A Haunting Final Interview With A Now Deceased Storm Chaser

Tim Samaras and his son died in Friday’s El Reno, Oklahoma tornado.

  

This weekend brought the sad news that Tim Samaras, a high-profile storm chaser, was killed with his son in Friday's twister in El Reno, Oklahoma. For years, Samaras has driven into the heart of tornadoes, equipment in hand, to learn more about them.

Late last month, as tornado season was opening in Oklahoma, Samaras talked to National Geographic about what motivated him to engage in such dangerous work--starting with a boyhood viewing of "The Wizard of Oz." It was our last interview with him, and one of his final interviews before his untimely death.

Samaras, a National Geographic grantee known for getting instruments inside tornadoes to measure pressure and wind speeds, talked about what we still don't know about these devastating storms, why he chases them, and how he, his son, and others cope in close quarters during a storm chase.

Please share your reflections about Samaras and his work in comments.

It sounds like you've gotten pretty close to some hair-raising tornadoes. What is that like?

Being close to a tornado is one of those incredible, fleeting moments that sometimes you have to take a couple of seconds to take in.

For the rest of the story: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/06/130602-tim-samaras-dead-storm-chaser-tornadoes-last-interview-weather/?utm_source=feedburner

Holy War

Inside The Meltdown At America’s Most Conservative, Most Christian Political Consulting Firm.

  

DELAWARE, Ohio — About 30 miles north of Columbus, down the road from a Walmart and across the street from a Walmart-sized Baptist church, a brick-faced Victorian estate stands alone in a meadow of persimmons. The building blends nicely into the landscape, except for two features: the fleet of black Bentleys parked outside, and the entirely unnecessary all-caps red sign over the parking spot closest to the front door:

“RESERVED PARKING FOR REX ELSASS. UNAUTHORIZED VEHICLES TOWED AWAY.”

This is the headquarters of the largest, most combative, and perhaps most controversial band of messaging warriors in Republican politics. Their blandly named company, Strategy Group for Media, has spent more than a decade developing a slashing formula for turning the party’s right-wing rejects into members of Congress. Now there are at least 40 Republicans in Congress who have worked with the Strategy Group, which serves as a campaign and strategy clearing house for the uncompromisingly conservative wing of the congressional caucus that has been at the center of American politics since 2010.

For the rest of the story http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/inside-the-meltdown-at-americas-most-conservative-most-chris

Why Corporations Always Win

The Right to Evade Regulation How corporations hijacked the First Amendment 

Every time you fill a prescription at a drug store like Walgreens, the pharmacy keeps a record of the transaction, noting information such as your name, the drug, the dosage, and the issuing doctor. It’s a routine bit of bookkeeping, and for a long time it raised few eyebrows. 

Then a firm called IMS Health starting buying up the data. Mining pharmacy records, the company assembled profiles of hundreds of thousands of American doctors and millions of individual patients, with names and other identifying details encrypted. IMS Health turned around and sold access to those files to pharmaceutical companies, making it easier for the firms to target (and reward) the physicians most likely to prescribe expensive, brand-name drugs.

Eventually, doctors and state officials caught on to what IMS Health was doing. Where the company saw a business opportunity, they saw a strategy that violated patient privacy and could increase health care costs. Three states—New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont—decided in 2006 and 2007 to ban pharmacies from selling prescription records for commercial purposes. By late 2010, 26 other states were considering similar measures.

For the rest of the story: http://www.newrepublic.com/article/113294/how-corporations-hijacked-first-amendment-evade-regulation

Why Watches are Set to 10:10 in Adverts

Once a fundamental tool, the wrist watch is now an accessory more than necessity.

The ubiquity of cellphones eliminated the need for watches on most people’s wrists. However, smart watches that accompany smartphones may catalyze a revival in wrist watches. Although these new fangled smart watches can emulate the analog hands of a traditional timepiece, they lack verisimilitude.

 

If you’re looking for the real thing, you may notice almost all analog wrist watches are photographed with a time of 10:10. The time doesn’t have any special meaning, it’s just aesthetics. The manufacturer’s logo is typically below 12 o’clock and the hands at 10 and 2 frame the logo proportionally and draw the readers eyes toward the logo itself.

For the rest of the story: http://brokensecrets.com/2013/06/03/why-watches-are-set-to-1010-in-adverts/

The Coming Cool War With China

Someone steals your most sensitive secrets. Then, planning a face-to-face meeting, he says he wants to develop “a new type” of relationship with you. At what point, exactly, would you start thinking he was planning to drink your milkshake? 

Ahead of the first summit meeting between U.S. President Barack Obama and President Xi Jinping of China on June 7, the two nations are on the brink of geopolitical conflict. As its officials acknowledge, China is a classic rising power, poised to challenge U.S. dominance. In historical terms, the sole global superpower never gives up without a fight. 

“China’s peaceful rise” was a useful slogan, while it lasted, for China’s leaders. “America’s peaceful decline” will get no one elected, whether Democrat or Republican. Geopolitics is almost always a zero-sum game. If China can copy or work around U.S. missile defenses, fighter jets and drones, the U.S.’s global position will be eroded -- and the gains will go directly to China. 

For the rest of the story: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-02/the-coming-cool-war-with-china.html

Magnetic north pole is moving

For the rest of the story: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nbh9VI2PL0I

DMT Found in the Pineal Gland of Live Rats

We’re excited to announce the acceptance for publication of a paper documenting the presence of DMT in the pineal glands of live rodents. The paper will appear in the journal Biomedical Chromatography and describes experiments that took place in Dr. Jimo Borjigin’s laboratory at the University of Michigan, where samples were collected. 

These samples were analyzed in Dr. Steven Barker’s laboratory at Louisiana State University, using methods that funding from the Cottonwood Research Foundation helped develop.

The pineal gland has been an object of great interest regarding consciousness for thousands of years, and a pineal source of DMT would help support a role for this enigmatic gland in unusual states of consciousness. Research at the University of Wisconsin has recently demonstrated the presence of the DMT-synthesizing enzyme as well as activity of the gene responsible for the enzyme in pineal (and retina). 

Our new data now establish that the enzyme actively produces DMT in the pineal.

The next step is to determine the presence of DMT in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), the fluid that bathes the brain and pineal. CSF is a possible route for pineal-synthesized DMT to effect changes in brain function. Successfully establishing DMT’s presence in this gland adds another link in the chain between the pineal and consciousness and opens new avenues for research.

For the rest of the story: http://www.cottonwoodresearch.org/dmt-pineal-2013/