What Darwin Didn't Know (BBC)  

Turns out the whole Global Warming/ Climate Change issue is manufactured.  

What's the Difference Between Global Warming and Climate Change?  

Political Rhetoric, Explained - Steven Pinker
Fora.TV 

Terminolgy  

The Civil Service on Helping Foreign Nations  

Yes, Prime Minister - The Defence policy  

State of Education - Yes, Prime Minister - BBC  

You're a banker - Yes, Minister - BBC  

It's Ponzimonium in the Gold Market

We've had a string of amazing revelations recently regarding the world's precious metals market. This is important stuff for anyone (like me) who holds gold as a means to avoid currency turmoil and counterparty risk.

(My earlier post on shenanigans at the Comex gold market.)

This news has been actively suppressed in the mainstream media.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a U.S. government regulatory agency, held hearings in Washington D.C. in late March regarding position limits in the futures market.

People involved in the markets have known/suspected for years that they have been manipulated by certain large entities, notably JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs.

Analysts like silver maven, Ted Butler, hedge fund giant, Eric Sprott, and the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee (GATA) have been collecting evidence of this manipulation for years.

These hearings were supposed to be a non-event. However, despite the media lock-down, the word is getting out.

The CFTC, like the SEC, is a conflicted agency. Some people, notably Chairman Gary Gensler and Commissioner Bart Chilton, seem to want to clean up the sleaze, fraud and corruption.

The CFTC even invited GATA's Bill Murphy and Adrian Douglas to make statements[...]

 

Magnetic field can alter moral judgments
by Kate Melville

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) neuroscientists have shown they can influence people's moral judgments by disrupting the right temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) of the brain. A finding, they say, that helps reveal how the brain constructs morality.

To make moral judgments about other people, we often need to infer their intentions - an ability known as "theory of mind." Previous studies have shown that the right TPJ is highly active when we think about other people's intentions, thoughts and beliefs. In the new study, the researchers disrupted activity in the right TPJ by inducing a current in the brain using a magnetic field applied to the scalp. They found that the subjects' ability to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions [...]

http://tinyurl.com/8xkmxbn

Narcotic effects of carbon monoxide keep city dwellers happy

by Kate Melville
Low levels of the gas carbon monoxide have a narcotic effect on city dwellers, say Tel Aviv University researchers, leading them to suggest that the pollutant is, in small doses, a boon to the well-being of urbanites. Their study examining urban stress and pollutants has been published in the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a tasteless, colorless and odorless gas most commonly found in the exhaust fumes of vehicles. A favorite for suicides, the gas has been dubbed the "silent killer" because excessive inhalation poisons the nervous system and cardiovascular system.
But Tel Aviv University's Itzhak Schnell says that low levels of the poisonous gas can have a narcotic effect. His claims are based upon findings from a wider project designed to study the impact of environmental stressors on the human body. Specifically, Schnell and his co-researchers wanted to measure how people living in an urban environment dealt with common stressors in their daily lives.
For the study, healthy test subjects travelled various routes through Tel Aviv to sites such as busy streets, restaurants, malls and markets, by public and private transportation, or by foot. The researchers monitored the impact of four different environmental stressors: thermal load, noise pollution, carbon monoxide levels, and social load (the impact of crowds). Data was taken from sensors that measured heart rate and pollutant levels.
The most surprising finding of the study, says Schnell, was in looking at levels of CO that the participants inhaled during their time in the city. Not only were the levels much lower than the researchers predicted - approximately 1-15 parts per million every half hour - but the presence of the gas appeared to have a narcotic effect on the participants, counteracting the stress caused[...]
 

http://tinyurl.com/7yxpl9l

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Solar Cheaper Than Diesel Making India’s Mittal Believer: Energy

India is producing power from solar cells more cheaply than by burning diesel for the first time, spurring billionaire Sunil Mittal and Coca-Cola Co. (KO)’s mango supplier to jettison the fuel in favor of photovoltaic panels.

The cost of solar energy in India declined by 28 percent since December 2010, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The cause was a 51 percent drop in panel prices last year as the world’s 10 largest manufacturers, led by China’s Suntech Power Holdings Co. (STP), doubled output capacity.

“Solar is going mainstream in India, helped by Chinese pricing,” said Ardeshir Contractor, founder of developer Kiran Energy Solar Power Pvt. Kiran, whose investors include Bessemer Venture Partners, an early financier of Skype Technologies SA, won one of the largest projects auctioned by India last month.

India joins pockets of Italy, Spain and Hawaii where rising fuel costs and lower panel prices make solar pay for itself without state subsidies,[...]
 

Right- and left-wingers found to look at things differently—literally

Jan. 25, 2012
Courtesy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
and World Science staff

From ca­ble TV news pun­dits to red-meat speeches, deep po­lit­i­cal stereo­types are on full dis­play in the un­fold­ing U.S. elec­tion sea­son. Con­ser­va­tives paint self-in­dul­gent lib­er­als as in­suf­ferably ab­sent on ur­gent na­t­ional is­sues. Lib­er­als say fear-mongering con­ser­va­tives are fix­at­ed on ex­ag­ger­at­ed dan­gers to the coun­try.

A new U.S. study sug­gests there are bi­o­log­i­cal truths to such broad brush­strokes.

In a se­ries of ex­pe­ri­ments, re­search­ers closely mon­i­tored phys­i­o­logical re­ac­tions and eye move­ments of study par­ti­ci­pants shown com­bina­t­ions of both pleas­ant and un­pleas­ant im­ages. Con­ser­va­tives re­acted more strongly to, fix­at­ed more quickly on, and looked long­er at the un­pleas­ant im­ages; lib­er­als had stronger re­ac­tions to and looked long­er at the pleas­ant im­ages com­pared with con­ser­va­tives.

“It’s been said that con­ser­va­tives and lib­er­als don’t see things in the same way,” said Mike Dodd, a psy­chol­o­gist at the Uni­vers­ity of Nebraska-Lincoln and the stu­dy’s lead au­thor. “These find­ings make that clear – quite lit­er­al­ly.”

Par­ti­ci­pants were shown a se­ries of im­ages on a screen. Elec­trodes at­tached to the skin meas­ured sub­tle elec­tri­cal changes, in­dic­a­tive of emo­tion­al re­ac­tions. Par­ti­ci­pants were al­so out­fit­ted with eye­track­ing equip­ment that cap­tured even the most sub­tle of eye move­ments. Re­search­ers found that while lib­er­als’ gazes tended to fall up­on the pleas­ant im­ages, such as a beach ball or a bun­ny rab­bit, con­ser­va­tives fo­cused on the neg­a­tive im­ages – of an open wound, a crashed car or a dirty toi­let, for ex­am­ple.

Con­sist­ent with this pat­tern, con­ser­va­tives al­so ex­hib­ited[...]



http://tinyurl.com/8abjgz2

 

It’s not an earthquake—it’s an aftershock from long ago

Nov. 4, 2005
Courtesy Nature
and World Science staff

Earth­quakes that oc­cur on land far from the bound­aries of tec­ton­ic plates may ac­tu­ally be af­ter­shocks of large quakes cen­turies ago, a new re­port sug­gests.

Tec­ton­ic plates are dis­tinct seg­ments of the Earth’s crust whose bor­ders tend to un­dergo large amounts of seis­mic, or earth­quake-re­lat­ed, ac­ti­vity. This oc­curs when a build­up in pres­sure along these bound­aries causes the ground to slip sud­den­ly.

This can al­so oc­cur with­in the plates, along cracks in the crust called fault­lines, but less of­ten. Such an event, though, was the 2008 Wenchuan earth­quake in Chi­na, which killed some 68,000 peo­ple by of­fi­cial es­ti­mates. It came as a sur­prise to many be­cause it oc­curred on a fault­line that had un­der­gone lit­tle re­cent seis­mic ac­ti­vity.

Be­cause of the in­fre­quent seis­mic ac­ti­vity at con­ti­nen­tal in­te­ri­ors like the Wenchuan re­gion, as­sess­ment of earth­quake haz­ard in these ar­eas re­lies on a rel­a­tively short his­tor­i­cal rec­ord, ac­cord­ing to re­search­ers Seth Stein of North­west­ern Un­ivers­ity in Il­li­nois and Mian Liu of the Un­ivers­ity of Mis­souri.[...]

http://tinyurl.com/74y274r

Violin shocker? Blind test said to show “old master” fiddles not so special

Jan. 5, 2012
Special to World Science

Genera­t­ions of mu­si­cians have re­vered vi­o­lins made by a hand­ful of 18th-century Ital­ian mas­ter crafts­men—most fa­mously An­to­nio Stra­di­va­ri, whose crea­t­ions are nick­named “Strads.”

To these mu­si­cians and their fans, the re­sults of a new blind test may come as a shock, if not an out­rage. If the re­sults are cor­rect, it seems many of us have been un­duly swayed by the im­mense mys­tique, not to men­tion price tags, of these in­stru­ments. Be­cause they don’t ac­tu­ally sound bet­ter than good mod­ern ones, sci­en­tists claim.

Per­haps the most iron­ic as­pect is that many oth­er re­search­ers have spent small for­tunes an­a­lyz­ing ex­actly what makes “Strads” and their ilk so spe­cial—and the study sug­gests that the an­swer is noth­ing.[...]

http://tinyurl.com/7cohpdz