STACEY POUNSBERRY, - The Bunsen Burner
Stephan: Anyone who has ever lived by the ocean is probably familiar with plankton blooms. Finally, science is beginning to understand this mysterious phenomenon.
According to a recent press release, oceanographers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (or WHOI) in Massachusetts recently published new data concerning the annual diatom bloom-a process that sustains the ocean’s ecosystem and absorbs vast amounts of carbon dioxide-online in the journal Science.
The report describes what is known as the North Atlantic Bloom as ‘the blooming of countless microscopic plants, or phytoplankton.
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Stephan: This report reveals one aspect of the corruption of standards going on in the corporate news media -- there are others. Like so much in our society, once unbreachable standards of news integrity are now deeply compromised.
This I can assure you about SR: There are no paid for articles, and no fake bylines.
Major newspapers in Chicago, Houston and San Francisco are among those this week that have acknowledged they published dozens of items in print or online that appeared under fake bylines.
As was first disclosed by the public radio program This American Life, the items in question were not written by reporters on the staffs of the papers at all but by employees of what is effectively a news outsourcing firm called Journatic.
The episode is at once a professional embarrassment for the papers and a reminder of an inescapable truth about the cost of gathering local news: Sometimes when you cut costs, you can’t avoid cutting corners.
‘How do you get police blotters from 90 towns? It’s not easy. But that’s what we do,’ says Brian Timpone, a former television reporter and small-town newspaper owner who created what became Journatic six years ago.
He built a company to provide a lot of news and information - mostly highly granular information - for publishers serving small communities around the country. The information in question involves such stuff as lives are made of: information about local arrests, real estate sales, weekly school lunch menus, high school track-meet results.
Even large papers with supposedly deeper pockets struggle for […]
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DAVID FERGUSON, Editor - The Raw Story
Stephan: The entire argument for prohibition is just falling apart assertion after assertion. There is no longer a shred of justification for destroying the lives of millions of individuals and families with this insane policy -- except for the profit made by those who, like vampires, feed off of this prohibition.
Click through to the link where you can download the entire report yourself.
A new report by the U.K.’s ‘national centre of expertise on drugs and drug laws
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Stephan: There is a very strange trend developing nationwide. Red value states, dominated politically by the Theocratic Right, for reasons of ideology and theology, are actively working against the best interests of their citizens -- with the cooperation of the citizens. The results are social outcomes dramatically inferior to blue value states. This report about Texas is one of half a dozen I could have picked. This differential between blue value and red value states is becoming so marked that one is compelled to say that living in these states is not good for your health or family wellness. I can understand what the politicians are doing, what is confounding is the support given to them by the citizens whose lives will be materially degraded.
Texas’ health care quality was rated the worst in the nation in the federal government’s annual nationwide health-care report card based on data collected by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
The recently released study is based on 155 quality measures, including success of preventative care measures, disparities in treatment among different ethnic groups and the effectiveness and cost of care for patients with chronic or terminal conditions such as diabetes and cancer.
Texas received its highest scores – none of which were better than average – in the categories of nursing home care, maternal and child health care, and cancer measures, which measure the number of preventative procedures performed, cancer diagnoses made and deaths due to cancer in the state.
For all other categories, Texas was rated ‘weak
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Stephan: Here is the antipode to the Kroger story. Once again I counsel that you buy organically grown local produce, or grow your own. The story of the evils of GMO crops is just beginning. Time will reveal much more, as the data accumulates. But, by then, the damage to you and your family will have been done.
I ask every one of my readers to go into the markets where you shop and tell them you want non GMO foods. And to get 10 friends to do the same. Consider the Kroger story. You would be amazed what will happen if even 10 shoppers tell a manager this.
As you may or may not know by now, the United States government has allowed genetically modified and engineered organisms to enter the public food supply with no warning. Every day, millions of people unknowingly ingest these GMOs because corporations like Monsanto (and the politicians they’ve bought and paid for) claim it’s unfair to require them to label their products.
Multiple scientific studies have linked GMOs to illness, disease, and mutation in plants, animals and humans. These adverse affects have been found to be especially pronounced in pregnant women and children, consequently a demographic that is more apt to eat the low price, processed foods that carry most of the world’s GMO’s.
Until such time as the state or federal government decides to finally stand up for the American consumer by passing mandatory GMO labeling laws, the only way to protect yourself from these toxic ‘foods
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