Portrait of Final Fantasy character Tifa Lockhart by Canadian digital artist sleepar. Reality is no match for the imagination.
What's Important This Week:
Losing the War on Disease: Inevitably, an NIH/WHO study shows, almost all dangerous infectious diseases are morphing to forms that are resistant to all antimicrobials,
leaving their victims, mostly (for now) in struggling nations,
condemned to die. Part of the problem is overprescription and
misprescription of antibiotics and antivirals. Part of it is ignorance
and poor hygiene. But part of the problem, the one we refuse to
acknowledge, is that it is unnatural for any creature to live in
crowded conditions. Infectious diseases are nature's way of saying "too
many, and too close together", and solving the problem to rebalance
populations for the benefit of all-life-on-Earth. When will we listen,
pay attention, change?
The Fragility of Having to Spend More Than You Earn: A NYT story profiles a family that, like the average US family, now spends more each year than it earns,
and depends utterly on increases in value of their home and their
investments and low interest rates on ever-growing debt. If these
things start to drop in value, as they are now, or if inflation or
interest rates spike, there is no way out except bankruptcy.
Yet More Poison from China: This week it's diethylene glycol, a cheap, toxic replacement for glycerin, in toothpaste. Time to shut the door on these criminal corporatist clowns, and jail the negligent importers, before thousands die.
Last Chance to Prove String Theory?:
Scientists refuse to believe that nature would play the ultimate trick
on us: Making space infinitely large and complex and the microcosm
infinitely small and complex, with no start, no end, and no
'fundamental building blocks'. If she has done that (and my instincts
say she has), our much-sought 'grand unifying theory of everything'
will elude us forever. As Liz Kolbert reports in the New Yorker this
week, string theory, the wildly convoluted and complex theory requiring
11 dimensions, is on the line when the hugely expensive new European
CERN accelerator tries once again to prove the existence of
hypothesized particles. If they fail, theory may end up being just that, forever unprovable, and the end of the line for those seeking Nobels for making further theories unnecessary.
Discover What Toxins Are In Your Cosmetics: EWG's Skin Deep cosmetic safety database rates the safety of 25,000 brand-name cosmetic products and tells you what dangerous and untested ingredients are in each. (Heh...now we need a Deep Throat food safety database to tell us about the ingredients in fast and processed foods.)
Corporatists Telling You to 'Cease & Desist'? Here's Help:
More and more oligopolies are suing customers who find workarounds to
their price-gouging. Now, the Berkman/EFF Chilling Effects
Clearinghouse can translate the threatening letter you received into
understandable terms and tell you how -- and if -- to respond to their threats. Thanks to my sister-in-law Morva Bowman for the link.
US Health System the Worst of Affluent Nations': A lesson in how to let greedy health industry oligopolies give you less for more.
Thoughts of the Week (both, as it happens, appear on the same page of this week's New Yorker):
From 'Atheists with Attitude' by Anthony Gottlieb, reviewing several recent books on the problems of modern religion (yep, including The God Delusion):
God is merely the answer that you get if you do not ask enough questions.
Unknown Age, by WS Merwin
For all the features it hoards and displays
age seems to be without substance at any time
whether morning or evening it is a moment of air
held between the hands like a stunned bird
while I stand remembering light in the trees
of another century on a continent long submerged
with no way of telling whether the leaves at that time
felt memory as they were touching the day
and no knowledge of what happened to the reflections
on the pond's surface that never were seen again
the bird lies still while the light goes on flying |
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
