Case studies: A hard look at GM crops

Kannu

Two topics specifically raise more heat than light, global warming and Genetically Modified crops ( if you excuse the inadvertent pun). 

So what we have to do is not to get into debates but listen carefully to the arguments. 

Climate change is happening and we need food productivity. Between these two conceptual positions and the public debate, there is too much noise. 

Love

Baba. 

Case studies: A hard look at GM crops : Nature News & Comment
http://www.nature.com/news/case-studies-a-hard-look-at-gm-crops-1.12907

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Palmer amaranth has taken root as a herbicide-resistant ‘superweed’ in many US cotton fields.

Polaris/eyevine

In the pitched debate over genetically modified (GM) foods and crops, it can be hard to see where scientific evidence ends and dogma and speculation begin. In the nearly 20 years since they were first commercialized, GM crop technologies have seen dramatic uptake. Advocates say that they have increased agricultural production by more than US$98 billion and saved an estimated 473 million kilograms of pesticides from being sprayed. But critics question their environmental, social and economic impacts.

Researchers, farmers, activists and GM seed companies all stridently promote their views, but the scientific data are often inconclusive or contradictory. Complicated truths have long been obscured by the fierce rhetoric. “I find it frustrating that the debate has not moved on,” says Dominic Glover, an agricultural socioeconomist at Wageningen University and Research Centre in the Netherlands. “The two sides speak different languages and have different opinions on what evidence and issues matter,” he says.

Here, Nature takes a look at three pressing questions: are GM crops fuelling the rise of herbicide-resistant ‘superweeds’? Are they driving farmers in India to suicide? And are the foreign transgenes in GM crops spreading into other plants? These controversial case studies show how blame shifts, myths are spread and cultural insensitivities can inflame debate.

GM crops have bred superweeds: True

Jay Holder, a farming consultant in Ashburn, Georgia, first noticed Palmer amaranth (Amaranthus palmeri) in a client’s transgenic cotton fields about five years ago. Palmer amaranth is a particular pain for farmers in the southeastern United States, where it outcompetes cotton for moisture, light and soil nutrients and can quickly take over fields.

Mystery Solved? A New Theory About Why Egypt Stopped Building Pyramids

Quite an interesting theory son. When I first saw the bent pyramid, I felt so sorry for it. It looks crooked, old, etc etc. specially after seeing the great pyramids and then the stepped pyramid, this one looks sad...

 

Love

Baba

Mystery Solved? A New Theory About Why Egypt Stopped Building Pyramids - Rebecca J. Rosen - The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/05/mystery-solved-a-new-theory-about-why-egypt-stopped-building-pyramids/275738/

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Continue to the TheAtlantic.com

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Is it possible they were too perfect?

Rebecca J. Rosen May 10 2013, 9:58 AM ET

STRUCTUREmag

When structural engineer Peter James arrived at the Bent Pyramid, 25 miles south* of Cairo, his task was to secure the structure’s remaining “cladding” — its smooth exterior envelope. But why was it crumbling in the first place?

The foundation seemed completely stable. The prevailing theory — that “the missing cladding was removed by local opportunist thieves” — didn’t inspire confidence: That could explain the destruction at the lower levels, but the damage extended far up the pyramid and “in an apparently random manner, with no signs of indentations from temporary scaffolding or of any symmetrical cutting of the blocks to aid removal,” James writes in STRUCTURE, a structural engineering trade publication. The damage just did not look like the result of thieves. Rather, as James puts it, it “appears to be caused by a giant whose hand has swept across the face of the pyramid with enormous energy, sucking out the facing and leaving the ragged empty sockets.
”

So what was causing the crumbling? James presents a new explanation: thermal movement — that is to say the expansion and contraction of the limestone with temperature fluctuations — has ground down the rocks and shifted their positions.

During the day, the temperature rises to 40°C (104°F) across the face of the outer casing, then at night cools to 3⁰C (37⁰F) because of the lack of cover and exposure to the prevailing winds. This gives an average daily temperature fluctuation of 37°C (67°F). The photographs of the Bent Pyramid show how thermal expansion has caused the blocks to move to the edges, where they have detached. It also shows how individual stones, unsupported, can cantilever and snap off and subsequently fall to the ground.


He estimates that the motion can amount to 1¼ inches per 328 feet. As the stones move, dust and sand would fall from the stones and fill in the spaces between them. The spaces into which they could contract at night would shrink, and over time they would be pushed out of position. “Multiply this endless movement by the number of days that the pyramid has been erected and you have the reason why all the outer casing has moved to the extremities, where it has buckled or displaced against blocks moving in the opposite direction and then fallen off,” James writes. “It may then have been picked up by opportunists and removed from the site.
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The Bent Pyramid is one of the best preserved and, as a result, it provides a unique opportunity for studying how the crumbling is happening. James theorizes that the reason the Bent Pyramid retains its casing, while the Red Pyramid and the Great Pyramid “have virtually none” is that, ironically, the Bent Pyramid had worse construction to begin with. As the Egyptians became more skilled, and developed more accurate construction techniques, the voids between the stones disappeared, and the structures were less able to absorb the ebbs and flows of the limestone. The other, more perfect pyramids may have developed exterior cracks rather quickly, and, James hypothesizes, may be why eventually the Egyptians moved their burial grounds to the Valley of the Kings. The pyramids’ perfection became their imperfection; their smooth facades broken by the precision of their construction.

How The London Boroughs Got Their Names

Kids

You may like these horrible histories behind the names of London boroughs. Fascinating. We live in deep historical places kids. We have had Saxons, Celts, Vikings, Romans, Normans and some Picts as well. This was a violent place. Harrow and Stanmore. Absolutely full of warfare but also long periods of peace. Fascinating. 

You have been to the museum of London. Remember this? 

Love

Baba

How The London Boroughs Got Their Names
http://londonist.com/2013/07/how-the-london-boroughs-got-their-names.php

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Fifty years ago today, the London Government Act 1963 received Royal Assent. It paved the way, two years later, for radical changes in London’s political boundaries. The 32 boroughs that we still know, love and pay our council tax to, were created. (The tiny City of London — also known as the Square Mile — holds different political status to the 32 boroughs, and carried on as normal after the Act.)

Many former boroughs (Finsbury and St Pancras, for example) disappeared overnight, though you can still see their names on old street signs around town. The new, bigger, amalgamated boroughs needed new names. In most cases, ancient appellations were chosen. So here’s our guide to the etymology of London’s boroughs. Find out which areas are named after sheep, chalk, crocuses…and a hill in Yorkshire.

Barking and Dagenham

Barking is an ancient, Anglo-Saxon phrase, first recorded as Berecingas. The name either derives from a local chieftan called Bereca or means “the settlement by the birch trees”. Dagenham is also ancient, first recorded as Dæccanhaam in 666 AD. ‘Haam’ means ‘home’ or ‘homestead’ and Dæcca was presumably a local land-owner or leader.

The Major Pipeline

this was fascinating, how does your university major link up with your eventual career?

This is just a cropped version of the graph, see the site for a better picturisation, fascinating where people end up with..Funny thing was on the managers, pretty much everybody is ending up in there, heh.

Tax Farming and the Origins of State Capacity in England and France

Fascinating comparison.

How did modern and centralized fiscal institutions emerge? We develop a model that explains (i) why pre-industrial states relied on private individuals to collect taxes; (ii) why after 1600 both England and France moved from competitive methods for collecting revenues to allocating the right to collect taxes to a small group of financiers—an intermediate institution that we call cabal tax farming— and (iii) why this centralization led to investments in fiscal capacity and increased Fiscal standardization. We provide detailed historical evidence that supports our prediction that rulers abandoned the competitive allocation of tax rights in favor of cabal tax farming in order to gain access to inside credit, and that this transition was accompanied by investments in standardization. Finally (iv) we show why this intermediate institution proved to be self-undermining in England, where it was quickly replaced by direct collection, but lasted in France until the French Revolution.

You know something, whenever I hear people fulminating about bankers and credit and and and, I just feel sad. More life changes, more it remains the same. The situations we are going through has been seen before, quite a lot of times. People forget that once taxation goes through the roof, people do tend to revolt. Typically, its the rulers (governments in today’s parlance) who usually bugger up the economy and then go for the tax take to try to make up for those stupid policy decisions. But the British were better at this, one of the reasons why we are still celebrating the birth of Prince George while the French are, well, French.

John Stuart Mill

Kannu

You want to study economics. Excellent. But remember that some other fields of study are inextricably linked with this son, like politics, history, anthropology, environmental studies, psychology, etc. anything to give you more insight into resources and behaviour. 

Here's an overview of John Stuart Mill son. One of my heroes. He trawled and wrote on all the subjects mentioned above son. Brilliant fellow. Another person like this was Raja Ram Mohon Roy but will speak about him later. 

Love

Baba 

John Stuart Mill - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill

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, FRSE (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist and civil servant. He was an influential contributor to social theory, political theory, and political economy. He has been called “the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century”.^[3] Mill’s conception of liberty justified the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control.^[4] He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductiveapproach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises offalsification as the key component in the scientific method.^[5] Mill was also a Member of Parliament and an important figure in liberal political philosophy.

Now that’s a compliment

Diya

You want to be a writer and illustrator. See what a great compliment one writer got :)

Aboriginal Australians

I'm afraid son that we are becoming way too civilised these days. Hunting or living in the wild is unknown to you and for far too many people, it will only exist in tv programmes. 

The fun of hunting down animals, cooking them in the wild and then celebrating isn't something that can be replicated easily now. I've done and its fun. 

Still an interesting read about an abo tribe. The abo's like pretty much every other tribal society in the world like the red Indians or Indians in Mexico or in brazil or the Bantu in South Africa or in india or wherever have been treated in a disgusting manner. Very sad history. If you get a chance, read the book, bury my heart at wounded knee. Very interesting. 

But they are dying out. And their languages, their culture, history all are vanishing as well. Sad. 

Love

Baba

Aboriginal Australians
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/06/aboriginal-australians/finkel-text

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Published: June 2013

First Australians

Aboriginals had the continent to themselves for 50,000 years. Today they make up less than 3 percent of the population, and their traditional lifestyle is disappearing. Almost. In the homelands the ancient ways live on.

By Michael Finkel

Photograph by Amy Toensing

A finger across the throat and a glance seaward. That’s the signal. The two men grip their spears, hand-carved from stringybark trees, and walk barefoot over the red soil to the water’s edge. Then into the aluminum dinghy, engine revved, and across a warm shallow bay of the Arafura Sea, at the wild edge of Australia’s Northern Territory.

Incoherence of the Incoherence

Kannu

I've told you that I've got a complicated relationship with God. I believe in him but the gap between reason and faith is tough to fulfil. When did the universe begin? What is life? Do we live in a deterministic universe? Does destiny exist? I grappled with some of these questions when I was researching artificial intelligence. To what extent can I use various factors and coefficients and parametric/non parametric means to predict the future? If god is all knowing, that means that he has a giant regression model in his mind. Is that where we are going? And if that is the case, then why struggle to improve oneself? See the first argument about an old man and young child and god. 

Asking these philosophical questions, son, is not to find the right answer. There IS no right answer. But there are answers which lead to more questions. 

Here's an interesting book by Ibn Rusd son. One of the brilliant thinkers, philosophers, scientists, medicine practitioners and jurists. I've spoken about him earlier. 

Read it it you get a chance son

Love

Baba

Incoherence of the Incoherence
http://www.muslimphilosophy.com/ir/tt/tt-all.htm

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ABU AL-WALID

MUHAMMAD IBN AHMAD

IBN RUSHD

AL-QURTUBI

AVERROES’

TAHAFUT AL-TAHAFUT

E-text Edition

(The Incoherence of the Incoherence)

TRANSLATED FROM THE ARABIC

WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES

BY

SIMON VAN DEN BERGH

PUBLISHED AND DISTRIBUTED BY

THE TRUSTEES OF THE “E. J. W. GIBBMEMORIAL”

E-text conversion

Muhammad Hozien

TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOLUME I

Preface

• INTRODUCTION

TRANSLATION

• THE FIRST DISCUSSION Concerning the Eternity of the World
  

• THE SECOND DISCUSSION: The Refutation of their Theory of the Incorruptibility of the World and of Time and Motion

• THE THIRD DISCUSSION: The demonstration of their confusion in saying that God is the agent and the maker of the world and that the world in His product and act, and the demonstration that these expressions are in their system only metaphors without any real sense

• THE FOURTH DISCUSSION:Showing that they are unable to prone the existence of a creator of the world

• THE FIFTH DISCUSSION: To show their incapacity to prove God’s unity and the impossibility of two necessary existents both without a cause

• THE SIXTH DISCUSSION: To refute their denial of attributes

• THE SEVENTH DISCUSSION: To refute their claim that nothing cars share with the First its genus and be differentiated from it through a specific difference, and that with respect to its intellect the division into genus and specific difference cannot be applied to it

• THE EIGHTH DISCUSSION: To refute their theory that the existence of the First is simple, namely that it is pure existence and that its existence stands in relation to no quiddity and to no essence, but stands to necessary existence as do other beings to their quiddity

• THE NINTH DISCUSSION: To refute their proof that the First is incorporeal

• THE TENTH DISCUSSION: To prove their incapacity to demonstrate that the world has a creator and a cause, and that in fact they are forced to admit atheism

• THE ELEVENTH DISCUSSION: To show the incapacity of those philosophers who believe that the First knows other things besides its own self and that it knows the genera and the species in a universal way, to prone that this is so

• THE TWELFTH DISCUSSION: About the impotence of the philosophers to prone that Cod knows Himself

• THE THIRTEENTH DISCUSSION: To refute those who arm that Gad is ignorant of the individual things which are divided in time into present, past, and future

• THE FOURTEENTH DISCUSSION: To refute their proof that heaven is an animal mowing in a circle in obedience to God

• THE FIFTEENTH DISCUSSION: To refute the theory of the philosophers about the aim which moves heaven

• THE SIXTEENTH DISCUSSION: To refute the philosophical theory that the souls of the heavens observe all the particular events of this world

• ABOUT THE NATURAL SCIENCES

• THE FIRST DISCUSSION: The denial of a logical necessity between cause and effect

• THE SECOND DISCUSSION: The impotence of the philosophers to show by demonstrative proof that the soul is a spiritual substance

• THE THIRD DISCUSSION: Refutation of the philosophers’ proof for the immortality of the soul

• THE FOURTH DISCUSSION:Concerning the philosophers’ denial of bodily resurrection

• The End: E-text note

The best graph in the world

That graph, son, is one of the greatest pieces of graphic design or brevity known to man. In a 2d imagery, Charles Joseph Minard has managed to cram in so much information that its ridiculously brilliant.

One of my problems is how can I get my salespeople to absorb a giant amount of information in a very limited time and actually do something about it which will help my clients and compete against other salespeople. It's a constant battle against suppliers who think that more is good versus sales people who are constitutionally unable to absorb any more than 3 things at one time. Which is good, I want them to sell, not spend time on data.

Fascinating, I am spending quite a lot of time thinking about data visualisation these days..

Love

Baba