Saturday, January 11th, 2014
Stephan: Here is the latest on the Bee Trend. It is not good news.
Click through to see the chart and map that help make this story clear.
he great bee die-off in the US and Europe has been known about for a while. A shortage of honeybees, it’s feared, threatens various crops that depend on them as pollinators. But now some research has put numbers on just how bad the bee deficit is in Europe. And the numbers are alarming, to say the least.
In the study of 41 countries, published yesterday, researchers found that between 2005 and 2010, demand for so-called ‘pollinator services” grew nearly five times faster than the supply of bees. In the UK, researchers estimate that there are now only enough beehives to meet a quarter of demand. Through a broad swath of Europe, they can meet only 25% to 50%. Overall, almost half the countries studied had bee deficits. ‘We face a catastrophe in future years unless we act now,” researcher Simon Potts of the University of Reading in the UK, told The Guardian.
Why hasn’t there been a catastrophe already? Because ‘wild pollinators”-bumblebees, hoverflies and others-have picked up the strain. That’s the good news. The bad news is that scientists have little hard data on wild bee numbers and their pollinating habits. Worse, wild bees may be just as much at risk as […]
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Saturday, January 11th, 2014
Stephan: In a kind of backhanded way this is good news of a sort. I have seen a number of these stories and discounted them, because the government denied that Fukushima played any role, but this one is well sourced and must be taken seriously. It's good news in that the system to get these doses out exists, and now they have the doses. But very bad news if it comes to pass that they are needed. That's the reality of the Fukushima disaster. We don't know... only that as long as radioactive waste pours in the sea, no good thing will arise. And that it will become increasingly planetary.
A federal bid notice reveals that a Pentagon agency began stockpiling potassium iodide in 2012 due to its concerns over the Fukushima nuclear crisis, shedding light on why the Dept. of Health and Human Services is now ordering 14 million doses of iodide.
“The recent earthquake in Japan in March of 2011 and the resultant nuclear crisis has renewed interest in” potassium iodide, the Defense Logistics Agency said in a solicitation.
‘The recent earthquake in Japan in March of 2011 and the resultant nuclear crisis has renewed interest in” potassium iodide, the Defense Logistics Agency said in a solicitation.
The Defense Logistics Agency posted a solicitation on FedBizOpps in 2012 asking contractors for 75,000 packages of potassium iodide tablets because the ‘recent earthquake in Japan in March of 2011 and the resultant nuclear crisis has renewed interest in this item.”
‘The U.S. Army Medical Materiel Agency has submitted a MILSTRIP (Military Standard Requisitioning and Issue Procedures) for this item to ensure that critical operational forces are protected in the event of nuclear fallout,” the solicitation added.
Potassium iodide keeps radioactive iodine from being absorbed by the thyroid gland and therefore it is commonly taken in the event of a severe nuclear emergency, such as the […]
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Saturday, January 11th, 2014
JEFF BRYANT, Director of the Education Opportunity Network - Salon
Stephan: Charter schools, another privatization program by profit first business interests occasionally produce good results, kind of show villages, but, as in all profit first operations --prisons, libraries, schools -- all too often become a racket. Until we decide as a people that national wellness, arising from individual wellness is our social priority all of this will only get worse. As this report makes clear it is time we went back to creating high quality public schools.
Imagine your 5-year-old boy went to a school where he was occasionally thrown in a padded cell and detained alone for stretches as long as 20 minutes.
Or you sent your kid to an elementary school where the children are made to sit on a bare floor in the classroom for days before they can ‘earn” their desks.
Or your kid went to a school where she spent hours parked in a cubicle in front of a computer with a poorly trained teacher who has to monitor more than 100 other students.
Maybe you don’t have children or send them to private school? So how do you feel when you find out the local school that you pay for with your taxes is operating a scam that diverted millions of dollars through fake Medicaid billing?
Or the school used your tax dollars as ‘grants” to start up other profit-making enterprises … or pay lavish salaries – $300,000, $400,000 or more – to its administrators … or support a movement linked to a reclusive Turkish cleric being investigated for bribery and corruption.
Welcome to the world of charter schools.
Are there wonderful charter schools doing great things for kids? Probably. Are all these cumulative anecdotes an unfair […]
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Saturday, January 11th, 2014
CAROLYN LOCHHEAD, - San Francisco Chronicle
Stephan: This report describes a probationary positive development on Climate Change. This may come to nothing; it's certain the Republicans in the Senate will largely try to block it. But this effort by Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) to get the Senate to engage seriously with climate change may happen. It's too early to tell whether this is mostly just an epiphenomenon, or the next important positive step in the Climate Change Trend. If the Senate seriously takes up climate change it will stimulate an extended national debate. The media won't be able to avoid it.
I think the result of such a debate, where data and real life will converge, will result in a clear national mandate to become pro-active in climate change remediation.
WASHINGTON — Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island said Thursday that they would lead a new Senate task force to knock down a “barricade of special interest lies” on climate change.
A prime goal of the group will be enlisting the support of outside interests, from corporations such as Coca-Cola to the Garden Club of America.
“We believe climate change is a catastrophe that’s unfolding before our eyes, and we want Congress to take off the blindfolds,” Boxer said in a briefing in her Capitol Hill office. “We know what happens when you throw the environment under the bus. There’s a place where it’s happening, and it’s called China.”
The task force of more than a dozen senators, none of whom are Republicans, has the blessing of Majority Leader Harry Reid and the White House. The group will work with newly installed presidential counselor John Podesta, a Washington insider who has been active on climate change as founder of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
Its aim is to undermine those in Washington who deny that humans are causing climate change, mainly Republicans, but also Democrats representing states with large fossil fuel industries.
“There is a […]
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Friday, January 10th, 2014
ERIC W. DOLAN, - The Raw Story
Stephan: The hysteria over drugs that change our state of consciousness, not just our moods, has blocked all manner of possible medical research, causing untold suffering. Here is an example of what I mean.
A study of more than 25,000 people under community corrections supervision suggests the use of psychedelic drugs like LSD can keep people out of prison.
The research is the first in 40 years to examine whether drugs like LSD and ‘magic” mushrooms can help reform criminals.
‘Our results provide a notable exception to the robust positive link between substance use and criminal behavior,” the researchers from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wrote in their study, which was published in the January issue of the Journal of Psychopharmacology.
‘They add to both the older and emerging body of data indicating beneficial effects of hallucinogen interventions, and run counter to the legal classification as well as popular perception of hallucinogens as categorically harmful substances with no therapeutic potential.”
Psychedelic substances piqued the interest of researchers beginning in the 1950s. Studies indicated that the drugs could be combined with psychotherapy to treat a number of conditions, including alcoholism and drug addiction.
But scientific investigations into the therapeutic potential of LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and other psychedelic drugs ground to a halt in the 1970s, when they were outlawed by the federal Controlled Substances Act.
‘Offenders may be especially likely to benefit from […]
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