Sunday, September 16th, 2012
COLIN BARRAS, - New Scientist (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is a novel look at how the placebo process evolved.
On the face of it, the placebo effect makes no sense. Someone suffering from a low-level infection will recover just as nicely whether they take an active drug or a simple sugar pill. This suggests people are able to heal themselves unaided – so why wait for a sugar pill to prompt recovery?
New evidence from a computer model offers a possible evolutionary explanation, and suggests that the immune system has an on-off switch controlled by the mind.
It all starts with the observation that something similar to the placebo effect occurs in many animals, says Peter Trimmer, a biologist at the University of Bristol, UK. For instance, Siberian hamsters do little to fight an infection if the lights above their lab cage mimic the short days and long nights of winter. But changing the lighting pattern to give the impression of summer causes them to mount a full immune response.
Likewise, those people who think they are taking a drug but are really receiving a placebo can have a response which is twice that of those who receive no pills (Annals of Family Medicine, doi.org/cckm8b). In Siberian hamsters and people, intervention creates a mental cue that kick-starts the immune response.
There is a […]
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Saturday, September 15th, 2012
LARS SCHALL, - Asia Times (Hong Kong)
Stephan: The corruption prohibition produces is so much more extensive than most people realize. An unholy alliance between governments and cartels and, like a cancer, is eating us alive from the inside. Here is a taste of reality that explains how so many feed at the narco-trough and why no one who is making this money, be they sheriff, legislator, or mule has any real interest in ending prohibition.
Lars Schall is a German financial journalist.
Oliver Villar is a lecturer in politics at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, Australia, a country where he has lived for most of his life. He was born in Mendoza, Argentina. In 2008 he completed his PhD on the political economy of contemporary Colombia in the context of the cocaine drug trade at the UWS Latin American Research Group (LARG). Whilst completing his PhD, Villar’s research interests in political economy, Latin America and the global drug trade followed teaching positions in politics at UWS and Macquarie University.
For the past decade his research has been devoted to the book (co-written with Drew Cottle) Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: US Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia’ (Monthly Review Press. He has published broadly on the Inter-American cocaine drug trade, the US War on Drugs and Terror in Colombia, and US-Colombian relations. This abiding interest extends across economic thought, economic development and the development of social and political relationships between the First World and Third World (in particular between the United States and Latin America) and the impact of neoliberal economic globalization.
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‘If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the […]
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Saturday, September 15th, 2012
SCOTT K. JOHNSON, - arstechnica
Stephan: This was inevitable, and speaks volumes about how psychotic we have become about profit. The Bible is right.
'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.' - Matthew 6:19-21,24 (KJV)
When you worship Mammon bad things happen though, because by emphasizing profit above all, it emphasizes the individual interest as being superior to all other interests, and it destroys the sense of interconnectedness and interdependence of all life that is the essence of the biosphere. The exploitation of the arctic will result in grave harm to an ecosystem not structured to include humans, and this will boomerang against us. That is my prediction.
It’s that time of year again, when we check in to see where the annual Arctic sea ice minimum will end up. And this year is a doozie. We haven’t quite bottomed out at the end of the melt season, yet, but already 2012 has set new records for smallest Arctic sea ice extent and volume, smashing through the numbers from 2007. Records are often attention-grabbing and ‘exciting,’ in a way, but while Usain Bolt’s incredible shrinking 100-meter dash time may be uplifting, shrinking sea ice is not.
Every time a new sea ice extent record is broken, the same question comes up: how long until it’s gone? That is, how long will it be before the Arctic Ocean is functionally ice-free in the summer, legitimately opening the once-fabled Northwest Passage?
The fact is, we don’t know. Climate models continue to underestimate the rate of sea ice loss we’re observing, leaving researchers to hazard less scientific guesses. Many estimate that day will come around 2030, but some others push it out to 2070. Regardless, Arctic sea ice is changing-and fast. The prospects of open shipping routes and newly-accessible resources have corporations chomping at the bit and governments racing to prepare the way. […]
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Saturday, September 15th, 2012
JEREMY BLOOM, - Red, Green and Blue
Stephan: Read this. Who made this happen? Who bears responsibility?
Because one solar power company failed (mostly because subsidies for Chinese solar power companies dropped the price of solar to the point that they couldn’t make a profit), the GOP says there should be NO further subsidies for ANY solar power companies.
Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.) attempted to remind the House of the truth behind the Solyndra investigation:
‘The facts simply do not support the over-the-top allegations that there was anything wrong with this decision,
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Saturday, September 15th, 2012
LISA GRAVES, - Truthout.org
Stephan: As you know I felt ALEC played a significant role in the legislation Governor Scott Walker sought. The confirmation of that is now coming out. Read this as a cautionary tale of an attempt to effect a legislative coup, state by state. Voter suppression, the war on women, and climate change denial are three other battlefronts in this effort.
On New Year’s weekend in 2011, many Wisconsinites were focused on the Badgers’ return to the Rose Bowl or whether the Green Bay Packers would beat the Detroit Lions and get another shot to win the Super Bowl, but the incoming administration of Governor Scott Walker had other, bigger contests on its agenda. In mid-winter, while many in the state were worried about who would win or lose the big games, Walker’s team was preparing to change state law in numerous ways, including making it easier for corporations to win big cases and limit the damages paid if their products or practices kill or injure people in Wisconsin.
Walker, who had suddenly dropped out of college in his senior year at Marquette University, didn’t think up these changes to Wisconsin personal injury law all by himself. Key provisions of his ‘tort reform’ package were previously drafted by lawyers or lobbyists for the global corporations that are part of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
(Editor’s note: This article was first published by the Wisconsin Association of Justice in The Verdict and a full set of cites is available there by subscription. It has been updated and modified for publication in PRWatch.)
As the […]
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