– How about some good news ?
– dennis
happy
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– Click here to go through to the article itself. ➡
Archive for the ‘And Now for Something Completely Different’ Category
10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy
Saturday, February 25th, 2012The Day of the COW
Friday, February 17th, 201216/02/2012 – Today, I drove my motorcycle from Christchurch to Golden Bay up at the northern end of the South Island; a distance of about 250 miles, roughly. I’m going to spend several days up here visiting friends. It was a good ride though I worried during the first leg, if the weather was going to be bad. From Christchurch to Culverden, it got progressively grayer and colder and I seriously considered turning around and packing it in. But, I pressed on and not long after, the blue skies and sunlight began to return and from there out, the day will brilliant.
The road up here took me through the central parts of the northern half of the South Island. Towns with names like Culverden, Springs Junction, Murchison and Motueka rolled by sporadically. But most of the country is beautiful farming country with green forested mountains around it. Too rural for me, I think but beautiful none the less.
Some where around 5 pm, I arrived at Bob’s place outside of Takaka. I really love this area and always have. I’ve said often that just about the only rural area in New Zealand that I would seriously consider living in would be Golden Bay.
It’s beautiful and it is progressive and that’s a nice combination. It is one of New Zealand’s best kept secrets and I only know about it because of my friend, Bob.
He and I met when he still lived in Christchurch and I followed his move up here with great interest. Golden Bay is an isolated area in the northeastern corner of the South Island. There’s basically one road in and out and it goes up and over the mountains (Takaka Hill) that stand between Golden Bay on the west and Motueka on the coast to the east. There’s less that 10,000 people in the entire area and it is wildly beautiful.
Bob and I sat drinking beers for a bit and catching up. Then he went down and milked his goats and I joined him. At some point, later in the evening after tea (Kiwi’s call the evening meal, ‘tea’), the phone rang.
It was the girl who’s living as a tenant on a property that Bob’s daughter owns here in Golden Bay a mile or so from Bob’s place. Bob’s daughter is in Australia just now working. The problem was that Bob’s been digging a big drainage ditch on his daughter’s property and one of the two cows that live on the property had walked into the ditch from the shallow end and had continued walking up it until she’d got stuck far up the ditch and at a level where her head was below the surrounding ground level. So much for cow curiosity. The tenant had found the cow stuck and called Bob to see if he could sort the situation out.
So, Bob and I piled into his car with some ropes and such and took off to see the situation. It was not long before sundown so we needed to get to it if anything could be done. When we arrived, it was much as described. A cow was 50 feet or so up the ditch from the end wedged in with the sides lightly pressing her flanks and her head two feet below ground level.
Cows don’t seem to have any idea about how to back up. And no one was keen on getting down into the ditch either in front of her or behind her least she panic and trample them.
Bob first tried tying the rope onto her horns and pulling her backwards but that only had limited success as she’d turn her head backwards and look at us rather than backing up. Then we tried putting the rope around her neck arranged so it would not cinch-up and strangle her. She backed up a bit with that approach but, in the end, Bob got down in the ditch behind her and tried a combination of a rope tied to one of her back legs and pulling on her tail while I kept a pull on the rope around her neck pulling her backwards.
Lot’s of fussing and pulling ensued. At one point, she went down on her front knees and wouldn’t get up and Bob had to jump down in front and help her up. It looked for awhile if we might have to leave her in the ditch for the night and have the digger operator come in the morning and dig a big hole beside her so she could turn around. But, with a lot of pulling and encouragement and a few close calls, she finally backup up until the surrounding ground was low enough that she could clamber out of the ditch.
Once she was out, Bob grabbed her head and soothed her (he’d bottle-raised her from a calf so she trusted him) and he took the loop off around her neck and I cut the rope looped around her back leg (staying vary carefully to the side so I wouldn’t get kicked senseless).
When all of this was done, we could barely see our way around in the dark. He dropped some boards and clutter into the shallow end of the ditch so she wouldn’t enter it again and we were off.
So, it was an interesting day all told. A beautiful motorcycle ride up the South Island followed by a nice welcome and a meal at Bob’s and then a big adventure in the near dark with a cow in a ditch.
Life can be quite surprising and fun at times.
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy
Friday, February 10th, 2012– I might have laughed this one off except that I recalled posting something similar a few years ago so I went digging and found the earlier article here: ➡
“Textbooks today still make silly statements that schizophrenia has always been around, it’s about the same incidence all over the world, and it’s existed since time immemorial,” he says. “The epidemiology literature contradicts that completely.” In fact, he says, schizophrenia did not rise in prevalence until the latter half of the 18th century, when for the first time people in Paris and London started keeping cats as pets. The so-called cat craze began among “poets and left-wing avant-garde Greenwich Village types,” says Torrey, but the trend spread rapidly—and coinciding with that development, the incidence of schizophrenia soared.
dennis
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Jaroslav Flegr is no kook. And yet, for years, he suspected his mind had been taken over by parasites that had invaded his brain. So the prolific biologist took his science-fiction hunch into the lab. What he’s now discovering will startle you. Could tiny organisms carried by house cats be creeping into our brains, causing everything from car wrecks to schizophrenia? A biologist’s science- fiction hunch is gaining credence and shaping the emerging science of mind- controlling parasites.
NO ONE WOULD accuse Jaroslav Flegr of being a conformist. A self-described “sloppy dresser,” the 63-year-old Czech scientist has the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought, and his still-youthful, square-jawed face is framed by frizzy red hair that encircles his head like a ring of fire.
Certainly Flegr’s thinking is jarringly unconventional. Starting in the early 1990s, he began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was subtly manipulating his personality, causing him to behave in strange, often self-destructive ways. And if it was messing with his mind, he reasoned, it was probably doing the same to others.
The parasite, which is excreted by cats in their feces, is called Toxoplasma gondii (T. gondii or Toxofor short) and is the microbe that causes toxoplasmosis—the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.
But if Flegr is right, the “latent” parasite may be quietly tweaking the connections between our neurons, changing our response to frightening situations, our trust in others, how outgoing we are, and even our preference for certain scents. And that’s not all. He also believes that the organism contributes to car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. When you add up all the different ways it can harm us, says Flegr, “Toxoplasma might even kill as many people as malaria, or at least a million people a year.”
The perp
An evolutionary biologist at Charles University in Prague, Flegr has pursued this theory for decades in relative obscurity. Because he struggles with English and is not much of a conversationalist even in his native tongue, he rarely travels to scientific conferences. That “may be one of the reasons my theory is not better known,” he says. And, he believes, his views may invite deep-seated opposition. “There is strong psychological resistance to the possibility that human behavior can be influenced by some stupid parasite,” he says. “Nobody likes to feel like a puppet. Reviewers [of my scientific papers] may have been offended.” Another more obvious reason for resistance, of course, is that Flegr’s notions sound an awful lot like fringe science, right up there with UFO sightings and claims of dolphins telepathically communicating with humans.
– More… ➡
REGRETS OF THE DYING
Wednesday, January 11th, 2012– This is so beautiful. I also find it inspiring. We should all think about this stuff and not just walk through our lives half asleep as the calendar pages riffle by us, unnoticed. As a country and Western song I heard says, “This ain’t no rehearsal.” it is all as real as it gets and if you miss it, you’ll have no one but yourself to blame.
– This was written by a woman named Bronnie Ware and her site can be found here.
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For many years I worked in palliative care. My patients were those who had gone home to die. Some incredibly special times were shared. I was with them for the last three to twelve weeks of their lives.
People grow a lot when they are faced with their own mortality. I learnt never to underestimate someone’s capacity for growth. Some changes were phenomenal. Each experienced a variety of emotions, as expected, denial, fear, anger, remorse, more denial and eventually acceptance. Every single patient found their peace before they departed though, every one of them.
When questioned about any regrets they had or anything they would do differently, common themes surfaced again and again. Here are the most common five:
1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.
2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.
This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.
3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.
4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.
5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.
This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.
Life is a choice. It is YOUR life. Choose consciously, choose wisely, choose honestly. Choose happiness.
– To the original… ➡
Arrogance?
Monday, October 24th, 2011– Someone here in New Zealand pointed out to me the other day that the United States is, perhaps, the only country in the world to stage a “World Series” and not invite any other countries to participate. It’s a point that’s been wryly appreciated by folks from outside the U.S. for some time.
– dennis
Rare elements … and yours truly
Wednesday, September 14th, 2011– Not many people, other than my close friends, know that I’ve been putting together a collection of the elements of the Periodic Table for a long time.
– Hence, my interest in the British Geological Survey Risk List 2011 of the world’s rare and expensive elements in the original article.
– This next table, however, is about my personal collection and indicates which elements I’ve got in my collection now.
– Key:
Red – I’ve got it
White – I don’t
Blue – It’s a gas
Yellow – Radioactive
– dennis
– And now to the original article…
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A new supply risk index for chemical elements or element groups which are of economic value
The risk list gives a quick indication of the relative risk in 2011 to the supply of the chemical elements or element groups which we need to maintain our economy and lifestyle. The position of an element on this list is determined by a number of factors which might impact on supply. These include the abundance of elements in the Earth’s crust, the location of current production and reserves, and the political stability of those locations.
The risk list highlights a group of elements where global production is concentrated in a few countries. The restricted supply base combined with the relatively low political stability ratings for some major producing countries significantly increase risk to supply. The list highlights economically important metals which are at risk of supply disruption including rare earths, platinum group metals, niobium and tungsten. The list also shows the current importance of China in production of many metals and minerals.
As demand for metals and minerals increases, driven by relentless growth in the emerging economies in Asia and South America, competition for resources is growing. Human factors such as geopolitics , resource nationalism, along with events such as strikes and accidents are the most likely to disrupt supply. Policy-makers, industry and consumers should be concerned about supply risk and the need to diversify supply from Earth resources, from recycling more and doing more with less, and also about the environmental implications of burgeoning consumption.
The list focuses on risks to supply and does not include any assessment of factors that influence demand, such as criticality of an element to a particular technology or how easy it is to substitute that element with another.
Download the Risk list 2011 publication.
– To the Original… ➡
The U.S. Budget simplified…
Wednesday, August 24th, 2011– I don’t know if this is really accurate – but I enjoyed it.
– dennis
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The U.S. Congress sets a federal budget every year in the trillions of dollars. Few people know how much money that is so here is a breakdown of federal spending in simple terms.
Let’s put the 2011 federal budget into perspective:
U.S. Income: $ 2,170,000,000,000
Federal budget: $ 3,820,000,000,000
New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
Recent budget cut: $38,500,000,000 (about 1 percent of the budget)
It helps to think about these numbers in terms that we can understand.
Therefore, let’s remove eight zeros from these numbers and pretend this is the household budget for the “Jones” family:
Total annual income for the Jones family: $ 21,700
Amount of money the Jones family spent: $ 38,200
Amount of new debt added to the credit card: $ 16,500
Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
Amount cut from the budget: $ 385
Yep, that about sums it up.
– research thanks to Van
What Are We Capable Of – THIS IS ANONYMOUS!
Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
Anonymous
– The other day, I posted what Truthout is all about. I liked what they identified as the problems we’re facing.
– Anonymous is another favorite of mine. I’m not sure if they can carry off their aims but the truth is that I’ve become pretty discouraged that anyone else is going to rise up and try to put things right. Big Pharma’s not going to give up their obscene profits, nor are the multinationals that profit from war. The U.S. government is not going to turn the clock back to the Jimmy Stewart and “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” period. It just isn’t going to happen. The powerful rarely, if ever, give up their power and privileges voluntarily.
– But we still need something to change desperately. We’re gambling our ecology away, we’re gambling away the futures of our children, we’re allowing vast numbers of people to live in systems where the good of profits trumps the good of people – and that’s simply not right.
– Maybe Anonymous has a way forward. I’m willing to take a look.
– Check out this video. There’s a lot more like it on YouTube.
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Click –> here <–
– Also, check this out, while it’s still on-line… ➡
– Research thanks to Mike S.
Stop Coddling the Super-Rich
Tuesday, August 16th, 2011– From the New York Times – an Op-Ed by Warren Buffett.
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OUR leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Some of us are investment managers who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to classify our income as “carried interest,” thereby getting a bargain 15 percent tax rate. Others own stock index futures for 10 minutes and have 60 percent of their gain taxed at 15 percent, as if they’d been long-term investors.
These and other blessings are showered upon us by legislators in Washington who feel compelled to protect us, much as if we were spotted owls or some other endangered species. It’s nice to have friends in high places.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
To understand why, you need to examine the sources of government revenue. Last year about 80 percent of these revenues came from personal income taxes and payroll taxes. The mega-rich pay income taxes at a rate of 15 percent on most of their earnings but pay practically nothing in payroll taxes. It’s a different story for the middle class: typically, they fall into the 15 percent and 25 percent income tax brackets, and then are hit with heavy payroll taxes to boot.
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, tax rates for the rich were far higher, and my percentage rate was in the middle of the pack. According to a theory I sometimes hear, I should have thrown a fit and refused to invest because of the elevated tax rates on capital gains and dividends.
I didn’t refuse, nor did others. I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone — not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 — shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off. And to those who argue that higher rates hurt job creation, I would note that a net of nearly 40 million jobs were added between 1980 and 2000. You know what’s happened since then: lower tax rates and far lower job creation.
Since 1992, the I.R.S. has compiled data from the returns of the 400 Americans reporting the largest income. In 1992, the top 400 had aggregate taxable income of $16.9 billion and paid federal taxes of 29.2 percent on that sum. In 2008, the aggregate income of the highest 400 had soared to $90.9 billion — a staggering $227.4 million on average — but the rate paid had fallen to 21.5 percent.
The taxes I refer to here include only federal income tax, but you can be sure that any payroll tax for the 400 was inconsequential compared to income. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains. Some of my brethren may shun work but they all like to invest. (I can relate to that.)
I know well many of the mega-rich and, by and large, they are very decent people. They love America and appreciate the opportunity this country has given them. Many have joined the Giving Pledge, promising to give most of their wealth to philanthropy. Most wouldn’t mind being told to pay more in taxes as well, particularly when so many of their fellow citizens are truly suffering.
Twelve members of Congress will soon take on the crucial job of rearranging our country’s finances. They’ve been instructed to devise a plan that reduces the 10-year deficit by at least $1.5 trillion. It’s vital, however, that they achieve far more than that. Americans are rapidly losing faith in the ability of Congress to deal with our country’s fiscal problems. Only action that is immediate, real and very substantial will prevent that doubt from morphing into hopelessness. That feeling can create its own reality.
Job one for the 12 is to pare down some future promises that even a rich America can’t fulfill. Big money must be saved here. The 12 should then turn to the issue of revenues. I would leave rates for 99.7 percent of taxpayers unchanged and continue the current 2-percentage-point reduction in the employee contribution to the payroll tax. This cut helps the poor and the middle class, who need every break they can get.
But for those making more than $1 million — there were 236,883 such households in 2009 — I would raise rates immediately on taxable income in excess of $1 million, including, of course, dividends and capital gains. And for those who make $10 million or more — there were 8,274 in 2009 — I would suggest an additional increase in rate.
My friends and I have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress. It’s time for our government to get serious about shared sacrifice.
– Research thanks to Rolf A.
Truthout
Monday, August 15th, 2011– I like what Truthout is about. Sometimes, they deluge me with so much stuff I just have to step away for a bit but I always find what they’ve got to say interesting and closely aligned to my own view of the world.
– This morning, I made a donation to their organization because they sent me a message summarizing what they are about and what the big issues are, globally, and I found I really resonated with what they had to say.
– Below , is the text of their message:
– dennis
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We’re deep in the battle over the fate of the United States. Will we solidify our government as a plutocracy – a late-stage empire that can serve only the interests of the super-rich? Will we continue to pursue policies around the globe that destroy the environment in pursuit of profits? Or will we retrench, and work to heal our bleeding political system before it’s too late?
The rest of the world is rising up against the cult of unrestrained free-market capitalism and money-power. From Tunisia to Egypt to Spain to Portugal to France to Germany to Greece to Israel to Chile to the UK, anti-austerity movements are on the rise, and the fight is playing out in chaotic, unpredictable and often tragic ways.
Everyone is asking why such a revolt isn’t happening here in the US.
One answer is simple – the US has invested billions of dollars in institutions that promote and protect consumerism-as-culture, both here and abroad. But activists around the country – whose hopes for change were dismantled over the past three years – are reuniting. The fight is coming here; it’s just a matter of time.
Our country is the epicenter of backwards, self-destructive, consumption-driven thinking. But it’s also the birthplace of amazing transformative struggles that have changed the world. Which side are you on?
– If you want to donate… ➡