Rebirth and Resurrection

Most of you know that Good Friday which was last Friday is the anniversary of Jesus' Crucifiction and Easter is the anniversary of Jesus' Resurrection where he got up out of his tomb and rolled back the stone and walked (or flew) away and many witnessed this.

All my life it has always seemed to me that all the attention focused on the Crucifiction was always misplaced and that as a Christian the focus should be instead on the Resurrection to be meaningful. Because everyone dies but the rebirth, the resurrection is what is actually important.

One type of rebirth that Christians and others might have is when they go to sleep at night by giving over themselves to Jesus, God or whatever people need to do to let go of the day to have a peaceful sleep. Oftentimes when I give my life completely to God in desperation after a difficult day I will wake up in the morning a completely new person and ready to deal with life sort of like a newborn child of God. I see this as God's daily potential rebirth and resurrection through a rebirth in consciousness.

Recently spring has shown itself where I live and all the flowers are out and the grass is high and very green and the birds are out. Well, each new day is potentially like a new spring day for each of us. And by letting go completely at night when we sleep, often we can resurrect in consciousness and health of all kinds and meet the new day with God everywhere in our lives.

So, I believe Resurrection and Easter can be every morning if you let go of your crucifiction of the previous day before you go to sleep whenever you need to.

Sometimes, when the day or week was very difficult I would say to God something like, "I just can't deal with my life God, if it be your will let me die tonight". Then I would go to sleep sort of like I was dying and when I woke up in the morning everything was new because I was completely reborn in consciousness with God.

Two Sides to Every Coin

When people come from a perceptual place of dualism everything has to be either Good or Bad. However, as an adult life really isn't like that. Though you might be able to define all life around you and all experiences as being good or bad for you personally in any given moment, it completely doesn't work beyond you and that moment and always becomes infinite shades of gray.

So, when I discovered this I had to change the way I saw things. I had been raised by parents that were in charge of a church as ministers from the time I was 6 to 12 years of age. So, dualism was instilled in me as a Christian Mystic. Trying to embrace non-dualism was very hard for me because of my training. But, over time I learned to be better at it by seeing everything sort of like the weather. Is rain good or bad? Is snow Good or Bad? Is wind good or bad? It all depends on many factors doesn't it? It depends on how much? When? and to whom? it is happening to. It depends on many different factors to the point where you cannot tell me that rain is good or bad universally. You cannot tell me that Snow or wind is good or bad universally either. And most of life is like this. It all depends.

In college one of the things I studied was Anthropology. I was interested in dominant and recessive genetic characteristics. The person who actually started this study I believe was a Catholic priest who studied I believe fruit Flies or something like that several hundred years ago. 

But one of the things that amazed me was that the dominant gene for humans is dwarfism which puts how we might look at the dwarves (Hobbits) in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" in a different context. So, how come if the dwarves are the dominant gene are there so few of them. The obvious is that they were killed off along the way which is really sad but likely also true. So, as dwarves had tall children they kept them alive even if they were one in 10 or 5 in ten or whatever the original genetic disposition was.

Then we move on to how there are all these different genetic traits we all have. As I studied more about DNA and all these traits I realized something. Every genetic trait people have has only survived because it was useful to our survival in some way along the way. So, whenever you look at everyone alive it means someone for literally thousands of generations of people had to survive to get pregnant by someone, choose to have the baby, keep it alive until it could breed, etc. etc. etc.

And I thought to myself: "How remarkable is that?" It means that anyone who didn't have a child for whatever reason did not have their genetics passed on to today. So, their specific genetics were not passed down through the gene pool and were eliminated. Now, I suppose you could also say that their basic genetics were carried on through any brothers or sisters or parents or other relatives that did breed and had kids that kept on breeding up until today. This is another way to look at it.

So, literally ANY genetics that survived until today have some usefulness to the survival of the human race or else they wouldn't exist. So, here is the "Two sides of every Coin". If you start with the premise that every genetic trait that exists now is useful to the survival of the human race in some way, then you have to rethink possibly how you and most people have tended to think about this in the past.

And anyone who survives to breed in the thousands and potentially millions of years will follow this pattern to survive in whatever type or types of environments exist externally and internally for  all time to come. All of us are environmentally suited to be alive now in this particular ecosystem and time we live here on earth. And this likely will continue to be this way except when people genetically engineer things without understanding the full consequences of their actions. But, even then, when things are genetically engineered like plants, people, animals etc., those that survive from that will again be suited to survive within whatever ecosystems remain or they will die too. So, whatever survives genetically is suited to a greater or lesser degree to the environments it was born into.

Then we take all these genetic dispositions and realize that often their are two sides to every coin(or genetic trait). By seeing that there might be a good side to any genetic trait as well as a bad side to any genetic trait it is important not to just go eliminating genetic traits just because you don't know what they are good for. Because if you eliminate any of them it could cause in the future: Human Extinction, because you don't yet understand what that trait was for in human survival ongoing.

How to survive being an intuitive

Being an intuitive is difficult. But if you make it to be 30 you likely are one of the ones most likely to make it to 90 and beyond also. There are many reasons for this. An intuitive usually is a feelings type of person. They tend to feel everything deeply. This allows them to more deeply access all their senses on an everyday basis. Most people if something is painful shut off or shut up their senses in regard to the pain. However, an intuitive finds that there senses keep them alive and if they shut off or cover over their senses it might lead to their deaths or the deaths of others. So, even though being an intuitive might be very painful while growing up, as an adult of 30 or older oftentimes it is a Godsend to be an intuitive once you have figured it out and have become used to it. However, under 30 like with all people it is much harder to survive in some ways especially from about ages 12 to 25 because there are so many extra variables in your life you are dealing with.

Also, everyone has different abilities and interests. So, how someone uses those abilities and interests will show how each person will develop.

However, most people don't choose to become intuitives. It is not usually something anyone sets out to do. Life chooses you. That is the best way to put it. And then life tests you all the time to see if you are safe for the rest of all life around you to be allowed to stay alive as an intuitive. What I have found is that only intuitives that life approves of stay alive in the long run after 30 years of age. They will tend to either self destruct or have accidents if they are misusing their abilities. This is just what I have observed over the years.

As an intuitive I have noticed that all life observes us every moment. For example, most of my life I didn't like insects at all. So, I might be the first to kill a fly or a spider. But, in my early 30s after beginning to study Tibetan Buddhism with Tibetan Lamas in the U.S., India and Nepal I took Ahimsa Vows to not kill anything except in self defense. This changed my life a lot. For example, my family and I owned a couple of businesses and 6 months a year for a couple of years from May to October usually I worked as a Fire Lookout on top of a mountain. There were always flies in the summer because of cattle ranches all around me and herds of Wild Boar around that might number up to 100 and herds of deer etc. So, at first I was frustrated because of the flies. Then my alternate Fire Lookout (we broke the week into two halves so each of us worked 1/2 week) showed me how to use a paper cup or plastic glass to capture flies and bees and hornets and with a piece of paper over the lip I just walked them out of the lookout and released them into the air. This was amazing in the difference of my karma. Especially when I saved spiders and flies I felt a huge burden lift off me.

In the past, whenever I would kill a spider especially, astrally the spider often would be angry and grow big astrally and bite me astrally and I didn't like that feeling. But, when I saved spiders and flies I no longer had to deal with all the bad karma killing always brings into a person's life. This might seem like a small thing but actually over time it is huge.

Partly as a result of my Ahimsa vows and treating all beings with kindness my karma got better and better and better. And now I am easily able to trace my good fortune in life directly to how I treated all beings especially after I was more aware and after 30 years of age. I turned 30 around 1980.

Roth IRA?

Note: Though I don't fit in either of the categories mentioned there are many of you that do. The concept of saving and paying zero tax for generations and having it be a perfectly legal alternative might be helpful to many of you. However, it might also be important to consider that some day there might be a flat tax and all these legal types of tax shelters might not exist. However, the other side of this is imagine just how many lobbies of businesses and individuals are lobbying to keep whatever types of tax shelters they now have in place? So, the world is changing and none of us know for sure how it is all going to go. But in the end it is "nothing ventured nothing gained" which is the motto of all investors and entrepreneurs in the end. end note.

21

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The Perfectly Legal Way to Pay Zero Tax for Generations

By Dan Caplinger | More Articles | Save For Later
March 31, 2013 | Comments (15)

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Most people think of tax shelters as being available only to massive corporations and the ultra-rich. But if you have a job, you have access to a tool that can help you and your family avoid having to pay any taxes on your investment income not just throughout the rest of your life but for your heirs' lifetimes as well. Best of all, it's never been easier to take advantage of these benefits. All it takes is opening a Roth IRA.
How you can become like a big corporation
Back in 2011, the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy collaborated with the Citizens for Tax Justice to create a list of what it called "Corporate Taxpayers & Corporate Tax Dodgers" covering the preceding three years. Noting factors like accelerated depreciation, deductions for stock options, offshore tax shelters, and industry-specific tax breaks, the report identified many companies that not only avoided paying income tax over that three-year period but also got net refunds back from the U.S. Treasury. Corning (NYSE: GLW  ) and Honeywell (NYSE: HON  ) were among the 30 companies that had negative tax liability from 2008 to 2010, according to the report, while Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC  ) and AT&T (NYSE: T  ) received the largest amounts in what the report called "tax subsidies" -- representing the difference between what those companies paid in tax versus what they would have paid under the 35% corporate tax rate. Through perfectly legal means, these companies all managed to hold the IRS at bay.
Roth IRAs don't involve any of the strategies that corporations use to their advantage, but they're equally effective. When you open a Roth IRA, you don't get any upfront tax deduction, which is why so many taxpayers never even think to go beyond the traditional IRAs that they're more familiar with. When you're focused on saving taxes now, the traditional IRA delivers a valuable tax deduction you can use on this year's tax return, while the Roth doesn't give you any current benefits at all.
But what you get in return for giving up those upfront benefits is so much more valuable. Throughout your lifetime, the income and gains that your Roth IRA investments generate are tax-free. Once you retire, you can take money out of your Roth IRA without paying any tax as well.
But how can you protect your heirs?
Those benefits are great for retirees, but the even more valuable aspect of Roth IRAs is that you can hold onto them forever. Unlike traditional IRAs, which force you to start taking distributions from your retirement account when you reach age 70 1/2, Roth IRAs have no minimum required distributions at any age. If you don't need the money in your Roth, you can leave it untouched and let those tax-free earnings continue to build.
Even better, you can pass on your Roth IRA to future generations. They will be required to start taking minimum distributions from their inherited accounts. But under the current rules, most heirs can stretch out their withdrawals from inherited Roth IRAs over the course of their expected lifespan, using life expectancy tables to pull out an appropriate percentage of the account balance every year. And best of all, those distributions are free of income tax for your heirs as well, giving you and your family generations of avoiding tax entirely -- all for the cost of forgoing a small upfront tax deduction.
What about income limits?
Some workers aren't allowed to contribute directly to an IRA because their income is above the appropriate Roth IRA income limits. For single filers earning more than $127,000 and joint filers above $188,000, Roth IRA contributions are completely disallowed.
But there's a back-door way into a Roth IRA. If you have a traditional IRA, you can convert all or part of that account to a Roth IRA without worrying about any income limits at all. The catch is that you have to include the amount you convert as taxable income on your current-year tax return, but again, that tax bill is the last one you'll ever have to pay on that money and the income and capital gains it generates over the rest of your life and beyond.
A truly long-term investment
If you've ever thought about leaving a legacy for your children or grandchildren, think carefully about opening a Roth IRA. With decades of potential tax savings ahead, your loved ones will thank you.

Rock's greatest pranks and Hoaxes

F-F-F-F-Foolin’: Rock’s Greatest Pranks, Hoaxes, And Outright Lies

By Chris Willman | Stop The Presses! – 4 hours ago

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If you can't trust people in the music business, who can you trust? But not all of them have been Honest Abes over the years. Some have pulled playful one-time pranks, others obfuscations or outright hoaxes that have gone on for years. Fans can't be trusted with the truth, either, as attested to by any number of deathless urban legends. It's all fodder for an April Fool's Day look at some of rock's greatest lies:

Paul and Linda, providing proof of life to Life"Paul is dead." The Beatles didn't start this one—honest. But for a couple of years in the late '60s, every lyric and every inch of cover art seemed to confirm that the three surviving Beatles were desperately yet covertly trying to tell us all that the Cute One was, in fact, the Dead One, who had blown his mind out in a car. The first person to discover these "clues" was apparently a writer for a student newspaper in Iowa, and by October 1969, the Beatles' plot to keep Paul's death three years earlier a secret—yet somehow leak it—was the talk of FM radio jocks everywhere. Never mind that John Lennon was actually saying "Cranberry sauce" in the coda of "Strawberry Fields Forever," not "I buried Paul." Who could listen to the spooky "Revolution 9" forward, let alone backward, and not feel they'd heard a ghost? McCartney finally kiboshed rumors of his demise by addressing the controversy in a Life magazine cover story. Yet, if you held the cover up to the light, the automobile ad on the flip side created the appearance that Paul was... in a car! Chills.
The Jack & Meg White marriage certificate, tracked down by diligent investigative jou …Jack White and Meg White: siblings. It's still not clear why Jack White spent years perpetuating the fantasy that he and his drummer were brother and sister instead of exes, long after the press had produced marriage (1996) and divorce (2000) certificates. But avoiding a lifetime of questions about "How does it feel to spend months at a time on the road with your former old lady?" seems like near-legitimate reason enough for the ruse, all high-concept rationales aside.
The Masked Marauders: Dylan, Jagger, Lennon, and McCartney form the worst supergroup of all time. It was the fall of 1969, and not anywhere near April 1, when Rolling Stone ran a fictional review of a fictional album by a fictional band called the Masked Marauders, who were supposed Mick Jagger, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Bob Dylan, and possibly George Harrison operating under a pseudonym. The obviously satirical review was written by famed rock critic Greil Marcus, himself using a pseudonym, taking a dig at the "supergroup" phenomenon that was producing acts like Crosby, Stills, and Nash. But it wasn't just rubes who fell for it; some of the musicians' own business associates became angry that their clients were recording and releasing secret projects while under contract. The hoax was taken a step further when Marcus hired some musicians to actually record an album, imitating the supposed participants' voices. Once Warner Bros. released it, it was pretty hard not to get the joke, with the fake Jagger singing "I Can't Get No Nookie" and the non-Dylan crooning "Cow Pie." Perhaps the best gag on the record had Dylan covering Donovan.
The New York Times gets punked on a grunge "lexicon." On Nov. 15, 1992, the Times weighed in on the phenomenon that had crossed over from Seattle to the entire nation with an article by Rick Marin titled "Grunge: A Success Story." Unfortunately, Marin made the mistake of trusting an employee at Sub Pop Records to provide him with a list of grunge slang, which ran as a sidebar to the main story. Amazingly, it is still online on the Times' website, with no correction or other notation that the paper of record had the flannel shirt pulled over its eyes. Among the insider terminology credited to Sub Pop's Megan Jasper (you just can't trust those Megs!): "lamestain" means "uncool person"... "cob nobbler" means "loser"... and "swingin' on the flippity-flop" is grunge-speak for "hanging out."
Reznor's fake album cover for "Strobe Light"Nine Inch Nails make an all-star record with Timbaland, Chris Martin, and Sheryl Crow. This was Trent Reznor's own snarky April Fool's joke in 2010. Anyone who had been followed his recent snide remarks about Chris Cornell making an album with Timbaland immediately got it when the NIN mastermind announced that the group was about to release Strobe Light, which would include the Bono/Jay-Z/Chris Martin collaboration "Everybody's Doing It."
Keith Richards' bloodstream is made up of someone else's blood plus his father's ashes. Richards is not above having a good laugh at the expense of a gullible rock press. In the early '70s, he went to Switzerland to deal with his heroin addiction, but rather than tell all, he put the story out that he was engaging in a complete blood transfusion. Decades later, he told NME he'd snorted his late father's ashes. Clearly he was having one over on us all, but when he wrote his memoir, Life, a few years ago, the Stone seemed to want to keep at least a little of the myth alive. Or perhaps he was telling the slightly more reasonable truth when he said that he'd finally gone out to scatter his father's ashes under a tree and, when "I took the lid off of the box, a fine spray of his ashes blew out on to the table. I couldn’t just brush him off so I wiped my finger over it and snorted the residue.”
A fake Fleetwood Mac goes on tour with an all-ringer lineup. It's hard keeping track of some of the transitions in the FM lineup over the years, but there was one version of the band that had no overlap with any other edition of Fleetwood Mac. You can thank former manager Clifford Davis for that, although some have continued to believe that Mick Fleetwood was somehow involved in the ruse. Guitarist Bob Weston had been fired from the group for getting involved with Fleetwood's wife, so the band canceled the tour. But, as Bob Welch recalled it, Davis sent them a letter saying that he "was not going down because of the whims of irresponsible musicians" and that he would be sending a "star-quality, headline act" out on the road, which they could either choose to be part of or not. Much to the real band's disbelief, a faux Mac was sent out on tour, to the outrage of thousands of fans demanding their money back... as well as the indifference of about as many attendees too wacked out to tell the difference. Some of the musicians recruited for the fake group eventually went on to form a real band called Stretch, and they addressed the controversy in a single called "Why Did You Do It."

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end quote from:

http://music.yahoo.com/blogs/stop-the-presses/f-f-f-f-foolin-rock-greatest-pranks-185856550.html 

Hawaii Volcano Breathing?

Radar Watches Hawaii Volcano 'Breathing'

By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet Staff Writer | LiveScience.com – 7 hrs ago

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• View PhotoA radar image of Kilauea volcano …

Hawaii's Kilauea volcano breathes fire. Day by day, the volcano's surface subtly swells and deflates as magma courses through deep channels and fissures.

At the very top of Kilauea sits Halema'uma'u crater and its churning, steaming lava lake. Since the lava vent burst open in 2008, scientists at the Hawaii Volcano Observatory have closely monitored its oscillations. Their techniques include recording earthquakes, ground deformation and gas emissions, as well as analyzing rocks tossed out of the lake by small explosions.

Now, there's a new weapon in the arsenal. By combining two types of highly detailed radar data, scientists can track surface-elevation changes at Kilauea volcano to less than a half-inch (1 centimeter) resolution, a new study shows. The findings were published online March 1 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The study reveals a link between subsidence, or sinking of the surface, near the lava lake and a collapse of the vent walls. When the wall rocks tumble onto the searing-hot lava, explosions toss rocks and lava out of the vent and create loud roars. The flying rocks are hazardous to scientists working in the area and can damage monitoring equipment, said Nicole Richter, a graduate student at Friedrich-Schiller-University in Germany.

"These eruptions are small, but they are still hazardous to people," she told OurAmazingPlanet.
Looking at subsidence within 328 feet (100 meters) of the lava lake, Richter and her colleagues saw the vent walls collapse more often when the crater was subsiding. The vent walls were more stable when subsidence rates were lower.
The results come from a combination of synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) from Germany's TerraSAR satellite and lidar topography of the volcano. Richter used the data to create interferograms, images that combine two or more pictures of the same place to make precise measurements.
InSAR could let scientists monitor Halema'uma'u crater for future widening and vent collapses, without exposing them to the hazardous, sputtering bursts and poisonous gas emitted from the active lava lake, researchers said.
"This is the only method we can use to actually see how the instability of the vent wall develops over time," Richter said.
Email Becky Oskin or follow her @beckyoskin. Follow us @OAPlanet, Facebook or Google +. Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

• Amazing Images from Kilauea's Lava Lake
• Infographic: How Hawaii's Kilauea Volcano Works
• The World's Five Most Active Volcanoes

end quote from:

http://news.yahoo.com/radar-watches-hawaii-volcano-breathing-155001538.html

Star circles Black hole every 2.4 hours

Star Caught Circling Black Hole at Record-Breaking Speed

Astronomers have spotted a star in our galaxy that races around a black hole at a breakneck speed, orbiting once every 2.4 hours, scientists say.

SPACE.com

Star Caught Circling Black Hole at Record-Breaking Speed

By Megan Gannon | SPACE.com – 7 hrs ago

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Astronomers have spotted a star in our galaxy that races around a black hole at a breakneck speed, orbiting once every 2.4 hours, scientists say.

The black hole in the spinning duo is known as MAXI J1659-152 and is at least three times more massive than the sun. The star, meanwhile, is a red dwarf with a mass just one-fifth that of the sun and is just 620,000 miles (1 million kilometers) from the black hole, according to the European Space Agency, which announced the discovery on Tuesday (March 19).

"The companion star revolves around the common center of mass at a dizzying rate, almost 20 times faster than Earth orbits the sun," astronomer Erik Kuulkers, of ESA's European Space Astronomy Centre in Spain, said in a statement. "You really wouldn't like to be on such a merry-go-round in this galactic fair!"

The two objects orbit a common center of mass. Because the star is the lighter, it has a larger orbit and has to travel at a remarkable speed of 1.2 million mph (2 million km/h), making it the fastest moving star ever seen in an X-ray binary system. The black hole, meanwhile, orbits at about 93,000 mph (150,000 km/h), ESA officials said. The space agency created a video animation of the black hole and ultra-fast star to illustrate the odd setup.

The pair was initially thought to be a gamma-ray burst when NASA's Swift space telescope first spotted it on Sept. 25, 2010.  Japan's MAXI telescope on the International Space Station also observed a bright X-ray source at the same place on that same day.
More observations revealed that the X-rays came from a black hole siphoning material from a tiny star companion. From dips in these X-ray emissions during a 14.5-hour observation with ESA's XMM-Newton space telescope, astronomers calculated that the star's orbital period was just 2.4 hours. This orbital period smashes the previous record of 3.2 hours, held by Swift J1753.5–0127.
The newfound pair lies high above the galactic plane, meaning it is out of the main disc of our spiral Milky Way galaxy — a characteristic shared by only two other black-hole binary systems, including Swift J1753.5–0127.
"These high galactic latitude locations and short orbital periods are signatures of a potential new class of binary system, objects that may have been kicked out of the galactic plane during the explosive formation of the black hole itself," Kuulkers said.
Follow SPACE.com on Twitter @Spacedotcom. We're also on Facebook and Google+. Original story at SPACE.com.

• Star Whips Around Black Hole at Record Speed | Video
• The Strangest Black Holes in the Universe
• No Escape: Dive Into a Black Hole (Infographic)
• Top 10 Star Mysteries

 

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http://news.yahoo.com/star-caught-circling-black-hole-record-breaking-speed-150432317.html

Fish grown in a Shipping Container?

Would You Eat Fish Grown in a Shipping Container?

Takepart.com – 7 hrs ago

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It's no secret that we're somewhat obsessed with shipping containers. They can be used to create housing, public art pieces and even retail stores. But now, they may be the answer to providing sustainable farming methods to London's urban inhabitants. 

GrowUp is a two-person operation started by sustainable farming enthusiasts Kate Hofman and Tom Webster. Their goal is to construct an eco-friendly means of farming fresh fish and vegetables that can be easily replicated in their congested urban environment—including spaces like driveways, parking lots and alleyways. In order to accomplish that, they're utilizing a system that remains narrow and compact.

The GrowUp Box is constructed from a recycled shipping container, which serves as the vessel for the cultivation of organic fish like tilapia and trout. A greenhouse stacked on top grows vegetables. And all of this food production occurs without the use of any soil, fertilizer, antibiotics or pesticides. How? Through the magic of aquaponics.

Aquaponics are a closed-loop scheme that uses a series of pumps to recirculate the water from fish to plants and back again; nutrient dense waste-water produced by the fish is distilled into a fertilizing water for the plants. The plants in turn purify the runoff and pump it back into fresh water for the fish below. As far as input, the GrowUp Box only requires fish food and energy to run the pumps.
While water is utilized, little is wasted because the system is set up to distribute it along the roots of the plants, not onto leaves where it could evaporate. And because the fish are grown in spacious tanks with unheated water, energy is conserved and the fish can thrive in a low stress environment.

But the benefits of GrowUp and similar urban farming systems extend to the city at large. Unlike traditional agriculture, they don't rely on transportation, refrigeration or plastic packaging. Equally as important is that it guarantees the absence of additives and preservatives used to keep fish artificially fresh over long stretches of transport.

GrowUp recently completed its first successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the creation of their first box, which Hofman and Webster plan to unveil at the Chelsea Fringe Festival this May.
UrbanFarmers, an organization in Switzerland, were the originators of the shipping container/greenhouse design, which they're using to further sustainable farming efforts in their home country.

An example of UrbanFarmers' own shipping container and greenhouse box. (Photo: UrbanFarmers)

Hofman and Webster want to bring UrbanFarmers' idea to the UK and so received a helping of consultation from the group. Together, their goal is to drastically alter the global food system, disrupting our usual methods of growing expensive, artificially-enhanced food by destroying the environment.
UrbanFarmers and GrowUp are among an ever-lengthening list of complementary projects with the same aim. China is quickly adopting rooftop farms as its citizens attempt to escape a calamitous and unregulated food system; Singapore recently adopted its first hydroponic vertical farm after tiring of importing almost 90 percent of its vegetables; and stateside, vertical fish farms are cropping up as a means of not only providing food, but cleansing our polluted waterways.
What’s perhaps most encouraging about this movement is that it shakes up the traditional food model that keeps the public blissfully unaware of foods’ origins or consequences. Urban farming instead empowers consumers to make smarter choices, either by giving them purchasing access to locally-harvested products, or teaching them how to get their hands dirty in order to grow their own.
How do you grow your own food when space is scarce? Share your stories in the Comments.
Recent articles from TakePart:
• Urban Farming Pioneer Will Allen is Leading a Food Revolution
• The Next Epicenter of Sustainable, Organic Farming is...China?
• ‘If You Ain’t a Gardener, You Ain’t Gangster’ (VIDEO)

end quote from:

http://news.yahoo.com/eat-fish-grown-shipping-container-152808135.html

Theoretically this might be a good idea. However, if it gets too cold for the fish or they are hunted by local cats or rats this could be a problem. Also, what are shipping containers made out of? Is it aluminum which might contaminate them or with steel that might rust over time? So, this is something that likely should be thought of too. However, I like the idea of recycling water and fish waste to fertilize veggies that are grown in an urban environment. As long as things in an urban environment like rats, mosquitos, homeless people etc. don't pollute the fish growing environment in some way it likely is a good idea.

Meteorite from Mercury?

This bizarre meteorite may be first ever discovered from Mercury

io9 1 hour ago

Written by Robbie Gonzalez

Robert T. Gonzalez PFollowOUnfollow 3/31/13 12:48pm Today 12:48pm g 10459L 13Edit. This bizarre meteorite may be first ever discovered from Mercury.

Scientists discover green meteorite from MercuryScience Recorder

Ancient meteorite from Mercury discovered in MoroccoDVICE

Highly Cited:Green Rock Might Be Meteorite From Mercury

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This bizarre meteorite may be first ever discovered from Mercury

OMG Mercury has water ice and organics. But what does that really mean?

Has Curiosity detected organics on Mars? Not yet, said NASA in a press conference held earlier… Read…

It was found last year in Morocco, but scientists now say this strange, green rock likely originated on our solar system's innermost planet.

The announcement was made earlier this month by meteorite expert Anthony Irving at the 44th annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas. According to him, the pea-green space rock – which has been dubbed "NWA 7325" – is at least 4.56 billion years old, and hails not from Mars, or an asteroid, but from Mercury. If he's right, the discovery would be a first for the field of meteoritics.

"It might be a sample from Mercury, or it might be a sample from a body smaller than Mercury but [which] is like Mercury," Irving said during his presentation. According to him, its chemical composition is different from any Martian meteorite he's ever seen, or any thought to have originated from an asteroid.

SPACE.com's Miriam Kramer explains:

NWA 7325 has a lower magnetic intensity — the magnetism passed from a cosmic body's magnetic field into a rock — than any other rock yet found, Irving said. Data sent back from NASA's Messenger spacecraft currently in orbit around Mercury shows that the planet's low magnetism closely resembles that found in NWA 7325, Irving said.
Messenger's observations also provided Irving with further evidence that could support his hypothesis. Scientists familiar with Mercury's geological and chemical composition think that the planet's surface is very low in iron. The meteorite is also low in iron, suggesting that wherever the rock came from, its parent body resembles Mercury.

In a paper describing the rock (pdf), Irving and his colleagues conclude that "ultimately only a sample return from Mercury may provide" a definitive answer as to its origins. But that, unfortunately, could take some time.

Many people are often surprised to learn that Mercury is, historically speaking, an oft-overlooked subject of scientific inquiry. (Messenger is the first spacecraft to ever orbit the planet, and it's only been circling Mercury since 2011.) We've known for a while that Mercury is something of an "oddball planet," to quote David Blewett, one of the scientist for the Messenger mission, a "fascinating, dynamic and complex world." It's awesome to see the Agency's Messenger spacecraft helping meteorite experts nail down the provenance of space rocks here on Earth – but it can only do so much detective work from Mercury's orbit.

Read Irving's paper describing the rock here (pdf).

Top image via Stefan Ralew/sr-meteorites.de

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jhvanceAnger

Download the PDF from the link in the article -- there are a couple of images in the 2-page paper which provide cross-section views under both normal and polarized light. The greenish part to which you seem to refer is an external shell subjected to high ablative temperatures upon atmospheric entry and which melted during its descent to the Earth's surface. 8 minutes ago

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This bizarre meteorite may be first ever discovered from Mercury

 

Unusual Bird Flu Virus Kills Two Men In China

Medical News Today

- ‎1 hour ago‎

Two men have died in Shanghai after being infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus strain, one that has never affected humans before, Chinese health authorities reported.

2 in China are first-known deaths from H7N9 bird fluUSA TODAY

New avian flu strain kills two in ChinaTelegraph.co.uk

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Unusual Bird Flu Virus Kills Two Men In China

Editor's Choice
Main Category: Bird Flu / Avian Flu
Also Included In: Infectious Diseases / Bacteria / Viruses
Article Date: 31 Mar 2013 - 13:00 PDT

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Two men have died in Shanghai after being infected with the H7N9 bird flu virus strain, one that has never affected humans before, Chinese health authorities reported.

The two patients were aged 87 and 27 years. The Xinhua News Agency reported that the younger man, surnamed Wu, became ill on February 19th, 2013 and died just over three weeks later on March 4th. The older man, surnamed Li, became sick on February 27th and died on March 10th.

The older patients' two sons became ill with flu and were hospitalized. The younger son, aged 55, developed severe pneumonia and died. The older son, aged 67, recovered and is no longer in hospital. Chinese health authorities say that neither son had the H7N9 virus.

A third patient, in Chuzhou in the eastern province of Anhui, also became infected with the H7N9 virus strain and became ill on March 10th. The woman, surnamed Han, aged 35, is reported to be in a critical condition in hospital in Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu Province.

Little is known about how H7N9 spread among humans

Health experts in China say they do not know how the virus strain has spread. They are certain that the three infected people did not transmit H7N9 to each other. Tests on 88 close contacts of the three infected people found no abnormalities.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission (the Commission) in China says that the three patients started off with coughs and fever, which then developed to pneumonia with breathing difficulties.

Commission laboratories confirmed that all three were infected with H7N9, an avian influenza (bird flu) strain known to affect birds, but not humans.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says there is no vaccine to protect humans from H7N9 infection.

H7N9 does not appear to be highly human transmissible

The Commission emphasized that there is no evidence indicating that H7N9 is highly transmissible from human-to-human. However, it is not possible to draw any conclusions from just three cases.

The Chinese CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) says that it has a team of experts studying the toxicity and human-infection potential of the virus.

Shanghai Daily quotes Jiang Qingwu, dean of Public Health School of Fudan University, as saying "So far, it is still an animal virus not a human virus".

Timothy O'Leary, of the World Health Organization, said in an interview with the Associated Press:

"There is apparently no evidence of human-to-human transmission, and transmission of the virus appears to be inefficient, therefore the risk to public health would appear to be low."

Health departments throughout China have been urged to step up supervision and monitoring of all cases involving flu symptoms, respiratory problems, and pneumonia.

People with fever, coughing, and breathing problems have been told to visit their doctors immediately.

What is bird flu (avian influenza)?

Avian influenza, also known as avian flu or bird flu, is a flu caused by viruses that infect birds and make them sick. It is an infectious disease of birds caused by influenza virus strains type A. Highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) is the more aggressive one.

Avian influenza affects several types of birds, including farmed poultry. In December 2012, pigs in China were found to be infected with the bird flu virus.

Bird flu (avian flu) is the illness, which is caused by the avian influenza virus.

Avian influenza can be transmitted from wild birds to farmed livestock or pet birds, and the other way round. The infection spreads via the saliva, feces, nasal secretions and the feed of infected birds. Since December 2003, there have been many bird flu outbreaks, which have directly killed or caused the culling of millions of farmed poultry and wild birds in Europe, Asia and Africa.

Scientists have identified over 16 different bird flu types. The one that causes the most concern is the H5N1 strain, because it can make humans very ill, and even kill them. Fortunately, H5N2 does not infect humans easily. However, some highly virulent strains have caused severe respiratory diseases in humans.

In the vast majority of human infections, the person was in contact with infected birds or surfaces/objects contaminated with their secretions or feces.

H5N1 kills 60% of humans who become ill after being infected. According to WHO, so far during this millennium H5N2 has killed 359 humans in twelve countries.

Experts worry that an avian influenza virus may one day mutate and become easily human-transmissible.

Scientists reported in the journal mBio last year that a new bird flu virus had infected harbor seals and could pose a threat to human health as well as wildlife.

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Unusual Bird Flu Virus Kills Two Men In China

Accident at Arkansas nuclear site kills man

WCPO

Accident at Arkansas nuclear site kills man

CNN

- ‎1 hour ago‎

(CNN) -- An accident at a nuclear facility in Arkansas killed one person Sunday, a county coroner said. The accident took place "in a non-radiation area, and there has been no risk to public health and safety identified," the Arkansas Department of Health said ...

Entergy Says Arkansas Nuclear Plant Accident Killed OneBloomberg

1 dead, 3 injured in Arkansas nuclear site accidentAFP

Wikipedia:Arkansas Nuclear One

1 dead, 3 injured in Arkansas nuclear site accident

(AFP) – 2 hours ago 

WASHINGTON — A worker was killed and three others were injured Sunday during an industrial accident at a US nuclear power plant that did not release any nuclear material, officials and operators said.
Part of a generator fell as it was being moved out of the turbine building at Entergy Operations Inc's Arkansas Nuclear One in Russellville, the company said in a statement.
"There is no danger to the public," it added.
The Arkansas Department of Health stressed that the accident, which occurred around 7:45 am (1245 GMT), took place in a "non-radiation area, and there has been no risk to public health and safety identified."
The injured workers were taken to hospital, according to Entergy.
Unit 1 of the plant is offline for refueling and Unit 2 was automatically shut down after the accident.
"Both plants are in a stable shutdown condition and there is no danger to the public," Entergy said.
The accident, in which the generator stator -- the stationary part of the system -- fell, is classified as an unusual event, the lowest of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's four emergency classifications.
"We are deeply saddened by what has happened today," said executive vice president and chief nuclear officer Jeff Forbes.
"Our greatest sympathy is with the family and friends of the employee who lost his life, and with those who sustained injuries. I also want to express my sorrow and support to all those who work at Arkansas Nuclear One. I know this is especially hard on them."
The group, which provides electricity to 2.8 million customers in Arkansas and the neighboring states of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi, employs around 15,000 people. It owns and operates power plants with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity, including more than 10,000 megawatts of nuclear power, making it a top US nuclear generator.

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1 dead, 3 injured in Arkansas nuclear site accident

 

 

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