Tuesday, October 25th, 2016
Jeffrey Salkin, - Religion News Service
Stephan: There is an interesting new trend starting. There have been a growing number of article appearing the Religious Right media about climate change; basically a kind of wiggling effort to acknowledge what I suspect their readers are beginning to tell them about their personal lives. It's all a little weird. Here is an example of what I mean.
A man wades through a flooded street in Ascension Parish, Louisiana, on August 15, 2016.
Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Bachman
Before a year ago, I never gave a second thought to the issue of Sea Level Rise (SLR).
And then, I moved to a neighborhood in Hollywood, Florida – fifty feet from the Inter-coastal Waterway.
I started hearing about Sea Level Rise. I read about the pending crisis on Miami Beach.
I read about how, if left unchecked, Sea Level Rise would condemn not only Miami Beach, and the Florida Keys, but entire neighborhoods in southeastern Florida.
Those houses would be under water – and not in the real estate meaning of the term.
Last week, during the epic “king tide” — a confluence of Sukkot and the full moon — I stood on a south Florida street as the waters came slowly rushing in, ultimately coming up to my mid-calf.
Our congregation, Temple Solel of Hollywood, Florida, has created two coalitions – […]
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Tuesday, October 25th, 2016
Paul King, Computational Neuroscientist - Medical Daily/The Raw Story
Stephan: Why do some memories remain, while others fade. Here is some explanatory information.
Credit: Shutterstock
Memories are stored as chemical changes at the connection points (synapses) between neurons in the brain. There are more than 100 trillion synapses in the human brain, and each memory is stored as slight changes to thousands or millions of synapses. In this sense, memories have a “distributed” representation: each memory involves thousands of synapses, and each synapse is involved in possibly thousands of memories.
If a memory survives until at least the next day, then its storage has already resulted in possibly permanent change to thousands of synapses in the brain. The question is for how long will that memory be retrievable? And is it still there even if it is not retrievable?
Episodic Memory
The memory for past events is among the least understood processes in neuroscience. It is only known for certain to exist in humans, and the experiments required to study its neural mechanisms are problematic for logistical and ethical reasons.
One fascinating study published in Nature looked at the activity of individual neurons in the episodic memory region (the hippocampus) […]
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Tuesday, October 25th, 2016
Stephan: I was looking at my MAC laptop and wondering if I was doing the right thing by keeping it plugged in between trips? So I went looking for an answer, thought this was the clearest one I found, and decided to share it because I suspect many of you have the same question.
Credit: Shutterstock
Q. Dear Umbra,
I work all day on a laptop (a MacBook Air). I’d like to prolong the life of my computer and battery so I don’t have the expense and waste of having to replace the laptop earlier than necessary. So what’s the best approach to plugging the laptop in vs. running it off the battery? When it’s 100-percent charged, should I unplug it and let the battery charge drop down low before plugging it in again? Or should I keep it plugged in all day long while I work?
Jamal J.
Princeton, New Jersey
A. Dearest Jamal,
Most people understand that repurposing or recycling something is better than throwing it away. But you know what’s even better than that? Not recycling that thing, because it still works perfectly — or, at least, postponing that inevitable moment of mortality as long as possible. In our culture of planned obsolescence and gimme-that-hot-new-tech upgrades, this is a somewhat radical idea. I tip my hat to you, my status quo–shaking friend.
“Maintain it, […]
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Monday, October 24th, 2016
Daniel Boffey , Observer Policy Editor - The Guardian (U.K.)
Stephan: BREXIT has passed out of the spotlight of American corporate media, but in Europe and the U.K. it is a growing concern; and it is going to affect us, whether we are paying attention or not. Here is the latest.
Storm clouds above Canary Wharf financial district in London.
Credit: Andy Rain/EPA
Britain’s biggest banks are preparing to relocate out of the UK in the first few months of 2017 amid growing fears over the impending Brexit negotiations, while smaller banks are making plans to get out before Christmas.
The dramatic claim is made in the Observer by the chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, Anthony Browne, who warns “the public and political debate at the moment is taking us in the wrong direction”.
A source close to Brexit secretary David Davis said he and the chancellor Philip Hammond had last week sought to offer reassurance that they were determined to secure the status of the City of London.
However, the government’s stated intention to take control of the freedom of movement into the UK is widely recognised among officials to […]
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Monday, October 24th, 2016
Peter Schroeder, - The Hill
Stephan: BREXIT was voted in, in my view, because an ignorant British electorate was flimflammed by a small group of unscrupulous politicians who had their own agenda. I see the same thing happening here in the U.S. where an equally ignorant group of Americans have been told a pack of lies by a psychopathic fraudster who has been gaming the system all his life. Here is what economists, both conservatives and liberals have to say about Trump's economic plans. Caveat Emptor
Donald Trump Credit: The Hill
Economists are dubious of Donald Trump’s claim that he could more than triple economic growth if elected president.
Trump has repeatedly blasted the gross domestic product (GDP) numbers under President Obama as pathetically low, promising he would change the trajectory by building a “tremendous economic machine.” He reiterated those claims during the third presidential debate Wednesday, after the government reported the economy grew 1.4 percent in the second quarter of the year.
“We’re bringing GDP from, really, 1 percent … and if she got in, it will be less than zero,” he said. “But we’re bringing it from 1 percent up to 4 percent. And I actually think we can go higher than 4 percent. I think you can go to 5 percent or 6 percent,” Trump said.
Such claims are not mere rhetoric from Trump, as many of his economic proposals, including his broad tax cuts, depend on robust growth to cover the costs. Without it, his plans would add trillions of dollars to the deficit and likely damage […]
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