OKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA — Historically speaking, Oklahoma used to be a place where almost no palpable earthquakes happened at all — but hydraulic fracturing, a.k.a. “fracking” has changed all that now.
The sketchy episode comes only two months on the heels of the implementation of new regulations in the state that prevent operators and waste disposers from injecting wastewater “below the state’s deepest rock formation, believed to be one of the main causes of the quakes,” Reuters reported.
The Oklahoma Corporation Commission (OCC) regulates all oil and gas activities in the state, and had a strong and vocal response to last weeks unprecedented episode.
MOISES VELASQUEZ-MANOFF, - The New York Times
Stephan: I must know a dozen women whose diet is guided by their gluten issues. It is impossible on my island, or at least in the circle of people we know, to give a dinner party without taking gluten into consideration.
For more than half a century I have been actively researching, writing research papers and articles about, and practicing a lifestyle based on holistic healthcare, eating and exercise. I know that there are things dismissed by mainstream allopathic medicine, such as homeopathy, that can in fact be very effective. Gluten, like the Atkins diet, however, is something quite different. There is no point in these friends that the research data strongly suggests that most of this gluten obsession is nonsense. It just makes them cranky and one has to listen to their gluten stories.
There is an issue here, but gluten is not it. This article gives an excellent assessment of reality.
Credit: Bruno Zocca
As many as one in three Americans tries to avoid gluten, a protein found in wheat, barley and rye. Gluten-free menus, gluten-free labels and gluten-free guests at summer dinners have proliferated.
Some of the anti-glutenists argue that we haven’t eaten wheat for long enough to adapt to it as a species. Agriculture began just 12,000 years ago, not enough time for our bodies, which evolved over millions of years, primarily in Africa, to adjust. According to this theory, we’re intrinsically hunter-gatherers, not bread-eaters. If exposed to gluten, some of us will develop celiac disease or gluten intolerance, or we’ll simply feel lousy.
Most of these assertions, however, are contradicted by significant evidence, and distract us from our actual problem: an immune system that has become overly sensitive.
Wheat was first domesticated in southeastern Anatolia perhaps 11,000 years ago. (An archaeological site in Israel, called Ohalo II, indicates that people have eaten wild grains, like barley and wheat, […]
1 Comment
Eddie Scarry, - Washington Examiner
Stephan: Another alarm goes off. A democracy cannot be healthy when almost three out of four people do not trust that the news media is honest and unbiased. Commentary and advocacy are fine And also note that the sense of bias and mistrust has gone up 17 per cent in just one year.
This ought to be a subject actively debated yet it goes almost unremarked. Why is that do you think that is?
Nearly three quarters of Americans believe the news media reports with an intentional bias, according to a new survey.
The 2015 State of the First Amendment Survey, conducted by the First Amendment Center and USA Today, was released Friday. It shows that only 24 percent of American adults agree with the statement that “overall, the news media tries to report the news without bias,” while 70 percent disagree. (emphasis added)
When the question was asked last year, 41 percent agreed, a 17-point difference.
“These are discouraging results for those of us who have spent our careers in journalism,” Ken Paulson, president of the First Amendment Center, wrote in an op-ed for USA Today on Thursday. “In 23 years in newsrooms, I saw consistent and concerted efforts to get stories right. Clearly, the public’s not convinced.”
The survey suggests that controversies this year that engulfed national news anchors Brian Williams of NBC and George Stephanopoulos of ABC may have had a deep impact on public trust in media. It also floats the idea that the public has had a negative reaction to news coverage of the racially-charged events in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, Md.
Other findings in the survey:
• Only 19 percent of […]
No Comments
