Choose Real Food
August 13th, 2011Via: Whole Health Source:
Choose Real Food
The people who design government dietary guidelines are gagged by the fact that politics and business are so tightly intertwined in this country. Their advice will never directly target the primary source of obesity and metabolic dysfunction– industrially processed food– because that would hurt corporate profits in one of the country’s biggest economic sectors. You can only squeeze so much profit out of a carrot, so food engineers design “value-added” ultrapalatable/rewarding foods with a larger profit margin.
We don’t even have the political will to regulate food advertisements directed at defenseless children, which are systematically training them from an early age to prefer foods that are fattening and unhealthy. This is supposedly out of a “free market” spirit, but that justification is hollow because processed food manufacturers benefit from tax loopholes and major government subsidies, including programs supporting grain production and the employment of disadvantaged citizens (see Fast Food Nation).
Related: Rawsome Farm Buying Club Raided Again
Image By: Adam Fields
Pre-Crime: BART Admits Halting Cell Service to Stop Protesters
August 13th, 2011Via: San Francisco Chronicle:
BART officials acknowledged this afternoon that they shut down cell phone and wireless data service in its downtown San Francisco stations to disrupt a planned protest. Their announcement sparked denunciations from civil libertarians and the apparent threat of a cyber-attack on the BART website.
A statement posted on the transit agency’s website said the communications blackout was ordered in the interest of public safety:
“Organizers planning to disrupt BART service on August 11, 2011 stated they would use mobile devices to coordinate their disruptive activities and communicate about the location and number of BART Police,” the statement reads.
“A civil disturbance during commute times at busy downtown San Francisco stations could lead to platform overcrowding and unsafe conditions for BART customers, employees and demonstrators. BART temporarily interrupted service at select BART stations as one of many tactics to ensure the safety of everyone on the platform.”
BART did not immediately offer details of how the shutdown took place, how long it lasted or what stations were affected.
Research Credit: ottilie
Consumer Sentiment Drops to Three-Decade Low
August 12th, 2011Via: Bloomberg:
Confidence among U.S. consumers plunged in August to the lowest level since May 1980, adding to concern that weak employment gains and volatility in the stock market will prompt households to retrench.
The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment slumped to 54.9 from 63.7 the prior month. The gauge was projected to decline to 62, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.
The biggest one-week slump in stocks since 2008 and the threat of default on the nation’s debt may have exacerbated consumers’ concerns as unemployment hovers above 9 percent and companies are hesitant to hire. Rising pessimism poses a risk household spending will cool further, hindering a recovery that Federal Reserve policy makers said this week was already advancing “considerably slower” than projected.
“The mood is very depressed,” said Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “Consumers are very fatigued and very uncertain. In the short term, people are going to pull back on spending.”
Sarkozy, Merkel in Emergency Meeting
August 12th, 2011Via: AFP:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy called a eurozone crisis meeting with his German counterpart while Italy promised cuts and tax hikes Thursday as its part in the battle to save the single currency.
Merkel will travel next Tuesday to Paris for the meeting aimed at producing “joint proposals” by September on how to better manage the euro and avoid future instability, Sarkozy’s office said.
The announcement came as financial markets were again in turmoil on concerns that the US and eurozone debt crisis may spark a new recession and after rumours of a France credit rating downgrade and fears over Greek debt exposure.
Markets are wondering whether France and Germany — the eurozone’s two biggest economies — can continue to underwrite other states’ debts without losing their top credit ratings and falling victim to the crisis themselves.
The crisis started in Greece and is now fuelled by fears that Spain or Italy might default on their debt and possibly spark a break-up of the currency shared by 17 countries.
DO NOT MISS: World Is Witnessing Financial WWIII
World Is Witnessing Financial WWIII
August 12th, 2011Via: Russia Today:
Following the loss of the US’s triple-A credit score which sparked sell-offs on global markets, a new war using financial derivatives has been waged, which by no means can bear the name of WWIII, financial analyst Max Keiser told RT.
Investors however remain unconvinced the country’s finances are solid enough. Problems in the Eurozone will be up for discussion by the French and German leaders next week.
Max Keiser, financial analyst and host of the Keiser Report on RT, said French banks are now loaded with toxic derivatives that were sold to them by US investment banks.
“The US investment banks and the rating agencies are now attacking these French banks. They know where the bodies are buried, and they are using the weapons they sold them to attack them,” he said. “The rating will be downgraded again. This is part of a new era on Wall Street – they go after sovereign debt. Wall Street and rating agencies are working together to destabilize the sovereign debt of these countries,” he added.
Research Credit: windhorse
Government Pays for Empty Flights to Rural Airports
August 12th, 2011Via: AP / San Francisco Chronicle:
On some days, the pilots with Great Lakes Airlines fire up a twin-engine Beechcraft 1900 at the Ely, Nev., airport and depart for Las Vegas without a single passenger on board. And the federal government pays them to do it.
Federal statistics reviewed by The Associated Press show that in 2010, just 227 passengers flew out of Ely while the airline got $1.8 million in subsidies. The travelers paid $70 to $90 for a one-way ticket. The cost to taxpayers for each ticket: $4,107.
Russia: Government Sponsored Youth Camp
August 12th, 2011Via: Los Angeles Times:
They wake up to the Russian national anthem and gather near the main stage lined with huge portraits of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his boss (on paper at least), President Dmitry Medvedev, where they do their morning exercises to music interrupted periodically by recorded quotations from both leaders.
As the day goes on, they are taught how to keep secrets from journalists, how to be active on the Internet, how to set up youth organizations and how to raise funds. They are trained in martial arts by an expert from the Vladimir Putin Fight Club and instructed to read books suggested by Putin.
One thing they don’t need to be taught is to adore Putin. They already do.
In this sprawling Kremlin-sponsored youth camp 220 miles northwest of Moscow — 99 acres of white sand, tall pines and Lake Seliger, a jewel of Russian nature — thousands of young men and women are learning how to be supporters of the ruling United Russia party, future politicians and senior government officials.
Research Credit: minerva
Epidermal Electronic System
August 12th, 2011Via: National Science Foundation:
Through a combination of careful theoretical modeling and precise micro-manufacturing, a team of engineers and scientists has developed a new type of ultra-thin, self-adhesive electronics device that can effectively measure data about the human heart, brain waves and muscle activity–all without the use of bulky equipment, conductive fluids or glues.
The researchers have created a new class of micro-electronics with a technology that they call an epidermal electronic system (EES). They have incorporated miniature sensors, light-emitting diodes, tiny transmitters and receivers and networks of carefully crafted wire filaments into their initial designs.
The technology is presented–along with initial measurements that researchers captured using the EES–in a paper by lead author Dae-Hyeong Kim of the University of Illinois and colleagues in the Aug. 12, 2011, issue of Science.
The EES device was developed by collaborators from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northwestern University, Tufts University, the Institute of High Performance Computing in Singapore, and Dalian University of Technology in China.
“Our goal was to develop an electronic technology that could integrate with the skin in a way that is mechanically and physiologically invisible to the user,” says corresponding author John Rogers, a professor in materials science and engineering department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “We found a solution that involves devices we designed to achieve physical properties that match to the epidermis itself. It’s a technology that blurs the distinction between electronics and biology.”
While existing technologies accurately measure heart rate, brain waves and muscle activity, EES devices offer the opportunity to seamlessly apply sensors that have almost no weight, no external wires and require negligible power.
Because of the small power requirements, the devices can draw power from stray (or transmitted) electromagnetic radiation through the process of induction and can harvest a portion of their energy requirements from miniature solar collectors.
The EES designs yield flat devices that are less than 50-microns thick–thinner than the diameter of a human hair–which are integrated onto the polyester backing familiar from stick-on tattoos.
The devices are so thin that close-contact forces called van der Waals interactions dominate the adhesion at the molecular level, so the electronic tattoos adhere to the skin without any glues and stay in place for hours.
The recent study demonstrated device lifetimes of up to 24 hours under ideal conditions.
France, Belgium, Italy and Spain Ban Short Selling
August 11th, 2011Via: New York Times:
A European market regulator announced on Thursday night that short-selling of financial stocks in several countries would be temporarily banned in an effort to stop the tailspin in the markets.
The European Securities and Markets Authority, a body that coordinates the European Union’s market policies, said in a statement that these negative bets on stocks would be curtailed effective on Friday in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain. They are already banned in Greece and Turkey.
“Today some authorities have decided to impose or extend existing short-selling bans in their respective countries,” the authority said. “They have done so either to restrict the benefits that can be achieved from spreading false rumours or to achieve a regulatory level playing field, given the close inter-linkage between some E.U. markets.”
The statement said details for each country would be posted on their individual financial regulators’ Web sites.
Ireland Being “Run by Mad People in Brussels”
August 11th, 2011Via: Irish Times:
POTENTIAL PRESIDENTIAL candidate Gay Byrne has expressed concerns about the development of the European Union, saying Ireland was being “run by mad people in Brussels”.
The veteran broadcaster, who revealed this week he had been asked to consider running for the presidency by Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, outlined his worries while speaking to reporters in Dublin last night.
“Those concerns are that I think it’s a crazy notion from the very beginning. We crossed the Rubicon when we joined the single currency. I think there’s no backing out now but it’s a mad, mad world and we are being run by mad people in Brussels,” Byrne said.
