stark ranting

AP: Caribbean Coral Suffers Record Death

A one-two punch of bleaching from record hot water followed by disease has killed ancient and delicate coral in the biggest loss of reefs scientists have ever seen in Caribbean waters.

Early conservative estimates from Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands find that about one-third of the coral in official monitoring sites has recently died.

Posted by stark at 01:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My dad passed along this link to WorldAudit.org. They ranked all countries with populations over one million according to the following criteria: justice for all, freedom of speech, human rights, and public corruption. The United States ranked 14th out of 150. Is that before or after Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo? I'd like to publicly go on the record and declare that I do not condone government sponsored torture in my name. I am not willing to turn a blind eye to human rights abuse in the name of security. I will never accept the argument that it's acceptable to torture "enemy combatants" because they're bad people or because the ends justify the means. I will never accept it.

Posted by stark at 01:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lara Logan of CBS News responds to critics that the coverage of the Iraq war is too negative.

I mean, security dominates every single thing that happens in this country. Reconstruction funds have been diverted to cover away from reconstruction to -- they've been diverted to security.

Soldiers, their lives are occupied most of the time with security issues. Iraqi civilians' lives are taken up most of the time with security issues.

So how it is that security issues should not then dominate the media coverage coming out of here?

Posted by stark at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ornate elephant seized from Randy "Duke" Cunningham
up for auction to the highest bidder.

Posted by stark at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hate to be a corporate whore, but this commercial is just an outstanding piece of filmmaking. What would it look like if you sent 250,000 superballs down the streets of San Francisco? Watch the video.

Posted by stark at 02:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Reuters: Texas arresting people in bars for being drunk

Next stop: Prohibition. America is devolving before our eyes.

Posted by stark at 05:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AP: Ex-Congressman's Loot to Be Auctioned

The spoils from former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham's bribery scheme — a household of valuable antiques, rugs and home furnishings — will be auctioned off by the government Thursday to help cover the back taxes and restitution he owes.

Some of the rugs have previously been valued at as much as $40,000.

Posted by stark at 02:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Awe is hard to put into words. But it certainly involves a sense of the mightiness and splendor and almost indecipherable intricacy of something greater than ourselves. A lot of religious mysticism arises directly from it. But it's equally experienced by the secularist whose mind opens to the splendor and intricacy of the material universe.

The quote is from a Salon interview with Edward O. Wilson. I intended to write something along those lines as a follow up to my post about Enlightenment. I still hope to write something, but for now I'll simply say that the above interview is a must read.

Posted by stark at 02:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This might sound a little out of character, but at times I can't help but wonder about the idea of global consciousness. The idea that our conscious minds might overlap in some nebulous way, difficult to grasp as it may be. There is perhaps nothing as individual and isolated as perceived consciousness, and yet the thoughts that run through someone else's mind can be oddly similar to my own. Is it coincidence? Do shared experiences cause analogous ripples of thought through each of our minds? If you consider the way fads take off in our culture you can see a shared responsiveness to a new idea, one that hits everyone the right way at the right time. It could be due to social pressure, or shared experience, but I can't shake the idea of a broader conceptualization not limited to a single mind.

Posted by stark at 01:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm a man of science, which is to say I believe in the principles of enlightenment. Although to be frank I'd never even heard of The Age of Enlightenment until I was in my mid 20s. It was through my own introspection that I came to the same conclusions as those who lived 200+ years before me. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that oddity. Ideas that had been well documented long before I was born and yet I came upon them seemingly by chance, or through force of will. You might suggest that a good deal of that worldview is embedded in our educational system, or passed on to me through my upbringing, but it was never stated outright. I like to think that in the absence of dogma, all thoughtful people would reach similar conclusions. But I guess history continues to prove that belief wrong time and time again.

Posted by stark at 01:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I submit for your perusal the lyrics to Zero 7's In the Waiting Line. You must listen to this song. Go. Do it now.

Wait in line
'Till your time
Ticking clock
Everyone stop

Everyone's saying different things to me
Different things to me
Everyone's saying different things to me
Different things to me

Woooohh
Do you believe
In what you see
There doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me

Do you believe
In what you see
Motionless wheel
Nothing is real
Wasting my time
In the waiting line
Do you believe in
What you see

Nine to five
Living lies
Everyday
Stealing time
Everyone's taking everything they can
Everything they can
Everyone's taking everything they can
Everything they can

Woooohh
Do you believe
In what you feel
It doesn't seem to be anybody else who agrees with me

Do you believe
In what you see
Motionless wheel
Nothing is real
Wasting my time
In the waiting line
Do you believe
In what you see

Ah and I'll shout and I'll scream
But I'd rather not have seen
And I'll hide away for another day

Do you believe
In what you see
Motionless wheel
Nothing is real
Wasting my time
In the waiting line
Do you believe
In what you see

Everyone's saying different things to me
Different things to me
Different things to me
Different things to me
Different things to me
Everyone's taking everything they can
Everything they can

Posted by stark at 01:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A majority of Americans, 56 percent, believe Bush is "out of touch," the poll found. When asked for a one-word description of Bush, the most frequent response was "incompetent," followed by "good," "idiot" and "liar." In February 2005, the most frequent reply was "honest."

I find it a grave injustive however, that "asshat" didn't make the list.

Posted by stark at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

File this under the category of Strange and Beautiful Universe.

Magnetic forces at the center of the galaxy have twisted a nebula into the shape of DNA, a new study reveals.

The recipe for a DNA nebula is strict but simple. It requires a strong magnetic field, a rotating body, and a nebulous cloud of material positioned just right.

Image courtesy: National Human Genome Research Institute.

Posted by stark at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

60 minutes had a great piece tonight about the factors that influence sexual orientation. They made quite a compelling argument that sexual orientation is affected by some combination of genes and hormone exposure in the womb. If that's the case it suggests we might be able to control sexual orientation before birth. Given that choice, will homosexuality be effectively eliminated from society? If you ask a gay man whether he'd rather have been born straight, the answer would probably be the same thing everyone says: I can't imagine being anything other than who I am. But given the choice to assign the sexual orientation of your child, how would you decide straight or gay? If everyone chooses to have straight babies, then society will lose out on the unique qualities of people who aren't like everybody else, and that seems like a shame. The burden of our increasing control over nature is that we must decide what is best and what is right, and that's not as easy as you might think.

Posted by stark at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)