Welcome to Trash Island.
Population Zero.
No life lives here,
Just plastic bags,
Disfigured Barbies,
Melting storybook heroes.

Souls plunge upward,
Toward light and air.
Blocked by leeching death,
And wayward cares.

The stench of rotting goods
Discarded,
Pays homage to what once was.

Since first eyes open,
First impressions burn.
The “more” becomes obsession,
While social status language learned.

This island represents
The slaughter of the land,
The sand, sea and trees,
Of forcing third world children’s hands
Slaving away laboriously.
 
Blood tipped fingernails fray and toil.
Whiplashed backsides for our spoils.
She sold her soul to buy a reflection,
While tear drops drown the cradle’s heaven. 

The ego of humanity.
The over consumption.
The assumption,
Taking over.
What presumption!

 Power tip pours guilt,
Raining down on time starved masses,
Fearing the shame from a neighbor,
Yet rewarded for passing lower classes.
 
Thank the corporation.
Thank the politician.
Thank the propaganda,
For instilling the societal dogma
Of this over-indulgent nation. 

Spun their web so tight.
Round the eyes of sight.
Bound from the reality of accumulation,
Our oceans forced starvation.
The death will float and bind,
 Revenge of nature we will find.

Peaceful creatures weigh on our shoulders,
Bits of rotting dolphin carcasses
Stuck between plastic coke can holders.
Garbage coalesces into mountainous boulders.
 
Where land once connected,
Water rose and covered.
Evolution’s blind creation
Created hate and neglect to destroy her wonder.

This island is bigger than Texas
And grows by the day.
Exit through the gift shop,
And buy a postcard
To glorify your stay.

Written by Abby Martin and Tyler Florence

http://www.greatgarbagepatch.org/

FOX NEWS– A federal judge on Wednesday overturned a California ban on same-sex marriage, ruling that the Proposition 8 ballot initiative was unconstitutional, but a pending appeal of the landmark ruling could prevent gay weddings from resuming in the state any time soon.

The ruling by U.S. District Judge Vaugh Walker, one of three openly gay federal judges in the country, gave opponents of the controversial Proposition 8 ballot a major victory.

Gay couples waving rainbow and American flags outside the courthouse cheered, hugged and kissed as word of the ruling spread. “Our courts are supposed to protect our Constitutional rights,” lead plaintiff Kris Perry said as Sandy Stier, her partner of 10 years, stood at her side. “Today, they did.”

Despite the favorable ruling for same-sex couples, gay marriage will not be allowed to resume. That’s because the judge said he wants to decide whether his order should be suspended while the proponents pursue their appeal in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge ordered both sides to submit written arguments by Aug. 6 on the issue. Supporters argued the ban was necessary to safeguard the traditional understanding of marriage and to encourage responsible childbearing.

California voters passed the ban as Proposition 8 in November 2008, five months after the state Supreme Court legalized gay marriage. “Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples,” the judge wrote in a 136-page ruling that laid out in precise detail why the ban does not pass constitutional muster.

The judge found that the gay marriage ban violates the Constitution’s due process and equal protection clauses. “Because Proposition 8 disadvantages gays and lesbians without any rational justification, Proposition 8 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the judge ruled.

Read full article about Overturning Prop 8. 

© COPYRIGHT FOX NEWS, 2010

Photo by flickr user Elsie esq.

REUTERS– Pancreatic tumor cells use fructose to divide and proliferate, U.S. researchers said on Monday in a study that challenges the common wisdom that all sugars are the same. Tumor cells fed both glucose and fructose used the two sugars in two different ways, the team at the University of California Los Angeles found.

They said their finding, published in the journal Cancer Research, may help explain other studies that have linked fructose intake with pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancer types.

“These findings show that cancer cells can readily metabolize fructose to increase proliferation,” Dr. Anthony Heaney of UCLA’s Jonsson Cancer Center and colleagues wrote. “They have major significance for cancer patients given dietary refined fructose consumption, and indicate that efforts to reduce refined fructose intake or inhibit fructose-mediated actions may disrupt cancer growth.”

Americans take in large amounts of fructose, mainly in high fructose corn syrup, a mix of fructose and glucose that is used in soft drinks, bread and a range of other foods. Politicians, regulators, health experts and the industry have debated whether high fructose corn syrup and other ingredients have been helping make Americans fatter and less healthy.

Continue reading about Cancer Cells Slurp Up Fructose, US Study Finds.

© Reuters, 2010

Photo by flickr user GE Healthcare

POPSCI– Researchers at IBM have created the most complex neurological map ever seen, detailing the comprehensive long-distance network that makes up the macaque monkey brain in unprecedented detail. Such a roadmap through the brain’s complex networking processes could have major implications for attempts at reverse-engineering neural networks and creating cognitive computer chips that “think” as powerfully and efficiently as the biological brain.

Focusing on a long-distance network connecting 383 brain regions and 6,602 long-distance connections that function like highways to connect disparate regions of the brain. Shorter, more localized connections were found to carry signals within regions.

But most importantly, they found what they describe in a paper published in PNAS as a “tightly integrated core” that might be they key to cognition in higher-thinking biological creatures. That core might be what gives us consciousness (we won’t get into the philosophical implications there). Further, the core isn’t located in one, or even two regions. The researchers found it stretches through the premotor cortex, prefrontal cortex, temporal lobe, thalamus, visual cortex and a handful of other regions.

Continue reading about IBM Researchers Create the Most Detailed Brain Map Yet.

© POPSCI, 2010

Photo by flickr user ky_olsen