Thursday, September 07, 2006
"...Gaia to its furthest conceivable magnitude..."
Gardner envisions a final state of the cosmos in which a highly evolved form of group intelligence--a cosmic community--marshals the assets of matter and energy bequeathed by the Big Bang and engineers a cosmic renewal: the birth of a new baby universe endowed with the same life-giving propensity that our cosmos enjoys.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy on Freedom
"...a slight foreboding..." is an understatement. Watch this.
"Spain says Africa must do more to stop migrants"
The rate of arrivals from the Canaries hit a new level at the weekend, and the central government's office said 1,965 Africans had arrived there since Friday -- nearly half the total during the whole of 2005.
"We are prepared to act with all due firmness," [Spanish Deputy Prime Minister] Fernandez de la Vega said, adding that everyone arriving in Spain illegally will eventually be made to leave.
Spain is angry that African countries are not cooperating more with the repatriation of their citizens who risk their lives on a dangerous voyage hundreds of kilometres (miles) up West African coasts to the Canaries.
Fernandez de la Vega did not say how Spain could prompt more cooperation, although trade, aid and cooperation agreements could provide Madrid with many ways of putting pressure on such poor states, especially if it gets European Union backing.
"Sweet Pea owners: 'We didn't want this'"
The men admitted that they jumped a fence and took fruits and vegetables from the garbage area at Sweet Pea [Produce]. They originally were charged with felony second-degree burglary and misdemeanor theft. They accepted the plea agreement offered by Assistant District Attorney Kerry St. James, they said, because they did not want to risk being convicted of a felony.
“Once I found out what these guys were being charged with, I contacted (St. James),” said Jonathon Hieb, who owns Sweet Pea with Katherine Zambrana. “I told him, ‘We’re not behind this prosecution. We don’t want anything to do with it.’ I thought for sure my input would have some kind of bearing, but he wasn’t hearing any of it.”
Hieb said St. James told him he was going to make an example of the men.
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St. James also asked Judge James Garrecht to fine the men $42 for each day they serve in jail, the standard cost of care for inmates. Garrecht refused.
"Hundreds of Suspected Taliban Killed"
Monday, September 04, 2006
"Harvard: Prof Did Not 'Intentionally' Suppress Fluoride-Cancer Study"
The panel's announcement came in the form of a four-paragraph statement. The panel's report, like the proceeding that produced it, is secret and not available to the public.
The data in question, which have since been published in a peer-reviewed journal by four Harvard professors and PhDs, strongly rebut Douglass's position and reveal a highly significant relationship between bone cancer in boys and fluoride in tap water.
"This excuse is so tortured, you can see why it took a bunch of Harvard professors a year to concoct it. Are we to believe that Dr. Douglass somehow forgot about the results of research that he signed-off on, that completely contradicted what he'd told taxpayers and public officials about bone cancer in boys and drinking fluoridated water?" said Richard Wiles, Senior Vice President of EWG.
"Whether or not Dr. Douglass intentionally suppressed and misrepresented these data is irrelevant," said Wiles. "He deceived the public and health officials about critical research findings for years, and hundreds of boys suffered the consequences."
The Harvard panel also brushed aside a clear conflict on interest stemming from the fact that Douglass is a paid consultant for the toothpaste industry, a major user of fluoride. "It is a sad day for Harvard when such a blatant financial conflict of interest is acceptable, particularly when the health of children is at stake," said Wiles.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
Hermann Hesse
via WikiquoteDemian (1919)
We aren't pigs as you seem to think, but human beings. We create gods and struggle with them, and they bless us.Siddhartha (1922)
I had to strive for property and experience nausea and the depths of despair in order to learn not to resist them, in order to learn to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of desired imaginary world, some imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it.Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)
How mysterious this life was, how deep and muddy its waters ran, yet how clear and noble what emerged from them.
The Glass Bead Game (1943)
How alien our country has become from her noblest Province and how unfaithful to that Province's spirit; how far body and soul, ideal and reality have moved apart in our country; how little they know about each other, or want to know.General
My instinct as an individualist and artist has always warned me most urgently against this capacity of men for becoming drunk on collective suffering, collective pride, collective hatred, and collective honor. When this morbid exaltation becomes perceptible in a room, a hall, a village, a city, or a country, I grow cold and distrustful; a shudder comes over me, for already, while most of my fellow men are still weeping with rapture and enthusiasm, still cheering and venting protestations of brotherhood, I see blood flowing and cities going up in flames.
