STEPHEN LACEY, - Climate Progress
Stephan: Here is some good energy news. It is still old energy, but at least it shows a major decline in one of the worst old energy sources.
Power generation from coal is falling quickly. According to new figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, coal made up 36 percent of U.S. electricity in the first quarter of 2012 - down from 44.6 percent in the first quarter of 2011.
That stunning drop, which represented almost a 20 percent decline in coal generation over the last year, was primarily due to low natural gas prices. As EIA explains, natural gas generation will climb steadily this year, while coal will see a double-digit drop by the end of 2012:
Natural
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Stephan: Over the years I have heard several friends with MS tell me this, now it is actually being explored. If you have MS, or know someone who does, you might try this or pass it on.
Source: REPORT 3 OF THE COUNCIL ON SCIENCE AND PUBLIC HEALTH (I-09) Use of Cannabis for Medicinal Purposes (Resolutions 910, I-08;921, I-08;and 229, A-09) (Reference Committee K)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — People with multiple sclerosis have long said that smoking marijuana helps ease their painful muscle cramping. And a new clinical trial suggests they are not just blowing smoke.
The study, published Monday, found that for 30 MS patients with muscle ‘spasticity,’ a few days of marijuana smoking brought some relief.
Some people with MS are already using medical marijuana to treat certain symptoms, including spasticity — when the muscles in the legs or arms contract painfully, in something akin to a ‘charley horse.’
There is some science behind the idea: The body naturally produces cannabinoids, the group of chemicals found in marijuana. And studies have suggested the cannabinoid receptors on our cells help regulate muscle spasticity.
But the evidence that pot smoking actually helps with spasticity has been anecdotal.
‘We’ve heard from patients that marijuana helps their spasticity, but I think a lot us thought, ‘Well, it’s probably just making you feel good,” said Dr. Jody Corey-Bloom, the lead researcher on the new study.
‘I think this study shows that yes, (marijuana) may help with spasticity, but at a cost,’ said Corey-Bloom, of the University of California, San Diego.
The cost, her team found, is that smoking caused fatigue and dizziness in […]
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Senior Staff Writer, - MedPage Today
Stephan: Men, if your waist is larger than 40 inches you are putting yourself at serious risk. Women, you too can correlate your waist size with your risk. Obesity is killing us.
BOSTON — Carrying too much weight in the belly — having an apple shape — may increase the risk of sudden cardiac death, researchers found.
In a cohort study, the risk of sudden cardiac death increased along with waist-to-hip ratio (P=0.009 for trend), according to Selcuk Adabag, MD, of the University of Minnesota and the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.
After accounting for numerous obesity-related comorbidities, however, other measures of obesity — body mass index and waist circumference — were not related to the risk of sudden cardiac death, Adabag reported at the Heart Rhythm Society meeting here.
Obesity ‘is a root cause of problems,’ he said in an interview. ‘People, particularly physicians, need to be paying attention to weight gain and should actively work on reducing weight.’
The findings of the current study could be incorporated into the counseling that physicians give to patients, he said, although waist-to-hip ratio is not often measured in the clinic and the public is not as familiar with that index of obesity as it is with BMI.
Obesity has been associated with a higher risk of sudden cardiac death in both the Framingham Heart Study and the Nurses’ Health Study, but the analysis by Adabag and colleagues took […]
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SHARON OTTERMAN and RAY RIVERA, - The New York Times
Stephan: The evidence is in, and it is damning: Conservative religiosity, be it Christian, Jewish, or Muslim, always seeks to control human sexuality, and covers up the frequent occurrence of child abuse, which patriarchal religious systems inevitably produce. Based on the data one can say: conservatives abuse children; social progressives rarely do. And when they abuse them they want to keep it a secret.
The first shock came when Mordechai Jungreis learned that his mentally disabled teenage son was being molested in a Jewish ritual bathhouse in Brooklyn. The second came after Mr. Jungreis complained, and the man accused of the abuse was arrested.
Old friends started walking stonily past him and his family on the streets of Williamsburg. Their landlord kicked them out of their apartment. Anonymous messages filled their answering machine, cursing Mr. Jungreis for turning in a fellow Jew. And, he said, the mother of a child in a wheelchair confronted Mr. Jungreis’s mother-in-law, saying the same man had molested her son, and she ‘did not report this crime, so why did your son-in-law have to?
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ELLEN BROWN, - Truthout.org
Stephan: This is a little realized aspect of student debt, and why I think this bubble must explode.
The Social Security program … represents our commitment as a society to the belief that workers should not live in dread that a disability, death, or old age could leave them or their families destitute. -President Jimmy Carter, December 20, 1977.
[This law] assures the elderly that America will always keep the promises made in troubled times a half century ago … [The Social Security Amendments of 1983 are] a monument to the spirit of compassion and commitment that unites us as a people. -President Ronald Reagan, April 20, 1983.
So said Presidents Carter and Regan, but that was before 1996, when Congress voted to allow federal agencies to offset portions of Social Security payments to collect debts owed to those agencies. (31 U.S.C. §3716.) Now, we read of horror stories like this:
I’m a 68 year old grandma of 2 young grandchildren. I went to college to upgrade my employment status in 1998 or 1999. I finished in 2000 and at that time had a student loan balance of about 3500.00.
Could not find a job and had to request forbearance to carry me. Over the years I forgot about the loan, dealt with […]
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