Speculations about "what might have happened" are exercises that serve a variety of purposes from constructing theories to punishing wrongdoers. But in the end they are all speculations.

The life forms affected by the environmental degradation and ecosystem disruption do not vote, make campaign contributions, sit on boards of directors and in legislative bodies, or have other such levers of political power within their reach. A very few have found themselves useful to humans. If success is measured in numbers, feedlot cattle, monoculture corn wheat and soy, factory-farmed chickens and the like might be counted among the successful, but only as long as humans can subsidise them.

The folks at the conference may not have to worry too much for too long: Charting Mankind’s Arctic Methane Emission Exponential Expressway to Total Extinction in the Next 50 Years.

Does it even matter whether or not there is an election?

Dr. Mobus, are you preaching to the choir, crying in the wilderness, or hoping to convert some passerby? Or perhaps all three? Nevertheless, thank you for speaking out.

The problem, of course, is the packaging. Where I learnt algebra, I never heard of "quadratic" equations, but I know now that some of what I learned goes by that name here. The cut-and-dried way it is presented here takes all the life out of mathematics. The Arabs called algebra Hisaab al Jabr, meaning the powerful computation, but it is endowed with its power only by the motivation of the person using it.

Even the "unification theory" exists within conscious awareness.

Thank you, Dr. Mobus, for so assiduously turning over the humanure. But a wise person had once advised me that it is sometimes better to leave the bucket undisturbed: the more you stir it, the more it stinks. The paradigm shift out of "growth" will not come easy. As Francis Bacon said about greatness, some will be born into it, some will attain it through their achievements, and upon some - the rest, the multitude - it will be thrust. Sink or swim.

Since Plasmodia had a dinoflagellate ancestor, would it be appropriate to consider making the desired antigens in a dinoflagellate? Maybe even consider combining the two genomes if it simplifies further steps?

Perception (of the world) is subordinate to awareness; awareness is an object within consciousness; consciousness is subjective ("I"). What is beyond is not in the realm of the "I".

Life emerged and evolved to produce consciousness. The non-theistic religions, Buddhism, Jainism and non-dual Vedantic Hinduism assign primacy to consciousness: for each individual being, it is where awareness of perceptions begins and where all concepts are conceived. It is the sine qua non for everything else.

Education of a Scientist

When the economists say "economy" they are referring to the process of conversion of (natural) resources into (usable) products, a process that is predicated (mostly unbeknownst to them) on energy flows. When they speak of economic "growth" (again, mostly unbeknownst to them) this translates into an acceleration of the process of conversion of resources into products. And when they say “The economy that we had before the recession is gone,” what they are referring to with the term "economy" (yet again, mostly unbeknownst to them) translates into that acceleration. The economy is not gone - not by a long shot. Both the primary economy, the natural resources, and the secondary economy, the usable products still exist. However the cumulative effects of the depredations wrought upon the primary economy since the adoption of agriculture, and magnified untold orders of magnitude since the adoption of fossil fuels (which happens to be another natural resource!) are now having increasingly severe consequences. It is also to be remembered that the process is linear from resource to product to wastes & trash. Biological ecosystems are sustained by cycles: the wastes at one point are the resources for the next point forming closed loops. With human activities, even renewable resources are depleted faster than their replenishment rates; even the so-called "renewable" energy sources require capture devices made from, and maintained with, non-renewable resources. The depleting fossil fuels and the shrinking of the energy streams contingent upon them, exacerbated by the depletion of most other natural resources, mandates not just a loss of the acceleration of the conversion process of resource to product, but an inevitable deceleration of the same. To economists, all this is represented by symbols: pieces of green paper bearing pictures of dead presidents, magnetized particles on hard drives, etc. This is the tertiary economy, where those limits do not apply in the creation of more symbols.

One may recognize the disconnect between the "politician" and the "state". The "state" is an oversized organizational chart personified. There is no such thing as Country X, but its organizational chart specifies and defines the location and status of everyone in the hierarchy. When the politician makes a promise, much of the responsibility devolves on the personified chart. This is particularly true for promises that are to come to fruition after the politician's term(s) in office. This adds to the surreality of the circumstances where diving into deNile with ignorance of or blindness towards the approaching crocodile of reality.

Can a universe emerge without mind? The "mind" is a phenomenon within the universe: it is manifest in three parts, the knower, the knowing and the knowledge. The knower is identified as the "I". The rest - including the known - the universe - are the "not-I". The source of both the "I" and the "not-I" is The One without a second, also referred to as Sunyata (Buddhism) and the Ain Sof (Kabbalistic Judaism), both of which mean "The Void". As in the case of the origins of the Big Bang, it is outside the parameters OS time and space.

There is no need to jump the sharks, they are swimming with them: and the sharks have them in their jaws. K Street Documentary: The Best Government Money Can Buy?

Thank you, Dr. Mobus, for a perceptive and comprehensive analysis of humanity's current predicament, and its hope for the future.

Taking it to the bank could be less than a prudent choice.

Your insights are worthy of a Cohen Gadol.

The Japs were still hemming and hawing about negotiations for surrender rather than an accepting an unconditional one. If the American commanders did not mind the loss of a few more American lives in a few more weeks, that was their attitude. But as far as I am concerned, if I were charged with the safety and well-being of troops, every individual among them takes priority over the adversary and the source of the adversary's support.

Well before the oil price spike of 2008, Richard Duncan of the "Olduvai Theory" had suggested a period of severe volatility in oil prices with repeated spikes and crashes. Indeed it was not until after the 2008 oil price spike that the peak oil blogosphere more widely addressed the issue of elevated petroleum prices depressing the economy. As I understand it, the most that the uS economy can tolerate without heading south is a price of $85 per barrel.

An educated person, it had been said, "is one who knows a little of everything, and everything of a little". That makes education a journey, not a goal: a lifelong endavour. And again, as a Chinese saynig from a long time ago says: For a return on investment in one year, plant rice. For a return on investment in ten years, plant fruit trees. For a return on investment in a hundred years, educate people. I am reminded of the terminology used, appropriately, although perhaps without full awareness of the implications: surgical training, and medical education. There is a distinction between education and training. Training can be quite sophisticated, depending on the complexity of the skills being imparted. It can (and these days often does) masquerade as education.

Lest we forget, at one time in these united States the "country doc" in addition to his "black bag" had assorted medications a box of surgical instruments in his buggy. The instruments would be sterilized by boiling in any convenient container in the patient's home and anesthesia would be provided by any bystander dripping chloroform or ether onto a gauze mask under the direction of the doctor. (I have heard stories passed down - third or fourth hand - of how to adjust the depth of anesthesia by the number of drops per minute). While this was nowhere close to today's situation in efficiency and desirability, it was a vast improvement over what preceded it for all of history. Much of materia medica preceding sulfaniliamide was based on fairly sound principles: it was ditched with the coming of modern pharmaceuticals. Even so, a lot of modern pharmaceuticals have their origins in more "primitive" materia medica. Morphine and heroin are from the opium poppy (one good aspect of our Afghan involvement is the resumption of the cultivation of that plant, a capitalist endeavour - the Taliban being religious fundamentalists had essentially stopped poppy cultivation). Incidentally, the opium poppy is a variant of the regular poppy and produces larger quantities of the desired substances than the regular poppy. Sulfanilamide came because Ehrlich thought that the differential uptake of stains by bacteria would be a way to find a toxic dye that would bind preferentially to bacteria, sparing the host cells. The aniline blue dye came from a plant in India and was imported by the British: when the actual molecule was identified and synthesized. its modification made a variety of different dyes possible. Experimentation with various side chains led to a molecule that was found to be bactericidal; it was then recognized that the bactericidal property resided in the side chain alone, leading to the sulfonamides. Quinine for malaria came from a plant used by South American Indians to treat fever, muscle relaxants used in anesthesia "neuromuscular blocking agents" came from a plant used for arrow poison, digitalis used in heart conditions from the purple foxglove Digitalis purpurea, penicillin and streptomycin from molds, bacitracin from a bacterium, etc. The loss of biodiversity may entail the disappearance of species that might have thus proved useful, and of cultures that may have pointed out similar useful knowledge. A lot of work needs to be done to find, categorize and publish data on low-tech remedies while also preserving the knowledge acquired in the industrial era, and finding low-tech ways to apply it. But little of it will be forthcoming in the current cutthroat for-profit, globalization environment. This environment evolved as the big players were able to afford the massive expenses of research and clinical trials, shutting out lesser players. Even some reliable medications have been abandoned in the promotion of new items under patent in pursuit of the economic incentive.

Terrible thing. Hope no knee involvement - which often does not quite return to normal. Even the distal tibia - the slowest healing fracture in the body - is a better prospect in the long term. Get well as fast as possible.

The mind is an epiphenomenon: it is to the "I" as a shirt, pants or shoes - or for that matter an arm or a leg. Little truths like little waves shimmer and glitter on the surface: great truths, like the great ocean deep, are dark and silent.