Toilets may be our environmental downfall

http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070730/sc_livescience/studytoiletsneedradicalredesign

Corey Binns
Special to LiveScience
LiveScience.com Mon Jul 30, 9:15 AM ET

The Western World's dependence on flush toilets could be its environmental downfall.

Toilets that use less water, such as the "squat toilet" in which one squats over a hole in the ground, are prevalent in parts of Asia, Europe and Africa, but a new historical study suggests that after decades of flushing, it will take radical innovations for the mainstream West to adopt any new system.

"Most people can hardly imagine that other ways of handling human waste have ever existed," said study author Maj-Britt Quitzau, an environmental sociologist with the National Environmental Research Institute of Denmark. "But actually, systems did exist prior to the flushing toilet where human waste was collected within the cities and re-used in farming areas."

Since the 1900s, scientists have known that flushing away human waste comes with environmental consequences , such as using precious, potable water.

Each year, a typical person will use almost 4,000 gallons of drinking water to flush away 75 pounds of feces and 130 gallons of urine, according to a 2001 study by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.

While drinking-water shortages plague millions in such places as India and in some African nations, Westerners continue to oppose alternatives to the flushing toilet.

'Earth toilets'
To understand the West's preference for flushing toilets, Quitzau surveyed historical research on attitudes toward human excrement and the technological development of water and sewage systems. He then analyzed statistical data on current attempts to introduce alternative solutions.

His research suggests that in order to succeed, toilets designed to save water must hurdle our culture's long history of city planning and well-intentioned obsession with hygiene.

Westerners have not always been addicted to flushing toilets.

In the 1850s, for example, a recycling "earth toilet" was as American as apple pie. It consisted of a seat placed over a container filled with dry earth. After use, more dry earth was piled into the container. Instead of throwing away the waste in the container, farmers put it to use in agricultural fields as compost.

Convenience and city planners

However, with the introduction of sewer systems in major cities and new moral attitudes toward human waste products, the labor-intensive method lost out to the convenience of the flush, according to Quitzau's research, detailed in the August issue of the journal Technology in Society.

The flushing toilets required water and sewage system to facilitate easy and enclosed removal of waste.

Even with its added expense, Quitzau said, "city planners and health personnel became some of the principal spokesmen for flushing toilets. They were troubled about the problems that growing urbanization brought along in the Western cities at this time."

In the city of Stockholm alone, the number of water-flushing toilets rose from 127 to more than 80,000 between 1890 and 1925, according to a study reported in a Swedish Science Press journal.

At the same time, environmentally sound earth closets, considered less sanitary, went extinct.

Composting toilets

Although many Westerners would never consider turning in their flushing toilet for a night pot or a cesspool, some pioneers are thinking outside the bowl.

Composting toilets (which rely on bacteria to convert fecal matter into fertilized soil) require no water, and urine-separating toilets rely on a minimal amount of water to wash waste into one of two compartments in the bowl.

The technologies remain relatively unpopular because people in developed countries are programmed—and their houses and cities are built—to flush it all away.

"Perhaps sometime in the future," said Quitzau, "people in Western cities could accept the idea of using human urine and feces as resources instead of as wastes."Until then, the unsanitary stigma will haunt some of the modern replacements for water-flushing toilets.

Quitzau says composting toilets are unfavorable because, although much improved technologically, they still remind people of ancient, unappetizing waterless technologies, such as the earth closet or outhouses.

Vacuum toilet

Building flush-free toilets to satisfy the masses will not be simple and, unlike the composting toilet, may require mimicking toilets that flush and must be user-friendly, Quitzau said. "This is not something, which can be suddenly changed," he said. "Houses are built with respect to flushing toilets, not with respect to composting toilets requiring a collection chamber in the basement. Urban planners are taught about sewage systems and not sustainable toilet systems, where human urine and feces are collected and transported to farming areas."

Currently, toilet technologies are focused on convenience, comfort and design, rather than sustainability, Quitzau says.

However, the vacuum toilet—familiar to airplane passengers—is one technique that has some potential for appealing to Westerners stuck in their old flushing ways. The noisy vacuum toilet functions similarly to a flushing toilet. Yet the environmental costs of the energy-sucking suction may not be worth the tradeoff.

The most likely candidate to replace the flushing toilet will most likely incorporate the convenience of flushing toilets with the sustainability of composting toilets."The stability of flushing toilets is still strong, and it will take both technological advancements and changes in social and cultural patterns in order for more sustainable toilet solutions to gain a stronger foothold," Quitzau said.

Jazzy Singin' in the Rain and Frisbee!

http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=696666&cache=1

Need some background music for your multi-media production?

http://mixonline.com/studios/business/audio_new_york_metro_65/index

That's an article about Guy Messenger, a creative and entreprenuerial aspirant.

If you need royalty free original music, Guy's just the fellow:

http://www.soundscapers.org/

I'd really like to be just a little safer from the War on Terror!

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/5002476.html

July 26, 2007, 1:59PMGame in bag prompts airport evacuation © 2007 The Associated Press

LONG BEACH, Calif. — A suspicious item in checked luggage that prompted the evacuation of a terminal at Long Beach Airport on Thursday turned out to be an electronic game, authorities said.
Several hundred people were evacuated from the terminal for about 90 minutes and five arriving aircraft were held on the tarmac until the all-clear was given.
Transportation Security Administration screeners spotted the suspicious item while X-raying a checked bag around 9:30 a.m., agency spokeswoman Jennifer Peppin said.
The item turned out to be a handheld electronic game board in a "raw form" that showed its wiring, she said.
The passenger worked for "some sort of game or toy company," she added.
Firefighters, police and a bomb squad were called to the airport, about 25 miles south of downtown Los Angeles.

Great separation of Church and State article, from the UK

http://www.skandavale.org/

This Hindu Temple site from the U.K. is aghast that the government "put down" their sacred cow that was also suffering from TB!

Here was the "webcam" to keep track of Sambo, the cow in question.

http://www.skandavale.org.uk/webcam.htm

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/world/20070726-1333-britain-sacredbull.html

That's the article about the cow.

Here's an excerpt, in case it gets archived...

Police seized a sacred bull from a Hindu monastery in Wales on Thursday, cutting locked gates and dragging away protesters before taking the animal for slaughter because he had tested positive for tuberculosis.
The plight of Shambo the bull attracted worldwide attention after the diagnosis this spring and prompted the Skanda Vale monastery to create an Internet petition campaign to try to save him. Hindus revere cattle and say killing the bull violates their religious rights.

“This is about the freedom of human beings to express their religious values,” said a monk, known as Brother Alex. “We can't be party to the destruction of life.”

The monastery suggested it could isolate Shambo to prevent the TB from spreading or send him to a willing charity in India, but authorities nixed those ideas.

Some people in Britain supported the seizure. Keith Porteous Wood, director of the National Secular Society, claimed Shambo's supporters were “putting religious dogma before the welfare of the community.”

“This case represents another example of religious bodies trying to put themselves above the law,” he said.

Is the Term "BRIGHT" that threatening?

http://nonshoppingchannel.blogspot.com/2007/07/christianity-cult-continues.html

If you have read the above mentioned post, then you will know that I sent the following into the LA Times Editorial page.

As a Bright, (everything stems from nature not superstition), I was heartened to read about home-church-goers sincere in their desire to live moral and law abiding lives. If that form of worship helps them do that, I say excellent, how ironic their detractorsconsider them "non-biblical".There are already several hundred Christian sects, this is how they all started, it is a grand tradition. .....Even after 2000 years, It seems it is difficult to know what is truth!

WELL HOW FASCINATING. THE EDITOR LEFT OUT THIS PART!!!
"As a Bright, (everything stems from nature not superstition),"

So, my little poignant humor on the end of the letter (It seems it is difficult to know what is truth!) doesn't make sense (without the Bright part up front) in my humble and ego-bruised opinion!

Fourth letter (I think) since 2003 that I have had published by the LA Times, and this was the first one they changed materially.

Bush Flipped On Genocide

 

This is what I sent to the author and the editor of the L. A. Times of the article that appeared here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg24jul24,0,5797195.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

 

From: Frish

Date: Jul 25, 2007 10:33 PM
Subject: Bush Flipped On Genocide
To: jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com
Cc: Letters@latimes.com
 

JG:

If genocide was ever "flipped-on" it was when we invaded and occupied a country unilaterally without provocation or threat, destablizing and then not propping up whatever was left...what do unemployed former military and police do for a living?  They become gang members and "terrorists" in their own country, since we removed what amounted for law and order, however brutal it was.

 

Bloodbath has already been occuring, by us, there now.  It has to stop. 

 

We cannot be in the line of fire, since we fire back. 

 

And, we've destroyed what little there was of a country, perhaps the intent all along. 

 

Militarize (and privatize) the oil wells...

 

The vacuum of power when we leave is the inevitable outcome of an incredibly bad mistake by our President.

This article ranks worst dates for your kids: Muslim, Atheist, Mormon, etc....

http://wpherald.com/articles/5488/1/Racism-found-alive-well-in-US/Poll-points-to-not-in-my-back-yard-mentality.html

The article attempts to raise our awareness about what we really think about each other versus what we claim to think about each other.

However, it never points out that each of our prejudices, while mainly illogical, are part of an evolutionary advantage - fear of the stranger.

That's what helped keep us in groups, there was US and THEM.

No one today truly appreciates how valuable a toddler was in 10,000 b.c. to a marauder...slave material, works for food, already survived natality, infancy, and now is self mobile yet oh so facile mentally...so, you'd better not be too friendly to strangers, they really might abduct you!

Is that a genetic predisposition to disliking those who aren't like us? Not clear, but worthy of study.

The best part, for me, of the article concerns who is valid marriage material for one's children. Now that tells the tale of US and THEM.

By a wide margin, respondents believe Americans think Muslims are the most likely to engage in terrorism (83 percent). Forty-two percent think Americans would be most concerned about their child dating a Muslim, followed by an atheist (17 percent) and a Mormon (14 percent). A quarter blamed Protestants or other Christian affiliations for a prejudiced society, followed by Muslims (20 percent).

None of this article should astound or surprise. Racism in and of itself is the cause of group formation, therefore it is self replicating.

Christianity - The Cult Continues!

The Los Angeles Times newspaper ran an article today regarding home-churches, evangelical gatherings without a formal church building that occur in people's houses. I decided, as a Bright, to write a letter to the editor of the Times.

The letter I wrote is in RED below.

The parts I didn't send are in BLUE below.

As a Bright, (everything stems from nature not superstition), I was heartened to read about home-church-goers sincere in their desire to live moral and law abiding lives.

If that form of worship helps them do that, I say excellent, how ironic their detractorsconsider them "non-biblical".

There are already several hundred Christian sects, this is how they all started, it is a grand tradition.

.....Even after 2000 years, It seems it is difficult to know what is truth!

Alternative Ending instead of Even after...
....And while it threatens the status quo, it should not threaten others.

However, while these don't appear to be "American Madrassas" (yet...) the internet can magnify the influence of a cult leader, and quickly. These folk deserve to be observed and documented, to ensure they are not being "anti-social" in a large sense.

I'm staying with my non-deistic worldview, thanks!

Here's the article...

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-housechurch23jul23,1,6106562.story?coll=la-headlines-california&ctrack=2&cset=true

Sin Pistola

My former wife and partner (for 29 years) was from Mexico...(Morelia, Michoacan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michoac%C3%A1n).

We were married (the first time) in a civil ceremony on a volley ball court at UC Santa Cruz, overlooking the ocean... there were nine of us in attendance, including several members of my brother’s commune. (June 1979)

We were married a second time (with her family) in a cathedral in Morelia.

The week before the wedding was filled with last minute preparations. About 40 of my family and friends were in town, so hosting such a crowd was interesting, not to mention a couple hundred of her relations and friends, but we also had to meet the priest, in order to make it “legal” from the church’s point of view.

After a long interview, translation both ways provided by my bride, the Priest wrote furiously in a very large book in very small handwriting. It was like the history of the parish, and I was fascinated by my inclusion. He had asked where I was born, where I had lived, what I did for a living, and he covered many other worthy topics. The whole process took over an hour!

Finally, the priest looked at me with great earnestness, and asked: "Sin Pistola?"

I was mildly taken aback, of course the Priest didn't know she and I had been living together for 4 years already and no, we weren't pregnant!

"Did he just ask what I think he asked?"

She nodded, and tried not to smile while suppressing her giggle.

I replied, "Si, Sin Pistola, todo libre!" (Without a pistol, everything free!)

That seemed to satisfy him. He asked me to raise my children Catholic (which, since I have none, I have done!).

After signing the paperwork, a Sister stood close by with an empty wooden dish. My wife prompted me to seal the deal with a donation, The Sister wobbled and almost dropped the tray when I dropped a twenty and a five dollar bill into her coffer!

Truly sealed the deal!

December 1979

Pranks By Boys: Shirtless at 57 degrees below zero

In the house, winter break, senior year in high school. It is really warm, and super dry, inside the house. STAtic electriCITY shedding at every opportunity, even the nail heads beneath the plaster could accept a discharge, making all of us thread the hallways carefully. Unfortunately the nylon carpeting…truly a static electricity power plant, if you will, made sparks and stings unavoidable.

My sister was home from college. She was already in San Diego at UC, and I had applied to San Diego State. Of course, my little brother was at home too…so we each had built in playmates right there at home. It must have been a Saturday, since I know I got up early to watch T.V. in the family room…a 3 stooges short, half an hour of bugs bunny and daffy, and various other choices (limited only by my inertia…no clickers back then, so I’d have to get up and PHYSICALLY CHANGE THE CHANNEL when I wanted to see another show.)

Outside it was remarkable. A day of absolute stillness and quiet, not a stir of a breeze, not a hint of a cloud, just a deep blue sky with the sun low on the horizon. What little moisture had been in the air the night before had delicately coated the existing snow with a light frosting. The sun, unimpeded, hit the new frost with sparkling effect. The roads were covered in compacted snow, but no one was driving.

The news band at the bottom of the TV screen that only occurred during a weather emergency was on all the broadcast channels I could receive from Minneapolis/St. Paul.
It told us over and over what we already knew, that the actual outside temperature was 57 degrees below zero, and could be deadly! Just being out when it’s that cold is dangerous.

We were still in the front family room when the mail truck putted by, the snow crunching and tire chains slipping and chirping. As the mail delivery proceeded, I reminisced about the 200 times I’d shoveled off the driveway over the prior 4 years. I had, during the last snowfall, ensured that the mailbox was accessible. A four foot mound of black snow piled up by the snowplow lined the street, but the ice took a break where I had carved out the mailbox.

I watched, and heard the clatter of the postal truck’s chains on the road when I got this crazy idea…to go get the mail!

The terrain was well known…the doorway, driveway and mailbox, then back up the driveway, and through the front door. About 75’ or so, one way… however, it was beyond just cold outside…it was 57 degrees below zero! Your lungs could freeze, (and definitely your nostrils) if you even took a breath that wasn’t sucked through a scarf or mask of some kind…

But I had this contingency well covered…I was a competitive swimmer at the time, ranked nationally top fifty, and knew how long I could hold my breath, even if I were doing work…so, of course, it seemed just the thing (to my 17 year old brain…). I had on pajama bottoms and no shirt, so…
Not disturbing my siblings, I went to the “mud room” and found some appropriate boots. These were nylon uppers with plastic soles that had lots of air to keep your feet away from the incredibly cold ground. The inside of the nylon upper had a serious piece of soft insulation that form fit your ankle and lower leg…they were rated to 90 below zero, just what I needed that day.

I grabbed a pair of wool stockings from the dryer and slipped on the boots. I knew that my head would lose heat fastest. So, somewhat reluctantly, I took my hat, really a combination hat and scarf, pulled it way down my face, curled up the edge to make it double thick almost all the way to the top of my head, then I took the rest of the 6’ length and wrapped it around my neck.

Now I was ready (enough!). Out of the mud room I strode quickly through the family room, to ensure my audience (big sis and lil bro) were aware and watching, flipped open the front door, closed the door loosely (didn’t latch it, but couldn’t leave it open, it was just too cold outside!), waved at my sibs as I marched past the window, down the driveway, to the mailbox, up the driveway, another wave, and then back inside…

I didn’t take a breath until I was back inside the house, and the door was firmly shut! My upper body was steaming while I was outside, the vapors continued to curl off my chest. I had exhaled just a little, before I came into the front door, and watched my breath SINK instead of rise, since the water vapor froze on contact with the air, and precipitated out as ice crystals!

After they stopped yelling at me, my sibs decided, once again, that I was absolutely crazy.

What holds the thoughts of God?

I see neither evidence nor any REASON for god. Therefore, I'm a strong atheist.

(I will capitalize REASON whenever possible...I mean this in many senses, and capitalization serves as emphais!)

There is no machinery behind the facade. What you see is what there is.

What you feel, well, that's not necessarily what there is.

Feelings are a result of evolution of personality, and are all about our social nature, since we evolved to live in groups...they are chemistry too, as are the thoughts you are having while reading this...but they are all contained within your ears.

The separation we all feel, of our thoughts separate from our bodies, is an illusion.

There is no separation from our bodies by our thoughts. Thoughts are TOTALLY contained in the chemistry within our bodies. The separation illusion allows us to do "rote" tasks (like breathing, or walking, or a myriad of other activities) while we are thinking of something entirely different.

It also gives rise to the idea that our minds are somehow separate entities that can survive on their own! NOT.

Your nervous system does not control anything outside of your body, not now, and not when you die.

There is no REASON to believe that we have a soul, distinct from our bodies and mind.

Very useful to be a thinking creature, and mankind has been quite successful (in both range and total population on the planet, we are as numerous as any other large land mammal has ever been!).

We know the thoughts within our minds are contained in the chemistry in our bodies...encoded somehow (some say holograms...whatever) in the neural network of our nervous system, brain and bodies.

No one claims a REASON on how thoughts could be separate from bodies, since that isn't our experience.

We by no means understand exactly what thoughts are or how they form or for how long they last with or without reinforcement and how reliable they are etc. etc. etc.

But no one argues that thoughts are somehow extra-corpular, don't we all agree that thoughts are electrical potential within our nervous systems that allow us to experience shared reality?

This leads me to the question...where is the information storage for god in the universe?

On what particle of matter does god exist?

If god is not at all material, on what basis is the information encoded?

What allows god to operate at greater than light speeds (being everywhere and knowing everything...)?

What holds the thoughts of god?

As I said above, humans are social creatures, and we evolved in groups. In the extended family that is the basic unit of human existence there was an alpha. That leader was to be obeyed (unless one was a teenage male attempting to upset the harem or whatever), THEIR VERY LIVES DEPENDED ON IT.

So, obedience to a "father-figure" is "built-in", simply because of our social heritage, WE'VE EVOLVED IT as a means to keep the group under control. Therefore, evolutionary forces are at work, as the god belief is far more ingrained and widespread than simple indoctrination could explain. There is a place in our brain that accepts authority, the Chief's authority.

(The chief may not always have been a male by the way...in the really olden days...)

Having a concept such as "god" around is quite useful as a placeholder, something that we don't or can't know, and all of those things that are unknown are attributed to god.

Humans have evolved (SOCIALLY) to use a crutch like god to be more successful.

This happened a long time before agriculture and the current trend towards monotheism, which grew out of the fields!

The current idea of god as father figure (the traditional on a throne white bearded fellow) is only a recent rendition of god.

So, evolution of our social nature makes it easy to believe in god, a higher power, a boogey man for the kids, a catch-all bucket within which to put whatever is unknown...and by naming the unknown, we make it less scary and more under our control...even while "giving control to god".

The whole idea is childish actually and literally (somehow people actually think somehow the very idea of god is good for kids! I'm not much in favor of anything that doesn't help kids understand the REAL world.)

We're here because the universe, as it formed over time, brought what was needed to have life exist here, whenever and however it was created and formed.

No one argues (well, no cosmologist would argue) that the chemicals we find around us are made from elements that were fused within stars. We literally are made of star dust.

Whatever happened to float on by in this region of the galaxy was just what was needed to have life form.

I don't claim to have all the answers about how life formed or how evolution got us to what we observe today.

I know exactly how unlikely it was to have happened.

(This part of the Galaxy (not in the radiation filled center, where almost all the mass of the galaxy is!), on a rocky planet (not on a gas giant which are by far and away the mass of the solar system), that has a water cycle (not too common we're guessing, just the right distance from the star and just enough of whatever it took for life to form so that the oxygen and water cycles could ensue on the planet. Not too likely, any of it!)

The most obvious observation we're here, THEREFORE LIFE HAPPENED.

Although it may have happened in parallel multiple times until life "took" here on Earth...it only HAD to happen once.

I believe science will someday, given enough time and experimentation and observation, understand it all.

Why would an "intelligence" need to be behind any of it? I see no REASON.

If humans are around long enough…and, therein lies the rub… The universe selects against "intelligence" whatever that is...

We see no "Contrails of Advanced Civilizations" in the stars...we hear no telepathic chatter of disembodied highly evolved intelligences that float between the stars (I mean, we're already here 15 BILLION (BILLION IS A REALLY REALLY LONG TIME!) YEARS, SO WHERE ARE THEY?)

evolution selects against "intelligence"...

"NATURE" does what it does. Intelligence cannot avoid nature or stem Nature's twitch or shrug that will remove humanity from the Earth. There is no intelligence in the Universe, it cannot coexist with nature.

GAIA selects against intelligence... while using our culture and technology to follow our biological imperative to obtain energy from any possible ecological niche. Igloos and spears and ice saws, or poison darts to fell prey out of the rain forest, humanity is pretty good at exploiting a wide variety of ecological niches.

Our intelligence will wipe us out, long before we're star trekkers!

That's why there are no signs of extraterrestrials, since there aren't any, their intelligence wiped them out if they ever existed!

We (all life forms taken as a whole in this case) are simply fulfilling the GEOLOGIC PROCESSES of planet Earth.

The Solar System and Planet Earth formed with the potential for life.

It is simply part of the geology and chemistry of our planet and solar system and, as "luck" would have it, we're here.

We are no more than the sum of our chemical processes. The slaves of the biology and geology that reared us. We're much dependent on being Earth-Bound actually.

Some think bioforming or terraforming or genetic mutation will somehow allow humanity to exist for longer than geology and evolution would otherwise allow...

We encounter, ingest, and digest, and turn sugars and oxygen into heat and sound and motion and digestion and thoughts and "night soil" and sweat and whatever else our chemistry accomplishes, and then we no longer operate and so die.

Why is this so hard to believe? Seems evident. Seems obvious. It is what we see happening, nothing is not explained.

Life is Chemistry
Evolving into niches
Expend Energy

The title of this bit of news is stupid, but, obviously so are all of us!

http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/35057

Mobile Phones Are Making Us Stupid

Mon Jul 16, 2007 3:24PM EDT

Here's a trend that has been years in the making. Since the advent of speed dial on land lines, people have been training themselves that memory is unimportant, placing every phone number you could need at the touch of a button. Now science has proven it: Phones, computers, and PDAs are making us dumb.

The stats: A quarter of UK residents (these studies always come out of Britain) don't know their home phone number. Only one-third know the birthdays of their immediate family. Half use one password, exclusively, presumably because they just can't remember any more.

The problem is pretty simple at heart: The less you use your memory, the study says, the worse it gets. The study indicates, shockingly, that people in their 50s and 60s have generally better memory than people in their 30s.

Why?

The older group was tasked with committing more to memory when they were younger, "training" their brains appropriately. Our gadgets make it simple to offload our memory to electronic devices. That's a good thing when it comes to keeping track of the 1000 people in your address book (each with multiple phone numbers and email addresses), but maybe we're taking it too far?

The good news is that you can exercise your brain without memorizing numbers by rote. Games like Brain Age and Sudoku and other mental stimulation can do just as good a job at keeping your memory sharp (and possibly even ward off ailments like Alzheimer's), the experts say.

my post on a philosophy forum

[QUOTE=Respondent]Any time a race becomes "enlightened" and tries to be peacefull I'll pick on them too. Once I got bored I'd flush that galaxy and do the benevolence/observance thing. Once I get bored of that I'd pick on them again.[/QUOTE]
(((I have snipped a small portion of "Respondent"'s post responding to a question about what he would do if he were god, here is my response to this portion of his rant.)))

You have stated my theory precisely, and if I thought there were a god, he'd act exactly as you.

Intelligence evolves and the universe strikes it down.

That is why there are no "little green men" or radio signals or contrails between stars.

Space is really really big.

But we've seen no evidence of space faring intelligences in our galaxy .

Space is really really big, it cannot be overemphasized!

However, even given current technology humans could in the not too distant future find our way to multiple star systems or even the entire galaxy...does 10,000,000 years sound a long time?

I would maintain that even a very slow progression of human colonies could conceivably stretch across the galaxy in 10,000,000 years...that is a really long time...

Well, the universe has been around 1000 times that long and there are no little green men visiting us are there!

Evolution cannot tolerate intelligence.

Intelligence (and the technology (think language and all that accompanies our most basic "CULTURE" in the anthropological sense, all that is not biological about us, non-instinctual, nurture, fire, tools, perhaps even consciousness, sentience, etc.)) is SELECTED AGAINST by the universe.

We will be the victims of our own success. Our technology has unburdened us from the vagaries of mother nature, we call anywhere home thanks to technolgy, we have health care and vaccinations, we have agriculture, we have energy, for now...we also are totally out of control when it comes to population, and worse, our impacts on natural systems have damaged them severely.

Chaos is inevitable (if really drastic things aren't accomplished right away) given current trends, no less the trend in human population - 9 billion humans by 2050, 1.5X as many as on the planet today (2007).

We will attempt to have technology save us. It will only speed our demise, as it is the reason we're engineered to fail!

Technology is simply an extension of our human nature. As living beings, our DNA drive us to obtain energy from the environment, and reproduce. Technology allows us to obtain energy from environments we weren't evolved to survive. Without a lot of very delicate and necessary technology people couldn't exist on much of the planet.

Technology has now ((or has already) (or will soon)) disrupted every biozone on the planet. The delicate web of interconnections between and amongst the various species is disrupted.

The web of life is constantly in flux. It is never in equilibrium. However, mankind's disruption allows certain energy niches on the planet to be very much more readily available. So, algae grow in the oxygenated and fertilized ocean water, and then die and suck up the oxygen, creating a dead zone in the ocean for Christ's sake.

There will be massive efforts put human knowledge into cyber minds before the end, or there would be, except the end will be here way sooner than most predict!

We won't be here long
So no need to have children
So they won't suffer.

CAUTION: VIOLENT contents - here is the headline, read post at your own risk..."Witness says accused Pickton surprised at how much prostitutes bled"

Monday, July 16, 2007
Witness says accused Pickton surprised at how much prostitutes bled

NEW WESTMINSTER (CP) - A key Crown witness told a hushed courtroom Monday that Robert Pickton was surprised at how much the women he murdered bled and how much of their remains his pigs ate.

Andrew Bellwood told court he and Pickton were watching television in Pickton's residence in his trailer in March 1999 when Pickton described how he killed prostitutes by having sex with them from behind, handcuffing them and strangling them before taking them to his slaughterhouse.

There they were bled, gutted and fed to the pigs, Bellwood testified, recounting how Pickton told him he couldn't believe how much the women bled.

He told court that as Pickton talked, he acted out some of the gestures, such as making a stroking motion as if he were caressing a woman's hair.

Bellwood, who has testified to being a crack cocaine addict, going on "binges," and having had relapses since 1999, said Pickton showed him how he would reach around and take the woman's arm and handcuff her before using a leather belt or wire to kill her.

"He had mentioned to me, 'You know what I do with these prostitutes?"' Bellwood said as the jury listened transfixed and the gallery was silent.

"From there he reached underneath his mattress. He pulled out a set of handcuffs that looked like a set of police handcuffs. He pulled out a belt and he pulled out a piece of wire.

"The wire had looped ends on it that looked like it had been spliced. The wire was the same consistency as piano wire.

"He had motioned to me that he would put them what we call doggy style on the bed, having intercourse with them. As he was telling me this story it was as if there was a woman on the bed. It was pretty much like telling me he'd reach behind their back for their hand and slid it behind their back and put on the handcuffs, stroking their hair, telling them that it's going to be OK. Everything's all over now.

"After he got the handcuffs on them he would strangle them either with the belt or the piece of wire."

Bellwood told Crown prosecutor Geoff Baragar that the conversation occurred after Pickton suggested the two of them hire a prostitute, but Bellwood said he wasn't interested.
Baragar asked Bellwood what was his state of mind was at the time.

"I was coherent," he said, adding that he had not been smoking crack cocaine or drinking alcohol.
Bellwood continued with his testimony.
"From there he would take them to the barn, bleed them and gut them. He commented on how much they bled. He kept telling me, 'Oh, you know how much they bleed, you wouldn't believe how much blood comes out of a person.'

"He proceeded to tell me, after he gutted them, hung them in the slaughterhouse, how much pigs ate of the carcass and whatever the pigs didn't eat, would end up in the 45-gallon drums of entrails he put the pigs in, you know, the pig guts into."

Bellwood is expected to be one of the last major Crown witnesses in the case and Baragar indicated the Crown's case is nearing an end "subject to other matters."

Bellwood began his testimony by explaining he started using drugs when he was 15 and moved up to crack cocaine by his mid-20s.

He told court he had a criminal record and there were occasions when he could spend as much as $5,000 on crack binges that could last as long as four days.

But he testified he never hallucinated while he was taking the drug and had never seen anyone hallucinate while on crack.

He explained he was introduced to Pickton in February 1999 and later lived for a time on Pickton's Port Coquitlam property.

Bellwood said he met Pickton through a man named Ross Contois, who was attending the same drug treatment facility as Bellwood on Vancouver Island.

Contois was married to Gina Houston, a good friend of Pickton's who has already testified at the trial.

Bellwood, 37, who now works in the oil industry in Alberta, said he first met Pickton when he and Contois went to the farm to buy hay for Houston's horses.

On subsequent visits, Bellwood testified he got to know Pickton better and eventually spent some time living on the property.

Bellwood recalled another woman named Lynn also lived there at the time.

The jury has heard from a witness named Lynn Ellingsen, who testified she lived in a spare bedroom at Pickton's trailer residence.

Ellingsen said that while high on crack one night, she walked into the pig slaughterhouse and saw Pickton butchering a woman who was hanging from a hook.

Bellwood said Lynn and Pickton appeared to be good friends and that he helped her a lot.

"He basically supported her," said Bellwood. "He was a sugar daddy of some sort."

In its cross-examination of Ellingsen, the defence suggested numerous times that she was hallucinating about the incident in the slaughterhouse and saw a farm animal and not a woman.

On Monday, Baragar asked Bellwood to describe Lynn when she was high on crack and whether he noticed any hallucinations.

"No, I've never seen anybody on crack experience hallucinations," Bellwood testified.

He said for him, crack use caused depression and remorse, but it did not affect his memory or induce hallucinations.

Pickton, who appeared to listen to the witnesses, did not look at Bellwood as he testified but he wrote several notes and passed them to his lawyers.

An RCMP officer also testified earlier in the trial that he met with Bellwood in September 2004 and paid for his dinner as they discussed the case as part of a "witness maintenance program."

The RCMP agreed to pay Bellwood's $925 monthly rent for three months while he attended a drug program at the Edgewood Treatment Centre, which the police also paid for.

In January 2005, the officer again met with Bellwood and his common-law wife and agreed to pay for the woman to take a course at the same treatment centre for $1,000.

Pickton is charged with the murders of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Georgina Papin, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe and Andrea Joesbury. He will face a further 20 murder charges at a later date.

Bellwood told the jury of beating he received by two men who came to the property after the alleged conversation with Pickton and accused him of stealing tools from Pickton. He said at the urging of "Lynn," the men punched him twice in the nose and head.

He told the jury he never stole anything from Pickton and left the farm after the beating.

He testified he never returned to the farm and didn't tell police of the conversation until he was questioned by officers in early 2002.

© The Canadian Press, 2007

What Have I shown you so far (the top of A Decahaiku):

Eagerness to meet
Openness, safety first, warmth,
I know what you need...

Wonderful nice time.
I dressed right do you agree?
I was O.T.T.

(ask mom)

If/When you want to
Know what I know, I'm happy
To share anytime.

I am not compelled
since I know I can frighten,
You ought to meet Mom!

It is up to you...
if I've disrespected you
I apologize

Those are all Haikus
And this is, This is as well,
Who else posts like this?

My profile's true.
As you said!: You're only human...
Taught me a lot thanks!

Astonishingly
We're going Italian
Relax, enjoy ride.

Bring your mom over
and meet my mom and then you'll
Know a lot more.

Hi mom, how are you?
Cheers to all and Hasta,
La vista to you.

(A goodbye note after a failed first date. She was three year widowed and still wearing black!)

Estimated IQ of George Bush

In 2006, a real historiometric study published in the scientific journal Political Psychology, compared the estimated IQs of all US presidents since 1900. It rated G.W. Bush second last, with an estimated IQ between 111.1 and 138.5, and an average of 124.8 (which still is well above the standardized average of 100).

According to the same study, the average estimated IQ of president Bill Clinton was 149. [9]

In an interview, it was noted by the study's director that "Bush may be 'much smarter' than the findings imply" but that he "scores particularly unimpressively for 'openness to experience, a cognitive proclivity that encompasses unusual receptiveness to fantasy, aesthetics, actions, ideas and values.'"

Other estimates of the IQ of G.W. Bush have been based on his SAT score of 1206 (566 for verbal and 640 for math),[10] which would equal an IQ of around 125-129.[11][12]

Still another estimate, based both on his SAT scores and IQ-type tests that he took as a required part of applying for Air Force Officer Training School in 1968, concludes that Bush has an IQ somewhere between 120 and 130.[13]

No official IQ data for George Bush is available, however.[14]
------------------------
Part of a Wikipedia article:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Presidents_IQ_hoax

My darling, Haiku for you and you alone!

(What I tell all my women who correspond via the web...)

We have a nuclear Love!

You live in my heart
Don't we have (CriticalMass)
-ive fun together?

Our separation
Is for the best, at moment
We'd inflame the sky!

My little Mushroom
Sliding alongside your Cloud
Then we'll say Whoopie!

I need a muse love.
A long distance love affair.
You are qualified.

Where fore art thou, virtual lover?

Carita Mia:

Do you like to kiss?
Press soft lips behind your ear...
Secrets get whispered

Shivering body
Ticklish, so kiss more firmly!
See nipples rise...

I like to kiss lips.
Pressing, sucking, rubbing, then...
Nibbling each other

I kiss everywhere!
Other parts than lips are nice
Curve of your body...

In sneaks a quick tongue
Strong muscles touch each other
Wet, hot and tasty

Sleep well my delight.

The Future of Plastics - "more plastic by weight than plankton on the ocean’s surface"

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/270/


This is a very nice article about a problem no one is focusing on very much. Plastic is in no way "biodegradable", therefore everything ever made with Plastic still exists in some form on the planet, except for what has burned. As it "erodes" due to the forces of nature, it doesn not "decompose" in any way, except it gets smaller and smaller. At each stage of the food chain, it becomes confused as food from top to bottom...here's a few excerpts from a fairly long and worthwhile article.

Even more exasperating was what his PhD student Mark Browne had discovered while shopping in a pharmacy. Browne pulls open the top drawer of a laboratory cabinet. Inside is a cornucopia of feminine beauty aids: shower massage creams, body scrubs, and hand cleaners. Several are by boutique labels: Neova Body Smoother, SkinCeuticals Body Polish, and DDF Strawberry Almond Body Polish. Others are international name brands: Neutrogena, Clearasil, Pond’s Fresh Start, even a tube of Colgate Icy Blast toothpaste. Some are available in the United States, others only in the United Kingdom. But all have one thing in common.

“Exfoliants: little granules that massage you as you bathe.” He selects a peach-colored tube of St. Ives Apricot Scrub; its label reads: 100% natural exfoliants. “This stuff is okay. The granules are actually chunks of ground-up jojoba seeds and walnut shells.” Other natural brands use grape seeds, apricot hulls, coarse sugar, or sea salt. “The rest of them,” he says, with a sweep of his hand, “have all gone to plastic.”

On each, listed among the ingredients are “micro-fine polyethylene granules,” or “polyethylene micro-spheres,” or “polyethylene beads.” Or just polyethylene.

“Can you believe it?” Richard Thompson demands of no one in particular, loud enough that faces bent over microscopes rise to look at him. “They’re selling plastic meant to go right down the drain, into the sewers, into the rivers, right into the ocean. Bite-sized pieces of plastic to be swallowed by little sea creatures.”

...snip...

The real reason that the world’s landfills weren’t overflowing with plastic, he found, was because most of it ends up in an ocean-fill.

After a few years of sampling the North Pacific gyre, Moore concluded that 80 percent of mid-ocean flotsam had originally been discarded on land. It had blown off garbage trucks or out of landfills, spilled from railroad shipping containers and washed down storm drains, sailed down rivers or wafted on the wind, and found its way to this widening gyre.

“This,” Captain Moore tells his passengers, “is where all the things end up that flow down rivers to the sea.”

It is the same phrase the geologists have uttered to students since the beginning of science.

However, what Moore refers to is a type of runoff and sedimentation that the Earth had hitherto never known in 5 billion years of geologic time-but likely will henceforth.

DURING HIS FIRST THOUSAND-MILE CROSSING of the gyre, Moore calculated half a pound for every one hundred square meters of debris on the surface, and arrived at 3 million tons of plastic. His estimate, it turned out, was corroborated by U.S. Navy calculations. It was the first of many staggering figures he would encounter. And it only represented visible plastic: an indeterminate amount of larger fragments get fouled by enough algae and barnacles to sink.

In 1998, Moore returned with a trawling device, such as Sir Alistair Hardy had employed to sample krill, and found, incredibly, more plastic by weight than plankton on the ocean’s surface.

In fact, it wasn’t even close: six times as much.

...snip...

"Plastic is still plastic. The material still remains a polymer. Polyethylene is not biodegraded in any practical time scale. There is no mechanism in the marine environment to biodegrade that long a molecule.” Even if photodegradable nets help marine mammals live, he concluded, their powdery residue remains in the sea, where the filter feeders will find it.

“EXCEPT FOR A SMALL AMOUNT that’s been incinerated,” says Tony Andrady the oracle, “every bit of plastic manufactured in the world for the last fifty years or so still remains. It’s somewhere in the environment.”

That half century’s total production now surpasses 1 billion tons. It includes hundreds of different plastics, with untold permutations involving added plasticizers, opacifiers, colors, fillers, strengtheners, and light stabilizers.

The longevity of each can vary enormously. Thus far, none has disappeared. Researchers have attempted to find out how long it will take polyethylene to biodegrade by incubating a sample in a live bacteria culture. A year later, less than 1 percent was gone.

...snip...

"Egyptian pyramids have preserved corn, seeds, and even human parts such as hair because they were sealed away from sunlight with little oxygen or moisture,” says Andrady, a mild, precise man with a broad face and a clipped, persuasively reasonable voice. “Our waste dumps are somewhat like that. Plastic buried where there’s little water, sun, or oxygen will stay intact a long time. That is also true if it is sunk in the ocean, covered with sediment. At the bottom of the sea, there’s no oxygen, and it’s very cold.”

He gives a clipped little laugh. “Of course,” he adds, “we don’t know much about microbiology at those depths. Possibly anaerobic organisms there can biodegrade it. It’s not inconceivable. But no one’s taken a submersible down to check. Based on our observations, it’s unlikely. So we expect much-slower degradation at the sea bottom. Many times longer. Even an order of magnitude longer.”

An order of magnitude—that’s ten times—longer than what? One thousand years? Ten thousand?

No one knows, because no plastic has died a natural death yet. It took today’s microbes that break hydrocarbons down to their building blocks a long time after plants appeared to learn to eat lignin and cellulose. More recently, they’ve even learned to eat oil. None can digest plastic yet, because fifty years is too short a time for evolution to develop the necessary biochemistry.

“But give it a hundred thousand years,” says Andrady the optimist—he was in his native Sri Lanka when the Christmas 2004 tsunami hit, and even there, after those apocalyptic waters struck, people found reason to hope. “I’m sure you’ll find many species of microbes whose genes will let them do this tremendously advantageous thing, so that their numbers will grow and prosper. Today’s amount of plastic will take hundreds of thousands of years to consume, but, eventually, it will all biodegrade. Lignin is far more complex, and it biodegrades. It’s just a matter of waiting for evolution to catch up with the materials we are making.”

Frish Sez:

So, it is just a matter of waiting for evolution to catch up! Life "evolves" to take advantage of energy niches, as stated elsewhere on this blog. The potential energy of plastics is simply one more resource for evolution's grinding progress.

However, will the chemicals that plastics have distributed around the planet, and the plastic particles themselves, disrupt biological systems causing chaos or ruin? Seems likely actually, plastics, from bottle caps to the smallest sliver of ground up plastic bag are mistaken for food at every level of the food chain. Krill have been found with plastic inside of them.

This can't be a good thing. They are wasting their energy consuming non-nutritious detritus from our profligate wasteful luxurious but unsustainable lifestyle. And, it is killing them and whales that feed on them...

Here's another source of scientific investigation into the accumulation of plastic in the North Pacific Gyre (a huge part of the ocean between Hawaii and California).

http://www.mindfully.org/Plastic/Plastic-Plastic-Everywhere-Algalita.htm

Here's a little something from Australia about whales around the world and plastic:

http://www.noosa.qld.gov.au/ServicesFacilities/EnvironmentalHealth/StormwaterQuality.shtml

Plastic Bags and Whales
A Bryde"s Whale became stranded off the North Queensland coast in August 2000. Despite the work of volunteers the whale died. The autopsy revealed 6m2 of plastic in the whale's stomach.

The Bryde's Whale is a member of the baleen whale family. Being a filter feeder their diet mainly consists of small shrimp-like crustaceans called Krill. The plastic bags ingested were not even mistaken as a food source. They were just accidentally swallowed when filtering the Krill.

The whale's stomach contained plastics and other foriegn items.

A dead pygmy sperm whale found on a New South Wales beach had a plug of plastic bags in its gut. Presumably these items were mistaken for squid, the sperm whale"s main food.

A sperm whale found dead on a North American beach was discovered to have starved to death because a plastic gallon bottle which it had swallowed had plugged its small intestine. The animal was full of plastic material ranging from other plastic bottles to 12m of nylon rope.

Pope: Other Christians not true churches

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070710/ap_on_re_eu/pope_other_christians;_ylt=AsFBgJ82RMHgP55D38neRN87Xs8F

This is too good for the archive...so here's the article...

By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 10, 3:59 PM ET
LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.

The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. "It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," said the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries.

"It makes us question the seriousness with which the Roman Catholic Church takes its dialogues with the reformed family and other families of the church," the group said in a letter charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the era before the Second Vatican Council.

It was the second time in a week that Benedict has corrected what he says are erroneous interpretations of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-1965 meetings that modernized the church. On Saturday, Benedict revived the old Latin Mass — a move cheered by Catholic traditionalists but criticized by more liberal ones as a step backward from Vatican II.

Among the council's key developments were its ecumenical outreach and the development of the New Mass in the vernacular, which essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict, who attended Vatican II as a young theologian, has long complained about what he considers its erroneous interpretation by liberals, saying it was not a break from the past but rather a renewal of church tradition.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which Benedict headed before becoming pope, said it was issuing the new document Tuesday because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II's ecumenical intent had been "erroneous or ambiguous" and had prompted confusion and doubt.

The new document — formulated as five questions and answers — restates key sections of a 2000 text the pope wrote when he was prefect of the congregation, "Dominus Iesus," which riled Protestant and other Christian denominations because it said they were not true churches but merely ecclesial communities and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."

The commentary repeated church teaching that says the Catholic Church "has the fullness of the means of salvation."

"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," said the document released as the pope vacations at a villa in Lorenzago di Cadore, in Italy's Dolomite mountains.

The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession — the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles — and therefore their priestly ordinations are not valid, it said.

The Rev. Sara MacVane, of the Anglican Centre in Rome, said that although the document contains nothing new, "I don't know what motivated it at this time."

"But it's important always to point out that there's the official position and there's the huge amount of friendship and fellowship and worshipping together that goes on at all levels, certainly between Anglicans and Catholics and all the other groups and Catholics," she said.
The document said that Orthodox churches were indeed "churches" because they have apostolic succession and enjoyed "many elements of sanctification and of truth." But it said they do not recognize the primacy of the pope — a defect, or a "wound" that harmed them, it said.

"This is obviously not compatible with the doctrine of primacy which, according to the Catholic faith, is an 'internal constitutive principle' of the very existence of a particular church," said a commentary from the congregation that accompanied the text.

Despite the harsh tone, the document stressed that Benedict remains committed to ecumenical dialogue.

"However, if such dialogue is to be truly constructive it must involve not just the mutual openness of the participants, but also fidelity to the identity of the Catholic faith," the commentary said.

The top Protestant cleric in Benedict's homeland, Germany, complained the Vatican apparently did not consider that "mutual respect for the church status" was required for any ecumenical progress.

In a statement titled "Lost Chance," Lutheran Bishop Wolfgang Huber argued that "it would also be completely sufficient if it were to be said that the reforming churches are 'not churches in the sense required here' or that they are 'churches of another type' — but none of these bridges is used" in the Vatican document.

The Vatican statement, signed by the congregation prefect, American Cardinal William Levada, was approved by Benedict on June 29, the feast of Saints Peter and Paul — a major ecumenical feast day.

There was no indication why the pope felt it necessary to release it now, particularly since his 2000 document summed up the same principles.

Some analysts suggested it could be a question of internal church politics or that the congregation was sending a message to certain theologians it did not want to single out. Or, it could be an indication of Benedict using his office as pope to again stress key doctrinal issues from his time at the congregation.

In fact, the only theologian cited by name in the document for having spawned erroneous interpretations of ecumenism was Leonardo Boff, a Brazilian clergyman who left the priesthood and was a target of then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's crackdown on liberation theology in the 1980s.

Joke comprehension may decrease with age

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070711/ap_on_sc/joke_comprehension_age

By BETSY TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer (From the web, July 10, 2007.)


ST. LOUIS - A new psychology study at Washington University was no laughing matter: It found that older adults may have a harder time getting jokes because of an age-related decline in certain memory and reasoning abilities.

The research suggested that because older adults may have greater difficulty with cognitive flexibility, abstract reasoning and short-term memory, they also have greater difficulty with tests of humor comprehension.


Researchers tested about 40 healthy adults over age 65 and 40 undergraduate students with exercises in which they had to complete jokes and stories. Participants also had to choose the correct punch line for verbal jokes and select the funny ending to series of cartoon panels.
Findings were published earlier this month in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society.


The research conducted by graduate student Wingyun Mak and psychology professor Brian Carpenter showed that the younger adults did 6 percent better on the verbal jokes and 14 percent better on the comic portion than did older participants, Mak said.


But who decides what's funny?


The researchers, citing past work in the field, wrote that humor research is "rooted in the philosophical notion that humor arises from a sense of incongruity, a conflict between the expected and the actual."


"Successful comprehension of humor occurs upon resolving something that is seemingly incongruous with a logical but less obvious explanation."


Researchers used a verbal joke test developed in 1983 and used in other humor studies. Mak added a new element, though, by showing participants cartoons from the Ferd'nand comic strip, and asking them to choose between four panels to locate the funny ending. Three of the choices for each cartoon were the wrong ones, created by an artist for the study.


Participants had to respond to jokes like this one:


A businessman is riding the subway after a hard day at the office. A young man sits down next to him and says, "Call me a doctor ... call me a doctor."


The businessman asks, "What's the matter, are you sick?"


Participants then had to choose the right ending. For this one, the correct answer was "I just graduated from medical school."


Wrong choices were straightforward answers or conclusions that did not follow from the premise. Among the wrong answers: "Yes, I feel a little weak. Please help me."


"This wasn't a study about what people find funny. It was a study about whether they get what's supposed to be funny," Carpenter said.


"There are basic cognitive mechanisms to understanding what's going on in a joke. Older adults, because they may have deficits in some of those cognitive areas, may have a harder time understanding what a joke is about."


Mak said humor comprehension merits further study because of the potential physical and psychological benefits of humor.


"I think it's really important to note this doesn't mean older adults aren't funny or don't understand humor," Mak, who is from Los Angeles, said.


She said humor comprehension and humor appreciation are tested in different ways. The Washington University study didn't delve into humor appreciation. In fact, Mak said, older study participants who may have picked the wrong answers may also have been laughing at their choices at the time.


Josephine Bertani, 73, of St. Louis, took part in the study. She has some memory issues, and thinks she probably didn't come up with all the right answers.


Even so, she leads tours of senior citizens as a volunteer through St. Ambrose Catholic Church.


"I'll entertain them with jokes," she said, adding that some tour participants bring her jokes that she can read aloud on bus trips. Any cases of the older people not laughing? "Not yet," she said.

Tolerance, why is it so hard?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/27/news/moscow.php

Gay Rights Campaigners
No surprise, they got beat up
No rule of law.

Tennis Anyone?

I wasn't there. Sometimes one can't know if I was there or not, sometimes I don't tell, sometimes you can't tell if the story is even true, but I believe, on good authority, that this is true, but I wasn't there.

Schultz and Cageman lived about one mile apart.

Their neighborhood had the distinction of being hilly.

Luckily, in Minnesota hills are not common.

Winter being winter, and snow/ice slippery, hills are definitely not recommended.

This particular year had seen a couple of large snowfalls before Christmas. The hills were covered with three feet of snow, and drifts were as high as 10 feet. The lights under the eaves of many houses were buried, the snow luminous and flashing green and red!

Winter in Minnesota is notoriously bad, dangerous, cold, and unforgiving. Strange things can happen when the weather gets as cold as it does, especially when it has been snowing.

Certain streets don’t get plowed often. Others get enough traffic to push the fresh snow down into hard packed ice.

That dark, dirty and hard ice seems to go directly from solid to vapor, since the actual temperature stays below zero Fahrenheit day and night, yet the ice disappears over a few days.

Schultz and Cageman were going to Walleye’s on some important mission. Probably to smoke a lot of pot, then pick up Walleye, since he had wrecked his Dodge Dart several weeks earlier.

Schultz pulls up and honks out the Winto-green gang rhythm, Cageman rounds the corner from his basement cave. A muted "Stairway to Heaven" was blasting on the AM and Schultz’ second-Joint-in-a-mile was being enflamed. As Cageman opens the door, he's hit simultaneously with the odor of pot and the sound from the music...he slams the door as he sits, and takes a hit and away they went.

Rounding the hill, the road covered with a thick sheet of very slick ice, Schultz attempted to make the left turn down a fairly steep slope.

The car began to skid off the side of the road, on the side that had been cut away, and the ice, (an "unwelcome mat"), blended gracefully onto the top of the snow drift...just down the hill was a private home’s tennis court, thoroughly covered in thick snow.

Schultz had one hand on the joint and the other on the wheel, looked toward Cageman, as they both screamed "HOLY SHIT" in perfect unison and rather highly elevated pitch.

Fingers never leaving the J, Schultz and Cageman and the car hurtle straight towards the tennis court’s fence. The car hits…WHAM, then the fence moaned GRRRRRRR as it slowly bent delivering the car to the center of the tennis court.

The car, half buried in snow, crunched to a stop. Their screaming stopped soon after that...with the car stalled.

A new grinding sound began as the fence, relieved of the car, shifted slowly to vertical.

Now, inside the court, the car remained, surrounded by car-roof-deep snow, and no visible means on how it could have gotten there... no tracks, no footprints, no nuttin' but the top of the car could be seen from the street above!

The silence was deafening! But not for long…

“Jesus Schultz, you could’a killed me!”

“Eff-off-A-Hole, the joint’s ash didn’t even fall!”

And, as Schultz held up the joint, Cageman saw that it was true.

They sat back, finished the joint, and appreciated the obvious "sign".

It being a weekday, the owners of the tennis court weren’t at home, so, the very lucky friends walked back to Cageman’s house. It was exceedingly quiet, as the snow dampened every noise. Their breath formed Godzilla-like vapor trails, and frost deposits defined Cageman's mouth through the scarf that covered it. Gloved hands dug deep into parka pockets belied the cold...the snow under their boots sang and squeaked as they trudged along the road.

First, lots of snow shovels. Next, dismantle fence. Now attach a cable to the car from the tow truck on the hill and drag the literally unblemished car up…

Insurance took care of everything; these guys led a charmed life.

Freshman Dorm Life: Vending Machines

Once upon a time, in a freshman all-male dorm, there were several vending machines in the lobby.

Most of the time, just across the foyer, there was someone at the front desk (actually a counter behind glass, with a window like a bank).

Well, one night, Belk was on duty, and sleeping like a newborn.

I can't say I was there, but no one is asking are they?

In the morning, all hell broke loose in the lobby.

"Mrs. B" (the hag that was our "Dorm Mother") all the Resident Assistants and their Assistants, and the regular preppy defenders of righteousness, the Campus Police, and even the San Diego Police were all mumbling and grumbling in front of the vending machines, and by the trophy cases, and behind and in front of the front desk...

It was fairly easy for them to figure out:

1. Belk had slept through the whole thing.

2. The vending machines had their contents delivered a spiral coil "untwisting" system. Each unwind of the spiral allowed another bag of snack food to drop into the tray. All it took was to flip the machines around and around and they would have their contents available. (How Belk could have slept through the flipping was a much debated item, considering the noise made by that many loose coins.)

3. The more disturbing thing was the fact that the trophy cases in the dorm’s ground floor “living room” were all empty. The 3 trophy cases each had sliding glass doors, embedded with chicken wire mesh, helping to confirm and remind and enforce that the dorms were modeled on a woman’s prison. Normally there were cylindrical locks with keyholes on metal tongues, that moved off the tongues to allow the sliding glass doors to move.

However, the trophies were no longer inside the cases. And, the locks were placed on BACKWARDS so the key hole was INSIDE the glass...so the doors could not be opened at all.

Now, if you knew what got them in that condition and could resolve it without breaking the glass (can't say I do, won't say I don't) would you offer your assistance?

As far as the trophies, poorly hidden in-between couch seats, in trash cans, and other noteworthy locations; none had gone missing.

No money was lost, none escaped from inside the guts of the vending machines.

The vending machines' contents were never recovered.

Tell me does prayer really help is god listening to us?

Once upon at time there were hundreds of gods. Every creek, brook, stream, river, lake, inlet, ocean had a god. Every tree and rock had a god.

Then, there were only a few gods, like the Greeks or Egyptians had.

Abraham brought the idea of a single god.

As you can see, the whole idea of god is approaching it's true nature, zero. That is, there is no god at all.

Now, can prayer help you?

It is imperative that one "believes" in the "doctor" and the "medicine".

Mind over matter. That is, it is all in your mind. If you decide you'd get better after you pray, maybe you will.

Isn't that the "secret" after all, the power of positive thinking.

It is WITHIN YOU to accomplish what you seek. Trust in yourself, that is the source of everything.

However, some find relying on an outside entity such as "god" helpful too.

So, believe in whatever voodoo works for you.

For me, I lean on myself.

Here's my YAHOO Answers! response to "Why do people who believe in Satan never see him? Why do people who believe in God only imagine they see him?"

There is no reason to believe that god or satan actually exist. Faith is the absence of reason. So faith is literally NO REASON to believe in god.

So, if you like to live your life without reason, be faithful. (see below)

Consider the following:
Kids, when they learn to speak, ask hard questions (like, where did the sun come from, or how old is the earth, or where does the moon go every month, etc.). It is important to have ready answers for such curiousity, and fairy tales fit the bill nicely. God is just another fairy tale to assist in child rearing (for one thing).

However, people do report on near death experiences (bright lights, hooded figures, tunnel) etc.

People also dream about how dead grandma spoke to them and gave them some advice. (Perhaps on a fast horse at tomorrow's race!)

People hallucinate during fever and see all sorts of things they try to relate to us later.

People imagine all kinds of things that go bump in the night.

Therefore, people speak to each other about all these things, and we tend to give them a name. God is a name for all things we have yet to describe! Or, perhaps, the expression "God Knows" says a lot!

People see things, (or imagine they see things), other people give them a name for what they saw, and they accept it as "god" or "satan".

Now, if you'd care to live your life with reason, instead of by faith, you might turn to science and history, and anthropology and other disciplines that describe the world in which we live.

The world I live in looks like this:
It is a world of geology.
It is a world that supports life, self replicating molecules.
Each species of living thing occupies an energy niche, and, when a species "discovers" an untapped energy niche, it evolves over time to take advantage of it.
Human beings are no different from any other living thing on the planet.
We have no spirit, nor anything "extra", beyond the chemical processes that keep us alive.

We do have our culture, language, technology. These items have removed us from the natural order. Our population is no longer in check, we are way out of control.

However, our technology is only an extension of our being living beings. That is, our biological imperative as a species is to efficiently occupy an energy niche. Technology and culture and language are simply means whereby humans can occupy energy niches we wouldn't "naturally" be able to exploit.

That's why we've taken over the entire planet.

That's why we're doomed, since we cannot live sustainably.

My recommendation:

http://www.vhemt.org/

Rocky and the seatbelt

Going to IBM's 100 Percent Club (the event for sales people who made quota) was a pretty big deal. Salesmen all measured each other by how many “Clubs” they had been to, as this indicated that you were successful over time. Being in San Diego, we had several folk who had 15, 20 or even 25 clubs under their belts!

After our second year on quota, both Jamie and I made the club. Being the rookie reps from the office, and with neither of us succeeding in making the club the first year, we were pretty pleased. So, we decided to take a red-eye to Miami from San Diego, since then we could have first class seats at the same price as coach.

We boarded the plane at about 11:30 PM San Diego time, and stopped in Phoenix. We didn’t have to change planes there, which was good, since we were already making a dent in the liquor in the first class compartment. By the time we landed in Atlanta we were so schnockered that we almost missed the connection to Miami. I don’t remember how we got to the Fountainbleu hotel, but when we arrived we actually were barking in the lobby, awaiting registration.

I think Rocky was either with us, or somehow met up with us soon after we deposited our bags in the room. We knew we’d be in for a treat since Rocky was an old hand at 100 Percent Clubs, and knew Miami like the bottom of his beer glass. We followed him, and a bunch of his cronies, to a bar not far from the hotel.

Rocky was greeted by the bartender, who immediately set up tall draft beers all around.

The bartender came from behind the bar, and wrestled a stool down from a bracket on the ceiling.

This was slightly weird as there were plenty of stools and chairs around.

This particular stool had a seatbelt attached to it. He plonked it down at the end of the bar, Rocky took his seat, and buckled himself in.

Another round of drinks, all around.

Jamie and I picked Rocky up three days later...he was still buckled in when we brought the cab around for him...

It is easy to prove that god is imaginary!

http://www.godisimaginary.com/

Haven't we grown out
of Children's Fairy Tales?
We now know a lot!

Miata - IBM Stream of Consciousness Jul/05/2007

I've been told that Miata, the car name that Mazda Motors chose, means "I peed in my pants" in Spanish.

At the "Olympics of Telecom", an international show in Geneva (Telecom '91), I played a role in IBM's booth. It was a 3 story booth, with an elevator. There were about 150 different demonstrations on and about the booth, and I had produced about 50 of them, including a signature recognition demonstration. I also was the voice over for many of the multimedia presentations, and, either ad libbed or wrote much of the copy.

I had a show badge at a pretty high level (some minor Executive) that got me into any part of the IBM booth. I also had pins from other booths, stuck onto my show badge, but only from companies that had strategic alliances with IBM. So, I had an AT&T pin, one from Sony, from Alcatel and TelMex and I knew what each of the alliances with these companies was...and several people had asked me and I told them why I had on the pins and they appreciated the information...however....

The President of IBM Europe (EMEA) wandered by my station on the show floor and saw my pins and told his staffie to tell my management that I was to remove all the pins from my badge, and even though I explained my situation to my management they had me remove the pins, and so, I removed all except the Radio Bejing pin, with which IBM had no alliance, except in tactics!

I worked with a fellow named Bayou Citizen. Bayou was a good old boy from Texas, but he'd been urbanized and urbaneized too. Spoke with nary a drawl. He was the field sales manager and I was the "Friend from the Factory" marketing guy, and together we'd get announcement activities accomplished.

We would measure the project by how many lives it would cost. We could look at a timeframe, and a list of activities, and decide, in 6-12 weeks time, how many people will have to be put into action for how many hours, and that's how we decided what the number of lives it would take to do the project.

For example, part of IBM's response to the 1987 stock market crash was to host 350 NYSE analysts, brokers, et al at a all day event on an IBM "college campus" (Thornwood). I was asked 6 weeks prior what we ought to demonstrate, and what we showed on the day was exactly what I had envisioned. Total Carte Blanche, I had a charge code, and that was that...(not a clue what the total event cost, but our demonstration included a private courier to transport one of only TWO 4MB cards in the world for the then PC (running OS/2!), so that we could do windows during the demo!)

Well, when we did the budget for this event, we figured it was a 3 life lost project. That's how many weeks of how many people's lives would be spent getting the event accomplished...3 lifetimes!

How many lifetimes?
How deadly Is the project?
We had to access!

Once Upon A Time
In a galaxy far far
Justice Prevailed

How Free Time is Spent... July 4th 2007

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/04/iphone_hack/


Famed reverse engineer Jon Lech Johansen claims to have discovered a way to "activate" an iPhone without signing up for a contract with AT&T. The hack allows users to use the iPod and Wi-Fi capabilities of the devices, but doesn't allow use of its phone features.


It is so frightening, what people do in their spare time...

Consumerism
Takes up money and free time
Mass's Opiate

Cheney as Darth Vader, Only scarier...

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/06/29/18431623.php

Dick Cheney as Darth
Not truly conservative
But Greedy as Hell.

Best Wishes to My Mother "Alyse Sue" from those who couldn't come to her 80th birthday from the electonic card invitation site.

Sue, you're just getting started I suspect, now that you're warmed up. Wish I could be there, you have so many friends and admirers that it can't help but be a heckuva bash! Will
fer.z
Wishing you a very Happy 80th Birthday. Like a good wine, you certainly get better with age. All my love, niece Jennifer
geb
Great idea!! We are sorry we will not be able to come. Since "Sue knows the date" we will however be sure to have an e-mail in the mail on time
wdans
All our best. 80's the new 60, so enjoy. Ric and David
fk95r
What great family members you all are. Wish I could be there in person but will celebrate with my wildest outfit. Thanks for thinking of me. You will all be in my thoughts from 5 to 8 (my time zone). Have a fabo celo! Francine
wjmann3
We are so sorry but we are driving to San Franciisco on Sunday to celebrate our grandson's birthday. I think you guys are great to honor your Mom and please accept our regrets- we don't like missing parties! ann and him
(+ 3 guests)
Have a spectacular day! Eat and drink and enjoy yourselves. We'll catch you later in the summer! Much love,
nny
Sorry I can't make what promises to be the party of the year, but will send Sue birthday greetings via mail. Barb tov ---sorry to miss this occasion (+ 3 guests) We will surely be eating a lot of cake.
Flash
Best love and birthday wishes to a great friend and incredible woman. So sorry we can't be there to celebrate with you. love Flash and mum.
dan
Nancy- I cant come , but sent a card to Sue c/o The Terrace and some Doggerel- love to all - dan
puker
je
Sorry i can't make the real party but surely will toast Sue with some bubbly to celebrate her b-day. A great idea to send cards...will get one off tomorrow. Enjoy and give her a hug for me.
jud
Sorry we won't be there to celebrate with all of you-sounds very festive! It will be our pleasure to honor her with a donation. Have fun! Jane, Dave and Arnie.
sa
will be there in spirt!
judy
I will be there in spirit and gretting card. Judy
uzaa
mwlis
We're really sorry we can't make it. We'd really like to celebrate with Sue and visit with the family.
termons
So sorry but I can't make it that wekend. Several parties already in the works tho non as fancy as an 80th b-day. Have a great time and sing loudly for me. Thanks for including me. Love, Cousin ry
Ei
Sorry we can't make it!
rmei
Big birthday hugs when the time is right but alas we three cannot join you--R, F & J
drama
I'll be in Seattle still on Sunday, but I'll see her on Thursday!
gy
I cannot go. Thank you very much! Gy
Khaszkhstan

Sorry, I am unable to attend. Please give your Mom my most Heartfelt wishes for a Very Healthy and Happy 80th Birthday. Jim
jerck
so sorry that we will not be there! happy birthday to sue and we will be sending greetings to the restaurant! hugs and love to all of you! xxx j and p
puls
Sorry I can't make it, but I appreciate your info and will pass it along to a couple of other people from our Control Data days so maybe they will send cards too.
ynellj
We'll drink a toast to Sue on her 80th on Sunday (and Tuesday!). Sorry we can't be there. Jeanne and Burt
bin.bat
Sorry we can't make it over from Stockholm, but perhaps we can call your cell during the event? art
So sorry that Bill and I cannot make the trip from Minneapolis for this festive event. Our best wishes on this most special day! - art
ical
Unable to make it. Enjoy and Mazel Tov!
ioe.eio
I'm so sad to miss this great celebration. Unfortunately, I will be on holiday. Have a great time!
Mr
I wuld certainly add to the surprise! Sorry to miss the fun.
ssrne
I'll send the birthday message right now and of course one on the actual day. Michael, when you give the speech on the day please mention that she has been my inspiration since the 80's in ZIm and especially during my bout with cancer. A fabulous and amazing woman!!!!!!!
raybow
Sad! ;-(
icop2
Nancy and Michael, We'll certianly be there in spirit but unfortunately we won't be able to attend in person. Wow, an 80th birthday. I guess we're all getting a little older. We will certainly send a birthday card, a contribution and call on Tuesday the 26th. Love, icaAn
gmn
I am sorry that I cannot join you in person but I will be there in spirit. I will send a card, tho, and light a few candles in Sue's honor!
aooe
But I'll be there in spirit (and on paper).
sanjb
So sorry to miss the event. I emailed before but maybe you did not receive it. I will be in Las Vegas for that weekend. My best to everyone! JaWii
alon
I am sooo sorry that we will be traveling (taking the family on safari!) and unable to celebrate with you. lanurG
ienat
DAMN! I'm really bummed about this, but I'll be in the greater Seattle area that weekend, and a long planned and sorely needed vacation... I wish it weren't so! I'll wait to convey my best wishes until after the party, so as to not blow the big surprise! Hope you all have a great time, and really sorry to miss it!!
ldngnk
hl0
Darling invite, and so sorry we are 2000 miles away. Enjoy! Ann & Felix

llln
sorry I can't make the party for the BIG 80! I'd much rather be in California than NJ--Alas- Mazel Tov- May we all get together for such happy occasions! Enjoy L