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Archive for the ‘Articles & Essays’ Category

Don’t Underestimate the Forces of Good

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged on December 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Peace in our time? Scientist makes bold prediction that war is on the wane and will halve over next 40 years.

  • University of Oslo research suggests number of countries at war will fall from one in six to one in 12
  • Higher education, lower infant mortality and lower population growth are reasons why the world can expect a more peaceful future
  • Current conflicts in Libya, Tajikistan, Syria, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Mauritania and Iraq will probably be over
  • The risk of conflict will be greatest in India, Nigeria, Sudan, Ethiopia and Tanzania

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Don’t Underestimate the Forces of Regeneration

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on December 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Mexico City: Now One of Safest Places in Mexico – Once infamous for its pollution, lawlessness, & chaos, it’s at the vanguard of ecological & civic change. Abortion, gay marriage, & gay adoption is legalized. Outsiders who once viewed the city as terrorizing, now want to visit, to live here.

Mayor Ebrard steps down on Dec. 5 with wide approval ratings over his six-year administration, which has changed Mexico City both on the surface and in ways much deeper. For starters, Mexico City simply looks different. There are all-women buses that circulate the city and newly paved bike paths traversed by men in suits commuting to work.

Perhaps the most important changes have taken place under the surface, via new laws, climate action, and violence-combating plans. Abortion was legalized in 2007, as was gay marriage in 2010, and later gay adoption. Mexico City has been at the vanguard of ecological change, and has also been transformed by the things one no longer sees: It’s now perceived as one of the safest places in Mexico.

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Conspiracy to Find a Cure

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on December 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

A trio of oral medicines from Abbott Laboratories Inc to treat hepatitis C produced unprecedented cure rates in patients who had failed to benefit from standard treatment, as well as very high cure rates for newly treated patients

Some 93 percent of patients who failed prior therapy had a sustained virologic response (SVR), meaning they were considered cured, after 12 weeks of taking the trio of new drugs, plus ribavirin.

“Nobody anywhere has broken the 50 percent mark in (cure rates) for this population,” Scott Brun, a senior Abbott research executive said in an interview. “These are robust results.”

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Get Your Minimum Daily Requirement of Beauty

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on December 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Geirangerfjord, Norway

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A Glimmer of Pronoia for the Poor and Sick

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , , on November 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

For impoverished women with cancer, there’s a special clinic that provides alternative medicine for free.

To a poverty-stricken woman living with cancer, the thought of a free massage or acupuncture treatment to soothe her chronic pain and emotional fatigue may seem like a far-flung pipe dream.

Yet even in these hard times, angels live among us.

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Zoom and Bloom, Not Doom and Gloom

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on November 28, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

7 Best-Case Scenarios for the Future of Humanity

Most science fictional and futurist visions of the future tend towards the negative — and for good reason. Our environment is a mess, we have a nasty tendency to misuse technologies, and we’re becoming increasingly capable of destroying ourselves. But civilizational demise is by no means guaranteed. Should we find a way to manage the risks and avoid dystopic outcomes, our far future looks astonishingly bright. Here are seven best-case scenarios for the future of humanity.

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This Year in Pronoiac History

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on November 21, 2012 | 1 Comment »

50 years ago, at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, second-in-command Vasilli Arkhipov of the Soviet submarine B-59 refused to agree with his Captain’s order to launch nuclear torpedoes against US warships and setting off what might well have been a terminal superpower nuclear war.

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Pronoia from the Future

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on November 21, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Germany exports more energy than ever. The surplus is due to the massive development of renewable energies.

Germany exported the equivalent of the output of two large power stations – 12.3 terawatt hours – during the first three quarters of the year, according to a preliminary report from the German Association of Energy and Water Industries (BDEW), seen by the business weekly Manager Magazin.

By comparison, Germany had to import more than it exported over the first three quarters of last year, when the balance was -0.2 terawatt hours. But that was the exception during recent years – since 2006, Germany has consistently exported well over five terawatt hours more than it has imported.

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Pronoia from Below

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on November 21, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

The Occupy movement evolves, showing all of us rabble-rousing progressives how to build a mass movement and transform the way the political process works: Start at the grassroots by helping people in need.

There is a sense of camaraderie reminiscent of Zuccotti, as young people plan the day’s activities. Donations come in by the truckload and are sorted in the basement, which looks like a clearinghouse for every household product imaginable, from canned soup and dog food to duvet covers.

“This is young people making history,” said Mark Naison, a professor at Fordham University who has been studying Occupy Wall Street. “Young people who are refusing to let people suffer without putting themselves on the line to do something about it.”

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Another Outbreak of Human Ingenuity and Inventiveness

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on November 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Teenage girls from Africa invented a new kind of generator.

How’s this for an innovative startup: four African girls — the eldest of which is just fifteen years old — have worked together to invent a generator that’s powered by urine. The group presented their creation at this year’s Maker Faire Africa, and it’s so freaking brilliant it makes me want travel back in time and punch 15-year-old me right in the solar plexus.

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Early Adapters Find Success Faster

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , , on November 7, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Denmark Reaches 2020 Goal for Solar. Only 8 Years Early.

Continuing a pattern: Countries, states, businesses, and cities that begin seriously implementing renewable energy meet with greater success, sooner, at less cost, than even the most optimistic proponents would have imagined.

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The Beginning of the End of an Abomination

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on November 7, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

U.N is set to ban horrific practice

On Monday, [Khady] Koita, a leading figure in the campaign against female genital mutilation (FGM), will join other high-profile activists at the United Nations to drum up support for a global ban on a practice forced on millions of children every year.

"FGM is horrific, brutal, degrading and indefensible," said Koita, who was born in Senegal and now lives in Brussels. "My big hope is that one day no girl will have to go through what I have been through."

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Presidential Elections Are Just One Way to Change the World

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on October 31, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Howard Zinn: The Optimism of Uncertainty

We don’t have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don’t “win,” there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope. An optimist isn’t necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places — and there are so many — where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.

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Commit Some Pronoia on Yourself

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , , on October 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Telling Fewer Lies Linked to Better Health

Telling the truth when tempted to lie can significantly improve a person’s mental and physical health, according to a “Science of Honesty” study presented at the American Psychological Association’s 120th Annual Convention.

“Recent evidence indicates that Americans average about 11 lies per week. We wanted to find out if living more honestly can actually cause better health,” said lead author Anita E. Kelly, PhD, professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame. “We found that the participants could purposefully and dramatically reduce their everyday lies, and that in turn was associated with significantly improved health.”

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Sometimes Pronoiac Acts Require You to Get Mad

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , , on October 24, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Millions Against Monsanto: The Food Fight of Our Lives

Finally, public opinion around the biotech industry’s contamination of our food supply and destruction of our environment has reached the tipping point. We’re fighting back.

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Let’s Notice What Works As Much As We Notice What Doesn’t Work

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on October 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Instead of cataloging only what is going wrong, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature will now also track and reward successful efforts to conserve species and their environments.

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There Are More Things in Heaven and Earth Than Are Dreamt of in Your Philosophy

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , , on October 17, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

Man who supposedly needed a heart transplant miraculously cures his own heart

A young man in dire need of a heart transplant shocked doctors and loved ones alike when his failing heart mended itself, the Omaha World-Herald reports.

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Conspiracy to Protect the Environment and Focus on Well-Being

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , on October 10, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Bhutan aims to be first 100% organic nation

The Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, famed for seeking “happiness” for its citizens, is aiming to become the first nation in the world to turn its home-grown food and farmers 100 percent organic.

The tiny Buddhist-majority nation wedged between China and India has an unusual and some say enviable approach to economic development, centred on protecting the environment and focusing on mental well-being.

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Healers Conspiring to Find New Healing Agents

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged , , on October 10, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

New antibiotic cures disease by disarming pathogens, not killing them

A new type of antibiotic can effectively treat an antibiotic-resistant infection by disarming instead of killing the bacteria that cause it. Researchers report their findings in the October 2 issue of mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology.

“Traditionally, people have tried to find antibiotics that rapidly kill bacteria. But we found a new class of antibiotics which has no ability to kill Acinetobacter that can still protect, not by killing the bug, but by completely preventing it from turning on host inflammation,” says Brad Spellberg of the UCLA Medical Center and David Geffen School of Medicine, a researcher on the study.

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Are You Aware of the Conspiracy to Improve Life on This Planet?

Posted in Articles & Essays, tagged on September 26, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

There’s a tuition-free online university aimed at poor students around the globe who would otherwise not have access to higher education.

[Shai] Reshef founded the school in 2009. After making millions from several for-profit, online education ventures in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, he says he realized just how inaccessible higher education is for most people around the world.

“Listen, everyone should be educated,” Reshef says. “I care about the people who don’t have the right to an education right now, and they should have the right.”

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