Category: John

Kurzweil- Press ignores bias in study of multivitamins and prostate cancer

In a recent paper reporting on the National Cancer Institute study of multivitamin use and the risk of prostate cancer, the NCI authors cited several possible bias factors. An analysis by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman shows why the study's biases should be considered before drawing conclusions.
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Why texting harms your IQ

From The Times
April 22, 2005

Txts n emails mk ppl stupid coz they R worse than smking pot & lead 2 a st8 of 'infomania'

By Michael Horsnell
THE regular use of text messages and e-mails can lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana.

That is the claim of psychologists who have found that tapping away on a mobile phone or computer keypad or checking them for electronic messages temporarily knocks up to 10 points off the user's IQ.

This rate of decline in intelligence compares unfavourably with the four-point drop in IQ associated with smoking marijuana, according to British researchers, who have labelled the fleeting phenomenon of enhanced stupidity as "infomania".

Research on sleep deprivation suggests that the IQ drop caused by electronic obsession is also equivalent to a wakeful night.
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E. Howard Hunt names the men who killed Kennedy

I'm not familiar with prisonplanet.com, but they tell the story of a recording E. Howard Hunt made on his deathbed. The tape was recently made public by Howard Hunt's son, Saint John Hunt. On the tape Howard Hunt describes a bitter LBJ and his involvement with the murder of JFK. Hunt names others who were involved in the conspiracy. Five minutes of the tape were aired recently on CoastToCoastAM.com
There is a direct link to the mp3 file here.

What's been bugging me about it is, what if it's true? I mean – just for a minute – inhabit a world where the Kennedy assassination has been solved- We know who did it, who helped who and why.
Now what?
How is justice served over 40 years later? Who's going to pay?
What does it mean? What would change?
How do I heal, or why, or who cares?
Is it just miscellaneous information?

McLuhan Meeting Notes

Just a brief collection of notes from today's McLuhan meeting.
We read pgs. 169-172 of Marshall's (Amazon) Take today; the executive as dropout.
Again we are amazed at the insights a book published 35 years ago provides to us today.
Kerry Thornley (Wikipedia) was the co-founder (with Greg Hill) of Discordianism.
My curiosity was piqued after listening to an R.U. Sirius (mp3) interview with Adam Gorightly on the subject of Rightly's new book (Amazon) The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture.

What happened to   Ward Churchill (Wikipedia) in the aftermath of his controversial 911 article? (Basically he's appealing the Standing Committee's finding that his research was flawed while awaiting sanctions yet to be determined.)

Michael made a point I felt worth repeating, although I'm only paraphrasing…
"The Republicans own the infrastructure i.e. the hard assets – they don't care if they bankrupt the country, they'll just re-monetize in the new currency- it's the rest of us who will be screwed."

Pinchbeck on The Colbert Report. (Comedy Central- fast internet and computer required.)

Until next time.

One Cubic Mile of Oil

Very interesting article over on Wired with a diagram that puts our energy consumption in perspective. Wow! Now I understand what Michael is talking about when he says the singularity has already happened and it was cheap oil. And I get a much better idea of the gloom and doom side of oil depletion Robin's talking about. Humans consume 1 cubic mile of oil a year and as an example from the Wired chart- the equivalent is 52 Diablo Canyon sized Nuclear Power Plants running for 50 years!!!

Critical-Mass

Wow,
Just to say that B and I were a part of http://www.santamonicacriticalmass.org/ Friday night. I have to tell you it's really some of the most FUN I've had in a LONG time. I mean, I've always loved bicycles and that's a big part of it, but something about 300 of us cruising through the night under a full moon… exhilarating. If there isn't a group near you http://www.critical-mass.org/ maybe you can start one. If you're near Santa Monica or Venice, please join us the first Friday of each month.
JH

Welcome – What could we do here?

I know it looks like it has a McLuhan theme, and it could, but initially I was thinking it would simply be a way for us to communicate with each other easily, i.e. Gerry's Dudley films, events Michael's going to, Robin observations on the road etc. You can post pictures. Videos as well, but I'll have to sort out those details as things evolve. If they evolve. At the very least I'm going to use it to post links to McLuhanesque newspaper articles, etc.

JohnH