jabmyeyes.com

I read about the folks who are against healthcare reform they seem to belong to the same pile of people who are against cleaning up the environment.  The common denominator seems to be they don’t like the costs of these humanitarian interventions.  Talk about jab my eyes out!  Is it that they figure some people and places are just expendable?  They are poor and uneducated and someone has to clean up our mistakes and make our chemicals.  Look at these pictures from China.  This would seem to exemplify the cost of not caring.

So when you are shopping for a toy for your favorite tot and you notice that it was made in China.  Remember this picture of plastic factory waste going in to what was once a beautiful river.

Next time you buy an Iphone, computer or various other electronics and some jewelry remember this titanium plant.

Without rules a nations people are allowed to suffer.  Without activism the suffering continues.  Our country allows activism and yet some refer to those activists as socialists.  I don’t get it.

Don’t blame this horridness on the people of China.  Just like here there are good people trying to do good things to advocate for the health and happiness of all people.  Not just those who can afford good health and happiness.  Please see the entire article and all the photos at

http://www.chinahush.com/2009/10/21/amazing-pictures-pollution-in-china/

Tim Gummer says:

If it wasn’t already obvious, then it is surely clear here that our Stuff is made in a Mordor of this very earth, by a people in slavery. In a globalized world, our complicity in their deaths and suffering is no less than those who stood by in the towns of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. These workers’ horrors may be marginally less, but unlike the deathcamps’ neighbours, we cannot pretend we have not seen.

The thoughts of this person are worth sharing.  There is a book called The case for God.  I haven’t read it, yet.  This commentary makes me want to. (the black words are Johannes and the blue words are mine.)

Johannes says:

There’s a tendency to disparage people who believe in God as weak, groveling sheep. Kindness is often equated to weakness as well. It’s easier to debunk only evangelical Christianity, rather than Judaism or Islam or Hinduism or the Quakers or Gnostic tradition or Episcopalians. But let us not forget that Western mathematicians Goedel, Newton, Gauss or scholars like Emerson, Kierkegaard, and more had their own particular way of discovering what God meant to them. Kierkegaard was an affluent depressed Danish philosopher who wrote some very interesting papers on faith. He loved his woman so much that he didn’t marry her.  He didn’t want her to have to deal with his depression.  He wrote that faith can only exist where there is doubt. You don’t have to have faith in a table because you can see it and feel it and put stuff on it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson lost his memory in later years and it embarrassed him.  I once read that fish have no memory and that is why it is ok for them to live in a bowl.  Everytime they swim to the other side of the bowl there is a whole fascinating and undiscovered world.  I had a betta fish in a bowl on my desk here. I was so sad when he died.  I used to put a mirror next to his bowl sometimes and he would try to fight his reflection.  No one taught him to fight it was just inately in him to do so.  I think some people are like that.

I’m getting off track.

Ms. Armstrong’s work is another scholarly breath of fresh air to people that Christianity is more complex and God was often viewed as more apophatic than paternal deliverer of goodness to your prayers. what is apophatic? One of her main points indeed is that both logic and myth have their place in thought, just as reason and emotion have their place in humanity. otherwise we’d be conformist robots.  We’d run around killing and pillaging those who don’t think like us. I think they call that religious wars.

If you ever studied advanced mathematics (I mean beyond the standard calculus or linear algebra/diff eq course), there are places where “logic” becomes less insightful — Russell’s paradox is an example or invoking Zorn’s lemma just to create something as basic as counting (natural) numbers. What does it mean to the mind that there are different sizes of “infinity”? Yet Cantor, who formalized set theoretic foundations of all modern mathematics, proved that indeed we do have different orders of infinity. (when you look up Bertrand Russell, Max Zorn, and Georg Cantor you read some pretty heady stuff.  Brilliance and depression seem to hang out together.  I think I’m glad I’m not that brilliant.  They all seem to allow science and fact to co-exist with faith.  I like that.)

Read Ms. Armstrong’s metaphor on music and the limits of human understanding of God. Blanket rejection of faith in such a smug, strident attitude is rather sad and unappreciative of the beauty of a free mind engaging in something fully outside the limited realms of “self.” I think Johannes is trying to tell us to “step outside the box”.

Yes, there is doubt, but faith without doubt is mere credulity as Kierkegaard posits. Faith is not to simply overcome doubt, but it, like love, transcends rationality. Religion ought to be more than just a set of logical beliefs, as music is more than just notes on a page and dry theory or mere vibrations or life is more than books, theories, and philosophers. The theory came after the experience, to explain and justify and to share. I love what Johannes says here. Love is something you can’t see or prove, the color yellow is something you can’t describe to a blind person, yet they exist.

Ms. Armstrong emphasizes that religion is embodied in practice, in action, in process with something greater than yourself. The existence of God is not so much a falsifiable hypothesis, and the semantics of language obfuscate much communication. Religious zealots, the oil industry and the tobacco industry hire lobbyists who do an incredible job of obfuscation. Show me where “love” exists. Show me where “music” exists. Show me where “beauty” is. There are many things outside the faculty of logic and language. Be humble and grateful that there is more. I am

Isn’t this a beautiful picture?  There is a guy in our town named Chip Ford who takes pictures for the Lovely Citizen.

I’m glad there are scientists and philosophers busy trying to find out why a pear smells like a pear or why the beautiful colors represented in this photograph happen.  I guess it all fits in the periodic table somewhere.

My point is Faith should not be mocked because it is based on doubt.  Faith is the driver for scientists and activists and incredible discoveries that people have made through all the recorded eras.  Faith and prayer saved my son.  I believe in the incredible power of faith.

http://knopf.knopfdoubleday.com/2009/09/22/the-case-for-god-by-karen-armstrong/

After a free labor day meal, the polystyrene containers that filled the garbage cans were painful to see.  Their usefulness lasted for 1/2 hour and their time in the landfill (polystyrene isn’t recycled) will last for hundreds and perhaps thousands of years.

Did you know styrofoam AKA polystyrene, AKA plastic #6 is manufactured using benzene, from coal; styrene, from petroleum; and ethylene, a “blowing agent”.  The main manufacturing route to styrene is the direct catalytic dehydrogenation of ethylbenzene: If you understand that and want more detail go to…
http://www.epa.gov/ttn/atw/hlthef/styrene.html

Long-term exposure to styrene in humans results in effects on the central nervous system (CNS), such as headache, fatigue, weakness, and depression, CNS dysfunction, hearing loss, and peripheral neuropathy. This only happens after long term exposure, so if you live long enough you’ll be a deaf, unbalanced, dummyhead with tremors and restless leg syndrome. Know anyone like that?

You might think to yourself…  “Somethings gotta kill me, I’m not gonna worry about monomers of styrene”.  Try thinking of this.  It takes 500 years for the chemical components of polystyrene to dissolve and it’s foreverness accounts for 25% of landfill waste.

While polystyrene is recyclable, most recycling programs don’t.  Burning polystyrene releases all the stuff it is made of into the air;  including dioxin, and carbon monoxide. Dioxins are highly toxic and can cause reproductive and developmental problems, damage the immune system, interfere with hormones and also cause cancer. Prevention or reduction of human exposure is best done via source-directed measures, i.e. strict control of industrial processes to reduce formation of dioxins as much as possible. That is from WHO, as in the World Health Organization. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs225/en/

There are some positive things we can do with the Styrofoam/polystyrene that already exists.  If you mix it with cement and make building blocks out of it, the result is strong enough to withstand earthquakes.  If the building burns we’re screwed so make sure there is a good sprinkler system installed.

A concern was espressed that if California does away with all polystyrene containers for food use — jobs will be lost.  Those plants that are currently making polystyrene containers for food consumption are in China.  Hong Kong has a study of the impacts of polystyrene. http://www.way-to-go.org/doc/PolystyreneFactSheets.pdf

The legislature (Of Hawaii) finds that it is in the interest of protecting the public health and safety to prohibit the use of polystyrene food containers by restaurants and take-out food operations. http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session2008/Bills/SB2629_.htm

The market is bursting with alternatives including polylactic acid (PLA), which is generated using corn instead of petroleum. Many of these substitutes can be commercially composted after use.

Another great product I read about is Angela Morris’ Woolcool… http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5949979.ece

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A very smart lady named Margarita Calafell is using enzymes to make a super product to replace polystyrene.  Hope she can make it waterproof so we can use if for take out. http://www.engineersedge.com/technology_news/posts/794.html

Hopefully polystyrene will go away as will asbestos.

Wouldn’t it be better if the TV personalities would talk serenely about facts rather than loudly bashing someone or some idea.   Wouldn’t it be better if we stopped listening to them;  just shut them off, because we were all two busy admiring people who are discovering and inventing stuff. Science claims that basically we are herd animals.  Maybe we need to classify ourselves as a home planet herd.  We’ll just push the loudmouths to the outside of the herd for the lions to eat.

the desire to classify is inherent in humans, as we crave a sense of order. Similarly,  humans are predisposed to impose group boundaries and to see outsiders as a threat. We seek every opportunity to identify with a home land, a home tribe, a home religion, a home team, and to declare everybody else the enemy.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327275.900-immigrant-species-arent-all-bad.html

Wheee – chromosomes!

Human DNA By ed_case

http://www.scq.ubc.ca/filter/?cat=3

But some of you are doing fascinating things with your time.  check it out

Inventor Shawn Frayne has come up with a device that harnesses the power of wind without any rotating parts. Instead, his company’s Windbelts capture energy using fluttering fabric.   Air passes over a taut membrane, it induces a vibration, somewhat akin to a violin bow.   Magnets mounted on the membrane bounce back and forth between metal coils, inducing an electric current.

What makes this so way cool is that it can be put on fences in urban areas and it can be palm sized or room sized and the materials it is made from are all available right here in the good ole USA.

http://www.terrapass.com/blog/posts/windbelt

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Scientists from Ohio State University report that marijuana, contrary to the conventional wisdom,  may help ward off Alzheimer’s and keep recall sharp. Are you kidding me? The only thing I was able to recall was where the ice cream was. Their findings, released today at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington D.C.:  chemical components  of marijuana reduce inflammation and stimulate the production of new brain cells, thereby enhancing memory. I don’t know, I’ll need more evidence before I believe this one.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=pot-joins-the-fight-against-alzheim-2008-11-19

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two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.  Show this to your kids next time they whine about being bored.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.  they must have giggled after they pulled this off.

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/

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This is my favorite story.  Click the link to see the full story.  I’m not doing this fascinating kid justice with this short introduction.

The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a new book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.

Self-taught William Kamkwamba has been feted by climate change campaigners like Al Gore and business leaders the world over.

“People thought I was smoking marijuana,” he said. “So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].’ Then they said: ‘Ah, I see.’”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8257153.stm