Timothy Wilken, MD
writes: I will soon publish a book explaining human intelligence. … It
will reveal that there are four levels of knowing available to the human
mind.

A simple metaphor for those four levels of knowing are: KnowWhere, KnowWhen, KnowHow, and KnowWhy.

KnowWhere: Where do I go in space to survive. Where do I get water,
food, shelter?  KnowWhen: When do I act in time to
encourage or stop a sequence of events. KnowHow: How do many
different temporal sequences fit together to create spatial complexity.
And finally, KnowWhy:
Why do things happen the way they do? What is
the consequence of complexity?

A human with KnowWhere would know they
should avoid a nuclear explosion. Where can I go to be safe.

A human
with KnowWhen could learn to detonate a nuclear weapon. When to a push
the button and in what sequence to trigger the bomb.

A person with KnowHow could invent and design a nuclear weapon. How do the laws of
physics work together and what temporal sequences must I create to
allow nuclear fission or fusion to occur.

A person with KnowWhy, would
know that nuclear weapons should never be invented or manufactured.
What are the consequences of using nuclear power as weapons? What
happens when such weapons are common? What happens if they fall into
the hands of those dominated anger and ignorance. Why would it be a bad
idea to create nuclear weapons?

With our new understanding of human
intelligence, it will soon be possible for many humans to learn to
understand their minds and began accessing the higher levels of
knowing. As they do they will gain increasing understanding of sequence
and consequence. But, today most humans live their lives in the level
of Information with only occasional visits to the level of 
Knowledge. … 

Think of the power of the tools we humans use
everyday—a Boeing 747 airplane, our automobiles, the internet,
computers, cell phones, televisions, household appliances, the tools in
our garages and at our places of work. The knowing in these tools
multiply our human power by orders of magnitude. They allow us to do
what was considered impossible just a few years ago. It is the power of
the knowing embedded in these tools that give them their power. …

You
don’t have to be wise to use a tool full of KnowHow. You don’t even have
to understand KnowWhen to use such a tool. Many of our fast food
restaurants, use picture icons of the food and drinks on the buttons of
the check out computers, so that the illiterate and innumerate humans
working there can operate the computers without reading, adding or
subtracting. The computer even tells the operator the correct amount of
change to return to the customer.

However, there is risk in using tools
you don’t understand. Remember, “a little knowing can be a dangerous
thing.” Today, we commonly put enormously powerful tools into the hands
of those who do not understand them. This means the risk of these tools
being used in an unsafe manner is high.

And since weapons are just
tools that are specifically designed to hurt or kill, they are among
the most dangerous tools  in our present world.

Today, weapons are
easily available to anyone who desires them. They can be purchased
legally by any adult who passes a background check for a criminal
record. If you are not a convicted felon, you can legally purchase all
the weapons and ammunition you desire. You are not legally required to
be literate, numerate, or have any knowledge of science or physics. …

Welcome to the human
crisis! (07/25/06)
more…

James Howard Kunstler writes: Wherever the environmentally-informed gather these days,
a nervous impatience often mounts, and ends up expressing itself as an
outcry for “solutions.” For example, at the Telluride Mountain Film
Festival, where I happened to be this past weekend, along with a couple
of hundred other people who spewed airplane exhaust across the
stratosphere to get there. This year’s twin themes were Global Warming and Peak Oil.

Many frightening documentary films and Powerpoint talks were served
up in the opening symposium (including ones by Dennis Dimick, the
editor of National Geographic, Daniel Nocera of MIT, and yours truly)
and, as the morning wore on, the audience grew visibly impatient, until
one speaker dropped the word “solutions,” and the audience gave out a
big whoop of approbation.

It only made me more nervous,
because this longing for “solutions,” strikes me as a free-floating
wish for magical rescue remedies, for techno-fixes that will allow us
to make a hassle-free switch from fossil hydrocarbon power to something
less likely to destroy the Earth’s ecosystems (and human civilization
with it). And I think such a wish is, in itself, at the root of our
problem — certainly at the bottom of our incapacity to think clearly
about these things.

I said so, of course, which seemed to piss off a substantial number of my fellow festival attendees.

My position on this can be easily misunderstood. I don’t want
civilization to collapse (I like Mozart and access to root canal). I
don’t want Homo sapiens to go extinct, or the planet to parboil. I certainly don’t believe in doing nothing in the face of this emergency.
But I also don’t believe we are going to make any hassle-free switch in
the way we run things — or that we should want to. Would the USA be a
better place if we could run Wal-Mart and Las Vegas on wind power? I
don’t think so. Would the public benefit from another hundred years of
suburban living — and an economy based largely on creating ever more
of it? (05/28/07)
more…

BBC Medical Science — Children who drink plenty of apple juice may be less likely to develop asthma symptoms, say scientists.

The National Heart and Lung Institute research, published in the European Respiratory Journal, is the latest study to link apples and lung health.

Children who drank apple juice at least once a day were half as likely
to suffer from wheezing as those drinking it less than once a month, it
found. Eating fresh apples themselves gave no apparent benefits, the
study concluded. The study looked at five to 10-year-old schoolchildren
in the Greenwich area of London, asking their parents about their
child’s fruit intake, and about any symptoms they had suffered.

While no link was found between apple juice consumption and a reduced
chance of an actual asthma diagnosis, the link between wheezing and
drinking the juice was quite strong. The appearance of wheezing
symptoms is one of the most important signs that a child is at
increased risk of asthma, although many with the symptoms are not
eventually diagnosed with the illness.

A similar, but weaker, benefit was found for children eating bananas at least once a day compared with less than once a month.

The apple juice involved did not have to be fresh apple juice – long-life juices made from concentrate were also effective.

Dr Peter Burney, who led the project, said that it was possible that
‘phytochemicals’ in apples, such as flavanoids and phenolic acids, were
helping to calm the inflammation in the airways which is a key feature
of both wheezing and asthma. He said it wasn’t clear why a link between
eating apples themselves and reduced asthma symptoms – already spotted
in other research in adults – did not appear among these children.

“Further studies are needed to confirm the protective effects of apple juice from concentrate and bananas,” he said.

Dr Mike Thomas, an Asthma UK researcher at the University of Aberdeen,
said that the study was further evidence of the protective effect of
apples.

Research from the university published last week suggested that women
who ate plenty of apples during pregnancy were protecting their unborn
children against asthma later on. (05/28/07)
more…

BBC Environment –
A warm spring has brought about the early arrival of some UK wildlife,
the first results of the Springwatch 2007 survey suggest.

Over
the past few months, amateur naturalists have logged more than
24,000 first sightings of six key species of plants and animals. Some,
such as the peacock butterfly and frogspawn, have been spotted earlier
than expected.

The Woodland Trust said it was worried “because the changes are so rapid”.

Springwatch, now in its third year, is run by the Woodland Trust and
the BBC. Nick Collinson, head of conservation policy at the Woodland
Trust, believes the warm conditions may be responsible for some
earlier-than-expected sightings. He said: “This has been our earliest Springwatch year, well ahead of
the normal time we would have expected to see these events 30 years
ago.”

Members of the public were asked to record the dates they have first
seen red-tailed bumblebees, frogspawn, flowering hawthorns, seven-spot
ladybirds, peacock butterflies and swifts. Mr Collinson was worried
about the possible impact of increasingly warm springs.

He said: “We are concerned because the change seems to be so rapid. And
we know there is a mismatch of timing, so, for example, when
insects would pollinate flowers, the flowers are coming out earlier
than the insects are available, and we know this is happening. It is
very difficult to tell what that means, but certainly we know that
wildlife is under pressure.” (05-29-07)
more…

BBC Medical Science — US
scientists have developed “super-oxidised” water which they say speeds
up wound healing. Oculus, the Californian firm which developed the
water – made by filtering it through a salt membrane – says it kills
viruses, bacteria and fungi. It is also effective against MRSA and UK
trials are being carried out on patients with diabetic foot ulcers, New
Scientist magazine reported. Experts said wound healing was a major
problem for people with diabetes.

The key ingredient of the water, called Microcyn, are oxychlorine ions
- electrically charged molecules which pierce the cell walls of
free-living microbes.

The water can only kill cells it can completely
surround so human cells are spared because they are tightly bound
together in a matrix. It is made by taking purified water and passing
it through a semi-permeable sodium chloride membrane, which produces
the oxychlorine ions.

One study showed that patients with advanced foot ulcers who were
treated with the water, alongside an antibiotic had an average healing
time of 43 days compared with 55 days in those who received standard
treatment. The results were presented at a Global Healthcare biomedical
conference in Monte Carlo.

Bleach also contains a number of electrically charged molecules such as
hypochlorite but in much higher concentrations than in the water.

However, US studies have shown the water kills 10 strains of
bleach-resistant bacteria. Professor Andrew Boulton, from Manchester
Royal Infirmary, who is conducting one of the early UK trials, said the
treatment seemed promising. (05-28-07)
more…