Big Think asks: Why should we drug our drinking water?
Jacob Appel: I think when you ask questions about whether or not any pharmaceutical or any products be added to the drinking water, you’re really asking two sets of questions. One is: should any product that might be beneficial be added to the drinking water? And secondly, should the specific product be added. The first question I think can be dismissed fairly easily. People who oppose adding enhancement to the drinking water in the way people opposed adding fluoride to the drinking water half a century ago rely on the false premise of naturalism—that because something occurs naturally it must be better.
Now many things that occur naturally are better, but that correlational, not causational. Pain is natural, anesthetics are synthetic. Most people would prefer anesthesia to pain. By the same logic, there are many things that naturally occur in the drinking water that are beneficial in some parts of the country that don’t cover other parts of the country. One of those items happens to be lithium. People who oppose adding lithium to the drinking water in trace amounts don’t go around advocating to strain the lithium from the drinking water in the areas where it does exist.
The specifics of lithium are rather interesting and I should add, I am not the first person to propose this idea. Peter Kramer floated this idea in the New York Times over a year ago, the Brown University psychiatrist, the author of “Listening to Prozac.” In areas where lithium in trace amounts is in the drinking water, there seems to be a lower level of suicidality and in the Texas counties that we’re studying, there’s actually a lower crime rate. The same studies were repeated in Japan, a completely different cultural milieu and they had the same result.
I should add that we are not talking about adding therapeutic levels of lithium to the drinking water. It’s worth noting that if you wanted to get a therapeutic level than the trace amounts that currently exist in the area where there is already lithium, you would have to drink several Olympic size swimming pools every minute to reach that level of concern. That level of therapeutics. So the reality is, these are very low levels and there’s no reason to think they are not safe in the areas they already exist, so why not give everybody that benefit?
Read the full response and watch the video at Big Think.
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Posted to metavalent.com
Big Think Month of Thinking Dangerously: Drug Our Drinking Water
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/cqYcR_7H-7Y/
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Posted to ethernettv.net
Deborah Gordon Digs Ants
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/sA8VBAB4Jbg/
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Posted to ethernettv.net
Jill Bolte Taylor: My Stroke of Insight
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/L0CPp_GBERk/
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- society
- Best Of
- Philosophy
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Posted to ethernettv.net
OG Libertarianism, Penn Jillette Style
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/vHR_STkJK_Q/
“To be able to say you’re wrong and here are the reasons, is respect. To say you’re evil, is anti-human.” — Penn Jillette
This is not an endorsement of libertarianism, per se, but it is a damned good working description. Compare and contrast to other ideas and draw your own conclusions.
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- politics
- society
- Philosophy
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Posted to ethernettv.net
Everything you ever wanted to know about Internet Cookies but didn’t know how to ask
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/08gmcVebJDA/
Okay, not really everything, but it’s a reasonable start.
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- society
- technology
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Posted to metavalent.com
Neurotheology: Toward a New Neurospiritual Tradition
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/JCUN_GiDyWo/
“Just as Copernicus’s heliocentric notion of universe is now bedrock truth, the Neuro Revolution will bring about new ideas of human spirituality that will forever reshape our understanding of humanity’s role and place the universe. A quiet transformation has begun, albeit one that may take centuries to play out fully” (Lynch, 152. The Neuro Revolution.).
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Posted to ethernettv.net
Jane McGonigal: Gaming to Solve Real World Problems
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/yJMLDL8hxY4/
- Tags:
- society
- technology
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Posted to metavalent.com
Cultural Neuroscience
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/db8z9mDwMI8/
Explore. Learn.
- Tags:
- society
- neuro-cogno
- education
- metaverse
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Posted to michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us
On Misandry
Only one page of #misandry ... so far. How is it that nobody even knows the word misandry, when the messaging is increasingly pervasive and the inverse prejudice is (rightly) universally condemned?
- Tags:
- social justice
- society
- norms
- values
- misandry
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Posted to google.com
The Futurist: The Misandry Bubble
http://www.singularity2050.com/2010/01/the-misandry-bubble.html
Shared by @silverton
Interesting. Glad to see I'm not the only one bringing this up in polite company. I just mentioned this yesterday in a conversation with four female friends. When asked, "do you know the word misogyny?" A chorus of "obviously!" rose. I then asked, "but what is it's inverse?" Not a single one had ever heard of the word misandry. Executive Summary : The Western World has quietly become a civilization that undervalues men and overvalues women, where the state forcibly transfers resources from men to women creating various perverse incentives for otherwise good women to conduct great evil against men and children, and where male nature is vilified but female nature is celebrated. This is unfair to both genders, and is a recipe for a rapid civilizational decline and displacement, the costs of which will ultimately be borne by a subsequent generation of innocent women, rather than men, as soon as 2020.
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- social justice
- society
- norms
- values
- misandry
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Posted to michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us
Information Policy as Posthuman Law
Vintage 2002 topic, only getting more urgent by the day. Or is it? Remind me to dig deeper for a refresh.
The subject of information policy is increasingly flows between machines, machinic rather than social values play ever-more important roles in decision-making, and information policy for human society is being supplemented, supplanted, and superceded by machinic decision-making. As the barrier between the human and machinic falls with implantation of chips within the body and other types of intimate relationships, and as dependence upon the information infrastructure continues to grow, the question of the rights of technological systems themselves is entering the legal system.
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Posted to digg.com
WSJ.com - For Older Workers, a Reluctant Retirement
http://digg.com/business_finance/WSJ_com_For_Older_Workers_a_Reluctant_Retirement
Although the U.S. labor market is showing improvements, conditions for older workers continue to deteriorate, as a number of workers ages 55 to 64 feel forced to retire before they are financially ready.
Nah, ya' think?
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Posted to ethernettv.net
Outsourcing Personal Memory: The Benefits and Challenges of Capturing Yourself Digitally
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/U6ma-YPF3Eo/
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- society
- technology
- science
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Posted to metavalent.com
Legal Challenges in an Age of Robotics
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/vUtekHf9reg/
On Thursday, November 12, 2009, sponsored by The Rock Center for Corporate Governance and Stanford Program in Law, Science, and Technology, Legal Challenges in an Age of Robotics: Once relegated to factories and fiction, robots are rapidly entering the mainstream. Advances in artificial intelligence translate into ever-broadening functionality and autonomy. Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of robotics in warfare, medicine, and exploration. Industry analysts and UN statistics predict equally significant growth in the market for personal or service robotics over the next few years. What unique legal challenges will the widespread availability of sophisticated robots pose? Three panelists with deep and varied expertise discuss the present, near future, and far future of robotics and the law.
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Posted to ethernettv.net
iCANN on Internationalized Domain Names
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/EthernetTV/~3/0JWUKPBeasY/
Interesting that at nearly the same time as this iCANN decision, Aunt Rosie the Wave Translation Robot may remove language barriers, further enabling all people everywhere to use their own native languages, yet communicate across all language divides.
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- society
- technology
- science
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Posted to metavalent.com
Cognitive Liberty and Right to One’s Own Mind
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/metavalent/~3/BiriVNcdlhE/
More extraordinarily high-signal outputs from the seemingly inexhaustible cognition engine behind Sentient Developments: Cognitive liberty is not just about the right to modify one’s mind, emotional balance and psychological framework (for example, through anti-depressants, cognitive enhancers, psychotropic substances, etc.), it’s also very much about the right to not have one’s mind altered against their will … Our society has a rather poor track record when it comes to respecting the validity of certain mind-types … Forced cognitive modification is an issue that’s affecting real people today.
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Posted to metavalent.com
Of Neuro Economics and Artificial Brains
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Posted to michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us
Remix for Progressive Effect
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=976
Inadvertently stumbled across this remix on a slow starting Saturday morning, due to Pandora playing in the background. To recreate: 1. Queue up 04.18.09 NPR Weekend Edition’s interview with Joe Queenan, author of "Closing Time". 2. Queue up the following 4 artists/songs: NiN / Suck, Tool / 46&2, RATM / Killing in the Name, Massive Attack / Teardrop. 3. Mix volumes to taste. "Over the course of time, I got tired of listening to middle class and upper middle class people’s stories, and I got tired to listening to their problems, ‘cuz they didn’t have problems. You know, problems are food, problems are shelter, or problems are somebody down the street has got a gun. Problems are not ‘my daddy doesn’t appreciate me enough’ or ‘I didn’t get into Middlebury,’ those aren’t problems. I wanted to write about what poverty is really like. I wanted to make it clear to people that we don’t all come from the same background. Just because I speak this way, and just because I’ve been to La Sorbonne, and just because I’ve read Marcel Proust: I didn’t start out like you, and there’s a lot of people like me. Don’t you ever think that we all started out the same way, and don’t you ever take your own good fortune for granted.” — Joe Queenan This remix of NPR segments with industrial metal (or anything, for that matter) strikes me as an interesting idea to play with later; overlapping progressive music with progressive dialog.
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Posted to michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us
Total Social Collapse HOWTO
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=921
Stewart Brand’s notes from last night’s Total Social Collapse meet-up and pep rally: Date: Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:10:24 -0800 From: Stewart Brand Subject: [SALT] Managing social collapse (Orlov talk) With vintage Russian black humor, Orlov described the social collapse he witnessed in Russia in the 1990s and spelled out its practical lessons for the American social collapse he sees as inevitable. The American economy in the 1990s described itself as “Goldilocks”—just the right size—when in fact is was “Tinkerbelle,” and one day the clapping stops. As in Russia, the US made itself vulnerable to the decline of crude oil, a trade deficit, military over-reach, and financial over-reach. Russians were able to muddle through the collapse by finding ways to manage:
food, shelter, transportation, and security.
Russian agriculture had long been ruined by collectivization, so people had developed personal kitchen gardens, accessible by public transit. The state felt a time-honored obligation to provide bread, and no one starved. (Orlov noted that women in Russia handled collapse pragmatically, putting on their garden gloves, whereas middle-aged men dissolved into lonely drunks.) Americans are good at gardening and could shift easily to raising their own food, perhaps adopting the Cuban practice of gardens in parking lots and on roofs and balconies. As for shelter, Russians live in apartments from which they cannot be evicted. The buildings are heat-efficient, and the communities are close enough to protect themselves from the increase in crime. Americans, Orlov said, have yet to realize there is no lower limit to real estate value, nor that suburban homes are expensive to maintain and get to. He predicts flight, not to remote log cabins, but to dense urban living. Office buildings, he suggests, can easily be converted to apartments, and college campuses could make instant communities, with all that grass turned into pasture or gardens. There are already plenty of empty buildings in America; the cheapest way to get one is to offer to caretake it. The rule with transportation, he said, is not to strand people in nonsurvivable places. Fuel will be expensive and hoarded. He noted that the most efficient of all vehicles is an old pickup fully loaded with people, driving slowly. He suggested that freight trains be required to provide a few empty boxcars for hoboes. Donkeys, he advised, provide reliable transport, and they dine as comfortably on the Wall Street Journal as they did on Pravda. Security has to take into account that prisons will be emptied (by stages, preferably), overseas troops will be repatriated and released, and cops will go corrupt. You will have a surplus ofmentally unstable people skilled with weapons. There will be crime waves and mafias, but you can rent a policeman, hire a soldier. Security becomes a matter of local collaboration. When the formal legal structure breaks down, adaptive improvisation can be pretty efficient. By way of readiness, Orlov urges all to prepare for life without a job, with near-zero burn rate. It takes practice to learn how to be poor well. Those who are already poor have an advantage. [ms; Finally, OUR TIME HAS COME! We the penniless are the New A-Listers! ;-)] –Stewart Brand
The text of Dmitry Orlov’s SALT talk. Slides from 2006 talk, “Closing the Collapse Gap.”
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The Dystopians - featuring Dmitry Orlov (longnow.org)
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Posted to michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us
The Tyranny of Dead Ideas
http://michael.silverton.palo-alto.ca.us/packets/?p=909
Journalist and former Clinton administration adviser Matt Miller discusses his new book “The Tyranny of Dead Ideas: Letting Go of the Old Ways of Thinking to Unleash a New Prosperity.” Miller is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and a contributing editor at Fortune magazine. He’s also an award-winning contributor to The New York Times and a commentator on National Public Radio. Miller spoke at the Commonwealth Club of California earlier this week. SOURCE: Minnesota Public Radio Dead Ideas:
Things will always be better; our kids will always do better economically than we have. Free Trade is good, no matter how many people it hurts. Your company should take care of you. (Why are companies saddled providing healthcare, for instance?) Taxes hurt the economy and are always too high. Schools are a local matter. Money follows merit. We live in a just meritocracy.
What we can do about them:
Only Government can save Business. Only Business can save Liberalism (because Free Market pays for social justice programs). Only Higher Taxes can save the economy and the planet. Only Lower Upper Class can save us from Inequality. Only Better Living can save us from sagging paychecks. Only a dose of Nationalization can save local schools. Only lessons from Abroad can save American Ideals.
Will be rebroadcast on Feb 27 on KQED.
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