What is in our food and how will it change us?

For some time now I have been a fan of Kim Harrison and her Dead Witch Walking series with Rachel Morgan. I have enjoyed how her characters have evolved, and her books are interesting in an alternate universe type of way. I love the mix of mythological characters that are all based in history and fairytales. What I find very interesting is the concept that humanity became more interested in chemical and biological science instead of space and machine weapons in this reality. And yet they still manage to almost kill themselves off.

What makes this so interesting is that in the last ten to twenty years we have started investing a lot more into chemical and biological research. The fact that we are cloning and changing the biological makeup of our food falls right into her stories. The idea is that someone created a weapon based on biological science that made it out of the research lab to make changes in a genetically altered strain of tomato. It causes a change that almost destroyed the human race. That is something we can actually do today, be it by human error or by design. The very fact that we are making changes in our food has already made changes in us, the people who eat it. It is true, you are what you eat.

If there is a cow that produces unusual large amounts of milk we don’t just breed to keep that trait anymore, we clone the cow. There are cows that have been genetically altered to produce more milk. Then we feed our chickens growth hormones to speed up their development so they can be sold sooner. Um, we are eating those hormones when we eat the chicken. Then we have the changes in our vegetables and fruits. They are changed to grow faster and larger, and sometimes changed so far from the original source that it becomes a new strain. This can be seen in a lot of grains, which is used to feed animals and us. It is scary when you think about this. What are all these changes in genetics and hormones doing to us?

I used to think people buying organic were just funny, now I think they have the right idea. The problem is that it is too expensive for the average family. So now we have girls starting the change to womanhood before they are even teenagers. There are girls out there who are 10 years old having menstrual cycles and accelerated development. They look like they are 18 not 10. We have children growing exceedingly fast, and taller then any other time in history. Now I do know that as adults we are getting fatter, and the same hormones and chemicals that are used to grow our food can cause this in some part. A fat pig is a good pig for market, not so good when we eat it with the hormones that caused it to get so fat. Don’t get me wrong; the side of fries and large pop with our ham sandwich does not help any. But you get the idea.

How long before something mutates and becomes harmful to us? Or the changes we have made to our foods changes us?

A possible step to segregation in Toronto’s schools

I cannot believe what I just saw on the news tonight. The Toronto school board (or one of them) is looking into having special schools and programs for black students. I understand that the idea is to try to meet the needs of black students, as there is a high drop out rate. However great the intention they have this is not a good idea. This is the first step to segregation. Special schools and programs based on skin colour no matter what the intentions are is not the right direction to go. Programs should be based on the students needs not their skin colour.

This is going open a big can of worms and I will be very surprised if they follow threw on this proposal. There are a few big problems I can see: one is that a non black student is going to be upset that they don’t get the extra help if they need it based on their skin colour. Also what about mix race? Because they have a black person in their family line does that mean they can go to this school or not because they have a non-black person in their family line? Does this mean other groups will start having special schools and programs? They did say that any one could go to the school but that it would be designed for the needs of the black students. Once this starts then you need to meet every groups needs, you cannot have a school designed to meet just the needs of one segment of the school population in this day and age. How are the students going to feel about being in a special program or school? Every one knows that in school “special” has a very negative connotation.

I think that they need to look at it not in terms of skin colour but the geographical location of the schools. There should be programs and schools available to try and help all the students stay in school in that geographical area. The higher the drop out rate in the area the more help available to the schools in this area. I believe that the idea to help students is on right track, but it must not be based on the colour of ones skin but the needs of the individual student.

Here is a link to a news article School board to discuss black-focused schools

Biggest black hole in the cosmos discovered

The most massive known black hole in the universe has been discovered, weighing in with the mass of 18 billion Suns. Observing the orbit of a smaller black hole around this monster has allowed astronomers to test Einstein's theory of general relativity with stronger gravitational fields than ever before.

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The Top 10 real life Star Trek Inventions!!!

I always knew that some of our new technology was inspired by Sci-fi books and shows. Here are some technology inspired by Star Trek that is part of our lives now or will soon be. In the past few months a number of technologies and products that invoke the Star Trek name have been rolled out.

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Are You Ready For Cars Driving Themselves?

Cars that drive and even park themselves could be ready for the road within a decade, GM executives say. But such cars would also have to navigate such obstacles as government regulations, liability laws, and the desire of drivers to keep control.

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8 Unconventional Forms of Transport

Some pretty, cool, inovative and somewhat odd forms of transport. Some of these are really cool looking.

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Snow eating Robot and other new technology on MobuzzTV

Mexican BandAid Surveillance at the Korea Expo

This video is about: Tiny cameras will monitor your in-flight behavior, Viacom to provide video for bloggers, Mexican drug gangs big fans of YouTube, Crazy cool nanotech bandaids, Yuki Taro eats snow and poops ice, a visit to the Korea Expo in Madrid



This is actually interesting to watch. I found this video looking for information on the Yuki-taro autonomous snowplough robot. Research and Development information about the Yuki-taro autonomous snowplough robot can be found HERE. I think that this snow removal robot is a great idea. It takes snow of the ground, and turns it into blocks of snow/ice that can be easily stacked and then removed. Every year people die as a result of shovelling snow. This looks like this snowplough robot could be a big help not just for individuals, but that a city could make great use of them. The labour cost and fuel cost goes up every year. Using these autonomous snowplough robots would be a great way to clear the sidewalks, driveways and parking lots. A larger version could help with side roads, but I think that main roads and highways will still need the big snowploughs for a long time to come.



I wonder how well it works on snow/ice. I always find patches of ice from where we walked and compressed the snow. It would be interesting to know if it can deal with that or just fresh snow. Will it have some way to deal with ice from melting snow? We sometimes have a snow/rain mix in the same day and this will form snow with a hard ice shell or a mix of heavy wet snow, and sometimes layers of snow with ice. I guess we will have to wait until the snowplough is available for the general market to see what it can actually deal with.