes have left the ground unable to store as much water as it used to. “We live in a desert, and our underground canteen is getting smaller,” she tells the News. The Republic notes that the problem is widespread across the US, with Denver, parts of California, and the New Jersey coast among the many areas starting to sink.

Just FYI, in case the above wasn’t clear, fracking uses a ton of groundwater.

Also, as noted above, the constant mining of subsurface water is also to blame. And, while not sinking at the moment, Oklahoma has seen a meteoric rise in the number of Earthquakes in ares where fracking is practiced. That leads to weakened infrastructures such as sewer lines, roads (which require stable beds) and pretty much anything you thought was built on solid ground.

Things like businesses and homes and stuff. Maybe they don’t need those in Oklahoma.

So, where is the good news? East of here. As in the Far East.

In countries where they don’t use harmful methods of energy extraction or have come around to the fact that maybe, just maybe, we might not want to kill the planet, they are taking measures to reduce the human imprint. And they are using some creative methods to accomplish that goal.

Dan Lewis reports that China is surrounding the Gobi Desert with billions of trees to stop dust storms and encroachment. He also reports its working.

One Chinese news agency, citing the State Forest Administration, reported in 2007 that “more than 20 percent of the lands affected by desertification in the project areas have been harnessed and soil erosion has been put under control in over 40 percent of the areas that used to suffer soil erosion in the past.”

And in 2014, the Daily Mail echoed these results, reporting that “a study says the measures are working, despite previous criticism.”

There are still problems. Trees tend to wither and die in desert conditions. So they are having to reroute water to stabilize the environment. The good news is that, as China clamps down on pollutants around the country, they have more fresh water to work with than ever before.

But, because China is still China, one of the methods they are using to save and reroute water, the Three Gorges Dam, is so large it will alter the rotation of the Earth.

Raising 39 trillion kilograms of water 175 meters above sea level will increase the Earth’s moment of inertia and thus slow its rotation. However, the effect would extremely small. NASA scientists calculated that shift of such as mass would increase the length of day by only 0.06 microseconds and make the Earth only very slightly more round in the middle and flat on the top. It would shift the pole position by about two centimeters (0.8 inch). Note that a shift in any object’s mass on the Earth relative to its axis of rotation will change its moment of inertia, although most shifts are too small to be measured (but they can be calculated).

Just remember this when someone tells you that man can’t alter anything on Earth.

Speaking of trees, and here altering the Earth in a good way, Amanda Froelich reports that Milan Italy is building the world’s largest vertical forest.

In an age where harmonious innovation is becoming more celebrated, sustainable designs to preserve the Earth and contribute to wellbeing are being implemented at a rapid rate. One such innovation to recently be accepted for development is a vertical forest designed by Stefan Boeri Architects.

The first ever vertical forest will soon be the greenest building in Milan. Because the average household in a city produces approximately 25-30 tons of CO2 per year, implementing greener architecture in highly populated areas cannot come soon enough.

This stunning development is part of a vision presented by BioMilano which promises to incorporate 60 abandoned farms into a greenbelt surrounding the city. Part of the mission is to create a vertical forest building which boasts a stunning green façade planted with dense forest systems to provide microclimate and to filter out polluting dust particles. According to Inhabit, there are two buildings currently under construction.

The greener architecture will help absorb CO2, oxygenate the air, moderate extreme temperatures, and lower noise pollution. The bio-canopy is not only aesthetically pleasing to the eye, but it helps lower living costs.

So it saves money, makes living in a city healthier and helps the earth be a better place to live. Bonus? It’s pretty too. Here’s a pic.

But how do you put all of those ideas together? How do you stop erosion while simultaneously upgrading the planet?

Amy Frearson says that one answer is to build a really fucking cool school and that Vo Trong Nghia is doing just that.

According to Vo Trong Nghia Architects, the structure is intended to promote sustainable development in Vietnam, in response to rapid industrialisation that causes frequent power shortages, increasing temperatures, high levels of pollution and reduced green space.

“It is our goal to create a green university building that counters these problems as well as instils sustainable practices to these future generations,” said the design team.

Creating 11,000 square metres of floor space, the seven-storey facility will feature a prefabricated modular concrete structure that can flexibly accommodate different uses, while also keeping construction costs to a minimum.

The building is orientated to face the prevailing wind, allowing for efficient cross ventilation, and large trees positioned in front of every window will help to lower the temperature of the air flow through the interior.

A shallow plan will also allow daylight to permeate each storey, reducing the need for artificial lighting.

Vo Trong Nghia Architects – whose previous projects include a naturally ventilated school and a thatched bamboo bar – says the structure provides an alternative to the air-conditioning-reliant buildings that dominate South-East Asia.

That’s important because not only does it reduce waste created by artificial air systems it reduces, dramatically, the amount of power needed for people to live.

Bonus? It’s pretty damn pretty too. Here’s a rendering from the architect.

Look at it this way, if monkeys and other primates really are evolving to full sentience (spoiler alert: they are) at least we’ll leave them a nice place to live.

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October 1, 2015 by Bill McCormick

Turnabout is fair play. Image courtesy of Symmetry is Art.

There are a ton of superhero movies headed your way. They’re also headed my way. Which makes me all tingly. A well made superhero flick is a great way to escape for a couple of hours. And they provide inspiration to our youth. Superman is the Christ-like figure we should all aspire to. Except when he’s not. Yeah, that link will ruin your childhood. Batman doesn’t kill. Except when he does, as he did in his very first story. But, in many ways, it’s those flaws and mishaps that keep the characters interesting. They point out, often brutally, that anyone can fail. That doesn’t make the ideals any less laudable. Since the 90’s Hollyweird has finally started figuring that out. Not with the Fantastic Four, sadly, but in general they’ve done a pretty good job.