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"This conjures up the specter of predominantly male, predominantly affluent legislators telling poor women they must bear and raise alone children they cannot afford to bring up; forcing teenagers to bear children they are not emotionally prepared to deal with; saying to women who wish for a career that they must give up their dreams, stay home, and bring up babies; and, worst of all, condemning victims of rape and incest to carry and nurture the offspring of their assailants. Legislative prohibitions on abortion arouse the suspicion that their real intent is to control the independence and sexuality of women…"
Ann Druyan and Carl Sagan - The Abortion Debate
South Korea’s New President Promises Era of ‘Truskpolitik’
The first female president of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, took the oath of office today during a time of opportunities and critical challenges for South Korea.
Read the full story here
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Varela: That point is important, because for people like myself, who come from a place that is not a dominant center like the United States or Europe (although I have worked most of my life in the U.S. and Europe), it is very clear that what is called international science is a particular style of science. This is not to say that the system prevents different voices from coming in, but today what ordinary citizens all over the place would consider real science is fundamentally European-American science.
Newcomb Greenleaf: Of course, a good example of that is the Chinese science of acupuncture. Westerners are still very puzzled that acupuncture seems to work. How does this work? They don’t like it. Most Western scientists would like to ignore the whole thing and feel that in non-Western cultures there really was never any significant understanding. They would like to regard the Third World as always somehow scientifically primitive.
Livingston: Here’s a case with acupuncture; we have two different theories that account for the same phenomena but are based on a very different argument. For instance, if you apply the meridians of the acupuncturists to the Western practice of using procaine injections to relieve spasms and tensions, you will find that there is a great deal of overlap between the acupuncture points and the injection points. But the interpretation of what happens in the process of massage, heat application, or acupuncture, on one hand, and injection of procaine on the other is radically different. Both interpretations account for the phenomena.
Dalai Lama: That is my point. National origin is not an especially fundamental problem; differences arise unconsciously due to a variety of environmental factors. You are very sincerely trying to explain the truth, but due to other factors you are unconsciously conditioned; as a result, you have different a explanation.
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Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind
A huge problem of socioculture and the how it ruins an open discussion within science; I notice frequently with European-American branches of science and their arrogance and will to ignore data that doesn’t originate from them, where even their peer reviews are subject to a social conditioning. Like in the case of David H. Hubel and Torsten N. Wiesel for the discovery of specific neurons that receive a message through the retina and cortex as to a location and a field size of what activates them (of which they received a Nobel Prize for) but over in the Soviet Union you had legitimate experiments which had a better and more substantial data and I quote: In the soviet union these same experiments were repeated, but this time the conditions were altered from those used in the Hubel and Wiesel experiment at Harvard. They [soviets] went through six or seven different variables that made the whole physiology much more dynamic and plastic than in the Hubel and Wiesel paradigm. It has been very difficult to get these findings published in the West. So the channels of science get affected by the sociocultural conditions. A very helpful experiment, but it wasn’t listened to. Good data, good questions, good experiments, but it wasn’t listened to.
And it troubles me to know that if this is the sort of science we are okay with, what other valuable data and experiments is the European-American culture and peer review ignoring on the basis of a corrupt or ignorant sociocultural structure? I feel like in the end, the ones who feel these effects worst are the citizens. Imagine the repercussions of ignoring an experiment or valuable data that can save lives but was ignored for social, economical, or political reasons? Just a thought.
"Every killer makes his pain another’s problem. But only those who’ve marinated in privilege can conclude that their private pain is the entire world’s problem with which to deal."
… Alcohol serves at the pleasure of the players on both sides of the game, its virtues those indicated by Seneca and Martin Luther, its vices those that the novelist Marguerite Duras likens, as did Hamlet, to the sleep of death: “Drinking isn’t necessarily the same as wanting to die. But you can’t drink without thinking you’re killing yourself.” Alcohol’s job is to replace creation with an illusion that is barren. “The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.”
The observation is in the same despairing minor key as Billie Holiday’s riff on heroin: “If you think dope is for kicks and thrills you’re out of your mind. There are more kicks to be had in a good case of paralytic polio and living in an iron lung. If you think you need stuff to play music or sing, you’re crazy. It can fix you so you can’t play nothing or sing nothing.” She goes on to say that in Britain the authorities at least have the decency to treat addiction as a public-health problem, but in America, “if you go to the doctor, he’s liable to slam the door in your face and call the cops.”
Humankind’s thirst for intoxicants is unquenchable, but to criminalize it, as Lincoln reminded the Illinois temperance society, reinforces the clinging to the addiction; to think otherwise would be “to expect a reversal of human nature, which is God’s decree and never can be reversed.” The injuries inflicted by alcohol don’t follow “from the use of a bad thing, but from the abuse of a very good thing.” The victims are “to be pitied and compassionated,” their failings treated “as a misfortune, and not as a crime or even as a disgrace.”
… Whether declared by church or state, the war against human nature is by definition lost. The Puritan inspectors of souls in seventeenth-century New England deplored even the tentative embrace of Bacchus as “great licentiousness,” the faithful “pouring out themselves in all profaneness,” but the record doesn’t show a falling off of attendance at Boston’s eighteenth-century inns and taverns. The laws prohibiting the sale and manufacture of alcohol in the 1920s discovered in the mark of sin the evidence of crime, but the attempt to sustain the allegation proved to be as ineffectual as it was destructive of the country’s life and liberty.
Instead of resurrecting from the pit a body politic of newly risen saints, Prohibition guaranteed the health and welfare of society’s avowed enemies. The organized-crime syndicates established on the delivery of bootleg whiskey evolved into multinational trade associations commanding the respect that comes with revenues estimated at $2 billion per annum. In 1930 alone, Al Capone’s ill-gotten gains amounted to $100 million.
So again with the war that America has been waging for the last 100 years against the use of drugs deemed to be illegal. The war cannot be won, but in the meantime, at a cost of $20 billion a year, it facilitates the transformation of what was once a freedom-loving republic into a freedom-fearing national security state. [++]
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Some of the most creative leaps ever taken by the human mind are decidedly irrational, even primal. Emotive forces are what drive the greatest artistic and inventive expressions of our species. How else could the sentence ‘He’s either a madman or a genius’ be understood?
It’s okay to be entirely rational, provided everybody else is too. But apparently this state of existence has been achieved only in fiction [where] societal decisions get made with efficiency and dispatch, devoid of pomp, passion, and pretense.
To govern a society shared by people of emotion, people of reason, and everybody in between — as well as people who think their actions are shaped by logic but in fact are shaped by feelings and nonempirical philosophies — you need politics. At its best, politics navigates all the minds-states for the sake of the greater good, alert to the rocky shoals of community, identity, and the economy. At its worst, politics thrives on the incomplete disclosure or misrepresentation of data required by an electorate to make informed decisions, whether arrived at logically or emotionally.
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Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier — Neil deGrasse Tyson
![pieceinthepuzzlehumanity:
What Happens When Counter-Cyberterrorism Leaves Cyberspace?
These are exigent times. In order to bring into clear view the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves in, we must first illuminate the legal framework that allows our dire circumstances to exist. Let us first go back to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists law signed in 2001 by President George W. Bush shortly after 9/11 that, upon ratification, ushered in an era of permanent semi-global war. However, the heart of the law is the power detailed in Section 2 in which
…the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (which was upheld by a federal appeals court), under the guise of clarification, expands the persons covered under the AUMF into ambiguous territory to include
[a] person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
It is this expansion of covered persons that is used as justification for the indefinite detention of anyone by the US military. Furthermore, in conjunction with Title VIII of the USA PATRIOT Act, not only can persons deemed to possess any ties or relations (no matter how tenuous the auxiliary relationship is) with organizations the President deems as a terrorist organization, but if a person has provided material support to or harbored a member of a terrorist organization (especially if the death of a person occurs), then they are subject to life in prison. Of course, the modus operandi of distributing “justice” pursuant to these statutes is a system of secret military courts formally established in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which effectively extends military tribunals to the aforementioned covered persons.However, recent revelations concerning Presidential Policy Directive 20, first reported on in the Washington Post, a secret directive President Obama signed in mid-October, has sparked fears that the directive paves the way for boots on the ground on the homefront in the name of cybersecurity. While the Pentagon considers cyberspace a domain in its purview, it has yet to establish concrete rules of engagement for cyberspace– it is for this reason that PPD20 was signed in order to
finalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.
However, the lack of concrete specifics had not hindered the Pentagon from declaring that a cyberattack can constitute as an act of war. While federal law prohibits the military from being deployed on US soil without an act of legislation beforehand, the possibility of the deployment of US military on american soil without the immediate forewarning of legislation has become a reality with section 1021 of NDAA 2012.The question that then lies before us is what happens if (perhaps more appropriately when) Anonymous or groups like or associated with it are declared a terrorist organization and how many degrees of separation will save us?
(photo: Source)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me12owCfsR1qapl6zo1_500.jpg)
What Happens When Counter-Cyberterrorism Leaves Cyberspace?
These are exigent times. In order to bring into clear view the gravity of the situation in which we find ourselves in, we must first illuminate the legal framework that allows our dire circumstances to exist. Let us first go back to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists law signed in 2001 by President George W. Bush shortly after 9/11 that, upon ratification, ushered in an era of permanent semi-global war. However, the heart of the law is the power detailed in Section 2 in which
…the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (which was upheld by a federal appeals court), under the guise of clarification, expands the persons covered under the AUMF into ambiguous territory to include
[a] person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.It is this expansion of covered persons that is used as justification for the indefinite detention of anyone by the US military. Furthermore, in conjunction with Title VIII of the USA PATRIOT Act, not only can persons deemed to possess any ties or relations (no matter how tenuous the auxiliary relationship is) with organizations the President deems as a terrorist organization, but if a person has provided material support to or harbored a member of a terrorist organization (especially if the death of a person occurs), then they are subject to life in prison. Of course, the modus operandi of distributing “justice” pursuant to these statutes is a system of secret military courts formally established in the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which effectively extends military tribunals to the aforementioned covered persons.
However, recent revelations concerning Presidential Policy Directive 20, first reported on in the Washington Post, a secret directive President Obama signed in mid-October, has sparked fears that the directive paves the way for boots on the ground on the homefront in the name of cybersecurity. While the Pentagon considers cyberspace a domain in its purview, it has yet to establish concrete rules of engagement for cyberspace– it is for this reason that PPD20 was signed in order tofinalize new rules of engagement that would guide commanders when and how the military can go outside government networks to prevent a cyberattack that could cause significant destruction or casualties.However, the lack of concrete specifics had not hindered the Pentagon from declaring that a cyberattack can constitute as an act of war. While federal law prohibits the military from being deployed on US soil without an act of legislation beforehand, the possibility of the deployment of US military on american soil without the immediate forewarning of legislation has become a reality with section 1021 of NDAA 2012.
The question that then lies before us is what happens if (perhaps more appropriately when) Anonymous or groups like or associated with it are declared a terrorist organization and how many degrees of separation will save us?(photo: Source)
Here Is What Some Schoolchildren in Louisiana Learn About Evolution
Fifth graders in some state-sponsored schools in Louisiana study both creationism and evolution as competing theories. “Fact or Theory?”
-source | Buzzfeed
Just a quick glance looks like it favors creationism pretty hard. And with tax payer money.
i am so tired of obama and romney why can’t thor be president
ohmygod could you imagine tho
“mr. president, what are your thoughts on gay marriage?”
“I HOPE ALL MORTALS HAVE A GAY AND JOVIAL MARRIAGE”
THESE POLICIES DONT SUIT THE NEEDS OF MY PEOPLE?
Conservatives long for the world of Leave it to Beaver, Christmas Story, and Babe Ruth. A world of everyone looking the same, talking the same, eating the same foods, and enjoying the same sports. Everyone loves Jesus, America, Baseball, and tries to work hard so he can be rich and enjoy well-deserved luxury. A core belief of this group is that those who are successful and rich deserve to live luxuriously because they are individually and personally responsible, through the making of good choices, for their own prosperity. And conversely, those who are not successful deserve, to some significant degree, their lower station because they failed to make the correct choices.
Liberals long for the world of Star Trek. This is a world of equality and exotic diversity, where there’s no repulsion to being surrounded by people, foods, or ideas that are different than their own. It’s a world where money has less value, and where art, science, and exploration are placed as the highest of cultural priorities. Those who hold this ideal tend to believe that one’s success or failure, wealth or poverty, depends more on circumstances outside of their control, and thus see the elevation of the underprivileged to be a communal effort that should be willingly funded by those in society who have been fortunate enough to be successful.
It’s Global Warming, Stupid
An interesting piece on how the uncertainty inherent in studying probabilistic phenomena can and often is used as evidence against the validity of the research findings. I loved this quote (as I do all baseball analogies):“Would this kind of storm happen without climate change? Yes. Fueled by many factors. Is storm stronger because of climate change? Yes.” Eric Pooley, senior vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund (and former deputy editor of Bloomberg Businessweek), offers a baseball analogy: “We can’t say that steroids caused any one home run by Barry Bonds, but steroids sure helped him hit more and hit them farther. Now we have weather on steroids.”
