Marijuana smokers who spend most of their time stoned are more likely to have higher levels of a protein that may raise risks of heart attack and stroke, scientists said.
The study subjects, who reported smoking from 78 to 350 joints a week, had elevated amounts of a chemical that raises the amount of fats in their blood, wrote researchers in the Journal of Molecular Psychiatry. Higher levels of these fats, known as triglycerides, increase risks of cardiac disease and stroke.
The study suggests marijuana's active ingredient stimulates the liver to produce too much of the protein. Marijuana is the most-frequently used illegal drug in the U.S., according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Heavy marijuana use has been linked to psychosis, hypertension and memory loss, the authors wrote.
"Evidence exists that its abuse is a risk factor for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disorders,'' wrote the authors, whose research was led by Jean Lud Cadet of NIDA, based in Bethesda, Maryland. The study, of 18 users and 24 non-smokers, wasn't designed to measure whether the pot-smokers had heart disease. Bong
Jaysus! If you strapped my ass in an iron chair and force fed me Starbucks triple espressos and I had an unlimited supply of ice cream available on a Pavlovian basis, I couldn't smoke 50 joints a week - and I'm no light weight. Those so called subjects were lying. Anybody who smoked that much would be comatose and sure as hell not able to make it into some clinic to respond to questionaires asked by straight people in lab coats with clipboards and pointed questions. As far as the results of the study, obviously the research team didn't take into account the 'M' factor. 'M' being for munchies. Stoners go for the sugar and fat and to hell the celery sticks and Appalachaian Trail Mix granola - of course their blood is going be as choked up with triglycerides and fat as the Hollywood freeway is at five on a Friday afternoon.
CLAREMONT, CA - Indiana Jones better get his alibi ready. A large crystal skull similar to those at the center of the upcoming Harrison Ford movie was recently stolen from a New Age store, puzzling employees in part because of the laid-back nature of shop regulars.
"We have zero shoplifting in here, and I have no idea why anyone would take something as lovely as that," said Persis Newland, owner of Kindred Spirits in Claremont, about 30 miles east of downtown Los Angeles.
The skull, named Solar Ray by owner Don Marr, had been on loan at Kindred Spirits for about four months and went missing about two weeks ago. It had sat on an altar in the store's classroom area and was considered one of the shop's prized objects.
"He was on an altar, and he just enjoyed being here," said employee Kristen Nestor, who supervises the store's weekly crystal-reading classes. "He participated in our classes. Nestor said she believes the skull is as old as 500 years.
"He likes to travel and things like that," Nestor said. "He was here for about four months, just enjoying everyone who comes through here." Oooooom
Haifa, Israel - Many employees often do not file grievances even when presented with the opportunity to do so. A new study in Industrial Relations sought to assess the degree to which certain minority groups may be more or less prone to file grievances as a way to remedy particular types of workplace issues or problems.
Self-report data were collected from a sample of 866 blue-collar workers drawn from four unions in the northeastern United States. The study assessed employee grievance filing in relationship to demographic variables, including gender and race. The sample consisted of men, women, whites, African Americans, and Hispanics. The overall rate of actual grievance filing by women and ethnic minorities was not significantly different from that of their male or white counterparts.
However, employee demographic characteristics do serve as a significant moderator of the link between the severity of potentially injurious workplace conditions and the rate of employee grievance filing. Specifically, the grievance filing of women and minorities was more sensitive to the severity of particular workplace conditions than was the grievance filing of their majority peers.
In contrast, the grievance-filing behavior of men and whites tended to remain fairly constant regardless of their perceived level of workplace injustice or injury. It is reasonable to expect then that grievance filing for women and minorities will be utilized only when the severity of the condition is such that the failure to file is perceived as entailing even greater risks than those entailed in filing. Link
This one made me laugh. Despite the obvious effort the author put into trying to interject his personal bias, it still doesn't say anything beyond the fact that women and minorities whine more often, whine more loudly and are heard more readily and more often. Now before you get going - I am mostly Native American, but I look white, so I can speak for the white man, as I have been perceived thus all of my life.
Who in THE hell would listen if a white man complained? They do so on occasion - like in the odd reverse discrimination lawsuit - and are summarily laughed out of court. If a white man accuses a woman OR another man of sexual harrassment - he is derided and dismissed. And then there's the fact that white men are outnumbered. Women are the majority - 52% according to the last census. And if you add all the ethnic minorities up - they outnumber white men as well. In fact, white men are the real minority and, I might add, a truly endangered species.
The bully is the scourge of the elementary school playground. So who could object to a new anti-bullying curriculum scheduled to be tested in three Minneapolis elementary schools - Hale, Jefferson and Park View - and adopted districtwide if successful?
But what if that curriculum is really a disguise for a very different agenda brought to Minneapolis by the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington, D.C.-based gay and transgender advocacy group? What if its lessons have little to do with bullying, and much to do with ensuring that kids as young as age 5 submit to HRC's orthodoxy on family structure, even if it differs from their own parents' view?
What if students who dissent are subjected to teacher-directed peer pressure and negative evaluations? In other words, what if anti-bullying advocates themselves turn out to be the bullies? Welcome to the "Welcoming Schools" curriculum. This is a must read!
Go read it - I made it so it won't take you from here - it'll open in another window. This is the most infuriating story I've read in a very looong time and it will disturb you as well. Or at least it should. It's bad enough this nation is under constant assault from all quarters from the outside, but we are also being ripped apart and destroyed from the inside out. The very saddest thing is that is not a thing we can do about it ...
Breathalyser tests for people leaving bars and cafes across France could be mandatory from this summer under a plan to be put Monday before President Nicolas Sarkozy's cabinet, Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo said Sunday.
The move - revealed by Borloo on France 2 television - follows a particularly deadly Pentacostal holiday weekend on French roads, with at least 17 fatalities in seven accidents reported, some of them alcohol-related.
"I can tell you that tomorrow, at the council of ministers, Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot and I will present a decree to make electronic breathalyser tests obligatory in drinking establishments open until 2:00 am, so that everyone can check their level, their condition upon leaving," he said. "I hope that by this summer, it will be obligatory in all such places," he said, adding that the idea has already been trialled at 350 cafes and bars in the west of France.
In the weekend's deadliest accident, four people aged 15 through 26 were killed Saturday when the car they were in went off the road near Forbach, in the east of France. Police said the driver, 36, who survived, had been drinking. Le link
Looks good on paper, but consider the possibilites. First it'll be optional, then mandatory. Then they'll check you after every hour to see if you can continue to be served. Then it's only a matter of time before the government realizes the potential for tax revenue. Every tenth of a point you blow over a certain level will equal another 10% tax on the price of your drinks. Basically, they will be taxing intoxication. Remember, in Europe, they think nothing of imposing a tax on mileage - they tax your actual vacation travel. They tax your television viewing annually. Would it come as any surprise they'd tax euphoria?
Authorities in Spain launched Sunday an investigation into the deaths of at least 18 people in a reported bacteria epidemic at one of Madrid's main hospitals.
Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, who was on an official visit to Niger, announced a probe into what she described as "a very, very serious incident" at the 12th October University Hospital.
El Pais reported that at least 18 people had died in a bacteria epidemic that infected more than 250 patients over a period of 20 months at the hospital.
The deaths were caused by Acinetobacter baumannii, a highly virulent hospital-acquired infection that has strains that are resistant to most drugs, the daily reported. The situation was so bad at the hospital that the intensive care unit had to be destroyed so that a new, non-contaminated structure could be built, the report said.
The hospital's director, Joaquin Martinez, denied at a press conference alongside his preventative medicine chief Jose Ramon de Juanes that 18 deaths were directly caused by the bacterial infection.
Patients in a critical state "die from their illness, accompanied exceptionally by an infection of multi-drug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii and other types of micro-organisms, because they are more vulnerable due to their health problems," said Juanes.
According to reports, the bacterium infected a total of 252 patients between February 2006 and its eradication 20 months later. More than 100 of those patients died, although only 18 of them directly from this infection, the report said. Link
Sooo, the hospital's director and his chief of preventive medicine deny the infections had anything to do with the deaths - and yet they demolished and rebuilt the intensive care unit anyway. Folks, that's called accountability under socialized medicine. Nothing that could or might go wrong with you or your treatment will be the provider's fault - thereby depriving you of any civil redress via litigation. I am no fan of frivolous lawsuits but am a staunch advocate of justifiable civil actions against obvious neglect, malpractice or less than stellar medicine - the kind we have here, as a rule, and the kind they don't have in nations where so called 'universal healthcare' is mandated. Ask any Brit or Cannook.
GRAFTON, WV - On this 100th anniversary of Mother's Day, the woman credited with creating one of the world's most celebrated holidays probably wouldn't be pleased with all the flowers, candy or gifts.
Anna Jarvis would want us to give mothers a white carnation - she felt it signified the purity of a mother's love.
Jarvis, who never married and never had children, got the Mother's Day idea after her mother said it would be nice if someone created a memorial to mothers.
Three years after her mother died in 1905, she organized the first official mother's day service at a church where her mother had spent more than 20 years teaching Sunday school.
Today, the former Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church is the official shrine to mothers around the world. On Sunday, the shrine will celebrate the 100th anniversary, giving each mother attending a special service a white carnation.
The shrine also serves as a "reminder to the accomplishments of these women and to the issues mothers still deal with today, trying to do the balancing act of being everything to everyone," said Cindi Mason, the shrine's director. Link
Three U.S. marines have been convicted of consuming alcohol without a license in the United Arab Emirates, The National reported, citing un-named military officials.
The convictions are the first time that U.S. marines have been tried in a local court in the Gulf, rather than being turned over to U.S. authorities, the Abu Dhabi-based newspaper said.
The marines were fined 1,000 dirhams ($272) for consuming alcohol without a license, the newspaper reported. Link
You know what? I am getting very tired of those oil rich Middle East shiekhs treating us like vassals - and that's exactly how they view us. They are convinced we will do anything to keep their self indulgent, condescending, back-stabbing bloated asses in the opulent, misogynistic, oppressive stlye to which they've become accustomed in order to protect their sole contribution to mankind - oil. Just imagine if we could go full steam ahead in eliminating them from our energy requirements. Wouldn't it be nice to watch them murder each other over their petty religious differences? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we didn't have to send our troops there to prevent that from happening. Wouldn't it be great if the only worry we had in the entire region was Israel? Wouldn't it be glorious to watch them crawl back into the blowing sands from whence they came?
Japanese MPs have backed plans to scrap rules restricting the use of military technology in space. Lawmakers say Japan still opposes putting weapons into space, but claim the rules drawn up in 1969 have stifled innovation by Japanese firms. Some supporters of the bill say it could open the way to Japan launching spy satellites.
Tokyo was alarmed last year when China conducted a test and shot down one of its own weather satellites.
The bill is backed by government and opposition MPs, making it almost certain to become law in the next few weeks. The BBC's Chris Hogg, in Tokyo, says the MPs' decision is controversial because Japan is officially a pacifist country.
The new legislation would overturn a parliamentary resolution passed in 1969 that limited Japan's use of space to non-military missions.
It would mean the Defence Ministry could develop and operate spy satellites and other hardware designed to enhance the country's security. Rink
This is the best news the United States could possibly get from that region short of a complete collapse of China. Just stop and think about it. The Japanese are the best in the world at developing hardware, especially electronic, mechanical and robotic hardware. They are also the only other nation in the world with the ability to spend the enormous amounts it will require to do the research and developement and to be able to actually deploy the devices and potential weaponry. And, they do NOT have to go begging for a launch site - I'm sure we'll be very accommodating in that regard. Now stop and think about just how fast technology has moved in the last decade and try imagine what Japan could accomplish in the next ten years. Now think about history - particularly WWII. Japan destroyed and enslaved China in a matter of weeks and had no compunctions about doing so - those sentiments have not gone away. To the contrary - that incident of the Chinese satellite destruction and the flyover of a North Korean missile during a test not long ago have only served to heighten Japan's nationalism and animosity towards both countries AND their desire to become even more allied with us. Witness them allowing a U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier to home port in Japan for the first time in history and our deployment of U.S. Aegis equipped anti-missile destroyers off their western coast.
When Bill and Hillary first got married, Bill said, “I am putting a box under our bed. You must promise never to look in it.” In all their 30 years of marriage, Hillary never looked.
However, on the afternoon of their 30th anniversary, curiosity got the better of her and she lifted the lid and peeked inside. In the box there were 3 empty beer cans and $1,874.25 in cash.
After dinner, Hillary could no longer contain her guilt and she confessed, saying, “I am so sorry. For all these years I kept my promise and never looked in the box under our bed. However, today the temptation was too much and I gave in. But now I need to know why do you keep the empty cans in the box?”
Bill thought for a while and said, “I guess that after all these years you deserve to know the truth. Whenever I was unfaithful to you, I put an empty beer can in the box under the bed to remind myself not to do it again.”
Hillary was shocked, but said, “I am very disappointed and saddened, but I guess after all those years away from home on the road, temptation does happen and I guess that 3 times is not that bad considering the number of years we’ve been together.” They hugged and made their peace.
Eni SpA might have its assets in Libya expropriated by the government there because of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's decision to appoint a minister who has been critical of Islam, the online edition of energy newspaper Staffetta Quotidiana reported, citing unidentified Libyan diplomats.
The company's business in the north African country could be nationalized and Eni's agreement to invest $28 billion together with Libya's national oil company may be canceled, the report said. Eni, present in Libya since 1959, last year produced an average of 252,000 barrels of oil and oil equivalent a day in the country, according to data posted on the company's Web site.
Berlusconi, who was sworn in as premier yesterday, appointed Roberto Calderoli, a member of the anti-immigration Northern League party, as his minister for legislative simplification. Calderoli sparked riots against Italy's consulate in Benghazi, Libya in 2006 after wearing on television a T-shirt with a Danish cartoon satirizing the prophet Muhammed. Libyan police killed 11 people while stopping the attack. Calderoli also has campaigned against building mosques in northern Italian cities.
Shokri Ghanem, the chairman of Libya's state-run National Oil Corp., declined to comment on the report. An Eni official wouldn't comment, nor would an official of the press office at the Libyan Embassy in Rome.
One of Libyan ruler Muammar Qaddafi's sons last week urged Berlusconi not to include Calderoli in his government. Link
Whoa. Back when Khadafi was public enemy #1, after the Lockerbee bombing, Italy was his only ally. Recently, he has stated that Libya will no longer pursue nuclear weapons - some say because he fears the same fate as Saddam Hussein. There has been some evidence he is lying about that - but he has, at least publicly, made quite a move to normalize relations with the West. His son is being groomed to replace Khadafi - this may be his handiwork with his father's blessing. Regardless, to expropriate Eni's assets simply because of the perceived anti-Muslim behavior of some politician is ominous. I imagine the price of oil has more to do with it - Khadafi wants to get all of the profits from Eni and the Danish Mohammed cartoons issue is just a red herring. We should beware of oil rich Arabs and crackpot despots like Hugo Chavez getting even more greedy
China is preparing to allow margin trading and short selling, Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, told a conference in Shanghai today, without providing a timeline.
China, the world's fastest-growing major economy, wants to introduce more investment tools to allow investors to earn higher profits and hedge against market risks. Investors can borrow money to buy stocks in margin trading if they expect share prices will rise. They can also short sell individual stocks by borrowing them from brokerages.
Individual and institutional investors can make margin trades and short-sell an unlimited amount of stocks under rules issued in August 2006. Brokerages with three years trading history and net assets of no less than 1.2 billion yuan for the past six months will be allowed to handle margin trades, according to the rules.
Shang also said that the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market that has led to more than $300 billion in asset writedowns and credit losses worldwide "mandates'' closer oversight. Regulators will review asset-backed securities, Shang said. kaching
The Chinese have been money traders and gamblers for longer than any other civilization by thousands of years. They are so much more inclined to get in the mud and fight with their investments and wagers than any of their western counterparts. I've seen it first hand. There is nothing so cacaphonous nor maddening as being where Chinese trade or bet money. It makes the floor of any exchange I've been on in the West seem positively funereal by comparison. Allowing margin trading for the newly emerging 'middle class' in China is going to change everything. The Chinese government might be able to control communications, media, public disobedience and all the other aspects of Chinese society. They don't have a prayer of keeping a lid on this. It's good news.
British consumers throw out a third of all food bought, worth some 10 billion pounds (19.5 million dollars), a study showed Thursday.
The average household throws food worth 420 pounds each year into the waste bin, rising to 610 pounds for those with children, said the study by the Waste and Resources Action Programme. This includes 1.3 million unopened yoghurt pots, 5,500 whole chickens and 440,000 ready meals, it said.
"These findings are staggering in their own right, but at a time when global food shortages are in the headlines this kind of wastefulness becomes even more shocking," said Environment Minister Joan Ruddock.
"And there are climate change costs to all of us of growing, processing, packaging, transporting, and refrigerating food that only ends up in the bin," she added.
Much of the food thrown away is past its sell-by date, after being left too long in the fridge, but some one billion pounds' worth of discarded products were still "in date," the study said. Link
Barack Obama, the first "postracial candidate," is heading to the Democratic nomination almost entirely because of his near-universal support from black voters in the Democratic primaries. In both states Tuesday, his share of that vote was 90% or more. If one resets the black vote to the norm of earlier elections, Hillary Clinton is the nominee.
The idea that Obama was a postracial politician dates to his famous keynote speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004. He set the postracial template himself in the speech's third sentence, describing his father born in a small Kenyan village, herding goats, etc. His mother was "born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas." Over the next three years, writers ratified this postracial definition of Obama's own design. From this idea, a Democratic star arose.
Hillary Clinton, who now resembles the robot's crawling hand in the final scenes of "The Terminator," can plausibly argue to the superdelegates that much of this is electoral bunk. In Indiana, her share of the white vote to his, men and women combined, was 60-40, a huge lead. In North Carolina, 61-37.
They won't buy it. Ever. The "first woman" running for president would have to be pulling 90% of her own piece of history, women, to compete with his achievement. Obama has locked up 90% of a constituency that Democrats not only must have to win in November, but that they've elevated to mythic status the past 40 years. As well, the black vote came spontaneously to Sen. Obama, without him having to make an overt appeal for their vote, as she did with women.
The Democratic superdelegates are products of their party – nice liberals, nice people. To stiff Obama's black voters at this late hour, most of the superdelegates would have to be as hard and clinical about politics as the Clintons. They aren't. Obama moves them and validates their commitment to the Democratic idea. Shelby Steele described the force even Hillary can't match in these pages last March: Race lifts the Obama candidacy "to the level of allegory. . . . Because he is black, there is a sense that profound questions stand to be resolved in the unfolding of his political destiny."
Barack Obama is going to run an aura campaign. As it has been from the start, it's going to be a speech candidacy, a rhetorical candidacy, a JFK candidacy, the promise of another Camelot. Link
And a candidacy totally devoid of substance beyond that which his far left supporters and his own radical conscience will allow. He is dangerous. Not only do we not know enough about him - it is likely were we to know more - it would be frightening. He cannot possibly win in the general election - unless he puts his opponent on the ticket with him and it's uncertain she'd entertain that notion. Can you imagine the awkwardness of Bill Clinton pacing the halls of the White House or the vice president's residence?
Obama has just that - an aura. An ephemeral quality borne of the ether - something intangible and the stuff of nothing. His words - his ability to speak - are his only currency. Beyond them - he has no more carriage or history than some used car on some used car lot in some unknown part of some town in someplace you have never been. The car lot has cleaned it up - detailed it - it shines. The salesmen won't let you get close enough to it to check under the hood or to even kick the tires. Take it - as is.
Add university research to the long list of human activities contributing to global warming. Hervé Philippe, a Université de Montréal professor of biochemistry, is a committed environmentalist who found that his own research produces 44 tonnes of CO2 per year. The average American citizen produces 20 tonnes.
Hervé Philippe; “I did my PhD on nucleotide sequencing in the hope of advancing our knowledge of biodiversity, but I never thought that the research itself could have a negative impact on biodiversity,” he said, during a recent biology department symposium.
Philippe has a well-established international reputation for his work on phylogeny and according to his calculations his computers produce 19 tonnes of CO2 per year, the air conditioning in the laboratory produces 10 tonnes of CO2 per year, and transport from one meeting to another produces 15 tonnes of CO2 per year.
Philippe doesn’t believe in the myth that technology is the solution. “In 1973, that type of rhetoric already existed,” he says. “But environmental problems have gone from bad to worse. In Canada, for instance, oil consumption is 1.7 times greater despite better technology.”
It will have taken 200 years of oil exploitation to dry up the reserves that took 200 million years to build. “This fact has been known for 50 years but we’ve done nothing about it. By viewing oil as an unlimited resource we are making a tremendous mistake.”
He doesn’t believe in one magical solution, but rather in transformations adapted to each area. For universities, he recommends having less frequent international conferences, increasing the use of videoconferences, avoiding research on well explored topics, reducing publications and evaluating the amount of CO2 produced by research projects. Link
Behind the insane irony of this article are Professor Phillippe's notions as summed up in that last line. If those words are not the most anti-intellectual, anti-scientific pursuit and anti-academic as any I have ever heard in my life - then I cannot recall them. Just remember, this man has students, Those are somebody's kids. Those parents assume sending their children off to college will expand their young minds.
I don't profess to be all that astute when it comes to politics and my observations about the world's oldest profession are made from far outside the beltway and with my own obvious bias. But, I have been paying more than passing attention to politics for a very long time and I know a few things. One thing I know is that a more cold and calculating couple of crooks than the Clintons has never appeared on the political scene throughout American history and perhaps - never. I also know they do nothing without their own personal and political interests being at the fore - nothing. They are as corrupt and contemptible as any creatures to ever walk on two legs. They are literally the spawn of Hell. True demons among us. Nothing they say or do should or can be trusted. And I am being generous and as kind as I can.
I've mentioned the following to many of you in emails or in the comments hereon. The reason Hillary Clinton does not drop out is because she knows something about Barack Obama that will destroy him. Remember, the Clintons invented the 'politics of personal destruction'. They are masters of it and Hillary was the driving force behind its invention and the hands-on commander of its implementation throughout her husband's political career. It was Hillary who created the infamous 'Bimbo Squad' to crush the lives of all the women who claimed her husband was a philanderer. She wielded that power through and with the aid of all the various agencies within her husband's control AND hired outside private operatives to conduct 'oppostion research' and personal intimidation that might have been found out by official oversight or scrutiny. All of that is proven fact.
The recent revelations about Barack Obama and his 'friends and associates' has not been sufficient to slow down his march to his party's nomination. Frankly, this is 'primary season' and the party faithful will not be dissuaded unless something momentous and catastrophic were to be revealed. Not only that, but her doing so now, would cause such turmoil within the Democratic party that she and her husband might forfeit what power they retain in the party. The Clintons have patiently allowed Obama to do his own damage to himself, but it hasn't been nearly enough.
Meanwhile, she keeps on chuggin' along and remains defiant - even to the point of paying for her own campaign out of pocket with not only her money - but Bill's as well. They would not be doing that if they were convinced she has no chance. They know she DOES have more than a chance or they would cease and desist now.
Given the ugliness of the revelations made to date about Obama, whatever it is that they have on him must be truly destructive - enough to cause him to withdraw completely. He has already admitted to drug use - so that's out. There can be only one thing that would allow the Clintons the assurance of certainty that they will prevail in this race. There's only one thing that would force Obama out immediately and which would not alienate half of the Democratic party with its disclosure.
The Clintons know something about the Obamas that cannot be refuted factually, dismissed by the most strident ally and that is so venal and shocking that even their most ardent supporters will throw them aside in favor of Hillary once it is made known. There is only one subject with that power - sex.
I predict either Barack or Michelle Obama has had gay laissons and the Clintons can prove it. I further predict that this information will not be made public until after the primaries are over and maybe even not until after the convention in August - thus leaving the Democrats with no other alternative but to turn to Hillary for rescue. I suspect she'll not align herself with him as Veep for the simple reason that it would tie her to him. I think that will be the best clue as to the possibility I am correct. If she is NOT the Veep candidate, which would almost certainly guarantee victory in November for them both - there's a real good reason why.
Royal is a cantankerous old male baboon whose troop of some 80 members lives in the Moremi Game Reserve in Botswana. A perplexing event is about to disturb his day. From the bushes to his right, he hears a staccato whoop, the distinctive call that female baboons always make after mating. He recognizes the voice as that of Jackalberry, the current consort of Cassius, a male who outranks Royal in the strict hierarchy of male baboons. No hope of sex today.
But then, surprisingly, he hears Cassius's signature greeting grunt to his left. His puzzlement is plain on the video made of his reaction. You can almost see the wheels turn slowly in his head: "Jackalberry here, but Cassius over there. Hmm, Jackalberry must be hooking up with some one else. But that means Cassius has left her unguarded. Say what — this is my big chance!"
The video shows him loping off in the direction of Jackalberry's whoop. But all that he will find is the loudspeaker from which researchers have played Jackalberry's recorded call. The purpose of the experiment is not to ruin Royal's day but to understand what goes on in a baboon's mind, in this case how carefully the animals keep track of transient relationships.
Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth, a husband-and-wife team of biologists at the University of Pennsylvania, have spent 14 years observing the Moremi baboons. Through ingenious playback experiments performed by themselves and colleagues, the researchers say they have worked out many aspects of what baboons use their minds for, along with their limitations. Link
Excellent article - you will enjoy it. Yes, I have witnessed intelligence in animals - it can be surprising and a bit alarming to see. That man was able to leverage his intelligence so well is an amazing circumstance and I wonder how much of that was actually man's doing. I hold that intelligence is on its own evolutionary path and will survive and thrive whether man does or not. I'm currently reading 'The Third Chimpanzee' - the author takes great exception to how mankind treats those other species which have demonstrated intelligence - his empathy and disgust is palpable. For myself, I worry about the day we ascribe some level of intelligence to all animals, thereby granting them rights and ultimately removing all animals from our food chain. On one hand, I am all for saving the whales, protecting the dolphins, removing monkeys from all but the most necessary vivisection experiments and being gentle and kind to all God's creatures, great and small.
Curbing a notorious form of industrial pollution may ironically harm Amazonia, one of the world's natural treasures and a key buffer against global warming, a study released Wednesday has found. Its authors see a strong link between a decrease in sulphur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and a rise in sea temperature in the northern Atlantic that was blamed for wreaking a devastating drought in western Amazonia in 2005.
University of Exeter professor Peter Cox and colleagues created a computer model to simulate the impact of aerosols - airborne particles that, like sulphur dioxide, are also spewed out by fossil-fuel power plants -- on Amazonia's climate.
The aerosols, while a bad pollutant, indirectly ease the problem of global warming as they reflect sunlight, making it bounce back into space rather than warm the Earth's surface.
In the 1970s and 1980s, according to Cox's model, high concentrations of aerosols over the highly industrialised northern hemisphere had the effect of buffering the impact of global warming on north Atlantic surface waters, which led to more rain over Amazonia.
But tighter curbs on sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants led to a reduction in aerosol levels, causing these Atlantic waters to warm. This changed patterns of precipitation, leading to the 2005 drought.
Projecting into the 21st century, the study estimates that by 2025 a drought on the same scale as in 2005 could happen every other year. By 2060, forests would be starved for rainfall nine out of every 10 years, says the study, published in the British journal Nature. want YOUR head to explode?
There's a common recurring theme in science fiction - scientists analogous to priests. Knowledge is the new religion and is dispensed as a sacrament by a small number of 'all-knowing - all seeing' scientist/priests to a congregation no longer able to contend with the vast amounts of fact and data the new technology brings. We've been getting ever nearer to that point and I fear global warming may be the trigger that pushes us over the brink. So many people rely on the edicts and proclamations of 'a consensus of scientists' as regards global warming without bothering to consider the facts these days - is it any wonder that those of us who do are distressed and worried? Do not the adherents of global warming demand our faith in their findings - just as any tent show revival preacher would? Is there not an almost religious hysteria surrounding the subject? When you factor in the reduction in students graduating from our educational institutions who are ev
