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News Briefs 22-12-2014

Books!

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  1. Antibiotics
    http://www.naturalnews.com/047898_Ebola_treatment_DRACOs_apoptosis.html#

    While we may be facing an antibiotic apocalypse there has been encouraging news on the viral front – so called DRACOS.

    “Scientists from the school’s Lincoln Laboratory basically came up with a method of targeting viruses that destroys infected cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed, similar to how antiviral nutrients function. But here’s the kicker: The discovery was made in 2011, three years before the current Ebola outbreak, though it hasn’t received any media attention whatsoever.”

  2. Interstellar

    And this thing called love. I literally started to sink into my theater chair when I heard the character of Brand played by Anne Hathaway declare with dead seriousness that love is not just a chemical reaction or a genetic drive to continue the species but a physical, tangible force that can transcend space and time and unite two people despite any and all odds including deep, deep space. This is how she knew her lover was still alive on one of the worlds circling that black hole.

    I know love can make people do amazing, crazy, and stupid things, but Nolan really went off into the deep end of the pseudoscientific swimming pool here. This notion about love is the kind of thing one expects from a Lifetime or Hallmark Channel production, not an expensive epic wannabe that continually boasts about how scientific it is – and then immediately dances down the magical mystery tour path. If they had stuck with the melodramatic message that love can drive and unite two people even if they are very far apart in space and time in the metaphorical sense, that would have worked. But then they went the pseudoscience route, which really undermined Nolan’s repeated claims about how science-oriented Interstellar is.

    How dared Nolan suggest something as wishy-washy as ‘love’ could be of importance to science beyond its psychological and reproductive benefits!

    I for one love how Interstellar doesn’t leave the audience indifferent. Either you love it or you hate it. A sign of an art piece with enough strength to pass the test of time IMO.

    1. Out of control materialism
      Out of control materialism and fundamentalism is what we should really be concerned about when it comes to reaching our limitations. Also, I’ve heard this newer critique that fantasy and sci-fi are so mixed that ‘we don’t have good sci-fi anymore.’ Sci-fi usually always has a “pseudoscience” aspect to it by definition, so I don’t know where the criticism comes…well, except for a lack of imagination and dreams.

      1. We don’t need help! [Spoiler Alert]
        The guy’s critique of Interstellar had some valid points, which I’ve even discussed on private conversations with a Fortean colleague who also took issue with some of the movie’s ‘flimsiest’ plot elements –e.g. sending the astronauts to planets near a black hole wouldn’t exactly be the safest place to relocate humanity.

        But what I detected was a similar vein to the argument employed by the critics of the Ancient Astronaut theory, i.e. that expecting an outside intervention to give us a hand in order to avoid extinction is an offense to Man’s powers of inventiveness.

        That reminds me of the way my grandfather taught his kids to swim: By throwing them to the pull expecting them not to drown…

        FWIW I’m also very skeptical of the ‘traditional’ take with the AA theory; but that doesn’t mean there couldn’t be other avenues that outside intelligences might employ in order to guide our journey during times of difficult transition. And what exactly is so wrong about getting a slight nudge in the right direction anyway?

        I dunno. The movie wasn’t perfect by any means, and yet I really appreciated the Nolan’s courage to insert all these difficult elements into their story, and encouraging the audience to wonder about our future in space; while at the same time showing just how hard it’s going to be to leave our solar system and find in the darkness of space another ‘jewel’ like our own planet.

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