Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Stephan: More on the Monsanto GMO trend. It is going to take a population uprising to stop this. This is what happens when national wellness is not a priority, and it will be interesting to see if this can rouse the American people from their stupor, to stand up for their own health.
As if there were not already enough concern about the impact of GMO crops on agriculture and the environment, a new international study raises the worry that a diet including genetically modified ingredients may be contributing to obesity.
The effect of GM foods on rats, mice, pig and salmon is being studied by an international team from Hungary, Austria, Ireland, Turkey, Australia and Norway. In March they reported preliminary findings that found no negative metabolic changes in the pigs, salmon or mice they tested.
The results released in July link GM corn with modest weight gain in rats. The animals were fed corn with an insect-resistant gene. The control group ate unmodified corn. During the course of the 90-day study, the gm-fed rats gained more weight than the others.
Professor Ã…shild Krog Dahl cautions more study is needed but that if the impact on humans is similar, long-term consumption of genetically modified food or the meat from animals fed a GM diet could be contributing to the increase in obesity.
Although the study’s initial findings show no major negative health impacts, Professor Krog Dahl points out the need for more investigations. She says:
It has often been claimed that the new genes in genetically modified […]
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Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Stephan: Watching television tonight I saw yet another gun fueled massacre be reported endlessly. It was wall to wall sensoids, each dripping detail discussed over and over. There has been the usual small modicum of serious questioning of the gun laws. More pro forma than anything else. Never has the power of the NRA's minority views been more evident. Conservatives are making it harder and harder to vote, but to get a gun, many guns, armor and a gas mask in order to kill people. Not so tough.
(Please click though to see that chart, 'Number of Deaths Due to Injury by Firearms, per 100,000 Population 2008.')
This tragedy took place in Colorado a state that has a relatively low number of deaths due to firearms.
Less dramatic, but more lethal in numbers is the over all day-to-day death rate, as one might style it. Doing that reveals that Red value policies produce inferior and more dangerous social outcomes than is the case in Blue value states.
Arkansas, Louisiana Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada and, particularly Alaska are seriously more dangerous to live in that New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts.
Will anything be done? I doubt it. And it is too late anyway. We have, by best estimate somewhere between 270 and 350 million privately held guns owned by something north of 80 million people -- about 26 per cent of the population. We are, particularly in the red value states, a lethal society. A triumph of paranoia over wellness.
Richard Florida is Co-Founder and Editor at Large at The Atlantic Cities. He's also a Senior Editor at The Atlantic and Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
Last night’s horror in Aurora, Colorado, once again confronts America with the senseless tragedy of gun violence. The debate over this country’s relationship to guns will start all over again, and this time, in the middle of a presidential campaign.
The map below, by my colleague Zara Matheson at the Martin Prosperity Institute, charts the geography of gun violence across the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [PDF]. The data (from 2008, the most recent year available) include accidental shootings, suicides, even acts of self-defense, as well as crimes.
There were 10.3 deaths by firearms per 100,000 people in Colorado in 2008, exactly the same as the national average. Gun deaths were highest in Alaska (20.9 per 100,000) and lowest in Hawaii (3.1 per 100,000).
Last year, I took a deeper look at the the factors associated with gun deaths at the state level.
Gun violence and drug abuse are often presumed to go together, but we found no association between illegal drug use and death from gun violence at the state level. While it is commonly assumed that mental illness or stress levels trigger gun violence, we found no association between […]
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Saturday, July 21st, 2012
Christine Kearney, - Reuters
Stephan: The entire structure concerning getting your creative or scientific creation or discovery distributed has been a structure of middle-men. Agents, packagers, publishers, and the fiefdoms within a publishing company or studio are examples that come quickly to mind. It is all breaking down. The gift digital bestows on creators or discoverers, if they are disciplined enough, is the ability to communicate without middle men. This is a measure of where we are in this process of transition.
NEW YORK — Electronic books more than doubled in popularity in 2011, with ebooks outselling hardcover books in adult fiction for the first time, according to a survey released on Wednesday.
Net sales of e-books jumped to 15 percent of the market in 2011 from 6 percent in 2010, according to a report by the Association of American Publishers and the Book Industry Study Group. The groups compiled data provided by nearly 2,000 publishers.
Total overall U.S. book market sales declined 2.5 percent to $27.2 billion in 2011 from $27.9 billion in 2010, the report said.
While ebooks increased in strength, bringing in more than $2 billion in 2011, the majority of publishers’ revenue still came from print books, with $11.1 billion in 2011.
‘We’re delighted to see it (the report) affirm that the industry has remained steady, and has even grown in some areas, in what continues to be a challenging economic time and through such significant transformation,’ said Len Vlahos, executive director of the Book Industry Study Group, in an email.
The publishing industry has been more upbeat recently about the growth of ebooks, but the industry has been fearful over the impact of Borders, once the second largest U.S. book retailer, liquidating […]
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Saturday, July 21st, 2012
ROGER EBERT, - The New York Times
Stephan: This is an excellent essay, polemic I admit, by film critic Roger Ebert, but right on target, if I may use that metaphor. I am in complete agreement with it.
Note, at the end, the tragic presentiment of one of the victims.
James Holmes, who opened fire before the midnight premiere of ‘The Dark Knight Rises,
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SARAH BOSELEY, Health Editor -
Stephan: You would think that this condom campaign, when first proposed, would have been seen for the insanity it so obviously is. But in the U.S. what you do with your genitals is a matter of burning passionate interest to the Right.
Police in major cities in the United States are criminalising women who carry a stock of condoms, making sex workers and their clients less likely to use them and increasing their risk of contracting HIV, says Human Rights Watch.
A new report compiles evidence from sex workers in four major cities – Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
Interviews with more than 300 people show that those most at risk of HIV, such as sex workers and transgender women, are afraid to carry condoms in case they should be stopped and searched by police.
‘Some women told Human Rights Watch that they continued to carry condoms despite the harsh consequences. For others, fear of arrest overwhelmed their need to protect themselves from HIV, other sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy,’ says the report.
One of the interviewees, Carol F, a sex worker in Los Angeles, told HRW she had been arrested partly on the basis of carrying condoms. ‘After the arrest, I was always scared
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