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 Crisis Conduct
By: Stephan A. Schwartz
I created Crisis Conduct to help you gain and maintain control of your life during times of great stress and challenges. Each step-by-step experiential CD is a unique technology based on worldwide university and laboratory research to alter your consciousness.
Combining literally hundreds of research studies with ancient and honored inner-pilgrimage traditions, these powerful transformative experiences become your life-time toolkit to navigate through challenging times, whenever you need them
Available Now!! Click here for details and ordering information.
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| Sunday, 19 May 2013 |
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Will the Catholic Bishops Decide How You Die or Whether You Live?
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| As if our healthcare system weren't in bad enough shape, it appears we now have to choose our hospitals based on religious policies. All of this is part of the politically aggressive Theocratic Right, which has invaded healthcare, schools, and the armed services. Collectively this is a concerted effort to impose a minorities' religious views on society as a whole. If you are over 50 this is not the Christianity you and I grew up with. This is neo-medievalism in the 21st century. |
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VALERIE TARICO - Truthout |
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What happens when religious institutions get to manage public funds, absorb secular hospitals, and put theology above medical science and individual patient conscience? Religious freedom suffers.
In 2010, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, an elderly woman was rushed to a local hospital called St. John. She had suffered a massive stroke and could no longer eat, drink or speak. Mercifully, she was one of the growing percent of Americans who have prepared for such an eventuality by writing an end-of-life directive. Hers said that said she did not want artificial hydration or nutrition if she wasn't going to recover. Unfortunately, St. John is a facility where the directives of the Catholic bishops take precedence over the directives of individual patients, and one such directive orders hospitals to feed and hydrate end-of-life patients whether they want it or not.
Americans would do well to consider what happens when theology dictates health ... |
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Christianity of the Inquisition in the US Army
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This is what I mean by the Theocratic Right's aggressive program to convert armed services personnel.
Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired United States Army colonel, and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell. Wilkerson is an adjunct professor at the College of William & Mary where he teaches courses on US national security. He also instructs a senior seminar in the Honors Department at the George Washington University entitled "National Security Decision Making." |
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Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, USA (Ret.) - The Real News |
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PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. And welcome to this week's edition of The Wilkerson Report with Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson.
Larry was the former chief of staff for Colin Powell for many years. He teaches at the William & Mary College, often appears on The Real News.
Thanks for joining us.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: Thanks for having me, Paul.
JAY: So you recently joined the board of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Why?
WILKERSON: I didn't know the problem was as rampant as it is. And when Mikey Weinstein, who is the head of the foundation, identified to me that his board member Doherty, Glen Doherty, had just been killed in Benghazi and he needed a replacement, I was a little reluctant, because I understand that sometimes Christ is necessary in the foxhole, ... |
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Western Leaders Study 'Gamechanging' Report on Global Drugs Trade
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| Here is another facet of the trend towards the ending of Marijuana Prohibition, and a re-evaluation of non-pharmaceutical drugs. Our policies have been destroying Central and South American nations, and they have had enough. |
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JAMIE DOWARD - The Observer (U.K.) |
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European governments and the Obama administration are this weekend studying a "gamechanging" report on global drugs policy that is being seen in some quarters as the beginning of the end for blanket prohibition.
Publication of the Organisation of American States (OAS) review, commissioned at last year's Cartagena Summit of the Americas attended by Barack Obama, reflects growing dissatisfaction among Latin American countries with the current global policy on illicit drugs. It spells out the effects of the policy on many countries and examines what the global drugs trade will look like if the status quo continues. It notes how rapidly countries' unilateral drugs policies are evolving, while at the same time there is a growing consensus over the human costs of the trade. "Growing media attention regarding this phenomenon in many countries, including on social media, reflects a world in which there is far greater awareness of the violence ... |
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America's First Climate Refugees
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The Northern indigenous peoples, who have lived in the isolated Alaskan north are the first to fall victim to climate change. They will not be the only ones, as we will all discover in the coming years.
Click through to see the very sad video, and the many pictures that accompany this report. |
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SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - The Guardian (U.K.) |
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NEWTOK, ALASKA -- Sabrina Warner keeps having the same nightmare: a huge wave rearing up out of the water and crashing over her home, forcing her to swim for her life with her toddler son.
"I dream about the water coming in," she said. The landscape in winter on the Bering Sea coast seems peaceful, the tidal wave of Warner's nightmare trapped by snow and several feet of ice. But the calm is deceptive. Spring break-up will soon restore the Ninglick River to its full violent force.
In the dream, Warner climbs on to the roof of her small house. As the waters rise, she swims for higher ground: the village school which sits on 20-foot pilings.
Even that isn't high enough. By the time Warner wakes, she is clinging to the roof of the school, desperate to be saved.
Warner's vision is not far removed ... |
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Cancer Diagnosis Puts People at Greater Risk for Bankruptcy
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| This is what the illness profit system has produced. There is no other advanced Western nation about which this story could be written. It is our great shame that we punish the severely ill over money. |
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DEAN FORBES - Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center |
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SEATTLE – People diagnosed with cancer are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to declare bankruptcy than those without cancer, according to a new study from Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Researchers also found that younger cancer patients had two- to five-fold higher bankruptcy rates compared to older patients, and that overall bankruptcy filings increased as time passed following diagnosis.
The study, led by corresponding author Scott Ramsey, M.D., Ph.D., an internist and health economist at Fred Hutch, was published online on May 15 as a Web First in the journal Health Affairs. The article will also appear in the journal's June edition.
Ramsey and colleagues, including a chief judge for a U.S. Bankruptcy Court, undertook the research because the relationship between receiving a cancer diagnosis and bankruptcy is less well understood than the much-studied link between high medical expenses and likelihood of bankruptcy filing.
"This study ... |
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| Saturday, 18 May 2013 |
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The Army Goes Off the Grid
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| This is good news. The military, perhaps because it is a centralized command structure, often adopts progressive positions before general society. The military integrated long before the rest of America. It became a gender, race, and religion neutral meritocracy -- an evolution in which I played a role -- well before this was the norm. So the military's adaptation of noncarbon energy is the latest in a line of accomplishments. |
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Jim Hightower - Nation of Change |
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Do you know about 'net zero”? That’s the wonky phrase attached to an elegant idea: converting communities to total renewable energy, complete recycling, and a culture of conservation to bring humankind’s carbon footprint into a sustainable balance with a healthy earth.
Now, imagine the last place you’d expect this ideal to take root…and even flourish. How about an Army base? In Texas? Well, astonishingly enough, the Army is pioneering America’s net-zero future. Fort Bliss, a sprawling military base accommodating 35,000 soldiers in El Paso, is one of our armed forces’ leading hotbeds of energy conservation and creativity.
The post already has a 1.4-megawatt solar array and has placed rooftop solar panels on enough base housing to generate 13.4-megawatts of energy. It’s partnering with El Paso Electric to add a 200-acre, 20-megawatt solar farm by 2015. The base’s managers plan to convert its own waste into energy. Oh, and ... |
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'World’s Greenest Office Building” Makes Net-Zero Look Easy
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| It can be done. |
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SAMANTHA THOMAS - Yes! |
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Peering down Seattle’s Capitol Hill, the Bullitt Center appears to be just another high-end commercial building-until you look up and notice the roof, which is overlaid with shiny silver photovoltaic panels that extend far beyond the building’s exterior walls. Even in the cloudiest of cities, the panels generate all the electricity the six-story structure requires.
The building is a project of the Bullitt Foundation, which calls it 'the greenest commercial building in the world.” The foundation, which was founded in 1952, has focused since the 1990s on helping to create cities that function more like ecosystems. Its new building provides office space for eco-conscious tenants, but also functions as a learning center that demonstrates how people and businesses can exist in harmony with nature.
The Bullitt Center was built according to a demanding green building certification program called the Living Building Challenge, which lists net zero use of ... |
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World's Largest Fat-burning Power Station to Burn Blubber From London Sewers
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| Here is a recycling opportunity I never even considered. It just goes to prove yet again, how profligate we are with resources, and how much can be gained through recycling. |
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JAMES HOLLOWAY - GizMag |
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East London is set to play host to the world's biggest power station to run solely on fat, which will provide a much-needed use for the discarded fat which can block the city's sewer system. The station will generate 130 gigawatt-hours of electricity per year, enough to power about 39,000 houses.
The power station is to be built in Beckton, East London, where some 75 GWh (58 percent) of the output will be sent directly to the nearby Beckton sewage works, run by Thames Water, as well as a local desalination plant brought online during droughts and emergencies. The rest of the energy will be fed into the national grid. Set to contribute a little over 6 percent of the 1.3 terrawatt-hours of electricity Thames Water uses every year, the new plant will boost Thames Water's renewably-sourced energy from 14 to 20 percent.
As part of the deal, ... |
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Glyphosate’s Suppression of Cytochrome P450 Enzymes and Amino Acid Biosynthesis by the Gut Microbiome: Pathways to Mod
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This is the abstract from a peer-reviewed paper providing further proof of the toxic nature of Glyphosate, the principal ingredient of Round Up. This stuff is truly dangerous. It is going to be the next DDT -- for those old enough to remember that.
Click through and you can download the full text of the paper. |
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ANTHONY SAMEL and STEPHANIE SENEFF - entropy |
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Abstract: Glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup®, is the most popular herbicide used worldwide. The industry asserts it is minimally toxic to humans, but here we argue otherwise. Residues are found in the main foods of the Western diet, comprised primarily of sugar, corn, soy and wheat. Glyphosate's inhibition of cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes is an overlooked component of its toxicity to mammals. CYP enzymes play crucial roles in biology, one of which is to detoxify xenobiotics. Thus, glyphosate enhances the damaging effects of other food borne chemical residues and environmental toxins. Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body. Here, we show how interference with CYP enzymes acts synergistically with disruption of the biosynthesis of aromatic amino acids by gut bacteria, as well as impairment in serum sulfate transport. Consequences are most of the diseases and conditions ... |
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World’s Fish Have Been Moving to Cooler Waters for Decades, Study Finds
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| More alarm bells to which no one in power is listening. |
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LENNY BERNSTEIN - The Washington Post |
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Fish and other sea life have been moving toward Earth’s poles in search of cooler waters, part of a worldwide, decades-long migration documented for the first time by a study released Wednesday.
The research, published in the journal Nature, provides more evidence of a rapidly warming planet and has broad repercussions for fish harvests around the globe.
Can zoos save polar bears from extinction?: Global warming puts polar bears’ natural environment in jeopardy. Some zoos say captivity could help them survive global warming’s assault.
University of British Columbia researchers found that significant numbers of 968 species of fish and invertebrates they examined moved to escape the warming waters of their original habitats.Previous studies had documented the same phenomenon in specific parts of the world’s oceans. But the new study is the first to assess the migration worldwide and to look back as far as 1970, according to ... |
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| Friday, 17 May 2013 |
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Climate Research Nearly Unanimous on Human Causes, Survey Finds
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I know that a certain number of my readers do not believe climate change is occurring or, if it is occurring that it is human mediated. Readers write me, and post in the comments section to this effect. Everyone of course, is entitled to his or her own opinion but not, as the saying goes to their own facts.
I am a scientist, facts matter to me. As a consciousness researcher I am all too aware of the power of denierism, even amongst scientists. A survey in New Scientist showed about one-third of all scientists, for instance, believe consciousness is entirely a peculiarity of our physiology, and nonlocal consciousness is impossible. A small number of them are very vocal, and get lots of media attention. But two-thirds think something more is going on.
With that as context, there is no third of scientists who deny climate change. Indeed, as this report makes clear the number is less than three per cent. For science climate change is happening, and it is heavily anthropogenic. This subject is only in dispute at the political and religious levels -- where facts don't play much of a role. |
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SUZANNE GOLDENBERG - The Guardian (U.K.) |
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A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.
Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.
The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.
The study described the dissent as a "vanishingly small proportion" of published research.
"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite ... |
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Why Rituals Work
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| Many years ago I spoke at a conference along with Paul de Chardin, a neoplatonic philosopher at Haverford. In answer to a question from the audience, from a lapsed Roman Catholic, who asked de Chardin didn't he find the rituals of the Church medieval and meaningless, I was surprised to hear him reply that, No, he found small rituals very important. He went on to describe how he used small quotidian rituals to remind himself that he was a spiritual being. "Every morning as I stand under the shower I undergo the rite of Baptism. And every time I break a piece of bread I am reminded of the Eucharist. It had a huge effect on me. From that day on, I have never put any food in my mouth without stopping to say a personal grace. And with every shower I reconsecrate myself to my spiritual purpose. Breaking up the day with small personal rituals that are meaningful to you, whether they make any sense to anyone else I find is a very useful practice for a healthy life. |
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FRANCESCA GINO and MICHAEL I. NORTON - Scientific American |
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Think about the last time you were about to interview for a job, speak in front of an audience, or go on a first date. To quell your nerves, chances are you spent time preparing – reading up on the company, reviewing your slides, practicing your charming patter. People facing situations that induce anxiety typically take comfort in engaging in preparatory activities, inducing a feeling of being back in control and reducing uncertainty.
While a little extra preparation seems perfectly reasonable, people also engage in seemingly less logical behaviors in such situations. Here’s one person’s description from our research:
I pound my feet strongly on the ground several times, I take several deep breaths, and I "shake" my body to remove any negative energies. I do this often before going to work, going into meetings, and at the front door before entering my house after a ... |
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New Phone app Allows Users to Boycott Koch Brothers and Monsanto Products
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This is wonderful news. One of those little social acupunctures that allows the 99 per cent to speak out effectively -- don't buy their stuff.
Go to: http://www.buycott.com/ to download.
I urge all my readers to do so and shop accordingly. |
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ARTURO GARCIA |
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A phone app allowing users to identify products used by questionable companies like Koch Industries and Monsanto has generated enough demand to cause problems for the developer, Forbes reported on Tuesday.
'The workload is a bit overwhelming now,” said 26-year-old Ivan Pardo, the developer behind Buycott. 'Our Android app was just recently released and the surge of new users today has highlighted a serious bug on certain devices that needs to be fixed immediately. So all other development tasks I was working on get put on hold until I can get this bug fixed.”
Pardo, who has been designing the app over the past 16 months, said there is no partisanship behind Buycott, which provides users with the ownership background of products by scanning their barcode.
The app also allows users to take part in online campaigns that boycott or, alternatively, highlight companies that support their political ... |
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SheerWind Claims Its INVELOX Wind Turbine Produces 600% More Power
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| Wind power seems about to undergo a next stage evolution. This story is an example. Carbon energy still reigns, but I see an exhilarating transition trend. It is going to be fascinating to watch, and even participate in. |
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BOB YIRKA - Phys.org |
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SheerWind Inc. of Chaska, Minnesota is claiming in a press release that its newly developed funnel-based wind turbine system is capable of producing 600 percent more power than conventional wind turbines. The new design uses funnels to channel wind to a ground-based turbine.
The idea behind the INVELOX system is to capture wind using wide mouthed funnels and channel it via ducts to a turbine sitting at ground level. The wind picks up speed as it is concentrated through a series of nozzle and pipes before it is delivered to a turbine, which produces electricity. SheerWind claims in its announcement that the system is capable of producing electricity with wind speeds as low as 1mph.
As an example, they say that tests have demonstrated that the system operating in natural wind speeds of 10mph is able to increase that speed to 40mph before it enters the turbine. After ... |
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The Geography of Hate
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Once again the difference between the Blue value and Red Value states, and the reality of this Great Schism is made clear. Be sure and click through and see the dynamic map. It is very sobering.
The full interactive map is available here: http://users.humboldt.edu/mstephens/hate/hate_map.html |
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Floating Sheep |
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UPDATE (5/13/13 @ 10:45pm): We have written and published a FAQ to respond to some of the questions and concerns raised in the comments here and elsewhere. Please review our comments there before commenting or emailing.
Following the 2012 US Presidential election, we created a map of tweets that referred to President Obama using a variety of racist slurs. In the wake of that map, we received a number of criticisms - some constructive, others not - about how we were measuring what we determined to be racist sentiments. In that work, we showed that the states with the highest relative amount of racist content referencing President Obama - Mississippi and Alabama - were notable not only for being starkly anti-Obama in their voting patterns, but also for their problematic histories of racism. That is, even a fairly crude and cursory analysis can show how contemporary expressions of racism ... |
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San Onofre Restart Odds Dim
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| This report describes another reactor breakdown. Nuclear reactors are now in their 40s, at the end of their lifetimes. There will be more and more of this. The last reactor built began in 1977. Nuclear energy, I believe, is going to prove to be an unbelievably expensive wrong turn, given life by the paranoia of the Cold War. |
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MORGAN LEE - NPR |
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A federal panel on nuclear safety has called for a full public hearing on a proposal to restart a damaged reactor at the San Onofre nuclear plant, siding in large part with the environmental group Friends of the Earth in an order published Monday.
The Atomic Licensing and Safety Board found that the destructive vibrations among steam generator tubes that have sidelined San Onofre are not accounted for in the plant’s official safety blueprint, known as the updated Final Safety Analysis Report.
An evaluation by Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff of plans to restart the plant at partial power amounts to an amendment of the operating rules - creating the opportunity for public hearings on the proposal, the board found.
The decision by a three-member panel of administrative judges, independent of nuclear commission staff, complicates plant operator Southern California Edison’s efforts build a secure regulatory footing to restart ... |
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