Yes we can, mushrooms can change the weather

Mushrooms can change the weather, according to new research by UCLA and Trinity College that looked into how the fungi can disperse their spores without wind. The study discovered mushrooms create their own wind by creating water vapor, cooling the air around them and thereby creating a current that turns into wind, helping the spores create new mushrooms. RT's Ameera David takes a look at which types of mushrooms are the wind-creating kind.

How Mushrooms Can Save the World

Crusading mycologist Paul Stamets says fungi can clean up everything from oil spills to nuclear meltdowns.

http://discovermagazine.com/2013/julyaug/13-mushrooms-clean-up-oil-spills-nuclear-meltdowns-and-human-health#.UqGzpidTDoa

By Kenneth Miller|Friday, May 31, 2013

Pioppino mushrooms (Agrocybe aegerita) induced tumor regression, reversing cancer in lab mice. The species also controlled blood sugar in diabetic mice.

Stuart Isett

For Paul Stamets, the phrase “mushroom hunt” does not denote a leisurely stroll with a napkin-lined basket. This morning, a half-dozen of us are struggling to keep up with the mycologist as he charges through a fir-and-alder forest on Cortes Island, British Columbia. It’s raining steadily, and the moss beneath our feet is slick, but Stamets, 57, barrels across it like a grizzly bear heading for a stump full of honey. He vaults over fallen trees, scrambles up muddy ravines, plows through shin-deep puddles in his rubber boots. He never slows down, but he halts abruptly whenever a specimen demands his attention.

This outing is part of a workshop on the fungi commonly known as mushrooms — a class of organisms whose cell walls are stiffened by a molecule called chitin instead of the cellulose found in plants, and whose most ardent scientific evangelist is the man ahead of us. Stamets is trying to find a patch of chanterelles, a variety known for its exquisite flavor. But the species that stop him in his tracks, and bring a look of bliss to his bushy-bearded face, possess qualities far beyond the culinary.

He points to a clutch of plump oyster mushrooms halfway up an alder trunk. “These could clean up oil spills all over the planet,” he says. He ducks beneath a rotting log, where a rare, beehive-like Agarikon dangles. “This could provide a defense against weaponized smallpox.” He plucks a tiny, gray Mycena alcalina from the soil and holds it under our noses. “Smell that? It seems to be outgassing chlorine.” To Stamets, that suggests it can break down toxic chlorine-based polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.

Most Americans think of mushrooms as ingredients in soup or intruders on a well-tended lawn. Stamets, however, cherishes a grander vision, one trumpeted in the subtitle of his 2005 book, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World. Mushroom-producing fungi, he believes, can serve as game changers in fields as disparate as medicine, forestry, pesticides and pollution control. He has spent the past quarter-century preaching that gospel to anyone who will listen.

HOW MUSHROOMS CAN SAVE THE WORLD

Timothy Leary — transhumanism with a SMI2LE by R.U. Sirius

Timothy Leary — transhumanism with a SMI2LE

June 9, 2013 by R.U. Sirius

 Most people know Timothy Leary as the “LSD guru” who encouraged people to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” in the 1960s. But a surprising number of transhumanist types don’t know that he was one of them.

In fact, Leary may have been the first to signal a memeplex for the transhuman future — SMI2LE (Space Migration Intelligence Increase and Life Extension) — back in the mid-1970s.
My new book, Timothy Leary’s Trip Thru Time, explores Leary’s life and philosophies, including his transhuman explorations.

Here’s an excerpt from the book. You can read the entire electronic version free here, or buy a print version.

1976–1996 — Transhumanism with a SMI2LE
Leary emerged from prison in 1976 as one of the advocates for advances in the human condition that would soon be called transhumanism. At that point in time, you could probably have counted the number of proto-transhumanists with a voice in the world on the fingers of one hand.
In fact, going back to 1974, about a year after Leary expressed, in his Starseed Transmission, his wild prison fantasy of taking 5,000 advanced mutants out to galaxy central, Gerard K. O’Neill, a physicist and professor at Princeton University released a paper claiming that human settlements could be built in space at Lagrange points — locations where a habitat could theoretically remain stable.
One of these stable points was called “L5” and it soon became the focus of a movement to colonize space. Besides Leary, a number of major figures in 1970s culture became part of the movement for space colonization, including Carl Sagan, Freeman Dyson, Stewart Brand — a former Merry Prankster who had started the Whole Earth Catalogue and was about to become, arguably, the central figure in the creation of digital culture, NASA astronaut Rusty Schweickart, and California Governor Jerry Brown, who sponsored a conference to explore the possibilities. (This is where he got the nickname “Governor Moonbeam.”)
Other people cycling through the movement who would later become widely known for their participation in other techno-movements included K. Eric Drexler — considered by many the father of nanotechnology — and Hans Moravec, one of the early proponents of “strong AI” (Artificial Intelligence that exceeds human capacity).
The enthusiasm for Space Migration dissipated not so much because the L5 concept was unworkable as that it was way too expensive to pull off. While space colonization fell into disrepute, arguments are once again being raised that it is the only way to resolve problems of population, energy consumption and the psychosocial impact that the absence of a frontier might be having on the human species.
Timothy Leary’s arguments for Space Migration were tied in with his advocacy for Intelligence Increase and Life Extension (SMI2LE). Always one for sloganeering, Leary came up with “No Rejuvenation without Space Migration,” believing that issues around overpopulation, limited resources and the potential for exhausting personal and cultural novelty on this limited planet could be answered by spreading out and finding new adventures in the stars. (He would later believe he’d found an answer to at least the latter problem in Virtual Reality.)
The potential for technologies that increase intelligence and expand lifespans beyond their apparent biological limits has become the obsession of a large and growing movement called transhumanism.
The first of eight points in “The Transhumanist Declaration,” originally written in 1998 and revised, reads, “We envision the possibility of broadening human potential by overcoming aging, cognitive shortcomings, involuntary suffering and our confinement to planet earth.”
In other words, SMI2LE. Leading transhumanists rarely acknowledge that Leary defined the movement with precision 38 years ago.

Related:

• Timothy Leary’s Trip Thru Time

Video games and your degree: Can they ever mix?

Yes, i would argue they can mix, and do mix, and will mix into something unlike a game, or video, or CGI, something to blow your socks off. Let us play, steve fly>

2009's Annual Review of Cybertherapy and Telemedicine included a study which revealed the findings that people who are highly stressed and suffer from depression could vent their aggression and frustration through playing video games. If people can knock out a pedestrian on the streets of GTA's Liberty City and only suffer the consequences of the animated police chasing after them then, it could be argued, that it is much better the gamer vents their aggression in a virtual world then in the real world.

Researchers at the University of Rochester found due to the nature of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) and how the gamers often have to make “life or death” decisions for their characters, people who participated in these games would gain plenty of practice, and therefore improve, their decision making skills for use in the real world. The most well known and one of the longest running MMORPGs is World Of Warcraft in which players can develop their characters to gain various talents and skills. The game provides an inexhaustible system of goals and success which make the games more competitive for the players. -- http://www.independent.co.uk/student/student-life/video-games-and-your-degree-can-they-ever-mix-8926365.html

Cory Doctorow on Singularity 1 on 1: The Singularity As A Progressive Apocalypse

 

Published on 11 Sep 2012

http://www.singularityweblog.com/cory...

Cory Doctorow is one of my all time most favorite science fiction writers. So it is no surprise I had so much fun interviewing him.

I don't know how he does it, but Cory is one of those rare individuals who can juggle successfully being a father, an avid reader, a blogger, an activist, a journalist and a prolific science fiction writer, all at once.

It is for this reason that I was persistent in chasing Cory for over 2 years so that I can finally get him on Singularity 1 on 1. And it was totally worth it: Doctorow is indeed a very dynamic, eloquent, passionate, challenging and fun interlocutor.

During our conversation Cory covers a wide variety of topics such as: how Star Wars inspired him to become a science fiction writer; Cory's initial jobs as a bookstore seller, Greenpeace activist, web developer, entrepreneur and director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation; the intimate relationship between being a science fiction writer, a blogger and an activist; the motivation and goals behind his work; what science fiction is about and what it is good and bad at doing; Doctorow's take on the technological singularity as a "progressive apocalypse"; his "militant atheism" and technology activism.

Some of my favorite quotes that I will take away from this interview with Cory are:

"Science fiction is very good at predicting the present."

"Evolution is not perfection. Evolution is suitability."

"We have failed to appreciate the gravitas of the internet and continue to regulate it as if it is a glorified video on demand service. And as we do this, we put everything that we do on the internet -- which is everything -- in jeopardy."

Synthetic Biology and Open Cog for 2013

Do violent video games lead kids to....

Yes, if the games are produced by the US armed forces, and other armies around the planet who use games or gaming environments to actually, carry out violent crimes, but, alas, at a distance, so thats OK i guess.



"Texas A&M International University Professor Christopher Ferguson told NPR, “You know most of the debate now is really on to these minor acts of aggressiveness,” he said. “You know we’re talking about little children sticking their tongues out at each other and that sort of thing.”
Ferguson conducted his own meta-analysis and found no connection between video games and youth violence. “We have done a number of studies of video game violence with both children and adults and find no evidence to support links between video game violence and youth violence. Furthermore, youth violence has declined to 40 year lows, not gone up in recent years,” Ferguson told PC Gamer. -- http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2013/02/22/do-violent-video-games-lead-kids-to-be-violent-in-the-real-world/

The Tide is turning on the war on some drugs

Life after cannabis prohibition: The city announces its ambitions

Peter Stanners

March 15, 2013 - 22:53

The Copenhagen Model will see the production, sale and consumption of cannabis legalised, but many questions remain

 

The conference was the latest attempt by mayor Frank Jensen (Socialdemokraterne), centre, to legalise cannabis in Copenhagen for a trial period (Photo: Peter Stanners)

The tide is turning against the criminalisation of cannabis. Portugal, the Netherlands and several US states have to varying degrees decriminalised its use and now Copenhagen has decided to join the movement with a three-year trial to decriminalise the drug.

READ ON HERE

Swimming in Mexican Cenote, Tulum.

From my recent trip to Mexico, bringing Maybelogic and drums to Chitchen Itza offerings. I snapped some underwater footage at Cenote Encantado, the morning after a great fire ceremony and honoring of local spirits in the most delicate and awe-inspired setting imaginable. aho.