Monsanto’s Herbicide Roundup Linked to Birth Defects
One of the most widely used pesticides in the world has been linked to brain, intestinal and heart defects in fetuses, according to the results of a scientific investigation released Monday. According to the study authors, the doses of herbicide used in the study “were much lower than the levels used in the fumigations,” and so the situation “is much more serious”.
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Monsanto’s Crops Spawning Superweed Epidemic in U.S.
“Superweeds” are plaguing high-tech Monsanto crops in southern US states, driving farmers to use more herbicides, return to conventional crops or even abandon their farms…”
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Daily Mail – Tuna will be wiped out by 2012 unless overfishing is stopped, environmental groups have warned. If current quotas are maintained, the breeding population of Atlantic bluefin tuna will have disappeared in three years, it is claimed. The population can only be saved by a complete halt to fishing in May and June, when the fish swim to the Mediterranean to spawn, the World Wildlife Fund says.
World Wildlife Fund – The population of tunas that are capable of reproducing – fish aged 4 years or over and weighing more than 35kg – is being wiped out. In 2007 the proportion of breeding tuna was only a quarter of the levels of 50 years ago, with most of the decline happening in recent years.
Meanwhile, the size of mature tunas has more than halved since the 1990s. The average size of tuna caught off the coast of Libya, for example, has dropped from 124kg in 2001 to only 65kg last year. Data gathered by WWF show that this pattern has been observed across the entire Mediterranean.
Before the age of large-scale industrial fishing, individual tunas could even weigh in at 900kg. The loss of these giant tunas – able to produce many more offspring than medium-sized individuals – has a disproportionately high impact on the reproduction of the species.
The huge overcapacity of fishing fleets, catches that far exceed legal quotas, pirate fishing, the use of illegal spotting planes to chase the tunas, under-reporting of catch, fishing during the closed season, management measures disregarding scientific advice – and the insatiable appetite of the world’s luxury seafood market – have all contributed to this dramatic decline.
WWF is calling for the immediate closure of the Mediterranean bluefin tuna fishery to give the species a chance to recover, while continuing to encourage consumers, retailers, restaurants and chefs to join the global movement to avoid the consumption of the imperilled fish.
The word ‘constitution’ literally means ‘health’.
The powerful thing about our nation and therefore our business economy is our Nation’s Collective Constitution, preserved and protected by an “organ” of law. It is tied to two other powerful “organs” or Documents/contracts, The Writ of Habeas Corpus, and the Magna Carta. This combination literally binds the laws that govern where our health an energy can go to the laws of physics, keeping us and our ‘Constitution’ in harmony with Nature and each other.
The last few years of living with out them connected has shown all of us how quickly chaos can creep in to our lives.
Personally committing to a level of breathing and connecting to how that makes me gain energy and move energetic and physical junk from my body, when I conciously connect to the breathing like when I am riding my bike or doing kundalini yoga.
then the other side is sitting super still and thinking of nothing and breathing… that has been instrumental in giving me clarity and focus and healing.
Also my whole world changed when I quit eating meat which was hard as I was raised on farms in Northern Michigan where people eat alot of wild animal meat in their diets!!!
Since I have stopped eating meat 16 years ago now, I have an incredible amount of energy and resistance to illness ( I do not get sick anymore even when my family or friends are sick..) I know it comes from not eating all the extra antibiotics that are in marketed meat that comes from flesh and not veggies.
Hope this is helpful to everyone.
Arneson taught classes in game design in his later years
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Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-play game, has died of cancer at 61 in a hospice in St Paul, Minnesota.
His two-year battle with the disease ended on Tuesday when he passed away peacefully, his daughter said.
Arneson created the game famous for its oddly shaped dice in 1974 along with the late Gary Gygax.
“The biggest thing about my dad’s world is he wanted people to have fun in life,” said his daughter Malia.
Arneson and Gygax developed D&D using medieval characters and mythical creatures and it was a worldwide hit, particularly among teenage boys.
It eventually was turned into video games, books and films.
Pioneer
“I think we get distracted by the everyday things you have to do in life and we forget to enjoy life and have fun,” Malia Weinhagen told the Associated Press.
“But my dad never did. He just wanted people to have fun.”
D&D, described by AP as “the quintessential geek pastime”, spawned copycat games and later inspired a whole genre of computer games that is still growing in popularity.
“[Arneson] developed many of the fundamental ideas of role-playing: that each player controls just one hero, that heroes gain power through adventures and that personality is as important as combat prowess,” said a statement from Wizards of the Coast, which produces D&D.
The company noted that Blackmoor, a game Arneson had been developing before D&D, was the “first-ever role-playing campaign and the prototype for all [role-playing game] campaigns since”.
Arneson met Gygax, who died in March of last year, at a games convention in 1969.
He is survived by his daughter and two grandchildren.
The United States Department of Agriculture is responding to climate change by updating the Plant Hardiness Zone Map for the first time in 20 years. The map shows where various types of plant species can thrive, and as warmer annual temperatures move northward, the more than 80 million U.S. gardeners and farmers will be looking to the map to see what new plants may be able to grow in their area. The Plant Hardiness Zone Map is typically used for domesticated plants, but this graphic display also sheds light on how native plant species are shifting due to climate change. The updated map is due out later this year.
thoughts from the maji-
“The vague nature of the way that the initiative was written allows for law enforcement and government officials to control the rate at which the program deploys, the same thing was done here in California.. The answer to this? STARK Raving and Rabid prescience and tenacity when it comes to communicating and pressuring officials to adapt the initiative to accomplish the true goal of balancing the health of the State.
HASSLE them until they do not want to hassle you anymore and are SICK of the issue, and just want to be left alone again in their tired little deadend lives…. this is the latest big chance to have the public’s attention on them, let’s make the attention uncomfortable, let them remember that their positions in government and law enforcement are not theirs to use for power-mongering, influence-peddling, or personal political agendas. It is time for All Americans not just Michiganers to take back their personal Constitutions and in the process the collective Constitution will be restored… Not rocket science here folks, just have to step up and show for yourselves with courage, tenacity and steadfastness.
Thousands of people expected to sign up starting today
DETROIT (AP) — The first wave of what could be tens of thousands of people signing up for Michigan’s medical-marijuana program is expected in Lansing today.
For Greg Francisco, of Paw Paw, who is organizing the mass submission in the state capital, it will be a sweet moment after a decade of working to legalize medical marijuana.
“In a year, we’re going to look back and say, ‘What was the fuss all about?'” said Francisco, executive director of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association. “People have been using medical marijuana in this state all along. All this does is give them some legal protection.”
Rules for Michigan’s medical-marijuana program went into effect Saturday, and the state begins taking applications today. The first cards will be issued to patients later this month. But questions linger about how the program will work in practice, and resolving all the confusion may require additional legislation or intervention by the courts.
Michigan residents can get a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana to relieve pain and other symptoms. Patients can register with the state and receive a card protecting them from arrest for growing, using or possessing the drug, which remains illegal under federal law.
Twelve other states have similar programs.
An analysis by the House Fiscal Agency estimates between 2,000 and 55,000 patients may sign up for Michigan’s program.
John Hazley, 39, plans to register “as soon as possible.” The Detroit man says he smokes marijuana to relieve pain in his knee and back from old injuries, and worries about becoming dependent on pain pills.
“Usually when I take the pills, I’m tired and sleepy, and when I take the marijuana it gives me a boost,” Hazley said.
In the five months since voters approved the measure, there’s been confusion about what the law will mean for police, prosecutors and patients.
For instance, Michigan’s law doesn’t say how patients will obtain marijuana or seeds to grow their own, nor does it address whether employers can enforce drug-free workplace rules if workers are registered to legally use marijuana. It also leaves unsaid how police will enforce the limit of 12 mature plants and 2.5 ounces permitted each patient.
Advocates and officials say many of those issues may end up in court. The state legislature also can modify the law with a three-quarters vote in each chamber.
“There’s going to be a lot of litigation here, there’s going to be a lot of court time … to answer these unanswered questions and put some solid color in those gray areas,” said James McCurtis, spokesman for the Department of Community Health, which runs the program through its Bureau of Health Professions.
State officials initially sought to head off many of those questions by writing some of the strictest rules in the nation for patients in the program, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press under the state’s Freedom of Information Act.
Among the proposals were random inspections of growing sites, mandatory inventories of marijuana grown by patients or their designated caregivers and allowing the release of patients’ names and other information to law-enforcement agencies. Many of the rules went beyond the law approved by voters.
The officials drafting the rules were trying to plug perceived holes in the law, said Rae Ramsdell, director of licensing for the department’s Bureau of Health Professions.
“You’re trying to anticipate what kind of problems you’re going to have and address those problems before they happened,” she said.
In an internal e-mail two days after the Nov. 4 election, one official described the law as “a hopelessly short-sighted and simple-minded ballot initiative” with “some really poorly worded language.”
McCurtis said the official, Kurt Krause, then-acting director of the Office of Legal Affairs and now deputy director of the department, was referring to areas of confusion in the legislation and was concerned about the department seeming to offer legal advice to the public.
When draft rules for the program were released last December, there was an immediate backlash from patients and their advocates. Many turned out for a public hearing in January to blast the proposed rules.
A review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings and Rules dated Dec. 1, 2008, also determined a number of early rules “exceed that which is required” under the law. It called one on denying incomplete applications “somewhat harsh” and another “arbitrary and capricious.” Random inspections of growth sites were deemed a possible violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.
“The comments from all the different groups made us go back and re-examine what the law said, and looking at what the law said drove the decisions to remove a lot of the enforcement-type language and not to try to anticipate the problems that might come up, but to work within the very tight statute that we had,” Ramsdell said.
The final draft of the rules, unveiled in February, pulled back on almost every point of contention.
“We had to kind of go away from the enforcement perspective and think about how we could get these people registered and use marijuana for medical purposes,” Ramsdell said. “That for us is a huge shift because we are used to enforcing laws that are put into place. And in this case, all we are responsible for doing is putting into place a registry.”
The physics arXiv blog, April 6, 2009
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23309/
Ten of life’s 20 amino acids must be common throughout the cosmos, based on a thermodynamic analysis of the likelihood of them forming.
This turns out to match the observed abundances in meteorites and in early Earth simulations.
The combined actions of thermodynamics and the subsequent natural selection suggest that the genetic code we observe on the Earth today may have significant features in common with life throughout the cosmos, according to two McMasters Scientists. Today, Paul Higgs and Ralph Pudritz at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, put forward an answer which has profound implications for the nature of life on other planets.
We know that amino acids are common in our solar system and beyond. Various first experiments to recreate the conditions in the Earth’s early atmosphere have produced 10 of the amino acids found in proteins. Curiously, analyses of meteorite samples have found exactly these same 10 amino acids. Various researchers have noted this link but none have explained it.
Now we know why, say Higgs and Pudritz. They have ranked the amino acids found in proteins according to the thermodynamic likelihood of them forming. This turns out to match the observed abundances in meteorites and in early Earth simulations, more or less exactly.
Glenn Greenwald, Salon – There are few things rarer than a major politician doing something that is genuinely courageous and principled, but Jim Webb’s impassioned commitment to fundamental prison reform is exactly that. Webb’s interest in the issue was prompted by his work as a journalist in 1984, when he wrote about an American citizen who was locked away in a Japanese prison for two years under extremely harsh conditions for nothing more than marijuana possession. After decades of mindless “tough-on-crime” hysteria, an increasingly irrational “drug war,” and a sprawling, privatized prison state as brutal as it is counter-productive, America has easily surpassed Japan — and virtually every other country in the world — to become what Brown University Professor Glenn Loury recently described as a “a nation of jailers” whose “prison system has grown into a leviathan unmatched in human history.” What’s most notable about Webb’s decision to champion this cause is how honest his advocacy is. He isn’t just attempting to chip away at the safe edges of America’s oppressive prison state. His critique of what we’re doing is fundamental, not incremental. And, most important of all, Webb is addressing head-on one of the principal causes of our insane imprisonment fixation: our aberrational insistence on criminalizing and imprisoning non-violent drug offenders (when we’re not doing worse to them).