Posts Tagged ‘science’

#Science as Copy may be Deadly

Posted: September 6, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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By @anarchyroll

Scientific studies just sound like the most credible thing in the world don’t they?

Not only is it scientific, but it involves studying. How can you go wrong with that combination? Unless you’re religious of course. Because then you start entering the; are their dinosaurs and dogs in heaven matrix. Which will only end in ruined dinner parties and tears.

A wise man once said that facts can be used to prove anything that’s remotely true, facts, shmacts. That wise man was of course the great philosopher Homer Simpson. In the era of 24 hour news cycles and twice a week podcast drops, scientific studies are the new facts.

What’s the difference between a scientific study and a proven fact? Well if you are trying to prove a point, win an argument, or create online content to market then the answer is nothing. But the actual difference is an important one. The difference between facts and hearsay is deep and wide, just ask a lawyer or a judge.

But if you’re trying to create content for a cable news show or it’s website, or are publishing the findings of a scientific study to make a splash to get more funding for more scientific studies, the difference between facts and hearsay is razor thin. John Oliver did a great job pointing this out on the previous season of Last Week Tonight.

Around the same time I first saw the above video, I also saw an alarming headline about medical error being the third leading cause of death in America.

It grabbed my attention, how could it not?

I sat down to write an article about it at a later date and when I went to look the article up, there was already a story challenging the study as being sensationalism over scientific. Science is not content in need of marketing, it is light in need of spreading.

However, scientific studies have had their credibility leveraged as a tool to confuse and persuade rather than educate and enlighten. Our silence and gullibility makes us culpable in this practice becoming not just commonplace but foundational in creating content for televised news in America. Television was created by product marketers for product marketers. Anything that appears on television, much like anything seen at a pro wrestling event, is for entertainment purposes only.

The problem is that was a memo that never got sent out. It is a course not taught in schools. It is a life lesson many parents don’t think to pass on. So people take what they see on the news as gospel and adjust the way they live their lives accordingly. If disposable science says the third leading cause of death is medical error, I wonder where death via scientific study error ranks.

#Pollution isn’t Oxygen’s only Threat from #GlobalWarming

Posted: May 12, 2016 in Frackishima
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by @anarchyroll

Did you know warm water contain less oxygen?

I didn’t. Like most people when I think of what produces oxygen, I think of trees. But 70% of the Earth’s oxygen comes from the ocean, more specifically from the marine plants in the ocean.

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One need not be an environmentalist or a cynic to be aware that the average person doesn’t give a shit about marine phytoplankton. Even people tuned into environmental news are likely to think phytoplankton is a superfood juice fad. Perhaps because Googling marine phytoplankton brings up almost exclusively websites trying to sell the plant in powdered form.

“Save the Trees” may be easier to say and fit on a button/bumper sticker, but it is the phytoplankton that produces almost 3/4 of the oxygen. Maybe we can turn “Save the Phytoplankton” into a meme or gif.

Did you know we need oxygen to live?

It’s true, although it feels like suffocation to not have access to dank memes and social media, not having oxygen is actually suffocation.

So although we as humans have demonstrated a remarkable tolerance for pollution of the air we breathe, that tolerance is likely to be just a wee bit smaller with no air to breathe at all.

#AnarchyJC 200 ; #GMO Labeling

Posted: March 21, 2016 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional, Frackishima
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By @anarchyroll

Is GMO labeling important?

If it wasn’t, the companies who put GMOs in our food wouldn’t be actively and expensively trying to stop legislation mandating GMO labeling in America.

GMO labeling is the norm in 64 other countries around the world, which includes pretty much all the other industrialized ones.

There can certainly be a case made for GMOs, you know, with all the starving people in the world who don’t care if the food they get to eat is organic or GMO as long as they get to eat and not die.

But for the large percentage of the population that can think and live above the survival plain, who want to know what they are putting in their body, why all the resistance if there is nothing wrong with GMOs?

Times have changed, people literally want to know how the sausage is made these days. In the 1900s, that wasn’t the case, then again neither was equal rights for women and minorities. Times have changed.

Times have changed so much in Europe, that GMO labeling is so passé that countries are moving into the banning stage. Scotland and Germany have recently announced GMO crop bans. Meanwhile in America, we’re hoping the state of Vermont can lead the way.

Vermont? Isn’t that Bernie Sanders‘ home state? Yes, yes it is. Bernie Sanders has long been a champion of labeling GMO ingredients in food.

The resistance from GMO creators to labeling legislation tells you all you need to know about this issue. That and Monsanto is one of the largest creators of GMOs. If there is nothing to hide, why are they spending hundreds of millinos of dollars to hide? If GMOs are safe, why are Germany and Scotland banning them?

How do we or they know GMOs are safe if there are no long term studies on humans who ingest and/or are exposed to them?

And remember that in America, people just want the right to know. The battle over banning GMOs in America is a half a decade at minimum away from starting. This battle is just about the right of consumers to know if the food they are buying for themselves and their children contains GMOs.

In general, those who not only wish to suppress information from the public and spend hundreds of millions of dollars to do so, can be classified as evil and on the wrong side of history. The GMO labeling issue/debate is no different.

#Water Inequality is the Next Income #Inequality

Posted: February 20, 2016 in Frackishima
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by @anarchyroll

Global Disaster

There is something about those two words paired with each other that grabs one’s attention and holds it like a vice. When the two words are placed next to each other by a scientist studying ten years worth of data from NASA, the vice is more like the jaws of life.

When that decade long study involves an additional 35 years of weather data? Eek. BUT, this is not another global warming warning. This is about the next wave of haves and have nots. Economic inequality? That is so 20th century.

A world with such water scarcity that wars are fought for it? Seems like science fiction dystopian bullshit. Except if you live in California during the last half decade, or the country of Ethiopia or the continent of Australia.

The study of Famiglietti et al, directly talks about the rich-get-richer-mechanism and emerging classes of haves and have nots in regards to water access. That is the language of the scientist.

That prospect wouldn’t be worrisome if economic poverty wasn’t a thing or wasn’t increasing or wasn’t pervasive or wasn’t silently condoned by the actions of the first world.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer paradigm applied to water access will be the literal manifestation of trickle down economics. People will literally be dependent on the miniscule droplets of the source of life to survive while the haves bathe their terminally ill pets in triple filtered, reverse osmosis purified agua.

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Global Disaster

Groundwater depletion coupled with rising sea levels and no meaningful action being done about either while hoping human beings will share resources voluntarily after those resources have been consolidated involuntarily.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster…..Sounds like another day, in Frackishima.

#Sitting is the New Smoking is Just Fear Mongering with Good Intention

Posted: October 15, 2014 in Anarchy Journal Constitutional
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by @anarchyroll
10/14/2014

Breathing in fire, smoke, and chemical additives is certainly different from sitting down. Sitting is the new smoking is a term that has caught on recently, with the good intention of attempting to curb the obesity epidemic.

It has come to the surface that excessive sitting whether for work or to binge watch television shows is like pouring gasoline on the fire that is the chances of getting cancer in America.

There are many good groups, charities, drives, purposes, and quests to try to stand up to cancer. Equating sitting down to smoking a cigarette is not one of them. More exercise is good. Clean eating is good. Regular medical check ups are good. Preventive medicine is good. Telling people sitting down too much will kill them, is bad. Using fear as a tool for a good cause is nothing more than a pipe dream, it is an oxymoron. Fear is a tool for bad, and evil. A good cause, in the end cannot benefit from using fear as a tool.

Scaring people to exercise? Most people are already scared to exercise. Are we counting on a double negative? The threat of diabetes and aesthetic exile aren’t already enough, we’re going to go the; being fat will give you cancer route?

I am a person who exercises regularly. I am a person who believes in physical fitness, clean eating, mental sharpening, and emotional well-being. I have also been a fast food eating, knowledge hating, couch potato. People who live a life, in which their hopes and dreams, of the life they want to live, are vastly beyond out of reach; seek solace in the relaxation and escapism that a comfortable seat and a high-definition screen to stare at, provides them.

The physical activity is just more work; is a paradigm of work being associated with pain. What are we as a society doing to make people associate physical activity with pleasure? Besides fat shaming and feeding into the narcissism of the physically fit in the name of inspiration.

Epidemic is not a term to be used or confused lightly. An epidemic is not solved by telling people to drink more water and/or take more vitamins. The obesity epidemic in America is as much a psychological one as it is a physical one. Until we as a society, culture, and race are willing to address the tough, deep, and complicated questions about why people are willing to cause massive suffering to their bodies in the name of temporary pleasure for the mind and spirit; then anything and everything done to curb such behaviors and habits are nothing more than lip service. The only thing worse than lip service is fear mongering, which is exactly what the sitting is the new smoking movement is; even if it is a road paved with good intentions.