Author: Daniela

  • New study finds nothing impressive about GM crop yields

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    By Laura Rance in the Winnipeg Free Press: The debate over genetically modified crops has often generated more heat than light. Some opponents claim the stuff is hazardous to our health, which seems unlikely, given that just about anything with vegetable oil or corn in it (and that’s just about everything these days) comes from…

  • Newly found clouds double the amount of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs

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    From Design & Trend, by Jessica Passananti: Researchers at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University studied the influence of cloud behavior on exoplanets far from our solar system. The newly found clouds double the amount of potentially habitable planets orbiting red dwarfs, the most common type of stars in the universe. In the Milky Way…

  • And you thought it was bad here

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    From Ally Bruschi’s article in The Daily Mail: Endless food scandals throughout the past few years have Chinese consumers growing suspicious and weary of their grocery store produce —enough so for more well-off families to begin seeking organic alternatives to their traditional foods. For example, Catherine Ho Wai-man and her family have stopped buying produce from…

  • Distributism and the Internet

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    I’m posting the following article by Daniel McInerny from aleteia, a Catholic publication, in its entirety.  It reflects much of my own thinking.  I’ve only recently learned about distributism,  an economic philosophy that arose as a countervailing force to the laissez faire capitalism and rampant industrialization taking place at the turn of the 20th century.…

  • A Poem For Sunday

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    Originally posted on The Dish: “Mood” by Countee Cullen: I think an impulse stronger than my mind May some day grasp a knife, unloose a vial, Or with a little leaden ball unbind The cords that tie me to the rank and file. My hands grow quarrelsome with bitterness, And darkly bent upon the final…

  • Catholic law and federal law collide over Crimen Sollictationas

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    Hunt Henion in the Examiner brings news of the, “slowly emerging conflict between Catholic law and federal law[that] hit the fan today when Catholic clergy were ordered to refuse to enforce the church law called Crimen Sollicitationas.” “Thousands of Catholic clergy and officials are being issued an Order to Comply with child protection laws this week,…

  • San Francisco leading the way with sustainability development program.

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    San Francisco is, again, ahead of the curve in working with California’s sustainability guidelines to establish a program to reduce water consumption, reduce waste and enhance community-scale energy resources.  Architect News  reports on a new tool called Eco-Districts that will help them get to their goal: To aid in the fulfillment of these goals, the program…

  • Douens and other folklore

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    One of the best explanations of folklore can be found in Alan Dunde’s brief essay “What is Folklore?”  He argues that folklore is constantly being created and recreated to suit new situations. In her article in The Guardian  Angelo Bissessarsingh,  shares how stories of the douen and other characters brought to the islands by the Ibo,…

  • Opposition to GMO’s Growing Around the World – Cont’d.

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    A reader pointed me to an article by Jon Entine,  published by the American Enterprise Institute, that questions the methodology used by Séralini to conclude that rats fed genetically modified corn developed grotesque tumors.  I’ve posted an excerpt from the article below.  You can find the entire article here. The study concluded, controversially, that rats fed corn genetically modified…

  • Water Drops, Daisies and Bumblebees

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    The photo above provides a wonderful demonstration of the physics of light in water drops as well as the attraction of water molecules to plant molecules and to one another. In this case, the liquid drops result from rain and fog. A drop of liquid behaves like a simple lens – just like a camera. Therefore, the refracted image is upside-down when viewed through the drop. Somehow, bees,…