The Fluid Druid's Web Portal

UPDATE  below Science Daily reports on a new theory by Erik D. Andrulis that if true demonstrates the earth is alive.  The peer reviewed journal Life has just published Theory of the Origin, Evolution, and Nature of Life, which argues the earth is...

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A friend of mine well versed in these matters and appreciative of problems on both sides has recommended this analysis as the best she has come across for understanding the issues at stake and why we should care....

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Alexei Navalny is one of the young Russians deeply involved in the broad outpouring of protest against the fraudulent election that returned Vladimir Putin to power.  In this interview he explains the crucial role of the internet and blogs in what is happening, and why their influence is making for a more peaceful protest than would likely otherwise have happened. Each new communications medium seems to upend politics, from the printing press to the penny post to the radio and then...

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Alexei Navalny is one of the young Russians deeply involved in the broad outpouring of protest against the fraudulent election that returned Vladimir Putin to power.  In this interview he explains the crucial role of the internet and blogs in what is happening, and why their influence is making for a more peaceful protest than would likely otherwise have happened. Each new communications medium seems to upend politics, from the printing press to the penny post to the radio and then...

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Courtesy of Stephen Schwartz’s sleuthing, I have come across two articles that give us hope that we can solve our energy problems with contemporary technologies if only the parasites who own the government would get out of the way – or be gotten out of the way.  Solar cell technology just took a GIANT step forwards. Read the full post here »

Suzanne Simard of the Dept. of Forest Sciences at the University of British Columbia has a delightful short video reporting that multi-species forests are connected in complex communicative networks with "mother trees" serving as the nodes in these networks. Her faculty page lists publications for those so interested. More and more the utter...

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In what might prove to be one of the most important inventions of the past 100 years, Andrea Rossi's claim to have a functioning cold fusion reactor appears to have  passed important tests.  Stay tuned.  f this thing is real it will go far towards closing down the oil and coal industries, which richly deserve it, and enabling the Middle East to have the economic clout it so richly deserves....

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I just read on of the more hopeful pieces I have seen in a while regarding environmental degradation, the most disturbing of what I consider the three major crises threatening us today.  This crisis has several dimensions: destruction of natural ecosystems, the destruction of many species, over population, and perhaps most worrisome of all, global warming with its attendant “global climate weirding.” All are terrifying in their implications. (more...)

A very interesting series of posts on recent research with psilocybin mushrooms has just started to appear at one of my favorite bogs, The Reality Based Community, which is made up of a variety of academic types with a wider than normal range of interests and competencies.  Bob Jesse has just published some important research that will warm the hearts of those of us, myself included, who think that on balance entheogens have been a blessing. Now he is Read the full post here »

Some things are so cool they are well worth looking at even on a blog that deals with completely different subjects....

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Atheists have been popping up and in some cases rudely intruding of late, most recently on Facebook.  Last night I “unfriended” someone on FB because I was tired of putting up with his mix of rudeness, arrogance, and his thinking that because he was smart, he was smarter than he was. (May the world be saved from smarter than average people who as a consequence think no one is more knowledgeable than they on anything that interests them.) Feh. But it got me to thinking about why I am Read the full post here »

I just saw a great article by Stephen Lacey  linked to on Crooked Timber on how the price of solar power is falling very rapidly.  This has been a long term trend, and shows no signs of slowing.  The rate is close to Moore’s Law concerning computer memory, which once was also expensive. In a time with so much bad...

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I just saw a great article by Stephen Lacey  linked to on Crooked Timber on how the price of solar power is falling very rapidly.  This has been a long term trend, and shows no signs of slowing.  The rate is close to Moore’s Law concerning computer memory, which once was also expensive. In a time with so much bad...

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The modern world’s essentially autistic view of reality has suffered many assaults over the past 150 years.  In particular Darwin, the paradoxes of quantum mechanics and the rise of ecology as a science and a societal crisis, among other issues,  all are suggesting that this approach to the world is self-defeating, scientifically mistaken, and immoral. The overall message is depressing.  Clearly a radical rethinking is needed.  One of the most hopeful examples of this radical rethinking is...

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