SANDRA LEANDER, - Arizona State University
Stephan: Further evidence that we are destroying the world we live in, in ways great and small. Since I expect nothing will be done of any substance until it is too late I counsel once you again to begin researching your options.
TEMPE, Ariz. – Arizona State University researchers have discovered for the first time that temperature determines where key soil microbes can thrive – microbes that are critical to forming topsoil crusts in arid lands. And of concern, the scientists predict that in as little as 50 years, global warming may push some of these microbes out of their present stronghold in colder U.S. deserts, with unknown consequences to soil fertility and erosion.
The findings are featured as the cover story of the June 28 edition of the journal Science.
An international research team led by Ferran Garcia-Pichel, microbiologist and professor with ASU’s School of Life Sciences, conducted continental-scale surveys of the microbial communities that live in soil crusts. The scientists collected crust samples from Oregon to New Mexico, and Utah to California and studied them by sequencing their microbial DNA.
While there are thousands of microbe species in just one pinch of crust, two cyanobacteria -bacteria capable of photosynthesis – were found to be the most common. Without cyanobacteria, the other microbes in the crust could not exist, as every other species depends on them for food and energy.
‘We wanted to know which microbes are where in the crust and whether they displayed […]
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Stephan: Language is a living thing. Think of all the words that didn't exist when you were a child. And how it is written also changes. Think of the 'f's in the middle of words that stood, in colonial times, for 's's. Spelling was very erratic until well into the 19th century, one of the reasons names pronounced the same have so many different spellings -- Ralegh, Raleigh. We are now seeing another major shift, the demise of cursive. Personally I will miss it.
A single sentence, uttered in the trial of George Zimmerman for the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin, has catapulted an issue into the national spotlight.
When asked if she could read a letter in court, witness Rachel Jeantel, her head bowed, murmured with embarrassment, ‘I don’t read cursive,’ according to court testimony.
Is it any surprise that cursive — the looped, curvaceous style of handwriting that’s been a mainstay of education for generations — is all but dead? [15 Weird Things We Do Everyday, and Why]
‘Cursive should be allowed to die. In fact, it’s already dying, despite having been taught for decades,’ Morgan Polikoff, assistant professor of education at the University of Southern California’s Rossier School of Education, told The New York Times.
‘Very small proportions of adults use cursive for their day-to-day writing,’ Polikoff said. ‘Much of our communication is done on a keyboard, and the rest is done with print.’
The recently established Common Core State Standards, the standardized educational benchmarks for U.S. public schools, omit cursive as a requirement. Some states, including Indiana and Hawaii, had dropped cursive from their curricula in favor of keyboard proficiency as early as 2011.
‘I think it’s important to have nice handwriting, but the importance of […]
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MIRIAM KRAMER, - Live Science
Stephan: Here is the latest on archaeological research concerning ancient cosmological beliefs.
What interested me particularly about this report is the last paragraph:
'It's a very common human conception that there are different levels of being and different levels of cognition and different levels of connectivity with the human condition,' Simek said. 'I think all people at one level or another do that.'
It is clear from the article itself that both the writer of this report, and the researchers who did the work reported on, are all physicalists, and see all this as myth.
For those of us who do research into the nature of consciousness, whether from a study of ancient paths, or from the perspective of modern science it is clear, it is not. It is an accurate report of the subjective experiences of individuals who have come to directly and personally know nonlocal consciousness.
Some of the oldest art in the United States maps humanity’s place in the cosmos, as aligned with an ancient religion.
A team of scientists has uncovered a series of engravings and drawings strategically placed in open air and within caves by prehistoric groups of Native American settlers that depict their cosmological understanding of the world around them.
‘The subject matter of this artwork, what they were drawing pictures of, we knew all along was mythological, cosmological,’ Jan Simek, an archaeologist at the University of Tennessee said. ‘They draw pictures of bird men that are important characters in their origin stories and in their hero legends, and so we knew it was a religious thing and because of that, we knew that it potentially referred to this multitiered universe that was the foundation of their cosmology.’
Simek and his team studied art from 44 open-air locations and 50 cave sites. The earliest depiction of this kind of cosmological stratification dates to around 6,000 years ago, but most of the art is more recent, from around the 11th to 17th centuries.
The researchers noticed that certain kinds of drawings and engravings only appear in specific areas of the plateau. For instance, open-air spots in […]
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NANCY BENAC and ALICIA A. CALDWELL, - The Huffington Post
Stephan: Here is a pretty good and up-to-date assessment of the trend to eliminate Marijuana Prohibition. There continues to be great resistance, of course, from all the government agencies, local, state, and federal, as well as the private prison corporations, all of whose budgets depend on the continuance of this madness that has eaten up a trillion dollars worth of tax payer money, and destroyed the lives of millions of people.
WASHINGTON — It took 50 years for American attitudes about marijuana to zigzag from the paranoia of ‘Reefer Madness’ to the excesses of Woodstock back to the hard line of ‘Just Say No.’
The next 25 years took the nation from Bill Clinton, who famously ‘didn’t inhale,’ to Barack Obama, who most emphatically did.
And now, in just a few short years, public opinion has moved so dramatically toward general acceptance that even those who champion legalization are surprised at how quickly attitudes are changing and states are moving to approve the drug – for medical use and just for fun.
It is a moment in America that is rife with contradictions:
_People are looking more kindly on marijuana even as science reveals more about the drug’s potential dangers, particularly for young people.
_States are giving the green light to the drug in direct defiance of a federal prohibition on its use.
_Exploration of the potential medical benefit is limited by high federal hurdles to research.
Washington policymakers seem reluctant to deal with any of it.
Richard Bonnie, a University of Virginia law professor who worked for a national commission that recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972, sees the public taking a big leap from prohibition to a more […]
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CLAUS HECKING and STEFAN SCHULTZ, - Der Spiegel (Germany)
Stephan: The rise of the American surveillance apparat is lending a new dimension to the growing anti-Americanism that readers throughout the world report to me, and that I have witnessed myself, on my international travels. There are consequences to our governmental paranoia, and it makes me very sad to see my country go from the shining light of democracy to intrusive overbearing world bully. I don't think the Obama Administration has properly thought through the pushback that is developing at both the official and popular levels. Here is a German take, and it is not a happy one.
Senior European Union officials are outraged by revelations that the US spied on EU representations in Washington and New York. Some have called for a suspension of talks on the trans-Atlantic free trade agreement.
Europeans are furious. Revelations that the US intelligence service National Security Agency (NSA) targeted the European Union and several European countries with its far-reaching spying activities have led to angry reactions from several senior EU and German politicians.
‘We need more precise information,’ said European Parliament President Martin Schulz. ‘But if it is true, it is a huge scandal. That would mean a huge burden for relations between the EU and the US. We now demand comprehensive information.’
Schulz was reacting to a report in SPIEGEL that the NSA had bugged the EU’s diplomatic representation in Washington and monitored its computer network (full story available on Monday). The EU’s representation to the United Nations in New York was targeted in a similar manner. US intelligence thus had access to EU email traffic and internal documents. The information appears in secret documents obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden, some of which SPIEGEL has seen.
The documents also indicate the US intelligence service was responsible for an electronic eavesdropping operation in Brussels. SPIEGEL […]
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