Does this replace mom's chicken soup?

Just eat a burger--or maybe not. See this story in yesterday's food section.

Water scarcity is another thing...

...to face India, along with the increasing pressure toward modernization and capitalization of industry. People do want a "standard of living" that is above subsistence, and for the first time this may be available--at a cost.

Read the story.

See the slide show.

A world without pandas...

... if this fellow would have his way. Read the article. What are your feelings?

The most important person of the 20th century...

... according to many, was Norman Borlaug.

Who? TAMU professor and Nobel prize winner Norman Borlaug pioneered the strains of staple crops that now feed literally billions of persons in the poorest regions of the world. He may have saved more lives than were lost in the world wars.

Here is Eric Berger's tribute. He includes some additional links.

Biocentrism

Mr. Berger had this past week an interesting wrap up and interview about the concept of "biocentrism," a theory about the unified perception of reality put forward by physicist Dr. Robert Lanza. The theory, in an oversimplified nutshell,

"is an out-and-out challenge to modern physics, and its inability to reconcile the fundamental forces of nature and make sense of our universe. Lanza believes that is because physicists fail to take consciousness into account as part of their theories. As a result he proposes a new theory, biocentrism, that says the universe cannot exist without life and consciousness."

I posted the following comment to the blog:

Interesting.... Of course, all "explanations" are indeed rational. The possibilities are that there is an objectively real rational structure "out there," that there isn't such a thing and that what science observes is purely the observer's composition, or that there is a single field that includes the observer as well as what is observed. Now this doesn't have to be purely subjective--consciousness itself may well have that necessary and universal "structure" that ties it to the "structure" of what we experience as observed reality. There is a metaphysical question about "the mind of God," or something like that, lurking behind all of this. Science, at its limits, often seems to point in this direction.

An longer abridgment of Dr. Lanza's book is also found here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31393080/.

Syllabus and Course Calendar, Fall 2009

Here's the Syllabus/Course Description:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=df8n9qbt_507f48p7hch

Here's the Assignment Calendar:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=df8n9qbt_245dr8dtmgs

Textbook.

The text for this class is an anthology. Here are the specs:

Environmental Ethics: Readings in Theory and Application
Louis P. Pojman and Paul Pojman
Wadsworth Publishing, 5th Edition, 2007
ISBN-13: 978-0495095033