In Britain, a new prime minister uses new words. Gordon Brown says "all methods of diplomacy, all means of intelligence, all tools of law and policing" should be employed against terrorists. He speaks of using the "arsenal of democracy" to "defeat their ideas," of backing moderate voices "that emphasize shared values." In 2008, Americans can begin to hope for the same.
The [CDC] study showed marked decreases in sexual behavior among both young men and young women. Teenage boys who received sex education were 71 percent less likely to become sexually active before age 15, and teenage girls were 59 percent less likely to become sexually active.Knowledge is power.
Taubes points out that the current medical orthodoxy — that consuming fat makes you fat and exercise makes you thin — has no basis in research. In fact, all the available research points in quite another, and more traditional, direction.Check out the podcast from the CBC show Quirks and Quarks.
Well, some of it ends up in the air as PM10 (particulate matter that is 10 microns in diameter) which we might breath in. Some of it ends up as that dark grime on your rims (although some of that is brake pad dust) and windshield. The rest waits by the side of the road for the next rain storm to wash it away. Once in the storm drain the little rubber bits probably make their way to the ocean where they happily float around.
Unfortunately for the little critters in the ocean these little bits look a lot like food. In fact in some areas of the oceans man-made particles outnumber plankton and other microscopic critters by an order of magnitude! When these bits make their way into an animals belly they don't break down and can't be digested. This means that they accumulate, leading to eventual starvation. If a larger fish eats it first the rubber may than accumulate in its belly until it is eaten by a seabird or mammal, and so on...
"The suit against Target is the latest in a series of copycat lawsuits inspired by the false claims of activist groups engaged in a smear campaign against large-scale organic producers," Aurora spokeswoman Sonja Tuitele said in an emailed statement. (emphasis mine)The quote above highlights the issue. What if food labeled organic isn't what consumers think it is?
The small dairy farms counter that when consumers buy milk labeled "organic," they picture it coming from small herds of cows that graze lazily on bucolic pastures.The USDA has defined organic, and the size of the establishment isn't part of the definition. But when a producer must "emphasize the use of renewable resources and the conservation of soil and water to enhance environmental quality for future generations," it's a little hard to think of that being large-scale.
Harsh interrogation definitely yields names and other information, Johnson agreed. "It works," he said.In other words, torture gets people to spill the beans. Whatever beans will get their torturer to stop... For an administration of yes men, I guess that's why torture works out well.
But the information confessed is utterly unreliable, he said, and it can lead investigators in the wrong direction, endangering U.S. military forces and threatening national security.
In a panic to stop tough interrogation, many will spit out any name that comes to mind — innocent neighbors, cousins and friends — Johnson said.
At 46 uses, the ceramic mug becomes the environmentally responsible choice [over styrofoam]. And after 369 uses, the stainless steel mug also become a better choice than styrofoam.That's right, it takes a year for that daily cup of joe in a stainless steel mug to even out with the disposable styrofoam, thanks to high resource and production costs. And then there's the paper cup, seemingly more environmentally benign:
24 paper cups are equivalent in material intensity to a stainless steel mugWow. 15 times more resource-intense than styrofoam. But as with most environmental choices, it's not even that black-and-white.
Additional dimensions include the recyclability of the materials, their toxicity, the biodiversity of the raw material extraction site, and the working conditions along the supply chain.And one other thing: you save a lot less environment if you have many reusable mugs. After all, each stainless steel mug you own takes a year to beat a 1-a-day habit of styrofoam.
But, in keeping with the times, it might be better to relabel it as free-range, grass-fed, organic, locally produced, locally harvested, sustainable, native, low-stress, low-impact, humanely slaughtered meat.There's something to it.
There will be no police officers infiltrating protest organizations, Bostrom promised. Police will be in uniform, not war-like tactical gear, he said. There will be no contract cops, similar to the Blackwater security forces. St. Paul police, not the Secret Service, will be in charge of policing outside the convention site at Xcel Energy Center.It's a great start. Let's hope the yahoos don't mess up this excellent attempt at providing a free speech zone inside and outside the convention center.
Dear XXXXDoes it really take that long to hire someone in a state agency? Ugh.
Thank you for applying for the XXXXX Department of...Economic Development Planner Senior State position, 07DEED000233.
We have decided to select a candidate from within the Department.
Electronics are being discarded almost as fast as they’re being made. And the innovators are largely to blame for that. While the effective lifespan of a new computer should be, in a sane world, a decade or more, realistically you’ve got a dinosaur if it’s been sitting on your desk longer than a couple of years. And our tax laws encourage this.Read more on the role of technology and "planned obsolescence" in economic growth.Why?
Because the innovators know that they need you coming back every few years to keep those coffers overflowing. If you’re visiting the Apple Store only once in a decade, then there might not be an Apple Store at all.
The first time I saw Star Wars, I wanted to be a Jedi (I was six, and hadn’t yet tuned into the princess-impressing coolness that was Han Solo.) Sure, I wasn’t a Skywalker and The Force wasn’t naturally strong with me, but a short hyperspace jaunt to Alderaan and some personal time with a Jedi master and I could take my first steps into a larger world...
Check out the rest here
over 30 million pounds of ground beef in 18 separate recalls have been necessary this year aloneMany of the leading public officials are calling for irradiation of the nation's food supply (bombardment with gamma rays) to kill harmful bacteria:
We should require that our entire food supply be subjected to irradiation before consuming it. Once again, we see a solution posed that is designed to treat the effect while ignoring the cause. It is somewhat akin to the cigarette smoker who would rather wait to develop cancer and then undergo treatment for it rather than just quit smoking.See, the reason we have bacteria, on the shit, on the meat, is because of how we make meat:
Cattle are ruminants, and they have evolved to eat grasses and forbs. Feeding grain to cattle makes their digestive tracts abnormally acidic. Over time, the E. coli in their systems become acclimated to this environment, thereby rendering it more resistant to the acid shock of our digestive juices. However, few E. coli from grass-fed cattle will survive because they have not become acid-resistant. Consequently, when cattle are fed a diet of grass, our natural defenses are still capable of protecting us.How much difference does the process make?
A study by Swedish researchers in 2001 found that 100 percent of calves raised in pens had some level of E. coli contamination, while those raised in pasture showed no signs of contamination at all.Feedlot cattle stand around in dirt and fecal material. Grass-fed cattle stand on grass.
When he went on about the welfare queen driving her Cadillac, and kept repeating the story years after it had been debunked, some people thought he was engaging in race-baiting. But it was all just an innocent mistake.
When, in 1976, he talked about working people angry about the “strapping young buck” using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks at the grocery store, he didn’t mean to play into racial hostility. True, as The New York Times reported,
The ex-Governor has used the grocery-line illustration before, but in states like New Hampshire where there is scant black population, he has never used the expression “young buck,” which, to whites in the South, generally denotes a large black man.
But the appearance that Reagan was playing to Southern prejudice was just an innocent mistake.
Similarly, when Reagan declared in 1980 that the Voting Rights Act had been “humiliating to the South,” he didn’t mean to signal sympathy with segregationists. It was all an innocent mistake.
In 1982, when Reagan intervened on the side of Bob Jones University, which was on the verge of losing its tax-exempt status because of its ban on interracial dating, he had no idea that the issue was so racially charged. It was all an innocent mistake.
And the next year, when Reagan fired three members of the Civil Rights Commission, it wasn’t intended as a gesture of support to Southern whites. It was all an innocent mistake.
Poor Reagan. He just kept on making those innocent mistakes, again and again and again.
The single biggest source of medical research funding, not just in the United States but in the entire world, is the National Institutes of Health (NIH): Last year, it spent more than $28 billion on research, accounting for about one-third of the total dollars spent on medical research and development in this country (and half the money spent at universities)...There's your private sector health care innovation - it's in the marketing department.As books like Marcia Angell's The Truth About the Drug Companies and Merrill Goozner's The $800 Million Pill point out, a lot of the alleged innovation we get from private industry just isn't all that innovative. Rather than concentrating on developing true blockbusters, for the last decade or so the pharmaceutical industry has poured the lion's share of its efforts into a parade of "me-too" drugs--close replicas of existing treatments that offer little in the way of new therapeutic advantages but generate enormous profits because they are patented and because companies have become exceedingly good at promoting their sales directly to consumers. (emphasis mine)
The most well-known example of this is Nexium, which AstraZeneca introduced several years ago as the successor to Prilosec...AstraZeneca promoted Nexium heavily through advertising--you may remember the ads for the new "purple pill"--and, as a result, millions of patients went to their doctors asking for it. Trouble was, the evidence suggested that Nexium's results were not much better than Prilosec's--if, indeed, they were better at all. And, since Prilosec was going off patent, competition from generic-brand copies was about to make it a much cheaper alternative. (The fact that Prilosec's price was about to plummet, needless to say, is precisely why AstraZeneca was so eager to roll out a new, patented drug for which it could charge a great deal more money.)
If a presidential candidate were to declare that the earth is flat, you would be sure to see a news analysis under the headline ‘’Shape of the Planet: Both Sides Have a Point.'’This tendency is particularly frustrating during national election campaigns, when I'd like to select candidates based on their honesty and policy.
This story has been repeated endlessly, both in the United States and in other countries. Someone -- these are all real -- notices a funny smell, or some white powder, or two people passing an envelope, or a dark-skinned man leaving boxes at the curb, or a cell phone in an airplane seat. The police cordon off the area, make arrests and/or evacuate airplanes, and in the end the cause of the alarm is revealed as a pot of Thai chili sauce, or flour, or a utility bill, or an English professor recycling or a cell phone in an airplane seat.Read the story about the English professor - it's an embarrassment.
The stakes could not be higher, and on these matters there could be no nuance or hesitation. One was either for the Revolution or for tyranny.Read on for more on how failing to understand history dooms us to repeat it.
Jensen and Murphy, 1990:
On average, corporate America pays its most important leaders like bureaucrats. Is it any wonder then that so many CEOs act like bureaucrats?
So we stopped paying them like bureaucrats, and got this:
The Price of Any Departure Will Be at Least $159 Million
By ERIC DASH
Merrill Lynch’s directors may be weighing E. Stanley O’Neal’s future, but one thing is already guaranteed: a payday of at least $159 million if he steps down.
When Binney and I met at Dillon Reservoir, he brought graphs of Colorado River flows that go back nearly a thousand years. “There was this one in the 1150s,” he said, tracing a jagged line downward with his finger. “They think that’s when the Anasazi Indians were forced out. We see drought cycles here that can go up to 60 years of below-average precipitation.”For the 30 million people that depend on the Colorado River, that's no laughing matter. The story goes on to discuss how water use in the United States is decreasing, but not nearly fast enough to prepare for inevitable battles between states and regions for the precious resource.
The bill would "turn energy markets upside down, causing massive reductions in coal usage and enormous increases in natural gas and renewable fuels usage."Yes.
He suggested that both the administration’s program of eavesdropping without warrants and its use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, might be acceptable under the Constitution even if they went beyond what the law technically allowed.Technically? Let's look at the Constitution, Article 6:
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the LandThe article in question may or may not apply to exactly the kind of "extralegal" behavior of President Bush, but its ambivalence doesn't exonerate him (its focus was on superseding state laws and constitutions).
The measure "extends our Constitution beyond American soil to our enemies who want to cut the heads off Americans," said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.).I thought that Iraq represented an opportunity to spread democracy and American political values beyond our borders. So why would we be ashamed to extend our Constitution - the enumeration of our values - beyond American soil?
Twenty-six years after Ronald Reagan first set his controversial fiscal policies into motion, the deceased president's massive tax cuts for the ultrarich at last trickled all the way down to deliver their bounty, in the form of a $10 bonus, to Hazelwood, MO car-wash attendant Frank Kellener.The best part is the faux analysis:
"Had Mr. Kellener received that money in 1981, like the Democrats wanted, it would only be worth $4.24 today because of inflation," Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. said during an official announcement of the economic policy's success at a press conference Monday.The sad part is that while the Onion's numerical mysticism is tongue-in-cheek, this kind of game-playing often isn't. The Defense Department recently announced that sectarian violence in Iraq was down because people shot in the front of the head were considered "criminal deaths" whereas back-of-the-head hits were called "sectarian."
Aside: I used to love tartar sauce, but I think it lost its appeal when I realized it was made of mayo and relish, two things I used to despise. Mayo is cool now. Relish: no.At any rate, when Dad set the tartar sauce bottle on the table, there was something...familiar about it. The brand? The label? And how could it look familiar, anyway, we haven't had tartar sauce in years!
BEST IF SOLD BY NOV 1997Of course it was familiar. I still lived at home then and this was the same tartar sauce. 40 million Americans have been born since this tartar sauce was sold.
“This government does not torture people,” the president said
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.’
The history of U.S. wars and covert interventions, and their relationship to democratization, plus the long-standing close alliances between Washington and some of the world's most repressive regimes do not lend much credibility to this nostrum.As much as the author is critical of current U.S. foreign policy priorities, he's not necessarily in favor of a military intervention in Burma.
...Pres. Bush spoke of the universal longing for democracy, of the benefits to the U.S. of the spread of democracy in areas of terrorist operations, and of the (historically fairly silly) claim that democracies don't start wars. (In the post-World War II era, the United States has started far more wars than any other nation.)
The history of such U.S. invasions, proxy wars (and covert overthrows, don't forget those) includes too many instances of the United States overthrowing (or helping overthrow) democratic governments (in Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Congo in 1960, and Chile in 1973, to name four of the best documented cases), then establishing long, close friendships with the dictators that replaced them.Many of these cases came about during the Cold War, when U.S. intervention was defended on the basis of anti-communism. The parallels to Iraq (under the guise of anti-terrorism) are a little frightening.
When the Pew Global Attitudes Project conducted 45,239 interviews in 47 nations this year, they asked respondents to choose between these statements:
In 46 of the 47 nations the second answer was the majority or plurality winner...In 38 of the nations, fewer than 30 percent believes the U.S. favors democracy for all. In Britain, only nine percent, in Germany, four; in France, three.
- The United States promotes democracy wherever it can or
- The United States promotes democracy mostly where it serves its interests.
Not even Americans drink the Kool-Aid.
Thirty percent of U.S. respondents agreed with the statement that the U.S. promotes democracy for everyone and for democracy's own sake; 63 percent said no, only when it serves the U.S. interests.Sad.
Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, along with Minnesota's Norm Coleman, North Carolina's Liddy Dole and Tennessee's Lamar Alexander, drafted a bold new plan that would move our troops into a new support role in Iraq, while demanding that we begin a drawdown of American troops.The article looks no further than the re-election battles these bold senators face in 2008 for his rationale.In 2009.
But legal experts said private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. The laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on ordinary phone lines do not apply to text messages.Historically, government has stepped in to require communications companies to relay any message, especially when there were near-monopolies on the service.
Given the way that mobile phone companies lock users in to long-term contracts, I think there's a good argument for market failure when speech is suppressed. Especially when your Verizon alternatives are shit.Professor Wu pointed to a historical analogy. In the 19th century, he said, Western Union, the telegraph company, engaged in discrimination, based on the political views of people who sought to send telegrams. “One of the eventual reactions was the common carrier rule,” Professor Wu said, which required telegraph and then phone companies to accept communications from all speakers on all topics.
Some scholars said such a rule was not needed for text messages because market competition was sufficient to ensure robust political debate.
It is, of course, ridiculous that the United States Senate spent a day debating and voting on a resolution condemning an advertisement while our troops remained in Iraq, fighting a war with no end. And it's doubly ridiculous that [Senator] Coleman, of all people, is still playing politics with this issue.So what's the appropriate dialogue for a nation at war?
There are more than 160,000 troops currently serving in Iraq. We should honor their service by providing them with the best possible medical care when they return. We should honor their sacrifice by refusing to allow this president to keep them there in the middle of a civil war. And we should honor them by taking seriously the difficult debate about the best way, or at least the least bad way, to end our engagement in Iraq.It's shameful it takes a satirist to get us serious about this war.
When included on lists of treats that parents are discouraged or forbidden to send to school — and when those policies are, say, put to a vote at the P.T.A. — “cupcakes are deal breakers,” Professor Nestle said. “It sounds like a joke, but it’s a very serious problem on a number of levels. You have to control it.” (emphasis mine)And then there's the newly fashionable cupcake an its aficionados, whose recently closed high-end cupcakery drew some venomous detractors:
“At last!” said a blogger posting on Eater.com. “We neighbors get relief from cupcakistas who don’t realize Duncan Hines makes better-tasting cupcakes.”
After a long debate thread, another blogger wrote, “You people need to go back to the suburbs ... Seriously, bunch of grown up New York City residents obsessing over a cupcake shop. I miss the gunfire and crackheads.” (emphasis mine)
Just 69% of the 504 consumers polled in August by Shelton Group, a Knoxville, Tenn., marketing firm, would favor one house over another based on energy efficiency, down from 86% a year ago.However, the other survey results are more complicated:
Consumers want proof that an energy-efficient home will save them money in the long run in order to justify the generally higher cost of such a home, Shelton claims.Of course they do. That's kind of the point of energy efficiency, isn't it?
As it stands, ‘energy-efficient’ is consistently equated to ‘more expensive’ in the minds of consumers for products across the board,” Shelton said.Well, that's probably because no one talks about "payback periods." If light bulb A costs twice that of bulb B, I may choose B. And then discover two years later that bulb A would still be working while B has been replaced. Think ahead, people.
When asked what they would buy if given an extra $10,000 to build a new home, 26% of survey respondents chose granite countertops, compared with 24% who favored an energy-efficient HVAC system. Twenty-one percent chose “additional tile or hardwood,” the same percentage who favored “upgraded or additional energy-efficient kitchen appliances.” (emphasis original)This just makes me sad. Granite countertops are the latest home improvement fad, like stainless steel appliances or track lighting. Just wait 10 years and let's see what ends up being more valuable: those stone countertops or a high-efficiency air conditioner that gives you more disposable income...
How far off the mark are these fomentors of wars? Let's look at some of the comparisons wrought between our modern enemies and those totalitarians we've previously cast down:The collapse of the Soviet empire deprived us of what had been a central part of our political identity...That opposition helped define us, and its disappearance left a void.
Most of us soon got over the feelings of drift. But some people have dealt with the loss in another way -- by casting themselves in a grand revival of Armageddon. In this case, it's a titanic war against radical Islam, which often sounds like a war between Islam and the West.
This enemy, we are told, is the heir of communism and Nazism, which President Bush often invokes to justify staying in Iraq.
Start with Saddam Hussein, who was often compared to Hitler -- though his army, quite unlike the Wehrmacht, dissolved on contact with the U.S. military. His Iraq was secular, not Islamist, and if he posed a danger, it was to his neighbors, not to Western civilization.But what about Osama, he's bad...
Osama bin Laden must rejoice to be depicted as endangering our entire culture and way of life. His movement has failed to gain power in a single country even in the Islamic world, and he hasn't been able to carry out an attack on American soil in over six years.Almost every sentence in this piece is worth quoting, so I'll finish with Chapman's conclusion:
Radical Islamic elements pose a danger to our security that will demand vigilance, resources and, in some instances, military action. But let's not make it more than it is.Mr. Chapman for Secretary of State (and as far from Treasury as we can keep him...)
The clothesline was once a ubiquitous part of the residential landscape. But as postwar Americans embraced labor-saving appliances, clotheslines came to be associated with people who couldn't afford a dryer. Now they are a rarity, purged from the suburban landscape by legally enforceable development restrictions. (emphasis mine)These are the same covenants that require "medium to dark tones" of house paint and a minimum of a two-car garage (preferably a large, bland edifice dominating the street face of the houses). And it's costly policy:
Clothes dryers account for 6% of total electricity consumed by U.S. households, third behind refrigerators and lighting, according to the Residential Energy Consumption Survey by the federal Energy Information Administration. It costs the typical household $80 a year to run a standard electric dryer, according to a calculation by E Source Cos., in Boulder, Colo., which advises businesses on reducing energy consumption.Homeowners who are looking to do good by the environment and their pocketbook have been threatened with legal action from their associations.
Facing the threat of legal action, Ms. Taylor has in recent days resorted to hanging the laundry in her garage, with the door open slightly. But she says that denies her laundry the direct benefits of the sun and the fresh mountain air. She is thinking of moving to a less-restrictive neighborhood.Good idea. Anyone who thinks a suburban subdivision represents the pinnacle of sightly design deserves a smack in the face.
Here’s what I’m afraid will happen: Democrats will look at Gen. Petraeus’s uniform and medals and fall into their usual cringe.Instead, Krugman says "get us out." He offers five reasons why Democrats should stop crumbling in front of Bush's handpicked military men.
Exposure to synthetic butter in food production and flavoring plants has been linked to hundreds of cases of workers whose lungs have been damaged or destroyed...Heated diacetyl becomes a vapor and, when inhaled over a long period of time, seems to lead the small airways in the lungs to become swollen and scarred.Well, the major news outlets have finally taken note, probably due to a consumer whose persistent popcorn consumption led him to develop the same ailment that popcorn plant employees have been contracting for years.
The man told Dr. Rose that he had eaten microwave popcorn at least twice a day for more than 10 years.And what do you know. Intervention works.“When he broke open the bags, after the steam came out, he would often inhale the fragrance because he liked it so much,” Dr. Rose said. “That’s heated diacetyl, which we know from the workers’ studies is the highest risk.”
Dr. Rose measured levels of diacetyl in the man’s home after he made popcorn and found levels of the chemical were similar to those in microwave popcorn plants. She asked the man to stop eating microwave popcorn.
Maybe not definitive, but OSHA could take note: it's better to be safe than sorry.Six months later, the man has lost 50 pounds and his lung function has not only stopped deteriorating but has actually improved slightly, Dr. Rose said.
“This is not a definitive causal link, but it raises a lot of questions and supports the recommendation that more work needs to be done,” Dr. Rose said.
In the golden age of American home buying — the years after World War II — savings-and-loan institutions or government agencies supplied returning G.I.’s with fixed 30-year mortgages. Home prices appreciated, steadily but at modest rates, and lending fiascoes were rare...The game continued, with non-bank entrants into the mortgage market offering all sorts of products like adjustable-rate mortgages or allowing people much more house than they could afford.
...The world began to change in the late 1970s, when Salomon Brothers...pioneered the mortgage security...Instead of keeping his mortgages in a drawer, the banker on Main Street could unload his risk by selling them to Salomon. The banker was thus converted from a long-term lender to a mere originator of loans.
Lenders and borrowers alike knew that such loans were dicey; they were counting on the borrowers to refinance — which, as long as home prices kept rising, was a cinch. Naturally, when prices stopped rising, the music stopped.So what happens now? Some states are looking to help bail out the unfortunate borrowers who didn't understand how their mortgage was merely a risky investment by a Wall Street hedge fund investor. But how to do so without rewarding the investor, who ought to be left holding the tab for their poor choice.
Back in the days when ladies had a home journal (in 1918) the Ladies Home Journal wrote: “There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.”He also notes that these supposed "social norms" differ across cultures, something that the researchers found but that the media left out. The biggest leap beyond data was the idea that color norms (a social construct) could be measured by color preference - the subject of the actual study.
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And so here's the origin of "turd burglar": Back when the early white settlers headed west to settle the American frontier, they needed fuel for their nightly camp fires. Dried buffalo dung was plentiful and burned quite easily. But as the buffalo was hunted to near-extinction, their poop understandably became more and more scarce. Buffalo dung became a rare and highly sought after commodity. And in the Wild West, this meant the outlaw element soon got involved. Bandits would hold up stage coaches for the sole purpose of robbing innocent folk of their buffalo chips. Frontiersman would curse these purloiners of poo, these dung desperados, these... "turd burglars". And thus the term was coined. But wait, you say, robbery is not the same as burglary, is it? Shouldn't it be "turd robbers"? Indeed, you may be right. But in the Wild West, no one cared for such semantics. So don't be an a-hole about it.Unfortunately, I was unable to verify this for myself. But it's funny, so you got to read it.
G-coupled proteins, which are often targets for pharmaceutical developments, pick up chemical signals from outside a cell and relay them to the inside. The disruption of receptors can repel or kill insects.Yeah, I don't know what half of that means either, but this part makes sense:
The company's first product, TyraTech All Natural Crawling Insect Killer, will be made with active ingredients on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's exempt list...Because the ingredients are natural oils, that means the products are safe to drink.Tell that to your can of RAID.
The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams...Mountaintop mining is the most common strip mining in central Appalachia, and the most destructive. Ridge tops are flattened with bulldozers and dynamite, clearing all vegetation and, at times, forcing residents to move.As always with this administration, however, the stink of corruption lies heavy about the decision.
...From 1985 to 2001, 724 miles of streams were buried under mining waste, according to the environmental impact statement accompanying the new rule. If current practices continue, another 724 river miles will be buried by 2018, the [Army Corps of Engineers] report says.
The early stages of the revision process were supported by J. Stephen Griles, a former industry lobbyist who was the deputy interior secretary from 2001 to 2004...The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce dependence on foreign oil.Gee, the industry writes its own rules. That's new.
"What we are saying is that these e-coli could survive in the concentrations that we use in our (consumer formulated) antibacterial soaps," Aiello said. "What it means for consumers is that we need to be aware of what's in the products. The soaps containing [antibiotic] triclosan used in the community setting are no more effective than plain soap at preventing infectious illness symptoms, as well as reducing bacteria on the hands."What antibacterial soaps are good for, however, is helping bacteria mutate into more resistant forms.
E-coli bacteria bugs adapted in lab experiments showed resistance when exposed to as much as 0.1 percent wt/vol triclosan soap.So show a little marketing resistance and buy regular soap. Clean hands, weak bugs.
[Does] intergenerational equity demand conservation? We think not. The strongest normative argument against conservation is that it transfers resources from the relatively poor to the relatively rich. That’s because today’s generation is almost certainly much poorer than future generations will be. For instance, if per capita income grows at 2 percent a year, people 100 years from now will be approximately 7 times wealthier than we are today. Those concerned about intergenerational equity should worry more about standards of living today than about standards of living tomorrow.You hear that? There's no need to conserve, because everyone will get richer. On the other hand:
