any see the global economic crisis as proof that we live in one world. But as countries stumble to right the wrongs of the corporate masters of the universe, they are driving us right back to a future that looks like nothing more than a new Middle Ages, that centuries-long period of amorphous conflict from the fifth to the 15th century when city-states mattered as much as countries. The state isn’t a universally representative phenomenon today, if it ever was. Already, billions of people live in imperial conglomerates such as the European Union, the Greater Chinese Co-Prosperity Sphere, and the emerging North American Union, where state capitalism has become the norm. But at least half the United Nations’ membership, about 100 countries, can hardly be considered responsible sovereigns. Billions live unsure of who their true rulers are, whether local feudal lords or distant corporate executives. In Egypt and India, democratic elections have devolved into auctions. Delivering security and providing welfare aren’t just campaign promises; they are the campaign. The fragmentation of societies from within is clear: From Bogotá to Bangalore, gated communities with private security are on the rise. David Field This diffuse, fractured world will be run […]
Scientists at The University of Manchester have developed a new way of dating archaeological objects – using fire and water to unlock their ‘internal clocks’. The simple method promises to be as significant a technique for dating ceramic materials as radiocarbon dating has become for organic materials such as bone or wood. A team from The University of Manchester and The University of Edinburgh has discovered a new technique which they call ‘rehydroxylation dating’ that can be used on fired clay ceramics like bricks, tile and pottery. Working with The Museum of London, the team has been able to date brick samples from Roman, medieval and modern periods with remarkable accuracy. They have established that their technique can be used to determine the age of objects up to 2,000 years old – but believe it has the potential to be used to date objects around 10,000 years old. The exciting new findings have been published online today (20 May 2009) by the Proceedings of the Royal Society A. The method relies on the fact that fired clay ceramic material will start to chemically react with atmospheric moisture as soon as it is removed from […]
Ocean acidification, a direct result of increased CO2 emission, is set to change the Earth’s marine ecosystems forever and may have a direct impact on our economy, resulting in substantial revenue declines and job losses. Intensive fossil-fuel burning and deforestation over the last two centuries have increased atmospheric CO2 levels by almost 40%, which has in turn fundamentally altered ocean chemistry by acidifying surface waters. Fish levels and other sea organisms such as planktons, crabs, lobsters, shrimp and corals are expected to suffer, which could leave fishing communities at the brink of economic disaster. Published today, Monday, 1 June, in IOP Publishing’s Environmental Research Letters, the paper ‘Anticipating ocean acidification’s economic consequences on commercial fisheries’ suggests a series of measures to manage the impact that declining fishing harvests and revenue loss will have on a wide range of businesses from commercial fishing to wholesale, retail and restaurants. Ocean acidification and declining carbonate ion concentration in sea water could directly damage corals and mollusks which all depend on sufficient carbonate levels to form shells successfully. Subsequent losses of prey such as plankton and shellfish would also alter food webs and intensify competition among predators for nourishment. As […]
At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, James Moroney, the publisher of the Dallas Morning News, told Congress about negotiations he’d just had with the online retailer Amazon. The idea was to license his newspaper’s content to the Kindle, Amazon’s new electronic reader. ‘They want seventy per cent of the subscription revenue, Moroney testified. ‘I get thirty per cent, they get seventy per cent. On top of that, they have said we get the right to republish your intellectual property to any portable device. The idea was that if a Kindle subscription to the Dallas Morning News cost ten dollars a month, seven dollars of that belonged to Amazon, the provider of the gadget on which the news was read, and just three dollars belonged to the newspaper, the provider of an expensive and ever-changing variety of editorial content. The people at Amazon valued the newspaper’s contribution so little, in fact, that they felt they ought then to be able to license it to anyone else they wanted. Another witness at the hearing, Arianna Huffington, of the Huffington Post, said that she thought the Kindle could provide a business model to save the beleaguered newspaper industry. Moroney disagreed. ‘I […]
Vegetarians are generally less likely than meat eaters to develop cancer but this does not apply to all forms of the disease, a major study has found. The study involving 60,000 people found those who followed a vegetarian diet developed notably fewer cancers of the blood, bladder and stomach. But the apparently protective effect of vegetarian did not seem to stretch to bowel cancer, a major killer. The study is published in the British Journal of Cancer. Researchers from universities in the UK and New Zealand followed 61,566 British men and women. They included meat-eaters, those who ate fish but not meat, and those who ate neither meat nor fish. VEGETARIANS GOT NOTABLY FEWER OF THESE CANCERS: # Stomach # Bladder # Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma # Multiple myeloma Overall, their results suggested that while in the general population about 33 people in 100 will develop cancer during their lifetime, for those who do not eat meat that risk is reduced to about 29 in 100. Special protection? The researchers said they found marked differences between meat-eaters and vegetarians in the propensity to cancers of the lymph and the blood, with vegetarians just […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
