It is generally thought that for immediate personal needs each person on the planet needs at least 5 gallons of clean water per day. Not surprisingly, that’s not how it works out. Many poor people in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, survive on just over one gallon of water per day -- most of it contaminated - while those of us in the United States, and much of Europe, send 13 gallons down the drain daily flushing toilets. Imagine, then, you turned on the tap… and nothing came out. It really is unthinkable isn’t it? We take it as a given that when we turn on a faucet clean drinkable water will come out, as much as you like. Will your children think that way? Maybe. Maybe not. Will your grandchildren? Definitely not. Can this be true? Water stress is defined as a nation providing for all purposes each individual access to less than 449,140 gallons (1,700 cubic meters) per year. Water scarcity is less than 264,200 gallons (1,000 cubic meters) per person per year.1 It takes a lot of water to be an even marginally […]
Most of us know very little about water. It comes in two types, salt and fresh. It has two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms, and is written H2O. In the Dead Sea, and the Great Salt Lake you can float. A random collection of facts, like knowing a dozen Latin tags, is usual, even for many in science or medicine. For most Americans access to water is a given. Like the right to vote, it seems a birthright. And when you turn on a tap, do you ask whether you can drink the water that comes out? Probably not. I want to suggest you consider expanding your worldview. And that you follow the rapidly evolving water story because, whether you do so or not, water is about to change your life, and will profoundly affect the lives of your children, and grandchildren, in ways both great and small. Water matters to our lives at every level, from the personal to the geopolitical. Its role in Global Warming, as well as its atomic structure, and how it interacts with consciousness, all matter. Water has always driven destiny, and is driving ours now. This […]
Walking on two legs uses up a quarter of the energy it takes to walk on all fours, according to a study that could explain why early human ancestors adopted bipedalism rather than the knuckle-walking of chimpanzees and gorillas. Explaining why humans went from a four-legged gait to a two-legged, upright posture has proven to be one of the most difficult and contentious issues in evolution. The study suggests that it all comes down to energy expenditure and how costly it is to move around in terms of the food required. Scientists compared the amount of energy expended by humans and chimps when walking on a treadmill and found that a two-legged gait is about 75 per cent less costly compared with walking on all fours. The results provide powerful evidence in support of the idea that the bipedal gait of humans became established because it was more energy efficient and so required less food. David Raichlen, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, said that although in the past scholars have suggested that bipedalism may have something do to with saving energy, there was little hard evidence to support of it. ‘For […]
Bill Bondar knows exactly where he died: on the sidewalk outside his house in a retirement community in southern New Jersey. It was 10:30 on the night of May 23, a Wednesday, and Bondar was 61-a retired computer programmer with a cherry red Gibson bass guitar, an instrument he had first picked up around the same time as Chuck Berry. He was 6 feet 1 and 208 pounds, down about 50 pounds over the last several years. On that night he had driven home from a jam session with two friends and, as he was unloading his car, his heart stopped. That is the definition of ‘clinical death,’ one of several definitions doctors use, not always with precision. He wasn’t yet ‘brain dead,’ implying a permanent cessation of cerebral function, or ‘legally dead,’ i.e., fit to be buried. But he was dead enough to terrify his wife, Monica, who found him moments later, unconscious, not breathing, with no pulse. His eyes were open, but glassy-’like marbles,’ Monica says, ‘with no life in them. They were the eyes of a dead man.’ In a general sense, we know what happened to Bondar. His doctor at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, […]
ON CHORABARI GLACIER, India - This is how a glacier retreats. At nearly 13,000 feet above sea level, in the shadow of a sharp Himalayan peak, a wall of black ice oozes in the sunshine. A tumbling stone breaks the silence of the mountains, or water gurgles under the ground, a sign that the glacier is melting from inside. Where it empties out - scientists call it the snout - a noisy, frothy stream rushes down to meet the river Ganges. D.P. Dobhal, a glaciologist who has spent the last three years climbing and poking the Chorabari glacier, stands at the edge of the snout and points ahead. Three years ago, the snout was roughly 90 feet farther away. On a map drawn in 1962, it was plotted 860 feet from here. Mr. Dobhal marked the spot with a Stonehenge-like pile of rocks. Mr. Dobhal’s steep and solitary quest - to measure the changes in the glacier’s size and volume - points to a looming worldwide concern, with particularly serious repercussions for India and its neighbors. The thousands of glaciers studded across 1,500 miles of the Himalayas make up the savings account of South Asia’s water supply, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
