Have you ever wondered if reality is unreal? Scientists work on a way to find out

      Good Day World!

 Testing! Testing! Are you really reading this? Are you sitting behind a computer? What world are you from?

Try not to become too alarmed. These are just basic questions that need to be asked. A virtual reality check if you will.

Are we all just pawns in a game of space chess? Players in a cosmic video game? Some scientists got together a while back and asked all of these questions. Then they set out to answer them. The following article will give you something to think about…for real:   

 Photo:A crew member of the Osiris hovercraft is surrounded by monitors in an animated film based on "The Matrix." The "Matrix" film series suggested that our everyday experience is basically a computer simulation. Researchers are now proposing a way to test that way-out hypothesis.Warner Bros.

What if everything — all of us, the world, the universe — was not real? What if everything we are, know and do was really just someone's computer simulation?

The notion that our reality was some kid on a couch in the far future playing with a computer game like a gigantic Sim City, or Civilization, and we are the player's characters, isn't new. But some physicists now think they know of a way to test the concept. Three of them propose to test reality by simulating the simulators.

Martin Savage, professor of physics at the University of Washington, Zohreh Davoudi, one of his graduate students, and Silas Beane of the University of New Hampshire would like to see whether they can find traces of simulation in cosmic rays. The work was uploaded in arXiv, an online archive for drafts of academic research papers.

The notion that reality is something other than we think it is goes far back in philosophy, including Plato and his Parable of the Cave, which claimed reality was merely shadows of real objects on a cave wall. Sixteenth-century philosopher-mathematician René Descartes thought he proved reality with his famous "I think, therefore I am," which proposed that he was real and his thoughts had a reality.

Then, in 2003, a British philosopher, Nick Bostrom of the University of Oxford, published a paper that had the philosophy and computer science departments buzzing.

The Matrix hypothesis
Bostrom suggested three possibilities: "The chances that a species at our current level of development can avoid going extinct before becoming technologically mature is negligibly small," "almost no technologically mature civilizations are interested in running computer simulations of minds like ours,” or we are "almost certainly" a simulation.

All three could be equally possible, he wrote, but if the first two are false, the third must be true. "There will be an astronomically huge number of simulated minds like ours," Bostrom wrote.

His suggestion was that our descendants, far in the future, would have the computer capacity to run simulations that complex, and that there might be millions of simulations, and millions of virtual universes with billions of simulated brains in them.

Bostrom's paper came out four years after the popular film, "The Matrix," in which humans discover they were simulations run by malevolent machines. The popularity of the film possibly contributed to the attention to Bostrom’s paper received at the time, but nothing came of it.

"He put it together in clear terms and came out with probabilities of what is likely and what is not," Savage said. "He crystallized it, at least in my mind."

Looking for anomalies
In the movie and in Savage's proposal, the discovery that reality was virtual came when unexpected errors showed up in life, demonstrating imperfections in the simulation.

Savage and his colleagues assume that any future simulators would use some of the same techniques current scientists use to run simulations, with the same constraints. The future simulators, Savage indicated, would map their universe on a mathematical lattice or grid, consisting of points and lines. This would not be an everyday grid but a "hypercube" consisting of four dimensions, three for space, and one to represent points in time.

A present-day example is lattice quantum chromodynamics, which explores the effects of the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces in the universe, on tiny elementary particles such as quarks and gluons. In this approach, the particles jump from point to point on a grid, without passing through the space between them. The simulations cause time to pass in a similar way, like the frames of film passing through a movie camera, so that the time that passed between frames is not part of the simulation. This style of simulation requires less computer power than treating space and time as a continuum.

Because Savage and his colleague assume that future simulators will use a similar approach, he suggests looking at the behavior of very high-energy cosmic ray particles to see whether there is a grid in the energy as a start.

"You look at the very highest-energy cosmic rays and look for distributions that have symmetry problems, which are not isotropic," or the same in every direction, he said.

"Everything looks like it is on a continuum,” Savage said. "There is no evidence to show that is not the case at the moment. We are looking for something to indicate you don't have a space-time continuum."

Disturbance in the force
That disturbance in the force might be a hint that something in reality is amiss. If the cosmic ray energy levels travel along the grid, like following streets in Manhattan or Salt Lake City, it probably is unlikely to be a simulation; if they unexpectedly travel diagonally, reality may be a computer program.

Jim Kakalios, a physics professor at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the paper, said a test such as the one Savage suggests may not prove anything. If they don't find the signatures, it doesn't mean we are not a simulation; our descendants could have used a different grid. If they do find something it also could mean “that's the way space-time is and we never noticed before,” he said.

Two other questions arise. One is whether it is conceivable that computers powerful enough to simulate our hugely complex universe ever will exist. If so, it likely will be very far in the future.

The second question is linked: Will it ever be possible to simulate human consciousness? After all, we run around thinking and feeling.

"Ultimately, the paper glides over the most interesting point: assume we have infinite computing power and we can create this hypercube," Kakalios said. "They assume [the simulators] would know how to simulate human consciousness."

We are aware of ourselves, he said, aware of our bodies, aware of what is outside of our bodies, he said. Human consciousness is almost indescribably complex.

For generations, science-fiction books — and some science books — have hypothesized inserting our consciousness into computers so that we essentially live forever. In "Caprica," a prequel to the television program "Battlestar Galactica," a girl's consciousness is preserved in a computer — and it becomes the basis for the evil cyborgs.

"We don't understand consciousness,” Kakalios said. "Neuroscience is where physics was before quantum mechanics. It's a more interesting problem than whether you can simulate protons and quarks."

Either way, however, Kakalios said the experiments on cosmic rays are the kinds of projects scientists should be doing, regardless of the simulation issue.

Joel Shurkin is a freelance writer based in Baltimore. He is the author of nine books on science and the history of science, and has taught science journalism at Stanford University, the University of California at Santa Cruz and the University of Alaska at Fairbanks.

This report was originally published Dec. 14 by Inside Science News Service as "What If Reality Was Really Just Sim Universe?"

Time for me to walk on down the road…

What Me Worry? Mexico's Maya face Dec. 21 with ancestral calm

     Good Day World!

 The way I figure it, if the Maya’s are cool with December 21st coming and going then I should be. Not that I ever really believed the world was coming to an end on that day.

It’s been interesting reading all the crazy articles associated with this apocalypse theory. In four more days it’ll no longer be a subject of conversation.

So to recap, for those of you who haven’t been reading all those apocalyptic stories the following article provides some good backround:

Photo:Two Maya priests hold a water blessing ceremony at the Noc Ac cenote — a natural deep deposit of water — in the Mexican town of the same name on Saturday. The ceremony was part of a Maya cultural festival to celebrate the end of a cycle in the Maya Long Count calendar, and the beginning of a new era. Luis Perez  /  AFP - Getty Images

“Amid a worldwide frenzy of advertisers and new-agers preparing for a Maya apocalypse, one group is approaching Dec. 21 with calm and equanimity — the people whose ancestors supposedly made the prediction in the first place.

Mexico's 800,000 Maya Indians are not the sinister, secretive, apocalypse-obsessed race they've been made out to be.

In their heartland on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, the Maya continue their daily lives, industriously pedaling three-wheeled bikes laden with family members and animal fodder down table-flat roads. They tell rhyming off-color jokes at dances, and pull chairs out onto the sidewalk in the evening to chat and enjoy the relative cool after a hot day.

Many still live simply in thatched, oval, mud-and-stick houses designed mostly for natural air conditioning against the oppressive heat of the Yucatan, where they plant corn, harvest oranges and raise pigs.

When asked about the end next week of a major cycle in the 5,125-year Mayan Long Count calendar, a period known as the 13th Baktun, many respond with a healthy dose of homespun Maya philosophy.

"We don't know if the world is going to end," said Liborio Yeh Kinil, a 62-year-old who can usually be found sitting on a chair outside his small grocery store at the corner of the grassy central square of the town of Uh-May in Quintana Roo state. "Remember 2006, and the '6-6-6' (June 6, 2006): A lot of people thought something was going to happen, and nothing happened after all."

Reflecting a world view with roots as old as the nearby Ceiba tree, or Yax-che, the tree of life for the ancient Maya, Yeh Kinil added: "Why get panicky? If something is going to happen, it's going to happen."

Photo: Students learn about the Maya at the Museum of National Identity in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, on Friday. The beginning of a new Maya era on Dec. 21 will be marked with celebrations throughout southern Mexico and Central America. Honduras is one of five countries preparing to observe the date.Orlando Sierra  /  AFP - Getty Images

A chorus of books and movies has sought to link the Maya calendar to rumors of impending disasters ranging from rogue black holes and solar storms to the idea that the Earth's magnetic field could "flip" on that date.

Archaeologists say there is no evidence the Maya ever made any such a prophecy. Indeed, the average Maya probably never used the Long Count calendar, neither today nor at the culture's peak between the year 300 and 600. The long count was reserved for priests and astronomers, while Maya villagers typically measure time as farmers tend to do — by planting seasons and monthly lunar cycles.

Maya priests, or shamans, at the temple of the Talking Crosses in the town of Felipe Carrillo Puerto say they don't know when, or if, the world will end. The church was the focus and last bastion of the 1847-1901 Maya uprising in Mexico and perhaps the most sacred site for average Maya. Its name comes from the conspirators who hid behind the crosses and whispered instructions to incite the revolt.

Maya priest and farmer Petronilo Acevedo Pena says God may punish humanity someday, because people have stopped going to church.

"When people planted their corn fields 50 years ago, everybody from all the towns around would pray" for good harvests, he said. "But when the government started giving out aid, seeds and fertilizer ... what do the people do now? They go to the government to ask for help."

One beer-company billboard near the resort of Tulum proclaims, "2012 isn't the end, it's just the beginning — of the party!"

The Mexico subsidiary of Renault is running "end of the world" promotions with interest-free loans for car sales: "Given that the world is ending, we're ending interest rates!"

Oprah Winfrey's website got into the act by publishing a list of "Apocalypse Dinners." It says: "Whether the world is really ending or whether you're just having a busy week, these six make-ahead meals from cookbook author Lidia Bastianich freeze well and feed many."

The Caribbean coast resort of Xcaret issued "million-dollar reward" certificates for anybody who survives the end of the world. "In case the world ends on Dec. 21, 2012, the beneficiary must be in Xcaret the day after the cataclysmic event with a valid photo ID in order to request payment," the certificate reads. "In case the world comes to an end, the beneficiary will be fully responsible for repopulating the world."

Sandos Hotels and Resorts, a Spanish-owned all-inclusive resort chain, is promoting a "New Era" celebration at its Sandos Caracol hotel in Playa de Carmen, near Tulum. "We invite guests to celebrate a transition to the beginning of what we, and many Mayan leaders and scholars hope will evolve into a new era of environmental sustainability and cultural consciousness," the hotel's website says.

Photo: A man dressed as a Mayan warrior delivers a life certificate for $1 million, to be paid in case the world comes to an end, to tourists posing for a photo at the Xcaret theme park in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, on Saturday. Israel Leal/AP

New Age expectations
Expectations are also running high in New Age circles.

Shantal Carrillo helps her mother, The Venerable Mother Nah-Kin, run the Kinich-Ahau spiritual center in Merida, and hopes to lead hundreds of people in an energy-renewing ceremony at the "dawn of the new era" at the Maya ruins of Uxmal. They hope Uxmal, whose rounded-edge pyramid is unique in the Maya world, will act as an "antenna" for cosmic energy.

"We have performed ceremonies for many years to reactivate the pyramid at Uxmal as an antenna, because it had been unused for many years," said Carrillo, who expects Dec. 21 "to give the world an injection of this energy" by having hundreds of people hold hands at the foot of the pyramid.

It's unclear whether archaeological authorities will allow such ceremonies.

Jose May, of the Merida tourism office, expects all of the city's hotel rooms to be full Dec. 21.

"I'm worried that there are going to be more people than (hotel) rooms," he said. "The people who are coming are basically spiritual, and that could be a problem as well, because those people like to form circles to receive energy, and there is no way to reserve space for that kind of thing at the ruin sites."

Moises Rozanes, who runs the run-down Hostal Zocalo in an old building on Merida's main square, says he once saw a flying saucer and spoke with an extraterrestrial who identified himself as Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec equivalent of the chief Maya god, Kukulkan, the bringer of wisdom.

He "told me the world was going to change, but he didn't say when," Rozanes said, recalling the 1997 encounter. He doesn't know what's going to happen Dec. 21, but is happy his hotel is getting business. "Everything's filling up" as far as bookings for the date, he said.

In all the fervor, Mayas rely on an ancestral calm built of good humor, calmness and the fact that it's too hot to get all worked up about things.

 

"The world is going to end, but we don't know when it will end, nobody ever gave a date," said Acevedo Pena. "They said it would be in 2000, but nothing happened."

Doomsday ads
Still, advertisers are running wild with the doomsday theme.

One beer-company billboard near the resort of Tulum proclaims, "2012 isn't the end, it's just the beginning — of the party!"

The Mexico subsidiary of Renault is running "end of the world" promotions with interest-free loans for car sales: "Given that the world is ending, we're ending interest rates!"

Oprah Winfrey's website got into the act by publishing a list of "Apocalypse Dinners." It says: "Whether the world is really ending or whether you're just having a busy week, these six make-ahead meals from cookbook author Lidia Bastianich freeze well and feed many."

The Caribbean coast resort of Xcaret issued "million-dollar reward" certificates for anybody who survives the end of the world. "In case the world ends on Dec. 21, 2012, the beneficiary must be in Xcaret the day after the cataclysmic event with a valid photo ID in order to request payment," the certificate reads. "In case the world comes to an end, the beneficiary will be fully responsible for repopulating the world."

Sandos Hotels and Resorts, a Spanish-owned all-inclusive resort chain, is promoting a "New Era" celebration at its Sandos Caracol hotel in Playa de Carmen, near Tulum. "We invite guests to celebrate a transition to the beginning of what we, and many Mayan leaders and scholars hope will evolve into a new era of environmental sustainability and cultural consciousness," the hotel's website says.

New Age expectations
Expectations are also running high in New Age circles.

Shantal Carrillo helps her mother, The Venerable Mother Nah-Kin, run the Kinich-Ahau spiritual center in Merida, and hopes to lead hundreds of people in an energy-renewing ceremony at the "dawn of the new era" at the Maya ruins of Uxmal. They hope Uxmal, whose rounded-edge pyramid is unique in the Maya world, will act as an "antenna" for cosmic energy.

"We have performed ceremonies for many years to reactivate the pyramid at Uxmal as an antenna, because it had been unused for many years," said Carrillo, who expects Dec. 21 "to give the world an injection of this energy" by having hundreds of people hold hands at the foot of the pyramid.

It's unclear whether archaeological authorities will allow such ceremonies. Jose May, of the Merida tourism office, expects all of the city's hotel rooms to be full Dec. 21.

"I'm worried that there are going to be more people than (hotel) rooms," he said. "The people who are coming are basically spiritual, and that could be a problem as well, because those people like to form circles to receive energy, and there is no way to reserve space for that kind of thing at the ruin sites."

Moises Rozanes, who runs the run-down Hostal Zocalo in an old building on Merida's main square, says he once saw a flying saucer and spoke with an extraterrestrial who identified himself as Quetzalcoatl, the Aztec equivalent of the chief Maya god, Kukulkan, the bringer of wisdom.

He "told me the world was going to change, but he didn't say when," Rozanes said, recalling the 1997 encounter. He doesn't know what's going to happen Dec. 21, but is happy his hotel is getting business. "Everything's filling up" as far as bookings for the date, he said.

In all the fervor, Mayas rely on an ancestral calm built of good humor, calmness and the fact that it's too hot to get all worked up about things.” (source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

AS IT STANDS: Seasonal greetings, humor, and a holiday miracle

    By Dave Stancliff/For The Times-Standard
    Nine more days until Christmas. Holiday shoppers are desperately racing against time. Long lines twisting through stores like snakes are common. Malls across the country are blare Christmas music in a not so subtle attempt to get people into the spirit of the season.
    Many are totally engaged in the holiday season and take advantage of the craziness it offers. For them, magic is in the air. Snow globes decorate homes decked with boughs of holly and images of Santa Claus in his sleigh or going down chimneys.
   Small children, always optimistic, believe in Santa Claus until someone older tells them differently. Random acts of kindness. Santa Clauses sit in stores for hours, patiently listening to children’s wishes.    
    Funny jokes. Did you hear the one about the judge and the prisoner?
    It was just before Christmas and the judge was in a good mood. He asked the prisoner  in the dock, 'What are you charged with?'
The prisoner replied, 'Doing my Christmas shopping too early.'
'That's no crime', said the judge. 'Just how early were you doing this shopping?'
'Before the shop opened', answered the prisoner.

   Normally, around this time of the year waiting in a long post office line of people with last minute packages to send, is stressful. Still there are funny moments.
    I saw a lady in the Post Office the other day buying stamps for her Christmas cards. The clerk asked her, “What denomination?”
    “Oh good grief! Have we come to this?” she asked. “Well, I guess I’ll take 50 Methodist and 50 Catholic ones.”
    The really cute stories always seem to involve children asking Santa to bring them something for Christmas. I’ve really heard some funny lines. When my three sons were of that age I wish I would have recorded some of their requests. More than one Santa raised his eyes in alarm!
    Here’s a good story I ran across:
    As a little girl climbed onto Santa's lap, Santa asked the usual, "And what would you like for Christmas?"
   The child stared at him open mouthed and horrified for a minute, then gasped: "Didn't you get my E-mail?" Talk about signs of the times.
   ‘Tis the season to be jolly. For many Americans, Christmas is all about the birth of Jesus. Church activities blend seamlessly into the season as celebrations lead up to Christmas Day.
   By the way, do you know why Santa Claus always comes down the chimney?
Answer: Because it soots him! It must be true. When I read the “Night Before Christmas” by Clement Clarke Moore to my grandchildren, their favorite part is when he pops out of that chimney with all those toys!
    Then there are Christmas miracles. Here’s one from last year:
   When 5-year-old Helen Berence Reyes Cardenas released two balloons into the sky on December 2nd from her Auburn, Washington yard, she hoped they would catch a breeze and sail straight to the North Pole. With the balloons, Helen released her silent hopes for a better year for her family. It had been a hard year for all of them.

   Despite the balloons taking a far more southern course than hoped, one of the two balloons with her Christmas list attached would appear to have made its way into Santa’s hands.

In the ranch town of Laytonville, California, Julie Sanders and her son were out on their quad runners when they came across Helen’s now-deflated balloon, and the note. “The fact that she asked for a doll, some pants, boots and nothing materialistic,” said Sanders to ABC News, told her all she needed to know about Helen and her family, over 700 miles away. “I just knew it was a family in need.”
Sanders called the phone number Helen had listed in her note, and discovered the issues leading to the family’s financial hardships. A family friend told her that Laytonville was a mill town, and had recently known hard times.
    The Sanders traveled over 50 miles to the nearest mall, purchased Helen some special outfits and toys to enjoy, and shipped them “from Santa,” just in time for the Reyes family to place them under the Christmas tree. (This story was originally posted by Steve Woods on Technorati, Dec. 5, 2011.)
    As It Stands, Christmas is a time for miracles, like peace and goodwill on earth.   

The longest war: The shooting at a Connecticut school shows, once again, that there’s no end in sight to our lethal way of life

I’ve been as stunned as millions of other people over the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary. I wanted to write something, to purge myself, but I couldn’t. My feelings too jumbled to properly convey. Then I ran across this Op Ed piece by Mr. Shapiro. He said what’s in my head. I’d like to share it with you: 

                         By Walter Shapiro

   “Sometime between the shootings in Columbine in 1999 and at a Tucson supermarket with Gabby Giffords in early 2011, Americans stopped uttering the pieties about “Never again.” Now we are heartsick, but somehow never completely surprised, when we hear the latest gruesome news bulletins from a movie theater in Aurora or a quiet elementary school in Newtown.

   We are a nation of 311 million people and roughly a similar number of guns. (Since there is no central federal registry of firearms and a 100-year-old unlicensed weapon can be lethal, estimates are far from precise.) What we do know for certain is that there are almost as many legal places to buy guns (130,000 registered dealers) as gasoline stations (144,000). Through the end of November, the FBI conducted nearly 17 million background checks of prospective gun owners this year.

   This is the Faustian bargain that comes with being a 21st-century American. We are a nation of stubborn individualism and lethal gun violence. These two characteristics are entwined in our national psyche. And—as much as I weep over the dead children at Sandy Hook Elementary School—I sadly know that nothing will change in my lifetime.

   The last glimmer of hope for effective gun control in America died in 2008 when the Supreme Court (District of Columbia v. Heller) endorsed an expansive view of the right to bear arms. As Justice Antonin Scalia declared in the majority opinion, “The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.”

   It is hard to pin down exactly when Americans made the collective decision that periodic massacres of the innocent are the price that we supposedly pay for our liberties.
   Maybe it dates back to the late19th century when Americans in peaceful communities embraced the myth of the Wild West and the gunslinger. Maybe it partially reflects the tabloid fascination that accompanied the gangster era of the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe it has something to do with the way that movies—that most American of art forms—have successfully turned mass violence into a mass commodity.

   Politics also played a role as well. As Jill Lepore pointed out in a New Yorker article earlier this year, the National Rifle Association (NRA) only embarked on its modern crusade against virtually all gun legislation around 1970. Fully entering the political arena with its endorsement of Ronald Reagan for president in 1980, the NRA emerged as a key player in the conservative coalition that came to dominate the Republican Party.
   It’s hard to remember that for a while in the 1980s and 1990s, a limited form of gun control seemed politically possible. Reagan’s press secretary James Brady, badly wounded in the John Hinckley assassination attempt on Reagan, became a courageous Republican symbol for sensible regulation of the most lethal weaponry.

   But then too many on Capitol Hill (Democrats as well as Republicans) grew fearful in the face of the frenzied opposition from the NRA. And following the 2008 Heller decision, it seemed the height of folly for legislators to take on gun control since the Supreme Court had so narrowed the framework for permissible regulation. As a result, even though the Aurora shootings took place in a swing state (Colorado) in an election year, Obama and the Democrats at the time never even raised the possibility of new federal legislation.

   This should not be portrayed in cartoonish terms as a story of the white hats (liberals with a visceral hatred of guns) versus the black hats (hunters and other Americans who enjoy owning firearms). There was an element of cultural superiority to the urban liberal disdain for gun ownership, just as there was a self-destructive stubbornness to conservative opposition to all forms of regulation.

   The result is an America that no sane person of any political persuasion could have possibly wished for. Who in his right mind wants to live in a country where maybe twice a year a crazed individual guns down dozens of people in schools and theaters? There is no plausible remedy since we are neither going to disarm   Americans nor are we going to pass out guns to elementary school teachers as a just-in-case precaution.
   All we can do is mourn and mourn again. And think of the young children who died only because they went to school giggling over silly things and dreaming of recess. Such is the American way of life and, sadly, death.”

Contemplating Navels: You may be surprised by what's living in inside yours

         Good Day World!

I’m feeling contemplative today and am looking inward…at my navel.

Not in the Zen-like sense however. More along the lines of curiosity. I was stunned, but not entirely surprised to learn our belly buttons are the repository for lots of bacteria. Like 2,368 types according to the researchers in the following article.

So the next time you think about picking you belly-button pause and consider all the bacteria you’re going to upset. Oh the humanity!

“What's inside your belly button? Probably dirt and sweat; possibly some lint, and perhaps even a piercing.

But according to new research, which asked 66 men and women to swab their navels with a sterile Q-tip, the skin in study participants' belly buttons also contained an average of 67 different species of bacteria.

The study, published online in the journal PLoS ONE, was done as part of the Belly Button Biodiversity project.

Why belly buttons? "It was a fun way to reach out to the public and teach them about the ecology and evolution of everyday life," says Rob Dunn, PhD, an associate professor of biology at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who led the study. In other words, the navel is a novel, attention-getting device to study science.

He says the belly button is a fun habitat filled with living organisms that we don't know much about. It's less exposed and gets washed less often than other areas of skin, so the bacterial community in the umbilicus is less disturbed.

Researchers cultured the bacteria from people's navels, and participants could view online photos of the bacterial colonies found living in their belly button. The experimenters also isolated DNA from the sample to identify the exact bacterial species.

In all, they found 2,368 different species of bacteria, which is a heck of a lot of biological diversity.

"We got many more species of bacteria than we expected," says Dunn. But most of those bacterial species were rare ones found in just a few people's belly buttons.

Only about 8 bacterial types occurred in more than 70% of all the people screened.

Those common kinds included species such as Staphylococci, which Dunn says is like your skin's standing army defending it from bad germs. Other frequent microbes were a species of Bacillus, a type that gives stinky feet their odor and may be protecting the body from fungi, and Micrococcus, a hardy bacteria found deep in the navel that can survive without oxygen.

The more common species of bacteria seem to be very predictable, Dunn explains. "They were more frequent and abundant on more people, and more common than we expected," he points out.

Dunn suggests that if scientists can get a handle on those common ones, they will know a lot more about what's going on with skin bacteria. For example, they might understand which ones are really good for the skin and which ones are bad. Or how the bacteria interact with one another or with the immune system.

Two samples contained an extremely rare type of archaea, a single-cell organism never previously found on human skin. One of these samples came from a man who self-reported that he had not bathed or showered for several years -- yikes!

Researchers also collected information from study participants on their age, gender, ethnicity, where they grew up, if they are pet owners (who may get more bacteria on their skin if their pooch or cat frequently lick them), and even if their belly button was an innie or an outie. So far, none of this data has been linked to the types of bacterial species found in someone's umbilicus.

Dunn said his research team will continue to study belly button bacteria and have collected more than 500 samples. But they have also started to look into the microbial diversity of underarms, and they are currently recruiting people interested in sampling the microbial communities found in their homes.” (Source)

Time for me to walk on down the road…

Crap-accino Coffee…good to the last droppings

GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Thailand -- In the lush hills of northern Thailand, a herd of 20 elephants is helping to excrete some of the world's most expensive coffee.

Trumpeted as earthy in flavor and smooth on the palate, the exotic new brew is made from beans eaten by Thai elephants and plucked a day later from their dung. A gut reaction inside the elephant creates what its founder calls the coffee's unique taste.

Stomach turning or oddly alluring, this is not just one of the world's most unusual specialty coffees. At $1,100 per kilogram ($500 per pound), it's also among the world's priciest.

For now, only the wealthy or well-traveled have access to the cuppa, which is called Black Ivory Coffee. It was launched last month at a few luxury hotels in remote corners of the world — first in northern Thailand, then the Maldives and now Abu Dhabi — with the price tag of about $50 a serving.

The Associated Press traveled to the coffee's production site in the Golden Triangle, an area historically known for producing drugs more potent than coffee, to see the jumbo baristas at work. And to sip the finished product from a dainty demi-tasse.

In the misty mountains where Thailand meets Laos and Myanmar, the coffee's creator cites biology and scientific research to answer the basic question: Why elephants?

"When an elephant eats coffee, its stomach acid breaks down the protein found in coffee, which is a key factor in bitterness," said Blake Dinkin, who has spent $300,000 developing the coffee. "You end up with a cup that's very smooth without the bitterness of regular coffee."

The result is similar in civet coffee, or Kopi Luwak, another exorbitantly expensive variety extracted from the excrement of the weasel-like civet. But the elephants' massive stomach provides a bonus.

Think of the elephant as the animal kingdom's equivalent of a slow cooker. It takes between 15-30 hours to digest the beans, which stew together with bananas, sugar cane and other ingredients in the elephant's vegetarian diet to infuse unique earthy and fruity flavors, said the 42-year-old Canadian, who has a background in civet coffee.

"My theory is that a natural fermentation process takes place in the elephant's gut," said Dinkin. "That fermentation imparts flavors you wouldn't get from other coffees."

At the jungle retreat that is home to the herd, conservationists were initially skeptical about the idea.

"My initial thought was about caffeine — won't the elephants get wired on it or addicted to coffee?" said John Roberts, director of elephants at the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation, a refuge for rescued elephants. It now earns 8 percent of the coffee's total sales, which go toward the herd's healthcare. "As far as we can tell there is definitely no harm to the elephants."

Before presenting his proposal to the foundation, Dinkin said he worked with a Canadian-based veterinarian that ran blood tests on zoo elephants showing they don't absorb any caffeine from eating raw coffee cherries.

"I thought it was well worth a try because we're looking for anything that can help elephants to make a living," said Roberts, who estimates the cost of keeping each elephant is about $1,000 a month.

As for the coffee's inflated price, Dinkin half-joked that elephants are highly inefficient workers. It takes 33 kilograms (72 pounds) of raw coffee cherries to produce 1 kilogram of (2 pounds) Black Ivory coffee. The majority of beans get chewed up, broken or lost in tall grass after being excreted.

And, his artisinal process is labor intensive. He uses pure Arabica beans hand-picked by hill-tribe women from a small mountain estate. Once the elephants do their business, the wives of elephant mahouts collect the dung, break it open and pick out the coffee. After a thorough washing, the coffee cherries are processed to extract the beans, which are then brought to a gourmet roaster in Bangkok.

Inevitably, the elephant coffee has become the butt of jokes. Dinkin shared his favorites: Crap-accino. Good to the last dropping. Elephant poop coffee.

As far away as Hollywood, even Jay Leno has taken cracks.

"Here's my question," Leno quipped recently. "Who is the first person that saw a bunch of coffee beans and a pile of elephant dung and said, "You know, if I ground those up and drank it, I'll bet that would be delicious."

Jokes aside, people are drinking it. Black Ivory's maiden batch of 70 kilograms (150 pounds) has sold out. Dinkin hopes to crank out six times that amount in 2013, catering to a customer he sees as relatively affluent, open-minded and adventurous with a desire to tell a good story.

For now, the only place to get it is a few Anantara luxury resorts, including one at the Golden Triangle beside the elephant foundation.

At sunset one recent evening in the hotel's hilltop bar, an American couple sampled the brew. They said it surpassed their expectations.

"I thought it would be repulsive," said Ryan Nelson, 31, of Tampa, Florida. "But I loved it. It was something different. There's definitely something wild about it that I can't put a name on."

His wife Asleigh, a biologist and coffee lover, called it a "fantastic product for an eco-conscious consumer," since the coffee helps fund elephant conservation.

But how does it taste?

"Very interesting," she said, choosing her words carefully. "Very novel."

"I don't think I could afford it every day on my zookeeper's salary," she said. "But I'm certainly enjoying it sitting here overlooking the elephants, on vacation." (Source)

Collector pays $1.2 million for rare posters, including 'Metropolis'

A film memorabilia collector paid $1.2 million for nine rare and early film posters, including the world's highest-valued poster of the 1927 film "Metropolis," in a bankruptcy auction in Los Angeles on Thursday, the trustee in the bankruptcy case said.

Ralph DeLuca, who owns New Jersey-based film memorabilia company Movie Archives Inc, won the bidding against three others in the court auction, said trustee John J. Menchaca.

Bidding for the lot of posters started at $700,000. DeLuca beat out memorabilia powerhouse Heritage Auctions.The "Metropolis" poster, the crown jewel of the collection, was purchased by California collector Kenneth Schachter for a record $690,000 in a 2005 private sale. But he was forced to sell the poster along with eight others after declaring bankruptcy.

The poster, one of only four known surviving copies, was illustrated by German Heinz Schulz-Neudamm, who depicted the film's dystopian future with towering, faceless skyscrapers and jagged script.

One copy is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, which confers the poster's value as art, DeLuca said.

"It's 'The Scream,' the 'Guernica' of film posters," DeLuca said of the modernist masterpieces painted by Edvard Munch and Pablo Picasso, respectively. "It's literally the 'Mona Lisa.'"  (source)

Don’t Worry About it! Why NASA is saying 'we told you so' about doomsday hype ... a week early

          Good Day World!

Good news for the holidays. The world isn’t going to end next week. I thought that would get you in the spirit of the season. For those who paid any attention, Mexican researchers debunked the Mayan doomsday calendar thing last Spring.

Researchers got together, and based upon additional information on the most recent Mayan dig, realized that the Mayan calendar did not have an end date. Just an end to certain periods of time.

Anyway, there’s still a lot of folks that are sure Dec.21st is going to be the last day for mankind. And women too. These folks are gathering in various parts of the world for reasons that you and I would never understand, in anticipation of the big moment when… well, I’m not sure how they think it’s going to go down - the world suddenly ends. Everything stops. Or disappears. Or something really bad happens.

Not to worry. NASA has got your back: 

“NASA's latest video debunking doomsday hype comes from the future — to be precise, from Dec. 22, one day after the expected peak for worries that the end of an ancient Maya calendar cycle will signal the end of the world as well. Some might think that the video, titled "The World Didn't End Yesterday," was prematurely released. But it wasn't: The advance word about the non-apocalypse is a key part of the space agency's plan.

"The teaser for the video explains everything: 'NASA is so confident that the world is not coming to an end on Dec. 21, that they have already released a video for the day after,'" Tony Phillips, the writer and editor behind the NASA Science website as well as SpaceWeather.com, told NBC News in an email.

Phillips says the "day after" angle was his idea.

"I felt it was a lighter and more creative way to approach the topic than some of the other treatments we've seen," he wrote. "Some people have been confused by it, but not all. The unorthodox approach is definitely a conversation-starter, which was our goal all along."

Bashing the bunkum
As the 12-21-12 date approaches, NASA has been taking the lead in telling people that the connection between the Maya calendar and doomsday fears is pure bunkum. By some accounts, a grand 5,125-year cycle comes to an end on Dec. 21, but this year, archaeologists found that the Maya calendar counting system goes beyond 2012, just as our own calendar recycles itself after Dec. 31.

For what it's worth, there's even some question whether Dec. 21 is the right date for the Maya calendar turnover.Along the way, the Maya hype has gotten mixed up with other end-of-the-world memes, ranging from monster solar storms to the onset of a threatening Planet X. There's a germ of truth behind some of the memes. For example, the sun really is heading toward the peak of its 11-year activity cycle, but solar maximum won't cause the end of the world.

In fact, Phillips has said the upcoming solar max could be"the weakest of the Space Age."Meanwhile, our planet is indeed heading toward a rough alignment with the sun and the galactic center on Dec. 21 — but that alignment happens every year at this time, due to the winter solstice.

NASA has been spending a lot of time lately separating the scientific fact from the scary fiction. Last month, the space agency put together a Web page that addresses the frequently asked questions about the 2012 hype, with links to even more information about topics ranging from polar shifts to supernovae and super volcanoes.

This may sound like overkill, but it's not: Earlier this year, an international opinion survey conducted by Ipsos for Reuters found that 14 percent of the respondents believe the world will come to an end during their lifetime — and 10 percent said they were worried that the Maya calendar change-over would mark the end of the world.

What to tell your kids
All this doomsday hype can be particularly troubling for kids, who tend to look to the grown-ups for a reality check. Do your children need some reassurance? These tips from Kids.gov, the U.S. government's Web portal for the younger set, could come in handy:

• Take their fears seriously. Dismissing a fear with a quick "don't be silly comment" or brushing it aside by telling them not to worry is not going to help. If your children express a fear, take time to sit down and discuss it. This sends the message that you are really listening and that your kids can always come to you and they will be taken seriously.
• Educate yourself about the topic of their fears. This allows you to speak confidently about the subject and give you the facts when discussing a rumor.
• Help your child research the rumor. If your child heard the rumor at school or saw something scary on the Internet, sit down with him at the computer and help him to conduct his own research. Discuss the importance of finding credible sources for information and guide him to legitimate, authoritative resources.
• Take the fear off their plate. For younger children, sit down to discuss the child's fear and then tell them, "OK, from now on I will worry about this for you. You don’t have to worry about this anymore. I’ll look into it and I will let you know what I find out." Make sure to check back with your child once you have researched the topic. Anticipate any questions he may have and plan your responses.

Do you still have concerns about Dec. 21? Are you hearing the Maya hype from your friends? How are you handling all this? Feel free to weigh in with your comments below, and check back next week for our continuing coverage of the doomsday buzz. In the meantime, review our coverage of last year's Rapture rigmarole to get an advance look at how this is all likely to go down.” (Source)

More about 2012:

• Stressed by storms? Don't panic
• Countdown to a non-doomsday
• 2012 and the Maya: What were they thinking?
• Serbian mountain draws the doomsday crowd
• Video: End of the world? Head to France

Time for me to walk on down the road…

It Just Gets Worse Folks: Poop-Contaminated, Mechanically Tenderized Beef in a Store Near You!

            Good Day World!
It’s becoming easier every day for me to understand why my sister Linda became a vegetarian. We both grew up loving hamburgers and steaks. Everyone we knew ate meat. There were no stories about poop in our meat. Now, after reading the following article with disgust and a touch of loathing, I’m questioning myself if I ought to follow in Linda’s footsteps?
I’m getting real tired reading about bad things consistently showing up in our food chain – in particular our meat supply. I’m just going to have to be more careful where I get my meat at, and where I go out to eat. I know. There’s no real safeguard unless I just quit eating meat.
It goes against everything I’ve ever known/eaten to give up cold turkey (pun intended) and become the Veggie Man. What next? My wife’s apple pie? Oh well, I’m passing on this disgusting information because I think you should be aware there’s a good chance you ate shit lately! 
“Why is a rare steak and its barely warm center safe to eat? Bacteria like E. coli live only on the meat's surface, so they're easily dispatched with a sizzle in the frying pan—that is, unless your steak has been poked with dozens of tiny little blades or needles that pushed bacteria deep into the meat.
The process is called mechanical tenderization, and more than 90 percent of beef producers do it. The blades cut throughmuscle fibers and connective tissue to make the beef less tough. (Dry aging a steak does the same thing through a chemical process, but it takes a lot longer.)
In the past decade or so, mechanically tenderized steaks have been responsible for at least eight recalls and sickened 100 people. A year-long investigation by the Kansas City Starreveals just how pervasive and unregulated this process is.
Food safety advocates want mechnically tenderized meat labeled so restaurants and home cooks know to cook their beef to higher temperatures. It's the same logic behind thehealth department recommendation that ground beef be cooked hotter (160 F) than intact cuts (145 F). Even that, however, may not be enough. A study published in the Journal of Food Protection last year found surviving bacteria that hang out in "cold spots" on mechnically tenderized steaks cooked to an internal temperature of 160 F.
Lack of labeling is just one example of the greater problem of lax oversight at meat plants. As the Star reports, the federal government's meat inspection program, called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points or HACCP, has been sarcastically referred to as "Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray" or "Hardly Anyone Comprehends Current Policy." Meat producers, rather than the government, are responsible for implementing HACCP.
When federal investigators did inspect meat plants, they found plenty of the source for E. colion beef: poop. Inspection reports obtained by the Star through FOIA requests included hundreds of references to feces. Choice quotes include "massive fecal contamination" and "a piece of trimmed fat approximately 14 inches long with feces the length of it."
he Star crunched the numbers and found that bigger meat plants had higher rates of positiveE. coli tests. Big meat factories, which mix beef from many different sources, also spread contamination wider and make tracing the source of outbreaks more difficult. That's of little help to people who became sick or even died from eating mechnically tenderized beef.”(Source)
Read more of the investigation at the Kansas City Star.
Time for me to walk on down the road…

‘Tis the Season! Joy! Joy! Blaring TV ads soon to be history!

The day has almost arrived! I want to break out dancing like Snoopy from Peanuts fame! Oh happy day! After all of these years of TV commercials louder than a nuclear bomb in your house, legislation has been passed to end the practice of ratcheting up the volume during show breaks.

Starting tomorrow, we can thank the so-called “Calm Bill” that Congress passed (in itself a miracle) forcing the FCC to finally take some action over it’s out-of-control, ear-bleeding, volume increase when commercials came on. The following article explains how this wonderful moment has come to pass:

“TV fans, you're about to get a break from your commercial break.

Shouting TV ads are soon to become a thing of the past as a new law goes into effect Thursday at midnight mandating that the volume of commercials has to be within a range of 2 decibels (db) more or less than the programming around them.

Joe Addalia, director of technology projects for Hearst Television, was in charge of figuring out the right technology to make 31 transmitters compliant with the new regulations. He told TODAY that 2 db was "the difference between viewers reaching for the remote and not." TV stations want to encourage watchers to leave the remote alone, he said, "because right next to the volume button is the channel button."

Commercials are often so loud because the only real limit on programming volumes is the one set by stations so that the sound levels don't damage their equipment. That level, however, represents a peak sound meant to accommodate for when something like a gunshot or explosion goes off during a show. Advertising content creators routinely crank the sound of their ads to just shy of that peak level, so the entire commercial is playing at the equivalent of a 30-second bomb blast.

Joel Kelsey, legislative director for the media advocacy group Free Press, previously testified in Congress about the need for volume regulation on commercials. Since nearly the beginning of television itself, loud commercials "have consistently been one of the issues consumers are most energized to write the FCC about. They don't like being screamed at every time the program breaks to ," Kelsey told TODAY.

However, it took an act of Congress, the "Commercial Advertisement Loudness Mitigation Act," or CALM Act, to prod the FCC into the necessary action. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate.

While station operators across the country have been busy implementing new volume-limiting controls, many viewers already have technology in their TV sets to dampen the auditory enthusiasm of "Crazy Carl's Car Shack" and "Head-On, DIRECTLY TO THE FOREHEAD!"

In a TV set's audio control settings, there may be a selection for "Automatic Volume control" or "Auto Volume" that once selected automatically smooths out the peaks and valleys in the volume. If you don't have the feature built in, you can purchase an external device such as this Audiovox Terk VR1 Automatic TV Volume Controller, found on Amazon for $21.99.

It's worth mentioning what tools consumers have at their hands, besides the mute button, because with so many moving pieces involved, you can be sure that some loud ads will get through. The FCC encourages viewers to report any rogue ads to 1-888-TELL-FCC (1-888-225-5322).” (Source)

For more information: FCC Q&A on the CALM Act