Serco, Puccinia path, The Freezing Point of Industrial Society

Serco is brutal. Their children's detention facility at Hassockfield in the northern UK has an appalling record of children injured at the hands of guards. In 2004 a child at the centre killed himself after being subjected to a "nose distraction technique" (AKA "being punched in the face") by Serco goons. Its guards at refugee detention centres in the UK have been involved in assaults and beatings [PDF, grep]. Its refugee centres in Australia are the site of frequent deaths in custody and violent suppression of ongoing protests by inmates.

blogspot

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the Puccinia path In North America we have managed to plant a carpet of wheat from Northern Mexico well into the prairie provinces of Canada. .. a substrate like an agar plate 4000km in diameter ready to receive and propagate the various kinds of rust ... Infection begins each year in Northern Mexico and along the Rio Grande valley and spores are blown northward.. The spores alight ... the mycellla produce great number of spores that again move northward. ..The rusts cannot overwinter in the northern end of the wheatbelt and must arrive each year from the south.. Rusts cannot oversummer in the southern par of the belt so spores must be blown southward to infect winter wheat and renew the spring migration. We have created a giant epidemiological system in which several species of Puccinia migrate yearly over 4000km - the Puccinia path

"The Living Fields" Jack R Harlan 1995 - a rather marvelous book on crops, their history, diversity mimics, uses and diseases.


then I guess you better read

The Forgiveness of Nature: The Story of Grass Graham Harvey
One Straw Revolution Fukokawa
Something by Physicist Vandana Shiva
Something on Permaculture by Bill Morrison
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The Freezing Point of Industrial Society

(great title)
theoildrum
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16,000 IRDs in Afghanistan

guardian
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Sasanian throne hall at Ctesiphon

(South of Baghdad

I have just begun to re

ad
"Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam" by Fred McGraw Donner (May 15, 2010)


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pharyngula
Squid Eyes

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axis label
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BioEnergy vs Solar cells

I chose sugar cane because it produces the largest number of calories per acre of any agricultural product. ..0 tons of sugar per hectare = 10,000 kg/10,000m^2 = 1 kg /m^2. .. kilogram of sugar a year.. 4,000 kcal/m^2.


At this site we learn that a square meter of 11% efficient solar panels collects around 550Wh a day in Austin Texas. So for a whole year that gives you 550 * 365 = 200 kWh/yr/m^2....1 kcal = 1.16 watt hour. So our 4,000 kcals of sugar = 4.65 kWh. That means the 11% efficient solar panel generates 200/4.65 = 50 times more usable energy a year than the sugar cane does.
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Ant Colony Energy/Mass power law...
com
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Creech US Air Force Base, Nevada

At the flick of a switch, the RAF Reaper device's deadly arsenal of laser-guided 500lb bombs and hellfire missiles can destroy .....
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Honeybee poisoned

Clothianidin’s major risk concern is to non-target insects (that is, honey bees),” write the EFED researchers (.pdf). “E
wired
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Varanus bitatawa

, known by the common name Northern Sierra Madre Forest monitor lizard, is a large arboreal frugivorous lizard of the genus Varanus. The lizard is eaten by the Aeta and Ilongot indigenous people of the Philippines who call it Butikaw.
mampam

- there is some argument as to whether this pic is of a Butikaw
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Worlds best chair from Lower Hutt (!)

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rather confused accusation against JulianA's accuser:

CUBAN CIA AGENT BEHIND THE ACUSSATION

Behind the alleged sex scandal which attempts to discredit the Wikileaks web site owner whose revelations are scaring the State Department, is a Cuban “collaborator” and CIA agent linked to Carlos Alberto Montaner, who became known in the past for his activism “anti-Castro”
After leaving Cuba, Anna Ardin became known for his {sic} vitriolic literature web sites funded by USAID and managed by the CIA, such as Misceleanas of Cuba, Cuban-owned by Alexis Gainza Solenzal.
From Gainza’s help and U.S. intelligence agent, Ardin morphed into “expert” media such as Dagens Nyheter Swedish and SVT. Then she got involved in the ruling Social-Democratic Party.
In 2007, she founded the “gay” club Queer-klubb Feber of Gotland, a Swedish island situated 60 kilometers from the coast.
Born in Havana, Alexis Gainza, Ardin’s mentor, is living in Sweden since 1991 (in Stockholm, since 1993) and found a lucrative market in the Scandinavian world of disinformation.
He has the franchise for this territory of the Cuban Liberal Union of the old agent Carlos Alberto Montaner, a terrorist fugitive from Cuban justice.
Gainza is also linked to the German International Society for Human Rights, “better known by its German acronym IGFM – Internationale Gesellschaft für Menschenrechte (IGFM). With known ties to German and American intelligence, the IGFM kept in their ranks former Nazis, as the jurist Martin Ludwig and former military Dieter von Glahn.
The current spokesman and president of the IGFM, Martin Lessenthin, works closely with the Venezuelan party “Primero Justicia” was involved in the 2002 coup attempt and is currently owned by the terrorist Alejandro Pena Esclusa.
“Primero Justicia” is the main partner in Venezuela, of the International Republican Institute, a right-wing organization subsidized by the National Endowment for Democracy.
com

thirdage
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It is sweet to dance to violins
When Love and Life are fair:
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Anna Ardin, joins Sofia Wilén in accusing Julian Assange of rape. Ardin previously had ties to a CIA backed anti-Fidel Castro group, which kind of makes you wonder
popcrunch

AA Reportedly wants to go to Palestine with some Xtians
"a Christian outreach group, aimed at helping bring reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis."
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I despise people who preach reconciliation with murderous opressors. I dont give a toss about "good Jews" - if youre good, get the Hell out of ZionistEntity.
Like my buddy JD, who was sent to Isreal because his mother was too young. JD served briefly in the IDF.
He once told me "When rounds fly past your head, two things happen; you hate all Arabs, and you love the guys in your unit" - a fine description of combat. Years later I suspected that JD wasnt under fire, maybe he got the story from someone who was. JD was smart enough to get out of Isreal as soon as he could. We encountered his mother beneath the abandoned elevated freeway, downtown West Manhattan. She appeared on rollerskates looking not much older than JD. Boomboxes all around synched to FM radio.

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Nutrition

E,D A... how galling it is, for one who couldnt give a toss about living, to have to ponder and scrabble over micro-nutrients...

people with intake of 18.5 mg/day vitamin E per day were 25% less likely to develop dementia than the people with 9 mg/DAY.. On the other hand, no associations were observed for dietary intake levels of vitamin C, beta-carotene and flavonoids.

.. when beta-amyloid .. accumulates in the brain, an inflammatory response is likely evoked that produces nitric oxide radicals and downstream neurodegenerative effects. Vitamin E is a powerful fat-soluble antioxidant that may help to inhibit the pathogenesis of dementia."
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vitamin D levels from blood samples of 858 adults aged 65 or older. Cognitive tests were undertaken at the start of the study, and again after three and six years.

..severe vitamin D deficiency, defined as blood levels of 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25(OH)D) of less than 25 nanomoles per liter - were associated with a 60% increase in the risk of substantial cognitive decline
http://www.nutraingredients.com/Research/Vitamins-D-E-show-brain-benefits
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Vitamin A
data from 43 randomized trials, representing more than 200,000 children aged six to five years. They concluded that vitamin A supplementation is effective in reducing all-cause mortality by 24%, mainly via a reduced occurrence of measles and diarrhea.

“More than 190 million children are vitamin A deficient around the globe; reducing their risk of mortality by 24% could save almost 1 million lives per year,” said the researchers, led by Professor Zulfiqar Bhutta, Chairman of the Division of Women and Child Health at Aga Khan University, Pakistan.
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Aspirin
the effect takes time to accrue, so aspirin must be taken over a long period. The latent period for improving oesophageal, pancreatic, brain and lung cancer was about five years of aspirin taking on a daily basis. For stomach and colorectal cancer the effects took ten years and for prostate cancer about 15 years.
economist
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An olive extract rich in hydroxytyrosol may be effective for reducing levels of oxidized LDL cholesterol..
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The soy isoflavone genistein may inhibit the development of human breast cancer cells due to its ability to target copper..
.. a dose- and time-dependent manner due to its ability to target copper and generate pro-oxidant signaling cascades that target cancer cells.

“Copper levels are known to be considerably elevated in almost all types of cancers,..genistein is able to target endogenous copper leading to pro-oxidant signaling and consequent cell death,”
nutraingredients
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Supplements of creatine, most commonly associated with sports nutrition, may boost cognitive function in vegetarians, a group at risk of low creatine levels..

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Climate

sea-level rose by an average of about 1 meter per century at the end of the last Ice Age, interrupted by rapid "jumps" during which it rose by up to 2.5 meters per century. The findings, published in Global and Planetary Change....
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