INTERESTING TIMES

Here's the text of a speech given by Richard Heinberg (the peak oil guy) to a set of college grads about entering the world as it exists today----on the downslope of the production curve. His words are oriented at helping them get past the denial that grips their parents, and "make the best of it".

... if you apply the critical thinking skills that you’ve learned here at WPI to an examination of the relevant data, you’ll probably come to the same conclusion as has been reached by the overwhelming majority of scientists who have studied all of these questions in great depth. Indeed, the scientific community is nearly unanimous in assessing that the Earth is warming, and that the only credible explanation for this is rising levels of CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels. That kind of consensus is hard to achieve among scientists except in situations where a conclusion is overwhelmingly supported by evidence.

Women don't want the carved guy walking down the beach. But they want everything else. Many thanks to hausfrauatu for pointing out THIS NY times story about sex research. It centers around researcher Meredith Chivers and her findings. Her study involved monitoring people's arousal while viewing video of various sex acts. Arousal was measured subjectively (self report) and objectively (genital physiology). Then the people's real and reported arousal levels were correlated, along with their reported sexual prefences. The findings were...well....INCREDIBLE. Yet credible. My head is reeling with the implications. Makes me want to go into sexual health...
( text from which I will make my usual notes )

From the last chapter of Deep Survival, here are the actions of a survivor according to Gonzales:
( 12 survival tips )

Homework for week 8
Doctor-Patient Communication
Liz Sutherland, ND, teaching
( here's my homework for tomorrow morning )