Stephan: We are much more attuned to and influenced by the biosphere than we realize. We just don't cultivate this sensitivity.
Michaela Rehle/Reuters
A US scientist believes he has discovered clear evidence of a lost human ‘sixth sense’ – one similar to that which enables animals to navigate the globe by detecting magnetic fields.
For years, planetary scientist Joseph Kirschvink has been trying to find a definitive answer to a hotly debated theory that suggests humans have an in-built magnetically guided ‘compass’ sense.
The California Institute of Technology researcher acknowledges the topic of ‘magnetoreception’ is scientifically controversial, since the theory has “been something of a romping ground for quacks and charlatans.”
In 2001, a research team led by Kirschvink described magnetite-based magnetoreception as an “attractive hypothesis to explain long-distance animal migration.”
“Earth’s magnetic field is the only geophysical signal that gives consistent information about position and direction at virtually all times and in all environments,” stated the team’s paper explaining the background to the phenomenon.
Animals have been found to possess subtle magnetic detecting power in previous studies. A 2003 scientific paper, in which Kirschvink was also involved, […]
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Stephan: The great monster of the American Gulag has crawled to a new level of moral depravity.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement public relations officials prepare for a visit by Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson at a new detention facility specially designed to imprison migrant women and their children as their deportation cases move through the courts, in Dilley, Texas, December 15, 2014.
Credit: Jennifer Whitney / The New York Times
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is striking deals with private prison companies to lock up a “guaranteed minimum” of mothers with their children in euphemistically-termed family detention centers.
The 2009 congressional mandate for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to keep a minimum of 34,000 people minimum locked up at any given time is already well-established. But a new report by the Center for Constitutional Rights […]
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Natasha Geiling, - Think Progress
Stephan: I grew up on the Chesapeake Bay and watched a tongue of toxicity grow down the rivers and into the bay from chicken and pig industrial operations. Like monocultural, I believe, this mechanistic form of dealing with other life forms must end. It is a product of materialism and greed.
Factory egg farm
Credit: shutterstock
The consolidation of animal agriculture has allowed American agribusiness to produce huge amounts of cheap meat at an astonishing rate. But that access to cheap meat comes at a cost: millions of tons of manure and toxic pollutants, which can threaten some of America’s most important waterways.
According to a new report released by Environment America, five major animal agribusinesses — Tyson, JBS, Cargill, Smithfield, and Perdue — produce a combined 162,936,695 tons of manure every year. But it’s not just the manure that is threatening America’s waterways. The report also points to the huge volumes of grain that need to be grown to feed animals in factory farms, noting that the chemical-intensive farming often associated with the production of feed like corn and soy can also create runoff that threatens rivers, lakes, streams, and bays. Moreover, factory farms are some of the largest contributors to water pollution, dumping more toxic pollutants into waterways annually from their processing plants, by volume, […]
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Annick de Witt, - Scientific American
Stephan: This is an excellent essay describing The Great Schism Trend. It does not deal with the physiological aspects, but describes well the social and psychological issues.
Supporters at a Trump Rally
Historians often look at society with the aim of seeing larger, overarching patterns in how humans tend to relate to the world, and how their understanding of reality changes throughout time. These worldviews are the lenses through which people see and filter reality, shaping our world in many seen and unseen ways. Worldviews inform both individual choices as well as our group identities, and they tend to underlie our disagreements and add emotional spice to our societal debates. Therefore, if we want to fathom the unexpected (and in many ways unprecedented) support that candidates like Trump and Sanders have garnered, and understand the intense polarization that characterizes our contemporary political landscape, we better take a long, deep look at what is happening with our worldviews.
In the West, we have over time seen massive shifts in our collective worldviews, which academics have frequently described as a move from more traditional, generally religion-based worldviews to more modern worldviews, in which science, rationality, and technology have become central. This […]
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