June 7, 2016

Watch What May Be The Strangest First Pitch in Japanese Baseball History

http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/06/06/watch-what-may-be-the-strangest-first-pitch-in-japanese-baseball-history/

"Japan, like the United States, is one of the only countries where people actually enjoy baseball. But unlike U.S. teams, Japanese ones don’t mind giving the honor of the opening pitch to murderous demons.

Winding up as only the possessed can, the sullen corpselike girl from “The Ring,” dressed in a white nightgown, her face veiled by black hair, throws the opening pitch at the ghost of the murdered woman from “The Grudge,” another Japanese horror classic. After she cracks a ball into the outfield, a pinch runner — her pallid, meowing son — then does a lap around the bases, scoring the first run of the game. The few fans in the stands appear unfazed.

The two women, originally from different horror universes, will reunite in a new crossover film, “Sadako vs. Kayako,” set for a mid-June release.

Watch the opening pitch in all its bizarre wonder below:"

June 7, 2016

Gloria Steinem’s new show links global instability to violence against women

Gloria Steinem’s new show links global instability to violence against women: “For the first time there are fewer females on earth than males”
http://www.salon.com/2016/06/05/gloria_steinems_new_show_links_global_instability_to_violence_against_women_for_the_first_time_there_are_fewer_females_on_earth_than_males/

"Violence against women is a vast, worldwide problem on a scale that’s so big that it’s unfathomable to most people who try to get a handle on it. But Gloria Steinem, along with an all-female team of journalists, will not be stopped from trying to raise attention to the issue. Steinem is the host of a new show on Viceland, titled simply “Woman.” On the show, she and her team of journalists travel the world, highlighting various stories about women and violence and exploring what this violence means not just for the women themselves, but for the greater world around them.

...

“Woman” isn’t a tedious and depressing chronicle of victimhood, however. Steinem’s team focuses heavily on the stories of women as doers: activists, politicians, even soldiers, all of whom are trying to find ways to push back against the oppression women face and create better, more expansive roles for women to embody. I spoke with Steinem about her show over the phone. The transcript is lightly edited for length and clarity.

Let’s start with the show itself. The premise of “Woman” is that you, along with a team of journalists, go around the world to investigate the link between violence against women and global instability. How are these two issues linked?

First of all, we would be doing these shows even if it was not linked. Violence against women is worth reporting in and of itself, even if it were not linked to other violence. But what’s striking is that now research shows, as in the book “Sex and World Peace,” which is where the research is all gathered, that the most reliable indicator of whether or not there is violence inside a country, or whether it will use military violence against another country, is not poverty or access to natural resources or religion or even degree of democracy. It’s violence against females.

..."

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A great interview. I look forward to seeing the show.

June 7, 2016

EU stance on glyphosate leaves farmers ‘frustrated’

European politicians gave a “no opinion” verdict on the use of glyphosate weedkiller yesterday, with farming leaders reacting angrily to this passive, non-committal position by the EU standing committee.
http://www.scotsman.com/business/companies/farming/eu-stance-on-glyphosate-leaves-farmers-frustrated-1-4147826

"Allan Bowie, president of NFU Scotland, claimed it added to the “frustration” felt by the whole of the farming community over the prevarication on the future of this widely used weedkiller.

And a spokeswoman for Copa Cogeca, which represents farming unions and farm co-operatives across Europe, said her organisations were deeply disappointed.

Bowie said: “Given glyphosate’s role in delivering safe and affordable food across the whole of the EU, today’s ‘no opinion’ position will simply add to the frustration felt throughout the whole farming community with regards to the future availability of this essential product.”

He went on to say that politics rather than science now seemed to be driving the decision-making process, but claimed: “It will be farmers, growers and consumers that will lose out were glyphosate not to be re-authorised.”

..."

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Farmers angry as EU fails to approve weedkiller Roundup
http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Farmers-angry-EU-fails-approve-weedkiller-Roundup/story-29370671-detail/story.html

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Farmers will suffer. Consumers will suffer. The environment will suffer. And yet many will cheer.

June 7, 2016

Australian man hospitalized after being tossed into the air by bison in Yellowstone NP

Australian man hospitalized after tossed into the air by bison serves as reminder as tourist season picks up
http://fox4kc.com/2016/06/05/australian-man-hospitalized-after-tossed-into-the-air-by-bison-in-yellowstone/

"Park rangers have been saying it for years, but apparently, they need to keep reminding people: Stay away from wild animals in the park.

It might seem like common sense to some, but after a slew of reports of people coming too close to animals in our nation’s national parks (to predictably bad results), the message bears repeating: Stay away from wild animals in the park.

One visitor to ignore the warnings was a 62-year-old Australian man visiting Yellowstone who was sent to the hospital after he got to know the business end of a bison while trying to take a photo of the creature on his iPad last year, KTVQ reported.

The man had to be airlifted to a hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, park officials said in a statement.

..."

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Woman shooting photos gets too close to Yellowstone mama bear
http://trib.com/news/state-and-regional/woman-shooting-photos-gets-too-close-to-yellowstone-mama-bear/article_b9282ea2-ecec-51d3-b9fe-c4359ddfb789.html

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Some people should not be in the National Parks. Or so it seems.

June 6, 2016

Meet the man who changed the way the U.S. fights poverty abroad

http://grist.org/food/meet-the-man-who-changed-the-way-the-u-s-fights-poverty-abroad/

"What should we pay for with our foreign aid? In recent history, the American answer to that question has been simple — “health programs.” But then Obama named Raj Shah head of the United States Agency for International Development where it was his job to spend our foreign aid. Shah steered more money to farmers, especially small farmers, and over the course of five years saw the results all over the world: Some of the poorest people were able to feed their families, send their kids to school, and save up money.

...

I’ve met families in Guatemala where children who used to work in the fields are now going to school because their fields produce more. You see how these investments help address the deprivation that I saw and became my life sense of purpose, in that very first visit to that rural south Indian village.

Why is it important to invest in agriculture? Can you lay out the case for that?

It’s actually very simple. If you look at relatively poor agrarian economies you find that 60-plus percent of the employment, or as I like to call it, underemployment, is still in the agricultural sector. And when you have that much of society’s effort focused on feeding itself it’s hard to get other things done. Country after country around the world has gone from everybody focused on feeding themselves, to a modern diversified economy with a smaller group of food producers. That pathway has been the key to reducing hunger and poverty in nearly every country around the world, including the United States.

How is that focus on fixing agrarian poverty working?

In Feed the Future, they are focused on some 19 economies that are still far too agrarian, where economic growth rates before the program were zero to two percent. They said, let’s increase investment in our agriculture. As expected, you are starting to see a rapid reduction in rural poverty, in the percentage of children who are stunted, and in the total number of people that don’t get 2,100 calories a day. Those are rough indicators of a large-scale transformation starting to occur.

..."

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Hugely important work, and another reason we have to stop Trump.

June 4, 2016

40 years ago today, I hit my first legitimate home run in little league.

I was 8 1/2 exactly.

It's one of those weird memories that never goes away.

Do any of you have similar memories?

June 4, 2016

Does anyone think we could get an anti-GMO DUer or two to take this course with a couple of us?

https://www.edx.org/course/science-politics-gmo-cornellx-gmo0101x

June 3, 2016

Ethics and Science Literacy in the American Social and Political Landscape

http://rsacerich.kinja.com/ethics-and-science-literacy-in-the-american-social-and-1753487574

"“SCIENCE DOESN’T PROVE ANYTHING!” he typed in all caps from his tablet halfway around the world, connecting wirelessly, utilizing satellites orbiting the earth in the lower atmosphere, to me, on my tiny wireless phone, sitting on a bus with a small combustion engine that amazingly makes it move at high speeds towards my destination, in order to illustrate why he doesn’t believe in the theory of evolution. As much as it may appear to be a caricature of the lack of scientific literacy in America, this is an event that happens on a nearly daily basis to science communicators and science popularizers all over the country. Sir Isaac Asimov often lamented on the mantra of “My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge,” a state the electorate is, ironically, devolving into. As a culture, we have now begun to cater to this ideology by insisting on false balance over rational discourse, anecdotes over evidence, ideology over education. To myself and many of my colleagues, this is the most pronounced and dangerous problem in America today, and the place it needs to be addressed and remedied is in the classroom.

There is currently an epidemic in this country that seems harder to cure every day, it grows rapidly out of control and becomes the overriding force of the American dialogue, consuming all sense of reason and rationality in its stead. The concept at the core of this epidemic is that ethics and science are in polar opposition, and in order to be an ethical human being, you need to oppose science as an idea in and of itself, lest you be labeled an enemy by a moral majority of your peers. When the news media conducts an interview with a leading geologist, discussing the current state of plate tectonics and the current prediction models for earthquake activity in the Bay Area of California, they feel compelled to also have a guest named Jim-Bob from Pasadena, who believes that the earthquakes are really caused by demons celebrating the rampant homosexuality in San Francisco, and the only way to save ourselves is to embrace God. This is nearly the level of false balance we’ve fallen to when discussing science in America.

Nowhere is this problem more apparent than in three of the most politically and ethically charged scientific discussions in living memory. These dialogues revolve around the science of genetic engineering of seeds in agriculture, anthropogenic climate change, and vaccines and immunizations. Each of these issues has a major ethics component that people use to argue against sound science, as if they aren’t compatible with one another. In each of these topics, the false balance that people demand is the scientist discussing the science, and the layman who disagrees for ethical reasons, to be regarded as equals.

When we look at the overriding discussion on genetic modification of seeds, a major component of modern agriculture, we see a stark illustration of the poor science literacy in the public consciousness. The concept of genetic modification, without delving into the hard science, is really the process of selecting desirable traits through gene manipulation, rather than generations of cross breeding. It’s typically a more focused method that allows for less chance of error in the end product than traditional breeding methods. The primary argument against this concept is often that it isn’t “natural.” They have in their minds that scientists are taking needles and injecting harmful chemicals into seeds, and the public in general is terrified of chemicals. This highlights the lack of understanding of chemicals, and that everything on earth is made of chemical compounds, as well as the whole idea of dose and dilution. There are many substances that at a certain dose can cure an illness, while at a higher dose can kill the patient. This is common knowledge amongst the educated scientific community, and is what many see as a failing of our education system where the general public is concerned. The false balance typically used to stir the emotions of the people that don’t know any better is to point at the idea of anything created by a large corporation must be detrimental. They typically spread these messages on iPads and Windows based computers, ironically, without any such ethical qualms.

..."


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A very good read, and rather important in regard to finding a real road to progressive action.

June 3, 2016

Oil train derails near Mosier in Oregon's Columbia River Gorge

http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/06/oil_train_derails_near_hood_ri.html#incart_big-photo

"A multi-car oil train derailment Friday in the Columbia River Gorge near Mosier sent up a massive plume of black smoke and stoked long-standing fears about the risks of hauling crude oil through one of the Pacific Northwest's most renowned landmarks.

Ten cars derailed and some oil was leaking, said Jennifer Flynt, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. It wasn't immediately clear whether the oil had reached the nearby Columbia River.

"We don't know whether there's any environmental damage including whether there's spillage to the Columbia," Flynt said.

Two cars caught fire, said Hal Gard, an Oregon Department of Transportation rail safety official.

..."

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Oil trains should not be in the Gorge. This was bound to happen, but...

June 3, 2016

How to flunk out of the University of Google

https://violentmetaphors.com/2016/06/03/how-to-flunk-out-of-the-university-of-google/

"...

I want to share with you my strategies for flunking out of the University of Google.

This is one instance where flunking is a good thing. A graduate of the University of Google chooses to accept only information that supports his or her position, and ignores or dismisses information in conflict with it. A graduate of the University of Google will not be able to answer the question “What kind of evidence would change your mind on this subject?” It’s insidious, because once their opinions are formed in this way, they tend to identify with other people who share those opinions, and any new information that comes their way will either be accepted or rejected on the basis of which position they’ve already taken (the cultural cognition effect)

...

Flunking out requires a decent amount of work, and the willingness to accept that you might be wrong about a subject from time to time. You’ll need to become more aware of your own cognitive biases, and have some strategies for overcoming them.

So as a preliminary step down the road to science literacy, I’ve put my thoughts on this together into a guide to learning about a subject in which you have no background. It’s an exercise; please don’t shortcut the process and go to Wikipedia, or you’ll miss the whole point.

..."

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A very good read, indeed.