United Nation Report the Worlds current state and its ability to continue sustaining life as we know it.

"The human population of planet Earth is, in effect, maxed out on its credit cards and soon will have problems paying the mortgage. Unless concerted global efforts are made to address these mounting problems, GEO-4 concludes that we shall shortly pass the point of no return."

The authors—388 scientists reviewed by roughly 1,000 of their peers—view the report as "an urgent call for action" and decry the "woefully inadequate" global response to problems such as climate change. "The amount of resources needed to sustain [humanity] exceeds what is available," the report declares.

"The systematic destruction of the earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the economic viability of economies is being challenged," Achim Steiner, UNEP's executive director, said in a statement. "The bill we hand our children may prove impossible to pay."

Can you hear the cries of rationalized hate!

World-renowned geneticist draws fire for claims that Africans are intellectually inferior: Sciam Observations

Nothing like stirring the pot--not to mention selling books--with an incendiary claim, in this case that one race is intellectually superior to another. Dr. Watson, we presume? Bingo. World-renowned geneticist James Watson, 79, who shared the 1962 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his role in helping break the DNA code, is being widely criticized after telling The Sunday Times of London that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours--whereas all the testing says not really." He went on, reports the newspaper, to say that "people who have to deal with black employees find...it is not true" that all humans are equal.

The Independent reports today that Watson is currently on a swing through Britain to publicize his latest book Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science due out next week in which he apparently makes similar such claims. "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," the London newspaper quotes from the upcoming book. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Opinions? Beware the Cyber Communists Plotting Red Revolt...
Update:

• Employer disassociation from the statement
• Scientist Apologizes

As you can see with the Home DNA test kit soon to be out, the last thing humanity needs is to fuel fascism...

Then again, doing an actual study and concluding once and for all, race does not determine intelligence would be very useful! Just as studies point out that race does not determine height... I mean science should not be scared of taboos, in my opinion scientists, or science in general, has a very delicate subject in its hands...

From a comment to the apology article:

When scientists are influenced by the fear of being labeled as racist, politically incorrect, socially inappropriate, or any of a multitude of other labels an often overly sensitive public is poised to slap onto them at first sign of error, they stop being scientists and start being 'yes men' to political correctness. Whatever Watson's intent in making the statements he was quoted as making, the net effect of those statements will be for all scientists to check their scientific results against what they perceive the public wants to hear. To me, this is just a feeding frenzy on scientific opinion at the expense of an open scientific forum. Given Watson's peer group's inclination towards political correctness over scientific pursuit, maybe he should have devoted his life to comedy instead. Obviously his peer group's priority is whether Watson can make them feel good as opposed to Watson's contribution to the mundane, such as genetics.

Underewater Competition.. Wet pixel Images...

When is a small world not so small?

• When we don't accept our differences.
• When we try to break our ties apart.
• When we must absorb all other cultures into our own.
• When we don't realize that 9x6 != 42...

Cheers to national geographic, on this one. (I'll forget the Mexico Fiasco for now... also they corrected the article as it no longer states Mexico as a central american country... ironically enough announcing a geography competition, from a geography named magazine...)

PS: Although religious culture is refreshing; I have a serious distaste for religious preachers...

Running the Numbers

Este post tiene imagenes sobre las estadisticas del consumismo en los Estados Unidos.

Por ejemplo:

Cada pistola en el dibujo representa una muerte debido a las armas de fuego.

Our Imagined Self-Importance (... !~42)

... It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.

– Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994

At least we make beautiful pictures in our attempts to supplant 42 to questions we don't know how to ask yet.

Ya saben!, en la india sobran piezas

En la India estan haciendo trasplante de órganos a precios muy competitivos.

Google Gapminder (argentina & dr life expectancy

Otro link robado del blog de mario:

Suspected terrorist Canadian Software Engineer tortured

"Canada's government said it would pay C$11.5m ($9.8m) to Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer who was detained by American officials and flown to Syria where he was tortured. An inquiry found that Canadian officials had falsely told their American counterparts that Mr Arar was a terrorist. "

Dominican Republic's 21st percentile regional rank in economic freedom.

Con respecto a: este artículo, Juan Matos dice:
"Aún con los datos manipulados llegamos a la posición 100... Imagínate fueran datos reales estuviéramos en la 132"

"Starting a business takes an average of 73 days, compared to the world average of 48 days."

"Customs implementation is burdensome and lacks transparency, especially for importers."

"Corruption and a lack of transparency characterize most of the trade process. Problems involving the enforcement and protection of intellectual property rights add to the cost of trade. Consequently, an additional 20 percent is deducted from the Dominican Republic's trade freedom score to account for these non-tariff barriers."

Freedom from Government - 91.5%
Esto mide que tanto el gobierno participa en el pais... Lo mas alto, lo menos participa.. :/

"The court system is inefficient, and bureaucratic red tape is common."

"Corruption is perceived as significant. The Dominican Republic ranks 85th out of 158 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index for 2005."

Me sorprendio que: Labor freedom. protegemos más al empleaado que la norma.

Does size really matter?

What do you think? Will we kill ourselves before we can see everything else out there?