Sunday, January 9th, 2011
WYNNE PARRY, Senior Writer - LiveScience
Stephan: There is a great deal of misinformation in the public conversation about polar shifts. Here is an excellent exegetic essay on the subject within the context of events happening at this moment.
The magnetic north pole is currently hovering over the North Sea and moving toward Siberia. This means two Florida airports are renumbering their runways.
Odd as this connection may appear on the surface, the adjustments under way at Tampa International Airport and beginning next week at Peter O’Knight Airport are the result of a natural, ongoing process.
Earth’s magnets
The Earth has an iron core, and movement within its outer part is likely responsible for sustaining a magnetic field, which constitutes much of what we measure at the Earth’s surface. As a result, the Earth resembles something of a giant magnet with two poles: magnetic north and magnetic south. However, its field is not perfectly symmetrical and has undulations that are always moving around, according to Jeffrey Love, a research scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Geomagnetism Program.
The magnetic poles don’t line up with the geographic ones, and the difference between them is an angle called declination. As if this wasn’t enough of a nuisance for navigators, the Earth’s magnetic field drifts, causing the angle of declination to change over time.
In fact, it drifts about one-fifth of a degree a year at lower latitudes, such as Florida. ‘So that means if you wait […]
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Saturday, January 8th, 2011
MATT SEDENSKY, - The Associate Press
Stephan: The Illness Profit System in its toxic glory. Our prisons have become our principal social program for the mentally ill, and nursing homes are being turned into the place we warehouse the disabled young.
SARASOTA, Fla. – Adam Martin doesn’t fit in here. No one else in this nursing home wears Air Jordans. No one else has stacks of music videos by 2Pac and Jay-Z. No one else is just 26.
It’s no longer unusual to find a nursing home resident who is decades younger than his neighbor: About one in seven people now living in such facilities in the U.S. is under 65. But the growing phenomenon presents a host of challenges for nursing homes, while patients like Martin face staggering isolation.
‘It’s just a depressing place to live,’ Martin says. ‘I’m stuck here. You don’t have no privacy at all. People die around you all the time. It starts to really get depressing because all you’re seeing is negative, negative, negative.’
The number of under-65 nursing home residents has risen about 22 percent in the past eight years to about 203,000, according to an analysis of statistics from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. That number has climbed as mental health facilities close and medical advances keep people alive after they’ve suffered traumatic injuries. Still, the overall percentage of nursing home residents 30 and younger is less than 1 percent.
Martin was left a quadriplegic […]
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Saturday, January 8th, 2011
GRAHAM SMITH, - Mail (U.K.)
Stephan: This is a gift from an earlier age. The next generation of space exploration, I think, will not be principally American. We don't have the money or, more importantly the national commitment to lead in science as we once did. It is one of the self-mutilating manifestations arising from willful ignorance. And it is going to get worse, possibly much worse, in the new House.
It’s an unlikely marriage between state-of-the-art and 40-year-old technology that has yielded extraordinary results.
Signals from seismic sensors left on the lunar surface by Apollo astronauts in 1971 have revealed that the Moon has a liquid core similar to Earth’s.
Scientists at NASA applied contemporary seismological techniques to the data being emitted from sensors placed by their colleagues during the U.S. space program’s heyday.
Core knowledge: NASA applied contemporary seismological techniques to data being emitted from sensors left on the Moon in 1971. Scientists now think the Moon has a solid, iron-rich inner core and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core
The new research suggests the Moon possesses a solid, iron-rich inner core with a radius of nearly 150 miles and a fluid, primarily liquid-iron outer core with a radius of roughly 205 miles.
Where it differs from Earth is a partially molten boundary layer around the core estimated to have a radius of nearly 300 miles.
The data sheds light on the evolution of a lunar dynamo – a natural process by which our Moon may have generated and maintained its own strong magnetic field.
Uncovering details about the lunar core is critical for developing accurate models of the Moon’s formation.
The core contains a small percentage […]
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Saturday, January 8th, 2011
ALEXANDER SMOLTCZYK, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: This is what a trillion dollars bought, money that should have gone for American schools, healthcare, and infrastructure, and high speed rail and internet was, instead, spent to produce this outcome. Iraqis and other Muslims, who still talk about the Crusaders, will hate us for this -- for generations yet unborn. Two countries each in its own way severely damaged. And no one in America has been held accountable.
BAGHDAD — Iraq finally has a new government after months of deadlock, but the cynical horsetrading has damaged the image of politics. Residents of Baghdad no longer trust their fellow citizens and have withdrawn into private life. They pray that a civil war will not break out.
The situation in Iraq may have normalized somewhat, but it is still a little disconcerting when you check into a hotel and are asked for a personal password ‘in case we have to negotiate with your kidnappers.’ The man at the reception has the unlikely name Tex Dallas. He is a former member of the elite British SAS military unit. Today he runs a guesthouse for journalists in the center of Baghdad.
According to the Iraqi Ministry of Tourism, 73 tourists visited Baghdad in 2009 — not including pilgrims from Iran, of course. The number was even lower the year before: just seven, apparently. ‘By the way, it’s better if you don’t spend more than 30 minutes in one place,’ warns Tex Dallas. He says that all Westerners have a price on their head: ‘a six-figure price.’ That’s the way people in the security industry talk. It will take some time for Baghdad to transition […]
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Saturday, January 8th, 2011
, - Physicians For A National Health Program
Stephan: Larry Dossey sent me this. I cannot improve upon his note that accompanied the URL: 'Few people seem to know that the majority of U.S. physicians favored a single payer/universal coverage approach during the healthcare debate. That they did so is not surprising, because doctors see the tragedies of the illness profit system daily, close up.
'Here is one group of physicians that proves that sanity still exists among America's doctors.'
Thanks to Larry, Dossey, MD.
A nationwide organization of doctors who favor a single-payer health care system today rejected calls by Republican leaders to repeal the new health law, noting that the law contains modest benefits for patients that should not be spurned.
At the same time, the doctors said that the enactment of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all program is the only way to assure high quality, comprehensive care to all Americans and the only way to rein in skyrocketing health care costs.
‘We reject the call by Republican leaders to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), even as we recognize the new law is incapable of resolving our health care morass,
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