Living in the Future (Trailer)

Living in the Future (Trailer)

Still

Undercurrents Alternative News: Stand Still

Meet meat

YouTube - Film School NYFA - They're Made Out Of Meat

A note to creationists ..

Gunter Wagner is reported here commenting on more recent research on mutation in Evolution Gets a Boost: No Cost for Complexity | Wired Science from Wired.com: He says, "'I would say the only intellectually interesting argument that the creationists are using, at least the scientifically more sophisticated ones, is that random mutation can not lead to the evolution of complex organisms. And there are interesting mathematical arguments that have been made to support that. But our results show that organisms found a way around that problem by restricting mutational effects on very narrowly confined parts of the organisms.'"

Here we go again: the 'enabling act'

You may recall worries about something like this a couple of years back, what is it with this government and seizing arbitrary powers? "It looks as if we will have to again go through all the fuss and lobbying that we saw over the wretched Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006, the previous attempt by this Labour Government to neuter Parliament by Order of a Minister."
Spy Blog - SpyBlog.org.uk: Danger ! Draft Constitutional Renewal Bill Part 6 tries to remove even the limited constitutional safeguards of the "destroy Parliament" Legislative and Regulatory Reform Act 2006:

Running Words Together: The Science Behind Cross-linguistic Psychology

A bit more info for mulling over in respect of the debate on linguistic relativity and determinism. This piece of research written up briefly here Running Words Together: The Science Behind Cross-linguistic Psychology tells us, among other things: "Despite the vast differences between the four languages, however, all participants used distinct words to describe when the student was walking and to identify precisely when she began running. These results indicate cross-linguistic commonalities in naming patterns for locomotion and help to support the notion of certain universal rules and constraints in all languages.
“We found that converging naming patterns reflect structure in the world, not only acts of construction by observers,” Malt stated. “On a broader level, the data reveal a shared aspect of human experience that is present across cultures and reflected in every language.” So the first bit of the article shows how language can affect thinking, the latter shows how reality tends to form language. I think that this is still coming up in favour of critical realism.

Compassion Meditation Changes The Brain

Worth noting this article: Compassion Meditation Changes The Brain: perhaps not surprising at one level, but it's good (again) to have back up for the benefits of filling our minds with good stuff. If learning the streets of London changes cabbies' brains, it is not perhaps such a leap to "Cultivating compassion and kindness through meditation affects brain regions that can make a person more empathetic to other peoples' mental states"