Awareness

"You can change and save the world by changing yourself. The most important part of personal transformation leading to planetary transformation is to become fully alive, alert, and aware of our surroundings and the divinity everywhere."

Thom Hartmann

Raining Dinner

It rained fish in Australia last week.

Wonderful World

Just two of many beautiful photos @ National Geographic.


Hanuman Temple, India
Photo: Lorne Warburton


Tecopa Hot Springs
Photo: Christine Tuohy

Killing Kermit

Weed killer castrates frogs.

One of the most common weed killers in the world, atrazine, causes chemical castration in frogs and could be contributing to a worldwide decline in amphibian populations, a study published Monday showed.

Bad Juice

Fruit juice cancer link?

Fruit juices drunk by millions of children each day could contain a harmful chemical linked to cancer, scientists have warned.

Researchers have found high levels of antimony - which can be lethal in large doses - in many popular brands.

Scientists from the University of Copenhagen found that bottles of fruit juice and squash contained up to 2.5 times more of the substance as is deemed 'safe' in tap water, under EU guidelines.

In some cases the levels of antimony were ten times higher.

The scientists believe that the chemical is leaching its way into the fruit juice from the plastic bottles which hold it.

Cabin Fever

I'm so ready for spring I can taste it. Scenes like this are what I'm longing for. Dude takes some awesome photos.

Adios Hummer

GM to discontinue the Hummer?

An SUV that once represented one of America's largest trucks is now collapsing.

A Chinese company, Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machines, announced they would no long buy the Hummer Brand. Hummer officials say plans are already in the works to dissolve the line.

In Mishawaka the AM General Plant has not produced a Hummer in the past year.

To paraphrase comedian John Fugelsang, now how will we know who has a small penis?

Bite Your Tongue

Fucked up tongue-eating parasite found off Jersey coast(?)



The sea-dwelling parasite attacks fish, burrows into it, and then devours its tongue. After eating the tongue, the parasite proceeds to live inside the fish's mouth. There's a horror film waiting to be made about this thing. Surprisingly, the fish doesn't seem to suffer any severe impediment--just the loss of its tongue--and seems to have no trouble surviving with its new, far uglier tongue.

End of Men

Will men become an endangered species?

What makes a man a man? Socially, that is a complicated question. Genetically, however, it is as simple as a single Y chromosome.

But guys, that chromosome is in trouble.

In a new study, researchers say there is a dramatic loss of genes from the human Y chromosome that eventually could lead to its complete disappearance -- in the next few millennia.

So I may have tits in my next life? I really don't see the problem here...

Redo

Thoughts on redesigning society with Jacque Fresco and Roxanne Meadows of The Venus Project.



Click here for part two.

Jacque Fresco's Utopia

Muffy, Ditch the Yacht

People can no longer afford their boats in this shit economy.

Rock & Repel

Town uses rock music to repel insects.

The huge flightless insects are a fearsome sight as they advance across the desert in armies of millions that march over, under or into anything in their way.

But the crickets don't much fancy Led Zeppelin or the Rolling Stones, the townspeople figured out three years ago. So next month, Tuscarorans are preparing once again to get out their extension cords, array their stereos in a quarter-circle and tune them to rock station KHIX, full blast, from dawn to dusk. "It is part of our arsenal," says Laura Moore, an unemployed college professor and one of the town's 13 residents.

Water Fall

Western states told to expect future water shortfalls.

Dark Future

Climate change could trigger mass migrations and world war.

Let's Grow!

Start an organic garden without spending money.

Grow organic food producing plants without spending any extra money, while choosing the methods that close the loop between consumption and refuse by recycling household and yard waste, paper, cardboard, food containers, water, and urine.

The End of Chocolate

Could you imagine a world without chocolate?

Scientists say that now it is chocolate's sustainability that needs to be monitored. The Ghana-based Nature Conservation Research Center warns that chocolate may become as rare and expensive as caviar within 20 years.

A number of factors, including climate change, are affecting the farming and production of cacao, or the cocoa plant.

Another one of life's simple pleasures to be enjoyed solely by the rich? Fuck me.

Blow Your Top

Alaska's Mount Redoubt about to blow?

Mount Redoubt volcano in Alaska could erupt within days to weeks, say scientists at the U.S. Geological Survey, amazing the rest of us with their certainty.

Medicine Water

Indian stream found to have highest level of drugs in the world.

The supposedly cleaned water was a floating medicine cabinet — a soup of 21 different active pharmaceutical ingredients, used in generics for treatment of hypertension, heart disease, chronic liver ailments, depression, gonorrhea, ulcers and other ailments. Half of the drugs measured at the highest levels of pharmaceuticals ever detected in the environment, researchers say.

Those Indian factories produce drugs for much of the world, including many Americans. The result: Some of India's poor are unwittingly consuming an array of chemicals that may be harmful, and could lead to the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria.

Quake

Recent quake activity raising fears in Yellowstone.

...a wave of recent earthquake activity is raising fears that have their origins 642,000 years ago, when a Yellowstone "supervolcano" exploded so violently that it created the caldera itself. Today, such an explosion — 1,000 times more powerful than the explosion of Mount St. Helens in 1980 — would not only cover most of the U.S. with ash but also throw so much dust into the atmosphere that the world's climate could change.

Stop on Green

Cheaper oil and poor economy slowing green revolution.

Vigilante Injustice

Of all the fucked up stories to come out of Hurricane Katrina, the shootings of black residents trying to escape the flooding by white "vigilantes" is among the most disturbing. At least 11 people had been shot and the authorities don't seem to be concerned.



At least 11 black people were shot by white gunmen in the days following Hurricane Katrina's destruction of New Orleans, and in the three years since those crimes, little has been done by law enforcement.

According to an 18-month investigation published in The Nation, a predominantly white neighborhood formed a militia after the levees broke to simply keep out people who "didn't belong."

But the investigation reveals a more sinister outcome: black men suffering brutal and unprovoked attacks from white men armed with shotguns, handguns and even assault rifles.

Read the rest here. Democracy Now! has more reporting on the situation here.

Deadly America

US natural disaster hot spots revealed.

Water From Air

Can this machine produce drinking water from air?

The Coming Quake?

FEMA predicts a catastrophic earthquake for the American south and midwest.

FEMA predicted a large earthquake would cause "widespread and catastrophic physical damage" across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and Tennessee -- home to some 44 million people.

Tennessee is likely to be hardest hit, according to the study that sought to gauge the impact of a 7.7 magnitude earthquake in order to guide the government's response.

In Tennessee alone, it forecast hundreds of collapsed bridges, tens of thousands of severely damaged buildings and a half a million households without water.

Transportation systems and hospitals would be wrecked, and police and fire departments impaired, the study said.

Power House

Wouldn't it be sweet if you could power your home with your very own personal wind turbine or rooftop windmill?

Flight Night

This solar powered plane can fly at night.

Power House

This is the house that sun runs.

Mike Strizki's solar-hydrogen house has liberated him entirely from gas, electric and oil bills for the past two years.

Rebirth

Scientists revive "ancient glacier creatures".

Creatures that once lived eight million years ago have been successfully thawed from the ice of an Antarctic glacier, in an experiment that sounds like a scene from a science fiction film.

The feat of revival was managed with as yet unidentified single-celled microbes and should pose no health issues, say the scientists.

Yeah, should pose no health issues. Heard that one before. Captain Trips here we come...

People of the Sun

Will a "Major discovery" lead to a solar power revolution?

Floating World

Is this the city of the future?



The Lilypad comprises of three marinas and three mountain regions with streets and structures strewn with foliage. "The goal is to create a harmonious coexistence of humans and nature," said Callebaut.

With high density populations living in low-lying areas -- The Netherlands, Polynesia, Bangladesh -- the ecopolis, its creator believes, could be the answer to mass human displacement that global warming is predicted to cause.

The Smell of Death

Pollution stinks! And it's making life shitty for bees.

A research team at the University of Virginia concluded that increased air pollution is dulling the airborne fragrance of flowers, which may help explain why bee populations are disappearing across the country. Unable to smell their way to sources of pollen, the bees are dying off.

We're Worth Less

An American life is dropping in value. What does this mean for you?

It's not just the American dollar that's losing value. A government agency has decided that an American life isn't worth what it used to be.

The "value of a statistical life" is $6.9 million in today's dollars, the Environmental Protection Agency reckoned in May - a drop of nearly $1 million from just five years ago.

The Associated Press discovered the change after a review of cost-benefit analyses over more than a dozen years.

Though it may seem like a harmless bureaucratic recalculation, the devaluation has real consequences.

When drawing up regulations, government agencies put a value on human life and then weigh the costs versus the lifesaving benefits of a proposed rule. The less a life is worth to the government, the less the need for a regulation, such as tighter restrictions on pollution.

These Cars Blow

The top 10 worst polluters on the road.

Toxic Voyage

India is the shipping industry's toxic waste dump.

Wet Pole

Are the ice caps really melting?

Modern Life Blues

The modern world is bringin' me down, man...

...it's hard to join a community when you have to fight congestion to get to the nearest coffee shop, when you're too tired from a long commute to do much more than watch the tube, and when the pervasive voice of advertising proclaims that "it's all about you."

[environmentalist Bill] McKibben predicts that a less-centralized approach to the economy, far from being an archaic throwback to a simpler time, has a rosy future. The new rush to locally grown produce and jobs within walking distance of residences could be a harbinger of the future.

The government could help, says McKibben, by cutting off subsidies to giant enterprises, like those that control farming. But the real change will come when individuals reach a tipping point and decide to change their lifestyles.

Read more here.

Long Weekend

In an effort to conserve energy Utah has adopted the 4-day workweek. Lucky bastards!

Urban Greenery

A garden grows below the grates of this New York sidewalk.

Drowning Santa

For the first time in human history we'll have a North Pole with no ice.

Man-Made Desert

What do you make of the Chinese Dust Bowl?

A Bad Wrap

Well, if the food isn't toxic, its packaging probably is. How long exactly until we become mutants?

Urban, Organic, Cuba

But while none of these slogans are household words in Cuba, 70 percent of the vegetables and herbs grown on the island today are organic and the urban gardens where they are raised are usually within walking distance of those who will consume them. So in one blow Cuba reduced the use of fossil fuels in the production and transportation of food. And they began doing this nearly 20 years ago.

Read more here.

Is it Getting Hot in Here?

The Army is weighing in on the global warming debate, claiming that climate change is not entirely man-made. Instead, Dr. Bruce West, with the Army Research Office, argues that "changes in the earth’s average surface temperature are directly linked to ... the short-term statistical fluctuations in the Sun’s irradiance and the longer-term solar cycles."

Read more here. Either way, we're fucked. I recently watched a program on the coming ice age. They say global warming would only slow the inevitable icy destruction.

Apocalypse in the Oceans

Have the oceans met their demise?

...the globe's oceans have transformed over the last several decades, transforming even as we sit here into wastelands, ghost worlds, desolate deathscapes that could be filmed in situ for sci-fi films about the post-apocalypse. You won't find this out from a day at the beach. The smiling sea captain depicted on the fish-sticks box is keeping mum.

Oh, and a large percentage of coral reefs worldwide are dying or already dead. Oh, and those bluefin tuna and halibut steaks you like? Say it with me: Mercury. Those jumbo fried shrimp battened on pesticides and antibiotics in bacteria-riddled Chinese farms, their decomposing flesh treated with borax? How's your health insurance?

Renegade Gardeners

They're sneaking about in the wee hours, they're invading land that isn't theirs, they're taking over unloved plots of earth, even traffic medians and planting stuff. They're the guerrilla gardener movement.

Scott is a guerrilla gardener, a member of a burgeoning movement of green enthusiasts who plant without approval on land that's not theirs. In London, Berlin, Miami, San Francisco and Southern California, these free-range tillers are sowing a new kind of flower power. In nighttime planting parties or solo "seed bombing" runs, they aim to turn neglected public space and vacant lots into floral or food outposts.

Story with photos here and a seed-bomb tutorial for you wannabe guerrilla gardeners.

Nature Boy

I love hiking and camping. In fact I'm supposed to be camping right now, but a mysterious fire in the forest yesterday afternoon shat on those plans.



If you're like me, you'll enjoy these nature pix and articles nearly as much as the lovely ladies I've been posting.

Bag Lunch

A Canadian teen may have found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster.

Getting ordinary plastic bags to rot away like banana peels would be an environmental dream come true. Now a Waterloo teenager has found a way to make plastic bags degrade faster -- in three months, he figures.

I was too busy smoking weed, staring at girls, and beating off to help make the world a better place when I was his age. Well done, kid. Read more here.

Going Green, Eating Green, Saving Green

Vegetable gardens are sprouting up in the city. I'm hoping to get my own garden going one of these years.

Funding Frankenfood

Is the Bush administration using food crisis to give GM foods a boost?

The Aftermath

Coverage on the environmental fallout after China's earthquake.

Lawnmower Man

You a handyman? Good with the tools? Got a lawn? Maybe a DIY solar-powered lawnmower is your cup of tea.

Back to Nature

Fears of the financial instability, food and fuel shortages creating a new "survivalist" movement?



A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.

That was before Breault heard an author talk about the bleak future of the world's oil supply. Now, she's preparing for the world as we know it to disappear.

Breault cut her driving time in half. She switched to a diet of locally grown foods near her upstate New York home and lost 70 pounds. She sliced up her credit cards, banished her television and swore off plane travel. She began relying on a wood-burning stove.

"I was panic-stricken," the 50-year-old recalled, her voice shaking. "Devastated. Depressed. Afraid. Vulnerable. Weak. Alone. Just terrible."

Read more here. Cut up the credit cards, banish the t.v., lose 70 pounds... sounds like a plan.

Death-Proof

Check out this futuristic, hurricane-resistant dome home created with FEMA cash.