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Up To Here

Mother Jones

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The image of a lonesome tumbleweed rolling across the plain is synonymous with the American West. But in eastern Colorado, tumbleweeds have become annual invaders, blocking roads and even burying houses. The infestations have been made worse by drought and climate change. The best way to get rid of them is heavy machinery—and the internet. Tumbleweeds sell online as home decorations for between $15 and $30.

We talked with photographer Theo Stroomer who has spent the past three tumbleweed seasons (fall to spring) documenting this peculiar menace.

Pastor Ragan Simpich at Hanover Community Church, Hanover, Colorado.

Mother Jones: Why are there so many tumbleweeds? Is the problem getting worse?
Theo Stroomer: This has been a problem periodically in the past, though I do believe it’s more common nowadays. This article suggests that a town in South Dakota got buried in 1989, which is the earliest I’ve heard of it happening. There are many species of tumbleweed. A rough definition would be a plant that grows, dies, breaks off from its roots, and spreads its seeds as the wind blows it around. What they all have in common is an uncanny ability to grow in dry conditions and reproduce like crazy. Drought plays to their strengths, suppressing the growth of other plants. So as drought gets more severe, we are likely to see more problems with tumbleweeds. In Colorado, in particular, we have created an ideal situation for tumbleweed growth because much of the eastern plains—counties like Crowley—have sold their water rights to urban areas. Without agriculture or moisture, there’s a lot of empty land available for takeover. 5280 Magazine did a great write up by Robert Sanchez (with photos by Mother Jones contributing photographer Matt Slaby) addressing this.

MJ: How did you first hear about these tumbleweeds and how much of a nuisance are they for residents?
TS: I started hearing about this stuff in early 2014. My friend Sarah Gilman, a reporter, mentioned offhand that she was writing a small piece about Colorado towns getting buried in tumbleweeds. It sounded perfect for a visual approach, so I started poking around and eventually decided I wanted to do a project.

At first, I was focusing on tumbleweed attacks as a way to talk about drought and climate change. Over time, an added dimension crept into the work: I realized that this plant has won a measure of acceptance as it puts down roots in the communities it calls home. That’s where all the weird cultural stuff comes in.

As for the nuisance level, it varies significantly by year and location. I end up in many communities with folklore about that one time when the tumbleweeds stormed through. I’m not aware of any places that have regular levels as high as you see in my photographs—those are isolated events, but they speak to a pattern that does seem to be occurring every year.

MJ: How do you find communities to photograph?
TS: I have ended up relying heavily on the internet and social media to figure out where I can make images. I get an email whenever ‘tumbleweed’ shows up somewhere on the web, and I go looking for other people’s pictures of what is happening in their communities. That has led to many of my photos, as well as some things I doubt I’ll ever get to see in person, like a “tumbleweed fire tornado,” just six miles from my house, that I missed.

As the research has branched out I’ve found other moonshots that aren’t likely to be feasible, such as (naturally) red tumbleweed gardens in Japan or a flammable tumbleweed fireplace log designed in Arizona that is held in a botanical collection in the UK.

Patty Neher removing tumbleweeds from her yard in Hanover, Colorado.

A batting cage filled with tumbleweeds in Eads, Colorado.

MJ: Are there specific regions that get hit hardest by the tumbleweeds?
TS: It varies every year, but I know they can get bad in South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Maybe a better way to think about it would be “what times are the tumbleweeds the worst?” and the answer is in times of drought. In my experience, the recipe for a tumbleweed attack is a lot of open ground, along with dry seasonal conditions that help tumbleweeds out-compete other plants. Once they’re dry and ready to break off, you need a few hours of 50 mph winds in the direction of a town.

MJ: Is there a long-term solution?
TS: I see reports occasionally that USDA researchers are testing a weed-eating fungus, but I think this is far from certain as a solution (or a good idea, without more information). Ultimately, I believe that tumbleweeds are an example of environmental change that we’re going to end up living with. Because there’s a dash of humor in the story, I hope that knowledge of these infestations makes it easier to have conversations about water use, and drought, and ultimately climate change.

Curious Country Creations sells tumbleweeds, along with other desert plants, from West Jordan, Utah.

Jesse Jenkins with a cobwebbed tumbleweed during the Haigler 8th Annual Fall Tumbleweed Festival in Haigler, Nebraska.

Bertha Medina removes tumbleweeds from her barn in Hanover, Colorado.

MJ: How many tumbleweed events like the tumbleweed Christmas tree are there in the US?
TS: I am only aware of three. Everything else is less formally organized, although people do seem to like building stuff with them.

The Haigler, Nebraska tumbleweed festival and decorating contest (there are other tumbleweed festivals, but they don’t actually involve tumbleweeds as far as I can tell).
Chandler, Arizona erects a tumbleweed Christmas tree (not in this essay yet).
Albuquerque, New Mexico has an annual tumbleweed snow man (also not in the essay yet).

MJ: What’s the most creative thing you’ve seen done with the tumbleweeds?
TS: I’m fond of this installation, a collaboration between artists Julius Von Bismarck, Julian Charriere, and Felix Kiessling. I don’t know their work, but the website says they are young up and coming folks from Berlin.

MJ: How long do you think you’ll be working on this project? What’s the end goal?
TS: There’s a season, which is roughly late fall through early spring. 2016 to 2017 is my third season of photography. I wonder sometimes if tumbleweed attacks will become commonplace and fewer people will care, the way we treat snowstorms now. I’m still enjoying the work, but I don’t know if there are very many new pictures outside of the longshots I mentioned above. I’d like to do a book. I haven’t decided if I have a Kickstarter campaign in me, so I may stick to a small handmade edition. I am also working on turning this into an exhibit filled with actual tumbleweeds. Another goal would be to be on TV with the words “Tumbleweed Expert” scrolling underneath me while I talk.

Eads, Colorado.

Road V, Boone, Colorado.

Jim Ver Meer, the “Tumbleweed Wrangler.” Ver Meer has constructed a machine that quickly mows down tumbleweeds. This tractor is one of several designs he uses for his business. La Junta, Colorado.

Bleachers filled with tumbleweeds. Springfield, Colorado.

A house buried in tumbleweeds in Eads, Colorado.

Josh Reiswig, a firefighter and assistant engine captain doing tumbleweed mitigation in Vogel Canyon, La Junta, Colorado.

Maribeth Gallion, Madeline Jorden and Julia Corlett at a tumbleweed cleanup at Chico Basin Ranch in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Max Franco with his pumpkin tumbleweed at the Haigler 8th Annual Fall Tumbleweed Festival in Nebraska.

A controlled burn during cleanup at Chico Basin Ranch in Colorado Springs. Burning is perhaps the most effective and permanent method of dealing with tumbleweeds. However, tumbleweeds also present a severe fire danger when a large number of them cluster together.

Tumbleweeds in a field outside of Lamar

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Up To Here

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What the Heck Is a Placebo Anyway?

Mother Jones

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Anton Mesmer, an 18th-century German physician, believed a mysterious force he called “animal magnetism” could be used to cure people. Mesmer’s theory was that there was invisible fluid in the body that could be controlled by magnetized objects and that disease was a result of “obstacles” to those fluids’ flow. To fight the disease, Mesmer used hypnotic procedures on his patients. At times, he would give people water he had “mesmerized” in order to cure them.

While Mesmer claimed some success with patients, he had critics. One was Benjamin Franklin, who saw Mesmer’s healing techniques for what they were: placebos. In modern medicine, a placebo is a fake medical treatment used to test out the results of real medications. The placebo effect is, essentially, the body’s response (in some instances, a very real response) to this fake treatment. In other words, Mesmer’s medications weren’t scientifically sound, but they may have made patients feel better through the power of suggestion.

Award-winning science writer Erik Vance has spent a lot of time thinking about the placebo effect. In his book, Suggestible You: The Curious Science of Your Brain’s Ability to Deceive, Transform, and Heal, Vance explores placebos, hypnosis, and how beliefs influence bodily responses to pain. “Placebos and beliefs generally is so much a part of our lives,” he tells Kishore Hari on a recent episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. “It has an amazing power to change our bodies.”

Vance has a unique perspective on the topic: He was raised in a Christian Science household and saw a doctor for the first time when he was 18 years old. “Belief was basically my health care,” he says.

Today, placebos are used by researchers to test whether drugs are actually effective in treating medical conditions—that is, whether patients who are taking an experimental medication see better results than patients who just think they are taking one. For some conditions—Parkinson’s disease, for instance—placebos can actually be an effective treatment.

It’s hard to figure out what the precise mechanisms of the placebo effect are and how they work. But as Vance explains, we now know that they often involve real chemicals produced by the body—real drugs from your “internal pharmacy.” Some of these chemicals are used by the brain to make sure that your expectation meets reality. When expectation doesn’t meet reality, the brain steps in and forces it to fit. Parkinson’s is caused by a lack of dopamine, a chemical that, among other things, is involved in reward processing in our brains. “Expectation drives placebos,” Vance explained to National Geographic. “And dopamine is a chemical that’s very responsive to our expectations. Parkinson’s happens to be a deficiency in the very chemical that’s very important in placebo effects and rewards.”

But while the mind is powerful, it can’t do everything. Vance says there are rules at play. Many serious diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, don’t respond well to sugar pills—patients need actual medicine that has been proven more effective than placebos. “There are some places where the role of the mind to affect the body is profound,” says Vance, “and other places where it is not.”

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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What the Heck Is a Placebo Anyway?

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That Time Scientists Discovered a Planet Called "Vulcan"

Mother Jones

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Live long and prosper. NBC Television via Wikimedia Commons

It’s not often you hear a scientist praise the virtues of failure, but this week’s guest on the Inquiring Minds podcast is no ordinary scientist.

Stuart Firestein, who previously wrote a book about the value of ignorance, tells host Indre Viskontas that “science is really about the stuff we don’t know.” The professor and former chair of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University explains that failure is often what leads to new discoveries.

To illustrate his point, Firestein describes the discovery of two new planets. The first, Neptune, was found in 1846 when scientists noticed that Uranus’ orbit wasn’t where it was supposed to be according to Isaac Newton’s laws of motion. As Firestein says, Uranus was “wobbling around” and hadn’t gone as far as scientists had expected. At first, it seemed like there must be something wrong with Newtonian physics. But eventually, scientists came up with a better explanation: There must be another planet invisible to telescopes whose gravitational pull was causing the “perturbations” in Uranus’ orbit. Using calculations, those scientists found Neptune, proving Newton was right all along.

“In that case, the failure led to a new discovery,” Firestein says.

The planet Neptune NASA

But a contradictory case soon led to a far different result. A few years later, scientists began to notice a “funny wobble” in Mercury’s orbit, too. Naturally, some thought there must be another new planet that, like Neptune, was causing the shakiness. They named this mysterious planet Vulcan. As it turned out, however, Vulcan didn’t exist. Mercury’s orbit could actually be explained by Einstein’s theory of relativity, which contains a different description of gravity than Newton’s laws. In other words, perhaps Newton really wasn’t quite right all along. But scientists’ efforts to apply his laws helped them vastly improve their understanding of our solar system.

That’s a story that is repeated over and over in science, according to Firestein. “It’s imperfection,” he says, “that is often the source of unexpected discoveries and creativity.”

The same principle applies to other disciplines. Firestein describes a 1996 study in which some participants were exposed to phrases associated with old age, while others received neutral words. After reading the lines, each participant walked down a hallway, and the results were telling. Those who read the words associated with old age—such as “Florida” and “bingo”—walked slower than those who read neutral phrases or ones associated with youth, Firestein says.

But there was just one problem. When researchers in Belgium tried to repeat the study, they weren’t able to replicate the results. Since the phrases in the Belgian study were given in French, rather than in English, Firestein says, the experiment was not a direct replication of the original. So was it a failure? Not according to Firestein.

In fact, he says, an example like this actually “increases our knowledge” because it can prompt scientists to examine variables and nuances that can be “very, very subtle.”

To Firestein, science is a study in trial and error. “Science is a process,” he says. “It never stops.”

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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That Time Scientists Discovered a Planet Called "Vulcan"

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Here Are All the Ways That Politicians Lie About Science

Mother Jones

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History is riddled with science denial. From Newton’s law of gravitation to Hanaoka Seinshu’s use of anesthesia, there’s no shortage of discoveries that have been scoffed at, ridiculed, and wholly rejected by prominent thinkers before eventually settling into the human narrative. But too often, significant damage is done—and sometimes lives are lost—while these debates play out. After centuries of dismissing scientific discoveries, only to be proven wrong time and again, you’d think we’d learn to have a little more faith in the experts.

In the era of social media, around-the-clock cable news, and Donald Trump, preventing the spread of misinformation has become one of the greatest challenges facing the scientific community. That’s especially true when it comes to politics. On this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, science journalist and author Dave Levitan calls out some of Washington’s worst offenders.

As a former writer for Factcheck.org’s SciCheck project—part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center—Levitan has spent countless hours pouring over statements made by politicians about science. Sometimes our leaders get the facts right. But frequently, says Levitan, they distort, misrepresent, or flat-out fabricate the data in order to pander to their audience or push an agenda. That’s the subject of Levitan’s forthcoming book, Not a Scientist: How Politicians Mistake, Misrepresent, and Utterly Mangle Science. To hear Levitan and co-host Kishore Hari dissect the many different techniques that our country’s leaders use to distort science, click below:

While misleading rhetoric is nothing new in politics, the danger it poses to environmental and public health may be at an all-time high. In a country where scientific literacy is already in decline, misinformation about topics as significant as climate change or infectious diseases can have devastating consequences. Yet many politicians, purposely or not, continue to get the science wrong. Levitan points to Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) as an example of the perfect “denier-in-chief.” Last year, Inhofe brought a snowball to the Senate floor to dispute the science of global warming. His implication: Because there was snow on the ground, the Earth couldn’t possibly be getting warmer. It was a classic display of a cherry-picking politician using a single data point to obscure an indisputable trend:

Two years ago, as Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was gearing up to run for president, he slammed the National Institutes of Health for funding research on fruit flies. “Have you seen what the NIH spends money on?” Paul said, according to the Washington Post. “Nine hundred and thirty-nine thousand dollars spent to discover whether or not male fruit flies would like to consort with younger female fruit flies.” When you put it like that, the NIH sounds ridiculous. But Paul missed the mark completely. As Levitan wrote at the time:

The characterization of the project as simply testing “whether male fruit flies like younger female fruit flies” is misleading. The study was in fact part of ongoing work looking into olfaction and other sensory perception, the aging process and how it relates to sexual and social activity. A paper that came out of the same line of inquiry appeared in the prestigious journal Science in 2013, showing that exposure to female pheromones without the opportunity to mate actually decreased male flies’ life spans. In short, sexual reward “specifically promoted healthy aging,” according to Scott Pletcher the scientist whose research Paul was criticizing. His lab’s work could yield insights both into how humans age and into aging-related diseases…Paul is entitled to his opinions on where government funds are best spent, but the study of flies has yielded important benefits to human health.”

Misrepresenting research is “a way to get people to not want the government to spend money,” Levitan says. “The effect, though, is that people don’t understand the importance of basic science research.”

Of course, scientists share the burden of communicating their findings clearly, but most of them don’t have the public megaphones that elected officials do. “Politicians have a lot of responsibility,” Levitan says. “They’re the ones legislating and governing where money goes and what science actually can get done. Some random scientist can’t just decide he’s going to give a speech and everyone will watch.”

In the end, Levitan offers voters a simple way to sift through the BS: Have a healthy degree of skepticism when politicians talk about science. “If they’re making fun of basic research,” he says, “they’re probably wrong.” And his advice to the politicians: Let the scientific consensus be your talking point.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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Here Are All the Ways That Politicians Lie About Science

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Hot Chilis, Maggot Therapy, and Penis Transplants

Mother Jones

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We can thank the armed forces for a lot more than just national security: Many advances in modern medicine we take for granted came from scientists’ work trying to keep soldiers safe. Everything from inventing certain mosquito repellents to treatments for dysentery and diarrhea have come from the military’s medical breakthroughs.

That’s just one of the insights Mary Roach shares on this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast. The writer also tells host Indre Viskontas about advances in ear plugs, a method of cleaning battle wounds that involves maggots, and the latest innovations in penis transplants.

Most or Roach’s studies and anecdotes come from her latest book, Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, which keeps with her style of single-syllable-science-titles (Gulp, Stiff, Bonk) but has a completely new theme: the military. Roach got the idea for the project while she was reporting in India and learned that the world’s hottest chili pepper, the bhut jolokia (also known as the “ghost chili”), has been weaponized by the Indian Defense Ministry.

“Military science suddenly presented itself to me as something that was more esoteric and broader…and less focused on bullets and bombs,” she explains.

Roach talks about inventions as old as military toilet paper, and newer advances such as penis reconstruction and replacements. The procedure wasn’t an option in the past, Roach says, because injuries that left soldiers without lower limbs or genitals were often fatal. Advances in medical treatment mean soldiers often survive below-the-belt wounds and may need genital reconstruction. The surgery is still uncommon: There are only about 300 genital injuries for every 18,000 limb amputations, she says. On her visit to a cadaver lab at Johns Hopkins, Roach was able to learn about the arteries necessary to connect in order to perform a successful surgery.

“It’s like transplanting a tree,” Roach says. “You don’t just lop it off, you take the roots and the soil around it.”

Roach is known for her squirm-inducing but always fascinating subject matter, such as cadavers, fecal transplants, and pig sex. In Grunt, Roach even details the healing power of maggots. As medieval as it sounds, the creature is incredibly efficient at cleaning wounds. Although the knowledge had been around for centuries, it was World War I surgeon William S. Baer who noticed a soldier who had been lying in the fields for days returned to camp with large open wounds that were free of infection. When he saw that maggots had been eating the dead flesh, allowing the wounds to heal, Baer started using the insects. Today “maggot therapy” is used on diabetic patients; the insects are even approved by the FDA as a medical device. While military surgeons are open to the idea, Roach says, getting hospital staff on board is a challenge.

“It’s been an uphill struggle…they’re maggots, they’re gross!” Roach said. “The nursing staff has to be trained in how to change the maggot-dressing and they might not want that added to their duty list.”

Roach sees her exploration of military science as illuminating some of the grizzly realities of war.

“Even when things are going okay in the military, even when no one is shooting at you, it really sucks,” Roach says. “It’s not a political book, but it’s kind of an antiwar book in its own way.”

Mother Jones senior editor Dave Gilson also talked with Mary Roach about Grunt. Here’s a highlight from their interview:

W.W. Norton

MJ: Did hanging out with soldiers and researchers change any misconceptions you had about the US military?

MR: I didn’t have any conception of this world at all. I didn’t realize that almost any of this existed—the Naval Submarine Medical Research Lab, or NAMRU Three or the Walter Reed Entomology Branch. That was all a surprise to me. I had maybe a misconception that everyone in the military was sort of hawkish. But in fact, the people who deal with the aftermath of war, trying to repair people’s bodies and minds, they are understandably quite anti-war. They’re not big boosters of war, particularly the people I talked to at the Armed Forces Medical Examiner System. Pathologists, people who have a real, day-after-day, graphic presentation of what war does to the body. I wasn’t really expecting that.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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Hot Chilis, Maggot Therapy, and Penis Transplants

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One Crazy Fact That Science Says Could Decide Game 7 of the NBA Finals

Mother Jones

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When the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers tip off Sunday night for Game 7 of the NBA Finals, don’t be dismayed if your team is slightly behind at half time. In fact, it might be a good thing.

That’s the surprising finding of a study that Jonah Berger—a marketing professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania—published several years ago. Along with his colleague Devin Pope, Berger found that NBA teams that were losing by just one point at the end of the second quarter were more likely to win than teams leading by a point. Why? On this week’s episode of the Inquiring Minds podcast, Berger tells host Indre Viskontas that it all comes down to motivation. “They say, ‘I’m almost there, I’m close to winning, but I’m not there yet,” says Berger. “It encourages them to work harder.”

It’s a phenomenon that goes beyond basketball and that, according to Berger, has serious real-world implication. As he and Pope wrote in the New York Times in 2009:

Understanding what motivates employees, researchers and, yes, sports teams, has important implications. Encouraging people to see themselves as slightly behind others should increase motivation. Companies competing to win contracts or research prizes would be wise to focus employees on ways their competitors are a little ahead.

Berger is known for his 2013 bestseller Contagious: Why Things Catch On, where he unpacks the social science behind why word-of-mouth publicity is better than any ad and why anti-drug commercials could actually lead to an increase in drug use. His latest book is Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces That Shape Behavior. In it, Berger writes about the power of influence and why we conform in some situations and rebel in others. According to Berger, your attraction to a certain sports car, designer handbag, catchy pop song, or good-looking person has less to do with your actual preferences than you might think. “It also depends on social dynamics and the fact that we tend to follow others,” Berger says.

What becomes popular is seldom the just result of objective measures of quality. Berger points out that before Elvis Presley was “The King,” he was told he couldn’t sing. People told Walt Disney he wasn’t creative. And publishers repeatedly turned down J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter before Bloomsbury picked it up in 1997. (The series made history when the seventh book sold 8.3 million copies in the first 24 hours after it was released.)

Social influence helps us form likes and dislikes, and it also fires up our competitive edge. For example, while studies show that simply educating residents on how to save energy isn’t particularly effective, hinting that they’re not “keeping up with the Joneses” can have a much bigger impact. When software company Opower informed residents on their bill that some of their neighbors were being more energy efficient than they were, it led to decreases in consumption.

So as you crowd around the television, clenching your fists during Game 7 this weekend, it’s worth remembering that the same competitive spirt driving Steph Curry and LeBron James can help you save a few bucks on your electric bill.

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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One Crazy Fact That Science Says Could Decide Game 7 of the NBA Finals

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Leo DiCaprio is already turning the Volkswagen emissions scandal into a movie

Actor Leonardo DiCaprio speaks on stage during the Global Citizen Festival. John Taggart/Reuters

Leo DiCaprio is already turning the Volkswagen emissions scandal into a movie

By on 13 Oct 2015commentsShare

Americans may not be very good at avoiding environmental devastation, but we are phenomenal at profiting from it.

Remember that Volkswagen scandal? The one where every nostalgic flower child’s favorite car company betrayed the world by cheating on emissions tests, dumping hundreds of thousands of secret pollutants into an already toxic atmosphere, and causing millions in healthcare damages? I’m guessing you do, because it literally just happened. And yet, Hollywood is already all over it.

Paramount just acquired the rights to a book about the scandal that has yet to be written, Variety reports. And, of course, our good friend and noted Earth lover Leo DiCaprio is already on board to produce, along with Jennifer Davisson Killoran. No other big names are attached to the film yet, but one can only hope that wood nymph Shailene Woodley shows up as a duped Volkswagen owner ready to let her inner rage monster out, and Werner Herzog flexes his acting muscles as a heartless Volkswagen executive. Throw in a little Rosario Dawson as a badass environmental activist, and you’ve got yourself a blockbuster hit.

Teasing aside, it’s actually pretty cool that Hollywood wants to immortalize this travesty. When Grist spoke with veritable film buff and environmental activist Narayana Angulo earlier this summer, he bemoaned the lack of narrative films about environmental issues. There are plenty of documentaries out there, he said, but not much in the way of feature films.

So good for you, Paramount. Way to recognize that it doesn’t make sense to just make sequels, prequels, and remakes until our eyes fall out and the world ends, while the actual end of the world is providing SO MUCH free material. And hey — most people will eventually just be going to the movies for the hopped up A/C, anyway. Perhaps by that point, they’ll find comfort in watching more attractive people conquer what, in their own lives, have become insurmountable problems.

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Leonardo DiCaprio to Produce Movie on Volkswagen Scandal

, Variety.

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Leo DiCaprio is already turning the Volkswagen emissions scandal into a movie

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We Could Stop Global Warming With This Fix—But It’s Probably a Terrible Idea

Mother Jones

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Mount Pinatubo erupting in 1991 Bullit Marquez/AP

Back in the late 1990s, Ken Caldeira set out to disprove the “ludicrous” idea that we could reverse global warming by filling the sky with chemicals that would partially block the sun. A few years earlier, Mount Pinatubo had erupted in the Philippines, sending tiny sulfate particles—known as aerosols—into the stratosphere, where they reflected sunlight back into space and temporarily cooled the planet. Some scientists believed that an artificial version of this process could be used to cancel out the warming effect of greenhouse gases.

“Our original goal was to show that it was a crazy idea and wouldn’t work,” says Caldeira, who at the time was a climate scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. But when Caldeira and a colleague ran a model to test out this geoengineering scenario, they were shocked by what they found. “Much to our surprise, it worked really well,” he recalls. “Our results indicate that geoengineering schemes could markedly diminish regional and seasonal climate change from increased atmospheric CO2,” they wrote in a 2000 paper.

You might think that the volume of aerosols needed to increase the Earth’s reflectivity (known as albedo) enough to halt global climate change would be enormous. But speaking to Kishore Hari on this week’s Inquiring Minds podcast, Caldeira explains that “if you had just one firehose-worth of material constantly spraying into the stratosphere, that would be enough to offset all of the global warming anticipated for the rest of this century.”

So does Caldeira think it’s time to start blasting aerosols into the air? Nope. “It’s a funny situation that I feel like I’m in,” he says. “Most of our published results show that it would actually work quite well, but personally I think it would be a crazy thing to do.” He thinks there’s just too much risk.

Caldeira, now a climate scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, recently contributed to a massive National Academy of Sciences report examining various geoengineering proposals. The report concluded that technologies to block solar radiation “should not be deployed at this time” and warned that “there is significant potential for unanticipated, unmanageable, and regrettable consequences in multiple human dimensions…including political, social, legal, economic, and ethical dimensions.” As my colleague Tim McDonnell explained back when the NAS study was released:

Albedo modification would use airplanes or rockets to deliver loads of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere, where they would bounce sunlight back into space. But if the technology is straightforward, the consequences are anything but.

The aerosols fall out of the air after a matter of years, so they would need to be continually replaced. And if we continued to burn fossil fuels, ever more aerosols would be needed to offset the warming from the additional CO2. University of California, San Diego, scientist Lynn Russell said that artificially blocking sunlight would have unknown consequences for photosynthesis by plants and phytoplankton, and that high concentrations of sulfate aerosols could produce acid rain. Moreover, if we one day suddenly ceased an albedo modification program, it could cause rapid global warming as the climate adjusts to all the built-up CO2. For these reasons, the report warns that it would be “irrational and irresponsible to implement sustained albedo modification without also pursuing emissions mitigation, carbon dioxide removal, or both.”

Still, the NAS report called for further research into albedo modification, just in case we one day reach a point where we seriously consider it.

Caldeira hopes it never comes to that. Like most other advocates of geoengineering research, he’d much rather stave off global warming by drastically cutting carbon emissions. In fact, he calls for a target of zero emissions. But he doesn’t have much faith in politicians or in legislative fixes like carbon taxes or cap and trade. “The only way it’s really going to happen,” he says, “is if there’s a change in the social norms.” Caldeira envisions a world in which it’s socially unacceptable for power companies to “use the sky as a waste dump.”

And if that doesn’t work out?

Caldeira points out that if we keep emitting huge amounts of CO2, temperatures are going to keep rising. That could lead to increased crop failures and possibly even “widespread famines with millions of people dying.” In that type of hypothetical crisis, he says, “there’s really only one way known to cool the planet on a politically relevant timescale”—aerosols. “So I think it’s worth understanding it now,” he adds. “At some point in the future it could make sense to do. I hope we don’t get to that state, but it’s possible.”

To hear the full interview with Ken Caldeira, stream below:

Inquiring Minds is a podcast hosted by neuroscientist and musician Indre Viskontas and Kishore Hari, the director of the Bay Area Science Festival. To catch future shows right when they are released, subscribe to Inquiring Minds via iTunes or RSS. You can follow the show on Twitter at @inquiringshow and like us on Facebook.

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We Could Stop Global Warming With This Fix—But It’s Probably a Terrible Idea

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, I reported on the newly public diary of retired Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), the longtime Clinton ally, which is included in the 89-year-old’s personal papers at the University of Arkansas. In entries penned during the 1980s, Bumpers was highly critical of the Clintons, dishing on the future First Couple’s “obsessive” qualities and alleged “dirty tricks” by Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign. Bumpers, who gave the closing argument for the defense in President Clinton’s impeachment trial, became a close friend and confidante of the president later in his career. But the previously unreported entries revealed a more tense relationship in the early going, as Clinton vied for political elbow room with the Democratic icon.

In response to the Mother Jones piece, the University of Arkansas library has pulled the diary from its collection at the request of Bumpers’ son, Brent. Per the Arkansas Democrat–Gazette:

Brent Bumpers of Little Rock, son of the former senator, said he was “shocked” by the diary. He has questioned its origin and authenticity, saying nobody in the family had ever heard anything about Dale Bumpers keeping a dairy.

Brent Bumpers said his father, who is 89 years old, doesn’t remember keeping a diary. He said Dale Bumpers always admired the Clintons and wouldn’t have written the things the diary contains.

Brent Bumpers said he wants to review the diary, but he won’t have the opportunity for several days.

Although Dale Bumpers hasn’t personally requested that the diary be pulled, Laura Jacobs, UA associate vice chancellor for university relations, said Brent Bumpers is speaking and acting on behalf of his father regarding the Dale Bumpers Papers.

But the Bumpers diary could not have been written by anyone but Dale Bumpers. When not commenting on the various politicians he interacted with, it is filled with personal musings on his wife, Betty, and three kids; the strains of the job; can’t-miss events such as the annual Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival; and the trials of a first-time candidate at an Iowa presidential cattle call—all interspersed with the thoughtful reflections of a lawmaker who was generally regarded as such.

This is the second time in the last year that the University of Arkansas has made news by restricting access to a political archive in its special collections. Last year, the university’s library blocked the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, from accessing its collections because of a dispute over publishing rights. (The library ultimately backed down.)

With Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush both running for president, reporters (and opposition researchers) will have more access to archival records than perhaps ever before. The two candidates have nearly a century of public life between them; that’s a heck of a paper trail. This may not be the last time a little-noticed archive makes news.

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

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Röyksopp and Robyn Meet the Inevitable End

Mother Jones

Most bands don’t announce their final album in advance. That designation is typically applied post-facto, when once-harmonious bandmates descend into irreparable squabbles on the road. But Norwegian electronic duo Röyksopp has declared that its aptly named new LP, The Inevitable End, out this week, its last.

But Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland aren’t disbanding. Instead, they simply plan to ditch the old long-play format. “We feel like this is a goodbye to the traditional album,” the duo wrote on their website.

I caught up with Berge and Brundtland alongside Swedish pop star Robyn, as the three toured to promote their collective EP, Do It Again. The three performers opened up about how they got together, how the internet has changed the game, and the joys of not being beholden to record executives.

Mother Jones: Your first song together was 2009’s “Girl and The Robot,” on a Röyksopp album. Had you known each other before that?

Robyn: Nope. We met the first day we went into the studio and wrote that song.

MJ: Röyksopp had sent you some tracks in advance, though? Did you turn anything down?

Robyn: No, I turned some things up. Laughs. I don’t turn anything down. There were so many things they sent that I really liked, but just liking something doesn’t always mean that you can use it. Some things just evoke ideas and feelings in you, and that has nothing to do with good or bad—it’s just what resonates at the time.

MJ: Were you trading ideas back and forth beforehand?

Brundtland: Robyn had heard some instrumental bits, beats and stuff like that, but I don’t think that was necessary. Either way, it can be slightly—I wouldn’t say scary—but you can crash and burn. That’s what it can feel like when you’re meeting up with someone and you’re supposed to make something that’s really good. But when we met up it wasn’t like that at all.

Robyn: No. And all my past experiences are like that. ‘Cause I had a period when I working and writing with professional songwriters, and I always dreaded it. It was so horrible to work that way.

MJ: What made it so horrible?

Robyn: It was early on in my career when I was in another type of world. It was never really people that I liked what they did. It’s never like, “Oh, I don’t really like this guy, but maybe, maybe if we work together some more we’ll start to like each other.” It’s either you click or you don’t.

MJ: I’ve read that each of you was each at an impasse before deciding to do this current album. How so?

Robyn: I don’t know how detailed I would like to be, but I was definitely exhausted after touring a long time. I was not in a good place at all. I was really looking forward to making more music, but I just didn’t feel like I had had enough time off after the Body Talk albums to make my own album. And I was looking to start collaborating with other people in a different way, where I didn’t want the music to become an album. I just wanted to make music and see what happened.

Brundtland: Looking back, I think that we subconsciously thought that we’ve had a nice run with our albums. They represent something different, all of them, and conceptually it’s just progressed. So I guess we were looking for something to break up that thing a little bit.

Berge: I think doing what we did with Robyn felt—this sounds a bit cheesy—but a bit cathartic. To make it even more cheesy, it gives life a bit of purpose. I personally was in a place that I wasn’t too comfortable with.

Brundtland: It felt new, because we didn’t really set out with that plan or anything like that. But just creating this album, which is referred to as an EP, you get a feeling of “I want more.” We have heard people say that they wish it was longer, and that’s so much better than “I wish the album was shorter.”

MJ: And people skipping past tracks.

Brundtland: Yeah. That exists—18-song albums with a lot of unnecessary stuff.

MJ: Robyn’s Body Talk was a series of three shorter releases. Do you think that sort of capital-A album—where you pack in as many songs as possible—has lost relevance?

Robyn: I hope so. It’s a horrible way of working, actually. I mean, I don’t mind taking time off to make an album. If it takes a long time, it does. But then to spend two or three years promoting it? It’s fucking insane. I’d rather spend that time making new music. I think back in the day when pop music started, people made albums every year, and you played music live that people hadn’t heard before you released the album. It was like a constant production period. Everything was slower and you could sell more records, of course, but it kind of worked in a different way then.

Then the ’90s came, and everything changed and became really heavy marketing. It totally destroyed everything. We all started our careers around that time. The way it is now is so much better creatively. You can set your own pace. It’s not weird to release short albums anymore, and people get better music too.

MJ: So you’re are no longer beholden to big record labels?

Robyn: Yeah. I don’t make any records anymore in collaboration with the record company. I make them on my own, and deliver them when they’re done. There’s this way of thinking about an album like it’s something that doesn’t exist anymore, but I don’t think it’s true. It’s just chopped up into different parts. You might release it in parts like I did with Body Talk, or do a mixtape and album, or a mixtape and an EP. For me, an album is more like a period of time where you’re thinking in a special way, exploring something. It doesn’t have to be one release.

MJ: Do you guys have a similar setup?

Berge: We’ve always done it so that we make the album and then sort of say, take it or leave it. We have our own label, same setup as Robyn. When we’ve said what we want to say, we’re finished. No fillers. It’s not like your 1998 hip-hop album, which is 80 minutes long and 48 tracks.

MJ: Did you have a bigger collaboration in mind when you started working on these songs?

Brundtland: We just enjoyed getting together. When we’re together we do things like we’re a band, so then we are a band I guess.

Berge: And although there is Robyn and there is Röyksopp, the tracks are neither Robyn nor Röyksopp; it’s something else.

MJ: You’ve referred to “Do It Again” as an accidental song. How is a song accidental?

Robyn: It wasn’t accidental in that “Wow, I wrote a song without knowing it.”

Brundtland: Well, the monkeys and the typewriters.

Berge: Shakespeare. Sometimes we have an idea: Let’s write a song about sadness, whatever, and it’s going to be 94 beats per minute. Let’s go. But in this instance the track sort of dictated itself. We didn’t know where to take it.

Robyn: We followed it, kind of.

MJ: How often do you start taking something in one direction and have to pull back?

Berge: We’re so professional and good that we don’t do that anymore.

Robyn: We don’t make mistakes.

Berge: Never. Laughter. Sometimes we would try a few things you know will absolutely not work, but you have to do it. Just like I had to see the latest Spiderman movie. I knew it would be shit, but I had to just see it anyway. It’s a bit like that.

Robyn: But I also think when you’ve made music a long time—I’m not trying to sound like a prick—but you kind of know. Like, let’s not try anything that isn’t good enough.

MJ: How does The Inevitable End compare to Senior, your previous album?

Berge: It’s not like Senior. It’s got a dark energy and I think it’s very sincere in many ways.

MJ: It feels closer to the heart?

Berge: They all do; it’s like comparing children.

Robyn: It’s very inviting. It’s sad, but it’s not cold. It’s very warm.

Berge: That’s very well put. I’m going to steal that.

MJ: How about you, Robyn?

Robyn: Markus Jägerstedt from her touring band and I are working on an album that we’ve made together with a producer.

Berge: And it’s fucking awesome.

Robyn: Will be. The album is made with producer Christian Falk. I worked with him on my first album that I recorded when I was 16. So I’ve known him half of my life. We became good friends and we kept working in different ways and he passed away a couple of weeks ago from cancer. We’re finishing without him, which is a really strange experience, but also a really beautiful thing because we get to be around the memory of him and the music a little bit longer. It was something we started before he knew he was sick. So it was a real collaboration between me and Christian, and then Markus came in as well. It was like a band effort.

MJ: How does it compare with Body Talk?

Robyn: We’ll see. I think it’s messier than what I usually do, because Christian was messy. It’s a raw energy and it’s based on a club world. I think it’s going to be fantastic, I’m really happy about it.

MJ: Do you think you’ll join up again for a sequel to Do It Again?

Robyn: Never ever.

Berge: We say be-bop-a-lula she’s my baby, Scooby Doo, Daddy-o. We don’t have any plans. That’s the way we operate.

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Röyksopp and Robyn Meet the Inevitable End

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