Dreams

Dolphins can recognize whistles from old tank mates from over 20 years ago

Dolphins have long impressed people with their sharp minds and humanlike traits, such as calling each other by name, goofing off and even understanding numbers. Now a scientist has found that the mammals can recognize an old friend’s whistle, even after they have been apart for 20 years — the longest social memory ever recorded for a non-human.

In a study released Tuesday, dolphins largely ignored calls from unfamiliar dolphins but responded when an old tank mate’s signature whistle was played back to them. It didn’t matter how much time had passed since the two had last seen each other or whether they had been tank mates for only a few months: The dolphins appeared to remember a familiar whistle.

“The main implications of such findings is that humans are not the only mammals that retain memories of others for long periods,” said Eduardo Mercado III, a psychologist at the State University of New York at Buffalo, who was not involved in the research.

Before the new study, published online in the journal “Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B,” much of what had been known about dolphin memory was anecdotal. This recorded feat of long-term memory puts dolphins in the same field as other highly intelligent creatures, including some monkeys and elephants, both of which have been known to recognize unrelated members of their species after time apart.

Video

[Read Meeri Kim's full story here at Washington Post]

The Arrogance of Fascism ... Nestle CEO: Water Is Not A Human Right, Should Be Privatized

I worked for Nestle' for six years and even them, forty-five years ago, it was always about what Nestle' wanted. Even then, they acted as if national laws did not apply to them.

Is water a free and basic human right, or should all the water on the planet belong to major corporations and be treated as a product? Should the poor who cannot afford to pay these said corporations suffer from starvation due to their lack of financial wealth? According to the former CEO and now Chairman of the largest food product manufacturer in the world, corporations should own every drop of water on the planet — and you’re not getting any unless you pay up.

Watch the video below for yourself:

The way in which this sociopath clearly has zero regard for the human race outside of his own wealth and the development of Nestle, who has been caught funding attacks against GMO labeling, can be witnessed when watching and listening to his talk on the issue. This is a company that actually goes into struggling rural areas and extracts the groundwater for their bottled water products, completely destroying the water supply of the area without any compensation. In fact, they actually make rural areas in the United States foot the bill.

As reported on by Corporate Watch, Nestle and former CEO Peter Brabeck-Letmathe have a long history of disregarding public health and abusing the environment to take part in the profit of an astounding $35 billion in annual profit from water bottle sales alone.

[Read the full story by Anthony Gucciardi at NaturalSociety]

10 worst examples of Christian or Far-Right terrorism

[Salon.com] Conservatives claim that all terrorists are Muslim, but most violent attacks in the US are carried out by white men.

From Fox News to the Weekly Standard, neoconservatives have tried to paint terrorism as a largely or exclusively Islamic phenomenon. Their message of Islamophobia has been repeated many times since the George W. Bush era: Islam is inherently violent, Christianity is inherently peaceful, and there is no such thing as a Christian terrorist or a white male terrorist. But the facts don’t bear that out. Far-right white male radicals and extreme Christianists are every bit as capable of acts of terrorism as radical Islamists, and to pretend that such terrorists don’t exist does the public a huge disservice. Dzhokhar Anzorovich Tsarnaev and the late Tamerlan Anzorovich Tsarnaev (the Chechen brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombing of April 15, 2013) are both considered white and appear to have been motivated in part by radical Islam. And many terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who were neither Muslims nor dark-skinned.

When white males of the far right carry out violent attacks, neocons and Republicans typically describe them as lone-wolf extremists rather than people who are part of terrorist networks or well-organized terrorist movements. Yet many of the terrorist attacks in the United States have been carried out by people who had long histories of networking with other terrorists. In fact, most of the terrorist activity occurring in the United States in recent years has not come from Muslims, but from a combination of radical Christianists, white supremacists and far-right militia groups.


Ten of the worst examples of non-Islamic terrorism, that have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years, are listed in this article by Alex Henderson at Salon.

The GOP: Crazy Like a Fox and Highly Destructive

Dr. Paul Krugman wrote in his NYT blog, The Conscience of a Liberal, that the GOP has basically gone insane ("Chaos Looms"). Ray Pensador gives us an interesting take on this in an article at Daily Kos:

"If they are crazy, they are crazy like a fox.  It's funny that what they are doing (in all the craziness) coincides 100 percent with the agenda of corporatist business cartels, i.e., ALEC.

You see, the U.S. Constitution is kind of a pesky obstacle to the treasonous alliances represented by billionaires, their business cartels, and the politicians on the take (who together make up the American Oligarchy, or Corporatocracy).

Much of the constitutional protections we used to take for granted have already been undermined (or done away with altogether)--with our acquiescence as the result of being manipulated through fear and propaganda.

But as is the case with every tyrannical class in history, today's blood-thirsty, rapaciously greedy tyrants will continue their oppression (and pushing their luck) for as long as we tolerate it.

The looting our the national treasure; the paralysis and dysfunction of government; the imposition of austerity (sequester and all the other non-sense) is all being done by design.


These forces, which represent the proverbial "enemy within," are in the process of tearing down our system of government (a democratic republic based on the tenets of a Bill of Rights/Constitution).

By creating gridlock, and constantly pushing the government to the brink of a shutdown or default, they are acting as some sort of "wrecking ball" against democracy.

They--the GOP--are not crazy; they are actually brilliant in making you think they are crazy.  They are systematically destroying the proper functioning of government, as ordered by their paymasters."

[READ THE FULL STORY HERE AT DAILY KOS]

Is a Neurotic Form of Christianity Destroying America?

“The deconstruction of Christianity is not an attack on the church but a critique of the idols to which it is vulnerable – the literalism and authoritarianism, the sexism and racism, the militarism, and the love of unrestrained capitalism with which the church in its various forms has today and for too long been entangled, any one of which is toxic to the kingdom of God.”

“Strategically, diplomatically, socially, politically, morally, economically, evangelically, in every possible way we are witness today to a low point in American leadership, an ethical, social, political and biblical catastrophe.”

These passages from the book, What Would Jesus Deconstruct: The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church (The Church and Postmodern Culture) by John Caputo, taken out of context, might suggest that religion is the singular cause for the continuing trajectory of a deepening dysfunction in our society. But a twisted popular form of Christianity catalyzes two other more powerful ingredients; predatory capitalism and a government that serves the interests of big money.

These three powerful components work together to drag us down the slope to more and more dysfunction in the name of a more moral society – a moral society based on a set of values that are so misapplied as to become destructive.

In other words, these three components create a moral society that destroys its own villages in order to save them.

[Read the full story by Robert De Filippis here at The Big Slice]

Christian Extremists Being Disgusting

Evangelical-Fundamentalist Christians are often utterly disgusting in their choice of tactics when they are pushing their biblically ungrounded Anti-Choice barrow. They claim to be Christians, but their actions are often far from being Jesus-like. This is one such case and it falls into the "contemptible" category.

 

As Janet Allen reports at AlterNet:

Squeezably Soft Fetus Toys Slipped Into Kids' Candy Bags at North Dakota State Fair

Photo Credit: Sebastian Kaulitzki/Shutterstock.com

North Dakota pro-lifers may have recently lost in federal court their bid to ban abortions at six weeks, ("Unconstitutional," said a federal judge), but that hasn't stopped them from trying everything they can to win the battle against choice.

In a particularly creepy ploy, anti-choicers slipped squishy fetus toys into children's candy bags during a parade a North Dakota State Fair. The doll, called "The Precious One" is manufactured by Heritage House, a pro-life store, and retails for $1.50 apiece, less if you buy them in bulk, which apparently the pro-lifers did, since there were lots of five and six year olds running around squeezing, throwing and playing with their squeezable fetus toys afterwards.

Here was the reaction of one mother who attended the event, according to Jezebel:

Amber Mendez, a mother of three who attended Saturday's parade, was likewise affected by the "Precious Ones" she found in the candy bags her kids got for free during the event. "They're so lifelike. I'm squeezing it. It's fleshy."

Mendez says she's "in the middle" when it comes to abortion, but feels that her rights as a parent were compromised at the parade when her children were handed the fetuses along with informational  pamphlets that included lines like "Week 1: conception; the baby is smaller than a grain of sugar, but the instructions are present for all that this person will ever become."

"My kids can read," she said. "I shouldn't have to explain to five and six-year olds what abortion is at a family event. I doubt these people would be allowed to hand out condoms to little kids. But it's okay to talk to them about abortion without my permission?"

The dolls are designed to brainwash youngsters—pregnant women, too—out of ever terminating an unwanted pregnancy. "Its beautiful detail, softness and weight can really move hearts and change minds," the Heritage House website says. Usually, the fetus toys are given directly to pregnant women and to kids at school demonstrations.