Are Smartphones Becoming a Substitute for Thinking?

Alex Pietrowski

Our smartphones are like a wealth of information at our fingertips. They help us find directions to new restaurants, offer information about the places we want to visit, and can instantly answer any question about whatever inquiry fills the mind. But are we getting lazy and avoiding thinking about things that we might already know?

A team of researchers at the University of Waterloo asked just that same question and conducted three studies with a total of 600 participants. The study categorized the subjects by measuring their cognitive style, ranging from intuitive to analytical, and it also evaluated verbal and numerical skills. The study also analyzed the participants’ device usage habits.

ADHD Not a Real Disease, Says Leading Neuroscientist

Alex Pietrowski

One of the world’s leading pediatric neuroscientists, Dr. Bruce D. Perry, M.D., Ph.D, recently stated publicly that Attention Deficit/Hyper-Activity Disorder (ADHD) is not ‘a real disease,’ and warned of the dangers of giving psycho-stimulant medications to children.

Speaking to the Observer, Dr. Perry noted that the disorder known as ADHD should be considered a description of a wide range of symptoms that many children and adults exhibit, most of which are factors that everyone of us displays at some point during our lives.

“It is best thought of as a description. If you look at how you end up with that label, it is remarkable because any one of us at any given time would fit at least a couple of those criteria,” he said.

Massive Bumblebee Die-Off Prompts Temporary Pesticide Ban in Oregon

Alex Pietrowski

In what may be the single largest mass bumblebee die-off on record, some 50,000 plus bees were recently found littering the parking lot of a Target store in Wilsonville, Oregon recently after a landscaping company sprayed surrounding trees with the insecticide Safari. Concerning shoppers and the community, the event also raised significant alarm amongst the Oregon Department of Agriculture, which has now enacted a temporary ban on the pesticide used in this incident, and for an additional 17 other insecticide products containing the chemical dinotefuran.

Dinotefuran, a popular insecticide found in agricultural, professional and household products is an insecticide of the neonicotinoid class, a class of insecticides widely suspected to be the primary cause of the global bee and pollinator die-off we are witnessing today. Neonicotinoids include a number of other insecticides other than dinotefuran, and have for decades been suspected of being especially dangerous to bees:

Monsanto Planting New GM Soybeans in 20 Locations Despite Recent Activism

Alex Pietrowski

The imperative nature of marching this Saturday, May 25th, in the March Against Monsanto couldn’t ever be more stressed than now, with recent news that Monsanto keeps forging ahead with its repugnant plans to poison us all by planting more altered seeds – yet again. Monsanto and other mega-pharmaceutical companies, with the USDA's complicit agreement to keep them afloat with both tax dollars and federal court shenanigans, are already targeting a crop called the ‘Xtend’ soybean to be planted in more than 20 farms across the United States.

This particular strain of frankenfood is chemically altered so that it can withstand a huge shower of the herbicidal stew containing glyphosate and dicama chemicals. Glyphosate causes cancer. Dicama is a known carcinogen and causes all sorts of health issues.

How the Media Prevents Meaningful Discussion About the Environment

Alex Pietrowski

For a normal human being who understands the value of having clean air and water to consume, clean soil to grow food in, and of living in a habitat that can support life, it is frustrating to watch one environmental calamity occur, after another without ever seeing a mainstream, non-politicized conversation about the condition of our natural world. It seems that merely expressing concern over the direction the environment is going is enough to solicit a number of stigmatized labels, such as hippie, liberal, terrorist, downer, debbie-downer, slacker, tree-hugger, climate changer, Al Gore, global warmer, Agenda 21′er, and so on. There is an extreme cultural bias against environmentalism, from many angles. Environmentalism is not a public priority.

What is at the root of this indifference toward the quality of our natural world? We certainly are a society that is highly preoccupied with security, but, for some reason, when it comes to securing a healthy environment, most of us look the other way, or put these concerns well below others.