The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted. A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming. However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say. Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future. See how modelled temperatures may develop The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe. The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.
The Earth's temperature may stay roughly the same for a decade, as natural climate cycles enter a cooling phase, scientists have predicted.
A new computer model developed by German researchers, reported in the journal Nature, suggests the cooling will counter greenhouse warming.
However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say.
Other climate scientists have welcomed the research, saying it may help societies plan better for the future.
See how modelled temperatures may develop
The key to the new prediction is the natural cycle of ocean temperatures called the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), which is closely related to the warm currents that bring heat from the tropics to the shores of Europe.
The cause of the oscillation is not well understood, but the cycle appears to come round about every 60 to 70 years.
Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent, according to an unprecedented study that reveals the extent to which climate change is already affecting the world's ecosystems.Scientists examined published reports dating back to 1970 and found that at least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world could be explained by rising temperatures driven by human activity.Big falls in Antarctic penguin populations, fewer fish in African lakes, shifts in American river flows and earlier flowering and bird migrations in Europe are all likely to be driven by global warming, the study found.The team of experts, including members of the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) from America, Europe, Australia and China, is the first to formally link some of the most dramatic changes to the world's wildlife and habitats with human-induced climate change. In the study, which appears in the journal Nature, researchers analysed reports highlighting changes in populations or behaviour of 28,800 animal and plant species. They examined a further 829 reports that focused on different environmental effects, including surging rivers, retreating glaciers and shifting forests, across the seven continents.
Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent, according to an unprecedented study that reveals the extent to which climate change is already affecting the world's ecosystems.
Scientists examined published reports dating back to 1970 and found that at least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world could be explained by rising temperatures driven by human activity.
Big falls in Antarctic penguin populations, fewer fish in African lakes, shifts in American river flows and earlier flowering and bird migrations in Europe are all likely to be driven by global warming, the study found.
The team of experts, including members of the UN's intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) from America, Europe, Australia and China, is the first to formally link some of the most dramatic changes to the world's wildlife and habitats with human-induced climate change.
In the study, which appears in the journal Nature, researchers analysed reports highlighting changes in populations or behaviour of 28,800 animal and plant species. They examined a further 829 reports that focused on different environmental effects, including surging rivers, retreating glaciers and shifting forests, across the seven continents.
Their forecast was not only too cold for 1994-2004, but it also looks almost certain to be too cold for 2000-2010. For their forecast for 2000-2010 to be correct, all the remaining months of this period would have to be as cold as January 2008 - which was by far the coldest month in that decade thus far. It would thus require an extreme cooling for the next two-and-a-half years.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/the-global-cooling-bet-part-2/
LIEDEKERKE, Belgium: If Belgium vanishes one day, it will be because of little towns like this one, where Flemish politicians are riding a new wave of nationalism and pushing for an independent state. Liedekerke has only 12,000 inhabitants, but its elected council has caused a stir by insisting on the "Flemish nature" of the town. Not only must all city business and schooling take place in Flemish, true throughout Flanders, but children who cannot speak the language can be prohibited from taking part in holiday outings, like hikes and swimming classes. "België barst!" says the graffiti on the bridge near the train station, or "Belgium bursts," the cry of the nationalists who want an independent Flanders. But here they also want to keep the rich, French-speakers from Brussels - only 21 kilometers, or 13 miles, away, and 15 minutes by train - from buying up this pretty landscape and changing the nature of the village. Marc Mertens, 53, is the full-time secretary of the town, a professional manager who works under the elected, but part-time village council. Sitting in a café near the old church - Liedekerke is thought to mean "church on the little hill" - he describes how his grandfather fought in World War I under officers who only gave commands in French.
LIEDEKERKE, Belgium: If Belgium vanishes one day, it will be because of little towns like this one, where Flemish politicians are riding a new wave of nationalism and pushing for an independent state.
Liedekerke has only 12,000 inhabitants, but its elected council has caused a stir by insisting on the "Flemish nature" of the town. Not only must all city business and schooling take place in Flemish, true throughout Flanders, but children who cannot speak the language can be prohibited from taking part in holiday outings, like hikes and swimming classes.
"België barst!" says the graffiti on the bridge near the train station, or "Belgium bursts," the cry of the nationalists who want an independent Flanders. But here they also want to keep the rich, French-speakers from Brussels - only 21 kilometers, or 13 miles, away, and 15 minutes by train - from buying up this pretty landscape and changing the nature of the village.
Marc Mertens, 53, is the full-time secretary of the town, a professional manager who works under the elected, but part-time village council. Sitting in a café near the old church - Liedekerke is thought to mean "church on the little hill" - he describes how his grandfather fought in World War I under officers who only gave commands in French.
....The way in which this region is portrayed in the foreign press is the object of great concern in the cabinet of the Flemish Minister of Foreign Policy, Geert Bourgeois (N-VA). An article in The International Herald Tribune recently spoke of `a kind of non-violent Fascism' which keeps Flanders . The spokesperson for the minister confirmed in De Morgen that the facts of the article were true, but as is often the case with foreign journalists, the extreme points of view received the most attention. Yet many ministers do their utmost to smooth that image,......
An article in The International Herald Tribune recently spoke of `a kind of non-violent Fascism' which keeps Flanders . The spokesperson for the minister confirmed in De Morgen that the facts of the article were true, but as is often the case with foreign journalists, the extreme points of view received the most attention. Yet many ministers do their utmost to smooth that image,......
The world has been introduced to the true face of Julius Caesar with the discovery in a river in southern France of a bust that was sculpted in the lifetime of the Roman leader. The marble sculpture, found in the bed of the Rhône in the town of Arles, has been authenticated as a realistic likeness of Caesar, wrinkled and balding in his fifties and probably modelled from life. "It is the only known bust of the living Caesar, except for the Mask of Turin, which was made just before or after his death, said Luc Long, the Ministry of Culture archaeologist who found it along with other treasures last autumn. "Even in Rome, no one has found a portrait of the living Caesar," he added. The bust, which has a broken nose, dates from between 49 and 46BC, the period when Caesar founded the Roman colony of Arles, to thank the town for helping him to conquer the nearby port of Marseille. Caesar used Arles as a base for his campaign against Pompey, his rival.
The world has been introduced to the true face of Julius Caesar with the discovery in a river in southern France of a bust that was sculpted in the lifetime of the Roman leader.
The marble sculpture, found in the bed of the Rhône in the town of Arles, has been authenticated as a realistic likeness of Caesar, wrinkled and balding in his fifties and probably modelled from life.
"It is the only known bust of the living Caesar, except for the Mask of Turin, which was made just before or after his death, said Luc Long, the Ministry of Culture archaeologist who found it along with other treasures last autumn. "Even in Rome, no one has found a portrait of the living Caesar," he added.
The bust, which has a broken nose, dates from between 49 and 46BC, the period when Caesar founded the Roman colony of Arles, to thank the town for helping him to conquer the nearby port of Marseille. Caesar used Arles as a base for his campaign against Pompey, his rival.
Hospitals and airplanes ban the use of cell phones, because their electromagnetic transmissions can interfere with sensitive electrical devices. Could the brain also fall into that category? Of course, all our thoughts, sensations and actions arise from bioelectricity generated by neurons and transmitted through complex neural circuits inside our skull. Electrical signals between neurons generate electric fields that radiate out of brain tissue as electrical waves that can be picked up by electrodes touching a person's scalp. Measurements of such brainwaves in EEGs provide powerful insight into brain function and a valuable diagnostic tool for doctors. Indeed, so fundamental are brainwaves to the internal workings of the mind, they have become the ultimate, legal definition drawing the line between life and death. Brainwaves change with a healthy person's conscious and unconscious mental activity and state of arousal. But scientists can do more with brainwaves than just listen in on the brain at work-they can selectively control brain function by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This technique uses powerful pulses of electromagnetic radiation beamed into a person's brain to jam or excite particular brain circuits. Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, the question still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's antenna. Two studies provide some revealing news. The first, led by Rodney Croft, of the Brain Science Institute, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, tested whether cell phone transmissions could alter a person's brainwaves. The researchers monitored the brainwaves of 120 healthy men and women while a Nokia 6110 cell phone--one of the most popular cell phones in the world--was strapped to their head. A computer controlled the phone's transmissions in a double-blind experimental design, which meant that neither the test subject nor researchers knew whether the cell phone was transmitting or idle while EEG data were collected. The data showed that when the cell phone was transmitting, the power of a characteristic brain-wave pattern called alpha waves in the person's brain was boosted significantly. The increased alpha wave activity was greatest in brain tissue directly beneath to the cell phone, strengthening the case that the phone was responsible for the observed effect.
Hospitals and airplanes ban the use of cell phones, because their electromagnetic transmissions can interfere with sensitive electrical devices. Could the brain also fall into that category? Of course, all our thoughts, sensations and actions arise from bioelectricity generated by neurons and transmitted through complex neural circuits inside our skull. Electrical signals between neurons generate electric fields that radiate out of brain tissue as electrical waves that can be picked up by electrodes touching a person's scalp. Measurements of such brainwaves in EEGs provide powerful insight into brain function and a valuable diagnostic tool for doctors. Indeed, so fundamental are brainwaves to the internal workings of the mind, they have become the ultimate, legal definition drawing the line between life and death.
Brainwaves change with a healthy person's conscious and unconscious mental activity and state of arousal. But scientists can do more with brainwaves than just listen in on the brain at work-they can selectively control brain function by transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). This technique uses powerful pulses of electromagnetic radiation beamed into a person's brain to jam or excite particular brain circuits.
Although a cell phone is much less powerful than TMS, the question still remains: Could the electrical signals coming from a phone affect certain brainwaves operating in resonance with cell phone transmission frequencies? After all, the caller's cerebral cortex is just centimeters away from radiation broadcast from the phone's antenna. Two studies provide some revealing news.
The first, led by Rodney Croft, of the Brain Science Institute, Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, tested whether cell phone transmissions could alter a person's brainwaves. The researchers monitored the brainwaves of 120 healthy men and women while a Nokia 6110 cell phone--one of the most popular cell phones in the world--was strapped to their head. A computer controlled the phone's transmissions in a double-blind experimental design, which meant that neither the test subject nor researchers knew whether the cell phone was transmitting or idle while EEG data were collected. The data showed that when the cell phone was transmitting, the power of a characteristic brain-wave pattern called alpha waves in the person's brain was boosted significantly. The increased alpha wave activity was greatest in brain tissue directly beneath to the cell phone, strengthening the case that the phone was responsible for the observed effect.
[Another] experiment revealed that after the phone was switched to "talk" mode a different brain-wave pattern, called delta waves (in the range of one to four Hertz), remained dampened for nearly one hour after the phone was shut off. These brainwaves are the most reliable and sensitive marker of stage two sleep--approximately 50 percent of total sleep consists of this stage--and the subjects remained awake twice as long after the phone transmitting in talk mode was shut off. Although the test subjects had been sleep-deprived the night before, they could not fall asleep for nearly one hour after the phone had been operating without their knowledge.
Los Angeles - Swarmed around Leo's Taco truck on Eagle Rock Boulevard, about 50 night patrons are stuffing their cheeks with carne asada tacos - and chewing over one of this city's big controversies: taco trucks. "Why should a taco vendor be able to park in front of someone else's restaurant and steal his customers away with cheaper food?" asks one man, spearing pinto beans on a paper plate with a plastic fork. "But making them move every hour is a bad idea," says another as he orders a veggie burrito. "How can a truck vendor keep loyal customers if he has to move so often?" These patrons, like many Angelenos, are as hot as salsa caliente over new rules that go into effect Thursday - what to do with the 14,000 roving restaurateurs who have brought inexpensive entrees, a sense of community, intensifying competition for diners, neighborhood complaints, and a political brouhaha to the street corners of Los Angeles County. The new county law makes parking a taco truck in one spot for more than an hour punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or six months in jail, or both.
"Why should a taco vendor be able to park in front of someone else's restaurant and steal his customers away with cheaper food?" asks one man, spearing pinto beans on a paper plate with a plastic fork.
"But making them move every hour is a bad idea," says another as he orders a veggie burrito. "How can a truck vendor keep loyal customers if he has to move so often?"
These patrons, like many Angelenos, are as hot as salsa caliente over new rules that go into effect Thursday - what to do with the 14,000 roving restaurateurs who have brought inexpensive entrees, a sense of community, intensifying competition for diners, neighborhood complaints, and a political brouhaha to the street corners of Los Angeles County.
The new county law makes parking a taco truck in one spot for more than an hour punishable by a fine of up to $1,000 or six months in jail, or both.
The best thing I had to eat last week was a massive carnitas huarache, from the Gorditas Lupita's truck on Eagle Rock Boulevard near Avenue 34. I ate it while leaning against a warehouse wall in Glassell Park, washed it down with a bottle of Mexican Coke and perfumed with the exhaust of a thousand diesel trucks. The second-best thing may have been a Puebla-style cemita overstuffed with fried beef milanesa, ripe avocado and shreds of the Pueblan string cheese called quesillo -- that one I ate sitting on a plastic folding chair right on Indiana Street, where it runs into César Chávez at Five Points in East L.A. (...)I love mini-malls. I love swap meets. I love tamale carts. I love itinerant fruit vendors. I love old Guatemalan women with hampers full of corn on the cob and squirt-bottle mayonnaise. I love the pickups that roam the Eastside, with loads of mangoes or bushels of fresh green chickpeas. I love the guys who lop off the tops of coconuts with rusted machetes. I love entry-level capitalism at its most chaotic, where the barriers to doing business are on the wispy side of minimal, where a family with a dream and a catering license can support itself selling delicious barbecued cabeza from a truck window, where two dozen oddball eating places can be launched for less money than it would take to open a single outlet of Burger King. There are plenty of cities in America where freedom is best expressed as the right to choose between Wendy's, McDonald's and Carl's Jr., but Los Angeles is not one of those places. I think that's why I live here. (...)Why would an ordinarily sensible woman wait 45 minutes outside a truck to secure the same plate of food she could nab in one-tenth that time at the related taquería next door? Sure, it's the communal experience, the great brotherhood of the taco-eaters, but it is also the food. In tacos as in love, timing is everything, and if you've ever inhaled a taco of pork al pastor moments after the slivers of dripping meat have been hacked from the spit, you know: At that moment, desire and fulfillment are one. A great street taco is happiness translated into the language of warm tortillas, finely chopped onion and a hot sauce that bring you to your knees.
(...)I love mini-malls. I love swap meets. I love tamale carts. I love itinerant fruit vendors. I love old Guatemalan women with hampers full of corn on the cob and squirt-bottle mayonnaise. I love the pickups that roam the Eastside, with loads of mangoes or bushels of fresh green chickpeas. I love the guys who lop off the tops of coconuts with rusted machetes. I love entry-level capitalism at its most chaotic, where the barriers to doing business are on the wispy side of minimal, where a family with a dream and a catering license can support itself selling delicious barbecued cabeza from a truck window, where two dozen oddball eating places can be launched for less money than it would take to open a single outlet of Burger King. There are plenty of cities in America where freedom is best expressed as the right to choose between Wendy's, McDonald's and Carl's Jr., but Los Angeles is not one of those places. I think that's why I live here.
(...)Why would an ordinarily sensible woman wait 45 minutes outside a truck to secure the same plate of food she could nab in one-tenth that time at the related taquería next door? Sure, it's the communal experience, the great brotherhood of the taco-eaters, but it is also the food. In tacos as in love, timing is everything, and if you've ever inhaled a taco of pork al pastor moments after the slivers of dripping meat have been hacked from the spit, you know: At that moment, desire and fulfillment are one. A great street taco is happiness translated into the language of warm tortillas, finely chopped onion and a hot sauce that bring you to your knees.
Just as "The Origin of Species" reshaped social thinking, just as Einstein's theory of relativity affected art, so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see the world. <...> This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism. <...> First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is. <...> In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That's bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They're going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I'm not qualified to take sides, believe me. I'm just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We're in the middle of a scientific revolution. It's going to have big cultural effects.
This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism. <...>
First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions, people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love. Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those moments, the unknowable total of all there is. <...>
In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and reinforcing each other. That's bound to lead to new movements that emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They're going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. I'm not qualified to take sides, believe me. I'm just trying to anticipate which way the debate is headed. We're in the middle of a scientific revolution. It's going to have big cultural effects.
But beware the Skolnick Effect! A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
And one note to comment about one funny thing about narratives.... their appearnace have ntohing to do with reality again. All these stuff explained here as revolutionary has been knwon for decades...the only difference is that soem good neuroscience is showing more proofs that we had before...
but we had pretty strong clues before.. thanks basically to basic phsychoogy and anthropology. So good proofs that well it was considered true.
Societies do not share narratives feeling but they do share two or three basic feeling structures (empathy and fear) The narratives of the different cultures regardign one person move form the individual to the existence of the pure collective.. from the a strong-self to a no-self... and previous phsychologicahl experiemtns already pointed out clearly toward a non-specific self.. soemthing like a "confederation of souls" as the poetry called it..
the same goes for religion ... especially religious experience.. related with structural religious myth (or trascendental myhts) in your relation with the other and the universal narrative of "the quest". These narratives made perfect sense together with the analysis of brain seizures producing trascendental states in awareness states (you do not fancy neuroscience to ask seizures patients)
So, despite being known for quite some time we have decided to create a narrative about it... it was about time!!!
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
Chicago repeals foie gras ban
Chicago's aldermen showed Wednesday that they have had their fill of the ban on foie gras and made it legal once again for city restaurants to serve up the delicacy made from duck and goose liver. Mayor Richard Daley, who had once dismissed the ban as "the silliest law the City Council has ever passed," squelched debate on the measure and commanded the council to vote. Looming above the council at the dais, his arms crossed and his gaze stern, he ignored the repeated, shouted objections of the ban's sponsor, Ald. Joe Moore (49th). After the 37-6 vote, Daley seemed weary of the topic, as he noted the widespread attention that the ban has brought to Chicago since its passage. "There's been extensive, extensive, extensive debate on this," Daley told reporters after the council meeting. "This has been talked about, debated about constantly by international, national, local press, media, by the whole hospitality, culinary field, all of it . . . This has been going on forever." (...) Moore spent hours Wednesday in hushed conversations with fellow aldermen on the council floor and in the antechamber. The only five who stuck with him in defiance of Daley were Toni Preckwinckle (4th), Ricardo Munoz (22nd), Ed Smith (28th), Scott Waguespack (32nd) and Rey Colon (35th). After the vote, Moore spoke briefly and warned his colleagues that what happened to his measure "tomorrow could happen to you." In a caustic voice, the mayor shot back: "Thank you, Ald. Joe 'Foie Gras' Moore."
Mayor Richard Daley, who had once dismissed the ban as "the silliest law the City Council has ever passed," squelched debate on the measure and commanded the council to vote. Looming above the council at the dais, his arms crossed and his gaze stern, he ignored the repeated, shouted objections of the ban's sponsor, Ald. Joe Moore (49th).
After the 37-6 vote, Daley seemed weary of the topic, as he noted the widespread attention that the ban has brought to Chicago since its passage.
"There's been extensive, extensive, extensive debate on this," Daley told reporters after the council meeting. "This has been talked about, debated about constantly by international, national, local press, media, by the whole hospitality, culinary field, all of it . . . This has been going on forever."
(...)
Moore spent hours Wednesday in hushed conversations with fellow aldermen on the council floor and in the antechamber. The only five who stuck with him in defiance of Daley were Toni Preckwinckle (4th), Ricardo Munoz (22nd), Ed Smith (28th), Scott Waguespack (32nd) and Rey Colon (35th).
After the vote, Moore spoke briefly and warned his colleagues that what happened to his measure "tomorrow could happen to you."
In a caustic voice, the mayor shot back: "Thank you, Ald. Joe 'Foie Gras' Moore."
City Hall. Hard at work.
FWIW, while Moore is a frequent interloper in my circle, I'm squarely with the Mayor on this one. "Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.
The process of force feeding geese to make foie gras is self-evident mistreatment bordering on cruelty and seems to be done simply to maximise profit. I have tasted foie gras and it isn't any better to a normal pate imo. Knowing what is involved I will not eat it again and, whilst it may seem prissily politically correct, to ban the product of a cruel practice was a good thing. keep to the Fen Causeway
Also, geese are assholes. Fuck 'em.
