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On the way into work today, I heard a story on NPR indicating that smoking of cigarettes is down considerably in China over the last few years - down to 350 million smokers! That's considerably more Chinese who smoke than the entire U.S. population (around 300 million). Apparently more than half of adult men in China are regular smokers. Zoiks!

On my way into work today, I saw several large gooey banana slugs. The weather's warm these days and, like us humans, our mollusk friends are coming out to play. Here are my favorite banana slug facts:

Some friends and I recently debated whether "supposably" is a word. Turns out, it's a word...but it isn't a synonym for "supposedly" in the way that so many toddlers use it. According to Webster's:

Supposable \s&-'pO-z&-b&l\, adj.

Capable of being supposed: CONCEIVABLE
sup·pos·ably \-blE\ adv.

I read something interesting today about the concept of "environmental amnesia" - check it out:

If one’s only experience is with a certain amount of pollution, then that amount becomes not pollution but the norm against which more (or less) polluted states can be measured at a later time...I have called this environmental generational amnesia (Kahn & Friedman, 1995).

Ben Cohen (cofounder of Ben & Jerry's) started an organization called True Majority. One of their earlier works uses stacks of Oreo cookies to show how much the U.S. spends on defense versus other programs.

OK, this is a little bit woo-woo, but it's pretty amazing if true. Masaru Emoto, a Japanese scientist, has taken photographs of ice crystals formed from different samples of water. To do this, he uses a dark field microscope with photographic capabilities. Water from pristine sources shows the beautiful geometric and crystalline patterns...and water from nasty toxic water shows uglier distorted crystalline structures. Many believe that Emoto's work demonstrates the impact of our intentions on the world around us. Consider the following photographs of ice crystals from different water sources:

Fujuiwara Dam, before offering a prayer

Fujuiwara Dam, after offering a prayer

Some interesting statistics on World Population:

In the 19th century, global population grew by only 600 million, but in the 20th century it grew by 4.4 billion. There are twice as many people today as there were in 1960. One tenth of all the people who have ever lived are alive today. There has been more growth in population since 1950 than during the 4 million years since our early ancestors first stood upright.

World population reached:

The average life expectancy is 61, up from 40 in just 50 years. The numbers of people 65 and older make up 10-15% of the world population today and is expected to increase to 20-30% by 2050. If fertility remained at current levels, the population would reach the absurd figure of 296 billion in just 150 years.

Source: www.overpopulation.org

Don't underestimate the importance of parental cuddling to a baby's proper development. Consider this:

It's not particularly shocking that baby rhesus monkeys, when deprived of direct contact with their real mothers, chose to transfer their affections to a warm soft surrogate monkey (made of towels) rather than a cold hard surrogate monkey (made of metal and wire mesh).

It's interesting, however, that the baby monkeys continued to cling to a milk-free cloth mommy even when the metal mommy had been fixed with a breast and steel nipple which delivered monkey milk. When the babies needed to eat, they would crawl over to the milk-bearing wire mother, but then they would immediately jump back to cuddle with the softer mommy.

There's a lot of talk these days about how greenhouse gases could spark a "mass extinction" on earth. Mass extinctions are episodes in the history of life on Earth during which unusually large numbers of species die off. They stand in contrast to the background rate of extinction, which occurs even when the diversity of life is increasing. Scientists recognize five major mass extinctions in the Earth’s history. The extinctions are measured in terms of large groups of related species, called families.

The five mass extinction episodes occurred because of major changes in the prevailing ecological conditions brought about by climate change, cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, or collisions with giant meteors. The sixth mass extinction appears to be in progress now, and the main cause is environmental change brought about by human activities.

51 of the world's 100 largest economies are corporations (not countries, as one might expect):

Source: www.corpwatch.org