The Recuperation of the Sensuous is the Rediscovery of the Earth

". . . As we reacquaint ourselves with our breathing bodies, then the perceived world itself begins to shift and transform. When we begin to consciously frequent the wordless dimension of our sensory participations, certain phenomena that have habitually commanded our focus begin to lose their distinctive fascination and to slip toward the background, while hitherto unnoticed or overlooked presences begin to stand forth from the periphery and to engage our awareness. The countless human artifacts with which we are commonly involved--the asphalt roads, chain-link fences, telephone wires, buildings, lightbulbs, ballpoint pens, automobiles, street signs, plastic containers, newspapers, radios, television screens--all begin to exhibit a common style, and so to lose some of their distinctiveness; meanwhile, organic entities--crows, squirrels, the trees and wild weeds that surround our house, humming insects, streambeds, clouds and rainfall--all these begin to display a new vitality, each coaxing the breathing body into a unique dance. Even boulders and rocks seem to speak their own uncanny languages of gesture and shadow, inviting the body and its bones into silent communication. In contact with the native forms of the earth, one's senses are slowly energized and awakened, combining and recombining in ever-shifting patterns. . ." (Abram, p. 63, 1997).

>> ^dag:
I'm curious Doc_M - what about tweaking an existing virus like Ebola, and making it more deadly?


It's still extraordinarily complicated. The world's understanding of what makes certain viruses deadly is limited. Figuring out a single detail that makes a virus more deadly than another similar one is worthy of a paper in a TOP journal for sure. Heck, you might very well get a Nobel Prize if it's a slow year. Making certain viruses more dangerous is not trivial, but it is of course possible. BUT, only a completely insane person would want to do it for any reason other than research. (BTW, people actually DO this to some viruses for research, but the safety regulations and precautions used are pretty serious and safe).

Using a "good" virus, that being one that replicates and spreads well, doesn't work well as a weapon simply because it doesn't do much in a small time frame and it would likely spread globally. Using a really deadly virus such as Ebola wouldn't work well simply because it kills so fast that it can't spread well and is EASILY contained, see Africa... every year. The bottom line is that the world has become such that no virus could ever be used as a weapon simply because you'd either kill no one or everyone, everywhere. So don't worry about viral attacks from anyone. It is just too risky and complicated. Recombinant viruses honestly make better medicine than they do weapons. Don't believe "I am Legend"-style rumors. lol.

Bacteria on the other hand... scary crap.

>> ^charliem:
Batteries get hot.
That heat is lost energy.
Batteries also have a limited life, they are dirty to dispose of, and cost a fortune to produce.
This way is much simpler.
Break water into its constituant parts with excess elec, then recombine them in a fuel cell later to regain that energy.
Simple, cheap, effective, very little waste, efficient....brilliant.


Exactly the answer I was looking for.

Batteries get hot.
That heat is lost energy.
Batteries also have a limited life, they are dirty to dispose of, and cost a fortune to produce.

This way is much simpler.

Break water into its constituant parts with excess elec, then recombine them in a fuel cell later to regain that energy.

Simple, cheap, effective, very little waste, efficient....brilliant.

I went to college twice, failing both times, with different majors every semester. I was a recombinant geneticist, then a philosopher, then a political scientist, then a historian. Now I'm a Wal-Mart employee who brings books about Russian history and Nietzsche to read while my co-workers watch Judge Judy.

...MG, you don't happen to have your rifle handy, do you?

In the intro to the pdf you posted, it refs a study on human cells which agrees with my assertion about exposure mutation.

Well, that was kind of the point of my referencing that particular study, as the basis for using a study on S. cerevisiae was as a setup to establish a baseline by which to compare mutagenicity, carcinogenic response, and other potential to reactions. It references the human cell exposure (notably, melanoma and osteosarcoma cells) study and a few others specifically because it was indirectly questioning the validity of those results, as they study S. cerevisiae's mutagenesis but also its recombinational repair. If you note in the conclusion, Shimizu et. al. suggest that ELF-MF "LF-MF does not injure the basic genetic system in the same manner as ionizing radiation or chemical carcinogen does". It is because of this that they call for further research on yet-more indirect mechanisms for any effects of MF exposure, and also a call for better exclusion of experimental setup issues ("involvement of eddy currents induced in the culture medium could not be precluded"). In fact, I do believe these issues of experimental procedure are very difficult to deal with - going through similar papers, they are a constant concern, especially when it comes to bacteria. This is ultimately a large issue of expanding all disease-related effects from simple organisms to more complex organisms, as complex organisms - in full, not just isolated cells - will ultimately not respond to such delicate, unintentional and untracked variable changes in experimental environment. This is, again, why epidemiological studies of humans will trump small-scale bacterial studies.

Certainly many of the things we take for granted in our lives are many times more dangerous then HV lines, you will get no argument from me on that. While I do see the tendency by many to fixate on a minor risk while ignoring real risks(terrorism vs car accidents for instance), that does not mean that the proper response should be to discount concerns of risk which are based on unexceptional claims, even if we lack conclusive proof.

I see your point, in that in the face of a great risk, minor risks should not be ignored. However, my argument is that in the face of all adequate studies, all evidence points to an either insignificant or non-existent risk.

Due to the complexity of the systems involved the correlation of leukemia to HV lines (as in the 2005 study from Oxford) is very similar to the correlation of global atmospheric temperature to CO2.

To the specific study (Childhood cancer in relation to distance from high voltage power lines in England and Wales: a case-control study):
This study actually is pretty deep and requires a strong analysis not typically afforded it. Of note in the study, is the fact that they control using the Carstairs deprivation index for socioeconomic status statistically, specifically for affluence vs. risk of childhood leukemia. This needs to be considered with the fact that they're studying an association between distance of home address at birth from high voltage power lines. Do you see the issue in the combination of that control and that effect study? The basic control isn't so easily useable because of the number of confounding variables, including numbers of moves vs. birth location (stress factor), parental employment vs. location, etc. (These are only indirectly related to socioeconomic status as countered by Carstairs index, which uses four indicators: population density, owning a car, low social class, and male unemployment.) Then when you consider, within 200m, the analysis found a relative risk of 1.69 (95% confidence interval 1.13 to 2.53), the result becomes not merely questionable but likely variably confounded, something that the paper notes: "There is no accepted biological mechanism to explain the epidemiological results; indeed, the relation may be due to chance or confounding." and "We have no satisfactory explanation for our results in terms of causation by magnetic fields, and the findings are not supported by convincing laboratory data or any accepted biological mechanism." and "We emphasise again the uncertainty about whether this statistical association represents a causal relation.", which altogether amounts to an immense amount of ass-covering.

It is also worth mentioning that assuming "400-420 cases of childhood leukaemia occurring annually, about five would be associated with high voltage power lines" approximately, and childhood leukemia is a pretty rare disease as it is. The amount of money blown on these types of studies would cover the treatment for these patients many times over. Of course, the issue of extended disease results still needs to be dealt with, but from the standpoint of pragmatism....

Overall my concern is more that the HV lines are an anachronism, just as with CO2 spewing cars and power plants, it is not technologically necessary to put up with these things when we have better option which use less energy, and produce less waste, both in physical and EMF terms. I think arguing that it may be a small risk, but it would be better to do away with the tech even if it were not, is more pragmatic then arguing from a complex, and sometimes conflicting, body of data that we should ignore it.

My argument with this sift specifically lies in epidemiological claims, and I take up the debate because of my interest in the topic and my exposure to the issue. I am arguing against claims of increase in disease incidence as caused by EMF exposure from power lines, cell phone towers, etc., something that has not only not been demonstrated but that, if causally linked, is highly unlikely to matter in any reasonable scale of public life. From a scientific/academic perspective, it's worth researching. From a medical perspective, most likely not. From a public health perspective, almost certainly not. And we're being practical here.

Like I said, I have no experience or anything approaching debate-worthy levels of knowledge on the technological necessity or lack thereof of HV lines, something separate from its possibility of causing diseases. If you would like to sift something about the technology of HV lines and its economic feasibility or some such that I could watch and then read up on, I'd be more than happy to look into it.

please get a clue. you are not "extracting" energy from water to run this or any other hydrogen powered car. hydrogen can only be used as dgandhi points out, as an energy STORAGE mechanism as you will always have to input more energy into the process of splitting water into it's constituent gases than you can ever get back out of the process of recombining them into water. you put lots of energy into splitting water into H and O then you GET BACK a portion of that energy by recombining the H with the O (burning it). this is 4th grade science. to anyone who knows how the thing actually works it makes you sound daft to say the car is "running on water" or giving "free energy" just as it would sound daft to say that your current car "runs on CO2" because the plants that decomposed in the ground that turned to oil over millennia originally produced their hydrocarbons by using CO2 in the ancient atmosphere. sorry but this is the sort of thinking that physicist Wolfgang Pauli rightly calls "not even wrong".