Heaving Dead Cats » environment

Random Thoughts On The Nature Of Things

Neece — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:01:14 +0000

Hello everyone,

First, I am now a Google Waver! Find me at zeneece@googlewave.com. I started my first public wave for atheists: Atheists Unite!

Secondly, I must confess my ignorance on a certain matter that has been bouncing around my brain for some time. I have asked my genius husband Butch and he didn’t have an answer, which made me feel better.

I’ll start with an example:

I always thought aspirin was found in the bark of white willows, and then was made in the lab. But the history seems to be entirely in the laboratory, according to Wikipedia. Also there does seem to be a connection between white willow bark and eventually aspirin.

Needless to say these days, aspirin is made strictly in the lab/factory. My question is, if things are made strictly from chemicals, where do the chemicals themselves come from? And a followup question would be, wouldn’t that make everything natural, at some point? Doesn’t everything eventually lead back to nature?

Another example:

Black Gold, petroleum, crude oil. It’s considered this unnatural thing. But didn’t it come from rotting vegetation and other natural organic matter?

When does something natural become something synthetic?

Why are natural things considered superior to synthetic things nowadays? Is there some proof that it’s true? Or is it marketing/propaganda?

I’m not trying to start anything, or as the Brits would say, I’m not trying to have a go at synthetics. I really just want to understand. If the red food dye and flavoring in my drink stick mix is synthetic, where did the chemicals that make it up come from?

I would love your feedback and thoughts on this. But please, I took chemistry in high school which was over 20 years ago (egads, that made me feel old), so keep it simple.

Thanks friends!

Life Is Good. Cinnamon Life Is Better!

Neece — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 05:47:33 +0000

You probably have to be American to get the joke in the title. Do other countries have Life cereal? I have no idea. That’s a phrase of my husband Butch’s anyway. I personally think the original Life cereal is the best, not the fancy versions that they also make, like cinnamon, chocolate oat crunch, etc.

Anyhoo, this is a roundup post in which I cover several topics that are tenuously connected at best. Here’s what I’m rambling on about:

I’m a citizen scientist now! WOOT!
- Encyclopedia of Life!
- My Flickr
Moving the body affects how we think – a study
Prayer and meditation may reshape the brain – a study

First, I want to talk about a ScienceDaily report: Massive Online ‘Macroscopic Observatory’ Of Earth’s Biodiversity To Be Created. “Wanted (soon): observations from environment-minded citizens that will allow science to study biodiversity at a planetary level in a massive, comprehensive virtual observatory of historic importance.”

This guy, Edward O. Wilson, created a website, Encyclopedia of Life (eol). His dream: “Imagine an electronic page for each species of organism on Earth…” and they are starting to do just that. A page for every species. If you read the ScienceDaily article, it will be amazing. You’ll be able to get information from the Deep Web from images, maps, classification, common and scientific names, links to research and papers, etc.

It’s already there now, and growing all the time. In the future you’ll also be able to get genome sequences and much much more. Basically anything you want to know about a species will be there, at your fingertips, all on one page, for free. My scientific geekiness is giggling with delight!

And here’s where I get to finally call myself a scientist! Uh, well, a citizen scientist, which is still cool. eol wants people to submit their pictures. I’m a photographer, and I love taking pictures of nature, but I’ve never been able to do much with them. Now I can help with this project! Can you say WOOT!? I can. Woot WOOT! (Sorry, uber-geek moment there).

So what you do, what I did, was to open a Flickr account. I’m ZeNeeceC on Flickr now. I got some older pictures posted yesterday. Then here’s the tough part. You need to machine tag them with their scientific names. This is so that when you send them to the eol Flickr group, eol’s computer can get those images and put them on the right pages.

My friend Jeff said that eol sounded like a Wikipedia kind of thing for science. In a way, he’s right, because we get to contribute our images. But eol is serious about science, so the images will get authenticated. Until that time, they have a yellow box around them so people can see that they are contributed but might not be scientifically accurate like the rest of the info on the page.

Even further, though, if you just want high end science info, eol lets you set that up so that you don’t even see the citizen science stuff. It’s a very well done site.

Anyway, I am having trouble finding out what things are called. Flickr has a group called ID Please, which I joined. And I joined BugGuide.net as ZeNeece to help me ID bugs. But the flowers and plants, I will need to find an online source to identify those more readily.

So that’s that. I wanted to share it with you because it’s so exciting to me, but also in case you or someone you know might be interested as well.

Onto some studies!

Our Bodies, Our Brains: a recent study shows that moving your body in certain ways can improve your ability to think. Published in Psychological Science.

Working with 38 subjects, the scientists confirmed that either a step forward (a typically positive movement) or a step backward (usually negative) significantly changed one’s ability to perform a mental task.

Taking four steps back improved a subject’s accuracy and timing on the task, whereas taking four steps forward led to longer processing times and more errors.

How cool is that? Now, if you follow the link, you’ll see that this was on 60 second science on Scientific American, so there are no links to studies. But they list the publication, Psychological Science, if you want to look into it further.

Prayer May Reshape Your Brain… And Your Reality: This is interesting. I’ve told you about some studies (see below) in the past in this field, which this article calls “neurotheology”. The article from NPR is about Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at University of Pennsylvania who has written several books and studies very religious people and their brains. Newberg says: “The more you focus on something — whether that’s math or auto racing or football or God — the more that becomes your reality, the more it becomes written into the neural connections of your brain.”

He also tested a doctor who meditates for an hour a day. He had him meditate in a brain scanner.

As expected, his frontal lobes lit up on the screen: Meditation is sheer concentration, after all. But what fascinated Newberg was that Baime’s parietal lobes went dark. Newberg said, “This is an area that normally takes our sensory information, tries to create for us a sense of ourselves and orient that self in the world,” he explains. “When people lose their sense of self, feel a sense of oneness, a blurring of the boundary between self and other, we have found decreases in activity in that area.”

The article goes on to suggest that you can benefit from meditation and prayer as well, even if you don’t devote 1 or 2 hours a day to it. I find this interesting and compelling, and it goes along with the other studies listed below. I would have liked some studies referenced and linked to in the article, but I guess I’m not that lucky.

Here are the other posts I’ve done about other relevant brain and mind studies recently:

Church: No brain activity required- study showed how experiencing transcendence basically shut down the right parietal lobe.
More differences in the brains of believers and non-believers: A recent study that found religious people were less anxious about mistakes they made than non-believers.
Knowledge and Beliefs are stored differently in the brain: this wasn’t a specific study. Dr. Steven Novella mentioned it in passing on his podcast.
Religion is the path of least resistance: This was about an article in New Scientist where people are born believers. I strongly suspect the way they conducted the studies mentioned.
Superstitious? It could be your lack of control: This was a neat study about people who were basically put into a situation where they felt a lack of control found patterns more readily in random information.

What Jesus Wouldn’t Do and What I Have Done

Neece — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 13:01:31 +0000

Sometimes you just have to give props where they’re due. Johnny left a comment somewhere around here yesterday with a link to a youtube video. It was so brilliant I have to share it with you immediately. It’s about everyone’s favorite lord, Jesus. Apparently he had a meeting with a group of angels before he had himself impregnated into poor, innocent Mary. This is the video from that meeting. It’s 8:40 minutes long, but entirely awesome. Thanks, Johnny, for letting us know about it!

What I don’t get is that nowhere in the bible is Australia mentioned, and Jesus and the angels are obviously from Down Under. Checkmate, heathens! HA!

Anyway, along the same lines, I have been pretty active on Facebook for a couple weeks or so. Every day people ask me to join causes and groups for one well-meaning reason or another. But no group really makes me feel like I’m doing something through joining. So I had to start my own! It is brand new, so go join today! Invite your friends and family, and together we can make a difference with ZERO EFFORT!

Six Zillion Strong For All Causes!

We can all sleep like innocent babies in our comfy beds tonight, secure in the knowledge that we made a difference by joining 6 Zillion Strong.

Think of all we can do if we simply join together. We can save whales from extinction! And polar bears from starvation! And so much more! Join today and then say hi on the discussion board and tell us who or what you want to save today! Since I’m the Founder, you can leave your comments here, but to truly make a difference, at this time, the only way is to join 6 Zillion Strong on Facebook.

If you feel we need to branch out already, to help spread the love and caring, leave comments here, and maybe we can make a group on HDC that can try to match the great works done by 6 Zillion Strong on Facebook.

Together, we can do anything. And it literally takes ZERO EFFORT! Join Today!

EDIT: this is a test. But watch this 9 minute video anyway, because it’s funny. These are the only two I’ve seen but Johnny says NonStampCollector is awesome, and I tend to agree.

Random Thoughts About Human Impact On Evolution

Neece — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:22:14 +0000

Charles Darwin celebrated his 200th birthday February 12 of this year. So of course many of the science podcasts I listen to, as well as many of the science and skeptic sites I visit, have been talking about evolution and Darwin and all that good stuff. Evolution is often paraphrased as the term, survival of the fittest, which is inaccurate. Here is how Dictionary.com defines it, as well as some other terms, just so we’re all on the same page:

Survival of the Fittest
a 19th-century concept of human society, inspired by the principle of natural selection, postulating that those who are eliminated in the struggle for existence are the unfit.
Natural Selection
n. The process in nature by which, according to Darwin’s theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated.
Evolution
Biology. change in the gene pool of a population from generation to generation by such processes as mutation, natural selection, and genetic drift.

I’ve been slowly forming some random thoughts regarding the human population and evolution and I thought I’d write them down. Your input would be most welcome, as usual.

I heard on The Naked Scientists ( podcast number or which exact one, I’m not sure) recently that humans aren’t really evolving and haven’t for the last couple of thousand years or so. Chris, the Naked Scientist, was talking about something else so it was one of those explanations for something else, not the topic of conversation. So he didn’t go into detail.

My ears perked up though because I’ve been vaguely wondering about human evolution in the past several thousand years. Mainly because humans seem to do things backwards from the rest of nature. Or we seem to do that lately in our history.

For instance, we take care of the old and sick, to the point that otherwise frail and less than hearty people are able to reproduce, and to reproduce much longer into older age than ever before. This is when a woman’s eggs may have more genetic defects in them. Which is why women who are pregnant over a certain age are encouraged to get tested for genetic defects more than younger women are.

I have an aunt who was born with a serious birth defect – spina bifida. She needed countless surgeries over her childhood, and several in her adulthood as well. She ended up getting married and having a child, which even a hundred years ago would not have been possible.

There are huge differences in child mortality and survival throughout the world even today, based on availability of medical care, basic nutrition and other factors. But even 100 years ago the infant mortality rate was higher, right? What was it 2,000 years ago when medical care was rudimentary at best?

So what does this do to the gene pool and to human evolution?

I was talking to my friend Jeff about this yesterday and he made a comment that we are evolving, just with machines now. But I would suggest that’s not the same thing. It certainly doesn’t fall into the biological definition of evolution. I’m not saying that we aren’t evolving at all. But we seem to have stalled at least. Instead of natural selection within the human race, we have technology of all different sorts to compensate for whatever lack of genetic strength we may have.

This could be as simple as red headed people living in the Mediterranean. They don’t need to get sunburned and get skin cancer because they can wear sunblock and protective clothing and stay indoors more. Or a child can be born with asthma, something that would have shortened her life long ago, perhaps. Instead while she may take medication and change her lifestyle a bit, she can grow up to have children, who may also be prone to asthma.

Did you see that movie, Idiocracy? I didn’t watch it because, well, it looked really dumb. But the concept is interesting and is something I see in my life nowadays, to a small degree. The premise of the movie, from what I gathered, is that smart people stop having children so only stupid people have kids, giving birth to dumber and dumber people, until everyone is idiotic. I don’t know about that idea. Because both my husband and I are way smarter than our parents. But I do see people who can barely function in society having kids while smart people make the decision to refrain from reproducing.

Here’s another point. Let’s talk about fishing. I’ve been hearing about how we fish and hunt. Humans take the biggest and strongest animals and fish from the population in huge numbers. Now, when it comes to cattle and poultry, we raise what we want to eat. But for fish we still get them from the wild in a lot of cases. The impact on those populations has actually caused the fish to evolve, but in a reverse sort of way.

There was this study published recently which I heard about. Basically they took this population of fish and treated them as if they were being fished as is common practice today – taking the biggest, leaving the smallest. After 12 years they found that the fish had to adapt and start reproducing earlier than they used to. This has a negative impact on the population, which then affects what is available for us to harvest.

In the wild a lion will target the weak and the young, which makes sense. But we don’t do that. We go for the biggest and strongest, leaving the young and weak. We seem to do it backwards. Which seems like it’s bad for the rest of the environment.

The good news is that this reverse evolution can be reversed. I found the fishing study. Here’s a link: ‘Undesirable’ Evolution Can Be Reversed In Fish, By Letting The Big Ones Go

Those are just some ideas I’ve been knocking around in my head. Your thoughts are welcome, as usual.

Dead Cats Into Diesel

Neece — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 16:59:56 +0000

Ok, for some reason this struck me as a bit…. odd. Diesel from dead cats? I just had to share it with you, since we’re Heaving Dead Cats around here on a regular basis. Now we can save money, heave dead cats and make fuel! Woot!

Dr Christian Koch, 55, from Kleinhartmannsdorf, has a special method for turning household garbage into biodiesel. This leads me to believe you can make biodiesel out of just about anything.

So, his method involves heating stuff like old tires, paper, motor oil, plastic, dead cats, just about anything, to 300 degrees Celsius. Then the hydrocarbons go through a catalytic converter.

Now I’ll know what to do with all those dead cats in my freezer! (JUST KIDDING)

Found Here and Here.

A Solar Revolution In Our Future

Neece — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:45:47 +0000

In a giant leap for clean energy, MIT professor Daniel Nocera and his team, have developed a simple method to split water molecules and produce oxygen gas. This paves the way for large scale use of solar power.

Getting energy from the sun isn’t the hard part, it seems. It’s storing that energy that has been a problem.

These guys at MIT were inspired by how plants perform photosynthesis. Their revolutionary method uses abundant, non-toxic natural materials.

I won’t get into all the details, but I just wanted to share it with you because it seems pretty important and wonderful.

Here’s a link to MIT where they have a video of Daniel Nocera describing the new process and a lot more details.

This is just the beginning though. It’s still not really cost effective, but other scientists will be able to run with it and we’ll see where it all leads us in the near future.

Nocera hopes that within 10 years, we’ll be able to power our homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power our own household fuel cell.

Of course, the power companies will not like this. But hopefully it will all happen anyway.

Farm Fountains and Aquariums

Neece — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:06:39 +0000

How about a self contained living river ecosystem in your living room? I love the idea of combining art into something practical, useful and also great for the environment, so this really fits the bill. This French designer, Mathieu Lehanneur created a fish hatchery and hydroponic growing system for plants. The water is chilled for the fresh water fish, then the plants get their nutrients from the fish water. They then clean the water for the fish. Brilliant! Of course, Mother Nature came up with the idea first, but hey, it’s still a great idea. Found at Inhabitat.

So, it’s very cool, but I don’t think it would fit into my budget. But I have another idea for you, which I also found at Inhabitat. The Farm Fountain!

Two artists, Amy Youngs and Ken Rinaldo, came up with this clever design. It uses aquaponics to create an ecosystem in your house. The water starts in the fish pond down below. Then the waste water is pumped up to the soda bottle planters and bubbles down through the soilless medium from one level to the next, until it gets back down to the fish. LED growing lights from an inexpensive floor lamp finish the ecosystem. Amy and Ken are really cool, because they give step by step instructions to make your own. Clever stuff! This one is right up my alley and I might have to see if my dear husband would mind having me create this in our home.

I have an AerogardenAerogarden which I got recently. I’ve grown some fantastic herbs in it, and will start some tomato plants when they’re finished, but this is even better, because it’s a complete ecosystem.

Heaving Dead Cats » environment

Random Thoughts On The Nature Of Things

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