Timothy Wilken, MD
writes: Children through immaturity and ignorance sometimes engage in
dangerous behavior. The danger may be to themselves or to others.
Often this begins before they are able to understand the consequence of
their behavior, or to be reasoned with. How do you stop them without
resorting to adversity and punishment?

We have
all seen parents slap a small child’s hand, when their child reaches
for something hot or sharp. The child immediately cries and often runs
away, but what has the child learned? Gordon would argue that
physically striking the child sends only one message, “You are bad!”And, while the child will withdraw, it is not because they understand
that they were in danger, but simply because they fear the parent will
strike them again. Now parents often feel that striking the child was
necessary to protect the child, but is this really true?

I remember one winter, a heavy storm knocked out the electrical power
to our home for almost a week. I hurriedly purchased a portable
kerosene heater for warmth and cooking. It was an amazing device, but
it was also dangerously hot. My three year old daughter Reason had
never seen such a thing in our modern all electrical home and watched
with fascination as I set it up. As I watched the sparkle in her eye, I
realized the damage she might sustain from touching the top or sides of
the heater.

I asked by wife to hold her well within her arms while I set up the
heater.Once it was lit, it soon became hot and began to glow. I told my
daughter that it was very hot. I placed a small piece of paper on top
which soon burst into flames. I poured a few drops of water on the
surface that flashed into steam. All this time her mother advised her,
that the heater was very hot and she should not touch it. She stood
back and I watched her eyes growing large in amazement. Later her
mother went to attend her baby sister Serene, and when I turned, Reason
was approaching the heater.

I moved quickly squatted down and contained her loosely in my arms.
Gently preventing her from getting closer than two feet. Then to my
delight, she told me that the stove was HOT! And that I was NOT to
touch it.

Later that evening, I would hear Reason carefully instructing her baby
sister that the heater was very HOT, and that Serene should NOT touch
it. This was quite unlikely since Serene was only nine months old.
However, she seemed to listen carefully as she sucked her bottle. Over
the next seven days, Reason never ventured closer than two feet to the
heater, and watched it with great respect. Then, electrical power was
restored and we put away the kerosene heater.  (05/07/07)
more…

James Howard Kunstler writes:
I got a letter last week from a reader complaining bitterly that
the stock market hasn’t crashed and blaming me for predicting that it
would. He didn’t say, but I hope he hadn’t been out there on a shorting
spree. In case any of you haven’t noticed, 2007 is not over yet.

The markets have been on an extraordinary spring run. The Dow finished
23 out of the last 26 days on the upside — some of them pretty way on
the upside. This is the biggest US stock market up-streak since a 19
for 21 streak in July of 1929, prior to the October crash. Bill
Fleckenstein points out a similar run on the Tokyo exchange — 32
upside trading days out of 38 — just prior to its 1989 tanking.

While this kind of behavior seems ominous, I’m not claiming it
necessarily has predictive value. One can say that the financial
markets per se are running in an impressive state of structural
distortion and imbalance and that systems way out of balance do not
stay that way forever. But I risk more opprobrium by stating the
obvious.

I think the persistence of this gross imbalance can be accounted for in
large part by the current global energy situation. The world is at peak
energy, peak oil especially, and the world runs on oil. Peak is peak.
The most. There are about 84 million barrels of oil a day flowing
around the industrial economies of the world. It is running a lot of
activity.

Now, I happen to think that oil production probably peaked about a year
ago, but we are still so close to it that the net available energy
remains immense. Even if 2007 averages out to 83.5 million barrels a
day instead of 84 million, it will still seem like a lot. Markets may
be dumber than we think. All they see is a vast amount of cheap energy
for manufacturing plastic salad shooters, for powering tourist jet
charters to Cancun, for running WalMart, Walt Disney World, and Taco
Bell. All that energy is here right now.

Among the many tragic elements in the human condition is this tendency
toward short-term thinking, the inability to imagine how our
arrangements will work in a time that is not right now. (05/07/07)
more…

BBC Medical Science — Taking daily selenium supplements may block the build up of HIV in a patient’s blood, research suggests.

The University of Miami found a lower HIV viral load in patients who
took selenium supplements for nine months. Selenium deficiencies have
been recorded in HIV patients, and evidence suggests the mineral can
improve the function of the immune system.

The Archives of Internal Medicine study suggests the supplements may be a cheap and easy way to help keep HIV in check.

Advances in antiretroviral therapy (ART) have given HIV patients a
longer life expectancy. However, strict adherence to the therapy is
required to keep HIV viral counts low, and there is a risk of side
effects. Therefore, scientists have been searching for alternative
treatments to keep HIV under control.

Over nine months, the University of Miami team gave 91 HIV patients a
daily capsule containing 200 micrograms of high-selenium yeast, and
another 83 patients a daily placebo capsule. The two groups had similar
selenium levels at the beginning of the study, but after nine months
levels were higher in the group taking the capsules containing the
mineral.

Those with higher selenium levels in their blood were more likely to
have a lower HIV viral load, and higher numbers of CD4 cells, which
play a key role in fighting off infection.

The researchers said the exact mechanism by which selenium exerts its effects on HIV is not known.

One hypothesis is that selenium’s antioxidant properties may repair
damage done to immune cells by oxygen, which is produced at higher
levels in the bodies of patients with HIV.

Writing in the journal, the researchers said: “Given the challenges of
using conventional pharmacotherapy to achieve and maintain virologic
suppression in HIV-spectrum disease, our results support the use of
selenium as a simple, inexpensive and safe adjunct therapy.” (05/07/07)
more…

BBC Marine Life & Humanity — A
quarter of the world’s oceans will be protected from fishing boats
which drag heavy nets across the sea floor, South Pacific nations have
agreed. The landmark deal will restrict bottom-trawling, which experts
say destroys coral reefs and stirs up clouds of sediment that suffocate
marine life.

Observers and monitoring systems will ensure vessels remain five
nautical miles from marine ecosystems at risk.

The South Pacific
contains the last pristine deep-sea marine environment. It extends from
the Equator to the Antarctic and from Australia to the western coast of
South America. The high seas encompass all areas not included in the
territorial sea or in the internal waters of a country.

The agreement reached in the coastal town of Renaca in Chile will come
into force on 30 September. It will close to bottom-trawling areas
where vulnerable marine ecosystems are known or are likely to exist,
unless a prior assessment is undertaken and highly precautionary
protective measures are implemented.

The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, an alliance of leading environmental and conservation groups, welcomed the agreement.

“This is a major step forward in the protection of biodiversity on the
high seas,” Matthew Gianni, a spokesman for the group, said.

Mr Gianni
said the deal was the first step taken towards implementing a UN
resolution passed in December, which urged the adoption of unilateral
“precautionary measures” to ensure bottom-trawlers do not cause
significant damage. This is the most significant meeting of fishing
nations since the UN General Assembly resolution and it has done what
the resolution required. It can be done, it has been done, and it’s
time for all countries to do the same in all other ocean regions.” (05/07/07)
more…

BBC Marine Life & Humanity — There
will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of
the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific
study. Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and
the rate of decline is accelerating.

Writing in the journal Science,
the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely
tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity. But a greater use of
protected areas could safeguard existing stocks.

“The way we use the oceans is that we hope and assume there will always
be another species to exploit after we’ve completely gone through the
last one,” said research leader Boris Worm, from Dalhousie University
in Canada.

“What we’re highlighting is there is a finite number of stocks; we have
gone through one-third, and we are going to get through the rest,” he
told the BBC News website.

Steve Palumbi, from Stanford University in California, one of the other
scientists on the project, added: “Unless we fundamentally change the
way we manage all the ocean species together, as working ecosystems,
then this century is the last century of wild seafood.”

This is a vast piece of research, incorporating scientists from many
institutions in Europe and the Americas, and drawing on four distinctly
different kinds of data. Catch records from the open sea give a picture
of declining fish stocks.

In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse, defined as a decline to less than 10% of their original yield.

Bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish are
not bringing the world’s fleets bigger returns - in fact, the global
catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003.

Historical records from coastal zones in North America, Europe and
Australia also show declining yields, in step with declining species
diversity; these are yields not just of fish, but of other kinds of
seafood too. Zones of biodiversity loss also tended to see more beach
closures, more blooms of potentially harmful algae, and more coastal
flooding. (05/07/08)
more…