Some 43 million Americans do it every day: take a tiny aspirin to help prevent heart attacks and strokes. In fact, doctors have been routinely recommending the practice to older adults for years. But recently, experts have been questioning the aspirin-a-day regimen, concerned that this everyday miracle drug can pose serious risks, including bleeding in the brain and stomach. The aspirin-a-day controversy erupted publicly in March when a 10-year study of nearly 30,000 adults ages 50 to 75 without known heart disease found that a daily aspirin didn’t offer any discernible protection. The group taking aspirin had cardiovascular disease at the same rate as those taking a placebo. Moreover, the study-published in the Journal of the American Medical Association-reported that taking a daily aspirin (100 mg) almost doubled the risk of dangerous internal bleeding. And last year the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force-a panel of medical experts-issued new guidelines for patients, recommending only those at risk for heart attacks or strokes should take a daily aspirin. Risk factors include having high blood pressure, high cholesterol and diabetes, as well as being overweight. The panel also recommended that people over 80 not take aspirin at all because of […]
Obama wants higher oil company taxes, pledges $58 million for cleanup efforts. Democrats align to ban offshore drilling along west coast According to a scientific analysis of footage from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, National Public Radio is claiming the growing ecological disaster is actually ten times worse than previously estimated, saying the rushing torrent of oil pouring into the ocean is equivalent to one Exxon-Valdez spill every four days. That’s more than 70,000 barrels a day — when the U.S. Coast Guard had placed the figure at a seemingly modest 5,000 barrels a day. Until this point in human history, the Exxon-Valdez disaster was just one of the worst oil spills ever, with nearly 11 million gallons of crude lost to the murky depths. The Deepwater Horizon well has been jetting oil unabated for just short of one month at time of this writing. Already, the pollution exceeds a scale which most individual humans can fully grasp. While government agencies continue to examine what led to the oil rig explosion that killed 11 people, environmental legal experts are already predicting that there will be criminal charges ahead for at least one of […]
They have been around since the time of the dinosaurs and have in the past survived several global mass extinctions of species, but now lizards are at serious risk of disappearing from the face of the earth as a result of climate change, scientists said yesterday. An international study has found that as many as 20 per cent of the 3,800 species of lizards could be extinct by 2080 if global temperatures continue to rise as predicted. In some parts of the world 12 per cent of the lizard populations that have been studied since 1995 have already disappeared – and researchers are blaming climate change. Lizards, which include geckos, iguanas and chameleons, are often referred to as cold-blooded creatures but in fact their body temperature rises and falls with their exterior environment. They have to bask in the sun to raise their body temperature, and seek shade when it gets too warm. Scientists fear that, in many parts of the world, temperatures have become too warm for the local lizards to be able to stay out during the hottest part of the day to catch enough food, causing the animals to weaken and die. ‘The […]
Until he extends his circle of compassion to include all living things, man will not himself find peace. – Albert Schweitzer There are many ways and reasons to settle differences without going to war; solutions that allow resources to be shared to the benefit all of those involved. I’m not a pacifist. I once picked up a gun to defend my sleeping daughter. (No, I didn’t shoot.) But there have been moments in history where it would have been close to impossible to do other than engage in battle. And I continue to hold those moments, the people who were involved in prayers and meditations. The word veteran comes from the Latin vetus, which means old. And old is what one sees in the eyes of a veteran of the killing fields. They have traveled through the ‘dark night of the soul.’ They’ve been tested in ways that can never be fully understood. In today’s world, a lot more is known about treating PTSD and much remains to discover. Intriguingly, in recent years, some of the most interesting programs are centered around nature. And they’ve emerged at a point in history when both humans and nature are […]
Coast Guard Captain leading hearings Wednesday: ‘It’s my understanding that [a blowout preventer is] designed to industry standard … manufactured by the industry, installed by the industry, with no government witnessing or oversight of the construction or installation. Is that correct?’ Regional supervisor, federal regulator MMS: ‘That is correct…’ That staggering statement of regulatory impotence was characterized this way by Sen. Bill Nelson in the Wall Street Journal: ‘If MMS wasn’t asleep at the wheel, it sure was letting Big Oil do most of the driving.’ It is tempting to hope that Big Oil’s days in the driver’s seat are over, now that the Obama administration has ordered that the Minerals Management Service, which oversees offshore drilling, be split up, after critics said the agency was too close to the industry and had an inherent conflict of interest. Realists are highly skeptical. And in our view, it is shortsighted to focus public ire on one business and one massive, deadly disaster, even as HuffPost yesterday spoke to another whistle-blower alleging egregious practices. This story lays bare the far-reaching (and largely unnoticed) emasculation of government regulatory power, as it has succumbed to corporate agendas over the past […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
