Some 70,000 years or so ago, modern humans apparently made their pilgrimage out of Africa, eventually colonizing the entire world and becoming, well, us.  At about the same time, Mount Togo in the Philippines in a massive super-volcano eruption, perhaps reducing those modern humans to about 5000 survivors.  Or so the story goes.  Here's possible some real, direct evidence of what was happening at that time.

http://www.pasthorizonspr.com/index.php/archives/07/2014/70000-year-old-african-settlement-unearthed

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70,000 year-old African settlement unearthed

pasthorizonspr.com

During ongoing excavations in northern Sudan, Polish archaeologists have discovered the remains of a settlement estimated to 70,000 years old

 

People who object to Obamacare (I'm not one of them) are often challenged to come up with a better alternative.  I found this as just one alternative.  Judge for yourselves.

Abstract
Obamacare moves American health care in the wrong direction by eroding the doctor–patient relationship, centralizing control, and increasing health costs. True health care reform would empower individuals, with their doctors, to make their own health care decisions free from government interference. Therefore, Obamacare should be stopped and fully repealed. Then Congress and the states should enact patient-centered, market-based reforms that better serve Americans.

http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/10/after-repeal-of-obamacare-moving-to-patient-centered-market-based-health-care

(From Michael Shermer on Facebook):

Psychologists have demonstrated the value of diversity—particularly diversity of viewpoints—for enhancing creativity, discovery, and problem solving. But one key type of viewpoint diversity is lacking in academic psychology in general and social psychology in particular: political diversity. This article reviews the available evidence and finds support for four claims: 1) Academic psychology once had considerable political diversity, but has lost nearly all of it in the last 50 years; 2) This lack of political diversity can undermine the validity of social psychological science via mechanisms such as the embedding of liberal values into research questions and methods, steering researchers away from important but politically unpalatable research topics, and producing conclusions that mischaracterize liberals and conservatives alike; 3) Increased political diversity would improve social psychological science by reducing the impact of bias mechanisms such as confirmation bias, and by empowering dissenting minorities to improve the quality of the majority’s thinking; and 4) The underrepresentation of nonliberals in social psychology is most likely due to a combination of self-selection, hostile climate, and discrimination. We close with recommendations for increasing political diversity in social psychology.

http://journals.cambridge.org/images/fileUpload/documents/Duarte-Haidt_BBS-D-14-00108_preprint.pdf

As a Hymenopteran lover, I've delighted this week to find honey, sweat, and bumble bees in our backyard, cicada killer wasps looking for mates, and especially this bald-faced hornet (they're really wasps) nest hanging from the porch.  What a summer!

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Get it, or get out.  Just kidding.

And my revised edition of the 2'nd Amendment:  "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free nation, the right of the people to self defense by necessary means shall not be denied.  Congress and the states will cooperate to regulate and support such militia and their facilities."

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David Strumfels's photos

 

The free market is not a moral mechanism, and was never seriously promoted as one by its founders. It is simply the best way to get competing/cooperating interests to work best to build the overall economy. But as a moral force, it is as devoid of life as Social Darwinism (or even true Darwinism at that) was, and using it that way just a rationalization for inhumanity. Even the preamble to the US Constitution declares "... to Provide for the Common Welfare ...". Of course, big government is not the preferred way to deal with needy and unfortunate in our society; but if we don't want to go that route we have to come up with better alternatives that will still (probably) involve government to some degree but allow market forces to work where appropriate. To me, I see Obamacare as just one attempt to do exactly that; and I'll back that position up by noting it's similarity to Republican plans (Romenycare in MA?) along the same lines.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/26/bill-maher-big-business-big-government_n_5623418.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000018&ir=Media

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'Big Business IS The New Big Government'

The Huffington Post

OK, I've been touting the coming solar energy revolution as a natural by-product of the computer revolution, in it's post but parallel emergence from materials science/chemistry/physics, both in converting raw solar to electricity and in storage technologies.  And I don't think I'm going to abandon that over one article, especially one that includes the same whopping big logical fallacy all solar-deniers (if I can use that term) make:  the fallacy that proclaims the computer revolution didn't happen because it's too expensive and difficult to keep changing those damned vacuum tubes.  But I've also learned that one ignores economists at one's peril.  So, without further introduction, here is ...

http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21608646-wind-and-solar-power-are-even-more-expensive-commonly-thought-sun-wind-and

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Sun, wind and drain

The Economist

SUBSIDIES for renewable energy are one of the most contested areas of public policy. Billions are spent nursing the infant solar- and wind-power industries in the...