Higher Perspective

This should come as no surprise to anyone. According to data from the American Association of Poison Control Centers, analyzed by Pediatrician Dr. Steven Lipshultz, 40% of poison control calls regard the consumption of energy drinks like Red Bull and Monster in children under the age of six years old. The doctor speaks unequivocally about this matter.

Energy drinks have no place in pediatric diets.

Dr. Lipschultz’s findings were presented at this year’s American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions. His report looked at records from October 2010 to September 2013 from 55 poison control centers in the United States. Of the 5,156 calls to poison control centers, 40% involved the accidental consumption of energy drinks by very young children. Dr. Lipscultz believes that the data is an underestimate of the whole scale of the problem.

How did I not hear of this experiment sooner? This is one in a series of rather startling studies conducted at the University of California at Berkeley that finds that wealthier people tend to behave more unethically than people of more modest means. Even when wealth is accumulated by means outside of their control, the wealthy considered themselves to be entitled to their advantages, more so than anyone else would be.

From PBS:

Paul Solman (PBS) : But the simple Darwinian story is if I have more resources than you, I can have more kids than you; my kids will pass on my DNA, which is the resource-hoarding DNA.

Dacher Keltner (Psychologist, UCB): That was sort of an older view of how we evolved as the particular social species we are, but what we’re learning through a lot of new advances in evolutionary biology is that we really had to cooperate to make it as a species.

We had to cooperate in terms of food gathering, defending against predators and so on. And human cultures evolved particular tendencies to reward the generous — to ensure that there weren’t people hoarding resources and that the resources were more equally distributed.

Just because the vacuum of space doesn’t allow for the passage of sound, that doesn’t mean that space isn’t a noisy place. Sound exists in space as electromagnetic vibrations. Through specially designed instruments, we’re able to record the vibrations within the range of human hearing and listen to what the universe is saying.

These recorded sounds are the complex interactions of charged electromagnetic particles from the solar wind, ionosphere, and planetary magnetosphere. These are, in a sense, sounds from heaven; radio waves coming to us from celestial bodies elsewhere. And it’s pretty fucking cool, isn’t it?

For a 24/7 live recording of space sounds, visit: http://www.radio-astronomy.net/

This is such a visually awe-inspiring video. Very cool. The question posed is: what would Nebulae look like if they were totally visible in our night sky?

Truth be told, it’s getting harder and harder to see the night sky. I’m almost 27 years old as of this writing, and it wasn’t until last year that I even saw the milky way galaxy in person, or at least as it looks in photographs. I understood where the term “backbone of the night” came from.

So what would our night sky look like if all of the nebulae were visible? Probably a lot like what the above video depicts. Enjoy.

This clip comes from the BBC Horizon documentary, The Hunt for AI and is absolutely incredible. In it, these two robots learn how to move their own bodies by observing their movements in a mirror. Then, it moves on to the two robots teaching each other their own new, unique language. The scientists featured, from the Neurobotics Research Laboratory, believe that a truly artificial intelligence is one that is allowed to develop on its own, as young children do. So this research project’s focus was to explore how “complex grammatical systems and behaviors can emerge in populations of robotic agents.”

In Madison, Wisconsin, the homeless population has grown by 7% in the last four years, rising to around 3,370. Occupy Madison, frustrated by lack of movement on behalf of city leaders opted to develop their own solution. It’s called Occupy Madison Inc. It’s a nonprofit organization, and their mission is to house the homeless.

Tiny Village, the name of their housing development, has 9 tiny homes, a permanent day resource center, safe places to sleep at night, as well as restrooms, showers, laundry facilities, a community gardening space; basically everything a chronically homeless person would need in order to function within the system. Their ribbon cutting event was November 15th, 2014.

Reincarnation is a believe in several cultures in religions stemming from Asia that after death, our souls might still have lessons to learn so we’re given human vessels again. We may also be reincarnated as other animals.

Dr. Ian Stevenson, a Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Virginia School of Medicine spent 40 years of his career researching reincarnation stories with children. He investigated 3,000 independent stories from children who claimed to have memories of a past life or to know people who were in their alleged past lives. Stevenson says the number of cases are so high that it warranted him studying them, and it exceeded what he and his team were able to do.

There’s some evidence that these children, claiming to be reincarnated, looked similar to the people they claim they were, or they have birth marks in the same places.

This clip is from Morgan Spurlock’s film, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. In it, Sut Jhally explains how diamonds are falsely marketed as being “rare” to both rich and poor people.

Americans exchange diamond rings as part of the engagement process, because in 1938 De Beers decided that they would like us to. Prior to a stunningly successful marketing campaign in 1938, Americans occasionally exchanged engagement rings, but it wasn’t a pervasive occurrence. Not only is the demand for diamonds a marketing invention, but diamonds aren’t actually that rare. Only by carefully restricting the supply has De Beers kept the price of diamonds high.

Countless American dudes will attest that the societal obligation to procure an engagement ring is both stressful and needlessly expensive. But here’s the thing – this obligation only exists because the company that stands to profit from it willed it into existence...

It’s tough not to be disappointed with people sometimes. We’re taught to be so reliant on others for our own lives that when they fall short of our expectations, we end up being pretty unhappy about it. But maybe it’s time to rethink what our expectations are.

Don’t expect people to fit a mold that you’ve made for them.

People are independent. They are who they are, completely independent of the people around them, and that includes you. If someone doesn’t do what you want them to, that’s more your problem than theirs in most cases. So embrace people for who they are. Help them if they need it, but let them be themselves.

Don’t rely on other people for your own well-being.

Look, I know it’s hard, especially when you’re in a relationship with someone, but you need to have a life set up for yourself where you can get by just fine without anyone else helping you along, be it functionally or personally. At the end of the day, you’re the boss of you, and you should rely on yourself for happiness.