This legislation reveals once again that government will always be decades behind cutting-edge healthcare, and beholden to special interests as well. Action Alert! After a year of discussions and negotiation, Reps. Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Fred Upton (R-MI), together with three other co-sponsors, finally released a preliminary draft of their 21st Century Cures bill. It’s clear that the authors intend this bill to …
Even in a Drought, California Farms Have a Future—But They’ll Need Local Control to Succeed – Keith Harrington
Last month, for the first time in history, California enacted mandatory limits on how much water its residents can use. And yet, as a recent op-ed in The New York Times points out, the state is exporting 100 billion gallons of water a year in the form of cattle feed. That’s right: cattle feed. California’s thirstiest crop isn’t almonds or broccoli or …
YOUR DNA CHANGES WITH THE SEASONS, JUST LIKE THE WEATHER – NICK STOCKTON
AH, MY SWEET summer child. What do you know of inflammation? Inflammation is for the winter, when genes uncoil in your blood and messengers send codes containing the blueprints for proteins to protect you from the harsh diseases of the cold. Inflammation is for those long nights, when the sun hides its face, or rain clouds block the sky, and trillions …
America’s Achilles’ Heel – Dmitry Orlov
Last Saturday, a massive Victory Parade was held in Moscow commemorating the 70-year anniversary of the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Red Army and the erection of the Soviet flag atop the Reichstag in Berlin. There were a few unusual aspects to this parade, which I would like to point out, because they conflict with the western official propaganda …
Terms of debate: Destroying vs altering nature, the fragile vs the resilient Earth – Kurt Cobb
Last week’s piece drew responses that throw into relief how much the language we use depends on our most basic assumptions about how the world works. If left unexamined, that language leads to further conclusions that go unchallenged because the underlying assumptions are never scrutinized. I challenged the Breakthrough Institute’s notion that humans are in one category and nature in another. If one …
Scientists mystified by unusual strandings of large sea creatures on West Coast
Beach mystery: Another dead whale washes up in Pacifica — For the second time in three weeks, a dead whale has washed up on [the same beach]… “Something’s going on with nature,” said Ralph Clement… “This is kind of eerie. What are the odds of two whales in the same place? It has to mean something.”… “This is just not supposed …
Jeb Bush, the Mexican Drug Cartel and “Free Trade”. The Bush Family and Organized Crime – Prof Michel Chossudovsky
Jeb Bush is a presidential candidate. But Jeb is not only the brother of George W. and the son of George H. W. Bush. Jeb Bush also had close personal ties to Raul Salinas de Gortiari, brother of Mexico’s former president Carlos Salinas de Gortiari. In the 1990s, Raul the “drug kingpin”, according to Switzerland’s federal prosecutor Carla del Ponte, was one of the main …
Pope Francis: Stealth Climate Warrior – Candida Moss
Pope Francis is in Sri Lanka and the Philippines this week on his second tour of Asia. His whirlwind trip through centers of both religious piety and religious conflict is an opportunity for Francis to deliver some of the high points of his papal message in his own distinctive style. The calls for truth and reconciliation he issued when he …
The Cognitive Short-Circuit of “Artificial Consciousness” – Bernardo Kastrup
The new sci-fi film Ex_Machina has been teasing back into the cultural dialogue dreams of artificial consciousness: the idea that we humans, through the Faustian power of technology, can birth into being mechanisms capable of inner life, subjectivity and affection. Since these dreams are entirely based on implicit assumptions about the nature of consciousness and reality at large, I thought a few …
It’s Time to Boycott Ben & Jerry’s – MARK HAGE
In 2011, Vermonters for a Just Peace in Palestine/Israel began a discussion with Ben & Jerry’s in South Burlington, Vermont, concerning their long-standing contractual relationship with an Israeli franchise that manufactures ice cream in Israel proper and sells it in Israel settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. These settlements – fortified colonies for Jews only – contravene international law. Ben & …