Source: Sacramento for Democracy
Climate change
Copenhagen climate summit: Five possible scenarios for our future climate (The Guardian)
Concise summary of what we can expect for each increase of one degree Celcius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in global temperature. Here are a few of the health implications.
1C: “Most of the world’s corals will die, including the Great Barrier Reef. Glaciers that provide crops for 50m people with fresh water begin to melt and 300,000 people are affected every year by climate-related diseases such as malaria and diarrhoea.”
2C: “The heatwaves seen in Europe during 2003, which killed tens of thousands of people, will come back every year. … More than 60 million people, mainly in Africa, would be exposed to higher rates of malaria. Agricultural yields around the world will drop and half a billion people will be at greater risk of starvation. … Glaciers all over the world will recede, reducing the fresh water supply for major cities including Los Angeles.”
3C: “Billions of people are forced to move from their traditional agricultural lands, in search of scarcer food and water. Around 30-50% less water is available in Africa and around the Mediterranean.”
4C: “Italy, Spain, Greece and Turkey become deserts and mid-Europe reaches desert temperatures of almost 50C (122F) in summer.”
5C: “Human population would be drastically reduced.”
Climate change is bad, but the Senate is tired (The Washington Post)
Ezra Klein’s take on the politics of this scenario:
Amidst all this, conservative Senate Democrats are waving off the idea of serious action in 2010. But not because they’re opposed. Oh, heavens no! It’s because of abstract concerns over the political difficulties the problem presents. … “[C]limate change in an election year has very poor prospects.” That’s undoubtedly true, though it is odd to say that the American system of governance can only solve problems every other year. … It’s very frustrating.
Amen.
Celebrities and health/Politics
Roosevelt’s Last Days: Did cancer kill FDR? (Slate)
The word on FDR’s death has long been that he died of high blood pressure. A new book, FDR’s Deadly Secret
Roosevelt was in the business of concealing his medical afflictions. After a bout with polio in 1921, he never regained the use of his legs and used braces and a wheelchair, but he asked not to be photographed in ways that would reveal his disabilities. Beginning in early 1944, the fact that Roosevelt had severely elevated blood pressure and congestive heart failure was also kept secret. … [Authors] Lomazow and Fettman have greatly expanded Goldsmith’s research. What they believe is that the melanoma spread not only to Roosevelt’s abdomen but to his brain. The bleed that killed the president, they hypothesize, was due to the cancer, not the hypertension.
Health news
Source: The Telegraph
Yawning is part of what makes us human (The Telegraph)
However yawns arise, and whatever they signify, such a spontaneous copying response to a second person’s signal of mood is an unmistakable sign of empathy; of an ability to understand and to react to someone else’s state of mind. People with autism or with schizophrenia find it hard to do that – and they respond less to yawns than do most of us.
Empathy is what makes us into social and cooperative beings, and the speed and extent with which a person yawns in response to another’s involuntary gape may be a quick and objective measure of to what degree he or she might be blessed with those useful talents. …
Perhaps what most people regard as an impolite act, to be disguised with a strategically placed hand when in company, is instead a deep insight into what it means to be human; a sign of an ancient shift from a quarrelsome and sexually violent mental universe to a generally cooperative and agreeable one. Man as a yawning rather than thinking ape – Homo oscitans rather than sapiens – may lack dignity, but reveals a new and attractive side to his personality.
Yawn – It’s one of the best things you can do for your brain. (The Pennsylvania Gazette)
New research on yawning: “[Y]awning is one of the best-kept secrets in neuroscience. Even my colleagues who are researching meditation, relaxation, and stress reduction at other universities have overlooked this powerful neural-enhancing tool.”
Social media
Faux Friendship (The Chronicle of Higher Education)
A long, fascinating, and provocative essay on the history and present state of friendship.
Yet what, in our brave new mediated world, is friendship becoming? The Facebook phenomenon, so sudden and forceful a distortion of social space, needs little elaboration. Having been relegated to our screens, are our friendships now anything more than a form of distraction? When they’ve shrunk to the size of a wall post, do they retain any content? If we have 768 “friends,” in what sense do we have any? …
Facebook’s very premise–and promise–is that it makes our friendship circles visible. There they are, my friends, all in the same place. Except, of course, they’re not in the same place, or, rather, they’re not my friends. They’re simulacra of my friends, little dehydrated packets of images and information, no more my friends than a set of baseball cards is the New York Mets. …
Friendship is devolving, in other words, from a relationship to a feeling–from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic caves, rearranging the tokens of connection like a lonely child playing with dolls.
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