Awkward Intelligence

Politicalprof: Another day in Gunmerica: May 10, 2013

tskmstr — Sun, 12 May 2013 23:22:32 -0700

Politicalprof: Another day in Gunmerica: May 10, 2013: politicalprof: From Joe Nocera, New York...

Article: NYC Study Finds Protected Bicycle Lanes Boost Local Business

tskmstr — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:21:08 -0700

NYC Study Finds Protected Bicycle Lanes Boost Local Business...

Article: Europeans are basically one big family

tskmstr — Wed, 08 May 2013 18:51:10 -0700

Europeans are basically one big family...

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tskmstr — Tue, 07 May 2013 18:12:40 -0700

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tskmstr — Tue, 07 May 2013 17:28:56 -0700

currentsinbiology: How Burning Plants Signal Future Generations...

tskmstr — Tue, 07 May 2013 16:53:33 -0700

currentsinbiology:

How Burning Plants Signal Future Generations to Grow

Previous studies have reported that chemicals known as karrikins are created as trees and shrubs burn during a forest fire and remain in the soil after the fire, ensuring the forest will regenerate. In the April 23 early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists at the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego, sought to uncover exactly how karrikins stimulate new plant growth.

The researchers found that a plant protein know as KAI2 binds to karrikin in dormant seeds, changing its shape. This karrikin-induced shape change may send a new signal to other proteins in the seeds causing seed germination when the time is right, after a forest fire.

After Boston, spending on video surveillance expected to surge | latimes.com

tskmstr — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:52:52 -0700

After Boston, spending on video surveillance expected to surge | latimes.com

New Study Links Popular Herbicide To Fatal Diseases

tskmstr — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 09:28:01 -0700

New Study Links Popular Herbicide To Fatal Diseases: April 25 (Reuters) - Heavy use of the...

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tskmstr — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:59:45 -0700

iambinarymind: I disagree with the assertion that “money is the...

tskmstr — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:56:14 -0700

iambinarymind:

I disagree with the assertion that “money is the root of all politics”.

Force, fraud, and coercion are the root of all politics.

Money by definition is a generally accepted means of exchange. Just like any other tool, what matters is the human action behind said means. What matters is if said action is consensual or forced.

I prefer consensual relationships and voluntary exchange.

TaskMaster: In the LBC

tskmstr — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:12:56 -0700

TaskMaster: In the LBC: tskmstr: Be careful Long Beach. If you have been paying attention there has...

joshbyard: New Metamaterial Can Store Light, then Release...

tskmstr — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:38:25 -0700

joshbyard:

New Metamaterial Can Store Light, then Release It

Nakanishi and co have created a metamaterial in which each repeating unit contains two variable capacitors.

One of the capacitors is designed to absorb and radiate waves at a particular frequency while the other is designed to trap them. If the capacitors are tuned to the same frequency, any light at that frequency is absorbed and trapped. Detuning the capacitors then releases the electromagnetic waves, allowing them to continue on their way…

Impressively, Nakanishi and co have built a proof-of-principle device that does exactly this with microwaves. That’s the first time anybody has demonstrated the storage and release of electromagnetic waves using a metamaterial.

What’s more impressive, however, is that the released waves have the same phase distribution as the originals. “The electromagnetic waves were stored and released, while maintaining the phase distribution in the propagating direction,” they say.

(via First Demonstration of the Storage And Release of Light in a Metamaterial | MIT Technology Review)

Article: We’re Fixated on the Tsarnaevs, But Day-to-Day Urban Violence Is the Bigger Killer

tskmstr — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 07:00:21 -0700

We’re Fixated on the Tsarnaevs, But Day-to-Day Urban Violence Is the Bigger Killer...

A quick observation.....

tskmstr — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:28:49 -0700

tskmstr: After all the death and injury. After the disruption of our lives and exploitation of our...

TaskMaster: Really congress......your all full of shit!

tskmstr — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 09:15:00 -0700

TaskMaster: Really congress......your all full of shit!: tskmstr: I get that our immigration policy...

thepeoplesrecord: This is the reality of austerity: Greek...

tskmstr — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 08:14:20 -0700

thepeoplesrecord:

This is the reality of austerity: Greek children are starving
April 22, 2013

Force-feeding Greece with budget cuts and tax increases gets a predictable, and tragic, results.

It’s not fair to blame Rogoff and Reinhart for the austerity craze that has gripped Europe. It is fair to say that their presentation of flawed data about the last half-century of growth and debt was used as intellectual ammunition in a total war on deficits that has destroyed families across the continent.

In Greece, the fog of austerity is more than a metaphor. This winter, a very real cloud of smoke haunted the city at night, as families burned felled trees and broken chairs to stay warm. While the economy has shrunk by a fifth and youth unemployment has screamed past 50 percent, the real tragedy can’t really be told with numbers. It’s simple, really. Children are starving.

The New York Times reports the heart-breaking details:

“He had eaten almost nothing at home,” Mr. Nikas said, sitting in his cramped school office near the port of Piraeus, a working-class suburb of Athens, as the sound of a jump rope skittered across the playground. He confronted Pantelis’s parents, who were ashamed and embarrassed but admitted that they had not been able to find work for months. Their savings were gone, and they were living on rations of pasta and ketchup.

The euro was supposed to tie Europe together as a single unified economic powerhouse. When Greek children go malnourished while unemployment falls in Germany, you can see very clearly that unity is just another European myth. In the United States, we have an answer for weak state economies. It’s called Mississippi. They get a permanent “bail out” through an annual transfer of money: tax credits, Medicaid spending, infrastructure assistance, and so on. In Europe, the answer for failing state economies is: You get this bag of money if you take the following measures to destroy your economy.

You don’t need to know how to fact-check Harvard economists to understand a simple truth: Force-feeding austerity to a country starving for money and growth will only get you more starvation.

Source

Article: China Thinks Its Bird Flu Might Be Spreading from Human to Human

tskmstr — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 07:26:13 -0700

China Thinks Its Bird Flu Might Be Spreading from Human to Human...

breakingnews: 2 explosions rock finish line of Boston...

tskmstr — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:35:50 -0700

breakingnews:

2 explosions rock finish line of Boston Marathon

AP: An unknown number of people are injured after two explosions rocked the finish line of the Boston Marathon on Monday.

Witnesses saw bloody spectators being carried to the medical tent which had been set up to care for fatigued runners.

An explosion was first heard three hours after the winners crossed the finish line on the north side of Boylston Street. Another explosion was heard a few seconds later.

Follow the latest at Breaking News.

Photo: WHDH via NBCNews.com

"To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme..."

tskmstr — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 08:05:20 -0700

“To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the...

current: John Fugelsang: Next month the great Willie Nelson...

tskmstr — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 06:35:01 -0700

current:

John Fugelsang:

Next month the great Willie Nelson turns 80, so I sure hope somebody warns him that marijuana is the gateway to heroin before it’s too late. Some people say Willie has a marijuana problem; I prefer to say he has a marijuana practice. But it was three years ago that Willie was arrested in Texas for possession of six ounces of pot. God, who produces it naturally across the globe, remains at large.
But I thought of Willie when that new Pew poll came out that shows for the first time in U.S. history a majority of Americans — 52 percent — favor marijuana legalization.

Actually, I should call it cannabis decriminalization.

Because cannabis is the actual name of the plant; back in the ’30s when DuPont Chemical and William Randolph Hearst wanted to make the hemp plant illegal, they decided to use the Spanish term for cannabis to take advantage of anti-Mexican racism. And it worked.

And I should call it decriminalization instead of legalization, because that’s really what it is — the criminalizing is a relatively recent phenomenon. In colonial days, cannabis was used as a painkiller. Back then, the biggest drug problem was the same as today: alcohol. Washington grew hemp at Mount Vernon. Jefferson grew it too. Nowadays we would lock them up, if we ever locked up rich white guys for pot. It was as American as apple pie back then. And everybody knew if you smoked that flowery top part of the hemp plant, you’d want to eat a lot of apple pie.

Our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, once wrote to the president of the Hohner Harmonica Company, “Two of my favorite things are sitting on my front porch smoking a pipe of sweet hemp and playing my Hohner harmonica.” And that poor guy deserved all the recreation he could get.

So this poll doesn’t really mean America’s getting more liberal — because technically, legal cannabis is the conservative point of view.

Now, over the years we’ve all grown up with the traditional propaganda about pot: how it makes you violent and lazy. To me, making violent people lazy is the only crime prevention plan that works. But more and more Americans have come to realize that cannabis has never really caused any murders — indeed, it may have prevented quite a few.

And with the national and state economies still struggling it looks like cannabis might be the one of the safest areas for investment. Next to tattoo removal — that’s going to be huge.

The question is, will we ever see a U.S. president take the lead on the issue and risk doing the right thing, even if it means going down in history as President Spliff?

Now our last three presidents — Obama, Bush and Clinton — have all been vague to honest about their usage of cannabis when they were younger. But the thing is, these three guys have had no problem locking people up in cages for doing the same thing they did. Now if these presidents really believed pot was evil, they would surrender themselves to the local authorities. If they thought it was a sin, they’d turn themselves in.

Because even if you don’t like pot — and we’ve all had that roommate — the drug war violates civil liberties and privacy rights. It shows the rich get away with things the poor can’t. Big pharma certainly doesn’t want to see pot legalized, and in the era of big-money, privatized prisons, we do need a steady flow of people sent to jail for using a flower that existed in North America long before white people ever got here.

So think about that the next time you’re watching TV news and hear about people getting locked up for evil, illegal, mood-altering drugs — before they cut to TV commercials for all those legal, taxable, mood-altering drugs.