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Fauxmage

05-25-2006, 12:01 PM

McDonald's CEO Decries Fast Food 'Fiction'

By DAVE CARPENTER (AP Business Writer)
From Associated Press
May 25, 2006 1:39 PM EDT
CHICAGO - McDonald's Corp. CEO Jim Skinner told shareholders Thursday not to believe the recent surge of "fiction" maligning fast food and pledged that the company will be more aggressive and creative in setting the record straight.
Skinner's comments at the fast-food chain's annual meeting were the strongest evidence yet of its initiative to counter negative publicity from a new children's book and soon-to-be-released movie, both associated with the 2001 book "Fast Food Nation."
"These days, big equals bad," he said at the meeting at McDonald's headquarters in Oak Brook, Ill. "And fiction somehow has become more compelling than fact. You have every reason to be proud of your company, our values and our social responsibility record."
Skinner said McDonald's is a leader in food safety and quality, toy safety, employment opportunity, training and development, charitable giving, animal welfare and the environment.
"Fictitious information irresponsibly published and reported in the media has people questioning the quality and safety of fast food in general," he said. "But at McDonald's, we work closely with our suppliers to develop and implement the highest standards, and have for over 50 years."
Concerns about the nutritional content of fast food have risen in recent years along with obesity rates among both children and adults. McDonald's has responded to complaints by consumer advocates to make its food healthier by offering more salads and fruit items and other menu options.
But that pressure has stepped up in 2006 with the publication of "Chew On This," co-written by "Fast Food Nation" author Eric Schlosser, and publicity about the upcoming film version of "Fast Food Nation." The book adds to criticism of the fast-food industry for its perceived role in increased obesity and views McDonald's and the industry harshly on the issues of food safety and employment security, among others.
The company said last month it would "ramp up" promotion of its healthier menu choices in response to the new book, taking a more active tack than it did following the 2004 documentary, "Super Size Me," which skewered the fast food business.
"We are committed to taking action that will most impact consumer perception and trust. And we will be more aggressive and creative in setting the record straight," said Skinner, who then showed a company podcast touting it as a leader in food quality safety.
A farmworker and a human rights activist assailed the company at the meeting for running a public relations campaign instead of addressing what they called a human rights crisis in the tomato fields of Florida.
"The workers who pick the tomatoes that go on McDonald's sandwiches and salads work under conditions that can only be described as sweatshops - poverty wages, no overtime pay, no right to organize and no benefits," said Lucas Benitez, co-founder of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers in southwest Florida.
Skinner responded that McDonald's has worked closely with its suppliers to maintain the highest standards for its workers and will continue to do so.
Shareholders voted in favor of a resolution urging the McDonald's board of directors to seek shareholder approval of any severance agreements with senior executives that would reward them with sums triple or more the combined size of their base pay plus bonus - payments widely known as "golden parachutes." Chairman Andrew McKenna said the board would consider the recommendation.
The shareholders rejected a resolution asking McDonald's to identify and label all genetically engineered ingredients in its products.
McDonald's shares rose 21 cents to $33.16 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. They are down 2 percent in 2006.

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Dexter

05-25-2006, 12:15 PM

:rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Gliondrach

06-09-2006, 10:21 AM

Animal DNA Changing with Climate, Study Finds
Bjorn Carey
LiveScience Staff Writer
LiveScience.com Thu Jun 8, 4:02 PM ET
Longer growing seasons have caused genetic changes in a wide range of animals in the past few decades, biologists announced today.

As the spring reproductive season arrives earlier and lasts longer in northern latitudes, a fact owing to climate change, animals that can adapt their schedules stand a better chance of seeing their genetic information passed on to later generations, leading to a change in gene frequencies within populations.
The shift could have substantial economic impacts as well. As premium growing seasons shift northward, Canada could become an agricultural powerhouse as the United States turns into a dustbowl, the researchers said.
The study is detailed in the June 9 issue of the journal Science.
Northern changes
Studies have shown that global warming is acting fastest at the most northern latitudes, resulting in longer growing seasons. The change is also alleviating winter cold stress without imposing summer heat stress.
"Spring is coming earlier and fall is coming later," said study co-author Christina Holzapfel, a biologist at the University of Oregon. "The conditions that you experience in the North are becoming way more like you'd expect them in the South."
Animals depend on the day length to decide when to reproduce, hibernate, and migrate, Holzapfel explained. Although the amount of sunlight on a given day remains unchanged from year to year, the temperature on those days is steadily climbing.
Many animals time their migrations and reproductive habits so they arrive in an area at the same time food is most abundant, but some food items sprout in response to warm temperatures and are becoming available earlier in the season. In some cases, animals are showing up as the food source is starting to fade, leading to a decrease in fitness and survival of offspring.
Reproductive flexibility
To meet these challenges, Canadian red squirrels, European blackcaps, and penguins are all kicking off breeding season earlier to take to synch up with seasonal food supplies.
"Take great tits for example," explains study co-author William Bradshaw, also of the University of Oregon. These European birds rely on day length to decide when to lay eggs so plenty of caterpillars will be available to feed their hatchlings.
But the caterpillars respond to warming temperatures and are arriving earlier in the season. Since the birds are still following daylight cues, there are fewer caterpillars left to feed hungry chicks when the eggs hatch, leading to lower fitness and survival rates.
Some of these birds have displayed the ability to keep up with the caterpillars by breeding earlier. Because their chicks get plenty of caterpillars and stand a better chance of surviving, the parents that operate on a flexible schedule increase the likelihood that their own genetic traits endure.
Although the exact gene garnering this flexibility hasn't been identified, the frequency of the trait will increase in the population as the flexible birds continue to out-compete those that fail to adapt.
"Natural selection is acting on gene frequency. When you get a change of those frequencies, that by definition is evolution," Bradshaw told LiveScience.
Other impacts
While shrinking glaciers and animals struggling to adapt to a changing global climate might grab all the headlines, pathogens that require a longer growing season could emerge, Holzapfel said. The shift could also have large economic impact, particularly related to agriculture.
"Corn does not currently grow in central or northern Canada because the growing season is not long enough," Bradshaw said. "With increased growing season, the Canadians will be able to grow more corn."
Although the northward shift of the long growing season could be a boon to Canadian farmers, it could also spell disaster for their American counterparts.
"The United States is going to be a dustbowl as the agricultural belt moves north," Holzapfel said. "We are already seeing this in the massive droughts in Africa."
VIDEO: Extraordinary Birds
VIDEO: Parrots: Look Who's Talking
Mating March of the Penguin Slows Down
How Global Warming is Changing the Wild Kingdom
Conflicting Claims on Global Warming and Why It's All Moot
Earlier Spring Starves Migratory Birds
More Frogs Dying as Planet Warms

thevegantwins

06-09-2006, 10:23 AM

I know this is a serious news article but how does someone say this statement, Take great tits for example without laughing out loud?

This is very scary stuff but certainly not surprising.

Gliondrach

06-09-2006, 10:24 AM

This is about various animals being affected:

Global warming rings alarm for dormice

Barbara McMahon in Rome
Thursday June 8, 2006

Climate change is bringing animals out of hibernation prematurely, making them lose weight and causing them stress, Italian scientists said yesterday. Spring-like temperatures too early in the year are waking animals up sooner and putting their feeding and breeding habits out of kilter with the environment.Dormice, whose name comes from the Anglo-Norman word dormeus meaning sleepy one, now hibernate five-and-half weeks less on average than they did 20 years ago. Marmots are also becoming prematurely restless in their burrows and are getting 38 days less slumber than before, according to the research.
The breeding cycles of birds, reptiles, turtles and rodents are also undergoing change. Great tits are laying eggs a week earlier and red kites 10 to 11 days earlier than they were nine years ago.Birds such as sparrows are losing weight as they struggle to adapt to the changes in the environment, according to Mauro Cristaldi and Germana Spunznar of the department of animal biology at Rome's La Sapienza University.
"The eco system is a very delicate chain that is being disturbed by these unseasonal temperatures," Dr Spunznar said. "Birds are suffering stress because they are being forced to fight for food. They are beginning their spring cycle much earlier when insects, berries, flowers and seeds are not as plentiful, so there is competition for nutritional resources."
The scientists say that another consequence of global warming is that tropical marine life species are moving into unsuitable waters.
They say 20% of fish in the Mediterranean are immigrant species that have moved up from southern seas through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. In the Adriatic, they found 15 species of fish, including puffer fish, that the sea was previously too cold to accommodate.
The research, conducted for Italy's National Research Council, is included in a report that addresses the issues surrounding the Kyoto agreement, the international treaty under which some industrialised countries have agreed to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Gliondrach

07-27-2006, 02:17 PM

In about fifteen minutes, on BBC2 television there's a special Newsnight programme with a debate on vivisection. You people not lucky enough to live in this holy place might be able to watch it live here:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm

There is also a link to a video podcast. But, I believe that you will be able to watch the lates programme on the site until the next programme replaces it - which will be in 24 hours and 12 minutes from now.

Bowwowmeow

08-07-2006, 10:00 PM

Cops Quickly Find Stolen Doughnut Truck

From Associated Press
August 07, 2006 4:27 PM EDT
RICHLAND, Wash. - A stolen truck full of doughnuts? Better believe Tri-Cities police were on that in a hurry. Moments after the theft of the Viera's Bakery van was reported early Friday in Kennewick, police issued an all-points bulletin.
A Benton County sheriff's deputy quickly spotted the truck. After a chase at 30 to 35 mph, Richland police got it to stop and arrested the driver, Steve Swoboda, 19, for investigation of auto theft and felony escape.
Still intact was the entire load of glazed, sugar and cream doughnuts, as well as apple fritters, bear claws.
"In 24 years in law enforcement I've never had a call like that," Richland police Capt. Randy Barnes said. "To steal a bakery truck, how clever is that?"
"It kind of sticks out, a doughnut truck," Kennewick police Sgt. Ken Lattin said.
The truck was taken while the delivery driver, Gilberto Gonzales, left the engine running during a stop at the Break Place Conoco. Gonzales asked the clerk if he recalled seeing a man who had been standing in front of the store.
"The clerk said, 'Yeah, that guy's been wanting a ride to Richland for a while,'" said Mario Viera, one of the operators of the bakery.
Viera said he was happy that none of the load was lost "but I'm going to make sure Gilberto doesn't leave the keys in the truck any more."

Yeah!!! Cops on donuts are like white on rice! :police: :piggy:

Oracl

08-15-2006, 11:03 PM

Man dies after eating toadfish

August 15, 2006 09:46am

A man has died in north Queensland after eating what is believed to be a poisonous toadfish.

The 45-year-old Fijian man caught the fish off a jetty near Bowen on Sunday, police said.

He filleted and cooked the fish on a barbecue on Sunday afternoon before collapsing on the beachfront.

An ambulance took him to Bowen Hospital but, despite attempts to revive him, he died at 6.15pm (AEST) that day.

Two other men who were with him at the barbecue survived.

It was not known how much of the fish, if any, they had eaten.

A post-mortem examination is due to be conducted today.
:sharknsmilie:

1vegan

08-16-2006, 03:38 AM

1977: Rock and roll 'king' Presley dies

on this day, August 16, 1977.....:professor:

1977: Rock and roll 'king' Presley dies
Elvis Presley, whose singing and style revolutionized popular music in the 1950s, has died.

Presley, 42, was discovered slumped in a bathroom at his mansion in Memphis, Tennessee on Tuesday.

He was rushed to the Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis but was pronounced dead on arrival. Even if it's not your kind of music, he's surely "one of a kind" (imho)

1vegan

08-29-2006, 03:39 AM

Scientists in Glasgow are examining whether drinking cider may offer the same health benefits as eating apples.

The researchers have found that English cider apples have high levels of "phenolic antioxidants" - linked to protection against strokes and cancer.

The next stage of the study, partly funded by the National Association of Cider Makers, is to analyse how humans absorb these chemicals from cider.

Twelve volunteers have been recruited to take part in the tests.

They will each drink a pint of cider, while avoiding all other dietary sources of antioxidants, and urine and blood samples will then be analysed.

Serena Marks, who is leading the study, said: "Previous research suggests there may be an association between phenolics and protection against some serious diseases, so we are trying to find out how we get phenolics from our diet." :drinkin: :toast:

Fauxmage

08-29-2006, 10:07 AM

I've never had cider before. :shy:

my3labs

08-29-2006, 01:41 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The gravy train -- make that the sausage, biscuits and gravy train -- just kept on rolling in most of America last year, with 31 states showing an increase in obesity.

Mississippi continued to lead the way. An estimated 29.5 percent of adults there are considered obese. That is an increase of 1.1 percentage points when compared with last year's report, which is compiled by Trust for America's Health, an advocacy group that promotes increased funding for public health programs.

Meanwhile, Colorado remains the leanest state. About 16.9 percent of its adults are considered obese. That mark was also up slightly from last year's report, but not enough to be considered statistically significant.

The only state that experienced a decrease in the percentage of obese adults last year was Nevada.

"Quick fixes and limited government programs have failed to stem the tide," said Dr. Jeff Levi, executive director of the trust, in explaining the rise.

Health officials warn that the incidence of obesity in a particular state doesn't mean it treats the issue less seriously than others. States have different challenges to contend with when it comes to obesity, said Dr. Janet Collins of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Populations are not equal in terms of experiencing these health problems," Collins said. "Low-income populations tend to experience all the health problems we worry about at greater rates."

Indeed, the five states with the highest obesity rates -- Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia, Louisiana and Kentucky -- exhibit much higher rates of poverty than the national norm.

Meanwhile, the five states with the lowest obesity have less poverty. They are Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The leanest states shouldn't take a whole lot of comfort in their ranking, though, said Dr. Jeffrey Koplan, a former CDC director.

"This epidemic is a nationwide epidemic. Some some states are higher, some populations have it higher, but the trend has been up in every state, the trend has been up for every ethnic group, the trend has been up for rich and poor," Koplan said.

The group's estimate of obesity rates is based on a three-year average, 2003-2005. The data comes from an annual random sampling of adults via the telephone. The information is designed to help the government measure behavioral risks among adults.

The government equates obesity with a body mass index, or BMI, of at least 30. Someone who is 5- eet 4 would have to weigh 175 pounds to reach that threshold.

The index is calculated by dividing a person's weight in pounds by his height in inches, squared, and multiplying that total by 703. For some people, particularly athletes who exercise a great deal, the BMI index could show them as being obese when in fact they are in excellent physical condition.

The Trust for America's Health made scores of recommendations for reducing obesity. For example:

• Employers should offer their workers benefits that help them stay healthy, such as nutrition counseling and subsidized health club memberships.

• The government should mandate routine screenings that measure the fitness of Medicaid beneficiaries, plus subsidize or reimburse them for participating in exercise and fitness programs.

• At the local level, governments should approve zoning and land use laws that give people more chances to walk or bike to the store or to work. Local governments also should set aside more funding for sidewalks.

The group also makes recommendations for individuals. But the recommendations that people eat well and exercise are known to Americans. And clearly, many just don't care to follow.

Collins said tobacco use is another area that could be labeled a personal choice, but government agencies have taken many steps to provide people with the environment and information they need to help them make their choices. The same should be done with obesity.

"I don't want to discount the personal choice aspect of this, but there are health issues and there are health costs involved," Collins said.

The report says those health costs are in the billions of dollars annually. Citing a 2004 report, the advocacy group said $5.6 billion could be saved when it comes to treating heart disease if just one-tenth of Americans began a regular walking program.

my3labs

09-01-2006, 12:11 PM

H E A L T H S T O R Y
Liver studies hint vegies suit humans
31 August 2006

Scientists studying kidney-stone diseases have stumbled across evidence that humans may be genetically more suited to vegetarianism than meat eating.

The discovery was made when the placement of an enzyme known as AGT, which is linked to the rare kidney-stone disease PH1, was found in one area of the liver in herbivores and another in carnivores, Professor Chris Danpure, of University College London, said yesterday.

Evolutionary science indicated that about 10 million years ago the distribution of the enzyme in human ancestors appeared to change from favouring a omnivorous diet to plant eating.

Humans began eating meat only in the past 100,000 years, a habit which has increased dramatically in recent times.

"It would appear that the diet we have now is incompatible with the distribution of this enzyme, which was designed for a herbivore diet, not meat eating," he said.

The human placement of the enzyme was the same as in rabbits, sheep and horses.

"One of the consequences of this could be the high frequency of kidney stones in humans, especially in western societies."

Danpure, who is a guest speaker at the annual Queenstown Molecular Biology Meeting this week, said if the link was proven it had potential for identifying people susceptible to kidney-stone diseases.

More than 300 leading scientists from New Zealand and overseas are attending the conference this week, which was opened by Research, Science and Technology Minister Steve Maharey on Tuesday night.

Molecular biology was helping transform the New Zealand economy and a recent survey found that biotechnology income to New Zealand companies in 2005 was $855 million, he told delegates.

my3labs

09-01-2006, 12:42 PM

Foie gras fracas sizzles as restaurants file suit

Wednesday, August 23, 2006; Posted: 10:46 a.m. EDT (14:46 GMT)

Some chefs say if they can't sell the duck and goose liver delicacy, they'll give it away.

CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) -- Saying the City Council stuck its beak where it didn't belong, a restaurant association sued the city Tuesday in hope of making foie gras legal again.

Meanwhile, a handful of chefs said they will continue to serve the duck and goose liver delicacy -- it just won't appear on the bill.

"The law says we can't charge for it. It doesn't say we can't give it away," said Michael Tsonton, chef and partner at Copperblue.

The ban was approved by the city council in April and implemented Tuesday. Animal rights activists contend that the production of foie gras -- which involves force-feeding ducks and geese to enlarge their livers -- is inhumane.

The lawsuit showed that chefs aren't content muttering in their kitchens about the ban.

A related news conference featured several white-jacketed chefs standing before a banner that read "Freedom Of Choice On The Menu."

The suit, filed by the Illinois Restaurant Association and one restaurant, argues the council overstepped its authority.

Aldermen may agree that the production of foie gras is inhumane, but they can't ban it, because none of the force-feeding occurs anywhere near Chicago or even Illinois, the suit says.

The lawsuit followed months of complaints, fund raisers, petitions and special events. In a show of solidarity Tuesday, restaurants that don't typically serve foie gras, including one pizzeria, gave diners what may be their only chance to utter the phrase, "Mushroom, sausage and foie gras pizza, please."

Chefs have called the ban an attack on their right to choose what kinds of dishes they want to create and an attack on the rights of consumers.

They also say the ban will cost more than $18 million a year in lost sales, tax revenues and tips -- and may even dissuade chefs from opening restaurants here.

"Whether the treatment of animals in Canada, France or New York leading to the production of foie gras is or is not humane is not a problem suitable for legislation by the City of Chicago, let alone a substantial Chicago problem," the lawsuit argues.

Fireworks, guns -- why not foie gras?
A spokeswoman for the city's law department said the argument that the city can't regulate a product because it is not produced here simply does not fly.

"Fireworks, guns, we regulate all those things and they aren't produced in Chicago," said Jennifer Hoyle, who said she had not seen the lawsuit.

Alderman Joe Moore, who led the effort to ban foie gras, agreed. "We feel that this is a constitutional ordinance and an ordinance well within the city's power to enact," he said.

More than a dozen countries, mostly in Europe, have banned production of fois gras -- pronounced fwah-GRAH and French for "fat liver" -- on the grounds of cruelty.

Attorney Barry Rosen, who represents the Illinois Restaurant Association, said he expects to file a motion for a preliminary injunction in the next few weeks.

As for restaurants concerned that diners will go elsewhere, putting foie gras in garnishes may be a solution, at least until the legal battle plays out.

Didier Durand, chef and owner of Cyrano's Bistrot & Wine Bar, plans to do just that.

"On the check you won't see foie gras," Durand said. "You will see roasted potatoes, $16."

:(

Gliondrach

09-01-2006, 02:26 PM

Let's hope the kidney stone finding is confirmed. It will be one more weapon that we can use.

Foie gras:

'Chefs have called the ban an attack on their right to choose what kinds of dishes they want to create and an attack on the rights of consumers.

'They also say the ban will cost more than $18 million a year in lost sales, tax revenues and tips -- and may even dissuade chefs from opening restaurants here.'

I wonder if they would think it was an attack on someone's rights if they weren't allowed to serve human meat from someone who had left their body to cullinary science?

And I'm glad that these people will lose money.

my3labs

09-01-2006, 04:24 PM

I hear ya. At what point do we limit our "rights" for crying out loud. Maybe someone should start serving up dog liver and see how well that goes over.
It ridiculous!

my3labs

09-01-2006, 04:24 PM

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- The mother of a boy abducted 24 years ago said she's bewildered by two photographs left at her front door, apparently showing her son and two other children bound and gagged.

The old photos appear to show 12-year-old Johnny Gosch with his mouth gagged and his hands and feet tied. The boy is wearing the same sweatpants Johnny was wearing when he disappeared while delivering newspapers on the morning of September 5, 1982, his mother said.

"It's like reliving it," Noreen Gosch told The Associated Press on Thursday night. "But the bigger picture is, 'Why are they doing this?'

"Whoever had these photos had them for 24 years. I don't understand why they would do this now. It must be some kind of message."

Gosch said investigators confirmed the photos were authentic and likely taken within "hours or days" of the abduction. She said they were checking for fingerprints that could lead them to the source and possibly a breakthrough in a case that has long baffled authorities. The other boys in the photo were unidentified.

"We are in the process of researching where they came from and whether they've been doctored up," West Des Moines police Lt. Jeff Miller told the Des Moines Register.

Johnny's disappearance triggered nationwide fears of child abductions. He was one of the first faces of missing or abducted children to appear on milk cartons across the country.

Several theories have developed since he vanished before dawn while delivering Sunday newspapers. His newspaper wagon was discovered near his West Des Moines home, but few substantial clues have surfaced since then.

Gosch believes her son was taken by child pornographers. She told authorities he briefly contacted her in 1997 but feared for his life and declined to give details about where he was. She believes his abductors got him involved in crimes, which is why he is hiding his identity.

The National Center for Missing Children is examining the other boys in the photograph and trying to match it with its database of missing children.

"These kids have parents someplace," Gosch said. "I'm sure they feel the same way I did. ... Hopefully we can do some good and give these parents some peace."

Johnny was Gosch's youngest of three children, and she has devoted her life to finding him, from raising money for private detectives to following her own leads and prodded police to try harder.

She also wrote a book called "Why Johnny Can't Come Home."

Gliondrach

09-06-2006, 03:04 PM

I see that Big Brother is on the march:

leavethemkidsalone.com/

It's wrong to fingerprint children without asking parents. Period.
As a parent yourself, when will you do take action to stop it, Mr Brown?

UK schools started fingerprinting children in around 2002. Quietly encouraged by central Government, parents were not generally informed. By 2007, more than 5,000 schools are fingerprinted children, some as young as five, on a daily basis. More than 20 firms now sell school biometric systems, some costing as much as £25,000. Figures obtained by Tory home affairs spokesman Damian Green indicate that up to six million children may be fingerprinted.

School systems store fingerprint templates, the lifelong key to a person's identity. Within 10 years these will be used to authenticate bank accounts and passports, World-renowned security experts argue that schools cannot possibly hold these securely. Microsoft's Identity Architect Kim Cameron states "It is absolutely premature to begin using 'conventional biometrics' in schools".

The parents' campaign LeaveThemKidsAlone.com was founded in 2006 in an attempt to get the process regulated. Yet after more than a year of intense lobbying, the best the Government was prepared to come up with was weak guidance on a non-government website advising that "as they judge appropriate, schools may also wish to seek their own legal advice on these matters". Schools are advised that they do not need to seek parental consent before fingerprinting children.

The government's BECTA guidance also states: "Data must not be transferred to other countries without adequate protection of data subjects' rights" The implication presumably is that if their rights are 'adequately protected' it may be. So does this mean that school library fingerprint data may ultimately end up at the US Department of Homeland Security?

On 23 July 2007, The Minister for Schools and Learners (Jim Knight) admitted in Parliament that "[the police] could access the data as part of an investigation into a specific crime".

In 2006, Roderick Woo, Justice of the Peace at the Hong Kong Office of the Privacy Commissioner, ordered a school to stop fingerprinting children. "It was a contravention of our law, which is very similar to your law, which is that the function of the school is not to collect data in this manner, that it was excessive and that there was a less privacy-intrusive method to use."

The Irish Data Protection Commissioner has been quick to issue comprehensive guidelines on the use of biometrics in schools. It stresses the need to obtain signed consent and a clear and unambiguous right to opt out of such systems without penalty.

In July 2007, the UK's Information Commissioner wrote : "[People] are concerned that fingerprinting in schools will teach children that giving up important personal information, and particularly biometrics, to those in authority is perfectly routine and mundane. It has even been suggested that fingerprinting in schools is part of a concerted attempt to 'soften up' the younger generation for increased state privacy intrusion, including initiatives such as ID cards and DNA testing. Any use of biometric technologies outside law enforcement should be considered in the light of such negative responses."

We urge the Government to compel schools to seek explicit parental consent before they are allowed to take children's fingerprints. We fear, however, that this will not happen without legal action on behalf of parents.

Gliondrach

09-06-2006, 03:28 PM

You can listen to a lecture by Peter Singer on the BBC. It was on earlier today but you can listen to it again.

bbc.co.uk/radio4/atoz/index.shtml#i

Then click on 'Listen Again' under 'Iconoclasts'

Gliondrach

09-08-2006, 07:55 AM

I've just listened to a fascinating discussion between Rupert Sheldrake and Andrew Weill. It is quite wide ranging but is mainly about medicine and health. It is on for about 1 hour and 14 minutes, although on the website it says that it's on for 43 minutes. They mention something very interesting about the coca plant and how allopathic medicine doesn't recognise that effect. They also talk about the low funding for complementary medicine research and how even that gets hijacked by medical researchers.

If the 'Personalise your RealPlayer' box comes up just click on 'cancel' and then 'exit'. Then play it. Sometimes these things start playing automatically but sometimes you need to do the cancelling, etc.

sheldrake.org/ then, at the bottom right of that page, under 'Featured Recording', where it gives their two names, click on 'Online Audio'.

Then click on 'Integrative Medicine and the Extended Mind'. The talk above that one is probably interesting as well but I haven't listened to it.

I decided to look at Sheldrake's site after hearing him on a discussion about research into telepathy and other such things. This is at:

bbc.co.uk/radio4/progs/listenagain.shtml

Click on 'Listen' under 'The Material World', if you are interested. It's only on for 26 minutes.

This is another helpful suggestion from the Gliondrach Helpful Suggestions Association.

my3labs

09-13-2006, 01:35 PM

MADRID, Spain (Reuters) -- The world's first ban on overly thin models at a top-level fashion show in Madrid has caused outrage among modeling agencies and raised the prospect of restrictions at other venues.

Madrid's fashion week has turned away underweight models after protests that girls and young women were trying to copy their rail-thin looks and developing eating disorders.

Organizers say they want to project an image of beauty and health, rather than a waif-like, or heroin chic look.

But Cathy Gould, of New York's Elite modeling agency, said the fashion industry was being used as a scapegoat for illnesses like anorexia and bulimia.

"I think its outrageous, I understand they want to set this tone of healthy beautiful women, but what about discrimination against the model and what about the freedom of the designer," said Gould, Elite's North America director, adding that the move could harm careers of naturally "gazelle-like" models.

Madrid's regional government, which sponsors the show and imposed restrictions, said it did not blame designers and models for anorexia. It said the fashion industry had a responsibility to portray healthy body images.

"Fashion is a mirror and many teenagers imitate what they see on the catwalk," said regional official Concha Guerra.

The mayor of Milan, Italy, Letizia Moratti, told an Italian newspaper this week she would seek a similar ban for her city's show unless it could find a solution to "sick" looking models.

Quality, not size
The Madrid show is using the body mass index or BMI -- based on weight and height -- to measure models. It has turned away 30 percent of women who took part in the previous event. Medics will be on hand at the September 18-22 show to check models.

"The restrictions could be quite a shock to the fashion world at the beginning, but I'm sure it's important as far as health is concerned," said Leonor Perez Pita, director of Madrid's show, also known as the Pasarela Cibeles.

A spokeswoman for the Association of Fashion Designers of Spain, which represents those at Madrid fashion week, said the group supported restrictions and its concern was the quality of collections, not the size of models.

Eating disorder activists said many Spanish model agencies and designers oppose the ban and they had doubts whether the new rules would be followed.

"If they don't go along with it the next step is to seek legislation, just like with tobacco," said Carmen Gonzalez of Spain's Association in Defense of Attention for Anorexia and Bulimia, which has campaigned for restrictions since the 1990s.

my3labs

09-13-2006, 04:52 PM

September 13, 2006

By KOMO 4 News & ABC News

UNDATED - The top reason doctors prescribe antibiotics for children is to cure an ailment that might not even require antibiotics, according to new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Every year, doctors write nearly 15 million prescriptions for antibiotics to treat earaches. But most of those earaches would clear up just fine without a prescription, studies indicate.

The overprescribing of antibiotics has been discussed for years, but oday's study looks at a "wait-and-see prescribing" practice, or WASP.

With WASP, doctors write a prescription and tell parents not to fill it unless the child fails to improve or gets worse 48 hours after the appointment. The United Kingdom, like many northern European countries, recommends the WASP approach.

In the new study, conducted by researchers at Yale and Vanderbilt universities, doctors examined about 300 children who were taken to emergency rooms with an earache. Half of the children's parents got a wait-and-see prescription for antibiotics, while the other half were told to fill their prescriptions immediately. All the children received ibuprofen and eardrops for pain.

Roughly two-thirds of parents in the wait-and-see group actually waited and did not fill their prescriptions. Those kids recovered just as quickly from their earaches as kids who got antibiotics right away.

Many doctors agree with the WASP approach and were not surprised that the approach was successful.

"As the great majority of kids with earaches do not need antibiotics and recover quite well without them, using them selectively makes a lot of sense," said Dr. Charles Shubin, medical director of the Mercy FamilyCare Children's Health Center in Baltimore.

Selective use of antibiotics is important because their overuse can have an impact on drug resistance.

Experts say using less of these drugs - especially in kids - will help maintain the drug's ability to work for future illnesses down the road, when they may be dearly needed.

1vegan

09-13-2006, 10:16 PM

Bowwowmeow

09-16-2006, 02:26 PM

Madrid Fashion Show Bans 5 Thin Models

By HAROLD HECKLE (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
September 16, 2006 3:50 PM EDT
MADRID, Spain - Organizers of Spain's top annual fashion show on Saturday rejected five models as being too thin to appear in this year's event.
The show, known as the Pasarela Cibeles, had decided earlier this month not to allow women below a predetermined body mass index to parade down the catwalk.
Doctors Susana Monereo of Spain's National Endocrinology Society and Basilio Moreno, an obesity consultant at Gregorio Maranon Hospital, were among the specialists called on to medically assess the models.
Five of the 68 models who showed up for appraisal failed the test, the doctors said. The models were over 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed less than 121.25 pounds, Monereo said.
"They had a body mass index below, well below, that which is considered normal not just by the Spanish endocrinology society, whom we represent, but also by the limits set by the World Health Organization," Monereo said.
Each model was allowed to appear at the examination accompanied by an agent and a representative from the fashion industry.
The show, which starts Monday and runs until Friday, wanted to project an image of beauty, elegance and health, and also banned makeup that makes models appear sickly, organizer Cuca Solana said.
"Clearly we don't want walking skeletons," Solana said.
Some well-known models had not gone to the examination, Solana said, but they were not identified.
Around 300 models originally were expected to apply for inclusion in the prestigious fashion event, but only 68 applied this year.
Solana said the rigorous pre-show test was not necessarily the cause for the downturn. One possibility was that model agencies may have chosen to send more models to other shows.
Last year's show drew protests from medical associations and women's advocacy groups because some of the models were positively bone-thin.
This time the Madrid regional government decided to pressure organizers to hire fuller-figured women as role models for young girls obsessed with being thin, Concha Guerra, deputy finance minister of the regional administration, said earlier this month.
A British Cabinet minister, meanwhile, called Saturday for London Fashion Week, also opening Monday, to follow Madrid's lead.
"The fashion industry's promotion of beauty as meaning stick thin is damaging to young girls' self image and to their health," Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell said in a statement. "Young girls aspire to look like the catwalk models - when those models are unhealthily underweight it pressurizes girls to starve themselves to look the same."
The British Fashion Council, which runs Fashion Week, said in a statement that it "does not comment or interfere in the aesthetic of any designer's show."
"The BFC has canceled the photo call on Sunday because it is unwilling to add any more impetus to the publicity surrounding this complicated issue," it added.
The body mass index is a calculation doctors normally apply to study obesity. It is calculated by dividing weight in pounds by height in inches squared, and multiplying that total by 703.
If the resulting number is between 18.5 and 24.9, a person's weight is normal. Below 18.5 they are underweight. In the case of the Madrid show, organizers rejected women with an index below 18.

And now the UK is following suit . . .

British Minister Says Ban Scrawny Models

From Associated Press
September 16, 2006 2:37 PM EDT
LONDON - A British Cabinet minister on Saturday called for London Fashion Week to follow its Madrid counterpart and ban extremely thin models from the catwalk.
Fashion Week organizers rejected the call - but said they were canceling the event's opening photo call to avoid giving the issue more publicity.
Last week Madrid's Fashion Week, the Pasarela Cibeles, announced it was banning models with a Body Mass Index, or height to weight ratio, below 18.
Organizers of the Spanish event said they wanted models to project "an image of beauty and health" and shun a gaunt, emaciated look.
"I applaud the decision taken by Madrid to ban super-thin models, and urge the organizers of London Fashion Week to do the same," British Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell.
The World Health Organization considers people with a BMI below 18.5 underweight. To achieve a BMI of 18, a 5-foot-9 model would have to weigh about 125 pounds. The average runway model at that height is 115 pounds.
The body mass index is a tool for doctors who study obesity. It is calculated by dividing weight in pounds by height in inches squared, and multiplying that total by 703.
If the resulting number is between 18.5 and 24.9, the person's weight is considered normal. Below 18.5 they are underweight.
"The fashion industry's promotion of beauty as meaning stick thin is damaging to young girls' self image and to their health," Jowell said in a statement.
"Young girls aspire to look like the catwalk models - when those models are unhealthily underweight it pressurizes girls to starve themselves to look the same."
The British Fashion Council, which runs Fashion Week, said in a statement that it "does not comment or interfere in the aesthetic of any designer's show."
"The BFC has canceled the photo call on Sunday because it is unwilling to add any more impetus to the publicity surrounding this complicated issue," it added,
London Fashion Week opens Monday and runs through Friday.

I don't have a problem with naturally underweight people. But giving women of naturally more muscular or curvy shapes the idea that we must all conform to such a body shape, and thereby prompting behavior that is unhealthy, is not a good idea. All shapes and sizes should be celebrated, not just one.
:hug:

my3labs

09-16-2006, 09:12 PM

I think it's so sad that young girls feel like they need to be a size 2 in order to look good. My youngest is 16 and whenever I go to her school, all I see is a bunch of anorexic looking teens that all look and dress the same.

my3labs

09-16-2006, 09:16 PM

I'm sure all of us in the states are aware of this already, but I thought I would post it anyway.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Shoppers changed their buying habits Saturday as spinach was pulled from grocery store shelves because of the outbreak of E. coli bacteria that had killed one person and sickened more than 100 others.

Natural Selection Foods LLC recalled its packaged spinach throughout the United States, Canada and Mexico as a precaution after federal health officials said some of those hospitalized reported eating brands of prepackaged spinach distributed by the company.

The officials stressed that the bacteria had not been isolated in products sold by the holding company, based in San Juan Bautista, California, and known for Earthbound Farm and other brands. As the investigation continues, other brands may be implicated, officials said. (Watch cases get discovered from coast to coast -- 2:47)

At a Safeway grocery in San Francisco's Potrero Hill neighborhood, many of the bagged produce shelves were empty Saturday. Anna Cairns said she had to settle for bags of iceberg green lettuce and Caesar salad, instead of her normal salad mix, which contained spinach.

"I have a bag of spinach in my refrigerator I need to throw away," said Cairns, 59, of San Francisco.

Marina Zecevic, 49, of West Los Angeles, shopping at a Trader Joe's, said she made the mistake of serving creamed spinach to her kids the day the story broke.

"My sons started accusing me of premeditated murder," she said.

She felt the contamination issue was overblown.

"The minute we get the all clear, the spinach is back on the table," she said.

The spinach, grown in California, could have been contaminated in the field or during processing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 74 percent of the fresh market spinach grown in the U.S. comes from California, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation. There have been previous bacterial contamination outbreaks linked to spinach and lettuce grown in the state.

Wisconsin accounted for 32 of the 102 reported illnesses, including the lone death, a 77-year-old woman who died of kidney failure.

Other states reporting cases were California, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Wyoming, according to the CDC. (Map)

"We are very, very upset about this. What we do is produce food that we want to be healthy and safe for consumers, so this is a tragedy for us," Natural Selection spokeswoman Samantha Cabaluna said.

The FDA advised consumers not to eat fresh spinach or products containing fresh spinach until further notice. Some restaurants and retailers may be taking spinach out of bags before selling it, so consumers shouldn't buy it at all, the FDA said.

Boiling contaminated spinach can kill the bacteria but washing won't eliminate it, the CDC warned.

At a Stop and Shop supermarket in Meriden, Connecticut, Michelle Bookey said she frequently buys spinach for salads for her dieting husband but plans to cook it from now on.

"It worries me. I don't even want to buy lettuce," said Bookey, 36.

Earthbound Farm, which claims it pioneered the retail market in pre-washed, bagged salads in 1986, says its spinach and other products are in 74 percent of U.S. grocery stores.

It also sells spinach to restaurants and other establishments that serve food. The National Restaurant Association said members were pulling spinach from their menus.

The recall earned the praise of Tom Stenzel, president and chief executive officer of the United Fresh Produce Association.

"The FDA investigation and the voluntary action taken by Natural Selection Foods LLC help narrow concern about any continuing risk, and begins to ensure that products that may be potentially contaminated is removed completely from the food supply," Stenzel said in a statement.

A Seattle law firm said it planned to add Natural Selection Foods on Monday to federal lawsuits previously filed in Wisconsin and Oregon that named other spinach producers.

1vegan

09-16-2006, 10:47 PM

The spinach, grown in California, could have been contaminated in the field or during processing, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

About 74 percent of the fresh market spinach grown in the U.S. comes from California, according to the California Farm Bureau Federation. There have been previous bacterial contamination outbreaks linked to spinach and lettuce grown in the state.

In other news articles I read that they suspect or claim that the contamination might be from the animal manure. :(

dreamer

09-18-2006, 01:14 PM

Study finds U.S. bias against women in science
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Women are being filtered out of high-level science, math and engineering jobs in the United States, and there is no good reason for it, according to a National Academies report released on Monday.

A committee of experts looked at all the possible excuses -- biological differences in ability, hormonal influences, childrearing demands, and even differences in ambition -- and found no good explanation for why women are being locked out.

"Compared with men, women faculty members are generally paid less and promoted more slowly, receive fewer honors, and hold fewer leadership positions," the Academies said in a statement.

"These discrepancies do not appear to be based on productivity, the significance of their work, or any other performance measures."

Female minorities fare the worst, the study found. And the expert panel said the discrepancies are costing the country many talented leaders and researchers and recommended immediate and far-reaching changes to change the balance.

"We found no significant biological differences between men and women in science, engineering and mathematics that could account for the lower representation of women in academic faculty and scientific leadership positions," said Donna Shalala, president of the University of Miami and head of the committee that wrote the report.

The study was compiled by all the National Academies -- the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine -- which advise Congress, the federal government, and various institutions.

"It is not a lack of talent but an unintended bias ... that is locking women out," Shalala, a former secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told a briefing.

"Fundamental changes in the culture and opportunities at America's research universities are urgently needed."

EVERYONE IS BIASED

"A substantial body of evidence establishes that most people -- men and women -- hold implicit biases," the report reads.

And it noted that the problem is not restricted to academia, or even to science.

"The underrepresentation of women and minorities in science and engineering faculties stems from a number of issues that are firmly rooted in our society's traditions and culture," the report reads.

Many arguments have been made to explain why women do not excel in math and science -- that they are not as good as men in mathematical ability, that female brain structures are different or that hormones affect performance.

Lawrence Summers resigned as Harvard University president after he made widely disparaged remarks in 2005 suggesting that women were biologically less able in math and science, and that women chose to pay more attention to their families and thus failed to put in enough effort to succeed at work.

The experts looked at many different studies on the issue.

"The committee found no sound evidence to support these myths and often good evidence to the contrary," said Ana Mari Cauce, Executive Vice Provost at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"In fact, female performance in high school mathematics now matches that of males. If biology were the basis of that, we've seen some major evolution in the past decades."

Urgent change is needed, said Cauce, if the United States wants to compete internationally in science.

"This is about more excellence. This is not about changing the bar or lowering the bar," Cauce said.

Trustees, university presidents and provosts need to make it clear from the top down that recruiting and promoting women is a priority, the report said.

my3labs

09-18-2006, 05:17 PM

Why is me time such a big deal?

By Emily Yoffe

A piece of essential wisdom about our lives is broadcast every time a plane takes off. No, it's not about your tray table. It's this: If the oxygen mask drops and you're traveling with small kids, put yours on first -- before you help them.

Too many women, single or married, childless or mothers, are endlessly fulfilling every obligation except the one to themselves. For your mental, physical, and psychological well-being, you sometimes just need to stop. Then you need to do something you want to do. You need to take some Me Time.

Like many things, Me Time is all the more wanted the rarer it gets. In their recent book, What Women Really Want, pollsters Celinda Lake and Kellyanne Conway discovered that women across all strata of society feel overwhelmed with the insatiable demands on them. When they asked what women wanted more of in their lives, the two most popular answers were "peace" and "time." They were talking about a sense of serenity and control over their lives. The women polled also said they would like more sleep, and that they battle the "guilt that creeps in whenever they take a break."

There aren't that many breaks, though. The Families and Work Institute (FWI) found that working mothers spend both more time at the job and more time with their kids than their counterparts did 25 years ago. Where are they finding that extra time? "It's coming from time for themselves," says Ellen Galinsky, FWI president.

Marianne Legato, a cardiologist, Health Advisory Board member, and author of Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget, can tell you why: "If you never have any time except reactive time -- things you must do for others -- you don't have a sense of control. You are interrupted all the time. Your brain has trouble resting even during sleep. Such chronic exhaustion increases the release of stress hormones, and your blood sugar rises." If this is your normal state, then the physical consequences increase your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and memory problems. If that's not enough to scare you into taking some time for yourself, consider this: The hormonal effects of always being on edge help deposit fat right around your waist.

There are more than physical benefits to getting off this treadmill. Taking a break will actually make you discharge your responsibilities better. Galinsky's surveys show that people who are happiest at work are those who take time for themselves. "If you shift your focus, you go back to the other areas of life with more energy," she says. "You're less stressed, more satisfied with life in general."

So what is Me Time? First, it can't be something you hate doing but feel you have to do. Take going to the gym, for instance: "Exercise is a really important tool for my sanity," says Alice D. Domar, PhD, a psychologist and author of Self-Nurture and Health's Ask Ali column. "But a lot of women use it as punishment for eating, or see it as an obligation." If that's you, then exercise doesn't count as Me Time.

For some women, it is a serving of quiet. Kim Renteria, a Houston glass artist, is a widow with three grown children. Every 5 weeks or so, she unplugs her phone. It's not that she doesn't enjoy her friends and family, but she knows she needs 48 hours of solitude for renewal. For many women, other women are the key to Me Time. Studies have shown that having a strong network of friends enhances people's satisfaction with life and even their health.

What is nourishing for one person can be a burden to someone else. If a book group doesn't appeal to you, maybe an art class does. Some women find that volunteer work provides a soul-enriching sense of accomplishment. But if you're someone who says yes to the constant requests for help then wonders what you were thinking, maybe what you need at this point in your life is to do less, period.

Maybe sometimes all you need is permission to do what you need to do to keep yourself sane. To breathe, and be happy. Think of this as your permission slip.

Emily Yoffe is a freelance writer in Washington D.C.

my3labs

09-26-2006, 05:19 PM

I was digging this until they recommened eating dairy! :no:

Tips for preventing insulin resistance
POSTED: 7:12 p.m. EDT, September 26, 2006
Adjust font size:
(AP) -- A healthy diet and lifestyle can go a long way in preventing insulin resistance, diabetes and heart disease in overweight people. Some tips:

• Get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise, enough to raise your heart rate but not leave you short of breath, five times a week. Exercising muscles makes them more receptive to insulin and helps them burn more glucose.

• Have several small meals each day, rather than a few large ones, to avoid ups and downs in blood sugar.

• Eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, particularly oats, beans and legumes; the fiber slows digestion, limiting spikes and drops in blood insulin and sugar levels.

• Eat fewer processed meats and other animal products, butter and other saturated fats, and trans fats, which are in many processed foods; they can limit the ability of insulin to regulate blood sugar. Use healthy cooking oils, such as canola, sunflower or olive oil.

• Limit consumption of sugary drinks, desserts and other sweets. Keep healthy snacks handy. • Avoid high-sodium prepared foods, which can push up blood pressure.

• Drink milk or eat dairy products; the proteins and enzymes in them slow conversion of glucose to blood sugar, which can reduce risk of insulin resistance developing. :no:

• Get six to eight hours sleep a night, as inadequate rest can disrupt blood sugar levels and raise insulin resistance.

• Try meditation, deep breathing or other relaxation methods. One study showed they can reduce high blood sugar levels.

my3labs

09-26-2006, 07:45 PM

NYC eyes ban on restaurant trans fats
POSTED: 8:07 p.m. EDT, September 26, 2006
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NEW YORK (AP) -- Three years after the city banned smoking in restaurants, health officials are talking about prohibiting something they say is almost as bad: artificial trans fatty acids.

The city health department unveiled a proposal Tuesday that would bar cooks at any of the city's 24,600 food service establishments from using ingredients that contain the artery-clogging substance, commonly listed on food labels as partially hydrogenated oil.

Artificial trans fats are found in some shortenings, margarine and frying oils and turn up in foods from pie crusts to french fries to doughnuts.

Doctors agree that trans fats are unhealthy in nearly any amount, but a spokesman for the restaurant industry said he was stunned the city would seek to ban a legal ingredient found in millions of American kitchens.

"Labeling is one thing, but when they totally ban a product, it goes well beyond what we think is prudent and acceptable," said Chuck Hunt, executive vice president of the city's chapter of the New York State Restaurant Association.

He said the proposal could create havoc: Cooks would be forced to discard old recipes and scrutinize every ingredient in their pantry. A restaurant could face a fine if an inspector finds the wrong type of vegetable shortening on its shelves.

The proposal also would create a huge problem for national chains. Among the fast foods that would need to get an overhaul or face a ban: McDonald's french fries, Kentucky Fried Chicken and several varieties of Dunkin' Donuts.

Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden acknowledged that the ban would be a challenge for restaurants, but he said trans fats can easily be replaced with substitute oils that taste the same or better and are far less unhealthy.

"It is a dangerous and unnecessary ingredient," Frieden said. "No one will miss it when it's gone."

A similar ban on trans fats in restaurant food has been proposed in Chicago and is still under consideration, although it has been ridiculed by some as unnecessary government meddling.

The latest version of the Chicago plan would apply only to companies with annual revenues of more than $20 million, a provision aimed exclusively at fast-food giants.

A few companies have moved to eliminate trans fats on their own.

Wendy's announced in August that it had switched to a new cooking oil that contains no trans fatty acids. Crisco now sells a shortening that contains zero trans fats. Frito-Lay removed trans fats from its Doritos and Cheetos. Kraft's took trans fats out of Oreos.

McDonald's began using a trans fat-free cooking oil in Denmark after that country banned artificial trans fats in processed food, but it has yet to do so in the United States.

Walt Riker, vice president of corporate communications at McDonald's, said in a statement Tuesday that the company would review New York's proposal.

"McDonald's knows this is an important issue, which is why we continue to test in earnest to find ways to further reduce (trans fatty acid) levels," he said.

New York's health department had asked restaurants to impose a voluntary ban last year but found use of trans fats unchanged in recent surveys.

Under the New York proposal, restaurants would need to get artificial trans fats out of cooking oils, margarine and shortening by July 1, 2007, and all other foodstuffs by July 1, 2008. It would not affect grocery stores. It also would not apply to naturally occurring trans fats, which are found in some meats and dairy.

The Board of Health has yet to approve the proposal and will not do so until at least December, Frieden said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration began requiring food labels to list trans fats in January.

Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the Department of Nutrition at the Harvard University School of Public Health, praised New York health officials for considering a ban, which he said could save lives.

"Artificial trans fats are very toxic, and they almost surely causes tens of thousands of premature deaths each year," he said. "The federal government should have done this long ago."

Bowwowmeow

09-27-2006, 10:38 AM

The proposal also would create a huge problem for national chains. Among the fast foods that would need to get an overhaul or face a ban: McDonald's french fries, Kentucky Fried Chicken and several varieties of Dunkin' Donuts.
Sounds good to me! :cheer:

my3labs

09-27-2006, 11:10 AM

That was my favorite part. Hate to see them struggle...:excited:

my3labs

09-27-2006, 12:48 PM

The 2006 Beloit Mindset list was recently released. I'm feeling really old.

BELOIT COLLEGE MINDSET LIST®
FOR THE CLASS OF 2006

Most students entering college this fall were born in 1984.

1. A Southerner has always been President of the United States.

2. Richard Burton, Ricky Nelson and Truman Capote have always been dead.

3. South Africa's official policy of apartheid has not existed during their lifetime.

4. Cars have always had eye-level rear stop lights, CD players, and air bags.

5. We have always been able to choose our long distance carriers.

6. Weather reports have always been available 24-hours a day on television.

7. The "evil empire" has moved from Moscow to a setting in some distant galaxy.

8. "Big Brother" is merely a television show.

9. Cyberspace has always existed.

10. Bruce Springsteen's new hit, Born in the USA, could have been played to celebrate their birth.

11. Barbie has always had a job.

12. Telephone bills have always been totally incomprehensible.

13. Prom dresses have always come in basic black.

14. A "Hair Band" is some sort of fashion accessory.

15. George Foreman has always been a barbecue grill salesman

16. Afghanistan has always been a front page story.

17. There has always been an heir to the heir to the British throne.

18. They have no recollection of Connie Chung or Geraldo Rivera as serious journalists.

19. Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw have always anchored the evening news.

20. China has always been a market-based reforming regime.

21. The United States has always been trying to put nuclear waste in Nevada.

22. The U.S. and the Soviets have always been partners in space.

23. Mrs. Fields' cookies and Swatch watches have always been favorites.

24. Nicolas Cage, Daryll Hannah, Eddie Murphy, and John Malkovich made their first major film impressions the year they were born.

25. The GM Saturn has always been on the road.

26. The "Fab Four" are not a male rock group, but four women enjoying "Sex and the City."

27. Fox has always been a television network choice.

28. Males do not carry a handkerchief in a back pocket.

29. This generation has never wanted to "be a Pepper too."

30. Ozzy's lifestyle has nothing to do with the Nelson family.

31. Women have always had tattoos.

32. Vanessa Williams and Madonna are aging singers.

33. Perrier has always come in flavors.

34. Cherry Coke has always come in cans.

35. A "hotline" is a consumer service rather than a phone used to avoid accidental nuclear war.

36. The drug "ecstasy" has always been around.

37. Genetic testing and DNA screening have always been available.

38. Electronic filing of federal income taxes has always been an option.

39. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has always been available to doctors.

40. Trivial Pursuit may have been played by their parents the night before they were born.

41. The U.S. has always maintained that it has a "clear right to use force against terrorism."

42. The drinking age has always been 21 throughout the country.

43. Women have always been members of the Jaycees.

44. The center of chic has shifted from Studio 54 to Liza's living room, live!

45. Julian Lennon had his only hit the year they were born.

46. Sylvan Learning Centers have always been an after-school option.

47. Hip-hop and rap have always been popular musical forms.

48. They grew up in minivans.

49. Scientists have always recognized the impact of acid rain.

50. The Coen Brothers have always been making films.

dreamer

09-27-2006, 01:12 PM

Too much testosterone kills brain cells By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Wed Sep 27, 8:23 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Too much testosterone can kill brain cells, researchers said on Tuesday in a finding that may help explain why steroid abuse can cause behavior changes like aggressiveness and suicidal tendencies.

Tests on brain cells in lab dishes showed that while a little of the male hormone is good, too much of it causes cells to self-destruct in a process similar to that seen in brain illnesses such as Alzheimer's.

"Too little testosterone is bad, too much is bad but the right amount is perfect," said Barbara Ehrlich of Yale University in Connecticut, who led the study.

Testosterone is key to the development, differentiation and growth of cells and is produced by both men and women, although men produce about 20 times more of the hormone.

It can also be abused, and recent scandals have involved athletes who use the hormone, or steroids that turn into testosterone in the body, for an unfair advantage.

"Other people have shown that high levels of steroid can cause behavioral changes," Ehrlich said in a telephone interview.

"We can show that when you have high levels of steroids, you have high testosterone and that can destroy the nerve cells. We know that when you lose brain cells you lose function."

Ehrlich's team tried the same thing with the "female" hormone estrogen, just to be fair.

"We were surprised, but it actually looks like estrogen is neuroprotective. If anything, there is less cell death in the presence of estrogen," she said.

Writing in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Ehrlich and colleagues said their findings meant people should think twice about supplementing with testosterone, even if it does build muscle mass and aid recovery after exercise.

"These effects of testosterone on neurons will have long term effects on brain function," they wrote.

"Next time a muscle-bound guy in a sports car cuts you off on the highway, don't get mad -- just take a deep breath and realize that it might not be his fault," Ehrlich said in a statement.

The cells die via a process called apoptosis, also known as cell suicide or programmed cell death.

"Apoptosis is an important thing for the brain -- the brain needs to weed out some of the cells. But when it happens too frequently, you lose too many cells and causes problems."

A similar process is seen in Alzheimer's disease, the most common cause of dementia in the United States, affecting an estimated 4.5 million Americans, and Huntington's disease, another fatal brain illness.

"Our results suggest that the responses to elevated testosterone can be compared with these pathophysiological conditions," the researchers wrote.

When I heard about this on the news, I started to wonder if that is maybe why Americans seem more angry and seemingly think less...the hormones in animal products and the excess the body makes from eating animal products (not just from intentionally taking steroids) are killing their brains:rubchin:

my3labs

09-27-2006, 05:10 PM

Brother gets 3-year-old sister drunk, police say
POSTED: 2:18 p.m. EDT, September 27, 2006
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MINNEAPOLIS, Minnesota (AP) -- A 14-year-old boy was arrested after his 3-year-old sister was found passed out drunk from hard liquor at home, police said.

The girl was unconscious when she was taken to a hospital after her sister called police Monday night, police spokesman Lt. Greg Reinhardt said. "The child could have easily died," he said.

She was recovering and had been released to a children's home by Wednesday morning.

The girl's teenage brother was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of child endangerment, Reinhardt said. He said neglect or abuse appeared to have caused the girl's condition, rather than accidental alcohol poisoning.

Police would not release further details on the boy and any court proceedings because he is a juvenile.

The girl's blood alcohol level was 0.12 percent, authorities said. Minnesota state law considers drivers drunk when their blood alcohol level is 0.08 percent.

About one ounce of 40-proof liquor would cause that blood-alcohol level in a 3-year-old child of average weight, about 28 pounds (12.6 kilograms). Kirk Hughes of the Minnesota Poison Control System said one ounce would be about two mouthfuls for such a child.

Reinhardt said police do not know what kind of hard liquor the girl drank.

Reinhardt said the girl's mother was not home at the time.

1vegan

10-02-2006, 04:03 AM

Men, Too, Will Shop 'Til They Drop
10.01.06, 12:00 AM ET

SUNDAY, Oct. 1 (HealthDay News) -- One in 20 American adults said they find themselves unable to stop shopping for items they may not even want or need.

And men are just as likely as women to suffer from "compulsive buying," according to the largest survey of its kind ever conducted.

"That's the biggest surprise -- that men engage in this behavior almost as commonly as women," said Dr. Lorrin Koran, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Stanford University.

He said the finding runs counter to the conventional view of compulsive buying as a "woman's disease." That impression grew out of the fact that women have typically made up the vast majority of volunteers for studies looking at the disorder.

However, Koran said men who obsessively shop are probably more reluctant than women to come forward and admit they have a problem. "Generally, in psychiatry, men seek care less often than women," he pointed out. "It's not 'manly' to seek help."

The study, published in the October issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, also found that compulsive shopping usually begins in a person's teens or early 20s, and is associated with lower -- not higher -- incomes.

According to Koran, compulsive shopping is more than the occasional splurge, later regretted.

Instead, the urge to shop becomes constant and overwhelming. For most, the act of browsing and buying gradually takes the place of time spent at work, with family or in other pursuits. To qualify as a disorder, "the behavior has to be associated with marked distress and interfere with functioning," Koran said.

The typical compulsive shopper usually feels a sense of euphoria while engaged in shopping, but that "high" later gives way to remorse and distress. "It's afterward, when you realize that you spent money that you didn't have or you argue with your husband about why you have all these clothes in your closet that you never wear," Koran said. "That's when you regret it."

The root causes of shopping addiction remain unclear. But British researcher Helga Dittmar, a senior lecturer of psychology at the University of Sussex, said two factors -- highly materialistic values and poor self-image -- appear to be risk factors. In this scenario, buying things is viewed as a path to self-improvement.

"They'll buy those consumer goods that symbolize a part of their ideal self," Dittmar explained.

"Helga Dittmar, a senior lecturer of psychology at the University of Sussex, said two factors -- highly materialistic values and poor self-image -- appear to be risk factors. In this scenario, buying things is viewed as a path to self-improvement. They'll buy those consumer goods that symbolize a part of their ideal self," Dittmar explained" "

I agree with Helga on this :agree:

Keykeypie

10-07-2006, 06:35 PM

Saturday, 7th October 2006
Girl upset by animal cruelty hanged herself
A STUDENT upset by animal cruelty hanged herself from a tree, an inquest was told.

Jennifer Scott, 17, had a history of self-harm and mood swings for which her GP had unsuccessfully tried to persuade her to seek help.

Animal lover Jennifer, in her first year of a National Diploma in Animal Care at college, was found hanging from a tree at the end of Zan Drive, Sandbach, her home town in Cheshire.

An extensive police search had been launched the previous night after she went missing on the way to a friend's house.

Her mother, Wendy Scott, 50, called the police after reading her daughter's last diary entry, which suggested she was going to harm herself.

The family previously revealed Jennifer left a note saying she had taken her life because she was could not bear to live in a world full of animal cruelty.

Her family and friends were too upset to speak after the inquest and Crewe coroner Nicolas Rheinberg chose not to disclose the contents of the diary or note at their request.

During the hearing, Mrs Scott said her daughter was an "extremely sensitive girl" who was "passionate about animals" and was upset by cruelty to them.

'Pale and tired'

She said the family had been worried about Jennifer for a while as she had seemed "very pale and tired" at times, but she had never talked to them about her self-harm.

Jennifer's close friend, Alice Shambrook, told the inquest her friend had only shown a few people, including herself, the scars she had on her arms from cutting herself with a kitchen knife and broken glass. She said: "She told me she heard voices in her head - not telling her to do something but they were very negative, the sort of unpleasant thoughts people have about themselves that in her case got out of control."

She added: "She could hide her feelings well.

"Most of the time, she was flamboyant and boisterous and everyone would notice when she came into a room."

The coroner ruled Jennifer "took her own life while the balance of her life was disturbed."

Mr Rheinberg said: "It is likely that Jennifer suffered from ill health, although this was never diagnosed.

"There is evidence of the tortured nature of her mind in the cuts caused by her self-harm."

paul

10-08-2006, 06:43 AM

such a sad story.

Keykeypie

10-08-2006, 09:19 AM

It sure is sad.......I wonder how many people in her life she tried to talk to & explain her feelings who laughed at her and told her she was being silly and "That's just the way things are....you can't change them"

Gliondrach

10-09-2006, 11:28 AM

Yes, it's a tragedy. If only she had been thinking properly she would have realised that killing herself would have made the world a worse place. One less person to care for and help the other animals.

All of us who care must stay as healthy as we can be. Then we'll be better able to help.

Bowwowmeow

11-16-2006, 06:09 PM

Report: Fewer People Hungry in U.S.

By LIBBY QUAID (AP Food and Farm Writer)
From Associated Press
November 16, 2006 4:18 AM EST
WASHINGTON - For the first time in six years, the number of Americans struggling with hunger fell in 2005, the Agriculture Department said.
Last year, 35 million people suffered food insecurity, meaning they didn't have the money or resources to get enough food for active, healthy living. The number was 38 million in 2004.
Advocates said the news was welcome but not good enough.
"In this land of plenty, its shocking to realize that 35 million Americans continue to struggle with food insecurity," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.
The report said some groups battle hunger at consistently higher levels. While the rate of food insecurity was 11 percent nationwide, for female-headed households it was 30 percent, for black families it was 22 percent and for Hispanic families it was 18 percent.
Jim Weill, president of the anti-hunger Food Research and Action Center, said the overall drop in food insecurity shows the effectiveness of programs like food stamps and school meals.
"But it's not cause for anybody letting up - it's just a sign that these programs work, and we need to redouble our efforts to get them to more people in need," Weill said.
The department had waited until after Election Day to issue the annual report, prompting accusations from Democrats that the Bush administration was playing politics with hunger.
Despite the positive news, the report is still drawing criticism, this time because analysts decided not to use the word "hunger" to describe how hungry people are.
Changing the wording "is a huge disservice to the millions of Americans who struggle daily to feed themselves and their families," said the Rev. David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, an anti-hunger group.
"We should not hide the word hunger in our discussions of this problem, because we cannot hide the reality of hunger among our citizens," Beckmann said.
The report found:
-There were more people with very low food security - those who are worst off. The number was 10.8 million, up from 10.7 million in 2004.
-There were 24 million people with low food security, down from 27.5 million in 2004.
In the report, the terms "low food security" and "very low food security" replace the old descriptions of "food insecurity without hunger" and "food insecurity with hunger." The change was recommended by the National Academies, which advise the government on science and medical issues.
Among the states, Hawaii saw the biggest drop in the number of hungry people, from 12.9 percent in 1998 to 7.8 percent in 2005. South Carolina saw the biggest increase, from 11 percent in 1998 to 15.5 percent in 2005.
The hunger report is based on Census Bureau data on poverty, which stopped climbing in 2005.

If they just paid everyone a living wage we wouldn't need charities. This really is disgusting. And what's with the term "food insecurity"????? Whose feelings is that PC phrase supposed to spare, the poor starving people or the fat wealthy selfish ones who won't share what they don't deserve to hog all to themselves anyway? :grumble: :no:

thevegantwins

11-17-2006, 01:15 PM

Tell that 'news' to the people in the city I work in who call my agency regularly for food.

paul

11-17-2006, 03:25 PM

:hbang: :tantrum: :grumble: :rollingpin:

:dizzy: :confused:

Gliondrach

11-19-2006, 05:16 AM

It's hard to believe about such a wealthy country. You need a proper welfare state. And a national health service. Mind you, ours could be improved.

thevegantwins

11-19-2006, 07:41 AM

It's hard to believe about such a wealthy country. You need a proper welfare state. And a national health service. Mind you, ours could be improved.
That's for sure. My husband is about to have a nervous breakdown because the government doesn't want to put his grandma on Medicaid, insurance for very ill people like here and they want to charge her/us $119 a day for her nursing home stay. :covereyes: She worked from her teen years until 74 years old and paid taxes all that time but now that she needs help, the government has turned its back on her. Wankers! :hbang:

Gliondrach

11-19-2006, 09:14 AM

That's appalling. Isn't there anyone you could enlist support from? A senator or representative? Was she ever in a union, if so they might be able to help. What will happen if she isn't put on medicaid and you can't afford to pay?

You could write to the newspapers to highlight how a citizen who helped to pay the taxes that pay for government is now being refused her rights to decent healthcare. It is thanks to her generation that the present generation is able to afford the better lifestyles that she didn't have all those years ago. Etc.

thevegantwins

11-19-2006, 11:51 AM

The finance woman at the nursing home is a bitch. She's been threatening my husband with the fact that I work for the county, and grandma is in a county nursing home, and that I should know the Medicaid regulations. She's trying to make it appear like we are scamming them somehow because his grandma gave us some money over the summer, money she has inherited from her sister who died. It was a few thousand dollars, not millions and wouldn't even cover a month's worth of nursing care. I'm a bit hesitant to get higher-ups involved because it could indeed effect my job and the promotion that I put in for. It's a very crooked system. My coworker's mom is in a nursing home now but she's a medicaid worker so she knew exactly what to do in order to keep all her mom's money and even her house so the government couldn't get it. I have never done medicaid so I didn't know how to take advantage of the system. :(

Oracl

11-19-2006, 11:14 PM

That sounds really unfair, TVT. :(

paul

11-20-2006, 01:30 AM

thats terrible tvt

thevegantwins

11-22-2006, 09:46 AM

Interesting how fewer people are hungry in the US according to the AP oon 11/16/06 however, several days later, the AP is reporting that in one of the largest cities in the world, 1 in 6 people needs to rely on outside assistance for food. :confused:

November 21, 2006
Report: Hunger Rising in New York City
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:58 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- The number of city residents relying on food from charities and unable to feed their families is rising, according to a report issued by an advocacy group.

Nearly one in six city residents lived in households that could not afford to buy enough food during the three year period ending in 2005, according to the New York City Coalition Against Hunger report released Tuesday.

These households made up 15.4 percent of city residents -- up from 14 percent between 2000 and 2003, according to the report, which was based in part on figures from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

According to the coalition's survey of the city's food pantries and soup kitchens, the number of people served by those charities rose an estimated 11 percent in 2006.

''I do think there's an increased demand, especially when I know that many of my staff in my own agency utilize food kitchens in between pay periods,'' the city's top welfare official, Human Resources Commissioner Verna Eggleston, said Monday in testimony at a City Council hearing on hunger.

Eggleston said her agency would begin accepting food stamp applications over the Internet next month, in a joint effort with the NYCCAH and another nonprofit group, Food Change.

About 1.1 million of the city's 8.1 million residents receive food stamps. Advocates estimate that hundreds of thousands more are eligible.

To target some of those people, Eggleston said, city employees will visit food pantries and soup kitchens during the holidays to help residents fill out food stamp applications.

1vegan

11-22-2006, 01:14 PM

My coworker's mom is in a nursing home now but she's a medicaid worker so she knew exactly what to do

would it be possible to ask that co-worker for advice in this case?

thevegantwins

11-23-2006, 04:40 AM

would it be possible to ask that co-worker for advice in this case?
Too late, I would have had to ask her a year ago, before grandma needed nursing care in order to 'arrange' things like she did for her mom.

Bowwowmeow

12-01-2006, 09:46 PM

English Smoking Ban to Begin July 1
By DAVID STRINGER (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
November 30, 2006 11:34 PM EST
LONDON - A ban on smoking in movie theaters, shopping malls, pubs and other public places in England will take effect July 1, the government said Friday.
Prime Minister Tony Blair has said the ban is aimed at aiding Britain's smokers to quit and part of a wider drive to improve public health. Government statistics compiled in 2004 found around one in four adult Britons smokes regularly.
The measure extends England's no smoking law to public places such as cinemas, offices, factories.
A similar ban will take effect in Wales on April 2.
Pub landlords and pro-smoker groups have all expressed concerns about the law - fearing a negative impact on business and the ebbing away of civil liberties.
"Thousands of people's lives will be saved and the health of thousands more protected" by the ban, said Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt. "Smokefree legislation will protect everyone from the harm of secondhand smoke ... and relaxing and will provide a more supportive environment for smokers who wish to give up."
In March, Scotland became the first British nation to ban smoking in public places, with businesses warned that failure to prevent smoking on their premises would lead to $350 fines. Individuals can be fined $87.
Some workplaces, including adult care homes, hospices, offshore installations and submarines, are exempt from the ban. Smoking is also allowed in police detention or interview rooms and in designated hotel bedrooms, but cinemas, offices, factories and shopping malls are all covered by the law.
Similar rules will apply in England and Wales.
Several American states and cities, Scotland, Ireland, Finland, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, Spain, and Sweden have all restricted smoking in pubs, cafes, offices and other public places in recent years.

In Belmont, CA, where I went to elementary school, the city council voted on a ban on smoking everywhere within city limits except single-family detached homes. No smoking in apartments, condos, or townhouses with shared walls, no smoking outside at all, and if you are driving through, no smoking in your car! It was a unanimous vote.

Gliondrach

12-02-2006, 09:55 AM

It can't come too soon for me. But even people smoking in the streets annoys me. I was walking behind a couple today and couldn't pass them for about 30 seconds. They were both smoking and I was downwind of them.

thevegantwins

12-02-2006, 10:47 AM

One thing I hate about the smoking ban is that in office buildings, they don't designate where outside people can smoke and they always seem to congregate next to the main doors so you have to walk through a toxic cloud of smoke to get inside.

Bowwowmeow

12-02-2006, 10:57 AM

Here in CA you are supposed to stay fifteen feet away from any building entrance. It doesn't do any good, though. I hope other cites near me do what Belmont has done. I know it makes it hard on smokers, and I am not without pity for them, but smoking outside still affects non-smokers. Even going 80 mph on the freeway doesn't keep me from smelling the cigarette smoke of the person driving in front of me.
I have always felt that smokers should only be allowed to smoke in their own homes, with their doors and windows closed, but considered that a pipe-dream. I was really amazed to hear what Belmont had done. Some people have criticized them, on account of the idea that condo owners have paid for their homes and should be able to do what they want, but non-smoking condo owners pay for theirs too, and should have the right to be free of toxic fumes in their own homes.

thevegantwins

12-02-2006, 11:18 AM

I should move to Belmont. Sometimes I can smell cigarette smoke in our bedroom even with the window closed, it comes wafting in from other apartments. It was worse in our last apartment building because it was someone who constantly smoked pot and you could often smell it on our apartment.

Bowwowmeow

12-02-2006, 11:21 AM

Yes! Move to Belmont so we can be neighbors!

thevegantwins

12-02-2006, 11:32 AM

I'd love to live near SF but mr. vegantwins is afraid of earthquakes.

Bowwowmeow

12-02-2006, 05:15 PM

Wait until after we get "the big one" then. I bet real estate will be at bargain-basement prices, too.

Bowwowmeow

12-13-2006, 07:23 PM

Peter Boyle Dies in NYC

By DEEPTI HAJELA (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
December 13, 2006 8:44 PM EST
NEW YORK - Peter Boyle, the actor who played the hilariously grouchy father on "Everybody Loves Raymond" as the final note of a distinguished career that also included a memorable role in Mel Brooks' "Young Frankenstein," has died. He was 71.
Boyle died Tuesday evening at New York Presbyterian Hospital. He had been suffering from multiple myeloma and heart disease, said his publicist, Jennifer Plante.
"I am deeply saddened by the passing of Peter Boyle," Ray Romano said, adding that Boyle was a mentor to him from the early days of "Everybody Loves Raymond."
"He gave me great advice, he always made me laugh, and the way he connected with everyone around him amazed me. The fact that he could play a convincing curmudgeon on the show, but in reality be such a compassionate and thoughtful person, is a true testament to his talent," Romano said.
"It's like losing a spouse," said Doris Roberts, who played Boyle's wife on the sitcom.
While a generation of TV viewers knows him as Frank Barone - with his trademark "Holy crap!" line - Boyle had a respectable career long before "Everybody Loves Raymond" debuted in 1996, including a part in Martin Scorsese's "Taxi Driver." He also was close friends with John Lennon, who was best man at Boyle's wedding.
A member of the Christian Brothers religious order who turned to acting, the tall, prematurely balding Boyle gained notice in the title role of the 1970 sleeper hit "Joe," playing an angry, murderous bigot at odds with the emerging hippie youth culture.
Briefly typecast in tough, irate roles, Boyle began to escape the image as Robert Redford's campaign manager in "The Candidate" and left it behind entirely after "Young Frankenstein," Brooks' 1974 send-up of horror films.
The latter movie's defining moment came when Gene Wilder, as scientist Frederick Frankenstein, introduced his creation to an upscale audience. Boyle, decked out in tails, performed a song-and-dance routine to the Irving Berlin classic "Puttin' On the Ritz."
It showed another side of Boyle, one that would be best exploited in "Raymond" as the curmudgeonly Frank Barone.
"He's just obnoxious in a nice way, just for laughs," Boyle said of the character in a 2001 interview. "It's a very sweet experience having this (success) happen at a time when you basically go back over your life and see every mistake you ever made."
When Boyle tried out for the role opposite Romano's Ray Barone, however, he was kept waiting for his audition - and he was not happy.
"He came in all hot and angry," recalled the show's creator, Phil Rosenthal, "and I hired him because I was afraid of him." But Rosenthal also noted: "I knew right away that he had a comic presence."
Patricia Heaton, who played Boyle's daughter-in-law in "Raymond," said in a statement, "Peter was an incredible man who made all of us who had the privilege of working with him aspire to be better actors. ... He was loved by everyone that knew him and loved by his many fans who cherished his talent."
"I've lost an amazing friend and colleague," said Brad Garrett, who played Boyle's son Robert on the sitcom. "Being able to share nine years with Peter on 'Raymond' and witness his talent and humanity was an honor."
Boyle had first come to the public's attention more than a quarter of a century before "Raymond," in the critically acclaimed "Joe." He met his wife, Loraine Alterman, on the set of "Young Frankenstein" when she visited as a reporter for Rolling Stone magazine and Boyle, still in monster makeup, asked her for a date.
On television, he starred in "Joe Bash," an acclaimed but short-lived 1986 "dramedy" in which he played a lonely beat cop. He won an Emmy in 1996 for his guest-starring role in an episode of "The X Files," and was nominated for "Raymond" and for the 1977 TV film "Tail Gunner Joe," in which he played Sen. Joseph McCarthy.
In the 1976 film "Taxi Driver," he was the cabbie-philosopher Wizard, who counseled Robert De Niro's violent Travis Bickle.
He appeared in dozens of other films, including "T.R. Baskin," "F.I.S.T.," "Johnny Dangerously," "The Dream Team," "Monster's Ball," "The Santa Clause," "The Santa Clause 2" and "While You Were Sleeping."
The son of a local TV personality in Philadelphia, Boyle was educated in Roman Catholic schools and spent three years in a monastery before abandoning his religious studies. He later described the experience as similar to "living in the Middle Ages."
He explained his decision to leave in 1991: "I felt the call for awhile; then I felt the normal pull of the world and the flesh."
He traveled to New York to study with legendary actress Uta Hagen, supporting himself for five years with various jobs, including postal worker, waiter, maitre d' and office temp. Finally, he was cast in a road company version of "The Odd Couple." When the play reached Chicago he quit to study with that city's famed improvisational troupe Second City.
Upon returning to New York, he began to land roles in TV commercials, off-Broadway plays and finally films.
Through his wife, a friend of Yoko Ono, the actor became close friends with Lennon. "We were both seekers after a truth, looking for a quick way to enlightenment," Boyle once said of Lennon.
In 1990, Boyle had a stroke and couldn't talk for six months. In 1999, he had a heart attack on the "Raymond" set. He soon regained his health, however, and returned to the series.
Despite his work in "Everybody Loves Raymond" and other Hollywood productions, Boyle made New York City his home. He and his wife had two daughters, Lucy and Amy.
---
Associated Press writer Bob Thomas in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

:(
I never saw "Everybody Loves Raymond" but I loved him in Young Frankenstein.

Gliondrach

12-14-2006, 06:06 PM

I saw him in a few films. I liked him. He was very good in The Dream Team.

Gliondrach

12-31-2006, 10:12 AM

Watching With Intent To Repeat Ignites Key Learning Area Of Brain
Science Daily — Watch and learn. Experience says it works, but how? University of Oregon researchers have seen the light, by imaging the brain, while test subjects watched films of others building objects with Tinker Toys.

As detailed in the Dec. 20 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience, researchers, using functional magnetic resonance imaging, found that when a person watches someone else perform a task with the intention of later replicating the observed performance, motor areas of the brain are activated in a fashion similar to that with accompanies actual movement.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061222093112.html

But some medical researchers still think they need to stick electrodes into monkeys' brains to learn about how human brains work.

There was a small study done about 30 years ago in which some basketball players practised taking free throws at the basket and other players just relaxed and imagined that they were practising. When the two groups were tested to see how their aim had improved the two groups scored about the same. The group who had only imagined doing the practising did just about as well as the group that physically practised.

It can help if you imagine, as clearly as possible, any new activity that you want to engage in, or anything that you want to learn.
------------------
Comedy Films Boost Blood Flow To The Heart
Science Daily — Watching comedy films boosts blood flow to the heart, finds a small study in the journal Heart.

Brachial artery blood flow was reduced in 14 of the 20 participants after watching movie clips that caused distress. But it was increased in 19 of the 20 participants after watching movie clips that elicited laughter. The difference in flow between sad and happy responses exceeded 50 per cent.

The extent of the impact of watching a sad film was of the same magnitude as remembering episodes of anger and doing mental arithmetic, say the authors, while the impact of watching a funny film was equivalent to a bout of aerobic exercise or starting on statin treatment.

sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/01/060118095009.html

I make myself laugh every day. I know it works. I always feel better after a good laugh. I tell myself jokes, recall funny incidents or look at my refletion in the back of a tablespoon. If you can't think of anything to make you laugh, you can always practise smiling. Smile as sincerely as you can. When you smile you release chemicals that are good for your body. With a naturally occuring smile the chemicals are often released first, which makes us want to smile. But, if you do the smile first, the chemicals follow. It's a bit like electricity and magnetism. One can produce the other. The same with smiles: those chemicals cause the feelings that make us want to smile; the smile causes those chemicals to be released. So, get smiling.

Gliondrach

01-09-2007, 09:23 AM

More big business corruption?

ExxonMobil Paid to Mislead Public

By The Associated Press

posted: 03 January 2007
04:30 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AP) — ExxonMobil Corp. gave $16 million to 43 ideological groups between 1998 and 2005 in a coordinated effort to mislead the public by discrediting the science behind global warming, the Union of Concerned Scientists asserted Wednesday.

The report by the science-based nonprofit advocacy group mirrors similar claims by Britain's leading scientific academy. Last September, The Royal Society wrote the oil company asking it to halt support for groups that “misrepresented the science of climate change.''

ExxonMobil did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the scientific advocacy group's report.

Many scientists say accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from tailpipes and smokestacks are warming the atmosphere like a greenhouse, melting Arctic sea ice, alpine glaciers and disturbing the lives of animals and plants.

ExxonMobil lists on its Web site nearly $133 million in 2005 contributions globally, including $6.8 million for “public information and policy research'' distributed to more than 140 think-tanks, universities, foundations, associations and other groups. Some of those have publicly disputed the link between greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

But in September, the company said in response to the Royal Society that it funded groups which research “significant policy issues and promote informed discussion on issues of direct relevance to the company.'' It said the groups do not speak for the company.

Alden Meyer, the Union of Concerned Scientists' strategy and policy director, said in a teleconference that ExxonMobil based its tactics on those of tobacco companies, spreading uncertainty by misrepresenting peer-reviewed scientific studies or cherry-picking facts.

Dr. James McCarthy, a professor at Harvard University, said the company has sought to “create the illusion of a vigorous debate'' about global warming.

JUST LIKE DRUG COMPANIES. THEY LIE AND CHEAT BECAUSE THE TRUTH WILL COST THEM PROFITS.

Gliondrach

01-12-2007, 10:24 AM

Not long ago, before I learned of the truth about what has been done by drug companies and some medical researchers - such as withholding treatment from people with a terminal disease so that the study could continue, or experimenting on unwitting human guinea pigs - I wouldn't have believed this article. In it, near the bottom, is reference to US surgeons who performed operations on babies without anaesthetic, but used muscle relaxants to keep them still. I do find that hard to believe. But not impossible to believe.

This is very long:newstarget.com/009173.html

This is about the operations on babies:
newstarget.com/019930.html

I wonder if that's true about Mr. Henry Cotton? If so, he must have been bad, mad and sad.

Keykeypie

01-12-2007, 12:56 PM

WOW!.....and I was reading in some board awhile back.....post after post
of my doctor said "this" ...and my doctor said that....and what I mean is I was thinking, does everybody have "a doctor"? I don't.
Not really......I have health insurance which is really expensive....but I never use it or go to doctors or anything......no....not even for a checkup.

I really do believe doctors often tell you you're sick when really you're not
.......and you know what else? I don't wash my hands all the time either....
just maybe once a day....because my hands are just going to get dirty again because locks are usually greasy and all.....but I NEVER get sick or anything
......I've never worried about health stuff at all.....but i guess being vegan really is healthy......although I'd be one even if it wasn't.

So anyway....if anybody knows where I can score some carrageenan.....
....I sure would love to have some....:wave:

Gliondrach

01-12-2007, 03:09 PM

Good to know you're healthy.

I'm sure you can buy carrageenan for cooking. Why do you want it?

Oracl

01-12-2007, 05:31 PM

Gliondrach

01-13-2007, 03:46 AM

Couldn't one use agar instead of carrageenan, in light of the possible health risks associated with the latter?

Keykeypie

01-13-2007, 07:21 AM

'Health insurance' is really 'sickness insurance'. ;) My only 'health insurance' is my diet and lifestyle. :crossfingers: I don't have a doctor either. Haven't been to one for years. :)

I'm working on the carrageenan source, Keykey. I'll do a bit of Googling. :agree:

Oh Thanks Oracl.....maybe you'll have better luck then me.
Yeah.....I hate paying for health insurance....around $500. a month
but what if I was in an accident or had a borken leg or something?.....medical
costs are so outragous you could run up a 100,000 dollar bill in no time.
......still, if I'd known years ago I'd always be healthy & lucky I wish I'd have put that money in the bank instead.

Good to know you're healthy.

I'm sure you can buy carrageenan for cooking. Why do you want it?

To add to the homemade soy milk & also to keep in a jar to sniff. Actually,
and I'm not making this up....they used to sell it in Irish Shops here in Queens....you know shops that sell Irish things like Irish music tapes & flags & books etc. Back in the 80ies there were thousands of Irish immigrants here and they used to buy it because they were often home sick and they said it smelled like "home"
.....I saw this one lady one day with tears just streaming down her face because the smell just brought back so many memories of her home......very
moving.
I don't know, maybe I lived in Ireland in a past life because the smell kinda
gets to me too......I don't mean I just like it.....I really REALLY love it. It smells like the sea......but different then the Atlantic sea.

Gliondrach

01-13-2007, 09:30 AM

Are you sure that was carrageenan? That is the extract of carrageen, also known as Irish Moss, a type of seaweed that grows on Irish coasts. Are you sure it wasn't just the seaweed, carrageen?

Gliondrach

01-13-2007, 09:36 AM

I thought so. I've just looked in Richard Mabey's book, Food For Free. He says it is widespread on temperate Atlantic shores. It probably grows near you. He uses the correct spelling of carragheen.

I wonder if it's the same seaweed that the Welsh use to make lava bread?

No, it's not. I've just seen in the same book that Laver, to give it its correct spelling, is a different seaweed.

Keykeypie

01-13-2007, 11:29 AM

Oh......thanks Martin. You know I didn't realize it was two different things.
Now I see it is.....

Wouldn't that be something if it was growing right here all the time.....maybe "The Wild Man" (http://www.econetwork.net/~wildmansteve/)might know.....he's this guy who takes people
on "walks" through Central Park & all and shows them what they can pick & eat. I'll go check his web page

Thanks again:wave:

Gliondrach

01-14-2007, 04:21 AM

My pleasure. Have you been on any of the Wild Man's walks?

Keykeypie

01-14-2007, 07:42 AM

No...but maybe someday I will....I bet it's real interesting

thevegantwins

01-30-2007, 10:07 AM

January 30, 2007
Remains of Village Found Near Stonehenge
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:31 a.m. ET

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Archaeologists have uncovered what may have been a village for workers or festival-goers near the mysterious stone circle Stonehenge in England.

The village was located at Durrington Walls, about two miles from Stonehenge, and is also the location of a wooden version of the stone circle.

Eight houses have been excavated and the researchers believe there were at least 25 of them, archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson said Tuesday at a briefing held by the National Geographic Society.

The village was carbon dated to about 2600 B.C., about the same time Stonehenge was built. The Great Pyramid in Egypt was built at about the same time, said Parker Pearson of Sheffield University.

The small wooden houses had a central hearth, he said, and are almost identical to stone houses built at about the same time in the Orkney Islands.

The researchers speculated that Durrington Walls was a place for the living and Stonehenge -- where several cremated remains have been found -- was a cemetery and memorial. Both are connected to the Avon River by paths they called avenues.

Parker Pearson said remains of stone tools, animal bones, arrowheads and other artifacts were uncovered in the village.

Remains of pigs indicated they were about nine months old when killed, which would mark a midwinter festival, he said.

Parker Pearson said Stonehenge was oriented to face the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, while the wooden circle at Durrington Walls faced the midwinter sunrise and midsummer sunset.

Interesting that it took them so long to find the village. I would imagine that area has been combed over and over again by archeologists with Stonehenge and nearby Avebury.

Fauxmage

01-30-2007, 06:37 PM

That is interesting, vegantwins. Archaeology is my longtime passion.

Fauxmage

01-30-2007, 06:38 PM

This has left me speechless.

Woman Jailed After Reporting Rape

By PHIL DAVIS (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
January 30, 2007 7:26 PM EST
TAMPA, Fla. - A woman who told police she had been raped was jailed for two days after officers found an old warrant accusing her of failing to pay restitution for a 2003 theft arrest.
While she was behind bars, according to the college student's attorney, a jail worker refused to give her a second dose of the morning-after contraceptive pill because of the worker's religious convictions.
The 21-year-old woman was released Monday only after attorney Vic Moore reported her plight to the local media.
"Shocked. Stunned. Outraged. I don't have words to describe it," Moore said. "She is not a victim of any one person. She is a victim of the system. There's just got to be some humanity involved when it's a victim of rape."
Moore said the woman was not allowed to take the second emergency contraceptive pill until Monday afternoon, a day late, after reporters called police and jail officials.
Tampa Police Chief Steve Hogue said the arrest led to a new policy Tuesday that tells officers not to arrest a crime victim who has suffered injury or mental trauma whenever "reasonably possible." The agency also apologized to the student.
"Obviously, any policy that allows a sexual battery victim to spend a night in jail is a flawed policy," police spokeswoman Laura McElroy said.
The woman is not being identified by The Associated Press because she reported being the victim of a sex crime.
Tampa attorney Jennifer D'Angelo, who represents the jail worker, said Tuesday that her client is prohibited from giving inmates any medication without specific orders. The worker insists she never discussed religion with the woman who reported being raped.
"She was mortified at what was being reported in the press," said D'Angelo, who declined to identify the worker. "She's frightened for her job and she's frightened about community backlash about these allegations."
The employee, who has worked for a jail health care contractor for about six months, was placed on administrative leave, D'Angelo said.
Moore said it was too soon to say if his client would sue. Her first priority was making sure detectives find her attacker.
"She is brave," Moore said. "We are going to work with police to catch this monster."
She was in Tampa on Saturday for Gasparilla, an annual pirate-themed parade that draws thousands of people. She said she was walking alone to her car when a man pulled her behind a building and raped her, McElroy said.
She reported the rape Saturday afternoon, and officers took her to a rape crisis center where she was given the first of two doses of the morning-after pill, McElroy said. The second dose is supposed to be taken within 24 hours.
Later, as she was riding in a patrol car trying to locate the crime scene in the dark, police found the warrant stemming from a 2003 juvenile arrest for grand theft and burglary. It said she owed $4,585.
"They stopped the investigation right there," and put her in handcuffs, Moore said.
Authorities arranged a special bond hearing Monday. "When the chief's office learned we had a rape victim in jail, we began working very aggressively to get her out," McElroy said.
Jennifer Dritt, executive director of the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence, wanted more explanation from the jail, saying the woman's arrest "makes people think law enforcement doesn't have a victim-centered approach."
Moore said his client believes she paid the fine for what he described as a childish mistake. He didn't have details of that arrest, but the woman has no criminal history as an adult, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
The sheriff's office, which runs the jail, said in a statement Tuesday that it is investigating the complaint and declined to comment further.

Charmagne

01-30-2007, 07:47 PM

That really is unbelievable! She needed rape counseling and compassion and ended up in jail!! I believe we are slowly losing all of our rights as citizens.

Oracl

01-30-2007, 09:51 PM

Depressing story. :(

thevegantwins

01-31-2007, 05:44 AM

Florida, in particular, seems to be a state devoid of civil rights. Any state that so blatantly cheats in a presidential election and nothing is done because the state's governor is the brother of the fake president is one state I don't want to go near.

Gliondrach

02-03-2007, 04:48 AM

2,600 turkeys have died on a farm in Suffolk from bird flu. It is the H5 strain but it's not known yet if it is the H5N1 form, which is deadly to humans. There are another 160,000 turkeys at that farm.

I've just checked - it is H5N1.
----------------------
eadt.co.uk/content/eadt/news/story.aspx?brand=EADOnline&category=News&tBrand=EADOnline&tCategory=news&itemid=IPED03%20Feb%202007%2011%3A17%3A55%3A353

THE bird flu discovered at a Suffolk poultry farm is HN51, the deadly strain of the disease, it emerged this morning.

The EU Commission confirmed the news this morning following the death of hundreds of turkeys at the Bernard Matthews factory in Holton, near Halesworth.

Sources from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have also confirmed it is the HN51 strain.

Emergency measures were put in place this morning to shut down the movement of poultry to minimise the risk of bird flu spreading to other animals and even humans.

It is the first time the H5N1 form of the virus, potentially one of the most dangerous to humans, has been detected at a poultry farm.

There are fears that the highly pathogenic form of the virus may mutate in to a form that could be easily passed between people.

All 160,000 birds at the Halesworth farm now face being slaughtered.
-------------------------

Oracl

02-03-2007, 09:40 PM

It's very sad but I'm not surprised this has happened. :(

Charmagne

02-03-2007, 09:48 PM

This is terrible.:agree: Is this anywhere close to you Gliondrach? I won't be surprised when they find it can be spread to humans by consumption.

Gliondrach

02-04-2007, 06:19 AM

It's about 250 miles as the crow flies. Or the turkey. They'll all be dead now. They were destined for that but at least they've been spared a few more weeks of suffering in that hell hole.

Charmagne

02-04-2007, 02:32 PM

I hope it hasn't affected all the wild birds as it will be hard to contain then.
I watched it on CNN - people gassing and dumping thousands of turkeys into trucks to be incinerated. It was very sad. But as you said at least they are not suffering anymore.

Gliondrach

02-04-2007, 02:36 PM

I hope the factory owners suffer extreme financial hardship. But they are probably insured against such things. It might put their premiums up, though.

The bloke who owns the factories used to advertise turkey burgers on television. He would use a mock East Anglian accent and say that they were boo-tiful. Buffoon.

Keykeypie

02-04-2007, 04:41 PM

This is really serious isn't it?

Charmagne

02-04-2007, 07:46 PM

Can you believe Bush? Isn't it typical that he would not commit to preventing global warming?

PARIS -- Forty-five nations answered France's call Saturday for a new environmental body to slow inevitable global warming and protect the planet, perhaps with policing powers to punish violators.
Absent were the world's heavyweight polluter, the United States, and booming nations on the same path as the U.S. -- China and India.
The charge led by French President Jacques Chirac came a day after the release of an authoritative -- and disturbingly grim -- scientific report in Paris that said global warming is "very likely" caused by mankind and that climate change will continue for centuries even if heat-trapping gases are reduced. It was the strongest language ever used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose last report was issued in 2001.
The document, a collaboration of hundreds of scientists and government officials, was approved by 113 nations, including the United States.
Despite the report's dire outlook, most scientists say the worst disasters -- huge sea level rises and the most catastrophic storms and droughts -- may be avoided if strong action is taken soon.
In his call to action at a French-sponsored environment conference on Saturday, Chirac said, "It is our responsibility. The future of humanity demands it."
Without naming the United States -- producer of about one-quarter of the world's greenhouse gases -- Chirac expressed frustration that "some large, rich countries still must be convinced." They are "refusing to accept the consequences of their acts," he said.
So far, it is mostly European nations that agreed to pursue plans for the new organization, and to hold their first meeting in Morocco this spring.
Chirac, 74, is seeking to leave his mark on international affairs before he leaves office, likely in May, though his own environmental record over 12 years as France's president is spotty.
Former Vice President Al Gore, whose Oscar-nominated documentary on the perils of global warming has garnered worldwide attention, cheered Chirac's efforts.
"We are at a tipping point," Gore told the conference by videophone. "We must act, and act swiftly ... Such action requires international cooperation."
The world's scientists and other international leaders also said now that the science is so well-documented, action is clearly the next step.
"It is time now to hear from the world's policymakers," Tim Wirth, president of the United Nations Foundation, said Friday. "The so-called and long-overstated 'debate' about global warming is now over."
Granger Morgan, an energy expert at Carnegie Mellon University in the United States predicted the new climate report "will kick a few more folks to get on board."
And Jason Grumet, head of U.S. bipartisan advocacy group, the National Commission on Energy Policy, said: "The debate has clearly shifted from a battle over the science to fighting over the scope and design of the solution."
However, many questions remain about Chirac's proposed new environmental body, including whether it would have the power to enforce global climate accords.
Chirac's appeal says only that the group should "evaluate ecological damage" and "support the implementation of environmental decisions."
Many countries have failed to meet targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions laid out in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The United States has never ratified the pact. And on Friday, the Bush administration reiterated its rejection of imposed cuts on greenhouse gases.
Earlier this week, Chirac warned in a published interview that the United States could face a carbon tax on its exports if it does not sign global climate accords.
The European Union, which agreed to the Kyoto Protocol curbing emissions, has committed to a 20 percent reduction in carbon pollution by 2020, said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. And if others join them, they could even try for 60 percent cuts by 2050, he said.
The United Nations also is considering a summit of world leaders to tackle global warming, and de Boer said he would expect the United States to send high-ranking officials to it.
Despite White House resistance to carbon-cutting measures with teeth, de Boer and Carnegie Mellon professor Morgan said they see movement in the United States anyway.
"We are certainly building critical mass among opinion leaders and nontechnical folks," Morgan said from Pittsburgh, citing recent calls to action by corporate CEOs, even in the energy industry. "We are at the point over the next three to five years where the U.S. is going to get quite serious about it."
And in May, the same international panel that wrote Friday's report will wrap up a new document spelling out the benefits and costs of slowing global warming, setting up a buffet of choices for policymakers.
For now, scientists are energized that the world is finally listening to them.
Kevin Trenberth, an American co-author of the new climate report, marveled at the overflow crowd of more than 400 reporters on hand for the document's release on Friday. It was more reporters than he'd seen in decades of climate conferences. He took out a small camera, smiled and took a picture of the media.

Oracl

02-04-2007, 10:17 PM

Yes, typical. :rolleyes: I don't see Australia mentioned, it won't surprise me if Howard follows Bush on this.......again. :mad:

Keykeypie

02-08-2007, 07:56 AM

OOPS..sorry see next post

Keykeypie

02-08-2007, 07:56 AM

[I NEVER KNEW THIS..]

During his lifetime, the great humanitarian and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. established an extraordinary legacy of peacefully pursuing freedom and equality for everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity. His family carried on his legacy and also applied his values to animals. Had Dr. King not been assassinated in 1968, he probably would have followed the compassionate example of his wife, Coretta Scott King and their oldest son Dexter, who both became vegan for ethical reasons. Dexter, a minister like his father, has been a vegan since 1988, and has called animal rights a "logical extension" of his father's commitment to non-violence. Coretta, who died in January 2006, said that her conversion to veganism in 1995 was "a blessing."

Fauxmage

02-08-2007, 10:28 AM

Oh yes Keykey, we have some posts here (http://www.thenakedvegan.net/showthread.php?t=130), and we have a very nice photo of Coretta in our avatar collection. :agree:

Gliondrach

02-08-2007, 04:08 PM

I didn't know it, either. I hope Dexter converts many of his congregation.

dreamer

02-15-2007, 02:32 PM

Just saw this on the Yahoo food section...note that these are all vegan foods!

Foods To Calm You Down Fast
Posted Tue, Feb 06, 2007, 10:55 am PST
POST A COMMENT »
Holiday bills arriving in heaps? Lurking taxes turning up the tension? No Valentine in sight? Regardless of the cause, there's an almost Alice in Wonderland counter-intuitiveness to the goodies we turn to for comfort. Instead of soothing our frayed nerves, many of them ultimately make us feel worse.
Take the classic-curling up with a pint of ice cream. It's a total backfire. Why? Sweets are insidious: After the initial rush, the body's insulin response kicks in, causing a sudden blood sugar drop that triggers the release of stress hormones. Soon you're feeling more jangled than you were before you inhaled that whole container of Chunky Monkey. And alcohol, of course, is a wolfish stimulant in calm sheep's clothing.

But true comfort foods do exist.

1. Berries, any berries
Eat them one by one instead of M&Ms when the pressure's on. For those tough times when tension tightens your jaw, try rolling a frozen berry around in your mouth. And then another, and another. Since the carbs in berries turn to sugar very slowly, you won't have a blood sugar crash. The bonus: They're a good source of vitamin C, which helps fight a jump in the stress hormone cortisol

2. Guacamole
If you're craving something creamy, look no further. Avocados are loaded with B vitamins, which stress quickly depletes and which your body needs to maintain nerves and brain cells. Plus their creaminess comes from healthy fat. Scoop up the stuff with whole-grain baked chips-crunching keeps you from gritting your teeth.

3. Mixed nuts
Just an ounce will help replace those stress-depleted Bs (walnuts), give you a whopping amount of zinc (Brazil nuts)-it's also drained by high anxiety-and boost your E (almonds), which helps fight cellular damage linked to chronic stress. Buy nuts in the shell and think of it as multi-tasking: With every squeeze of the nutcracker, you're releasing a little bit of tension.

4. Oranges
People who take a 1,000 mg of C before giving a speech have lower levels of cortisol and lower blood pressure than those who don't. So lean back, take a deep breath, and concentrate on peeling a large orange. The 5-minute mindfulness break will ease your mind and you'll get a bunch of C as well.

5. Asparagus
Each tender stalk is a source of folic acid, a natural mood-lightener. Dip the spears in fat-free yogurt or sour cream for a hit of calcium with each bite.

6. Chai tea
A warm drink is a super soother, and curling up with a cup of aromatic decaf chai tea (Tazo makes ready-to-brew bags) can make the whole evil day go away.

7. Dark chocolate
Okay, there's nothing in it that relieves stress, but when only chocolate will do, reach for the dark, sultry kind that's at least 70% cocoa. You figure if the antioxidant flavonoids in it are potent enough to fight cancer and heart disease, they've got to be able to temper tension's effects.

thevegantwins

02-15-2007, 02:35 PM

That's fantastic. I love how so many 'regular' foods are vegan. I'm reading Peter Mayle's latest book called Provence A-Z and many of the traditional, renowned Provencal specialities are vegan even cookies and other sweets. When will the rest of the world wake up to realize that there is absolutely no need to eat animals or their secretions?

dreamer

02-15-2007, 02:38 PM

It would be nice if they figure that out soon, but I don't see it happening. Are there a lot of good recipes in the book?

thevegantwins

02-15-2007, 02:41 PM

So far, only one and it contains dead cow. The book is more of a semi-guidebook/history lesson/cultural guide to Provence.

Gliondrach

02-15-2007, 03:11 PM

Good info from Yahboo. I hope people won't just see these vegan foods as stress busters, though. Let's hope they eat more and realise that they can enjoy them without adding dead animal bits.

Charmagne

02-15-2007, 05:43 PM

Thanks for posting that Dreamer. I'm a very "nervous" person. I have to drink Tension Tamer or Sleepytime tea to relax at night. I didn't know Chai was relaxing. I'll give it a try because I love the taste. I didn't know about the oranges and berries either. I do tend to eat too many sweets when I am nervous which only aggravates it.

dreamer

02-16-2007, 06:25 AM

I do tend to eat too many sweets when I am nervous which only aggravates it.
Well, you can still eat dark chocolate...even though that's "sweets" too:D

Oracl

02-26-2007, 09:41 PM

Jane Goodall is no abolitionist, that's for sure: :(

"If all use of animals in the laboratory was abruptly stopped there would probably, for a while anyway, be a great deal of confusion, and many lines of inquiry would be brought to a sudden halt. This might lead to an increase in human suffering. This means that, until alternatives to the use of live animals in the research labs are widely available and, moreover, researchers and drug companies are legally compelled to use them, society will demand - and accept - the continued abuse of animals on its behalf."

and

"The day will eventually come when it will no longer be necessary to use animals at all."

and

"A large percentage of testing is useless, and should be stopped today."I think all testing is useless and should be stopped today. :rollingpin: But I guess I am an abolitionist. :rubchin:

Bowwowmeow

02-26-2007, 10:18 PM

About the bit that says something about an increase in human suffering if lab animals were set free. In the first place, humans are already suffering because of animal testing, because it lulls them into a false sense of security in regards to the life-threatening diseases they've got. They are suffering because for most of these diseases, the cause is eating animals and the stuff that comes from their bodies, and if they had been vegan from birth, they wouldn't have stuff like heart disease, diabetes, and most cancers, and they wouldn't need drugs that will lower your blood pressure and give you liver disease, or kill your tumor and destroy your immune system (which means of course that you are going to have to have more medications to fix the side effects caused by the originals).

The kind of human suffering that animal testing is supposed to reduce is a direct result of our wrongful consumption of animals instead of food. The whole damn situation is the stupidest Catch-22 in the history of our moronic species.

Oracl

02-26-2007, 10:25 PM

The kind of human suffering that animal testing is supposed to reduce is a direct result of our wrongful consumption of animals instead of food. The whole damn situation is the stupidest Catch-22 in the history of our moronic species.

Yes. :agree: Well put. :agree: Gary F. would be impressed! :D

Bowwowmeow

02-26-2007, 10:29 PM

thevegantwins

02-27-2007, 06:19 AM

I think all testing is useless and should be stopped today. :rollingpin: But I guess I am an abolitionist. :rubchin:
Agreed. Does Jane Goodall, in her infinite wisdom, realize that human animals are not the same as mice, cats, dogs, rats etc..?

dreamer

02-27-2007, 02:01 PM

Right, and even other primates are different. For instance, I've read that chimpanzees can get and retain HIV, but thus far there has not been a full-blown case of AIDS in those chimps. So obviously even chimpanzees are enough different from us that what happens in humans--HIV becomes AIDS--doesn't happen in them. So I agree with Bowwowmeow and don't agree with Jane Goodall.

Bowwowmeow

02-27-2007, 09:38 PM

Prince Charles Says Ban McDonald's Food

http://my.eimg.net/harvest_xml/NEWS/img/20070227/45e3bad0_3ca7_1552720070227-1946761240.jpg (http://enews.earthlink.net/article/pho?guid=20070227/45e3bad0_3ca7_1552720070227-1946761240&article_path=/article/top&article_guid=20070227/45e3bad0_3ca6_1552620070227-2057040917)

Britain's Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales seems to be reluctant to taste a plate of grilled salmon, during a visit with the Duchess of Cornwall to the Imperial College London Diabetes Centre in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates while on a tour of the Gulf region,Tuesday Feb 27, 2007. John Stillwell

From Associated Press
February 27, 2007 11:42 PM EST
LONDON - Prince Charles suggested Tuesday on a visit to the United Arab Emirates that banning McDonald's fast food was crucial for improving people's diets, a British news agency reported.
Charles made the comments while visiting the Imperial College London Diabetes Center in Abu Dhabi for the launch of a public health campaign, The Press Association reported.
"Have you got anywhere with McDonald's? Have you tried getting it banned? That's the key," Charles was quoted as asking one of the center's nutritionists.
A McDonald's spokesman, Nick Hindle, called the remark disappointing. He said other members of the royal family "have probably got a more up-to-date picture of us," alluding to reports that Charles' son, Prince Harry, was spotted eating a chicken burger at McDonald's in 2005.
"This appears to be an off-the-cuff remark, in our opinion," Hindle said. "It does not reflect our menu or where we are as a business."
The Oak Brook, Illinois-based McDonald's Corp. took steps last year to display nutrition facts on its packaging and vary its menu to counter charges that its food is unhealthy and contributes to obesity. There are 25 McDonald's franchises in the United Arab Emirates.
Charles, who is first in line to the British throne, is an active advocate of organic food and in 1986 set up a farm on his Highgrove Estate that does not use artificial pesticides or fertilizers.
The prince was in the United Arab Emirates with his wife, Camilla, as part of a tour of Gulf countries.
The United Arab Emirates has the world's second highest number of diabetes cases per capita, with more than 20 percent of those aged 20 to 79 already diagnosed with the illness, while 40 percent of the population are at risk.

:yea: :yea: :yea:
He'd better watch out, though, or someone will take him to McCourt and try to McSue him. I think they'd sue Mother Theresa if they thought they had a good McReason. :rolleyes:

"Britain's Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales seems to be reluctant to taste a plate of grilled salmon..."

Maybe he's got more sense than previously believed. Where in Hell does Abu Dhabi get salmon from, anyway?

Gliondrach

02-28-2007, 05:13 AM

:yea: :yea: :yea:
[FONT=Papyrus][SIZE=3]He'd better watch out, though, or someone will take him to McCourt and try to McSue him. I think they'd sue Mother Theresa if they thought they had a good McReason. :rolleyes:

If they tried to sue him Harry would lead all the tanks of the Household Cavalry right through the front door of McDonald's headquarters.

Gliondrach

02-28-2007, 05:15 AM

Jane Goodall? She obviously believes the stupid, ignorant lies that one species can be a model for another species. Some humans can't even be models for other humans.

dreamer

03-05-2007, 12:57 PM

A state-by-state look at police training
By The Associated Press
March 5, 2007

A look at how long states give some law enforcement recruits to get fully trained. In many states, recruits who have not completed training must be supervised by full-fledged officers. Also, many states have different restrictions for police officers, sheriff's deputies, constables and part-time law enforcement personnel.

Six months or less:

• Alabama

• New Hampshire

• Illinois

• Oklahoma

• Tennessee

• Washington

• West Virginia

One year:

• Alaska

• Arkansas

• Idaho

• Indiana

• Iowa

• Kansas

• Kentucky

• Louisiana

• Maine

• Maryland

• Montana

• Nebraska

• Nevada

• New Jersey

• New Mexico

• North Carolina

• Rhode Island

• South Carolina

• South Dakota

• Virginia

More than a year:

• Mississippi

• Oregon

• Wisconsin

No grace period:

• Arizona

• California

• Colorado

• Connecticut

• Delaware

• District of Colombia

• Georgia

• Hawaii

• Michigan

• Minnesota

• Missouri

• New York

• Ohio

• Pennsylvania

• Texas

• Vermont

• Utah

• Wyoming

Other:

• Florida (Officers must attend first available training class.)

• Massachusetts (Officers can obtain a waiver under some circumstances that allows them to hit the streets before going to the academy.)

• North Dakota (Officers must attend first available class.)

Charmagne

03-05-2007, 02:02 PM

I'm surprised Mississippi was over a year - we have DUMB cops! Maybe some of them are not so dumb as lazy!:rolleyes:

thevegantwins

03-05-2007, 02:27 PM

March 5, 2007
English, Irish, Scots: They’re All One, Genes Suggest
By NICHOLAS WADE
Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts, and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’s western and northern fringes.

But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles , Saxons, Vikings and Normans.

The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist’s point of view, seems likely to please no one.

The genetic evidence is still under development, however, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it is hard to weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins.

That has not stopped the attempt. Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, says the historians’ account is wrong in almost every detail. In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.

The British Isles were unpopulated then, wiped clean of people by glaciers that had smothered northern Europe for about 4,000 years and forced the former inhabitants into southern refuges in Spain and Italy. When the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated, people moved back north.

The new arrivals in the British Isles would have found an empty territory, which they could have reached just by walking along the Atlantic coastline, since there were still land bridges then across what are now English Channel and the Irish Sea.

This new population, who lived by hunting and gathering, survived a sharp cold spell called the Younger Dryas that lasted from 12,300 to 11,000 years ago. Much later, some 6,000 years ago, agriculture finally reached the British Isles from its birthplace in the Near East.

Agriculture may have been introduced by people speaking Celtic, in Dr. Oppenheimer’s view. Although the Celtic immigrants may have been few in number, they spread their farming techniques and their language throughout Ireland and the western coast of Britain. Later immigrants arrived from northern Europe had more influence on the eastern and southern coasts. They too spread their language, a branch of German, but these invaders’ numbers were also small compared with the local population.

In all, about three-quarters of the ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, when rising sea levels finally divided Britain and Ireland from the Continent and from one another, Dr. Oppenheimer calculates in a new book, “The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story” (Carroll & Graf, 2006).

As for subsequent invaders, Ireland received the fewest; the invaders’ DNA makes up about 12 percent of the Irish gene pool, Dr. Oppenheimer estimates, but it accounts for 20 percent of the gene pool in Wales, 30 percent in Scotland, and about one-third in eastern and southern England.

Still, no single group of invaders is responsible for more than 5 percent of the current gene pool, Dr. Oppenheimer says on the basis of genetic data.

He cites figures from the archaeologist Heinrich Haerke that the Anglo-Saxon invasions that began in the fourth century A.D. added about 250,000 people to a British population of one to two million, an estimate Dr. Oppenheimer notes is larger than his but considerably less than the substantial replacement of the English population assumed by others. The Norman invasion of 1066 A.D. brought not many more than 10,000 people, according to Dr. Haerke.

Other geneticists say Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction is plausible, though some disagree with details. Several said that genetic methods did not give precise enough dates to be confident of certain aspects, like when the first settlers arrived.

“Once you have an established population, it is quite difficult to change it very radically,” said Daniel G. Bradley, a geneticist at Trinity College, Dublin. But he said he was “quite agnostic” as to whether the original population became established in Britain and Ireland immediately after the glaciers retreated 16,000 years ago, as Dr. Oppenheimer argues, or more recently, in the Neolithic Age, which began 10,000 years ago.

Bryan Sykes, another Oxford geneticist, said he agreed with Dr. Oppenheimer that the ancestors of “by far the majority of people” were present in the British Isles before the Roman conquest of A.D. 43. “The Saxons, Vikings and Normans had a minor effect, and much less than some of the medieval historical texts would indicate,” he said.

His conclusions, based on his own genetic survey and information in his genealogical testing service, Oxford Ancestors, are reported in his new book, “Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland.”

A different view of the Anglo-Saxon invasions has been developed by Mark Thomas of University College, London. Dr. Thomas and colleagues say the invaders wiped out substantial numbers of the indigenous population, replacing 50 percent to 100 percent of those in central England.

Their argument is that the Y chromosomes of English men seem identical to those of people in Norway and the Friesland area of the Netherlands, two regions from which the invaders may have originated.

Dr. Oppenheimer disputes this, saying the similarity between the English and northern European Y chromosomes arises because both regions were repopulated by people from the Iberian refuges after the glaciers retreated.

Dr. Sykes said he agreed with Dr. Oppenheimer on this point, but another geneticist, Christopher Tyler-Smith of the Sanger Centre near Cambridge, said the jury was still out. “There is not yet a consensus view among geneticists, so the genetic story may well change,” he said. As to the identity of the first postglacial settlers, Dr. Tyler-Smith said he “would favor a Neolithic origin for the Y chromosomes, although the evidence is still quite sketchy.”

Dr. Oppenheimer’s population history of the British Isles relies not only on genetic data but also on the dating of language changes by methods developed by geneticists. These are not generally accepted by historical linguists, who long ago developed but largely rejected a dating method known as glottochronology.

Geneticists have recently plunged into the field, arguing that linguists have been too pessimistic and that advanced statistical methods developed for dating genes can also be applied to languages.

Dr. Oppenheimer has relied on work by Peter Forster, a geneticist at Anglia Ruskin University, to argue that Celtic is a much more ancient language than supposed, and that Celtic speakers could have brought knowledge of agriculture to Ireland, where it first appeared. He also adopts Dr. Forster’s argument, based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary, that English is an ancient, fourth branch of the Germanic language tree, and was spoken in England before the Roman invasion.

English is usually assumed to have developed in England, from the language of the Angles and Saxons, about 1,500 years ago. But Dr. Forster argues that the Angles and the Saxons were both really Viking peoples who began raiding Britain ahead of the accepted historical schedule. They did not bring their language to England because English, in his view, was already spoken there, probably introduced before the arrival of the Romans by tribes such as the Belgae, whom Julius Caesar describes as being present on both sides of the Channel.

The Belgae may have introduced some socially transforming technique, such as iron-working, which would lead to their language supplanting that of the indigenous inhabitants, but Dr. Forster said he had not yet identified any specific innovation from the archaeological record.

Germanic is usually assumed to have split into three branches: West Germanic, which includes German and Dutch; East Germanic, the language of the Goths and Vandals; and North Germanic, consisting of the Scandinavian languages. Dr. Forster’s analysis shows English is not an off-shoot of West Germanic, as usually assumed, but is a branch independent of the other three, which also implies a greater antiquity. Germanic split into its four branches some 2,000 to 6,000 years ago, Dr. Forster estimates.

Historians have usually assumed that Celtic was spoken throughout Britain when the Romans arrived. But Dr. Oppenheimer argues that the absence of Celtic place names in England — words for places are particularly durable — makes this unlikely.

If the people of the British Isles hold most of their genetic heritage in common, with their differences consisting only of a regional flavoring of Celtic in the west and of northern European in the east, might that perception draw them together? Geneticists see little prospect that their findings will reduce cultural and political differences.

The Celtic cultural myth “is very entrenched and has a lot to do with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish identity; their main identifying feature is that they are not English,” said Dr. Sykes, an Englishman who has traced his Y chromosome and surname to an ancestor who lived in the village of Flockton in Yorkshire in 1286.

Dr. Oppenheimer said genes “have no bearing on cultural history.” There is no significant genetic difference between the people of Northern Ireland, yet they have been fighting with each other for 400 years, he said.

As for his thesis that the British and Irish are genetically much alike, “It would be wonderful if it improved relations, but I somehow think it won’t.”

dreamer

03-05-2007, 03:11 PM

I'm surprised Mississippi was over a year - we have DUMB cops! Maybe some of them are not so dumb as lazy!:rolleyes:
The story is about how long the cops can wait after going on the job b4 they get training (I just realized how vague that first sentence of the story was)...so in Mississippi, they can be on the job for over a year b4 getting any policing training...perhaps explaining your perspective;) I think in a related story posting they said some states (and I think Mississippi was one) they have up to 2 years to get the required training. Here in NC, they can wait up to a year which might explain a few things too:rolleyes:

Gliondrach

03-06-2007, 04:38 AM

The word that I use to describe all the inhabitants of the British Isles is 'British'. Ireland is one of the British Isles.

Many eminent historians, including yours truly, don't believe that there were any Celtic invasions. Cetlic culture and languages could have come here without the people being Celts. Just as in India, during the Raj, many Indians spoke English as their first language and adopted British culture. There was British law, British education, British-style architecture, a British railway system, British clothing fashions and many more aspects of typical British life. Would archaeologists in a thousand years conclude that they were British?

The peoples of these islands are all more or less the same with differing admixures of foreign interlopers. The people of, say, Cornwall, will have fewer Anglo-Saxon genes than the people of lowland Scotland. These lowland Scots are exactly the same, genetically, as the people of north east England. In fact, many words of the dialects are shared in common.

I heard recently that in some parts of England there was up to a 90% contribution to the gene pool from Anglo-Saxon men. That means that in other places there is less than 90%. The implication is that ancient Briton menfolk were replaced by the invading Anglo-Saxons. But the women were still Britons. And they provide half of each child's genes. Even with 90% of Anglo-Saxon genes in some places this still leaves much more than half the genes coming from the ancient Brits.

There was a very good archealogical programme on telly a few years ago which compared the DNA of skeletons found in near a small town in, I think, Dorset. Then they compared the DNA of the present inhabitants and found a man who is related to one of the skeletons. This means his family had lived in the area for three or four thousand years. His history will not be unique. Until the 19th century people usually lived in the same area where their ancestors had always lived.

That Oppenheim book sounds fascinating. I will have to get it. Thanks TVT.

I have read a book by Sykes- The Seven Daughters of Eve. Very good for anyone interested in the early history of humans. He charges just over £100 to test someone's Y-chromosome, to find out where your male line originated or mitochodrial DNA, to find out where your female line originated. It would be good for a dozen relatives to club together to find out more about their history. Actually, for the mitochondrial DNA he only traces the female line for those of European descent, and then only back to the so-called Seven Daughters. He might include tests for those not of European descent now, though. Many geneticists say that every single human is descended from one woman who lived in Africa about 150,000 years ago. That doesn't mean that she was the only woman. We are all descended from other women who lived then but she is the only one from whom all of us are descended. They say that we are all descended from one man who lived in Africa at a different time.

My modern y-chromosome will come from Ireland. That is, my father's father's father's..........father. My modern mitochondrial DNA will come from either Scotland or Ireland. It's all fascinating stuff and shows that we are all cousins.

thevegantwins

03-06-2007, 05:12 AM

Those test results would be fascinating, Martin. I'd love to know where my ancestors actually came from. Don't you think that anyone Irish would be quite insulted to be called British. I had a few friends from Northern Ireland when I lived in London and even they hated to be called British, they always called themselves Irish.

One of my arguments that I use when people tell me that Judaism is just a religion and not an ethnicity is that my DNA would show not only that I'm Jewish but what particular sect of Judaism my ancestors are from. I can't think of any other religion that would do so. I still don't believe in organized religion but I do not deny my Jewish ancestry.

Gliondrach

03-06-2007, 05:02 PM

Some Irish people might feel insulted to be called British but it is a geographical fact.

Would your DNA really show that you are Jewish? Would someone like Paul Newman show up Jewish DNA? Probably a bit but most of it is probably German. The Jews of Europe, which I suppose are your recent ancestors, will have mixtures of various other peoples. As someone only needs to have a Jewish mother to be Jewish, the genes could have been diluted by other peoples. But your mitochondrial DNA, if your mother was Jewish, will show relationships to most other Jews. Armenians are a bit like Jews, in that for centuries they lived amongst people of a different religion, were always in a minority and were persecuted and mistrusted. Those who leave their homeland quite often intermarry with non-Armenians. Thank God, or I wouldn't be here.

On Brian Sykes' website he has a map showing the routes taken out of Africa for all humans, not just the Caucasian-types. In fact, I notice that the European Seven Daughters of Eve lines come up through the Palestine/Israel area so one of them will be the mitochodrial matriarch of the Jews.

One day I would like my mitochondrial DNA and my y-chromosome analysed.

Here's the site I mentioned:oxfordancestors.com/ . The prices have gone up quite alarmingly. I would only go ahead if there were at least 10 of my relatives willing to cough up some money towards it. I don't really need to know what he could tell me. I am human, like every other human. Better than most, it is true, but still human. We are all related to each other.

Charmagne

03-06-2007, 05:18 PM

The story is about how long the cops can wait after going on the job b4 they get training (I just realized how vague that first sentence of the story was)...so in Mississippi, they can be on the job for over a year b4 getting any policing training...perhaps explaining your perspective;) I think in a related story posting they said some states (and I think Mississippi was one) they have up to 2 years to get the required training. Here in NC, they can wait up to a year which might explain a few things too:rolleyes:

Thanks Dreamer - actually it wasn't that vague - I was just skimming too fast as I am guilty of especially when trying to do more than one thing at a time. The older I get the more difficult to multi-task!:rolleyes:

I think it's sad they let any police officers on the street without completing FULL training. It's needed to protect them as well as the citizens. We have trials going on here in Mississippi right now involving the death of an inmate in one of our jails. The jailers probably undergo NO training at all.:sigh:

Gliondrach

03-06-2007, 05:25 PM

I've just seen a thread on the Sykes' forum entitled 'European Jews':

forum.oxfordancestors.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=5

dreamer

03-07-2007, 01:56 PM

No grisly food details, please -- we're British
Tue Mar 6, 11:21 AM ET

British consumers increasingly take animal welfare into account in food purchases, but they don't want to know the gory details, a report said on Tuesday.

"We are a nation of animal lovers and concerns over welfare standards are helping to shape the content of our shopping baskets," Julie Starck, senior consultant with international food and grocery research body IGD, said in a statement.

The IGD's report showed that 64 percent of consumers have considered animal welfare when buying food, although only 10 percent claimed they buy all higher welfare foods.

The research found increased interest among consumers in the food they eat and how it was produced, a trend that also has sparked rising demand for organic and fairtrade products.

"Food has begun to provide an emotional as well as functional role in consumers' lives," the report said.

The IGD research was sponsored by Freedom Food, a food labelling scheme aimed at improving animal welfare standards which has been set up by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

The report noted that many consumers felt guilt about eating meat and were reluctant to explore welfare issues.

"As consumers deliberately reject information on animal welfare due to the emotional response it provokes, it will be difficult to raise awareness of the issue, particularly at the point of purchase," the report said.

The report also linked the growth in demand to rising affluence among consumers.

"A strategy must be developed to ensure that current purchasers maintain their support even if an economic downturn results in lower levels of disposable income," the report said.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon.

Copyright © 2007 Yahoo! Inc. All rights reserved.

Gliondrach

03-07-2007, 04:35 PM

Yes, the British are a nation of animal lovers. Especially when the animals are served with potatoes, cabbage and peas.

1vegan

03-13-2007, 08:05 AM

The Snohomish County sheriff's office says a 4-year-old Everett-area boy weighed only 22 pounds -- about half what he should weigh, in what medics described as one of the worst cases of child neglect that they have ever seen.

The starving boy was taken to a Seattle hospital last week and his 27-year-old father, Danny Abegg, and his 22-year-old girlfriend were arrested for investigation of child abuse.

Sheriff spokeswoman Rebecca Hover said a Child Protective Services case worker asked deputies to check on the boy last week. When they arrived at the apartment in the 12900 block of East Gibson road, they found the boy unable to even sit up on his own.

According to court documents, the boy told deputies he'd only had water and popcorn that day.Jeez.....

I'm willing to bet that kid really needs counseling when growing up :(

Gliondrach

03-13-2007, 09:09 AM

Poor lad. I hope his health hasn't been damaged.

dreamer

03-13-2007, 03:11 PM

Police: Dad hides stash in girl's pocket
March 13, 2007

Police here say a man charged with drug possession had an unusual place to store his stash: his 6-year-old daughter's jacket pocket. Dennis Riker, 41, raised suspicions Monday morning when he stopped by his daughter's school in Hillside, saying he had left his keys in her jacket.

But the staff at the A.P. Morris School would not let him in because Riker was not the girl's legal guardian. That role belonged to the girl's grandmother.

Police said Riker, unbeknownst to the school, called the woman to ask her to come to the school. Meanwhile, school officials called her, too, but believed someone else answered and impersonated the woman. And then, the actual grandmother arrived, saying she wanted the girl's jacket.

It was all so strange that principal Tracey Wolff called police to the school. An officer checked the coat and found 25 vials of cocaine and a half-ounce rock of crack in the pocket inside.

Riker was charged with drug possession with intent to distribute and possessing drugs within 1,000 feet of a school. He was being held in municipal jail on $40,000 bail.

The grandmother said her son duped her into asking for the jacket.

And the 6-year-old? Authorities said she had know idea what was in her pocket.

"It's unconscionable that an adult would knowingly put drugs in a child's coat pocket," Police Chief Robert Quinlan told The Star-Ledger of Newark for Tuesday's newspapers.

___

Information from: The Star-Ledger, nj.com/starledger

what a wonderfull dad he is:no: :hbang:

This will probably sound crass but I can't read stories about child abuse anymore. I hear them regularly at my job, have to deal with clients who have injured/killed their children etc. and I just can't read the news stories. I'm sick of fighting with child protective services, whose offices are upstairs, to help the children while they ignore me and my coworkers. I'm so sickened by humans regarding how they treat every living being, especially those who are most vunerable. :mad:

paul

03-13-2007, 04:21 PM

:no: :hbang:

Charmagne

03-13-2007, 06:04 PM

Glad they found him when they did - it was probably just in time to prevent his death.:mad:

Oracl

03-13-2007, 11:15 PM

Poor little kid. :(

thevegantwins

03-14-2007, 06:32 AM

Yup, that's the sort of parents we have around here. That took place in the same county I work in.

dreamer

03-23-2007, 10:15 AM

Taco Bell lettuce now tied to outbreak
Federal authorities also are looking at cheddar cheese and ground beef. Fast food chain will not take lettuce off menu.
By NANCY LUNA
The Orange County Register

Federal authorities are focusing on shredded lettuce as the possible food source responsible for causing severe illnesses of 71 people who ate at Taco Bellrestaurants in several states.

Though the E. coli strain has not been found in lettuce – or any other food samples taken from Taco Bell eateries – health officials said Wednesday that lettuce "was the most likely source of the outbreak."

The latest findings were based on eating patterns of the victims.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said cheddar cheese and ground beef were also common ingredients eaten by those who got sick. However, "what we found is the most likely food vehicle is lettuce," said Dr. Christopher Braden, medical epidemiologist for the CDC, the agency handling the case study of victims.

Irvine-based Taco Bell said late Wednesday it was not going to remove lettuce from its menu.

"It's not necessary for us to remove lettuce," said Taco Bell president Greg Creed, citing the company's decision to change produce suppliers in the Northeast.

Lettuce is in about 70 percent of Taco Bell's products, Creed said.

Taco Bell said the lettuce supplied to its restaurants in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware was grown by various farmers and shipped to the chain's former produce supplier. It did not name the supplier.

In a joint news conference Tuesday, the FDA and CDC also declined to name the lettuce farm, and or farms, it was investigating.

This week, Taco Bell switched its East Coast produce supplier to Taylor Farms as a "strictly precautionary measure," the company said.

Despite the growing number of cases tied to Taco Bell, the federal agencies, as well as the fast food chain, said they believe the outbreak has been isolated to the East Coast.

"All the lettuce sold in these restaurants today is from a different source, and anything sold prior to Dec. 3, the last date of illness related to Taco Bell, has long been sold or discarded," Taco Bell said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Creed posted an open letter in major East Coast newspapers declaring that Taco Bell's food is safe.

Creed said federal authorities also told him that a "handful of the people who became ill did not eat at Taco Bell."

The nation's largest Mexican fast food chain was first notified two weeks ago that diners eating at its New York and New Jersey locations had fallen ill. More victims have turned up in other states, prompting a federal investigation.

Green onions were linked to the outbreak, but subsequent tests found they were not the culprit.

Hum...I wonder just how likely it is to be the lettuce as opposed to the cheese and beef?

Charmagne

03-23-2007, 02:02 PM

If it is the lettuce it can probably be traced back to the manure fertilizer that was used.:agree:

Fauxmage

03-23-2007, 04:12 PM

If its the lettuce, its probably not the manure, since that is aged and heat treated, or composted, which inactivates pathogens. Its either from animals straying from a nearby ranch, or the workers who don't wash their hands after defecating and then handle the lettuce. This can take place in the fields, where the workers are not allowed sufficient toilet breaks, and are not provided with toilets in the first place, so they go in the fields while they work, or it happens in the fast food place itself. I worked as a cake decorator in a grocery store for a while, and I remember one of the meat workers rushing out of the ladies' room after a bowel movement without washing her hands, and you should have seen what the deli people used to get up to! Officials always prefer to blame animals in these cases, though.

dreamer

03-26-2007, 01:45 PM

After I read this, I thought about how the doctors have found that "drugs work just as well." What about something that works even better...like a vegan diet? (Of course that's not mentioned!)

Most angioplasties unneeded, study finds
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE, AP Medical Writer
17 minutes ago

More than half a million people a year with chest pain are getting an unnecessary or premature procedure to unclog their arteries because drugs are just as effective, suggests a landmark study that challenges one of the most common practices in heart care.

The stunning results found that angioplasty did not save lives or prevent heart attacks in non-emergency heart patients.

An even bigger surprise: Angioplasty gave only slight and temporary relief from chest pain, the main reason it is done.

"By five years, there was really no significant difference" in symptoms, said Dr. William Boden of Buffalo General Hospital in New York. "Few would have expected such results."

He led the study and gave results Monday at a meeting of the American College of Cardiology. They also were published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and will be in the April 12 issue.

Angioplasty remains the top treatment for people having a heart attack or hospitalized with worsening symptoms. But most angioplasties are done on a non-emergency basis, to relieve chest pain caused by clogged arteries crimping the heart's blood supply.

Those patients now should try drugs first, experts say. If that does not help, they can consider angioplasty or bypass surgery, which unlike angioplasty, does save lives, prevent heart attacks and give lasting chest pain relief.

In the study, only one-third of the people treated with drugs ultimately needed angioplasty or a bypass.

"You are not putting yourself at risk of death or heart attack if you defer," and considering the safety worries about heart stents used to keep arteries open after angioplasty, it may be wise to wait, said Dr. Steven Nissen, a Cleveland Clinic heart specialist and president of the College of Cardiology.

Why did angioplasty not help more?

It fixes only one blockage at a time whereas drugs affect all the arteries, experts said. Also, the clogs treated with angioplasty are not the really dangerous kind.

"Even though it goes against intuition, the blockages that are severe that cause chest pain are less likely to be the source of a heart attack than segments in the artery that are not severely blocked," said Dr. David Maron, a Vanderbilt University cardiologist who helped lead the new study.

About 1.2 million angioplasties are done in the United States each year. Through a blood vessel in the groin, doctors snake a tube to a blocked heart artery. A tiny balloon is inflated to flatten the clog and a mesh scaffold stent is usually placed.

The procedure already has lost some popularity because of emerging evidence that popular drug-coated stents can raise the risk of blood clots months later. The new study shifts the argument from which type of stent to use to whether to do the procedure at all.

It involved 2,287 patients throughout the U.S. and Canada who had substantial blockages, typically in two arteries, but were medically stable. They had an average of 10 chest pain episodes a week — moderately severe.

About 40 percent had a prior heart attack more than three months previously.

"We deliberately chose to enroll a sicker, more symptomatic group" to give angioplasty a good chance to prove itself, Boden said.

All were treated with medicines that improve chest pain and heart and artery health such as aspirin, cholesterol-lowering statins, nitrates, ACE inhibitors, beta-blockers and calcium channel blockers. All also were counseled on healthy lifestyles — diet, exercise and smoking cessation.

Half of the participants also were assigned to get angioplasty.

After an average of 4 1/2 years, the groups had similar rates of death and heart attack: 211 in the angioplasty group and 202 in the medication group — about 19 percent of each.

Heart-related hospitalization rates were similar, too.

Neither treatment proved better for any subgroups like smokers, diabetics, or older or sicker people.

At the start of the study, 80 percent had chest pain. Three years into it, 72 percent of the angioplasty group was free of this symptom as was 67 percent of the drug group.

That means you would have to give angioplasties to 20 people for every one whose chest pain was better after three years — an unacceptably high ratio, Nissen said.

After five years, 74 percent of the angioplasty group and 72 percent of the medication group were free of chest pain - "no significant difference," Boden said.

The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Medical Research Council of Canada and a host of drug companies. Stent makers refused to help pay for the research, said scientists who led the study.

The study renewed a heated animosity between doctors who perform angioplasty and other heart specialists.

In fact, one who does the procedures and who spoke at a meeting in New Orleans sponsored by stent maker Boston Scientific Corp. was responsible for the early release of the study's results, which were not due out until Tuesday.

The study "was rigged to fail, and it did," the Wall Street Journal quoted Dr. Martin B. Leon of Columbia University telling several hundred of his colleagues Sunday night.

"A lot of people have been taking shots at us, and we need to go on the offense for awhile," the Journal reported Leon said.

He claimed to have inside knowledge of the results because he reviewed the study for the New England Journal. The journal would not comment, saying the identity of its reviewers is confidential.

The cardiology college issued a statement saying it was "extremely disappointed" results were released prematurely, "betraying the confidentiality of the scholarly process and the professional integrity of the scientific community."

The college "will be considering strong sanctions against the individual or individuals involved," the statement said.

Shares of Boston Scientific were down $1.15, or nearly 8 percent, to $14.07 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It was a nearly five-year low for the stock.

Dr. Spencer King of Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, a leading cardiologist who does many angioplasties, said he was disappointed in the study results.

"How many patients have interventions in which the only expectation is to reduce the use of nitroglycerin or to walk a bit faster? Most patients anticipate a better prognosis and might opt for an extended course of medical therapy if they believe they are not putting their life at excess risk," he wrote in a recent editorial in an American Heart Association journal.

In an interview at the cardiology meeting, King said he recently had surgery for back pain and did not expect permanent relief but added, "If it only held up for five years, I wouldn't be happy about it."

The new study "should lead to changes in the treatment of patients with stable coronary artery disease, with expected substantial health care savings," Dr. Judith Hochman of New York University wrote in an editorial in the journal.

Angioplasty costs $30,000 to $40,000. The drugs used in the study are almost all available in generic form.

Maron, the Vanderbilt doctor who helped lead the study, said people should give the drugs a chance.

"Often I think that patients are under the impression that unless they have that procedure done, they're not getting the best of care and are at increased risk of having a heart attack and die," he said.

The study shows that is not true, he said.

Gliondrach

03-27-2007, 05:19 AM

But no one earns money if people adopt a vegan diet - which could help many heart patients. There's lots of money in drug sales and operations.

dreamer

03-27-2007, 02:52 PM

True, but doctors are supposed to want what's best for patients...right?:rolleyes:

dreamer

03-27-2007, 02:53 PM

Wash. man held in theft of panties, bras
Tue Mar 27, 6:43 AM ET

A man was charged with theft and burglary after police said they found 93 pounds of women's panties, brassieres and other underwear at his home.

Investigators believe Garth M. Flaherty, 24, took as many as 1,500 undergarments from apartment complex laundry rooms before he was caught, police Cmdr. Chris Tennant said.

A man was seen taking underwear from two laundry rooms Saturday, a witness recorded his license number, and Flaherty was identified from photographs, Tennant said.

Police found enough underwear in his bedroom to fill five garbage bags, Tennant said.

"He said he had a problem," Tennant said.

Flaherty has been jailed on 12 counts of second-degree burglary and one of first-degree theft.

Police had previously received 12 reports of underwear thefts in the northeast part of town, where Washington State University is located.

"We were kind of concerned about how to match up bras and panties with victims," Tennant said. "Based on the unique descriptions from a couple of women, we can tie him to those thefts."

The underwear will be held as evidence until the case is resolved, after which their disposition is uncertain, Tennant said.

"Would you really want them back?" he asked. "I would say not."

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press.

Fauxmage

03-27-2007, 03:40 PM

But no one earns money if people adopt a vegan diet - I wouldn't call it earning. Profiteering is more like it, and in the early days of America, profiteers were put in the stocks and displayed for public abuse and humiliation.
which could help many heart patients. There's lots of money in drug sales and operations. They don't actually make much profit on operations, which is an obvious motive for recommending drugs over surgery.
True, but doctors are supposed to want what's best for patients...right?:rolleyes: Doctors do, I think. Its the drug companies who don't care about anything but money, and they are the ones that dictate what students learn in medical schools, due to the funding they provide to said schools. I've read that schools that do not get any backing from the major pharmaceutical companies can't even get certified to teach medicine.
A man was charged with theft and burglary after police said they found 93 pounds of women's panties, brassieres and other underwear at his home. I doubt if I even own twenty pounds of undies.

dreamer

03-28-2007, 07:38 AM

I agree that medical students are trained to see things that way: drugs or surgery will solve (or at least help) all your problems. One way that's obvious that one of the most overdone surgeries remains hysterectomies. Many docs are taught to see women's reproductive organs as "possible cancer vectors," so they often encourage the surgery when it is unnecessary as a way to assure no ovarian/uterine cancers. Now imagine what would happen if they said to men (which until recently, most docs were men), "you know, testicles and prostate glands are possible vectors of cancer, let's remove them." You think men would go along with that in most cases:no: ;)

As far as the undies, I've never weighed mine, but it's obvious that guy stole lots of different women's undies:D

Charmagne

03-28-2007, 05:49 PM

As far as the undies, I've never weighed mine, but it's obvious that guy stole lots of different women's undies:D

Hmm....seems like I'm missing some - must of been by here!:whistle:

my3labs

04-07-2007, 10:36 PM

Holy crap...this is one tough dude.

SORIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) -- After 3,272 miles of exhaustion, sunburn, delirium and piranhas, a 52-year-old Slovenian successfully completed a swim down the Amazon River Saturday that could set a world record for distance -- something he's already done three times before.

After nine weeks, Martin Strel arrived near the city of Belem, the capital of the jungle state of Para, ending a swim almost as long as the drive from Miami to Seattle. Strel averaged about 50 miles a day since beginning his odyssey at the source of the world's second-longest river in Peru on Feb. 1.

By Thursday evening, he was struggling with dizziness, vertigo, high blood pressure, diarrhea, nausea and delirium, his Web site said. But despite having difficulty standing and being ordered by the doctor not to swim, Strel was obsessed with finishing the course and insisted on night swimming.

"He's hit point zero," Borut Strel, Martin's son and the project coordinator, said by telephone from the Amazon. "There will be a ceremony Sunday in Belem, but he finished today."

Speaking in fluent accented English by satellite phone during a break aboard his support vessel, the elder Strel said that the going got tougher the closer he got to Belem.

"The finish has been the toughest moment so far," he said Thursday. "I've been swimming fewer kilometers as I get closer to the end. The ocean tides have a lot of influence on the river's currents and sometimes they are so strong that I am pushed backward."

He said he was lucky to have escaped encounters with piranhas, the dreaded toothpick fish, which swims into body orifices to suck blood, and even bull sharks that swim in shallow waters and can live for a while in fresh water.

"I think the animals have just accepted me," he said. "I've been swimming with them for such a long time that they must think I'm one of them now. I still have dolphins swimming with me."

Cramps, high blood pressure, diarrhea, chronic insomnia, larvae infections, dehydration and abrasions caused by the constant rubbing of his wet suit against his skin frequently tormented him.

Strel, who lost some 26 pounds, said there were times he felt such pain in his arms, chest and legs, "that I could not get out of the water on my own."

To cope with the delirium and other problems, Strel said he turned to his doctor.

"My doctor, who is a psychotherapist, talks to me, asks about my pains and redirects my thinking to other things," Strel said. "It definitely helps to have someone to talk to when I'm not in the water, even though sometimes I fall asleep while she is talking."

Sunburn was Strel's biggest problem in the first half of his adventure.

Just days after he began his swim, Strel developed second-degree burns on his face and forehead, and his team feared the burns would worsen and become infected.

His team fashioned a mask out of a pillow case for protection, but Strel did not use it all the time because it was too hot and made breathing very difficult, he said.

His lips became blistered, and scabs formed on his nose and upper cheeks.

In addition, his eyes became sore and swollen, probably from sunblock getting inside his goggles.

The sunburn became so bad that while still swimming in Peru he thought of quitting, he said.

"I couldn't sleep at night and I thought we would have to stop for a week or so. But with time things improved," he said. "People from all over the world sent us some creams that helped solve the problem and we improved the mask."

If confirmed by Guinness World Records, the Amazon swim will be the fourth time Strel has broken the world record for long-distance swimming.

In 2000, he completed an 1,866-mile swim along the Danube. He broke that record two years later after swimming 2,360 miles down the Mississippi. In 2004 he broke it again by swimming 2,487 miles along the Yangtze river in China.

Strel's Web site said he broke his 2004 record on March 17 when he arrived in the small town of Urucurituba in the state of Amazonas, 2,490 miles from the river's source.

Kate White, a Guinness spokeswoman, said the organization would only confirm if Strel had established a new record after analyzing data from him and his support team, a process that usually takes six to eight weeks.

Strel's staff said they planned to send Guinness all the documents required by the first week in August, at the latest.

Comparing his Amazon adventure with his other record-breaking swim in Europe, the United States and China, Strel said "it was the toughest expedition by far."

"The Amazon river has no barriers like locks, so the current is constantly flowing," he said. "I didn't expect so many whirlpools and so many currents."

Asked about new adventures, he said: "I am not thinking about that right now ... But I'll find some other crazy swim, maybe in a lake or in an ocean."

"I am not going to do the Nile. It's long but not challenging enough, it is just a small creek, he said. "The Amazon is much more mighty."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press . All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

Fauxmage

04-10-2007, 09:43 PM

DNA Shows Larry Birkhead Is Baby's Dad

By JESSICA ROBERTSON (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
April 10, 2007 11:26 PM EDT
NASSAU, Bahamas - DNA tests prove it: Larry Birkhead is the father of Anna Nicole Smith's million-dollar baby.

"I told you so!" the late Playboy Playmate's former boyfriend said Tuesday upon emerging from a closed court hearing. He added: "My baby's going to be coming home pretty soon."

Birkhead, a 34-year-old California photographer, then hugged his rival, Howard K. Stern, who has been caring for baby Dannielynn since Smith's sudden death in February.

The hearing was a pivotal moment in the battle over who gets custody of the girl, who could inherit a fortune from the estate of Smith's late husband, J. Howard Marshall II. Although Birkhead is the father, Stern's name is on the birth certificate. Another custody hearing was scheduled for Friday.

Stern, who was Smith's lawyer and later became her companion, said he wouldn't fight for custody, but a lawyer for Smith's mother, Virgie Arthur, indicated she might. The judge scheduled another hearing for Friday in the pink colonial courthouse to discuss who will raise the girl, who could inherit hundreds of millions of dollars.

Stern said he loved the baby despite the DNA results and would support Birkhead.

"I'm obviously very disappointed, but my feelings for Dannielynn have not changed," he said, adding of Birkhead: "I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure he gets sole custody."
Birkhead had been fighting for custody of Dannielynn even before Smith's death.

"Nothing's been determined except parentage and I'm the father," Birkhead said. "It's been a long road and I'm just happy to have this behind me."

A crowd of about 250 people, many of them tourists, cheered from behind police barricades when Birkhead, clutching a piece of paper, announced the DNA test results. The court's DNA expert, Dr. Michael Baird, confirmed it.
"Essentially, he's the biological father," Baird said.

This tropical capital has been transfixed by the Anna Nicole saga since she moved here last year. Smith gave birth to Dannielynn in September, only to see her 20-year-old son Daniel die days later at her bedside from a lethal combination of drugs. Smith died in February at age 39 in Florida.

Many in the crowd took pictures of the impromptu news conference with cameras and cell phones. One man in the crowd wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the handwritten message: "I'm the baby's daddy."

Arthur, who had been estranged from Smith for years, said she wanted to be present in her granddaughter's life, but seemed appeased by the DNA results.

"I'm happy that Dannielynn will know who her real father is," she said.
The baby, whose full name is Dannielynn Hope Marshall Stern, could inherit millions from Marshall's estate. Smith, a former model, had been fighting the Texas oil tycoon's family over his estimated $500 million fortune since his death in 1995.

The question of who inherits Smith's estate remains unresolved. A 2001 will released after her death in February said her fortune should be held in trust for her son, who died last year. The 19-page will named Stern as her executor but did not say how much Smith was worth. It remains a mystery how much her daughter might get.
What do you suppose the odds are that he really loves this poor little baby and wants to be her Dad, instead of the controller of her potential fortune if the courts award her the $500 mil.

Oracl

04-10-2007, 11:36 PM

Pretty low. :no:

Fauxmage

04-11-2007, 11:11 PM

Novelist Kurt Vonnegut Dies at Age 84

By CRISTIAN SALAZAR (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
April 12, 2007 12:46 AM EDT
NEW YORK - Kurt Vonnegut, the satirical novelist who captured the absurdity of war and questioned the advances of science in darkly humorous works such as "Slaughterhouse-Five" and "Cat's Cradle," died Wednesday. He was 84.

Vonnegut, who often marveled that he had lived so long despite his lifelong smoking habit, had suffered brain injuries after a fall at his Manhattan home weeks ago, said his wife, photographer Jill Krementz.

The author of at least 19 novels, many of them best-sellers, as well as dozens of short stories, essays and plays, Vonnegut relished the role of a social critic. He lectured regularly, exhorting audiences to think for themselves and delighting in barbed commentary against the institutions he felt were dehumanizing people.

"I will say anything to be funny, often in the most horrible situations," Vonnegut, whose watery, heavy-lidded eyes and unruly hair made him seem to be in existential pain, once told a gathering of psychiatrists.

A self-described religious skeptic and freethinking humanist, Vonnegut used protagonists such as Billy Pilgrim and Eliot Rosewater as transparent vehicles for his points of view. He also filled his novels with satirical commentary and even drawings that were only loosely connected to the plot. In "Slaughterhouse-Five," he drew a headstone with the epitaph: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt."

But much in his life was traumatic, and left him in pain.

Despite his commercial success, Vonnegut battled depression throughout his life, and in 1984, he attempted suicide with pills and alcohol, joking later about how he botched the job.

His mother had succeeded in killing herself just before he left for Germany during World War II, where he was quickly taken prisoner during the Battle of the Bulge. He was being held in Dresden when Allied bombs created a firestorm that killed an estimated tens of thousands of people in the city.
"The firebombing of Dresden explains absolutely nothing about why I write what I write and am what I am," Vonnegut wrote in "Fates Worse Than Death," his 1991 autobiography of sorts.

But he spent 23 years struggling to write about the ordeal, which he survived by huddling with other POW's inside an underground meat locker labeled slaughterhouse-five.

The novel, in which Pvt. Pilgrim is transported from Dresden by time-traveling aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, was published at the height of the Vietnam War, and solidified his reputation as an iconoclast.
"He was sort of like nobody else," said Gore Vidal, who noted that he, Vonnegut and Norman Mailer were among the last writers around who served in World War II.

"He was imaginative; our generation of writers didn't go in for imagination very much. Literary realism was the general style. Those of us who came out of the war in the 1940s made it sort of the official American prose, and it was often a bit on the dull side. Kurt was never dull."

Vonnegut was born on Nov. 11, 1922, in Indianapolis, a "fourth-generation German-American religious skeptic Freethinker," and studied chemistry at Cornell University before joining the Army.

When he returned, he reported for Chicago's City News Bureau, then did public relations for General Electric, a job he loathed. He wrote his first novel, "Player Piano," in 1951, followed by "The Sirens of Titan," "Canary in a Cat House" and "Mother Night," making ends meet by selling Saabs on Cape Cod.

Critics ignored him at first, then denigrated his deliberately bizarre stories and disjointed plots as haphazardly written science fiction. But his novels became cult classics, especially "Cat's Cradle" in 1963, in which scientists create "ice-nine," a crystal that turns water solid and destroys the earth.

Many of his novels were best-sellers. Some also were banned and burned for suspected obscenity. Vonnegut took on censorship as an active member of the PEN writers' aid group and the American Civil Liberties Union. The American Humanist Association, which promotes individual freedom, rational thought and scientific skepticism, made him its honorary president.

His characters tended to be miserable anti-heros with little control over their fate. Pilgrim was an ungainly, lonely goof. The hero of "God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater" was a sniveling, obese volunteer fireman.

Vonnegut said the villains in his books were never individuals, but culture, society and history, which he said were making a mess of the planet.

"We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard ... and too damn cheap," he once suggested carving into a wall on the Grand Canyon, as a message for flying-saucer creatures.

He retired from novel writing in his later years, but continued to publish short articles. He had a best-seller in 2005 with "A Man Without a Country," a collection of his nonfiction, including jabs at the Bush administration ("upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography") and the uncertain future of the planet.

He called the book's success "a nice glass of champagne at the end of a life."

In recent years, Vonnegut worked as a senior editor and columnist at "In These Times." Editor Joel Bleifuss said he had been trying recently to get Vonnegut to write something more for the magazine, but was unsuccessful.
"He would just say he's too old and that he had nothing more to say. He realized, I think, he was at the end of his life," Bleifuss said.

Vonnegut, who had homes in Manhattan and the Hamptons in New York, adopted his sister's three young children after she died. He also had three children of his own with his first wife, Ann Cox, and later adopted a daughter, Lily, with his second wife, the noted photographer Jill Krementz.
Vonnegut once said that of all the ways to die, he'd prefer to go out in an airplane crash on the peak of Mount Kilimanjaro. He often joked about the difficulties of old age.

"When Hemingway killed himself he put a period at the end of his life; old age is more like a semicolon," Vonnegut told The Associated Press in 2005.
"My father, like Hemingway, was a gun nut and was very unhappy late in life. But he was proud of not committing suicide. And I'll do the same, so as not to set a bad example for my children."

"We probably could have saved ourselves, but we were too damned lazy to try very hard ... and too damn cheap." Indeed.

RIP :(

Gliondrach

04-12-2007, 12:00 PM

I once tried reading Slaughterhouse 5 but couldn't get into it. Perhaps because I was in India at the time.

veggiesosage

04-17-2007, 03:42 AM

Presume you've all seen this about the terrible events in Virginia?

Virginia Tech University was today preparing to hold a memorial service for the 32 victims of the deadliest mass shooting in the US, with university authorities struggling to explain their handling of yesterday's events.The university has already been strongly criticised over the two-hour gap between the first killings and an email alert telling students that a shooting had taken place and warning them to "be cautious".
The email, which contained few details, said: "A shooting incident occurred at West Amber Johnston earlier this morning. Police are on the scene and are investigating."
The message warned students to be cautious, urging them to contact police about anything suspicious.
"I think the university has blood on their hands because of their lack of action after the first incident," Billy Bason, an 18-year-old student, told the Washington Post.
However, the Virginia Tech president, Charles Steger, defended the university's conduct.
Mr Steger said authorities had believed the initial shooting at a dormitory was a domestic dispute, and mistakenly thought the gunman had left the campus. "We had no reason to suspect any other incident was going to occur," he added.
He emphasised that the university had closed off the dorm after the first attack, and had decided to rely on email and other electronic means to communicate.
The university president said that with 11,000 people arriving first thing in the morning, it had been difficult to spread warnings.
Before the email went out, university officials began telephoning resident advisers in dorms and sent people to knock on doors. Students were warned to stay inside and told to keep away from windows.
Police have not disclosed whether the gunman - whose identity has not yet been revealed - was a student.
However, witnesses said he seemed to know his way around campus, chaining doors to stop students from escaping Norris hall, a building in the science and engineering block, where 30 people were killed.
At least 15 people were hurt, some seriously, with injury victims including those who jumped from windows in panic.
An Israeli lecturer who died in the massacre saved the lives of several students by blocking the doorway of his classroom before being fatally shot, his son said today.
Students of 75-year-old Liviu Librescu, an engineering science and mathematics lecturer who had worked at Virginia Tech for 20 years, sent emails to his wife, Marlena, describing how he had blocked the gunman's way and saved their lives, Joe Librescu said.
"My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee," he told the Associated Press. "Students started opening windows and jumping out."
Kevin Granata, another professor, was also killed, Ishwar Puri, the head of the engineering science and mechanics department, said.
Mr Granata served in the military and later conducted orthopaedic research in hospitals before coming to Virginia Tech, where he and his students researched muscle and reflex response and robotics.
Mr Puri described him as one of the top five biomechanics researchers in the country working on movement dynamics in cerebral palsy.

veggiesosage

04-17-2007, 05:09 PM

Um, this is a pretty major news item people, as well as being really horrible

Fauxmage

04-17-2007, 05:48 PM

I've seen a couple articles about it since I came online this afternoon. :( There is some discussion about the fact that the shooter was taking antidepressants. Then comes an article claiming antidepressants are good for children and teenagers, and the benefits outweigh the risk of suicide. :confused:

I'm not trying to downplay the availability of guns making things like this possible, but when people are as messed up as this guy was, they will find ways to hurt people, guns or not. You can still buy all the raw materials you need to make homemade explosives at the grocery and hardware stores.

What bothers me is that people could see how alienated this guy was, and no one did anything to effectively reach out to him before it was too late, except refer him to a counselor. Maybe it wouldn't have made any difference. But you don't need to be able to foresee a tragedy like this in order to want to do something to help a disturbed loner a little bit.

my3labs

04-17-2007, 08:45 PM

I'm afraid that I've become pretty hardened to this type of thing. When humans begin to understand how many animals we kill each day for food, testing, clothing, etc., then I'll start to feel badly about humans killing other humans.
Don't get me wrong, I feel sorry for the families involved and I'm certain that the poor students were terrified during the ordeal but whenever I hear this type of thing I always put it into perspective of what we do to animals each and every day.
How many animals do we kill each day? Something like 29 million, and no one blinks an eye.

Bowwowmeow

04-17-2007, 10:24 PM

I'm afraid that I've become pretty hardened to this type of thing. When humans begin to understand how many animals we kill each day for food, testing, clothing, etc., then I'll start to feel badly about humans killing other humans.
I confess I tend to react the same way initially to news like this. Like you, when I give it more thought I do feel bad for the victims, but it does pale a bit when I think about the daily mass killings of non-humans, especially when I consider that the whole world will grieve for the people, but very few give the suffering of animals a first thought, let alone a second. :(

thevegantwins

04-18-2007, 08:35 AM

I feel the same. In my emails to the people I wrote to regarding the feral cat killer which I posted about here (http://www.thenakedvegan.net/showthread.php?t=96&page=4), I mentioned the correllation between this man being upset about feral cats allegedly killing birds so he shot the cats and the shooting on the campus. Not to diminish the horrible losses so many people are enduring but I believe the fact that this society finds it acceptable to murder some living creatures for their own reasons makes it more difficult for disturbed people to not find it reprehensible to shoot at other living creatures for their own reasons.

my3labs

04-18-2007, 05:34 PM

Very well said BWM and TVT.

my3labs

04-21-2007, 10:22 AM

E. coli fears spur California and Pennsylvania beef recalls
Almost 400,000 pounds of beef are being recalled after reports of illness thought to be caused by E. coli contamination.
April 21 2007: 11:07 AM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Two beef producers, one in California and the other in Pennsylvania, have recalled a total of close to 400,000 pounds of beef stemming from fears of E. Coli contamination.

A Pennsylvania beef company is recalling about 259,230 lbs of beef products and a California company is recalling about 107,943 pounds of frozen ground beef products due to possible contamination with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Friday.
Video More video
Is your food safer if it is grown close to home? CNN's Judy Fortin reports (March 7)
Play video

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service and the Pennsylvania Department of Health have found several illnesses tied to steak products produced by HFX Inc. for Hoss's Family Steak and Sea Restaurants, a chain based in Pennsylvania.

USDA said 4,884 pounds were produced on various dates between April 5, 2007, and April 19, 2007, and were distributed to retail stores in Pennsylvania. The rest of the meat, 254,346 lbs, was distributed to restaurants in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia. The beef from Richwood Meat Co. was produced on April 28, 2006, and was sent to retail outlets in Arizona, California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

The Pennsylvania Department of Health said in a statement the illnesses are believed to be the result of eating rare or medium-rare steak at the restaurants March 24-March 29. Four of five people have been hospitalized, but none has developed kidney failure.

"Because the number of cases is small and the exposure period was several weeks ago, the health department believes the risk to Hoss's customers is low," the Pennsylvania Department of Health said.

E. coli O157:H7 is a potentially deadly bacteria that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration. Children, elderly and people with poor immune systems are the most susceptible.

USDA said products being recalled have an establishment number "EST. 8264" inside the USDA mark of inspection and a date code of 118-6 or 4/28/06.

Bowwowmeow

05-04-2007, 08:49 PM

Queen Elizabeth Tours Jamestown Settlement with Cheney, Leaves for Kentucky

article here... (http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20070504/463aafc0_3426_1335020070504-1250836505)

I hope he doesn't take her hunting, or you folks in the UK will be needing a new monarch. :whistle: :dunce: :crossfingers:

Gliondrach

05-05-2007, 02:06 AM

Why do you say that? Does Cheney tend to shoot his fellow hunters? If so, he can't be all bad.

I know that you took your life into your hands if you played golf with Gerry Ford. Or watched him playing golf.

thevegantwins

05-05-2007, 09:26 AM

Cheney shot one of his friends while hunting :rofl: A very wealthy supporter of him and Bush.

Gliondrach

05-05-2007, 10:22 AM

Who said there's no justice?

thevegantwins

05-05-2007, 11:00 AM

Ech, he survived.

dreamer

05-07-2007, 08:54 AM

Vegans face life for death of infant
ATLANTA, May 4 (UPI) -- A sentencing hearing is scheduled in Atlanta next week for a vegan couple convicted of killing their newborn baby by not providing him with proper nutrition.
In the first verdict of its kind in Georgia, a Fulton County jury found vegans Lamont Thomas, 31, and Jade Sanders, 27, responsible for the death of their 6-week-old son, Crown, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.

The infant, who was born in a bathtub at the couple's apartment, weighed only 3 1/2 pounds when he was dead on arrival at Piedmont Hospital in April 2004.

Doctors said the infant was so emaciated you could count his bones through his skin.

Prosecutors charged the infant's death had nothing to do with veganism but instead was the result of intentional neglect and underfeeding.

They accused the couple of trying to use their lifestyle as a shield against prosecution.

I can't help but notice that while the prosecutors point out that veganism was not the cause of the death, the headline would strongly suggest that the news agency at least implies it might be the case:no:

Bowwowmeow

05-07-2007, 09:30 AM

:( :( :(

Gliondrach

05-07-2007, 04:36 PM

Poor little lad. But how many children of meat eaters die of neglect and cruelty each year?

What about the headline:

Meat eaters face life for death of infant.

IndyVegan

05-16-2007, 03:33 AM

jerry falwell dies!! i know, i know, bad to celebrate death and all but at least the world is less one bigot and that can't be a bad thing!!

some quotes from the dead bigot:

The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, (on 9/11)

I sincerely believe that the collective efforts of many secularists during the past generation, resulting in the expulsion from our schools and from the public square, has left us vulnerable.
--Rev. Jerry Falwell (also on 9/11)

Pat, did you notice yesterday the ACLU, and all the Christ-haters, People For the American Way, NOW, etc. were totally disregarded by the Democrats and the Republicans in both houses of Congress as they went out on the steps and called out on to God in prayer and sang "God Bless America" and said "let the ACLU be hanged"? In other words, when the nation is on its knees, the only normal and natural and spiritual thing to do is what we ought to be doing all the time -- calling upon God.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell (speaking to good ol' Pat Roberon... on 9/11)

But we OF COURSE have a lot more good times to reminisce in than this!...

If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.
-- Jerry Falwell

The ACLU is to Christians what the American Nazi party is to Jews.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell

AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell

The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.
-- Rev Jerry Falwell, Sermon, July 4, 1976

It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.
-- Jerry Falwell

And last but not least...

Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.
-- Jerry Falwell, on CNN's Crossfire, May 17, 1997

thevegantwins

05-16-2007, 06:11 AM

:wave: Bye, Jerry Falwell. Let us know how :boil: is.

Gliondrach

05-16-2007, 07:51 AM

He must have been dropped on his head when he was a baby.

veggiesosage

05-21-2007, 06:49 AM

The Cutty Sark has been devastated by fire

Fire today ravaged the Cutty Sark, causing extensive damage to the world's last remaining tea clipper and one of Britain's most important maritime treasures.Residents in Greenwich, south-east London, where the 19th century ship has been in dry dock since the 1950s, described hearing an explosion at around 4.45am.
Firefighters arrived to find a "substantial" blaze had engulfed the timber and iron hulled ship, which has been undergoing a £25m renovation.
Police said they were examining whether arson was the cause of the fire and appealed for witnesses.
Despite the apparent damage, experts overseeing the broad restoration project on the 138-year-old ship said an initial inspection indicated a section of its structure remained intact and it could perhaps be restored."Initial indications are that this is not an insurmountable problem," Ian Bell, the technical manager of the Cutty Sark Trust, told reporters after being allowed to inspect the vessel.
He said parts were "completely unaffected" and his biggest fears were for the condition of the iron braces that held the ship together.
"There is some localised distortion, but not major distortion [of the metal]," he said. "It is not as bad as it could have been."
More than half of the ship's structure, including the three 100-ft (33-metre) masts and 250 teak planks, had already been removed as part of the restoration work. Much of the damage was to a temporary wooden roof installed to provide cover for the 65 carpenters, shipwrights, fabricators and other conservationists currently working on the project.
Initial inspections suggested the ship's distinctive bow and stern appeared to have survived the worst of the blaze. The figurehead, Nanny, was also safe in a temporary exhibition centre neighbouring the clipper.
Police said they were treating the ship fire as suspicious - a routine procedure - and CCTV images were being examined. A night security guard had been interviewed by detectives, and officers were trying to trace a silver car seen near the scene.
At a press conference this afternoon, the Met's Superintendent Mark Mitchell said a joint investigation by the London Fire Brigade and the Forensic Science Service was under way. Dogs from the police arson investigation unit were taken on to the site this afternoon.
Chris Livett, chairman of Cutty Sark Enterprises, said the ship was "the heart of Greenwich" and it would be "unbelievable" to think anyone would want to destroy it.
He was unable to put a figure on how much the blaze would cost but Richard Doughty, the chief executive of the Cutty Sark Trust, said the delay would cost £10,000 a day.
The Cutty Sark was "the Ferrari of her day because she was the epitome of speed under sail" inspiring countless yachtsmen and -women, he said.
"This is a ship that helped to make the wealth of London. She travelled the world, she belongs to the world. She is the first ship anywhere that was conserved for the nation."
"One thing is certain: we will now redouble our efforts to save the world 's most famous clipper ship. It has been rescued twice before, in 1922 and 1953; this will be third time lucky."
Asked whether he thought the fire was suspicious, Mr Doughty replied: "I find it hard to believe that anything we've done could have set the ship alight. There isn't anything electrical at the heart of where the fire started. I can't think of anything there apart from wood and metal."
The culture secretary, Tessa Jowell, said she was "horrified" to learn of the fire and hoped the ship could be restored.
"The Cutty Sark is an icon of our heritage and a world-famous landmark known by millions," said Ms Jowell, who is expected visit the scene later today. "I very much hope the Cutty Sark can be restored, so it can take its place once again as one of London's - and the world's - great sights."
Maureen Taylor, whose home adjoins the Cutty Sark site, said she was woken by a "loud bang".
"As soon as I looked out of the window I saw flames, and they were high already," she said, adding that she then got her 11-year-old daughter and the family's dogs outside and across the road. "There was ash everywhere in the sky," she said.
The battle to bring the blaze under control was delayed for 45 minutes after fire crews found gas cylinders near the ship and were forced to evacuate nearby residents and make sure no other cylinders were onboard.
While some water was directed on to the fire during this period, it was only a "defensive" response, with the "aggressive" firefighting delayed until the area was deemed safe, Ian Allchin, a London Fire Brigade spokesman, said.
By 6.20am the fire was under control but had left the ship a smoking, blackened wreck, framed by the exposed spars of a temporary roof erected above it during the restoration project.
The Cutty Sark has been closed to the public since November 2006 for a £25m renovation and was due to reopen in 2009. The ship needed substantial repairs because sea salt had speeded up the corrosion of its iron framework.
Nick Raynsford, MP for Greenwich and Woolwich, who visited the Cutty Sark last week, said the fire was a "terrible blow".
"This is the most famous ship in the world and it draws millions of visitors. People from all over the world will be devastated by this news."
The Cutty Sark left London on its first voyage on February 16 1870, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope to Shanghai three months later. But the ship made only eight voyages to China in the tea trade.
The opening of the Suez canal, just after the Cutty Sark was built, quickly made tea clippers redundant as steamers benefited from a shorter sea route. The ship was the world's only surviving example of an "extreme clipper", regarded as the ultimate development of a merchant sail vessel.
Most of the original hull had survived since the ship was built. One of London's top tourist sites, the Cutty Sark has attracted 15 million visitors since it opened in 1957.

Gliondrach

05-21-2007, 07:36 AM

I wasn't there. Fifty people will swear I was nowhere near it.

veggiesosage

05-23-2007, 08:20 AM

Nowt to do with veganism but I reckon its pretty cool anyway. The Chagos Islanders, who were kicked out of their homeland to make way for the Diego Garcia military base, have kicked the UK govrrnment's butt in court.

Families who were expelled from the Chagos Islands to make way for the Diego Garcia US airbase 30 years ago won their legal battle to return home today.The families - ordered from the islands by the British government - packed the court of appeal to hear the ruling, which condemned government tactics preventing their return as unlawful and an abuse of power.
The court ruled that thousands of people who were tricked, starved and even terrorised from their homes could return immediately, with the decision likely to draw a line under what is widely seen as one of the most shameful episodes in British colonial history.
In 2002 and 2006, the people of the Chagos archipelago - which is between Africa and Indonesia - won court decisions declaring the British actions unlawful.Today, they defeated the foreign secretary, Margaret Beckett, who had taken the case to the court of appeal. They had not sought to return to Diego Garcia itself, but to other islands in the chain.
Speaking amid triumphant scenes outside the Royal Courts of Justice, Richard Gifford, the solicitor for the islanders, said: "It has been held that the ties which bind a people to its homeland are so fundamental that no executive order can lawfully abrogate those rights.
"This is now the third time that Olivier Bancoult, the leader of the Chagossian community in exile, has proved to the satisfaction of English judges that nothing can separate his compatriots from their homeland.
"They now call upon the British government for a new start in this abusive relationship and to proceed with the utmost urgency to restore these loyal British subjects to their homeland."
Explaining the court's decision, Lord Justice Sedley said that "while a natural or man-made disaster could warrant the temporary, perhaps even indefinite, removal of a population for its own safety and so rank as an act of governance, the permanent exclusion of an entire population from its homeland for reasons unconnected with their collective well-being cannot have that character and accordingly cannot be lawfully accomplished by use of the prerogative power of governance".
After the ruling, a Foreign Office spokesman said ministers were "disappointed" that judges had not granted the department leave to appeal the decision. "We now have one month to lodge an appeal with the House of Lords," he added.
"The foreign secretary will consider the judgment carefully and decide if an appeal to the House of Lords will be made. Until this, the matter remains sub judice."
In 1966, the British government secretly sold the US a 50-year lease on Diego Garcia, and the residents were expelled from their homes. Most were left to fend for themselves in the slums of Port Louis, Mauritius.
Last May, high court judges condemned as "repugnant" the government's decision to "exile a whole population" from the Indian Ocean islands.
Government officials claimed the decision had been made on the basis that it was necessary for peace, order and good government.
However, Lord Justice Hooper and Mr Justice Cresswell ruled that the interests of the islanders had been ignored, and that orders made under the royal prerogative to prevent their return were irrational and unlawful.
Because of the importance of that decision - which included a declaration that orders made under the royal prerogative are not immune from judicial review - the judges gave the government permission for the appeal it lost today.
The high court first dealt a blow to the government in 2000 when it overturned measures, introduced in the form of an immigration ordinance in 1971, to keep the Chagossians in exile.
The court held that the islanders had a right of return to the group of 65 islands in the Chagos archipelago, although not to Diego Garcia itself.
Robin Cook, the then foreign secretary, said there would be no appeal, adding that a "feasibility study" into the possibility of the islanders' return would be conducted.
US military authorities expressed fears that any attempt to resettle any of the islands would severely compromise the security of Diego Garcia, which was used to launch bombing missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
It was then that the government decided the islanders could not go back after all.

1vegan

05-23-2007, 12:35 PM

dreamer

05-23-2007, 02:31 PM

I actually heard about this on BBC America news. They said that they were trying to let them go "home" while the British gov't continues their appeals--as they are apparently likely to have the ruling appealed yet again:(

1vegan

05-25-2007, 11:36 AM

*omni forgets child, child dies of dehyrdration

Mother forgot baby in car

25 May 2007

BRUSSELS – The five-month-old baby found dead in a car in the town of Halle in Vlaams-Brabant at about 4 pm on Thursday had been forgotten by his mother.

The public prosecution department in Brussels has announced that he probably died of overheating.

The mother had brought her two elder children to school on Thursday morning and went immediately to her work in Halle, forgetting to drop off her 5-month-old son at his babysitter.

At 4 pm the woman went to the babysitter to pick up the child, whom she thought she had dropped off. The child was found dead in his car seat in the back of the car.

The woman has not been arrested at the moment, though she may be charged with criminal negligence. An autopsy should shed more light on the baby's cause of death
that mum is sure gonna have a long lasting trauma :(

(sort of posting this here, cause it's not exclusively "vegans" who don't take good enough care of their kids, I know I can do that here)

Gliondrach

05-25-2007, 02:45 PM

Poor little devil. It must have been terrible for him. He must have been screaming for attention and no one came. Tragic.

thevegantwins

05-26-2007, 10:22 AM

Some father in New Jersey left his 2-year old in the car all night after arriving home from the child's birthday party! Fortunately, the child lived. The father must have been very drunk because he rang the police in the morning to report his car stolen. He hadn't realized his son was missing then and when the police found the car not far from where he lived, they also found the 2-year old in the back seat of the locked car, screaming his head off. :crazy:

Charmagne

05-26-2007, 11:12 AM

That poor baby! So sad.:( But you are right - had they been vegans it probably would of made the paper somehow.

1vegan

05-28-2007, 01:32 PM

Hold the meat; kids can be healthy without it
Plant-based diet can pack plenty of protein, vitamins

By BONNA de la CRUZ
Staff Writer

For 3-year-old Hunter Jones and his younger sister, Ronin, dinner may be a rice milk smoothie chock-full of baby spinach, frozen bananas and a dash of maple syrup, along with flaxseed and other healthy oils.

Don't worry that these young vegans aren't getting enough nutrients for their growing bodies, stay-at-home mom Mandy Jones said.

"I'm doing my kids a favor by giving them a head start in the world," Jones said. "They'll be less prone to heart disease and cancer."

Eating lots of fresh fruit, along with their daily vegan multivitamin, this brother and sister are the picture of health, rarely sick and keeping up with their meat-eating friends in height and weight, said Jones, 29, founder of a mom's group called Artsy Mamas.

Many medical professionals agree that raising your tots on a well-planned diet of fruits, vegetables, grains and beans can be healthy and safe.

The case of a vegan couple in Georgia who starved an infant to death should not convince people otherwise, said Dr. Rebecca Swan, assistant professor of pediatrics at the Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt.

"That was not a vegan issue. That was a nutritional issue," Swan said of the 6-week-old boy who wasted away to 31/2 pounds.

His parents fed him mostly soy milk and apple juice, according to news accounts.

That regimen is as harmful to a newborn as parents feeding an infant whole milk, Swan said. The couple was sentenced to life in prison earlier this month.

"A baby needs formula," the doctor said, noting that baby formula is fortified with proper vitamins and minerals. Fortified soy milk formula is available to parents who are keeping their babies off dairy.

Healthy and leaner kids

Some people are drawn to a meatless diet for weight loss and improved health, while others are concerned about the safety of meat.

Many vegetarians believe it is ethically wrong to eat animals, disapproving of the suffering of animals in modern factory farms. Still others are concerned about the environment and world hunger. Some people just don't like meat. And for many, it's a combination of reasons.

"You can certainly have a child raised on a vegan or vegetarian diet, who will grow and develop appropriately for their age," Swan said.

In fact, two studies in the 1980s upturned the notion that children who don't eat meat are stunted weaklings.

One study of 404 vegetarian children at The Farm community in Summertown, Tenn., showed they were slightly shorter than their meat-eating peers from ages 1 to 3 but had caught up by age 10. A study of British children who were vegans showed they were actually taller than their meat-eating friends and weighed slightly less.It's nice to see a objective article about veganism in the news :)

thevegantwins

05-28-2007, 01:44 PM

It is nice plus the article gave me an idea for tonight's toddler dinner: rice milk smoothie with raw organic kale leaves, hemp seeds, frozen pineapple and frozen banana.

dreamer

05-31-2007, 11:40 AM

Musician canned for focus on wrong organ
Wed May 30, 11:06 PM ET

A Catholic priest has removed his church's organist and choir director from her duties saying her sale of sex toys was not "consistent with Church teachings."

Linette Servais, 50, played the organ and sung with the choir for 35 years. Much of her work as choir director and organist was done without pay. When her parish priest asked to meet with her, she thought it was to say thank you.

Instead, she was told to quit her sales job with company known as Pure Romance or she would lose her position in the church.

Pure Romance in Loveland, Ohio, is a $60 million per year business that sells spa products and sex toys at homes parties attended by women. It has 15,000 consultants like Servais.

She said her decision was not hard: She began working with Pure Romance after a brain tumor and treatment left her sexually dysfunctional. The job allows her to help other women who have similar problems.

"After I got over the initial shock, I prayed over this a long time," she said. "I feel that Pure Romance is my ministry."

The Rev. Dean Dombroski felt differently, removing her from the choir loft just before Thanksgiving and gradually taking away other church duties. Servais can no longer take pictures during First Communion services or lead the committee planning St. Joseph's annual late-summer picnic.

Dombroski said he couldn't discuss the situation because it involves personnel. But in a letter to his rural congregation, he wrote: "Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings. Because parish leaders are expected to model the teaching of our faith ... she could stay on as the choir director/organist or she could continue to be a consultant but she could not do both."

Servais responded with her own three-page letter to church members, saying she felt compelled to help other women, especially those suffering from problems caused by cancer.

Many choir members quit in support, she said, and some have gathered at her home on occasional Thursdays to sing hymns.

"Father Dean made it sound so sinful," she said. "There is so much more to this business than toys."

paul

05-31-2007, 03:43 PM

Pure Romance stuff is really god, eer ive been eer cough cough told:whistle:

1vegan

05-31-2007, 09:12 PM

It's quite hypocrite if you ask me, after all the catholic church has been in the news several times cause priests couldn't keep their hands of little boys.....

Bowwowmeow

05-31-2007, 09:23 PM

Maybe they are overcompensating.

KRITER

06-04-2007, 12:11 PM

Hey yall Did you hear about the 1000 lb hog geting shot by the fat boy in Alabama?

thevegantwins

06-04-2007, 12:14 PM

This fat woman just posted an update to the story here: http://www.thenakedvegan.net/showthread.php?p=30831#post30831

KRITER

06-04-2007, 12:21 PM

I just seen it.Sory this fat man didnt kno.

thevegantwins

06-08-2007, 12:31 PM

June 8, 2007
In Britain, Obesity _ and Malnutrition
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:15 p.m. ET

LONDON (AP) -- It may be obvious that most Britons are overweight. What isn't so obvious is that at least 2 million of them are likely malnourished -- and that includes some of the people who are too fat.

Experts say the poor state of the average British diet -- often high in fat, salt and calories, but low on nutrition -- means malnutrition is a problem even though food is plentiful.

''You can't always tell if a person is malnourished with your eyes,'' said Dr. Marinos Elia, a professor of clinical nutrition and metabolism at Southampton University. ''People may be eating too much food, but they may not be eating enough fruits and vegetables.''

Dr. Alastair McKinlay, a gastroenterologist and chairman of a British malnutrition action group, put it bluntly: ''There's a widely held misconception that if you're fat, you can't be malnourished.''

Some experts even contend that the food rationing system during World War II offered Britons more nutrition than what they're eating today. From 1939-45, Britons got books of coupons, which they traded in for limited amounts of items like flour, milk, eggs, meat and canned fruit.

''Rationing was a huge success because it ensured that if you got your allotted amounts, you got a nutritionally reasonable diet,'' said Dr. Colin Waine, chairman of the National Obesity Forum. ''I'm not advocating a return to rationing, but it was a more balanced diet back then.''

Despite the unlimited food supply today, Waine said people don't always make the right choices.

Many nutrition experts believe the number of malnourished Britons is closer to 4 million, about 6 percent of the population, than the government's estimate of 2 million.

Most malnourished people have a chronic illness like AIDS, cancer or tuberculosis. In the last five years, according to the Department of Health, the number of hospital-identified malnourished patients has risen by more than 40 percent, though experts say that is largely due to heightened surveillance rather than a dramatic jump in cases.

There are no statistics on how many obese people may be malnourished, but doctors say they are seeing patients who are both overweight and malnourished. According to government statistics, 75 percent of Britons are overweight; more than one-fifth are obese.

While malnourished fat people are hardly in danger of starvation, other health problems are possible along with obesity-related complications like diabetes and heart disease. Once they start losing weight, malnourished people may actually burn their own tissue, including muscle, rather than fat.

Usually, people with vitamin deficiencies have skin problems, a swollen thyroid or bleeding gums. In severe cases, malnourished people might also experience hair loss, muscle wasting, a swollen abdomen, anemia or rickets.

In a country like Britain, experts say, malnutrition is rarely noticed. ''You've got to have pretty severe deficiencies before this is picked up,'' said Waine. ''But I think a lot of people are on the borderline.''

Part of the blame goes to the rise of processed and fast foods, most of which contain only small amounts of healthy nutrients. The national diet is in such trouble that earlier this month, the United Kingdom's Food Standards Agency recommended that folic acid be added to the nation's flour; a lack of it in the diet of pregnant women has been linked to birth defects.

Recent surveys estimate that fewer than 20 percent of adults eat the recommended five daily portions of fruits and vegetables.

If America has SAD (standard American diet), does Britain have BBAD (British Bloody Awful Diet)?

1vegan

06-09-2007, 12:04 AM

Some experts even contend that the food rationing system during World War II offered Britons more nutrition than what they're eating today

:eek:

"but,... but... but....didn't meat provide everything we need?!" :p

thevegantwins

06-09-2007, 10:13 AM

But wasn't meat rationed? I'm guessing Britains ate a primarily veg diet during WWII since victory gardens were plentiful and animal products were probably severely rationed.

Gliondrach

06-10-2007, 09:45 AM

There wasn't much meat. Haven't you seen Corporal Jones in his butcher's shop in Dad's Army? He was always having to tell people that they didn't have enough coupons for a joint. There's one episode where Walker, the spiv, was responsible for the disappearance of most of the pigeons from Trafalgar Square. He was going to sell them for meat. Sugar was in short supply and people used carrots to sweeten things.

Ah yes, rationing. During the war Marguerite Patten taught people how to cook frugal but healthy meals.

Some wartime recipes. Not necessarily hers:

Vegetable Roll with Potato Pastry

Ingredients for pastry:
4oz mashed and sieved potato
1/2 teaspoon of salt
8oz plain flour
3oz fat
2 tablespoons of baking powder

Method:
Sieve dry ingredients together.
Rub fat into flour and gently mix in
potato.
Add just enough water to make a fairly dry
dough.
Knead well.

Ingredients for filling:

11/2 cups of any mixed boiled vegetables, diced
1 pint thick gravy
Salt and pepper
A little chopped parsley

Method:
Take 1/2lb of potato pastry and roll out
on a floured board.
Moisten the vegetable mixture with a little of
the gravy.
Spread vegetables on to pastry leaving 1 inch all
the way round.
Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Roll up and seal well at the edges so that gravy
cannot seep out.
Place on a well greased baking tin with the seal
underneath.
Brush with milk.
Bake in a moderately hot oven for 35-45 minutes.

-----------------
This recipe was created by the Chef of the Savoy
hotel and named after Lord Woolton, head of the
Ministry Of Food.

Woolton Pie

Ingredients:
1lb diced potatoes
1lb cauliflower
1lb diced carrots
1lb diced swede
3 spring onions
1 teaspoon vegetable extract
1 tablespoon oatmeal
A little chopped parsley

Method:
Cook everything together with just enough water to
cover, stirring often to prevent it sticking to
the pan. Let the mixture cool.
Spoon into a pie dish, sprinkle with chopped parsley.
Cover with a crust of potatoes or wholemeal pastry.
Bake in a moderate oven until golden brown.
Serve hot with gravy.
------------------
And for afters you can have Carrot Fudge

Ingredients:
Carrots
Gelatine (you'll have to use a substitute)
Orange essence

Method:
Finely grate carrots and cook four tablespoons
full in just enough water to cover for 10 minutes.
Add flavouring with orange essence, grated orange
rind or orange squash/cordial.
Melt a leaf of gelatine.
Add gelatine to mixture.
Cook quickly for a few minutes stirring all the
time.
Spoon into a flat dish.
Leave to set.
Cut into cubes.

thevegantwins

06-10-2007, 10:50 AM

The vegetable roll sounds very tasty.I have all the ingredients. Maybe I'll give it a try for dinner tonight. I'll just have to find a gravy recipe. I never make it.

my3labs

06-10-2007, 11:34 AM

I use this gravy recipe all the time:

2 Cups Veggie Stock
2 1/2 T Tamari or other soy sauce
1 t fresh thyme or 1/2 T dried
salt and pepper to taste
2 T cornstarch, dissolved in 3 T water
1/4 soy milk

In a small saucepan, combine the stock, soy sauce, thyme and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and whisk in the cornstarch mixture. Whisk until thickened (about a minute). Slowly whisk in the milk but don't let it boil.

I don't usually add the milk.

This is from "The Vegetarian Meat & Potatoes" cookbook by Robin Robertson.

thevegantwins

06-10-2007, 11:47 AM

Thanks, my3labs. I really might try this tonight.

Gliondrach

06-11-2007, 03:18 AM

Let us know how it turns out. For an authentic atmosphere you should put up the blackout curtains and you should play a Vera Lynn or an Anne Shelton record. And pray that the sirens don't start sounding.

Gliondrach

06-11-2007, 03:24 AM

It calls for boiled vegetables to be cooked for a further 40 minutes! They will become just a mush. It might be better to put them in raw or very slightly cooked. Over here, not so long ago, it was the custom to boil vegetables until they became unrecognisable. I remember eating grey cabbage and Brussel's sprouts that fell apart when you tried to pick them up.

1vegan

06-11-2007, 06:32 AM

But wasn't meat rationed? I'm guessing Britains ate a primarily veg diet during WWII since victory gardens were plentiful and animal products were probably severely rationed.

I don't know how it was in the U.K during ww2, but I suppose meat was rationed, and even without rationing, meat consumption was way lower than it is now.

dreamer

06-19-2007, 11:59 AM

More proof that those people who could care less about animals dying to be "food" should get a clue!

Geese get revenge: Pate may cause rare disease
Tue Jun 19, 10:10 AM ET

Geese force-fed and then slaughtered for their livers may get their final revenge on people who favor the delicacy known as foie gras: It may transmit a little-known disease known as amyloidosis, researchers reported on Monday.

Tests on mice suggest the liver, popular in French cuisine which uses it to make pate de foie gras and other dishes, may cause the condition in animals that have a genetic susceptibility to such diseases, Alan Solomon of the University of Tennessee and colleagues reported.

That would suggest that amyloidosis can be transmitted via food in a way akin to brain diseases such as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or CJD, which can cause a rare version of mad cow disease in some people who eat affected meat products or brains.

Amyloidosis can affect various organ systems in the body, which accumulate damaging deposits of abnormal proteins known as amyloid. The heart, kidneys, nervous system and gastrointestinal tract are most often affected but amyloidosis can also cause a blood condition.

The researchers used mice genetically engineered to be susceptible to amyloidosis, which can be inherited.

"When such mice were injected with or fed amyloid extracted from foie gras, the animals developed extensive systemic pathological deposits," Solomon's team reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Sometimes Alzheimer's disease, the most common form of dementia, is described as a type of amyloidosis as well.

Symptoms are often vague and range from fatigue and weight loss to swelling and kidney damage.

Like CJD, mad cow disease, scrapie and related diseases, amyloidosis is marked by abnormal protein fragments. In the case of CJD, the proteins are called prions.

"On this basis, we posit that this and perhaps other forms of amyloidosis may be transmissible, akin to the infectious nature of prion-related illnesses," the researchers added.

"In addition to foie gras, meat derived from sheep and seemingly healthy cattle may represent other dietary sources of this material."

thevegantwins

06-19-2007, 12:01 PM

:laugh: Good for the geese. :thumbsup:

thevegantwins

06-21-2007, 08:21 AM

June 21, 2007
Not Buying It
By STEVEN KURUTZ
ON a Friday evening last month, the day after New York University’s class of 2007 graduated, about 15 men and women assembled in front of Third Avenue North, an N.Y.U. dormitory on Third Avenue and 12th Street. They had come to take advantage of the university’s end-of-the-year move-out, when students’ discarded items are loaded into big green trash bins by the curb.

New York has several colleges and universities, of course, but according to Janet Kalish, a Queens resident who was there that night, N.Y.U.’s affluent student body makes for unusually profitable Dumpster diving. So perhaps it wasn’t surprising that the gathering at the Third Avenue North trash bin quickly took on a giddy shopping-spree air, as members of the group came up with one first-class find after another.

Ben Ibershoff, a dapper man in his 20s wearing two bowler hats, dug deep and unearthed a Sharp television. Autumn Brewster, 29, found a painting of a Mediterranean harbor, which she studied and handed down to another member of the crowd.

Darcie Elia, a 17-year-old high school student with a half-shaved head, was clearly pleased with a modest haul of what she called “random housing stuff” — a desk lamp, a dish rack, Swiffer dusters — which she spread on the sidewalk, drawing quizzical stares from passers-by.

Ms. Elia was not alone in appreciating the little things. “The small thrills are when you see the contents of someone’s desk and find a book of stamps,” said Ms. Kalish, 44, as she stood knee deep in the trash bin examining a plastic toiletries holder.

A few of those present had stumbled onto the scene by chance (including a janitor from a nearby homeless center, who made off with a working iPod and a tube of body cream), but most were there by design, in response to a posting on the Web site freegan.info.

The site, which provides information and listings for the small but growing subculture of anticonsumerists who call themselves freegans — the term derives from vegans, the vegetarians who forsake all animal products, as many freegans also do — is the closest thing their movement has to an official voice. And for those like Ms. Elia and Ms. Kalish, it serves as a guide to negotiating life, and making a home, in a world they see as hostile to their values.

Freegans are scavengers of the developed world, living off consumer waste in an effort to minimize their support of corporations and their impact on the planet, and to distance themselves from what they see as out-of-control consumerism. They forage through supermarket trash and eat the slightly bruised produce or just-expired canned goods that are routinely thrown out, and negotiate gifts of surplus food from sympathetic stores and restaurants.

They dress in castoff clothes and furnish their homes with items found on the street; at freecycle.org, where users post unwanted items; and at so-called freemeets, flea markets where no money is exchanged. Some claim to hold themselves to rigorous standards. “If a person chooses to live an ethical lifestyle it’s not enough to be vegan, they need to absent themselves from capitalism,” said Adam Weissman, 29, who started freegan.info four years ago and is the movement’s de facto spokesman.

Freeganism dates to the mid-’90s, and grew out of the antiglobalization and environmental movements, as well as groups like Food Not Bombs, a network of small organizations that serve free vegetarian and vegan food to the hungry, much of it salvaged from food market trash. It also has echoes of groups like the Diggers, an anarchist street theater troupe based in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco in the 1960’s, which gave away food and social services.

According to Bob Torres, a sociology professor at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., who is writing a book about the animal rights movement — which shares many ideological positions with freeganism — the freegan movement has become much more visible and increasingly popular over the past year, in part as a result of growing frustrations with mainstream environmentalism.

Environmentalism, Mr. Torres said, “is becoming this issue of, consume the right set of green goods and you’re green,” regardless of how much in the way of natural resources those goods require to manufacture and distribute.

“If you ask the average person what can you do to reduce global warming, they’d say buy a Prius,” he added.

There are freegans all over the world, in countries as far afield as Sweden, Brazil, South Korea, Estonia and England (where much has been made of what The Sun recently called the “wacky new food craze” of trash-bin eating), and across the United States as well .

In Southern California, for example, “you can find just about anything in the trash, and on a consistent basis, too,” said Marko Manriquez, 28, who has just graduated from the University of California at San Diego with a bachelor’s degree in media studies and is the creator of “Freegan Kitchen,” a video blog that shows gourmet meals being made from trash-bin ingredients. “This is how I got my futon, chair, table, shelves. And I’m not talking about beat-up stuff. I mean it’s not Design Within Reach, but it’s nice.”

But New York City in particular — the financial capital of the world’s richest country — has emerged as a hub of freegan activity, thanks largely to Mr. Weissman’s zeal for the cause and the considerable free time he has to devote to it. (He doesn’t work and lives at home in Teaneck, N.J., with his father and elderly grandparents.)

Freegan.info sponsors organize Trash Tours that typically attract a dozen or more people, as well as feasts at which groups of about 20 people gather in apartments around the city to share food and talk politics.

In the last year or so, Mr. Weissman said, the site has increased the number and variety of its events, which have begun attracting many more first-time participants. Many of those who have taken part in one new program, called Wild Foraging Walks — workshops that teach people to identify edible plants in the wilderness — have been newcomers, he said.

The success of the movement in New York may also be due to the quantity and quality of New York trash. As of 2005, individuals, businesses and institutions in the United States produced more than 245 million tons of municipal solid waste, according to the E.P.A. That means about 4.5 pounds per person per day. The comparable figure for New York City, meanwhile, is about 6.1 pounds, according to statistics from the city’s Sanitation Department.

“We have a lot of wealthy people, and rich people throw out more trash than poor people do,” said Elizabeth Royte, whose book “Garbage Land” (Little, Brown, 2005) traced the route her trash takes through the city. “Rich people are also more likely to throw things out based on style obsolescence — like changing the towels when you’re tired of the color.”

At the N.Y.U. Dorm Dive, as the event was billed, the consensus was that this year’s spoils weren’t as impressive as those in years past. Still, almost anything needed to decorate and run a household — a TV cart, a pillow, a file cabinet, a half-finished bottle of Jägermeister — was there for the taking, even if those who took them were risking health, safety and a $100 fine from the Sanitation Department.

Ms. Brewster and her mother, who had come from New Jersey, loaded two area rugs into their cart. Her mother, who declined to give her name, seemed to be on a search for laundry detergent, and was overjoyed to discover a couple of half-empty bottles of Trader Joe’s organic brand. (Free and organic is a double bonus). Nearby, a woman munched on a found bag of Nature’s Promise veggie fries.

As people stuffed their backpacks, Ms. Kalish, who organized the event (Mr. Weissman arrived later), demonstrated the cooperative spirit of freeganism, asking the divers to pass items down to people on the sidewalk and announcing her finds for anyone in need of, say, a Hoover Shop-Vac.

“Sometimes people will swoop in and grab something, especially when you see a half-used bottle of Tide detergent,” she said. “Who wouldn’t want it? But most people realize there’s plenty to go around.” She rooted around in the trash bin and found several half-eaten jars of peanut butter. “It’s a never-ending supply,” she said.

Many freegans are predictably young and far to the left politically, like Ms. Elia, the 17-year-old, who lives with her father in Manhattan. She said she became a freegan both for environmental reasons and because “I’m not down with capitalism.”

There are also older freegans, like Ms. Kalish, who hold jobs and appear in some ways to lead middle-class lives. A high school Spanish teacher, Ms. Kalish owns a car and a two-family house in Queens, renting half of it as a “capitalist landlord,” she joked. Still, like most freegans, she seems attuned to the ecological effects of her actions. In her house, for example, she has laid down a mosaic of freegan carpet parcels instead of replacing her aging wooden floor because, she said, “I’d have to take trees from the forest.”

Not buying any new manufactured products while living in the United States is, of course, basically impossible, as is avoiding everything that requires natural resources to create, distribute or operate. Don’t freegans use gas or electricity to cook, for example, or commercial products to brush their teeth?

“Once in a while I may buy a box of baking soda for toothpaste,” Mr. Weissman said. “And, sure, getting that to market has negative impacts, like everything.” But, he said, parsing the point, a box of baking soda is more ecologically friendly than a tube of toothpaste, because its cardboard container is biodegradable.

These contradictions and others have led some people to suggest that freegans are hypocritical, making use of the capitalist system even as they rail against it. And even Mr. Weissman, who is often doctrinaire about the movement, acknowledges when pushed that absolute freeganism is an impossible dream.

Mr. Torres said: “I think there’s a conscious recognition among freegans that you can never live perfectly.” He added that generally freegans “try to reduce the impact.”

It’s not that freeganism doesn’t require serious commitment. For freegans, who believe that the production and transport of every product contributes to economic and social injustice, usually in multiple ways, any interaction with the marketplace is fraught. And for some freegans in particular — for instance, Madeline Nelson, who until recently was living an upper-middle-class Manhattan life with all the attendant conveniences and focus on luxury goods — choosing this way of life involves a considerable, even radical, transformation.

Ms. Nelson, who is 51, spent her 20s working in restaurants and living in communal houses, but by 2003 she was earning a six-figure salary as a communications director for Barnes & Noble. That year, while demonstrating against the Iraq war, she began to feel hypocritical, she said, explaining: “I thought, isn’t this safe? Here I am in my corporate job, going to protests every once in a while. And part of my job was to motivate the sales force to sell more stuff.”

After a year of progressively scaling back — no more shopping at Eileen Fisher, no more commuting by means other than a bike — Ms. Nelson, who had a two-bedroom apartment with a mortgage in Greenwich Village, quit her job in 2005 to devote herself full-time to political activism and freeganism.

She sold her apartment, put some money into savings, and bought a one-bedroom in Flatbush, Brooklyn, that she owns outright.

“My whole point is not to be paying into corporate America, and I hated paying a big loan to a bank,” she said while fixing lunch in her kitchen one recent afternoon. The meal — potato and watercress soup and crackers and cheese — had been made entirely from refuse left outside various grocery stores in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The bright and airy prewar apartment Ms. Nelson shares with two cats doesn’t look like the home of someone who spends her evenings rooting through the garbage. But after some time in the apartment, a visitor begins to see the signs of Ms. Nelson’s anticonsumerist way of life.

An old lampshade in the living room has been trimmed with fabric to cover its fraying parts, leaving a one-inch gap where the material ran out. The ficus tree near the window came not from a florist, Ms. Nelson said, but from the trash, as did the CD rack. A 1920s loveseat belonged to her grandmother, and an 18th-century, Louis XVI-style armoire in the bedroom is a vestige of her corporate life.

The kitchen cabinets and refrigerator are stuffed with provisions — cornmeal, Pirouline cookies, vegetarian cage-free eggs — appropriate for a passionate cook who entertains often. All were free.

She longs for a springform pan in which to make cheesecakes, but is waiting for one to come up on freecycle.org. There are no new titles on the bookshelves; she hasn’t bought a new book in six months. “Books were my impulse buy,” said Ms. Nelson, whose short brown hair and glasses frame a youthful face. Now she logs onto bookcrossing.com, where readers share used books, or goes to the public library.

But isn’t she depriving herself unnecessarily? And what’s so bad about buying books, anyway? “I do have some mixed feelings,” Ms. Nelson said. “It’s always hard to give up class privilege. But freegans would argue that the capitalist system is not sustainable. You’re exploiting resources.” She added, “Most people work 40-plus hours a week at jobs they don’t like to buy things they don’t need.”

Since becoming a freegan, Ms. Nelson has spent her time posting calendar items and other information online and doing paralegal work on behalf of bicyclists arrested at Critical Mass anticar rallies. “I’m not sitting in the house eating bonbons,” she said. “I’m working. I’m just not working for money.”

She is also spending a lot of time making rounds for food and supplies at night, and has come to know the cycles of the city’s trash. She has learned that fruit tends to get thrown out more often in the summer (she freezes it and makes sorbet), and that businesses are a source for envelopes. A reliable spot to get bread is Le Pain Quotidien, a chain of bakery-restaurants that tosses out six or seven loaves a night. But Ms. Nelson doesn’t stockpile. “The sad fact is you don’t need to,” she said. “More trash will be there tomorrow.”

By and large, she said, her friends have been understanding, if not exactly enthusiastic about adopting freeganism for themselves. “When she told me she was doing this I wasn’t really surprised — Madeline is a free spirit,” said Eileen Dolan, a librarian at a Manhattan law firm who has known Ms. Nelson since their college days at Stony Brook. But while Ms. Dolan agrees that society is wasteful, she said that going freegan is not something she would ever do. “It’s a huge time commitment,” she said.

ONE evening a week after the Dorm Dive, a group of about 20 freegans gathered in a sparely furnished, harshly lit basement apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, to hold a feast. It was an egalitarian affair with no one officially in charge, but Mr. Weissman projected authority, his blue custodian-style work pants and fuzzy black beard giving him the air of a Latin American revolutionary as he wandered around, trailed by a Korean television crew.

Ms. Kalish stood over the sink, slicing vegetables for a stir-fry with a knife she had found in a trash bin at N.Y.U. A pot of potatoes simmered on the stove. These, like much of the rest of the meal, had been gathered two nights earlier, when Mr. Weissman, Ms. Kalish and others had met in front of a Food Emporium in Manhattan and rummaged through the store’s clear garbage bags.

The haul had been astonishing in its variety: sealed bags of organic vegetable medley, bagged salad, heirloom tomatoes, key limes, three packaged strawberries-and-chocolate-dip kits, carrots, asparagus, grapes, a carton of organic soy milk (expiration date: July 9), grapefruit, mushrooms and, for those willing to partake, vacuum-packed herb turkey breast. (Some freegans who avoid meat will nevertheless eat it rather than see it go to waste.)

As operatic music played on a radio, people mingled and pitched in. One woman diced onions, rescuing pieces that fell on floor. Another, who goes by the name Petal, emptied bags of salad into a pan. As rigorous and radical as the freegan world view can be, there is also something quaint about the movement, at least the version that Mr. Weissman promotes, with its embrace of hippie-ish communal activities and its household get-togethers that rely for diversion on conversation rather electronic entertainment.

Making things last is part of the ethos. Christian Gutierrez, a 33-year-old former model and investment banker, sat at the small kitchen table, chatting. Mr. Gutierrez, who quit his banking job at Matthews Morris & Company in 2004 to pursue filmmaking, became a freegan last year, and opened a free workshop on West 36th Street in Manhattan to teach bicycle repair. He plans to add lessons in fixing home computers in the near future.

Mr. Gutierrez’s lifestyle, like Ms. Nelson’s, became gradually more constricted in the absence of a steady income. He lived in a Midtown loft until last year, when, he said, he got into a legal battle with his landlord over a rent increase — a relationship “ruined by greed,” he said. After that, he lived in his van for a while, then found an illegal squat in SoHo, which he shares with two others. Mr. Gutierrez had a middle-class upbringing in Dallas, and he said he initially found freeganism off-putting. But now he is steadfastly devoted to the way of life.

As people began to load plates of food, he leaned in and offered a few words of wisdom: “Opening that first bag of trash,” he said, “is the biggest step.”

I don't like how the media connects vegan with freegan since not all freegans are vegan. If you eat dead animal, even if it was obtained from a dumpster, you are not vegan.

dreamer

06-27-2007, 02:44 PM

Elizabeth Edwards asks to commentator Ann Coulter to stop attacks
Associated Press - June 26, 2007 8:03 PM ET

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - Elizabeth Edwards is calling on Ann Coulter to "stop the personal attacks." The plea came a day after the conservative commentator said she wished Edwards' husband, Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, had been killed by terrorists.

Elizabeth Edwards spoke by phone on MSNBC's "Hardball with Chris Matthews," where Coulter was a guest.

Mrs. Edwards called Coulter's remarks "a dialogue on hatefulness and ugliness."

For her part, Coulter charged that Edwards was calling on her to stop speaking altogether. Coulter said "I don't think I need to be told to stop writing by Elizabeth Edwards, thank you."

With the close of the second-quarter fundraising period approaching Saturday, the Edwards campaign quickly turned Coulter's comments into fundraising fodder. Edwards adviser Joe Trippi sent an e-mail to supporters, saying critics "will stop at nothing to tear John down."

I don't know how many of you know of Ann Coulter, but she's starting to make my 'short list' of people that I almost hate;) First she said that the 9/11 widows were basically glad to have their husbands dead for the $ and press they received...as well as saying that their husbands are probably happy to be dead instead of being stuck with them. Then she said much the same thing about Iraq war veterans' widows and mothers--I guess as she's not creative enuf to think of a different tirade. Then she said that John Edwards is a "fag." Now she has said--as the article states--that she wishes JE had been killed by terrorists. And when his wife made what I thought was a fair point--stop being hateful and ugly--she said on the show mentioned, "You're telling me to shut up and I won't shut up." [I actually saw this part of the show and that's basically what she said.] My immediate response was anger, but then I realized that it's sad that AC equates not being hateful and ugly as not being able to speak...in other words, that's all she has to offer, so if she can't do that, she can't talk:no: Not that I still don't find her dispicable, but that makes me feel a tinge of pity for her as well. What's really upsetting to me is that so many conservatives still love her--as on the show the crowd around them politely clapped at the wife's statement, but roared and clapped enthusiastically at AC's.

Gliondrach

06-27-2007, 02:58 PM

Never heard of her. She sounds like an idiot.

dreamer

06-27-2007, 03:01 PM

She's a super popular neo-conservative op-ed writer. My dad likes her and has one of her books. But here's more proof of her stupidity (including a bash at vegetarianism/environmentalism really) though it's from back in 2001 (she's said more dumb stuff recently):
"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.'"---Hannity & Colmes, 6/20/01

washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0111.coulterwisdom.html

Gliondrach

06-27-2007, 03:11 PM

If she said those things she definitely is an idiot and should be ignored. She probably gets pleasure from the reactions of people. Sad person.

Oracl

06-27-2007, 11:25 PM

Loser. :loser: :rolleyes:

dreamer

07-03-2007, 01:49 PM

N.C. fisherman reels in a piranha
7 minutes ago

A fisherman looking to catch a catfish for dinner instead reeled in a fish that flashed its teeth and bit his knife. Jerry Melton, 46, was fishing in the Catawba River last week when he caught what state wildlife officials later identified as a piranha, a South American carnivorous fish that lives in freshwater.

"When I got it on the bank I didn't really know what it was; I hadn't seen anything like it before," Melton said.

When Melton opened the fish's mouth with a pocketknife, he said the fish bit down and left an impression on the blade.

Wildlife officials told Melton on Saturday that he caught a 1 pound, 4 ounce piranha that was probably dumped in the river. Melton was fishing in Mount Holly, a town northwest of Charlotte.

The catch highlights the growing problem of people keeping exotic animals and fish as pets and later dumping them into local waters, said Paul Barrington, an ichthyologist with the Fort Fisher Aquarium. Earlier this year, another fisherman caught a snakehead fish — also a nonnative fish — in Lake Wylie near Charlotte.

"Releasing nonnative fish in our native waters is highly irresponsible because it could have a very adverse affect on the fish in that ecosystem," Barrington said. "Piranha and the snakehead fish have no predators in our waters."

Jacob Rash, a North Carolina Wildlife Resources biologist, said he believes the piranha was the first caught in the Catawba River and possibly the first in the region.

Melton, who is keeping the piranha in his freezer until he can have it mounted, said the experience will keep him out of the river's water.

"I've been fishing there my whole life," he said. "Catching something like that is definitely going to make me think twice about what's in that water."

Bowwowmeow

07-16-2007, 02:07 PM

Japan Quake Causes Nuke Plant Leak, Fire

By KOJI SASAHARA (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
July 16, 2007 2:37 PM EDT

KASHIWAZAKI, Japan - A strong earthquake shook Japan's northwest coast Monday, setting off a fire at the world's most powerful nuclear power plant and causing a reactor to spill radioactive water into the sea - an accident not reported to the public for hours.

The 6.8-magnitude temblor killed at least 8 people and injured more than 900 as it toppled hundreds of wooden homes and tore 3-foot-wide fissures in the ground. Highways and bridges buckled, leaving officials struggling to get emergency supplies into the region.

Some 10,000 people fled to evacuation centers as aftershocks rattled the area. Tens of thousands of homes were left without water or power.

The quake triggered a fire in an electrical transformer and also caused a leak of radioactive water at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant, the world's largest in terms of electricity output.

The leak was not announced until the evening, many hours after the quake. That fed fresh concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, which supply 30 percent of the quake-prone country's electricity and have suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups.

About 315 gallons of water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Officials said there was no "significant change" in the seawater near the plant, which is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit," Oshima said of the leaked water.

Eliot Brenner, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, said the agency told Japan's government it was ready to provide assistance if needed but had not received any request for help.

Brenner said he didn't have details about the incident. But a U.S. nuclear industry official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the incident was a Japanese affair, said the transformer fire and water leak occurred in systems linked to different reactors.

In Kashiwazaki city, the quake reduced older buildings to piles of lumber. Eight people in their 70s and 80s - five women and three men - died, most of them crushed by collapsing buildings, the National Police Agency said.

Kyodo News agency reported more than 900 people were hurt, with injuries including broken bones, cuts and bruises. It said 780 buildings sustained damage, and more than 300 of them were destroyed.

"I got so dizzy that I could barely stand up," said Kazuaki Kitagami, a worker at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Kashiwazaki, the hardest-hit city. "The jolt came violently from just below the ground."

The area was plagued by aftershocks, but there were no immediate reports of additional damage or casualties. Near midnight, a 6.6-magnitude quake hit off the west coast, shaking wide areas of Japan, but it was unrelated to the Niigata quake to the north and there were no immediate reports of damage.

First word of trouble at the Kashiwazaki Kariwa power plant was a fire that broke out at an electrical transformer. All the reactors were either already shut down or automatically switched off by the quake. The blaze was reported quelled by early afternoon, and the power company announced there was no damage to the reactor and no release of radioactivity.

But in the evening, the company released a statement revealing the leak of radioactive water, saying it had taken all day to confirm details of the accident. But the delay raised suspicions among environmentalists, who oppose the government's plan to build more reactors.

"The leak itself doesn't sound significant as of yet, but the fact that it went unreported is a concern," said Michael Mariotte at the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, a Maryland-based networking center for environmental activists. "When a company begins by denying a problem, it makes you wonder if there's another shoe to drop."

The accident comes as the government is discussing improving the earthquake resistance of such plants, said Aileen Mioko Smith of the Japan-based environmentalist group Green Action.

The fire indicated that some facilities at nuclear power plants, such as electrical transformers, were built to lower quake-resistance levels than other equipment, like reactor cores, she said.

"That's the Achilles heel of nuclear power plants," said Mioko Smith, who pointed out that it took plant workers two hours to put out the transformer fire.

Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Akira Amari told the power company early Tuesday not to resume plant operations before making a thorough safety check, Kyodo reported.

The quake, which hit at 10:13 a.m., was centered off the coast of Niigata. The tremor made buildings sway in the capital 160 miles away and was also felt in northern and central Japan. Tsunami warnings were issued, but the resulting waves were too small to cause any damage.

As rescue crews dug through the rubble for survivors or more dead, focus shifted to getting food and water to evacuation centers. Many roads were impassable, though bullet train service to nearby Niigata resumed late Monday.

More than 60,000 homes in the quake zone were without water, 34,000 lost natural gas and 25,000 had no electricity as of late Monday afternoon, local official Takashi Takagi said.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whose ruling party is trailing in the polls heading into July 29 parliamentary elections, interrupted a campaign stop in southern Japan to go to the damaged area.

"Many people told me they want to return to their normal lives as quickly as possible," Abe told reporters in Kashiwazaki. "The government will make every effort to help with recovery."

Japan sits atop four tectonic plates and is one of the world's most earthquake-prone countries.

In October 2004, a magnitude-6.8 earthquake hit Niigata, killing 40 people and damaging more than 6,000 homes. It was the deadliest to hit Japan since 1995, when a magnitude-7.2 quake killed 6,433 people in the western city of Kobe.

The last major quake to hit Tokyo killed some 142,000 people in 1923, and experts say the capital has a 90 percent chance of suffering a major quake in the next 50 years.
---
Associated Press writers Kozo Mizoguchi, Carl Freire and Chisaki Watanabe in Tokyo and H. Josef Hebert in Washington contributed to this report.

That's like the one we had in 89 that knocked a piece out of the Bay Bridge.

Gliondrach

07-18-2007, 07:56 AM

This might be good news for vegans. But it might mean that land that should be used to grow food for local people is taken over to grow this plant. Still, it might raise some people out of poverty. If they own the land.

'Sweet herb' may be green gold for Paraguay

By Philippe Zygel AFP - Wednesday, July 18 06:01 amASUNCION (AFP) - Paraguay is hoping a small herb that is not trafficked, addictive, or even fattening, could prove to be the real deal that the food industry has been waiting for.

Stevia -- Latin name stevia rebaudiana bertoni -- has been used for centuries by the Guarani native people to sweeten their drinks, being 300 times sweeter than sugar with none of the calories.

Now the 24-inch high shrub has caught the eye of the granddaddy of soft drinks Coca Cola, and its poor, small Latin American home is hoping the cash tills will soon start ringing.

Coca Cola and Cargill, one of the top US food companies, recently unveiled plans to make a stevia-based sweetener under the trade name Rebiana.

And even though the herb is not yet authorized for consumption in the United States and has only a limited use in the European Union, it is already popular in Asia where China has planted thousands of hectares (acres) of rural land with the shrub.

"Coca-Cola's announcement has sparked a giant interest," said Nelson Gonzalez, head of the stevia chamber of commerce, a trade group of producers under the aegis of Paraguay's ministry of industry.

The market for stevia has grown in Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador in South America, as well as in China Japan and South Korea, but the US Food and Drug Administration has termed stevia an "unsafe food additive," while the European Union allows its sale only as a food supplement or in cosmetics.

"World demand is enormous," Gonzalez said. "But the sugar lobby wants to stop the importation of this natural, safe, revolutionary product."

Studies at the medical school at the University of Asuncion found stevia had a long list of beneficial properties, being an anti-oxidant, anti-inflammatory and an anti-bacterial agent useful in the battle against diabetes, high blood pressure and tooth decay.

But it is finding it hard to shake off fears over carcinogens which have dogged its sister, chemically manufactured sweeteners, saccharine and aspartame.

In 10 years, plantations of stevia, which is native to northwest Paraguay, have grown from 865 to 3,700 acres.

Officials hope to increase that 10-fold over the next five years through cloning, which is more effective than planting the seeds.

However, the largest producer of stevia is not Paraguay, but China, which has 50,000 acres under cultivation.

Paraguay's stevia pioneer, the company Emporio Guarani, grows the plant and extracts the sweetener in its plant in Luque, six miles outside Asuncion, and is not worried by China's influence on the market.

"The land of the stevia is right here," said manager Maria Teresa Aguilera, whose phone has not stopped ringing with calls from companies around the globe, following Coca-Cola's announcement.

"Thanks to our climate, we can raise three crops while China grows one," she said.

Besides its claims to safety, stevia has another advantage over aspartame: it is stable to 390 degrees F so it can be baked.

2pounds of stevia crystals, extracted from 26 pounds of leaf, is worth 40 to 100 dollars, depending on its purity.

Knowing that Paraguay, half of whose six million inhabitants live in poverty, may be sitting on a gold mine, authorities are now launching a bid to win international recognition as the stevia plant's country of origin.

://uknews.yahoo.com/afp/20070718/tsc-lifestyle-paraguay-food-gastronomy-c2ff8aa.htm

Add h tee tee pee to the beginning to make it clickable.

Bowwowmeow

07-19-2007, 03:21 PM

Vandals Attack Man's Hummer, Leave Note

From Associated Press
July 18, 2007 10:03 PM EDT

WASHINGTON - When Gareth Groves brought home his massive new Hummer, he knew his environmentally friendly neighbors disapproved. But he didn't expect what happened next. The sport utility vehicle was parked for five days on the street before two masked men smashed the windows, slashed the tires and scratched into the body: "FOR THE ENVIRON."

"The thought of somebody vandalizing it never crossed my mind," said Gareth Groves, who lives near American University in Northwest Washington. "I've kind of been in shock."

Police said they see small acts of vandalism in the area from time to time, but they have not seen anything so severe, or with such a clear political message, in recent years.

"This seems to be an isolated event," Cmdr. Andy Solberg said.

Investigators said they are searching for the vandals but don't have many leads. Witnesses said they saw two men smash up the seven-foot-tall SUV early Monday and then run off.

Now, as Groves contemplates what to do with the remains of his $38,000 Hummer, he has had to deal with a number of people who have driven by the crime scene and glared at him in smug satisfaction.

"I'd say one in five people who come by have that 'you-got-what-you-deserve' look," said his friend Andy Sexton.

Neighbor Lucille Liem, who owns a Prius hybrid, said that a common sentiment in the neighborhood is that large vehicles such as the Hummer are impractical and a strain on the Earth.

"The neighborhood in general is very concerned with the environment," said Liem, whose Prius gets about 48 miles a gallon compared with the Hummer's 14 miles a gallon. "It's more liberal leaning. It's ridiculous to be driving a Hummer."

Liem quickly added that she does not condone violence.

"I'd say one in five people who come by have that 'you-got-what-you-deserve' look,' said his friend Andy Sexton."
He did.

Now if only the people who design, market, and sell these pieces of shit would all be thrown in jail, that would be a good beginning. :mad: :biff:

my3labs

07-19-2007, 09:48 PM

Nike suspends release of Vick line
New shoe will be delayed because of dogfighting case

Posted: Thursday July 19, 2007 3:33PM; Updated: Thursday July 19, 2007 6:59PM
Print ThisE-mail ThisFree E-mail AlertsSave ThisMost PopularRSS Aggregators Facebook

ATLANTA (AP) -- Michael Vick's legal troubles prompted Nike on Thursday to suspend the release of its latest product line named after the Atlanta Falcons quarterback.

Nike has told retailers it will not release a fifth signature shoe, the Air Zoom Vick V, this summer. Nike spokesman Dean Stoyer said the four shoe products and three shirts that currently bear Vick's name will remain in stores.

Vick will be arraigned next week in a Richmond, Va., federal courtroom on charges of sponsoring a gruesome dogfighting operation.

Meanwhile, Falcons owner Arthur Blank issued a statement Thursday, saying the organization is "working diligently on exploring our options."

"This is an emotionally charged and complicated matter," Blank said. "There are a wide range of interests and legal issues that need to be carefully considered as we move ahead, including our need to respect the due process that Michael is entitled to. Also, this situation affects everyone -- our club, our players and associates, our sponsors, our fans and the Atlanta community among them -- so we must consider all of our customers in making any decisions.

"Given the differing perspectives and strong feelings around this issue, we probably won't make everyone happy, but we are committed to doing the right thing. As the owner of this club that's, ultimately, my responsibility."

Blank added that he was "saddened and distressed about this -- not for myself, for our fans and community who have been so loyal to us."

ESPN reported that Vick had called Blank on Wednesday. The network said its sources believed Vick to have been contrite, and he apologized for the distractions the case has created, and thanked Blank for his support.

Stoyer said Nike still has a standing contract with Vick, but declined to speculate on his future with the company.

A statement released by Nike Inc. said the company "is concerned by the serious and highly disturbing allegations made against Michael Vick, and we consider any cruelty to animals inhumane and abhorrent. We do believe that Michael Vick should be afforded the same due process as any citizen; therefore, we have not terminated our relationship."

Stoyer, who declined to discuss terms of Vick's contract, indicated the company has no commercials or documentaries planned with the three-time NFL Pro Bowl selection.

In previous years, Nike has run footage and interviews with Vick on its Web site, but none of the video promotions are currently posted.

"Some of that was shown on a limited run based on rights and usage," Stoyer said. "There's nothing new planned."

The Humane Society of the United States issued a statement calling upon Nike to pull its Vick clothing and shoes from retailers and from its web site. It also called upon NFL commissioner Roger Goodell to suspend Vick.

Vick signed his current contract with Nike in 2001, the same year Atlanta chose him as the NFL's No. 1 overall draft pick. After leading the Falcons to the 2002 and '04 playoffs, Vick last year became the first quarterback in league history to rush for 1,000 yards in a season.

"we consider any cruelty to animals inhumane and abhorrent.".
Are you kidding me? What the hell do they think their shoes are made of?

Fauxmage

07-19-2007, 10:04 PM

"we consider any cruelty to animals inhumane and abhorrent.".
Are you kidding me? What the hell do they think their shoes are made of?
Its not cruel when its done to cows and kangaroos, I guess. :rolleyes:
I've got some of my own "due process" I'd like to give this Vick guy. :boil: :mad:

my3labs

07-19-2007, 10:24 PM

Its not cruel when its done to cows and kangaroos, I guess. :rolleyes:
I've got some of my own "due process" I'd like to give this Vick guy. :boil: :mad:
I've got my own due process I'd like to give to all the necrotarians in the world.

Charmagne

07-20-2007, 05:07 PM

I hope this cruel atrocity costs Vick his whole career and all endorsements!! :shiftydvil:

Gliondrach

07-21-2007, 08:59 AM

I'm going to write to Nick and ask him to refuse to use Vick in any advertising again. I'll tell him that every time someone hear's Vick's name they will think of cruelty to animals. I'll also thank them for stopping the advertisements - although the did it for their own protection.

Charmagne

07-24-2007, 01:10 PM

Pretty good video on Mass Extinction - nothing we didn't know but seeing it really hits home! (I'm excited:yea: I embedded a video!!:hyper:)

XbOXUza9ZeE

Charmagne

07-24-2007, 01:52 PM

NFL Commissioner Tells Michael Vick to Stay Out of Training Camp Amid Dogfighting Charges

Tuesday, July 24, 2007
http://www.foxnews.com/images/service_ap_36.gif

http://www.foxnews.com/images/300478/1_61_vick_michael_07.jpg (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290515,00.html#) AP

Michael Vick

http://www.foxnews.com/images/300478/1_41_vick_michael_07.jpg (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290515,00.html#)
http://www.foxnews.com/images/300478/1_42_071807_vick.jpg (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,290515,00.html#)

NEW YORK — Michael Vick was ordered by commissioner Roger Goodell on Monday to stay away from the Atlanta Falcons' training camp until the league reviews the dogfighting charges against him.
"While it is for the criminal justice system to determine your guilt or innocence, it is my responsibility as commissioner of the National Football League to determine whether your conduct, even if not criminal, nonetheless violated league policies, including the Personal Conduct Policy," Goodell said in a letter to the quarterback.
The NFL said Vick would still get his preseason pay and Goodell told the Falcons to withhold any disciplinary action of their own until the league's review was completed.
Goodell told Vick the league would complete its review as quickly as possible and that he expected full cooperation.

The Falcons open camp on Thursday, the same day Vick is scheduled to be arraigned in Richmond, Va., on charges of sponsoring a dogfighting operation.
Vick, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2001 draft, last season became the first quarterback ever to rush for more than 1,000 yards.

After his indictment last week, the NFL's position was that it would monitor developments and allow the legal process to "determine the facts."

Since then, pressure has been mounting on the league and the Falcons, particularly from animal-rights groups.

PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — demonstrated at Falcons' headquarters in Flowery Branch, Ga., on Monday and did the same outside NFL offices in New York last week. At the same time, Goodell was meeting with officials from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. The league and the ASPCA are working on a program to educate players about the proper treatment of animals.

Activists also put pressure on companies that have endorsements deals with Vick to sever their ties. Nike said it would not release a fifth signature shoe, the Air Zoom Vick V, this summer. Nike spokesman Dean Stoyer said the four shoe products and three shirts that currently bear Vick's name will remain in stores.

Arrrggghhhh! Will one of the bright moderators we have please copy and paste this article? I can't do it for some stupid reason!!:crying::shakehead: (Hurry before BMW gets mad at me!!)

Thank you in advance!:colors:

I'm ssooooo hoping they don't let Mike Vick play at all! I know I've e-mailed the NFL several times myself!:shiftydvil:

Oracl

07-24-2007, 11:07 PM

Pretty good video on Mass Extinction - nothing we didn't know but seeing it really hits home!
Good video, gets the point across, I think. :agree:

I noticed that Paul Ehrlich looks to have lost so much weight since I last saw him while Richard Leakey doesn't look too healthy to me. :rubchin:

my3labs

07-29-2007, 06:14 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The number of tropical storms developing annually in the Atlantic Ocean more than doubled over the past century, with the increase taking place in two jumps, researchers say.

The increases coincided with rising sea surface temperature, largely the byproduct of human-induced climate warming, researchers Greg J. Holland and Peter J. Webster concluded.

Their findings were being published online Sunday by Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.

An official at the National Hurricane Center called the research "sloppy science" and said technological improvements in observing storms accounted for the increase.

From 1905 to 1930, the Atlantic-Gulf Coast area averaged six tropical cyclones per year, with four of those storms growing into become hurricanes.

The annual average jumped to 10 tropical storms and five hurricanes from 1931 to 1994. From 1995 to 2005, the average was 15 tropical storms and eight hurricanes annually.

Even in 2006, widely reported as a mild year, there were 10 tropical storms.

"We are currently in an upward swing in frequency of named storms and hurricanes that has not stabilized," said Holland, director of mesoscale and microscale meteorology at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado.

"I really do not know how much further, if any, that it will go, but my sense is that we shall see a stabilization in frequencies for a while, followed by potentially another upward swing if global warming continues unabated," Holland said.

It is normal for chaotic systems such as weather and climate to move in sharp steps rather than gradual trends, he said.

"What did surprise me when we first found it in 2005 was that the increases had developed for so long without us noticing it," he said in an interview via e-mail.

Holland said about half the U.S. population and "a large slice" of business are "directly vulnerable" to hurricanes.

"Our urban and industrial planning and building codes are based on past history," he said. If the future is different, "then we run the very real risk of these being found inadequate, as was so graphically displayed by (Hurricane) Katrina in New Orleans."

Hurricanes derive their energy from warm ocean water. North Atlantic surface temperature increased about 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit during the 100-year period studied. Other researchers have calculated that at least two-thirds of that warming can be attributed to human and industrial activities.

Some experts have sought to blame changes in the sun. But a recent study by British and Swiss experts concluded that "over the past 20 years, all the trends in the sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures."

As the sea surface temperatures warm, they cause changes in atmospheric wind fields and circulations, and these changes are responsible for the changes in storm frequency, Holland said.

Chris Landsea, science and operations officer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Hurricane Center, said the study is inconsistent in its use of data.

The work, he said, is "sloppy science that neglects the fact that better monitoring by satellites allows us to observe storms and hurricanes that were simply missed earlier. The doubling in the number of storms and hurricanes in 100 years that they found in their paper is just an artifact of technology, not climate change."

But Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane expert at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the study was significant. "It refutes recent suggestions that the upward trend in Atlantic hurricane activity is an artifact of changing measurement systems," said Emanuel, who was not part of the research team.

Improvements in observation began with aircraft flights into storms in 1944 and satellite observations in 1970. The transitions in hurricane activity that were noted in the paper occurred around 1930 and 1995.

"We are of the strong and considered opinion that data errors alone cannot explain the sharp, high-amplitude transitions between the climatic regimes, each with an increase of around 50 percent in cyclone and hurricane numbers," wrote Webster, of Georgia Institute of Technology, and Holland.

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

my3labs

07-29-2007, 06:42 PM

OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) - An oral surgeon who played a practical joke on his assistant, and got sued for it, ended up getting a last laugh.

Dr. Robert Woo, of Auburn, temporarily implanted fake boar tusks in his employee's mouth while she was under anesthesia and took photos that later made the rounds. The employee, Tina Alberts, felt humiliated and quit, later suing her boss.

When Woo's insurance company, Fireman's Fund, wouldn't deal with the lawsuit, Woo settled out of court with Alberts for $250,000 - and sued the insurers. A King County Superior Court jury agreed with him and awarded him $750,000, plus the out-of-court settlement he had paid.

The insurance company won the next round, with the state Court of Appeals saying the prank had nothing to do with Woo's practice of dentistry and that the carrier had no duty to represent him in the lawsuit. But the state Supreme Court on Thursday restored the award for Woo.

The court decision was 5-4, with Justice Mary Fairhurst writing the sprightly majority opinion and Justices Charles Johnson and James Johnson writing separate dissents.

Fairhurst's opinion starts with the phrase "This case arises from a practical joke" and describes how the Hong Kong-born dentist pulled off the prank.

The backstory, the court said, is that Alberts' family raises potbellied pigs and that she frequently talked about them at the office where she worked for five years. "Woo made several offensive comments about her pigs," the court said. Woo later said that his jest was part of "a friendly working environment" he fostered in the office.

One day when Woo was performing oral surgery on Alberts to replace two teeth with implants, he installed temporary bridges that he had shaped to look like boar tusks. While she was still under anesthesia, he took photos, some with her eyes propped open. Before she woke up, Woo removed the "tusks" and put in the proper replacement teeth.

Woo says he didn't personally show her the pictures, thinking them too ugly, but that staffers gave her copies at her birthday party. Stunned, she went home and never went back to work. Woo tried to apologize; Alberts didn't respond.

Soon, though, she sued, alleging "outrage, battery, invasion of privacy" and so forth. Fireman's told Woo his policy didn't cover such claims and declined to pay for his defense. The practical joke was intentional and not a normal business activity, the insurers said.

Woo hired a lawyer on his own and eventually paid Alberts $250,000 just before the case went to trial. Woo sued the insurers. King County Superior Court agreed with him that Fireman's had a duty to defend him. A jury awarded him $750,000, plus the $250,000 he was out, as well as lawyers' fees - well over $1 million all told.

The state appeals court threw that out and Woo appealed to the high court, and now has won the full amount, plus his appellate legal bills.

Fairhurst said the practical joke was an integral, if odd, part of the act of performing the woman's dental surgery and "conceivably" should trigger the professional liability coverage of his policy.

Dissenting justices said the appeals court got it right and that the prank wasn't a dental procedure at all.

"Today's majority decision rewards Dr. Woo's obnoxious behavior and allows him to profit handsomely ...", wrote Justice James Johnson.

Woo was delighted with the ruling, said his lawyer, Richard Kilpatrick, who described Woo as a kindhearted and fun-loving man who was chagrined that an office prank involving him and three other women staffers turned out so badly.

"He hopes more insurers will think twice before running for the hills and not defending their clients. This showed how cavalier they can be," he said.

Attorneys for the insurance company did not immediately return calls for comment.

---

The case is Woo v. Fireman's Fund, No. 77684-9.

Gliondrach

07-30-2007, 04:51 AM

The pictures must have been very funny but someone who renders other people unconscious should show them respect and not take advantage of them. This dentist's patitients will probably be very wary of letting him knock them out in future.

I wonder why he was awarded so much money? Was it because he was emotionally damaged by havding his insurance claim rejected?

Charmagne

07-30-2007, 12:40 PM

.

"Today's majority decision rewards Dr. Woo's obnoxious behavior and allows him to profit handsomely ...", wrote Justice James Johnson.

I agree - this was not a harmless practical joke - this patient - even though it was an employee - was violated - in my opinion akin to rape which happens way too often by the medical profession after rendering patients unconscious.

I cannot see how this decision was reached at all.

dreamer

07-31-2007, 10:55 AM

Just another example of how conservative and pro-business the U.S. Supreme Court has become...
Equal work, unequal pay
By Lilly Ledbetter
Tue Jul 31, 4:00 AM ET

Imagine you've worked for a company for 20 years. You're a good performer. But unbeknownst to you, the company puts workers over 50 on a lower salary track. At 60, you learn that for the past 10 years, you have been earning less – tens of thousands of dollars less – than colleagues doing exactly the same work.

Think you have grounds for a suit? Think again.

The Supreme Court on May 29 ruled 5-4 in Ledbetter (that's me) v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. that workers don't have the right to sue for pay discrimination if they don't file a claim within 180 days after the decision is made to pay them less.

Now Congress has the opportunity to redress this injustice. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act will right this wrong. And it will have a profound impact on the working lives, and livelihoods, of Americans across the country.

This effort to bolster workers' right began in 1998 when I filed a sex discrimination suit with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. I did so because I discovered that the Goodyear plant in Gadsen, Ala., had been paying me significantly less than it paid my male counterparts.

My salary started out comparable to the male supervisors, but over the years, unbeknownst to me, my raises were always smaller. Eventually, I learned I was earning $3,727 a month while the lowest paid of my male colleagues got $4,286 – for doing the same job.

An Alabama jury awarded me more than $3 million after finding that Goodyear had violated my rights under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But a federal trial judge cut that award to $360,000, then an appellate court reversed the jury's decision and so I didn't even get the $360,000.

Then, in the strangest cut of all, the Supreme Court narrowly interpreted Title VII, completely out of line with legal precedent and sided with Goodyear, arguing that I had filed the complaint too late since Title VII requires employees to file within 180 days of "the alleged unlawful employment practice."

The majority ruling apparently ignored the fact that Goodyear was still underpaying me when I filed the suit. Instead, calculating the time based on the date I received the first discriminatory paycheck, years in the past, it ruled that I had missed the deadline for redress.

In her dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the Supreme Court's only woman, took the unusual step of reading her opinion aloud. She noted that the original jury heard testimony that a supervisor who evaluated me in 1997 – an evaluation that led to denying me a pay raise – was "openly biased against women." She wrote: "Toward the end of her career ... the plant manager told Ledbetter that the "plant did not need women, that [women] didn't help it, [and] caused problems."

Substitute any category of work-er for "women" – seniors, Latinos, gays, disabled, Muslims, etc. – and you can see the impact that results from the court gutting this key civil rights protection.

While workers' and civil rights groups are lauding the Ledbetter Act, the bill has met opposition from the pro-business lobby. Neal Mellon from the US Chamber of Commerce said that many business owners didn't want to open themselves up to the liability of employees filing suits "decades later." My story shows that filing these suits decades after the initial discriminatory paycheck is often unavoidable. Each paycheck I received was an act of discrimination, regardless of the amount of time that passed.

How many workers know what their colleagues make? Do you? I certainly didn't until years after the fact. Indeed, one-third of private sector employers bar employees from discussing their wages with co-workers.

Unless Congress rights this wrong, employers can legally get away with discrimination so long as they can make it to day 181.

• Lilly Ledbetter, a volunteer and mother of two, has been married for 51 years.

dreamer

08-01-2007, 08:32 AM

Why people have sex: It feels good
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Wed Aug 1, 7:36 AM ET

After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations. It's more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex — they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and "it feels good," according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: "I was attracted to the person."

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to study the overlooked why behind sex while others were spending their time on the how.

"It's refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love," said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study's co-author. "That's not what I came up with in my findings."

Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, "the more we look, the more we find similarity," said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn't part of Meston's study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.

Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women — ranging in age from 17 to 52 — to come up with a list of 237 distinct reasons people have sex. They ranged from "It's fun" which men ranked fourth and women ranked eighth to "I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease" which ranked on the bottom by women.

Once they came up with that long list, Meston and Buss asked 1,549 college students taking psychology classes to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences.

"None of the gender differences are all that great," Meston said. "Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex were there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women. Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner."

But this is among college students, when Meston conceded "hormones run rampant." She predicted huge differences when older groups of people are studied.

Since her study came out Tuesday, people are coming up with new reasons to have sex.

"Originally, I thought that we exhaustively compiled the list, but now I found that there should be some added," Meston said.

___

On the Net:

University of Texas study "Why Humans Have Sex": tinyurl.com/ypzwvr

Cindy Meston's Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory: mestonlab.com/

dreamer

08-03-2007, 07:46 AM

Does this surprise anyone?

Bad bosses get promoted, not punished
By Rachel Breitman
Fri Aug 3, 12:36 AM ET

How do people get ahead in the workplace? One way seems to be by making their subordinates miserable, according to a study released on Friday.

In the study to be presented at a conference on management this weekend, almost two-thirds of the 240 participants in an online survey said the local workplace tyrant was either never censured or was promoted for domineering ways.

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -- remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.

Despite their success in the office, spiteful supervisors can cause serious malaise for their subordinates, the study suggested, citing nightmares, insomnia, depression and exhaustion as symptoms of serving a brutal boss.

The authors advocated immediate intervention by industry chiefs to stop fledgling office authoritarians from rising up the ranks.

"As with any sort of cancer, the best alternative to prevention is early detection," they wrote.

They faulted senior managers for not recognizing the signs of workplace strife wrought by bad bosses. "The leaders above them who did nothing, who rewarded and promoted bad leaders ... represent an additional problem."

The study will be presented at the annual meeting of the Academy of Management, a research and teaching organization with nearly 17,000 members, from Sunday to Wednesday in Philadelphia.

Gliondrach

08-03-2007, 12:35 PM

Probably, the bosses above these bullies are happy that they force the workers to work hard. But working hard is not always working efficiently. And it leads to absenteeism and strife in the workplace. With a bit more understanding and compassion, mixed in with a happy atmosphere, the workers will work more efficiently and take less time off. I'm sure you've all had jobs that were quite pleasant - that you didn't dread going to and actually liked going to. Contrast those with jobs you've hated. I'll bet you could have been more productive when you were happy.

For more information, see my book 'How To Be The Kind of Manager Who Manages To Be Kind'.

thevegantwins

08-03-2007, 04:24 PM

A fine depiction of what should be done to Vick. :lol:

Bowwowmeow

08-03-2007, 06:07 PM

Yes, except it should be his fellow criminals who should all be thrown into a pit and forced to tear each other apart.

That's a great picture though! Where did you find it?

thevegantwins

08-03-2007, 06:20 PM

In my batch of daily alerts and such from NJARA.

1vegan

08-04-2007, 12:50 AM

"The fact that 64.2 percent of the respondents indicated that either nothing at all or something positive happened to the bad leader is rather remarkable -- remarkably disturbing," wrote the study's authors, Anthony Don Erickson, Ben Shaw and Zha Agabe of Bond University in Australia.

I think there are two main reasons that it stays that way:

1- top management doesn't care as long as their goals are met.

2- "top" management only get it's information from the bad manager who will always see his own actions in a good way. What is acctually going on, never reaches the higher management.

I'm pretty sure my former manager clearly lied about stuff, to cover up his own mistakes in handling things :agree::agree:

Charmagne

08-14-2007, 09:30 PM

Bill Maher was on Larry King's show tonight. I like him. He went on and on about how stupid Bush and Cheney were :thumbsup: Also, when asked if the American people had made too much of the Mike Vick dog fighting thing he said "you're asking the wrong person - I'm an animal lover - I find it reprehensible. There are no bad dogs - only bad treatment that leads to agressive dogs."

They also mentioned that Vick is going to try to plea bargain. This makes me ill. I hope he doesn't get away with community service and a large fine (he can easily afford). This won't stop him - it will just make him go further underground.:hbang:

Bowwowmeow

08-22-2007, 03:20 PM

Experts Tie Pigeon Dung, Bridge Collapse

By MARTIGA LOHN (Associated Press Writer)
From Associated Press
August 22, 2007 4:35 PM EDT

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Pounded and strained by heavy traffic and weakened by missing bolts and cracking steel, the failed interstate bridge over the Mississippi River also faced a less obvious enemy: pigeons.

Inspectors began documenting the buildup of pigeon dung on the span near downtown Minneapolis two decades ago. Experts say the corrosive guano deposited all over the Interstate 35W span's framework helped the steel beams rust faster.

Although investigators have yet to identify the cause of the bridge's Aug. 1 collapse, which killed at least 13 people and injured about 100, the pigeon problem is one of many factors that dogged the structure.

"There is a coating of pigeon dung on steel with nest and heavy buildup on the inside hollow box sections," inspectors wrote in a 1987-1989 report.

In 1996, screens were installed over openings in the bridge's beams to keep pigeons from nesting there, but that didn't prevent the building of droppings elsewhere.

Pigeon droppings contain ammonia and acids, said chemist Neal Langerman, an officer with the health and safety division of the American Chemical Society. If the dung isn't washed away, it dries out and turns into a concentrated salt. When water gets in and combines with the salt and ammonia, it creates small electrochemical reactions that rust the steel underneath.

"Every time you get a little bit of moisture there, you wind up having a little bit of electrochemistry occurring and you wind up with corrosion," said Langerman. "Over a long term, it might in fact cause structural weaknesses."

Langerman emphasized that he wasn't saying pigeon dung factored into the collapse of the 40-year-old bridge. "Let's let the highway transportation and safety people do their job," he said.

The problem is familiar to bridge inspectors everywhere.
The Colorado Department of Transportation spent so much time cleaning pigeon manure off bridges that it is embarking on a two-year research project looking for ways to keep pigeons away from its spans.

"It can be damaging to our structures because it's slightly acidic and it has other compounds in it that can dissolve especially things like concrete," said Patricia Martinek, the agency's environmental research manager.
Pigeon guano isn't just a danger to the bridges.

In the Denver area, the Colorado DOT pays outside environmental specialists to clean bridges wearing full biohazard suits with respirators because of heightened fears about bird flu and other diseases, said Rob Haines, who supervises maintenance there.

Keeping pigeons off bridges usually requires a multi-pronged strategy that can include netting to block holes and surfaces, spikes to keep them from landing, and sometimes poisoning, shooting or trapping the birds, said John Hart, a Grand Rapids, Minn.-based wildlife biologist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The problem is that pigeons are naturally drawn to bridges and tall buildings since they're descended from cliff-dwellers, said Karen Purcell, who heads Project PigeonWatch at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Bridges offer shelter from predators and flat surfaces for nesting and roosting.

"It's a nice fit for them," Purcell said.

Meanwhile, the National Transportation Safety Board issued an update on its findings in the collapse Wednesday, saying investigators are looking at whether chemicals used in an automated de-icing system had any corrosive properties.

The state Transportation Department wasn't concerned about the system; in fact, the agency is planning to install a similar system on the replacement bridge, said Khani Sahebjam, a state transportation engineer.

The de-icing elements are inside the concrete deck, Sahebjam said, so he wouldn't expect them to pose a structural problem.

The automated system was triggered by weather conditions and kept the state from having to send crews to spread de-icing chemicals, Sahebjam said.

What a load of crap! People have enough excuses already to hate pigeons. Why don't they do something for their community, and hire some unemployed people to actually keep the bridge clean? The GG Bridge is 70 years old, and they constantly work on it. They start at one end, re-painting it, and by the time they are finished, its time to start right over again, on account of the salt spray from both the ocean and the bay. It provides work for actual human beings instead of automated systems, and it keeps the bridge safe too.

Gliondrach

08-22-2007, 03:31 PM

Pigeons get the blame for many things.

dreamer

08-22-2007, 04:57 PM

I just mentioned this "news" to my students in one class and they said the same thing, BWM, "it's crap!"

dreamer

08-23-2007, 11:09 AM

Stephon Marbury defends Michael Vick, calls dogfighting a sport

August 22, 2007

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York Knicks guard Stephon Marbury defended Michael Vick, calling dogfighting a sport and comparing it to hunting.

Marbury spoke Monday about the federal dogfighting conspiracy charges against Vick while promoting his basketball shoe in Albany, N.Y.

"I think it's tough," Marbury said, according to Albany TV station Capital News 9. "I think, you know, we don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dogfighting is a sport. It's just behind closed doors."

On Monday, Vick said through a lawyer that he will plead guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and conspiracy to sponsor a dog in an animal fighting venture. He also faces possible prosecution in Virginia.

"I think it's tough that we build Michael Vick up and then we break him down," Marbury said. "I think he's one of the superb athletes, and he's a good human being. I just think that he fell into a bad situation."

1vegan

08-23-2007, 11:17 AM

What a load of crap! People have enough excuses already to hate pigeons.

:D anything to shift the blame from government officials to some where else imho

A day after the bridge collapsed, it was said on european news that it had been advised years before, to replace the bridge.

But for liability they are looking into everything to shift the blame.
The bridge had been labeled not so structurally safe....

I think this is more true ; "war money robbing us at home"

://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/326401_robert04xxx.html

just put http in front of that ;)

Bowwowmeow

08-23-2007, 11:21 AM

"I think it's tough," Marbury said, according to Albany TV station Capital News 9. "I think, you know, we don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dogfighting is a sport. It's just behind closed doors."
Unfortunately he has a point, and I've also read that some vegans think that other vegans should ignore this whole issue, but my view is that we must maintain outrage at this, and get people on the bandwagon of saying, "yes, there's not much difference between this and hunting, so let's make hunting illegal too." How else are we going to get people to think about these comparative issues and change their minds about them?

Just because it is hypocritical to be angry about the treatment of dogs as opposed to the treatment of deer, or cows, is no reason to condone what is done to dogs for the purposes of entertainment. Its a wake-up call for people to start wondering why they only care about dogs, and not all animals. These ignorant individuals may not see any difference between what they are doing to the dogs, and what others do to deer, bears, ducks, etc., but what they fail to understand is that it is all wrong. Its just that our society is too slow in recognizing this, and we only seem to be able to take baby steps in criminalizing animal abuse and exploitation. This guy wants to compare what they do to dogs to what people do to other animals to justify what he wants to do to dogs, and make it ok. I want to compare the same thing, and say none of it is ok.

thevegantwins

08-23-2007, 11:31 AM

The local NPR station around here said this morning that they thought it was horrible how much attention the Vick case was getting since there should be compassion for humans before compassion for non-humans. :dizzy: I think compassion needs to be taught for all living creatures and this planet will never achieve compassion for humans until people realize that we all share this planet, humans and non-humans.

dreamer

08-23-2007, 12:02 PM

TVT, I remember basically the same thing happening in another reported case on the news. I can't recall the whole setting, but in a case of road rage, a man picked up a Bichon Frise out of a woman's car and threw it out into traffic, leading to the dog's death. (He had done something similarly cruel to another animal a few years b4 as well.) Not only on news shows, but also when I mentioned it in some of my classes, the response was often, "well, people get less time for child abuse or murder." First off, that's blatantly NOT true. But secondly, shouldn't we have more strict laws about child abuse and murder if that were the case rather than being less strict on animal abuse?

As far as the news story I posted, I'd be perfectly OK with hunting being outlawed along with dogfighting, but I still don't see the situations as exactly the same. I do agree with a lot of what you said, BWM, but how many hunters (as they claim Vick did) hang or electrocute their "game" animals? I agree that they're in many ways "comparable," but not exactly the same. I definitely agree that non-"pet" species in this country are treated as "lesser" and should not be. I also don't think vegans should ignore this issue:no:

It makes me think of a conversation I had with my mom about a week ago. She started bragging about this dairy farmer she saw on the news who had started having a "cool down" tent on his farm--where the cows could go to get sprayed with cool water. She said that since the heat and drought he'd lost a few cows to heat stroke and they weren't giving as much milk. Then she asked me, "isn't that nice?" I pointed out that it is nice for the cows, but the farmer made it obvious that he was doing it not for the cows' benefit, but for his bottom line (more milk and more milking cows--as they didn't die from the heat). She said, "you just can't admit when any animal farmer does something nice for their animals." I personally didn't find this nice for the sake of the animals, but just for greed, but maybe I'm just cynical.

Bowwowmeow

08-23-2007, 12:42 PM

... it was horrible how much attention the Vick case was getting since there should be compassion for humans before compassion for non-humans...
I tend to feel compassion for victims before compassion for perpetrators, and its basically an unexamined, automatic response for me. When I do give it thought, I recognize that since 99% of the human population are not vegan, they are therefore perpetrators of cruelty and abuse, and don't deserve compassion. I believe in the inherent value of all living beings, but someone's actions are a big part of whether they deserve to continue being respected, and what makes humans different from other animals is that animals are not capable of actions that negate their "animality" in the way that humans are capable of actions that negate their "humanity".

Gliondrach

08-23-2007, 12:52 PM

That Marbury berk said: 'I think it's tough,' according to Albany TV station Capital News 9. 'I think, you know, we don't say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dogfighting is a sport. It's just behind closed doors.'

That is like someone of 200 years ago saying that it is all right to beat your wife because it is legal to do so to black slaves. No one - well, not many white people - thought it was wrong to beat slaves. Yet most of them, especially women, would have been somewhat opposed to the beating of wives.

Gliondrach

08-23-2007, 01:02 PM

:D anything to shift the blame from government officials to some where else imho

A day after the bridge collapsed, it was said on european news that it had been advised years before, to replace the bridge.

But for liability they are looking into everything to shift the blame.
The bridge had been labeled not so structurally safe....

I think this is more true ; "war money robbing us at home"

://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/326401_robert04xxx.html

just put http in front of that ;)

There could be something in that. As they say on that site:

'This structural failure put a lens on the perilous condition of bridges across the country. More than 70,000 bridges across America are rated structurally deficient like the span that went down in Minnesota, according to The Associated Press, and engineers estimate that fixing these bridges will take at least a generation and cost more than $188 billion.

'Compare that figure with the roughly $456 billion U.S. price tag for the Iraq war.

'About $378 billion has already been spent or allocated by Congress, and Congress will debate additional war spending -- about $78 billion -- according to The National Priorities Project.'

dreamer

08-30-2007, 11:52 AM

Wasps give Japanese rice crackers a special sting
Thu Aug 30, 12:00 AM ET

A Japanese fan club for wasps has added the insects to rice crackers, saying the result adds a waspish scent to the traditional fare.

The jibachi senbei, or digger wasp rice crackers, are made in Omachi town 200 km (120 miles) northwest of Tokyo and have five or six black digger wasps each, clearly visible to the naked eye.

"Young people see the bugs and refuse to eat the senbei," said Torao Kayatsu, the president of the Omachi digger wasp lovers club, who has been handing out sample crackers around town. "But seniors, they love them. We even have an order from a nursing home."

Along with the waspish scent, Kayatsu said the crackers were slightly more oily than the soy-sauce flavoured traditional ones.

"It's hard to explain," he said. "You really just have to taste it yourself."

A bag of 20 crackers costs 370 yen (1.60 pounds), but output may be limited as the wasps are caught in the wild for optimum flavour.

Copyright © 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

I don't get how someone can say they're a fan club for wasps and then encourage people to eat the wasps. I'm sure Brad Pitt wouldn't appreciate his fan club wanting to have people eat him:rolleyes:

Bowwowmeow

08-30-2007, 11:55 AM

Its encouraging though to see the younger generations in Japan refusing this stuff. They won't eat dead whales, either. Its a small ray of hope, but better than nothing.

KRITER

09-06-2007, 08:23 AM

I reckon yall heard Whoopie was saying Vick was just doing wuts part of his Southern Culture.

dreamer

09-06-2007, 11:15 AM

I saw parts of what she said (as I saw it on a news show that only showed excerpts) and she did seem to be excusing his behavior. But then the next day (which I did watch) she said that she was not excusing his behavior, but trying to understand why he did it. She further went on to say that she was against dog fighting and that he shouldn't have been involved in it. So she must've gotten a lot of angry emails/phone calls, hunh;)

dreamer

09-06-2007, 11:18 AM

American girls' suicide rates spike
By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press Writer
33 minutes ago

The suicide rate among preteen and teenage girls rose to its highest level in 15 years, and hanging surpassed guns as the preferred method, federal health officials reported Thursday.

The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests a surprising reversal in recent trends.

The biggest jump — about 76 percent — was in the suicide rate for girls ages 10-14 from 2003 to 2004. There were 94 suicides in that age group in 2004, compared to 56 in 2003. That's a rate of fewer than one per 100,000 population.

Suicide rates among all American young people, ages 10 to 24, fell 28 percent from 1990-2003. But in 2004 it shot back up by 8 percent, driven largely by increases among females aged 10-19 and males aged 15-19.

"In surveillance speak, this is a dramatic and huge increase," said Dr. Ileana Arias, director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Overall, suicide was the third leading cause of death among young Americans in 2004, accounting for 4,599 deaths. It is surpassed by only car crashes and homicide, Arias said.

The study also documented a change in suicide method. In 1990, guns accounted for more than half of all suicides among young females. By 2004, though, death by hanging and suffocation became the most common suicide method. It accounted for about 71 percent of all suicides in girls aged 10-14, 49 percent among those aged 15-19 and 34 percent between 20-24.

"While we can't say (hanging) is a trend yet, we are confident that's an unusually high number in 2004," said Dr. Keri Lubell, a CDC behavioral scientist who was one of the lead authors of study.

The study did not analyze why hanging has become the most common suicide method, but scientists speculated it could be the most accessible method.

"It is possible that hanging and suffocation is more easily available than other methods, especially for these other groups," Arias said.

The CDC is advising health officials to consider focusing suicide-prevention programs on girls ages 10-19 and boys between 15-19 to reverse the trends. It also said the suicide methods suggest that prevention measures focused solely on restricting access to pills, weapons or other lethal means may have more limited success.

Arias said the declining use of antidepressants could be a factor in the spike. But she noted it's "not the only factor" that health officials will be studying to explain the jump. Four years ago, federal regulators began warning that antidepressants seemed to raise the risk of suicidal behavior, and prominent warnings were added to packaging.

A drop in sales of the drugs corresponds with the rise in suicides.

"Suicide is a multidimensional and complex problem," Arias said. "As much as we'd like to attribute suicide to a single source so we can fix it, unfortunately we can't do that."

The study mentioned other factors that tend to increase the risk of suicide, including history of mental illness, alcohol and drug use, family dysfunction and relationship problems.

___

On the Net:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/dvp/suicide

(This version CORRECTS Corrects headline to say overall rate is up; adds 8 percent to story)

Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

One thing I wonder about this story is how many of these girls did not commit suicide, but rather were playing the "choking game" or the like. My understanding is there has been quite a subculture of people into choking/suffocation as a "drug"--they enjoy the feeling they get--which might be misidentified as suicide if no one realizes what's going on. [Most suicides don't leave notes, which is one of the only ways to be positive.]