How can a "dream" kill people?

How can a seemingly nice person kill himself and take another 150 people along?

by Mike Inger Helmke

 How can a very rich lady who is now "only" rich say nobody understands how she feels? Why do people throw their girlfriends out of the window? Why do famous actors and singers kill themselves either directly or via overdose of drugs?

Fat In Mom’s Butt And Thighs Are ‘Building Blocks’ For Babies’ Brains

The Inquisitr

Curvy moms with fat on their bottoms and thighs can now attest to the fact there’s at least one good reason for this. A new study just released uncovers the reason why women have fat they don’t want in these so-called “problem areas.”

The magic of water...

Water Is Weird

Gregg Davidson, Christianity Today

If someone were to stop you on the street and ask you to name, on the spot, a naturally occurring substance that epitomized ordinary—something entirely lacking in strangeness—there is high probability that you would eventually say “water.” You might note, as an aside, that it is a very important ordinary substance, essential to life and refreshing to the parched, but nothing about water strikes you as being particularly odd.

But you would be wrong. I mean, really, really wrong. The behavior of water, at least when compared to other natural materials, is a bit bizarre. In particular, there are at least five different properties of water that, if you were stumbling upon it for the first time, might strike you as strange.

A real magic carpet story: transforming 28,000 lives with $200

By Esha Chhabra, TakePart

Chhote Lal and Kanni Devi are perched behind a loom, weaving rugs in the courtyard of their two-room home in Nareth, Rajasthan, a rural village on the outskirts of Jaipur, India.

Devi has a wide, captivating smile accentuated by red lipstick, a new luxury in her life.

Lal, 40, and Devi, 35, have been weaving for Jaipur Rugs, India’s largest rug manufacturer, for more than 15 years. In 2013, they were selected as one of India’s best artisans by The Times of India. They were flown to Delhi, a first for the couple, and recognized for their skills. Devi points to a laminated copy of the article, which hangs in their living quarters. The title reads, “Carpet Weaver to Master Artisan.”

The not-so-polite question posed overseas: Is America crazy?

By Ann Jones in Oslo, Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 2015

In my long nomadic life, I’ve been to both poles and most countries in between. I still remember when to be an American was to be envied. The country where I grew up after World War II seemed to be respected and admired around the world.

Today, as one of 1.6 million Americans living in Europe, I instead face hard questions about our nation. Wherever I travel, Europeans, Asians and Africans ask expatriates like me to explain everything odd or troubling about the conduct of the United States. Polite people, normally reluctant to risk offending a guest, ask pointedly about America’s trigger-happiness, cutthroat free-marketeering, and “exceptionality.”

Their questions share a single underlying theme: Have Americans gone over the edge? Are you crazy?

Man Awakens After 12 Years in Vegetative State

By Samuel Smith, Christian Post, January 13, 2015

After all hope was lost for a South African boy who was left in a vegetative state for over 12 years, starting from the time he was 12, Martin Pistorius miraculously broke out of his paralyzing trance to eventually become a functioning business owner, husband and author.

In 1988, Pistorius’ parents noticed that there was something seriously wrong with their 12-year-old son. They noticed that he wouldn’t wake up unless he was awoken and spent most of the time laying down in the fetal position.

The Follies of a Target-Obsessed Government

The Curious Case of David Cohen

by ANDREW COCKBURN, counterpunch
The nomination of David Cohen, currently Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, to be deputy director of the CIA means more more than just the appointment of a seasoned apparatchik, popular on Capitol Hill, to high intelligence rank.  It represents the fusion in one agency of the two principal strands of American power projection.

The CIA has become notorious around the world in recent years for its leading role in incinerating high value targets with drone-fired missiles. This campaign, enthusiastically endorsed by President Obama, has been based on the presumption that the removal of individuals identified as enemy leaders is to the benefit of the United States.

Roundup: Half of All Children Will Be Autistic by 2025, Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT

Half of All Children Will Be Autistic by 2025, Warns Senior Research Scientist at MIT

By Alliance For Natural Health, anh-usa.org

Why? Evidence points to glyphosate toxicity from the overuse of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide on our food.

Super-bacteria found in Rio sea waters

BBC 

Nearly 70% of sewage in Rio—a city of some 10 million people—is spilled raw into the waters of Guanabara Bay.

Palestine-Israel Conflict: Wine, Blood and Gasoline

by URI AVNERY 

Kafr Kana, a village near Nazareth, is probably the place where Jesus – according to the New Testament – turned water into wine. Now it is the Arab village where the Israeli police is turning stones into blood.

Starving Central America

by NICK ALEXANDROV, Counterpunch

“The drought has killed us,” a young Honduran, Olman Funez, explained last summer. He was referring to what the World Bank called“one of the longest droughts in nearly half a century.” A 60-year-old Guatemalan peasant emphasized he had never “seen a crisis like this.” Carlos Román, a Nicaraguan farmer, told a reporter that “there is nothing. We eat what we can find.”

CO2 levels in atmosphere rising at dramatically faster rate, WMO report warns

By Joby Warrick 

Levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose at a record-shattering pace last year, a new report shows, a surge that surprised scientists and spurred fears of an accelerated warming of the planet in decades to come.

The New Old Capitalism

Workers Versus Owners (Again)

by JOHN K. WHITE, Dublin, Ireland. 

What do authors and taxi drivers have in common? No, this is not a lead-in for a joke, but a question about the same old problem with unregulated capitalism. Answer: They’re both being squeezed by cut-throat competition; authors by Amazon who are selling books for pennies and taxi drivers by Uber who are being beaten to fares by smart-phone apps. It’s no surprise – slash-and burn capitalism purposefully changes innovation into efficient selling – but the real question is, Who benefits – owners or workers? That one is as old as the hills and certainly no joke.

How the West Created the Islamic State

by NAFEEZ AHMED - Counterpunch

Follow the Money; Follow the Oil

Part 1 – OUR TERRORISTS

Titanic to God: "Shut up, I'm busy texting"

What really sank the Titanic

by Mike Inger Helmke

Being too busy sending messages to your friends is nothing new. Passengers of the Titanic already did that a hundred years ago. They left their messages with the ship's radio operator Jack Phillipps who would send them to Cape Race, Newfoundland, where they were forwarded. Not unlike typing our modern text messages with one  finger on our smart phone, they were typed in Morse codeand sent by the latest the state of the art wireless telegraph that had finally made it possible to get a message from a ship across the ocean. And that's what sank the ship...

Who finances ISIS?

  THE RELENTLESS MARCH OF THE 'ISLAMIC STATE'
Deutsche Welle

In the aftermath of its conquest of Mosul, the jihadi organization ISIS has been recognized as the richest terrorist organization in the world. Where does its money come from?

10 Time-Wasters and the Crucial Hacks That Beat Them

Carey Nieuwhof

When was the last time you complained about not having enough to do and more than enough time to do it in?

Exactly.

Almost every leader I know struggles with finding the time to get it all done.

I do too.

So what helps? And what hurts?

One of the best things you can do is have an honest conversation with yourself about how you waste time.

I’m going to assume you’re not gaming when you should be working, but there are other more insidious ways that time slips away.

Any idea what your time wasters are? And even if so, any idea how to fix them?

Here’s some practical help.

Global Warming: Welcome to Yesterday's Future!

Fed report: Warming disrupting Americans’ lives 

By Seth Borenstein, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP)—Global warming is rapidly turning America the beautiful into America the stormy, sneezy and dangerous, according to a new federal scientific report. And those shining seas? Rising and costly, the report says.

If the food’s in plastic, what’s in the food?

By Susan Freinkel, Washington Post

In a study published last year in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers put five San Francisco families on a three-day diet of food that hadn’t been in contact with plastic.

Researchers Discover Why Zebras Have Stripes

Huffington Post 

courtesy  http://gardenofeaden.blogspot.com.br/2012/01/are-zebras-black-with-white-stripes-or.html

It’s a question that has stumped scientists for hundreds of years: Why do zebras have stripes?

Climate change will mean way less sushi—and way more jellyfish

KURAGE SASHIMI

By Gwynn Guilford @sinoceros , QUARTZ

To anyone on land, climate change can seem subtle. The sea, however, is changing alarmingly. The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—the second of three reports on the impacts of global warming—offers the scary forecast that the hotter the planet, the higher the risk of  ”abrupt and irreversible changes” (pdf, p.13) to ecosystems.

Preschoolers’ Innate Knowledge Means They Can Probably Do Algebra

Alice Park, TIME

Give a three-year old a smartphone and she’ll likely figure out how to turn it on and operate a few simple functions. But confront her with an algebra problem and ask her to solve for x? Not likely.

Lego turned itself around by analyzing overbearing parents

by Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel Rasmussen

After decades of growth and innovation—in 2000, the company was the fifth-largest toy maker in the world—LEGO hit a major slump. In January 2004, it announced a huge deficit. It was, by its own accounts, bleeding cash to the tune of $1 million a day. Owner and CEO Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, grandson of founder Ole Kirk Christiansen, was at the helm of a strategy to turn the company around. He stepped down and appointed Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, a former McKinsey consultant, as new CEO of the company.

Another Anschluss in Crimea

By Eric Margolis

Many Americans have trouble understanding modern Russia or leader Vladimir Putin. That’s in good part because they have little or no understanding of Russia’s history or geopolitics.

Encouraging the Next Generation

 By Susan Cramm, strategy + business

About a month ago, I was sitting on the patio of a local coffee shop with a wonderful 14-year-old young lady who we’ll call Alyssa. Full of love and life, she easily connects with others, is compassionate with children, and is starting to demonstrate an artistic bent. But when we met, she was feeling a bit depressed. I asked her to consider her gifts and strengths, to help her refocus on the positive. But instead, she grew quiet and looked at me blank faced, seemingly dumbstruck and unable to see what is easily apparent to others.