STEPHANIE MENCIMER, - Mother Jones
Stephan: Once you start looking into the tall weeds of the illness profit system stories like this are to be found everywhere. I am astonished at how really bad our healthcare system is.
Recently, my doctor gave me an ultimatum: Come in for a pelvic exam, or I won’t refill your birth control pills. The problem arose after I tried to get my prescription refilled before going on vacation in March, only to be told that the doctor’s office wouldn’t sign off on the refill because it had been a year and one month since I’d had an annual exam and a Pap smear. A nurse grudgingly gave me a monthlong reprieve if I promised to come in for an exam when I returned from my trip.
I really, really didn’t want to go in for an exam. I’ve had two kids, a false positive Pap test and all the ensuing misery that comes with it, and spent enough time in the stirrups to last a lifetime. All I really wanted were my pills; I was pretty sure the exam could wait another year or more.
The science was on my side.
Just a few weeks earlier, the US Preventative Services Task Force, an independent group of national experts that makes evidence-based health care recommendations, released new guidelines declaring definitively that women over 30 don’t need a Pap smear more than once every three years unless […]
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Stephan: Over the past few days several of you have written me to tell me about horrible experiences you have had with the U.S. illness profit system, and how devastating it was on your life. I am long past being surprised by these accounts, having written many articles on this subject. (In addition to the SR archives, please see www.explorejournal.com/content/schwartz for my essays on this aspect of life in America.)
But still, things do change so, in spite of the several dire reports I have published recently, I went looking to get a clearer sense, based on data, of how most Americans are actually faring today. Once again I discovered it is an awful picture. Here are just a few of the reports I came across in my search. I have been following this trend for 15 years and the truth is, it is getting worse.
Maybe when Obama's programs really kick in it will get better but the truth is we won't really have true healthcare until wellness not profit is the main function of the system. The Ryan Plan is an abomination. If any of you vote Republican you will reap the consequences of your action, and I can guarantee you won't like it.
-- Stephan
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STEPHEN C. WEBSTER, - The Raw Story
Stephan: This is actually an ancient idea. The Egyptians used to build structures like large beehives which operated on the same principle. Old idea or new this could be very helpful for areas with water problems.
What if your source of electricity also gave you clean drinking water?
That’s the promise of new technology developed by the French engineering firm Eole Water, first conceived in the late 90s by a man who collected water from his air conditioner. He reasoned that if an air conditioner could help him accumulate water, so could other types of machines, so he set about merging the production of electricity and water.
Today, that dream is alive and well. Eole’s turbines are currently undergoing rigorous tests in Abu Dhabi following months of development and fine tuning in France. The company says that each turbine is capable of producing up to 1,000 liters of clean drinking water per day, or about 62 per hour, simply by filtering moisture out of the air and funneling it to a storage tank below.
Thibault Janin, Eole’s director of marketing, told CNN reporter Eoghan Macguire that the turbines can cost up to $790,000, and that the company is targeting poor, water-starved regions like Africa, South America and Indonesia first.
‘We have just started the commercial aspect of this product but the price is not that expensive when you compare it with the long term solution that it gives,
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Brian Westenhaus, - OilPrice
Stephan: This is a new entrant into the emerging LENR technology and, perhaps, the one that is going to make it commercial. An energy revolution is struggling to be born.
The new leader is Brillouin Energy with a new process named the Hot Tube Boiler. Sterling Allen at PESN interviewed Brillouin’s Robert W. George II, CEO; and the inventor, Robert Godes, the Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Allen learned Brillouin has had two significant independent validations of their scientific model and claims. One of those was by Los Alamos National Laboratories. The other was by Dr. Michael McKubre of Stanford Research International (SRI), who subsequently joined their board of advisors.
What puts Brillion out in front first is the temperature output. Brillouin expects the test of the new Hot Tube model at SRI will be capable of delivering steam at temperatures from 400ºC to 500ºC (750-932ºF). These kinds of temperatures are called superheated or deliver ‘dry steam
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DIANA MARKOSIAN, - The Washington Times
Stephan: I am beginning to consider the proposition that religious fundamentalism of whatever stripe, and its universal fear and loathing of women is, in fact, the collective manifestation of a deep species' self-destruction impulse -- rather like lemmings walking over a cliff. From that perspective religious fundamentalism is a form of mental illness, and should be recognized as such. And I consider this, and what is going on the U.S. as the same in essence differing only in degree.
ACHXOY-MARTAN, Chechnya — Chechnya’s government is openly approving of families that kill female relatives who violate their sense of honor, as this Russian republic embraces a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam after decades of religious suppression under Soviet rule.
In the past five years, the bodies of dozens of young Chechen women have been found dumped in woods, abandoned in alleys and left along roads in the capital, Grozny, and neighboring villages.
Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov publicly announced that the dead women had ‘loose morals’ and were rightfully shot by male relatives. He went on to describe women as the property of their husbands, and said their main role is to bear children.
‘If a woman runs around and if a man runs around with her, both of them should be killed,’ said Mr. Kadyrov, who often has stated his goal of making Chechnya ‘more Islamic than the Islamists.’
In today’s Chechnya, alcohol is all but banned, Islamic dress codes are enforced and polygamous marriages are supported by the government.
Some observers say Mr. Kadyrov’s attempt to impose Islamic law violates the Russian Constitution, which guarantees equal rights for women and a separation of church and state.
‘We are a traditional, conservative society, but the government has […]
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