exxon proposes burning the dead for fuel if climate calamity hits

they were actually YesMen - activists who posing as ExxonMobil and National Petroleum Council representatives delivered an outrageous keynote speech to 300 oilmen at Canada's largest oil conference - amazing how far it went before people caught on - funny. read it here

refactoring the mind

Listen to A monk's guide to changing your mind (mp3 audio)
I like that he places the practice of meditation within solid neurological and cognitive frameworks.. mostly because i'm tired of all the new-agey crap that gets unintentionally bundled in with one sitting quietly for a few minutes everyday and breathing.

check these bookmarks for some material in text form.


UPDATE: The above link the the audio file is broken - but I've found a very similar talk by the same monk, hosted here: http://diydharma.org/audio/download/3593/206%20-%20The%20science%20of%20meditation.mp3

notquitemindreading

listen :BBC - Radio 4 - Frontiers 06/06/2007.

the struggle is also for culture - one meme at a time

OpenArena

OpenArena is an opensource first person (doomlike) shooter. You can find it in the Ubuntu repository using the package manager, or, for the windows version, check this mirror, or the others listed here.

I've played it a few times, and it plays well - much better than Nexuiz. If anyone wants to run around cool maps shooting at me, leave me a comment.

Nice that its free 'as in speech' software as well.

mustn't underestimate stupidity. stupidity in general, mine in particular

apartheid israel

from YouTube:William Fletcher on Apartheid in South Africa and Israel

beware - cognitive hazards..

A Cognitive bias is distortion in the way humans perceive reality. Check out a really useful list of cognitive biases here. Some of these have been verified empirically in the field of psychology, others are considered general categories of bias.

also posted as 26 reasons what you think is right, is wrong

ubuntu for mobile devices

Linux evolves for mobile devices: A version of the increasingly popular Linux operating system Ubuntu will be developed for use on net-enabled phones and devices (including the new Centrino based UltraMobile PC platform)
read more..

just what i need to get excited about the old pocketpc, er.. again

hacking your body's bacteria

from this article:
" 'The microbes that live in the human body are quite ancient,' says a pioneer in gut microbe research. 'They've been selected (through evolution) because they help us.'

And it now appears that our daily antibacterial regimens are disrupting a balance that once protected humans from health problems, especially allergies and malfunctioning immune responses." (Vindication!)

"Microbial exposures early in life, scientists believe, cause mild inflammation that calibrates the body's responses to other pathogens and contaminants later in life. Without exposure as infants, researchers say, people can end up with unbalanced immune systems."

also from the article: "To hack the gut bacteria more precisely, Blaser calls for a Gut Genome Project, modeled after the Human Genome Project. It's a daunting task: The human genome, mapped to great fanfare but still dimly understood, contains a tenth of the genes believed to be in our gut bacteria."

oh yes, and they mention that: "Consumer probiotics don't always contain medically recognized bacterial strains, he said, and often the bacteria they contain are dead."