Saturday, November 19, 2011 ~ Have your say...

A Sobering Fact: Popular Articles Usually Have Something to do with Sex or the Paranormal

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I like to keep track of popular science web sites and which articles collect the most traffic, which are most popular, and which are shared on social networks.  


I couldn't help but notice that on LiveScience.com, the Popular Posts widget shows five stories, and none of them are based on hard science.  Their top stories are often related to sex or the  paranormal.  As of November 14th, 2011, the top articles were, in order:


1:  11/11/11 How Friday is tied to the Mayan Apocalypse 
2:  Sex With Animals Linked to Penile Cancer
3:  Asian Ancestors Had Sex With Mysterious Human Cousins
4:  Lair of Ancient 'Kraken' Sea Monster Possibly Uncovered
5: Do Einstein's Laws Prove Ghosts Exist?


Now, to be fair, the content of these articles are ultimately based on hard science.  The titles are chosen to provide link bait for users - so I don't fault the creators of the site.  In fact, LiveScience.com is one of the sites I will occasionally use as a reference for content.  What I am surprised at, is how popular the paranormal and sex are, even on a science-based website.

Which begs the question: are people looking to find the truth (science-based evidence), or are they looking to further support their own beliefs?  

Monday, November 14, 2011 ~ Have your say...

15 Reasons Why You Shouldn't Use Bottled Water

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According to the Earth Policy Institute, in 1976, Americans drank an average of 1.6 gallons of bottled water per year. 


That number has risen to 30 gallons per year today. This massive increase of portable water comes with a hefty price tag – both economically and environmentally.


1  Bottled water is 240 to 10,000 times more expensive than tap water.


2  The production of bottled water containers requires millions of barrels of oil per year.


3  The transportation of those bottles releases thousands of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere.  This is what only one tonne looks like:

4  American purchase 29 billion bottles of water every year, which requires 17 million barrels of oil to produce them (the equivalent amount of oil used to run 1 million cars for a year).  To get some perspective on how huge a number that is, look at the diagram below.  If each bottle were a penny, this is what only 10 billion pennies would look like:

5  In 2006, the equivalent of 2 billion half-liter bottles arrived in U.S. ports, according to the NRDC.


6  Fiji, for example, shipped 18 million gallons of bottled water to California, releasing about 2,500 tons of transportation-related pollution.


7  The Earth Policy Institute estimates that the energy used to pump, process, transport and refrigerate bottled water is over 50 million barrels of oil annually


8  According to a 2001 report of the World Wide Fund for Nature, roughly 1.5 million tons of plastic are expended in the bottling of 89 billion liters of water each year.


9  Bottled water isn't always as safe as tap water. The NRDC conducted a four-year study of the bottled water industry and that roughly 22 percent of the water tested contained contaminant levels that exceeded strict state health limits. One study found that hormone-disrupting phthalates had leached into bottled water that had been stored for 10 weeks.


10  Bottled water, because it is defined as a “food” under federal regulations, is under the authority of the Food and Drug Administration while the Environmental Protection Agency —under much stricter standards—regulates tap water.  Also, while municipal water systems must test for harmful microbiological content in water several times a day, bottled water companies are required to test for these microbes only once a week.


11  Spring water is not even necessarily from a spring: According to the NRDC, “An estimated 25 percent or more of bottled water is really just tap water in a bottle—sometimes further treated, sometimes not.”  Sometimes, it's basically just municipal water that's been filtered and bottled, then sold to the consumer with a huge margin.


12  Bottled water doesn’t even taste better. In an (non-scientific) study conducted by Showtime television, the hosts found that 75% of tested New York City residents actually preferred tap water over bottled water in a blind taste test.  Penn and Teller performed a similar study on their show, Bullshit!

13  Think recycling is the solution? Think again. According to the NRDC, the recycling rate for those 29 billion bottles of water mentioned early is very low; only about 13 percent end up in the recycling bin. In 2005, roughly 2 million tons of water bottles ended up in U.S. landfills


14  Plastic bottles take centuries to decompose and if they are incinerated, toxic byproducts, such as chlorine gas and ash containing heavy metals, are released into the atmosphere.

15  The bottles are not really considered safe for reuse.  According to Health Canada,
Health Canada does not recommend the reuse of single-use bottles because the reuse poses a potential microbiological risk if not cleaned properly. Studies on reusing single-use bottles have found that depending on the source of the water used and the general hygiene of the user, the growth of bacteria in the bottle can vary from negligible to potentially hazardous. Health Canada suggests that people use wide-necked bottles that can be thoroughly washed with hot soapy water between uses.



So there you have it - 15 reasons why bottled water is ridiculous, nonsensical, and one of the greatest marketing ploys ever to be conceived.  Drink the water from your tap:  it's cheap, it's safe, and there's much less of an impact on our environment.



References:
http://greenliving.nationalgeographic.com/water-bottle-pollution-2947.html?source=glmore 
http://www.kokogiak.com/megapenny/  
http://www.allaboutwater.org/environment.html  
http://www.energyrace.com/commentary/what_does_a_ton_of_co2_look_like/  
http://hc-sc.gc.ca/fn-an/securit/facts-faits/faqs_bottle_water-eau_embouteillee-eng.php#a16


Wednesday, November 9, 2011 ~ Have your say...

Just because it's natural, doesn't mean it's safe.

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According to the Courier Mail, an Australian news website, more than 200,000 practitioners work in unregistered health fields Australia-wide and complementary medicines generate almost $2 billion a year, but little can be done when treatments go wrong.

In a assessment of consumer-protection measures, Queensland's health watchdog admitted it was powerless to respond to the misconduct of alternative healers and other unregistered practitioners.

"The status quo does not sufficiently protect consumers from (the) risk of harm from unregistered health practitioners," the Health Quality and Complaints Commission said in a confidential paper obtained by The Sunday Mail.

Naturopathy, faith and spiritual healing, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, and massage are among the unregulated fields in Queensland, with the medical community warning of a health "time bomb".

In Australia, there "is a public health issue waiting to explode," said UQ School of Population Health researcher Jon Wardle, who has found there are now more alternative medical practitioners than doctors in some areas of the country.  "For half the healthcare sector to be non-regulated is completely inappropriate it is the black market of health."

The Sunday Mail reported that there have been 119 complaints about alternative practitioners to the state's health watchdog in the past three years. Allegations of assault, rough and painful treatment, illegal practices, medication errors and inappropriate treatment are among the complaints.  In one example, an acupuncturist caused a collapsed lung.   

Here's the bad news:  the complaints commission is unable to discipline offenders and can only forward cases to other agencies for action under general consumer and criminal laws.

A huge question mark hangs over the safety of complementary medicines when it was revealed that nine out of 10 products were not meeting regulatory standards.  The Auditor-General's report found the 10,000 complementary medicines registered with the Therapeutic Goods Administration did not have to be tested for safety nor efficacy.

The bottom line, in Australia:  medical doctors are formally regulated and alternative medicine practitioners are not.  Ultimately, it's the consumer who will suffer the most.  Future patients - don't assume that "because it's natural, it's safe". 


References:

Monday, November 7, 2011 ~ Have your say...

Breaking News: White House Formally Acknowledges: "Searching for ET, but no aliens yet".

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Ok, it's not really breaking news.  It's kinda mundane.  But, it's interesting nonetheless.  


The White House has formally acknowledged that the human race is not engaging extraterrestrials and is not withholding any information from said aliens.  This was in response to two petitions on the White House's "We The People" site, which requires a response from the government if 25,000 signatures are signed.  The first petition stated the following:


We petition the obama administration to "formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race - Disclosure."


"We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon."
___


Hundreds of military and government agency witnesses have come forward with testimony confirming this extraterrestrial presence. Opinion polls now indicate more than 50% of the American people believe there is an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about this phenomenon. The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth.


The second petition reads:


We petition the obama administration to "Immediately disclose the government's knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings"


This Petition calls for the President to disclose to the American people the long withheld knowledge of government interactions with extraterrestrial beings and call for open Congressional hearings to allow the people to become aware of this subject through those whose voices have been silenced by unconstitutional secrecy oaths.


The Response...


Phil Larson, who works on space policy and communications at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, replied with this official statement:


Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet


By Phil Larson


"Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.


The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.


However, that doesn't mean the subject of life outside our planet isn't being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth. Here are a few examples:


SETI—the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence—was originally stood up with help from NASA, but has since been moved to other sources of private funding. SETI's main purpose is to act as a giant ear on behalf of the human race, pointing an array of ground-based telescopes towards space to listen for any signal from another world.


Kepler is a NASA spacecraft in orbit that's main goal is to search for Earth-like planets. Such a planet would be located in the "Goldilocks" zone of a distant solar system—not too hot and not too cold—and could potentially be habitable by life as we know it. The Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-sized, rocky planets in or near the habitable zone of the star (sun) they orbit.


The Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, is an automobile-sized rover that NASA is launching soon. The rover's onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and other geology in an effort to detect the chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the Martian environment was like in the past to see if it could have harbored life.


A last point: Many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life.


Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved.


But that's all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth."


The official petitions can be found here and here:


Do you think this case is settled?  Or is the government lying to us again....???

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 ~ Have your say...

5 Amazing Photos of Storms

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This past summer was a Summer of Storms in the mid west USA, and electrician/amateur photographer Sean Heavey did his part to capture a few of them on film.  Heavey has photographed storms for the last seven years, but his most recent shots are up for a prestigious award by National Geographic.


'I have two storm chasing friends I met through my wife Toni and they've been badgering me to go out with them for that long,' explained Sean.


'I' normally rely on simply being in the right place at the right time for my photography, while I'm out working. But in July I finally decided to do it and thankfully this picture was the result. We don't usually get weather like this out in Montana, it felt like the perfect storm.  The power was awe inspiring.' 


Take a look at the five images below, and then read the full story from the Daily Mail to see the rest.

 








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