Here's the scenario: Jeremy Paxman continually tells Russell Brand that he has not right to be heard because he doesn't bother to vote. Brand explains to Paxman that voting is a farce that makes voters complicit in the rampant political/corporate corruption. Invigorating discussion that is well worth your time.
Fascinating story told by Carl Zimmer, illustrated by yeast studies.
Scientists suspect that the first step towards a complex multicellular body like ours is for cells to evolve to live in primitive clumps. There may be a lot of advantages to living this way. It may be harder for a predator to eat you, for example. At the University of Minnesota, a team of scientists led by William Ratcliff and Michael Travisano figured out a way to create this kind of natural selection in a lab. As I reported last year in the New York Times, they were able to get yeast–which normally lives as single cells–to turn into simple multicellular clumps in a few weeks.
Here's another excellent and succinct analysis by Dylan Ratigan, part of an mass emailing he recently sent out. Allowing conservatives to argue about "death panels" is a big mistake and here's why -- and BTW, the time to make policy is not as we gather around very sick people challenging each other as to who can spend the most to to extending someone's last breaths by 3 months, bankrupting healthcare in the process. We need to grow up and get our heads out of fantasy-land. Let's redefine healthcare in terms of sustainable and meaningful goals. Ironically, there is date that those who claim to be most confident in the existence of an afterlife insist on the highest rate of last-minute desperate expenditures. Here's Dylan's email:
Dear Friends, Generally speaking, there are only two ways to earn money. 1. Charge a fee for goods or services. 2. Charge a mutually agreed upon percentage based on a future outcome based on the newly created value. This percentage can be in the form of equity or commission. As it stands, healthcare in America is based on the first model. This creates a system with many, high fees generated by acute and traumatic care. The chart above, from this report by the International Federation of Health Plans, shows how much we are paying compared to the rest of the world: In reality, this care is for only 5 percent of us at a given moment, yet accounts for 50 percent of what each of us spend on the service regardless of whether or not we are using it. If this unfortunate reality upsets you, please relax...close your eyes....and imagine for a moment a healthcare model that uses the second model of income generation. One that is based on equity or commission based on a future outcome. [More . . . ]
One of my photographer mentors advised that I try to shoot SOMETHING every day. And this morning I finished reading Phil Zimbardo's "The Time Paradox," from which I learned (for the 800th time) that my perspective is skewed way toward future time orientation, which causes me to miss out on the present, especially ordinary things that are actually quite stunning. Therefore . . . I gave myself an assignment to take photos of leaves from the backside, illuminated from the front by direct sun. I tried to simply enjoy their beauty, but couldn't help contemplating their incredibly sophisticated function.
I'm working on some longer articles for Dangerous Intersection at the moment, though I'm not publishing at DI as often as I did several years ago. However, I have lots of plans to address quite a few exciting topics here. This will be the location for extended commentary and my own substantive articles. In the meantime, I've been posting many links to worthy articles over at my Facebook page. I'm publishing some of those materials only at Facebook, not here at DI. If you are interested in tapping into those very short articles and links, simply send me a Friend Request at Facebook.