A British soldier who had his leg blown off by a bomb while serving in Iraq has taken the internet by storm after his Facebook post attacking Islamophobia went viral.

Chris Herbert (left), who served in the British Army in Basra, Iraq, lost his right leg when a bomb went off next to his Land Rover in 2007.  One of his comrades, Private Luke Simpson, died in the attack, while two other soldiers were also injured.

Herbert, who was 19 when he suffered the life-changing injury, took to Facebook after complaining that he was "getting frustrated" with people expecting him to be racist after losing his leg.  He told those holding the entire Muslim faith responsible for terrorism to: "Get a grip of your lives, hug your family and get back to work."

The post has been shared [over 171,000] times and has been hugely popular on social media.  (Read post here.)

Herbert, who lives in Portsmouth, on the south coast of England, said he took the decision to speak out after an "Islamophobic group tried to recruit" him as a poster boy for their organization.  He says that upon his return to the UK he was abused and discriminated against on a number of occasions by "white brits".  Herbert added: "A White brit pushed my wheelchair away from a lift so he could use it first. "(Although a lot of people helped in my recovery! I don't hate white brits either! hahaha)."

"Blaming all Muslims for the actions of groups like Daeshe and the Taliban, is like blaming all Christians for the actions of the KKK or Westboro Baptist Church," he added.  "Get a grip of your lives, hug your family and get back to work."

The post has drawn widespread praise on Facebook and Twitter. One friend, Alastair Campbell, wrote beneath the comment: "Amen brother - you've hit the nail on the head, and it couldn't have come from a better bloke."  Another friend, Alex Elbourne, added: "Your words ring true Chris. Don't ever let the haters get you down. Don't ever let anyone tell you what you should think. I am proud to call you a friend."

Earth is entering a stream of gravelly debris from "rock comet" 3200 Phaethon, source of the annual Geminid meteor shower. Forecasters expect peak rates to occur on Dec. 13-14, when dark-sky observers in both hemispheres could see as many as 120 meteors per hour. Observing conditions will be nearly ideal because the shower peaks just a few days after the New Moon. Stay tuned for updates and, meanwhile, listen for Geminid echoes in the audio feed from our live meteor radar.

What can waiters, the TV series 'Lost' and the novelist Charles Dickens teach us about avoiding procrastination?  One of the simplest methods for beating procrastination in almost any task was inspired by busy waiters.  It's called the Zeigarnik effect after a Russian psychologist, Bluma Zeigarnik, who noticed an odd thing while sitting in a restaurant in Vienna. The waiters seemed only to remember orders which were in the process of being served. When completed, the orders evaporated from their memory.

Zeigarnik went back to the lab to test out a theory about what was going on. She asked participants to do twenty or so simple little tasks in the lab, like solving puzzles and stringing beads (Zeigarnik, 1927). Except some of the time they were interrupted half way through the task. Afterwards she asked them which activities they remembered doing. People were about twice as likely to remember the tasks during which they'd been interrupted than those they completed.

What does this have to do with procrastination? I'll give you another clue...  Almost sixty years later Kenneth McGraw and colleagues carried out another test of the Zeigarnik effect (McGraw et al., 1982). In it participants had to do a really tricky puzzle; except they were interrupted before any of them could solve it and told the study was over. Despite this nearly 90% carried on working on the puzzle anyway.

Cliffhanger

Here's another clue: one of the oldest tricks in the TV business for keeping viewers tuned in to a serial week after week is the cliffhanger. The hero seems to have fallen off a mountain but the shot cuts away before you can be sure. And then those fateful words: "TO BE CONTINUED..." Literally a cliffhanger.  You tune in next week for the resolution because the mystery is ticking away in the back of your mind.

The great English novelist Charles Dickens used exactly the same technique. Many of his works, like Oliver Twist, although later published as complete novels, were originally serialised.  His cliffhangers created such anticipation in people's minds that his American readership would wait at New York docks for the latest instalment to arrive by ship from Britain. They were that desperate to find out what happened next.

I've started so I'll finish

What all these examples have in common is that when people manage to start something they're more inclined to finish it. Procrastination bites worst when we're faced with a large task that we're trying to avoid starting. It might be because we don't know how to start or even where to start.  What the Zeigarnik effect teaches is that one weapon for beating procrastination is starting somewhere...anywhere.

Don't start with the hardest bit, try something easy first. If you can just get under way with any part of a project, then the rest will tend to follow. Once you've made a start, however trivial, there's something drawing you on to the end. It will niggle away in the back of your mind like a Lost cliffhanger.

Although the technique is simple, we often forget it because we get so wrapped up in thinking about the most difficult parts of our projects. The sense of foreboding can be a big contributor to procrastination.

The Zeigarnik effect has an important exception. It doesn't work so well when we're not particularly motivated to achieve our goal or don't expect to do well. This is true of goals in general: when they're unattractive or impossible we don't bother with them.  But if we value the goal and think it's possible, just taking a first step could be the difference between failure and success.

Travis Branum from North Vernon shared beautiful but eerie photos of giant vertical beams of colored light that appeared over North Vernon Indiana early this morning.

So what is it?  These are called "light pillars" and are pretty rare around these parts.
What caused it? Light pillars are created through the reflection of light off of numerous tiny ice crystals .

According to Wikipedia:
"The crystals responsible for light pillars usually consist of flat, hexagonal plates, which tend to orient themselves more or less horizontally as they fall through the air. Their collective surfaces act as a giant mirror, which reflects the light source upwards and/or downwards into a virtual image. As the crystals are disturbed by turbulence the angle of their surfaces deviates some degrees from the horizontal orientation, causing the reflection (i.e. the light pillar) to become elongated into a column. The larger the crystals, the more pronounced this effect becomes. More rarely, column-shaped crystals can cause light pillars as well"

The combination of a dense fog and air temperatures in the 20's allowed the water droplets in the fog to freeze into ice crystals allowing the phenomenon to occur.This same combo of dense fog and subfreezing temps also contributed to the formation of widespread hoar frost and rime ice. It made for a neat scene this morning in many locations.

US Army Secretary John McHugh announced this week that American women will be soon forced to register for the draft upon their 18th birthday just as men are. Army officials said that the move was in the spirit of "true and pure equality," but with the country wrapped up in dozens of unpopular wars it seems more like equal oppression than equal opportunity.

Currently, US citizens are not forcefully conscripted into military service, but not long ago the draft was a very real thing, and like the flip of a switch it can be imposed at any time that the government fails to recruit enough people for their wars. 

A recent ruling to open more combat roles to women inadvertently opened them up for selection for the draft.  McHugh said that universal draft registration will be a normal part of American culture before we know it.  "If we find ourselves as a military writ large where men and women have equal opportunity, as I believe we should," he said.

Not only are the wars currently taking place around the world totally inhumane and illegitimate, but the very concept of conscription is nothing more than slavery, forcing someone to do something against their will. Not only that but a mandatory draft would put people into a dangerous situation and force them to kill against their will, which is wrong for both men and women.

With no end in sight for the wars across the Middle East and now Africa, it should be no surprise that bringing the draft back would definitely be on the agenda.

Equality of freedom and equality of opportunity is something that people of all races, genders and ethnicities deserve, and this is a direction that humanity should move in. However, equal oppression is something entirely different, and when one social group is oppressed, we should work to free them from oppression, instead of shifting that oppression onto other social groups and calling it equality, as the US Army has done this week. Instead of celebrating the fact that the draft can be forced onto anyone, we should be working to abolish the concept of a military draft.

Check out Murray Rothbard's classic essay on conscription below:

In this lecture segment, Terence Mckenna discusses what he considered to have been Timothy Leary’s most powerful words, “find the others.” In a world polluted with ego, gender, race, social status, greed, et cetera, it is important that those who are attuned to the higher vibrations are interacting with one another in order to stay emotionally afloat and motivated despite the corruption, racism, and misogyny our species is putting each other through.

© PhBasumata/flickr
The forest, called the Molai woods, is a safe haven for numerous birds, deer, rhinos, tigers and elephants — species increasingly at risk from habitat loss.

A little over 30 years ago, a teenager named Jadav "Molai" Payeng began burying seeds along a barren sandbar near his birthplace in northern India's Assam region to grow a refuge for wildlife. Not long after, he decided to dedicate his life to this endeavor, so he moved to the site where he could work full-time creating a lush new forest ecosystem.  Incredibly, the spot today hosts a sprawling 1,360 acre of jungle that Payeng planted single-handedly.

The Times of India recently caught up with Payeng in his remote forest lodge to learn more about how he came to leave such an indelible mark on the landscape:

It all started way back in 1979 when floods washed a large number of snakes ashore on the sandbar. One day, after the waters had receded, Payeng , only 16 then, found the place dotted with the dead reptiles. That was the turning point of his life.  "The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms. It was carnage. I alerted the forest department and asked them if they could grow trees there. They said nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing bamboo. It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me. Nobody was interested," says Payeng, now 47.

While it's taken years for Payeng's remarkable dedication to planting to receive some well-deserved recognition internationally, it didn't take long for wildlife in the region to benefit from the manufactured forest. Demonstrating a keen understanding of ecological balance, Payeng even transplanted ants to his burgeoning ecosystem to bolster its natural harmony. Soon the shadeless sandbar was transformed into a self-functioning environment where a menagerie of creatures could dwell. The forest, called the Molai woods, now serves as a safe haven for numerous birds, deers, rhinos, tigers, and elephants — species increasingly at risk from habitat loss elsewhere.

Despite the conspicuousness of Payeng's project, Forestry officials in the region first learned of this new forest in 2008 — and since then they've come to recognize his efforts as truly remarkable, but perhaps not enough.  "We're amazed at Payeng," says Assistant Conservator of Forests, Gunin Saikia. "He has been at it for 30 years. Had he been in any other country, he would have been made a hero."

© CEN : Nina feeds Shavi

A dog injured in a hit-and-run accident is believed to have walked almost 200 miles to find the Russian woman who nursed her back to health.

Shavi was left to die by the side of the road after the crash, in southern Russia's Rostov Oblast region last winter.  She had been living on the streets as a stray when the driver hit her and then just drove away, Russian media reported. He left Shavi to die in agony with two broken legs by the side of the road, where she was shivering and freezing, but luckily, two passersby saw the animal and took her to the vet, before appealing online for someone who could care for her as she recovered.

26-year-old Nina Baranovskaya was the only person who replied to the appeal, it was reported.She picked up Shavi as soon as she'd had an operation on her hind legs and took her back to her small flat in Rostov-on-Don where she lives with her young daughter and several other pets. Then she helped the dog learn to walk again, teaching her basic commands and playing with her every day.  Shavi needed a lot of care and attention because of the lasting trauma from the crash, and Nina had to buy nappies for her and comfort her whenever she saw cars in the street or a stranger.

But Nina couldn't look after Shavi in the long term because she has a small flat and family commitments so she found her pet a loving home with friends 185 miles away.  However, just a few days later the dog went missing and Nina had a phone call from her friends in a panic.  Two weeks later, Shavi still hadn't reappeared and Nina was pretty worried.

But then, Shavi turned up in an unexpected place.  As Nina walked down the road last week she felt something brush her leg.
It turns out Shavi had walked almost 200 miles back to Rostov across unfamiliar terrain to be reunited with Nina, who burst into tears when she realised what had happened. Experts think it must have taken more than a week to make the trek, the Komsomolskaya Pravda reported.

Nina isn't going to let Shavi go again, and she's now looking for a bigger flat so they can stay together.
Source

Sumitra : Oddity Central : 28 Nov 2015

Meet Aisa Mijeno, a Filipino architect and scientist who invented a revolutionary lamp that runs on a glass of saltwater instead of batteries. Her vision in creating the SALt (Sustainable Alternative Lighting) lamp was to "light up the rest of the Philippines sustainably," by finding an environment-friendly alternative light source suitable for people in coastal areas. She came up with the idea after spending time with the locals of the Butbut tribe in the Kalinga Province of Philippines, who had no access to electricity.

The lamp can apparently run for eight hours on just two tablespoons of salt and a glass of water. "It is made of tediously experimented and improved chemical compounds, catalysts, and metal alloys that when submerged in electrolytes will generate electricity," Mijeno explained. The idea behind it is the chemical conversion of energy, but while it works on the scientific principle of the galvanic cell, it makes use of a harmless, non-toxic saline solution instead of hazardous electrolytes.

This saltwater lamp not only makes lighting available to remote areas, it's also a lot cheaper than conventional kerosene or electric lamps, considerably safer since it does not have components and compounds that may spark fire, and, most importantly, it's environment-friendly since it does not emit toxic gases and leaves a minimal carbon footprint."This isn't just a product," Mijeno said. "It's a social movement."

Although the SALt lamp isn't being mass produced yet, it has received global recognition. Mijeno has won several awards and competitions in Philippines, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea for the work that she put into the device. And The New York Times reported that she recently attended a discussion of climate change hosted by President Obama, where she spoke about the SALt lamp in detail. He called her venture a "splendid thought", while referring to her as "the perfect example of young entrepreneurs coming up with leapfrog technology."

For now, Mijeno's immediate challenge lies in finding a way to manufacture the lamp so that it remains durable, economical, and easy to maintain. If it manages to work as promised, it can produce about 90 lumens of light at just $20, plus $3 to replace the anode every six months. That's perfect for areas with no electricity grid, and safer than kerosene lamps. SALt also features a USB port that can be used to charge mobile phones or other electrical devices. If everything goes according to plan, Mijeno believes the product should be available on the market in 2016.

"The danger in (kerosene) lamps is it could cause fire accidents," she said. "We want to provide a lighting option that is more cost-effective, more safe, more sustainable and environmentally friendly by way of a lantern that uses saline solution or ocean water as a catalyst to generate electricity. Just imagine, if we're able to power a whole island using ocean water. That's what we're trying to aim for."

RT : 02 Dec 2015

A Portland student's simple gesture of goodwill is reminding the world that you don't need deep pockets to be able to help people in need. 

As temperatures drop with each passing winter's day, Gabby Kaper decided to tape heavy jackets to lampposts in downtown Portland for any homeless people feeling the cold.  The sight of jackets attached to the street lights caused a mini mystery until good Samaritan Kaper stepped forward.  The 20-year-old spent just $5 on chunky coats at a thrift shop before wrapping them around streetlights along with the message: "I am not lost! Please take me if you need me."

She told the Portland Press Herald how she took advantage of a $1 sale at her local charity store after hearing about a similar effort in another state.  "I went around and picked out the heaviest coats I could get," she explained.

The jackets were all reportedly picked up and the young lady now hopes her act of kindness can inspire others during the Christmas holidays.  "Every single one of us can make a difference... I hope everyone tries this, it's inexpensive and can mean the world to someone." she said on Facebook.

Other good Samaritans have been posting their messages of support for the idea across social media.
"Such a wonderful and thoughtful thing to do. Definitely gonna try this because of you." said one woman.
"You have such a big heart and are such a good person, good job!" wrote another.

Perhaps the inspiration for Ms Kaper, Canadian Tara Smith-Atkins carried out a similar good deed in the city of Halifax.  Last month, she brought her eight-year-old daughter and several of her friends out to wrap coats and scarves around street poles for those without shelter.

To read the entire article, click here.

© Wei Sun/Drexel University : Researchers have figured out a way to print 3D blocks of living stem cells.

Gone are the days when 3D printers merely built plastic trinkets — scientists say 3D-printed structures loaded with embryonic stem cells could one day help doctors print out micro-organs for transplant patients.

Embryonic stem cells, obtained from human embryos, can develop into any kind of cell in the body, such as brain tissue, heart cells or bone. This property makes them ideal for use in regenerative medicine — repairing and replacing damaged cells, tissues and organs.

Scientists typically experiment with embryonic stem cells by dosing them with biological cues that guide them toward developing into specific tissue types — a process called differentiation. This process begins with the cells forming spherical masses called embryoid bodies — an activity that mimics the early stages of embryonic development.

Previous research suggested the best way to grow embryonic stem cells is not in flat lab dishes, but in 3D environments that mimic how these cells might develop in human bodies. Recently, scientists developed 3D printers for embryonic stem cells. A 3D printer works by depositing layers of material, just as ordinary printers lay down ink, except it can also lay down flat layers on top of one another to build 3D objects.

Until now, 3D printers for embryonic stem cells just generated flat arrays or simple mounds, called "stalagmites," of cells. Now, researchers say they have, for the first time, developed a way to print 3D structures laden with embryonic stem cells.

"We are able to apply a 3D-printing method to grow embryoid bodies in a controlled manner to produce highly uniform blocks of embryonic stem cells," study co-author Wei Sun, a professor of mechanical engineering at Tsinghua University in Beijing and Drexel University in Philadelphia,told Live Science.

In principle, these blocks could be used like Lego bricks to build tissues "and potentially even micro-organs," Sun added.

To read the entire article, click here.

Aspirin's long held promises are increasingly falling flat. A natural, safer and more effective alternative to this synthetic drug has been known about for at least 15 years!

In a previous article titled "The Evidence Against Aspirin and For Natural Alternatives," we discussed the clear and present danger linked with the use of aspirin as well as several clinically proven alternatives that feature significant side benefits as opposed to aspirin's many known side effects.  Since writing this article, even more evidence has accumulated indicating that aspirin's risks outweigh its benefits. Most notably, a 15-year Dutch study published in the journal Heart found that among 27,939 healthy female health professionals (average age 54) randomized to receive either 100 mg of aspirin every day or a placebo the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding outweighed the benefit of the intervention for colorectal cancer and cardiovascular disease prevention in those under 65 years of age.

Of course, aspirin is not alone as far as dangerous side effects are concerned. The entire non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) category of prescription and over-the-counter drugs is fraught with serious danger. Ibuprofen, for instance, is known to kill thousands each year, and is believed no less dangerous than Merck's COX-2 inhibitor NSAID drug Vioxx which caused between 88,000-140,000 cases of serious heart disease in the five years it was on the market (1999-2004). Tylenol is so profoundly toxic to the liver that contributing writer Dr. Michael Murray recently asked in his Op-Ed piece, "Is it Time for the FDA to Remove Tylenol From the Market?"  Given the dire state of affairs associated with pharmaceutical intervention for chronic pain issues, what can folks do who don't want to kill themselves along with their pain?

Pine Bark Extract (Pycnogenol) Puts Aspirin To Shame

When it comes to aspirin alternatives, one promising contender is pycnogenol, a powerful antioxidant extracted from French maritime pine back, backed by over 40 years of research, the most compelling of which we have aggregated on GreenMedInfo.com here: Pycnogenol Research. Amazingly, you will find research indexed there showing it may have value for over 80 health conditions.

In 1999, a remarkable study published in the journal Thrombotic Research found that pycnogenol was superior (i.e. effective at a lower dosage) to aspirin at inhibiting smoking-induced clotting, without the significant (and potentially life-threatening) increase in bleeding time associated with aspirin use. The abstract is well worth reading in its entirety.

....  pycnogenol, unlike aspirin, did not significantly increase bleeding time. This has profound implications, as aspirin's potent anti-platelet/'blood thinning' properties can also cause life-threatening hemorrhagic events. If this study is accurate and pycnogenol is more effective at decreasing pathologic platelet aggregation at a lower dose without causing the increased bleeding linked to aspirin, then it is clearly a superior natural alternative worthy of far more attention by the conventional medical establishment and research community than it presently receives.

Not Just A Drug Alternative

Pycnogenol, like so many other natural interventions, has a wide range of side benefits that may confer significant advantage when it comes to reducing cardiovascular disease risk. For instance, pycnogenol is also:

• Blood Pressure Reducing/Endothelial Function Enhancer:
  
• Anti-Inflammatory Effects:
  

To read the full article, click here.