Unintended Consequences

Isn't this a lovely photo of first daughter?

GQ has an article about cell phone and tower electromagnetic radiation, that raises very interesting questions.

One is, why are Americans so peculiarly blind to the consequences of their actions and insistent upon putting instant gratification above all else?

It's pretty clear from research from other countries, and independent research that ISN'T funded by the very industries making astronomical profits, that the radiation from phones and towers is extremely dangerous for humans. The catalog of suppression of unbiased research fits the same pattern of repression about climate change science, and also closely parallels the intimidation of foresters who would corollate the consequences of pollution on trees, not to mention how the GWB administration de-funded the satellite that could accurately measure global warming!

And so another interesting question is, if it's true that radiation is disruptive to the electrical impulses at the cellular level in human brains, what might it be doing to vegetation? Something, after all, has caused trees and shrubs and even annual plants to take a relative recent rapid nosedive, and cell phones and towers are a relatively recent introduction.

"A human being is a complex organization of electrical fields. Electroencephalograms and electrocardiograms, for example, measure these fields. Every cell has an electrical field across the cell membrane, which is a regulatory interface and controls what goes into and out of the cell. All nerve signals are electric. And between the nucleus and the membrane there is an electrical field, you can measure voltages of individual cells! Electricity drives biology. We evolved in a particular electromagnetic environment"—the magnetic fields from the earth's iron core, the terrestrial magnetism from lodestones, visible light, ultraviolet frequencies, lightning—"and if we change that environment as we have, we either adapt or we have trouble."

So many questions and no answers!

Talk about unintended consequences! Even the mainstream media can't ignore that fact that melting ice leads inevitably to bending of the earth's crust and what does that mean??? EARTHQUAKES.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a delightful woman who grew up in Central America in what we Westerners would consider poverty, a condition that has made her wiser than many more privileged academics and scientists. I had been speculating that a truism I had long recognized, that nature abhors a vacuum, applies equally well to an individual as it does to nature, and the entire global ecological equation.

And we somehow managed even with a language barrier to agree that when it comes to humans, no matter how much money you have, it's never enough. No matter how much storage space you have, you will fill it up and need more. No matter how easy your chores are, you will have to make your standards higher and your chores will fill up your time and become more onerous.

This is the delight and the doom of our species. We are never content, nothing is ever sufficient. We strive to improve, to excel, to perform. And therein lies our demise. We have no built-in understanding that there are any limits, and so we surpass those limits, until we consume everything, and there is nothing left.

Along these lines is the Doomer Report blog, the extremely well-written ruminations of a Singularitarian. It's quite refreshing to come across the articulation of ideas that consume my thoughts, when most people it seems are content to consume and think solely of their next item of consumption. Among other ironies is the notion that the science has become so advanced, and our technology so complex and inventive, just along as it is about to be the end of all science, technology and perhaps an overwhelming proportion of life.

It's been such a lovely party lately, so sad...must it come to an ignominious, faltering end? Thanks to RPauli for so many of these links, including this one, that chronicles the progression from glimmering to enlightenment, through denial and despair, to invigorated activism.