Month: February 2021

Big Brother, Conspiracy, Manipulation, Matrix, Money, PoliticsLeave a comment

IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD TODAY YOU MUST UNLEARN THIS ONE THING

Fernando Kaskais

Sigmund Fraud, Staff Writer Waking Times At present, we are dangerously trending toward chaos, total world war, civil war, incivility, and a complete breakdown of civil society, and to the indoctrinated, it’s difficult to understand why exactly this is happening. As the stress of this mounts, the misinformed lash out at friends, family members and strangers who do not fully subscribe to their worldview. The battle really is one of understanding how the world works, and with such epidemic false perceptions, people choose the wrong targets for their ire. If one were to unlearn, however, many of the things we’ve been … Continue reading IN ORDER TO UNDERSTAND THE WORLD TODAY YOU MUST UNLEARN THIS ONE THING

Literature, Media&Culture, Philosophy, PsychologyLeave a comment

Pause. Reflect. Think

Fernando Kaskais

Susan Stebbing’s little Pelican book on philosophy had a big aim: giving everybody tools to think clearly for themselves Peter West is a teaching fellow in Early Modern philosophy at Durham University in the UK.Listen here Edited by Nigel Warburton ‘There is an urgent need today for the citizens of a democracy to think well.’ These words, which could have been written yesterday, come from Thinking to Some Purpose, a popular book by the British philosopher Susan Stebbing, first published in 1939 in the Penguin ‘Pelican’ books series, with that familiar blue-and-white cover. This little book, which could easily be slipped into … Continue reading Pause. Reflect. Think

Curiositys, Future, Science, Space, TechnologyLeave a comment

If Aliens Exist, Here’s How We’ll Find Them

Fernando Kaskais

Two esteemed astrophysicists peer into the future of space exploration. BY MARTIN REES & MARIO LIVIO Suppose aliens existed, and imagine that some of them had been watching our planet for its entire four and a half billion years. What would they have seen? Over most of that vast timespan, Earth’s appearance altered slowly and gradually. Continents drifted; ice cover waxed and waned; successive species emerged, evolved, with many of them becoming extinct. But in just a tiny sliver of Earth’s history—the last hundred centuries—the patterns of vegetation altered much faster than before. This signaled the start of agriculture—and later … Continue reading If Aliens Exist, Here’s How We’ll Find Them

Buddhism, Living, Philosophy, Psychology, SexLeave a comment

The Buddha Didn’t Teach Consent

Fernando Kaskais

But can early Buddhism help us develop a better sexual ethics anyway? By Amy Paris Langenberg Buddhism has a sexual ethics problem. In 2018, the Dalai Lama admitted as much when he said on Dutch public TV that he had been told of sexual violations occurring in Tibetan Buddhist communities as long ago as the early 1990s. His admission was the result of a petition by a group of abuse survivors in the Netherlands. Their efforts are part of a larger trend of students speaking out publicly about their experiences. While international Buddhist groups are beginning to respond seriously to the problem of … Continue reading The Buddha Didn’t Teach Consent

Brain, Curiositys, Drugs, Living, PsychologyLeave a comment

IS DRUNK YOU THE REAL YOU?

Fernando Kaskais

by Nick Leftley  Sometimes, the “good” version of you — the one that successfully holds down a job, keeps a relationship together and maintains a semblance of a normal life — is eclipsed by a different one: Enter Drunk You. This is the you that thinks eight cheeseburgers is a reasonable dinner; that sees a fistfight as a valid response to being bumped into; that thinks, hey, it’s really important that I tell my much-more-sober boss every detail of the last 10 years of my sex life. Drunk You is the you that tries to loudly undo all the good that Sober You does, a rampaging … Continue reading IS DRUNK YOU THE REAL YOU?

Animals, Curiositys, Living, Philosophy, ScienceLeave a comment

Are humans animals?

Fernando Kaskais

Do humans have animal bodies – and animal minds? By Melanie Challenger So, are we animals? For many people today that sounds like a silly question. Of course, humans are animals! We’re composed of cells with genetic material, and we move around, seeking energy to feed our bodies, pooping it out again as waste. We look a lot like our fellow primates with our five-digit hands and feet, our thoughtful eyes, and our lean, muscular physiques. We have lungs, a heart, a brain, a nervous system, and all those other features we share with mammals. And just think of the “nodal” (the … Continue reading Are humans animals?

History, Media&Culture, Planet, ScienceLeave a comment

Israeli Archaeologists Present Groundbreaking Universal Theory of Human Evolution

Fernando Kaskais

by Ruth Schuster Tel Aviv University archaeologists Miki Ben-Dor and Ran Barkai proffer novel hypothesis, showing how the greed of Homo erectus set us careening down an anomalous evolutionary path Why the human brain evolved as it did never has been plausibly explained. Apparently, not since the first life-form billions of years ago did a single species gain dominance over all others – until we came along. Now, in a groundbreaking paper, two Israeli researchers propose that our anomalous evolution was propelled by the very mass extinctions we helped cause. Or: As we sawed off the culinary branches from which … Continue reading Israeli Archaeologists Present Groundbreaking Universal Theory of Human Evolution

Curiositys, Health, Living, Psychology, ScienceLeave a comment

So You Got Vaccinated … And Then You Got COVID. Now What?

Fernando Kaskais

By Maggie Koerth In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to take the mask off. But what are you gonna do? David Flint and his wife had to check in on her father up in the Bronx. Flint’s wife is her father’s home health aide, and the older man had just come home from having foot surgery. For more than an hour, they were all sitting there around the bedside — Flint, his wife and his sister-in-law. It’s a long time to wear a mask when not everyone else is. “After a while, I took it off,” Flint said. Flint was … Continue reading So You Got Vaccinated … And Then You Got COVID. Now What?

Eco, Future, Planet, ScienceLeave a comment

New Study Suggests Atlantic Ocean Circulation System Could Collapse

Fernando Kaskais

By VOA News A study suggests a key environmental system that affects how water circulates in the Atlantic Ocean and effects the climate could be on the verge of collapse due to the rapid melting of glaciers and sea ice. The study, published Tuesday in the scientific journal Proceedings of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) used a global ocean model to study the effects of melting ice on the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a large system of ocean currents that carry warm water from the tropics northward into the North Atlantic. The system includes the Gulf Stream, … Continue reading New Study Suggests Atlantic Ocean Circulation System Could Collapse

Animals, Eco, Globalization, Living, Planet, PoliticsLeave a comment

No Waters Left Untouched: Fish Biodiversity Has Declined Globally

Fernando Kaskais

Pollution, dams, and invasive species are wreaking havoc on the biodiversity of nearly all rivers on Earth. BY DAMIAN CARRINGTON ivers in which fish populations have escaped serious damage from human activities make up just 14% of the world’s river basin area, according to the most comprehensive study to date. Scientists found that the biodiversity of more than half of rivers had been profoundly affected, with big fish such as sturgeon replaced by invasive species such as catfish and Asian carp. Pollution, dams, overfishing, farm irrigation and rising temperatures due to the climate crisis are also to blame. This story was originally published … Continue reading No Waters Left Untouched: Fish Biodiversity Has Declined Globally