HOWTO kill/block an RFID

DC Madam Predicted She Would Be Suicided

Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet Thursday, May 1, 2008

Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.

DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey predicted she would be “suicided” on several occasions both recently and as far back as 17 years ago – comments that now appear ominous in light of the announcement that the former head of a Washington escort service allegedly killed herself today.

“If taken into custody, my physical safety and most probably my very life would be jeopardized,” she wrote in August 1991 following an attempt to bring her to trial, “Rape, beating, maiming, disfigurement and more than likely murder disguised in the form of just another jailhouse accident or suicide would await me,” said Palfrey in a handwritten letter to the judge accusing the San Diego police vice squad of having a vendetta against her.

During several recent appearances on The Alex Jones Show, Palfrey also said that she was at risk of being killed and that authorities would make it look like suicide. She made it clear that she was not suicidal and if she was found dead it would be murder.

Palfrey had threatened to release the names of well-known clients of her upscale call girl ring in the nation’s capitol, and had indicated that Dick Cheney may be one of them.

“We now know it goes at least as high as a United States Senator,” Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show, “I’m hearing rumors now from other people that there are other possibilities in that stratosphere so to speak, on that level.”

“No I’m not planning to commit suicide,” Palfrey told The Alex Jones Show on her last appearance in July, “I’m planning on going into court and defending myself vigorously and exposing the government,” she said.

“Blanche Palfrey had no sign that her daughter was suicidal, and there was no immediate indication that alcohol or drugs were involved, police Capt. Jeffrey Young said,” according to an AP report.

Click here to listen to Palfrey clearly state that she would not commit suicide.

Click here to listen to the entirety of the last interview with Palfrey.

UPDATE: In an almost uncanny development, as soon as this article started to go viral on the Internet, Time Magazine released a story claiming that Palfrey told author Dan Moldea that she would rather commit suicide than go to jail. What a funny coincidence!

RELATED: Palfrey Considered Call Girl’s “Suicide” Possible Murder

FLASHBACK: D.C. Madame: “Big Names” May Be On Client List

Developing…

Protecting Yourself From Suspicionless Searches While Traveling

Posted by Jennifer Granick [on the EFF Deeplinks blog]

The Ninth Circuit’s recent ruling (pdf) in United States v. Arnold allows border patrol agents to search your laptop or other digital device without limitation when you are entering the country. EFF and many civil liberties, travelers’ rights, immigration advocacy and professional organizations are concerned that unfettered laptop searches endanger trade secrets, attorney-client communications, and other private information. These groups have signed a letter asking Congress to hold hearings to find out what protocol, if any, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) follows in searching digital devices and copying, storing and using travelers’ data. The letter also asks Congress to pass legislation protecting travelers’ laptops and smart phones from unlimited government scrutiny.

If privacy at the border is important to you, contact Congress now and ask them to take action!

In the meantime, how can international travelers protect themselves at the U.S. border, short of leaving their laptops and iPhones at home?

Many travelers practice security through obscurity. They simply hope that no border agent will rummage through their private data. Too many people enter the country each day for agents to thoroughly search every device that crosses the border, and there is too much information stored on most devices for agents to find the most revealing and confidential tidbits. But for travelers who may be targeted based on their celebrity, race or other distinguishing factor, obscurity is not an option. As last week’s news that Microsoft is giving away forensic tools that can quickly search an entire hard drive on a USB “thumb drive” shows, it won’t be long before customs agents can efficiently perform a thorough search on every machine. So long as there are no protocols or oversight for these searches, every traveler’s personal information is at risk.

Encryption is one (imperfect) answer.

If you encrypt your hard drive with strong crypto, it will be prohibitively expensive for CBP to access your confidential information. This answer is imperfect for two reasons—one is practical, the other is technological.

Practically, the government has not disclosed CBP’s laptop search practices, despite our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for these documents. We don’t know what a border patrol agent will do when confronted with an encrypted machine. One possibility is that the agent will simply give up and let the traveler pass with her belongings. Other possibilities are that the agent will turn the traveler and her machine away at the border, or that he will seize the laptop and allow the traveler to continue on. I suspect that on most occasions, CBP agents confronted with encrypted or password-protected data tell the owner to enter the password or get turned away, and the owner, eager to continue her voyage or to return home, simply complies.

If you don’t want to comply, CBP cannot force you to decrypt your data or give over your password. Only a judge can force you to answer questions, and then only if the Fifth Amendment does not apply. While no Fifth Amendment right protects the data on your laptop or phone, one federal court has held that even a judge cannot force you to divulge your password when the act of revealing the password shows that you are the person with access to or control over potentially incriminating files. See In re Boucher, 2007 WL 4246473 (D. Vt. November 29, 2007).

If, however, you don’t respond to CBP’s demands, the agency does have the authority to search, detain, and even prohibit you from entering the county. CBP has more authority to turn non-citizens away than it does to exclude U.S. persons from entering the country, but we don’t know how the agents are allowed to use this authority to execute searches or get access to password protected information. CBP also has the authority to seize your property at the border. Agents cannot seize anything they like (for example, your wedding ring), but we do not know what standards agents are told to follow to determine whether they can and should take your laptop but let you by.

Technologically, encryption is imperfect because even strong crypto can be cracked when someone obtains the keys. Border agents can demand the keys from travelers unwilling to face seizure or detention. Agents may also be able to extract and use keys that are stored on the machine itself. Generally, if you keep your keys with the laptop, in your head or on your disk, then the encryption is easier to socially engineer or break than if you keep the keys elsewhere. (Discussion of what encryption techniques to use or avoid is beyond the scope of this post.)

Encryption aside, there may be other ways you can show CBP that your laptop is indeed a normal computer and that you mean no harm while keeping confidential information from prying eyes. Most operating systems let users to create multiple accounts on a single machine. A traveler could allow CBP to examine his own account, while storing client data or trade secrets in a separate account “owned” by his law firm or corporation. Under typical border search circumstances, this might satisfy CBP concerns. However, simply storing information in a different account—even one protected by a password—is not the same as encrypting it. If CBP is interested, the most commonly used forensic search tools can access and search non-encrypted data in every account on the machine.

Law firms, corporations and other entities that routinely deal with confidential information are handing their business travelers forensically clean laptops loaded with only what the traveler needs for that particular business trip. Leaving unnecessary data, like five years of email, behind may be the best thing. Of course, if trade secrets or client information are the reason for the trip, this plan will not help.

Another option is to bring a clean laptop and get the information you need over the internet once you arrive at your destination, send your work product back, and then delete the data before returning to the United States. Historically, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) generally prohibited warrantless interception of this information exchange. However, the Protect America Act amended FISA so that surveillance of people reasonably believed to be located outside the United States no longer requires a warrant. Your email or telnet session can now be intercepted without a warrant. If all you are concerned about is keeping border agents from rummaging through your revealing vacation photos, you may not care. If you are dealing with trade secrets or confidential client data, an encrypted VPN is a better solution.

Finally, however useful these techniques might be to protect laptops, travelers do not have this array of options for protecting data stored on less configurable smart phones. Of course, many phones do have a lock or password protection option, which travelers might consider enabling before heading to the airport.

In sum, while you must submit yourself and your electronic devices to warrantless and suspicionless searches at the border, you are not legally obligated to decrypt information or reveal passwords. However, if you fail to do so, the border agents may detain or search you, or even seize the device. There are no options that provide perfect privacy protection, but there are some options that reduce the likelihood that a legitimate international traveler’s confidential information will be subjected to arbitrary and capricious examination.

Example Security Precaution

Attorney Alice needs to have confidential attorney-client privileged information overseas. Before departure, she removes unnecessary information, encrypts her hard drive with strong crypto and sets up a login for a protected account and a travel account on her computer. To access the confidential data, one would need to first login to the protected account, and then open the encrypted files. Only Alice’s employer (The Law Offices of Bob) knows the passwords to the account and encrypted data, and keeps them secret until Alice arrives at her destination. Bob then sends the passwords to Alice in an encrypted email message.

Related Issues: Privacy, Travel Screening

Related Cases: US v. Arnold

Big Health Benefits Attributed To Raw Diet: Six Diabetics In Documentary Are Able To Reverse Their Disease
 
The Hartford Courant, Connecticut
 
03-31-08
 
Mar. 31–In his 2004 film “Super Size Me,” director Morgan Spurlock humorously documents the dramatic health consequences of eating all the wrong things for 30 days. Subsisting on a McDonald’s-only menu, he gains 25 pounds and a host of ailments, among them the decidedly unfunny side effects of liver damage and sexual dysfunction.
 
So what might happen, then, after 30 days of eating all the right things?
 
That question was the seed that evolved into “Raw for 30 Days,” an independent documentary film that chronicles the experience of six diabetics who sign up for a radical diet change. The participants, most diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, move into an Arizona retreat center where they are medically supervised during a challenge to stay off dairy, meat, sugar, alcohol and processed foods. Keeping to a vegan, raw-foods diet of only uncooked, organic plant-based foods, the filmmakers claim participants were able to naturally reverse their diabetes, losing significant weight and coming off their insulin.
 
Set to be distributed online before a summer release at smaller film festivals, the documentary is by no means poised to be a cinematic blockbuster. But buzz has been building for more than a year in raw- and health-food circles. Proponents are wondering if the information can resonate with a mainstream American public plagued with an obesity epidemic and chronic diseases.
 
“I think it’s going to take people to the level of believing, truly believing, that you are what you eat,” says Glen Colello, a holistic health counselor and owner of the newly opened West Haven raw- and health-foods cafe Catch a Healthy Habit. “Maybe people will see this movie and realize medication isn’t their only option.”
 
Such was the intent of the team behind the film, led by creator and executive producer Mark Perlmutter, a longtime vegetarian who himself shifted to a largely raw, or living-foods, lifestyle. He said he witnessed the health benefits in eating fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds in their natural state. The philosophy is that uncooked foods are more nutrient-rich and have their enzymes intact and take less energy to digest, thereby freeing the body to heal itself.
 
Perlmutter learned more after moving to Arizona, where he became familiar with the work of raw-food pioneer Gabriel Cousens, a medical doctor who runs the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Center in Patagonia. The center became the setting for the documentary, filmed in 2006 with six diabetics picked from a pool of more than 100 candidates.
 
Audiences will see those who stick with the program go through dramatic transformations. One participant initially diagnosed with type 2 diabetes later learns he actually had type 1 diabetes, considered incurable without a pancreas transplant.
 
“So, how do we get people to do this for themselves? They can’t all go to Arizona,” says Perlmutter. “It’s great to get a couple of miracle stories about these people having major breakthroughs, but the question is how do you get [the medical establishment] to embrace something that obviously works for some people?”
 
But traditional medicine has embraced alternative therapies over the last decade, with many doctors now weaving holistic and naturopathic approaches into conventional treatments. There is, however, skepticism about the long-term benefits and loftier claims of extreme approaches such as raw foods, which dietitians caution can be difficult to sustain and may add up to an unbalanced diet that leaves out too many important foods. Most doctors advise patients to seek their physician’s opinion before starting any such diets.
 
Scientific studies do show clearly the relationship between dietary choices and health. The World Health Organization determined that 70 percent of chronic diseases worldwide could be prevented entirely with changes to diet and lifestyle. In the United States, that figure jumps to 80 percent.
 
“Absolutely. Yes. Diet has a tremendous impact on disease progression and disease manifestation,” says Dr. Mitch Kennedy of the University of Connecticut Health Center, the facility’s first certified naturopathic physician. “And the fact is that most people don’t eat well. All you have to do is look around at what’s available — the fast-food chains and packaged foods and what’s in the food labels.”
 
Kennedy says there are merits to a raw-foods lifestyle. The nutrient content in foods is best preserved in its raw state. And considering the average American doesn’t get the recommended five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, most would do well to introduce more into their diets. Yet, he rarely recommends an entirely raw plan. It can be a drastic change, hard on the digestive system and lead to deficiencies in vitamin B12 without consumption of meat or dairy products.
 
When asked for comment, the American Diabetic Association declined to address the film directly, saying only that “weight loss through any means can lower glucose levels in those with type 2 diabetes, sometimes even to normal.” It cautioned against any “one-size-fits-all diabetic diet” and encouraged healthful eating and exercise habits.
 
Kirt Tyson, the misdiagnosed type 1 diabetic, and the most successful of the film’s six participants, says he knows the raw-food plan cured him of his disease. A Baltimore native, he says he went from his worst — a four-day hospitalization with his blood sugar at 1,200 — down today to normal levels. He remains on a raw diet, no longer on insulin.
 
“When you get diagnosed with this disease, you’re always told … there’s no cure. So from that moment, you feel so defeated,” says Tyson, 26, now a graduate student studying naturopathic medicine at Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine & Health Sciences in Arizona. “What this film does is give hope back to people. It’s not a one-shot thing. You have to work for it. I have to work at it every day.”
 
He doesn’t advocate ignoring traditional medication, but says patients need to be better informed about all options available to them.
 
“Hopefully in the future, I’ll be able to do some research to show how this diet is actually working,” he says. “I don’t know the chemistry behind it. But you can’t look at a guy who was once taking insulin, and now is not and say there’s not something to it. Clearly, it’s working for me.”
 
For more information about the film, visit www.RawFor30Days.com
 
Contact Joann Klimkiewicz at .
 
—–
 
Copyright (c) 2008, The Hartford Courant, Conn.

Experts Now Recommend Hands-Only CPR
 
By STEPHANIE NANO
Associated Press Writer
 
NEW YORK (AP) — You can skip the mouth-to-mouth breathing and just press on the chest to save a life. In a major change, the American Heart Association said Monday that hands-only CPR – rapid, deep presses on the victim’s chest until help arrives – works just as well as standard CPR for sudden cardiac arrest in adults.
 
Experts hope bystanders will now be more willing to jump in and help if they see someone suddenly collapse. Hands-only CPR is simpler and easier to remember and removes a big barrier for people skittish about the mouth-to-mouth breathing.
 
“You only have to do two things. Call 911 and push hard and fast on the middle of the person’s chest,” said Dr. Michael Sayre, an emergency medicine professor at Ohio State University who headed the committee that made the recommendation.
 
Hands-only CPR calls for uninterrupted chest presses – 100 a minute – until paramedics take over or an automated external defibrillator is available to restore a normal heart rhythm.
 
This action should be taken only for adults who unexpectedly collapse, stop breathing and are unresponsive. The odds are that the person is having cardiac arrest – the heart suddenly stops – which can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems. In such a case, the victim still has ample air in the lungs and blood and compressions keep blood flowing to the brain, heart and other organs.
 
A child who collapses is more likely to primarily have breathing problems – and in that case, mouth-to-mouth breathing should be used. That also applies to adults who suffer lack of oxygen from a near-drowning, drug overdose, or carbon monoxide poisoning. In these cases, people need mouth-to-mouth to get air into their lungs and bloodstream.
 
But in either case, “Something is better than nothing,” Sayre said.
 
The CPR guidelines had been inching toward compression-only. The last update, in 2005, put more emphasis on chest pushes by alternating 30 presses with two quick breaths; those “unable or unwilling” to do the breaths could do presses alone.
 
Now the heart association has given equal standing to hands-only CPR. Those who have been trained in traditional cardiopulmonary resuscitation can still opt to use it.
 
Sayre said the association took the unusual step of making the changes now – the next update wasn’t due until 2010 – because three studies last year showed hands-only was as good as traditional CPR. Hands-only will be added to CPR training.
 
An estimated 310,000 Americans die each year of cardiac arrest outside hospitals or in emergency rooms. Only about 6 percent of those who are stricken outside a hospital survive, although rates vary by location. People who quickly get CPR while awaiting medical treatment have double or triple the chance of surviving. But less than a third of victims get this essential help.
 
Dr. Gordon Ewy, who’s been pushing for hands-only CPR for 15 years, said he was “dancing in the streets” over the heart association’s change even though he doesn’t think it goes far enough. Ewy (pronounced AY-vee) is director of the University of Arizona Sarver Heart Center in Tucson, where the compression-only technique was pioneered.
 
Ewy said there’s no point to giving early breaths in the case of sudden cardiac arrest, and it takes too long to stop compressions to give two breaths – 16 seconds for the average person. He noted that victims often gasp periodically anyway, drawing in a little air on their own.
 
Anonymous surveys show that people are reluctant to do mouth-to-mouth, Ewy said, partly because of fear of infections.
 
“When people are honest, they’re not going to do it,” he said. “It’s not only the yuck factor.”
 
In recent years, emergency service dispatchers have been coaching callers in hands-only CPR rather than telling them how to alternate breaths and compressions.
 
“They love it. It’s less complicated and the outcomes are better,” said Dallas emergency medical services chief Dr. Paul Pepe, who also chairs emergency medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.
 
One person who’s been spreading the word about hands-only CPR is Temecula, Calif., chiropractor Jared Hjelmstad, who helped save the life of a fellow health club member in Southern California
 
Hjelmstad, 40, had read about it in a medical journal and used it on Garth Goodall, who collapsed while working out at their gym in February. Hjelmstad’s 15-year-old son Josh called 911 in the meantime.
 
Hjelmstad said he pumped on Goodall’s chest for more than 12 minutes – encouraged by Goodall’s intermittent gasps – until paramedics arrived. He was thrilled to find out the next day that Goodall had survived.
 
On Sunday, he visited Goodall in the hospital where he is recovering from triple bypass surgery.
 
“After this whole thing happened, I was on cloud nine,” said Hjelmstad. “I was just fortunate enough to be there.”
 
Goodall, a 49-year-old construction contractor, said he had been healthy and fit before the collapse, and there’d been no hint that he had clogged heart arteries.
 
“I was lucky,” he said. Had the situation been reversed, “I wouldn’t have known what to do.”
 
“It’s a second lease on life,” he added.
 
—
 
On the Net:
 
Heart Association: http://www.americanheart.org/handsonlycpr
 
Sarver Heart Center: http://www.heart.arizona.edu/
 
© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

Should You Ditch Your Chemical Mattress?
 
Commentary: Good night, sleep tight—don’t let the volatile organic compounds bite.
 
By Hannah Wallace
 
Susan Greenfield and her girlfriend Llina Kempner couldn’t wait for their new memory-foam mattress top to arrive. For months, they’d heard friends rave about how the high-tech material molds itself to your body. But when they unwrapped the three-inch-thick pad in their Manhattan apartment, they noticed a strong, acrid odor. “My nose and my lungs were miserable,” recalls Greenfield. For the two nights Kempner slept on the mattress top, she felt nauseated. After Greenfield, who is chemically sensitive, had an asthma attack in the middle of the night, the couple returned the mattress pad. But its stench lingered in the apartment for weeks.
 
Reactions like Greenfield’s are relatively rare, but you, too, might lose some sleep when you find out what’s really inside your mattress-memory foam or not. The place where you spend one-third of your life is chock-full of synthetic materials, some potentially toxic. Since the mid- to late ’60s, most mattresses have been made of polyurethane foam, a petroleum-based material that emits volatile organic compounds that can cause respiratory problems and skin irritation. Formaldehyde, which is used to make one of the adhesives that hold mattresses together, has been linked to asthma, allergies, and lung, nose, and throat cancers. And then there are cotton pesticides and flame-retardant chemicals, which can cause cancer and nervous-system disorders. In 2005, Walter Bader, owner of the “green mattress” company Lifekind and author of the book Toxic Bedrooms, sent several mattresses to an Atlanta-based lab. A memory-foam model was found to emit 61 chemicals, including the carcinogens benzene and naphthalene.
 
There is no proven health risk from the substances in mattresses, however, mostly because tracking their long-term effects is virtually impossible. Heather Stapleton, an environmental chemist at Duke University, says there’s simply not enough data to determine whether low levels of these chemicals will eventually make people sick. “It’s the dose that makes the poison,” she says. “If they’re not getting out, maybe it’s not a problem-but we don’t know. There are plenty of lab studies that show that these compounds are harmful. It’s just a question of what levels people are exposed to.”
 
Still, more and more consumers are seeking out mattresses made of natural latex, organic cotton batting, and organic wool. Sales of California-based Vivètique’s latex mattresses have increased by 40 percent annually for the past five years-they now comprise 45 percent of the company’s total sales. And they are even sold by discounter 1-800-Mattress.
 
It’s hard to say whether you should ditch your conventional bed in favor of a green one, since you’ll likely have a tough time figuring out exactly which toxins are lurking under your covers. Take, for example, fireproofing chemicals: Pentabde, a member of the polybrominated diphenyl ether (pbde) family of flame retardants, was used in some mattresses before 2004, when it was phased out. (Pentabde is now known to be toxic to the liver, thyroid, and nervous system.) So let’s say that just to be on the safe side you toss your pre-2004 mattress and buy a new one. Problem solved? Maybe not. Last July, the Consumer Product Safety Commission began to require that all mattresses sold in the United States be able to withstand 30 minutes of exposure to an open flame.
 
Mattress makers aren’t using Pentabde anymore-but it’s not clear exactly what they are using to meet the new standard. Major manufacturers such as Simmons, Sealy, and Tempur-Pedic won’t divulge their flame-retardant formulas, which are considered trade secrets. A Simmons press release touts a “proprietary blend of char-forming, intumescing, flame-resistant components.” Tempur-Pedic vaguely states that its products “consistently meet all safety standards.” A best guess at what’s in today’s mattresses comes from Ryan Trainer, executive vice president of the International Sleep Products Association, an industry group. He says most companies use “various types of barrier fabrics” such as cotton treated with boric acid or rayon treated with silica-both relatively benign chemicals-as well as fire-resistant materials such as modacrylic fiber (which contains antimony oxide, a carcinogen) and melamine resin (which contains formaldehyde).
 
With a doctor’s prescription, people who are chemically sensitive and have allergies can order a mattress that doesn’t pass a flammability test. But organic-mattress companies have found a simple way to fireproof: wrapping their bedding in a layer of wool. Their prices aren’t so warm and cozy-a queen-size latex model from Virginia-based Savvy Rest starts at $1,599. But if you’re having nightmares about your mattress, and it’s time to trade in your well-worn Posturepedic anyway, it might be worth it.
 
Susan Greenfield was a fan of organic mattresses even before the smelly memory-foam pad showed up-she’s slept on one for 15 years, says she “loves” it, and describes it as “very comfortable but very hard.” Hey, whatever helps you sleep at night.

Henbit
 
 
For this installment of Species of the Week I have reprinted a portion of the newsletter from my local chapter of the Native Plant Society:
 
 
South Carolina Native Plant Society
Pause for Plants, March 2007
 
Patches of Purple
 
Blooming now in lawns, fields, and along roadsides are the “Henbits,” two species of the mint family which have pinkish purple flowers, square stems and opposite leaves. Their common name comes from the notion (maybe fact) that free-range chickens find them tasty. One species is called “purple henbit” or “purple dead nettle.” Its scientific name is Lamium purpureum, “Lamium” from Greek for “thread” referring to the flowers tubular shape, and “purpureum” for purple flower petals and purple young leaves. The other henbit is Lamium amplexicaule with a species name describing its green leaves that “clasp the stem.” This henbit is also known as, “Giraffe head.” With a little stretch of the imagination, the fully mature flowers can be said to look like liliputian purple giraffe heads! Many online search references tell you how to eradicate these really attractive Eurasian transplants, and they are described as aggressive annual weeds! Both henbits have wide distributions over North America. They grow well in light shade to full sun.
 
Below is a vigorous patch of henbit:
 

 
[Image from Texas A&M University http://uvalde.tamu.edu/herbarium/laam.htm]
 
Folks sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between these “cousins” of the same genus. Their flowers are similar pink/purple tubular with two-lobed spotted lips. But their leaves are more distinctive, and a closer look reveals that the stem-clasping leaves of Lamium amplexicaule are round shaped with rounded teeth along their edge, and only the lower most leaves have stalks (petioles). Lamium purpureum leaves are more triangular shaped, less deeply lobed, and youngest leaves are often purple.
 
For more information and some great images check out
 
http://pick4.pick.uga.edu/mp/20q?search=Lamium+amplexicaule&guide=Lawn
 
Henbits are edible and healthful. Young fresh leaves can be used as pot herbs or in salads. Perhaps some of you would like to gather up henbit and other wild edible weeds to try the following recipe!
 
 
Wild Weed Salad*
 
1/2 cup young henbit leaves
1/2 cup young dandelion leaves
1 cup lamb’s quarter new leaves
1 small head of butter lettuce, torn (optional)
1/2 cup tender nasturtium and violet leaves, torn
1/4 cup chive blossoms
1/4 cup rose or tulip petals
1/2 cup nasturtium and violet flowers
2 tsp. fresh mint chopped fine and bruised
2 Tablespoons chopped basal
2 cloves minced garlic
Salt and pepper to taste
1 Tablespoon honey
3 ounces apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup salad oil
 
*This recipe can be changed to suit what is in season at the time. Carefully wash all the flowers and greens, let dry on paper towels. Mix gently in a salad bowl. Combine honey and apple cider vinegar, whisk in oil. Season to taste with salt and white pepper. Add dressing to salad and toss gently to coat all ingredients. Sprinkle with chopped almonds and serve.
 
Medicinal uses are also reported for henbits, and some examples are:
 
Whole plants of purple deadnettle, (Lamium purpureum) are soaked in hot water producing an decoction to check bleeding ( astringent ), and whole plant teas are used as a diaphoretic to induce sweating.
 
Decoctions and teas of henbit (Lamium amplexicaule) are used to relieve rheumatism, as a laxitive, a stimulant and also to induce sweating.
 
 
 
Mark
 
_________________
“Let us save at least part of our lives for enjoyment of this wonderful world which still exists. Leave your dens, abandon your cars, and walk out into the mountains, the deserts, the forests, the seashores.”
- – Edward Abbey

Low Thyroid Function: A 7 Step Plan to Overcome This Hidden Epidemic From UltraWellness-Running the Right Tests for Low Thyroid Function Can Help Diagnose and Correct Thyroid Problems in Millions of People
 
Market Wire
 
03-21-08
 
LENOX, MA, Mar 20, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX) — Many of the 45 million people affected by hypothyroidism don’t know they have it because doctors aren’t running the right tests. But by following the new guidelines for hypothyroid testing, as well as running lesser-known tests, doctors could diagnose more people with low thyroid function.
 
“There are many reasons for low thyroid function, yet I’ve seen lots of patients with this problem who were just ignored by their doctors,” said Mark Hyman, M.D. of UltraWellness. “Most doctors just check something called the thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), which doesn’t give a full picture of the thyroid, the interpretation of this test is incorrect most of the time.”
 
Most doctors only regard TSH levels over 5 or 10 as worth treating, but new guidelines from the American College of Endocrinology consider anybody with a TSH level over 3.0 as hypothyroid. There are also other tests, including free T3, free T4 and thyroid antibodies, which are essential for diagnosing low thyroid function.
 
“Using old guidelines and thinking, conventional medicine misses millions who suffer with hypothyroidism,” said Hyman. “I like to look at all of the factors that could be causing chronic thyroid problems such as chronic inflammation from gluten intolerance or food allergies, chronic stress, heavy metals such as mercury, or deficiencies of vitamin D, selenium, vitamin A, zinc, and omega-3 fats.”
 
Hypothyroidism can also be caused by environmental toxins such as pesticides, which act as hormone or endocrine disruptors and interfere with thyroid hormone metabolism and function, causing hypothyroidism, creating a slow metabolism and preventing weight loss.
 
“I believe a comprehensive approach is needed to address chronic thyroid issues and to diagnose them. Unfortunately, most of the options for healing by conventional care are quite limited and only provide a partial solution, but by following my seven-step plan you can achieve optimal health and UltraWellness,” said Hyman.
 
For more information on identifying symptoms of hypothyroidism and Dr. Mark Hyman’s seven-step plan to address hypothyroidism, visit The UltraWellness Blog (www.ultrawellness.com/blog).

Sources:
Life Extension Daily News
7-step Plan to Boost Low Thyroid and Metabolism – The Ultrawellness Blog

 

Just One Cup Of Green Tea Per Day Cuts Ovarian Cancer Risk In Half – Life Extension Newsletter

(Learn more about these issues at the Organic Consumers Association and the National Resources Defense Council.)
 

Where does your representative stand?

For more than five years, AT&T and other telephone companies broke the law and violated their customers’ privacy rights by sending billions of private domestic internet and telephone communications and records to the National Security Agency.

The Bush administration has been lobbying Congress to let the phone companies off the hook. But recently, the House of Representatives stood strong and passed a bill that would hold them accountable.

Enter your zipcode at StopTheSpying.org to find out how your House representative voted on the recent bill denying the telecom industry immunity for their criminal involvement in spying on the American people.

See also:

• EFF: The Case Against Retroactive Amnesty for Telecoms
• Wikipedia: NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
• American Civil Liberties Union: FISA
• Wikipedia: Legal challenges to NSA warrantless searches in the United States

Study: Subliminal ads warp your brain – CNET

Science has proven, once again, that advertising is effective. Who knew?

Researchers from upset-destined Duke University (fill out those brackets, people) and the University of Waterloo have published the results of a study that suggests that brief exposure to Apple’s brand logo drives higher levels of creativity than exposure to IBM’s logo. In fact, the researchers suggest that subliminal advertising is actually more effective than regular advertising, because people don’t have time to raise their anti-ad defenses.

…etc.

The Reality Distortion Field Is Real – Slashdot

“Apparently, even subliminal exposure to the Apple logo can make you ‘think different.’ Researchers at Duke University subjected participants to subliminal images of the iconic Apple and IBM logos (during what subjects thought was a visual acuity test), and those who were shown the Apple logo generated more creative ideas after the test than did those who were shown the IBM logo. In a second test, subjects exposed to the Disney logo acted more honestly than those who saw an E! Channel logo.”

Mr. Obama’s Profile in Courage – New York Times
March 19, 2008
Editorial

There are moments — increasingly rare in risk-abhorrent modern campaigns — when politicians are called upon to bare their fundamental beliefs. In the best of these moments, the speaker does not just salve the current political wound, but also illuminates larger, troubling issues that the nation is wrestling with.

Inaugural addresses by Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt come to mind, as does John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech on religion, with its enduring vision of the separation between church and state. Senator Barack Obama, who has not faced such tests of character this year, faced one on Tuesday. It is hard to imagine how he could have handled it better.

Mr. Obama had to address race and religion, the two most toxic subjects in politics. He was as powerful and frank as Mitt Romney was weak and calculating earlier this year in his attempt to persuade the religious right that his Mormonism is Christian enough for them.

It was not a moment to which Mr. Obama came easily. He hesitated uncomfortably long in dealing with the controversial remarks of his spiritual mentor and former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who denounced the United States as endemically racist, murderous and corrupt.

On Tuesday, Mr. Obama drew a bright line between his religious connection with Mr. Wright, which should be none of the voters’ business, and having a political connection, which would be very much their business. The distinction seems especially urgent after seven years of a president who has worked to blur the line between church and state.

Mr. Obama acknowledged his strong ties to Mr. Wright. He embraced him as the man “who helped introduce me to my Christian faith,” and said that “as imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me.”

Wisely, he did not claim to be unaware of Mr. Wright’s radicalism or bitterness, disarming the speculation about whether he personally heard the longtime pastor of his church speak the words being played and replayed on YouTube. Mr. Obama said Mr. Wright’s comments were not just potentially offensive, as politicians are apt to do, but “rightly offend white and black alike” and are wrong in their analysis of America. But, he said, many Americans “have heard remarks from your pastors, priests or rabbis with which you strongly disagree.”

Mr. Obama’s eloquent speech should end the debate over his ties to Mr. Wright since there is nothing to suggest that he would carry religion into government. But he did not stop there. He put Mr. Wright, his beliefs and the reaction to them into the larger context of race relations with an honesty seldom heard in public life.

Mr. Obama spoke of the nation’s ugly racial history, which started with slavery and Jim Crow, and continues today in racial segregation, the school achievement gap and discrimination in everything from banking services to law enforcement.

He did not hide from the often-unspoken reality that people on both sides of the color line are angry. “For the men and women of Reverend Wright’s generation,” he said, “the memories of humiliation and fear have not gone away, nor the anger and the bitterness of those years.”

At the same time, many white Americans, Mr. Obama noted, do not feel privileged by their race. “In an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero-sum game,” he said, adding that both sides must acknowledge that the other’s grievances are not imaginary.

He made the powerful point that while these feelings are not always voiced publicly, they are used in politics. “Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan coalition,” he said.

Against this backdrop, he said, he could not repudiate his pastor. “I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community,” he said. “I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother.” That woman whom he loves deeply, he said, “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street” and more than once “uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”

There have been times when we wondered what Mr. Obama meant when he talked about rising above traditional divides. This was not such a moment.

We can’t know how effective Mr. Obama’s words will be with those who will not draw the distinctions between faith and politics that he drew, or who will reject his frank talk about race. What is evident, though, is that he not only cleared the air over a particular controversy — he raised the discussion to a higher plane.

Transcript & Video: Barack Obama’s Speech on Race – New York Times

Reporting: Criticizing Pastor, Obama Assesses Race in America – New York Times, Obama Urges U.S. to Grapple With Race Issue – New York Times

What Obama Said, By The Editors – Two views from guest contributors on Senator Barack Obama’s “Race in America” speech. – New York Times

Fresh Air from WHYY, March 11, 2008 · Was America meant to be a Christian nation? Author Steven Waldman attempts to answer this and other questions related to America’s religious history in his new book, Founding Faith: Providence, Politics, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America.

Waldman is the co-founder of Beliefnet.com, a website devoted to spirituality and faith issues. In tandem with his book, Beliefnet has opened an online archive of historical documents related to the separation of church and state, and religious freedom in America.

How To: Buy Cheap Eyeglasses Online

Near-sighted blogger Matt Haughey stopped paying $500 for new eyeglasses and started shopping online for specs at much lower prices—around $50 or so. Over at the 43 Folders weblog, he explains what measurements you need, how to choose from the wide variety of glasses sold online, and what to expect from the whole experience. Anyone else had success or failure with online eyeglasses purchases? Let us know in the comments.

Adventures in $40 eyeglasses [43 Folders]

Specifically tackling re-lensing, BoingBoing.com linked to an article marking the first attempt at completing the process entirely online:

Ira, the blogger behind the Glassy Eyes blog, is one of my heroes. He writes about online companies that sell prescription eyeglasses. I now buy all my prescription eyeglasses online and save a bundle.

Today, Ira writes that he is sending in a pair of cherised, but badly scratched, eyeglasses for re-lensing. If he reports back with good results, I’ve got some vintage eyeglass frames I’m going to get re-lensed.

All TVs since 2005 have been fitted with digital as well as analog tuners. (Televisions that don’t have tuners included in their manufacture are just called “monitors.” You’d be hard-pressed to buy one of these on accident.) So if your TV is less than 3 years old, you’re in the clear. If it’s not, you’ll need a converter box for it to pull in even your local broadcast channels – such as PBS – over the air.

The FCC has mandated that we all be sufficiently notified and that there be coupons available for citizens to use toward lessening the financial hardship of the switch. Each of us is allowed up to two coupons. You’ll need a converter for every TV you use after February 2009 that is analog-only. The official website to request these coupons is DTV2009.gov. There is additional information and tools at this website, including a tool for locating where to buy a converter, but it’s likely that any retailer who sells televisions will have converters available.

NOTE: Digital TV is not the same as HDTV (High Definition TV). Normal Digital TV converter boxes will not enable you to watch over-the-air HDTV programming. You have to buy a converter capable of HDTV as well as Standard Definition DTV to see this programming. Read this page at DTVFacts.com to learn more.

DTVFacts.com aims to better educate consumers and does an excellent job of it.

ConsumerReports.org has a terrific website dedicated to the transition.

From ElectronicHouse.com: “A new report by the consumer advocacy group MassPirg (Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group), finds many retailers are misleading consumers about the upcoming analog-to-digital television transition.”

Wikipedia’s page on the transition is available here.

DTVAnswers.com is another informational site, published by the National Association of Broadcasters.

If you have any specific problems or would like to learn more about individual converter boxes or other hardware, I highly recommend searching or posting a new message to the Audio Video Science Forum.

Update: There is a specific forum for discussion of CECBs (Coupon-Eligible Converter Boxes). You can find it here.

Newegg.com has converter boxes available in their “Set-top box” category, but I’m not sure if they can accept the coupon. I’ll provide an update when I find out.

Update:  The Community Broadcaster’s Association has created an information clearing house for CECB specifications and how-to’s at KeepUsOn.com.

Prison Nation – New York TimesMarch 10, 2008

Editorial

After three decades of explosive growth, the nation’s prison population has reached some grim milestones: More than 1 in 100 American adults are behind bars. One in nine black men, ages 20 to 34, are serving time, as are 1 in 36 adult Hispanic men. Nationwide, the prison population hovers at almost 1.6 million, which surpasses all other countries for which there are reliable figures. The 50 states last year spent about $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections, up from nearly $11 billion in 1987. Vermont, Connecticut, Delaware, Michigan and Oregon devote as much money or more to corrections as they do to higher education.

These statistics, contained in a new report from the Pew Center on the States, point to a terrible waste of money and lives. They underscore the urgent challenge facing the federal government and cash-strapped states to reduce their overreliance on incarceration without sacrificing public safety. The key, as some states are learning, is getting smarter about distinguishing between violent criminals and dangerous repeat offenders, who need a prison cell, and low-risk offenders, who can be handled with effective community supervision, electronic monitoring and mandatory drug treatment programs, combined in some cases with shorter sentences.

Persuading public officials to adopt a more rational, cost-effective approach to prison policy is a daunting prospect, however, not least because building and running jailhouses has become a major industry.

Criminal behavior partly explains the size of the prison population, but incarceration rates have continued to rise while crime rates have fallen. Any effort to reduce the prison population must consider the blunderbuss impact of get-tough sentencing laws adopted across the United States beginning in the 1970’s. Many Americans have come to believe, wrongly, that keeping an outsized chunk of the population locked up is essential for sustaining a historic crime drop since the 1990’s.

In fact, the relationship between imprisonment and crime control is murky. Some portion of the decline is attributable to tough sentencing and release policies. But crime is also affected by things like economic trends and employment and drug-abuse rates. States that lagged behind the national average in rising incarceration rates during the 1990’s actually experienced a steeper decline in crime rates than states above the national average, according to the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit group.

A rising number of states are broadening their criminal sanctions with new options for low-risk offenders that are a lot cheaper than incarceration but still protect the public and hold offenders accountable. In New York, the crime rate has continued to drop despite efforts to reduce the number of nonviolent drug offenders in prison.

The Pew report spotlights policy changes in Texas and Kansas that have started to reduce their outsized prison populations and address recidivism by investing in ways to improve the success rates for community supervision, expanding treatment and diversion programs, and increasing use of sanctions other than prison for minor parole and probation violations. Recently, the Supreme Court and the United States Sentencing Commission announced sensible changes in the application of harsh mandatory minimum drug sentences.

These are signs that the country may finally be waking up to the fiscal and moral costs of bulging prisons.

Round-the-world News About Vitamin D

Work & Family Life

03-05-08

Originally Published:20080201.

Research reports keep rolling in on the importance of vitamin D in our diet-beyond its familiar role in helping us to build strong bones. Here are some of the findings:

Periodontal disease, in a dental study of 6,700 people from 13 to 90, the gums of patients with higher blood levels of vitamin D were 20 percent less likely to bleed. “The evidence on gingivitis and tooth loss suggests that vitamin D influences oral health by decreasing inflammation,” said Bess Dawson-Hughes, director of the Bone Metabolism Lab at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University.

Cancer. Studies by Reinhold Vieth at the University of Toronto have reported a substantial reduction in the rates of colon cancer as blood levels of vitamin D went up. Dr. Vieth suggests that vitamin D inhibits a mechanism by which cancer cells spread or it may boost the function of blood vessels or the immune system.

Diabetes. A number of studies have found that people with higher blood levels of vitamin D had a lower risk of diabetes than people with lower levels. Researchers have suggested that vitamin D seems to influence responsiveness to insulin.

Fitness. A study at the Wake Forest University School of Medicine found that people with low blood levels of vitamin D scored from 5 to 10 percent lower on tests measuring grip strength, balance and walking speed than those who had higher levels. Apparently vitamin D helps build and repair muscles as well as bones.

Longevity. People who take vitamin D supplements may also live longer, according to Sara Gandini, Ph.D., of the European Institute of Oncology in Italy, and Philippe Autier, M.D., of the International Agency for Research on Cancer in France. “The intake of ordinary doses of vitamin D supplements seems to be associated with decreases in total mortality rates,” they reported.

“The results are remarkable,” according to Edward Giovannucci, M.D., ScD., of the Harvard School of Public Health, in an editorial on vitamin D research in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

What to do. Adults should try to get 800 international units (IU) daily of vitamin D-or 1000 IUs a day if you are 70 or older. The average U.S. adult intake of vitamin D is 230 IUs daily, according to a study reported in the journal Nutrition Reviews. Vitamin D is available from sunlight, of course, and from foods such as fatty fish, eggs, fortified milk and fortified cereals as well as supplements.

-Sources: Bottom Line Health, CSPI Nutrition Action Letter, and Tufts University Health & Nutrition Letter

(Also, see an earlier article I posted on 21 December, 2007.)

By David Michael Green, AlterNet. Posted March 7, 2008.

…

It is almost a mathematical certainty that neither candidate can win the nomination by means of gathering pledged delegates in the months ahead. Under the proportional allocation system Democratic primaries and caucuses tend to use, a candidate has to do exceedingly well in the popular vote to realize a significant shift in delegates. It would appear that Clinton’s got some favorable states ahead, and that Obama has as many or perhaps more, unless momentum has really shifted now, after Tuesday.

…

Anyhow, let’s say we end the primary season about where we are now, with Obama about 100 delegates up, and having won more votes and more states than Clinton, but with neither candidate over the magic nomination-clinching line. It would be fairly outrageous for the Clintons to seize the brass ring at that point, but they will not care in the slightest what the ramifications of their actions might be for the party or the country. The Clintons will do anything – and I mean anything – to get the presidency. This is a sickness that infects the hearts and minds of some people much more than others. Because of their own needs, most prominently a very deep-seated personal insecurity, they simply need the validation of being president, and they go after it like a heat-seeking missile headed toward a power plant.

…

Maybe it goes to the Supreme Court for resolution (you know, those nice people in black robes who gave you the George W. Bush presidency), and they decide in her favor. Most likely she employs a combination of all these gambits, and collectively they could possibly give her enough delegates for a narrow technical (and very Pyrrhic) victory.

If any of these scenarios play out, Obama should leave the Democratic Party and run as a third-party candidate. Simple as that.

It would be the morally proper thing to do, and it just might even be successful, especially in the longer term.

If this seems an improbable quest, remember that Obama’s support is quite passionate – he’s not just your standard-issue marginal political preference for, say, Joe Biden over Chris Dodd. Nor would this be some personal (and absurd) vanity project, like Ross Perot’s. His supporters would be outraged at the stealing of the nomination from its rightful owner, and they’re a motivated bunch. Black voters would feel particularly slighted, and would be likely to follow Obama elsewhere. That alone would be enough to finish off the already badly-damaged Clinton candidacy in the general election. Given this moral high ground, too, I don’t think Obama would be perceived as the Ralph Nader who gave the election to McCain. Perhaps, because of access restrictions, he wouldn’t even be able to get on the ballot in many places, except as a write-in.

In the end, I don’t think it much matters. If he can’t win in 2008, the country will be ripe for the taking after four years of John McSame. And Obama has shown us nothing this last year if not excellence in organizing skills. There’s plenty of time by 2012 to give birth to a real progressive party that has been aching to calve off from the Democrats for three decades now. If the Clintons and the Liebermans of this world want to hang tight with their DLC party of Diet Pepsi Wall Street, let them. If they feel a burning compulsion to become the Whigs of the 21st century, I for one won’t stand in the way.

…

Unfortunately – really, very unfortunately – it’s an almost impossible trick to pull off given the structure of the American political system, and I have joined lots of other smarter people counseling against the effort, suggesting an attempt at hijacking the Democratic Party instead. Not for nothing was the last new major party born in America 150 years ago. It’s not an accident that for about three-fourths of the country’s history it’s been Republicans or Democrats. Period.

…

(Read the whole thing here: http://www.alternet.org/election08/78973/?page=1)

A German art project could help the British avoid the oppressive proliferation of surveillance cameras in their country. The I-R.A.S.C is simple, consisting of a circle of infra-red LEDs mounted on a headband. The infra red is invisible to The Man, but will cause CCTV cameras to flare out over the face of the wearer, obscuring his identity and making this the digital equivalent of a hooded sweatshirt.

This is not a production unit, but given that youd only need a hat, a battery and a few LEDs, you could easily knock one up in the garage.

CCTV Busting Infra-Red Headset Makes You Invisible | Gadget Lab from Wired.com

(This advancement impacts any sort of electrical array where an inverter is used, but I gear this post toward photovoltaics because in my opinion they’re currently by far the best option for alternative energy production. I lost the love for wind turbines when I learned they kill thousands of bats a year. Which warrants a separate post…)

A new inverter developed by engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute achieved an efficiency rating of 98.5 percent. The more efficient the inverter, the less energy is lost in the conversion.

“Fraunhofer researchers succeeded in reducing the power dissipation of conventional inverters by 30 to 50 percent when compared with results obtained with traditional silicon-based transistors.”

So, while increasing the efficiency of the photovoltaic material itself is probably the more exciting direction for improving efficiency, inverters that lose less of the energy as it is usefully delivered are also a development that will help.

(Source: EcoGeek)

It’s called Detox Your Home and it includes short videos with Sarah Snow, who has two terrific shows on the Discovery Networks:  Get Fresh and Living Fresh.

(More home health links here:  http://del.icio.us/bobodod/home+health and more home related videos here:  http://del.icio.us/bobodod/home+video)

…

Whistleblower: Cellular carrier giving FBI unfettered access

One of the better known traditions of the annual Mardi Gras celebration in New Orleans, LA is the beads — most folks wear lots of cheap plastic beads while they wander the city’s streets in search of fun, and men hoping that women will flash their breasts usually toss ladies their beads in what they hope will be considered a fair exchange. However, while in New Orleans, those beads symbolize a wild party and low-level exhibitionism, on the other side of the world they mean something else. In Fuzhou, China, a man named Roger Wong owns a factory that produces the majority of the beads tossed to strangers during Mardi Gras, and to his employees, the beads mean work days of 14 to 20 hours, for which they are paid less than ten cents an hour. Most of the workers in Wong’s plant are young women, whom he says are less likely to cause trouble or make demands than their male equivalent. The workers live in a dormitory where they can be fined one month’s wages if a member of the opposite sex is found in their room. And most are struggling to support themselves and their families on wages that are low even by the standards of a Chinese sweatshop. Mardi Gras: Made in China is a documentary which explores the dramatic contrast between the conditions under which Mardi Gras beads are made and what happens with them once they arrive in the United States; both American revelers and Chinese workers are given a perspective on how the other half lives, and what can be done to make their circumstances more equitable.

Mardi Gras: Made in China official website

IMDB

RottenTomatoes.com

I first learned of Mr. Pollan and his food-based investigative journalism, during another interview with Terri Gross on Fresh Air. He discussed the lengths he went to for a New York Times Sunday Magazine article entitled “Power Steer” on the life of meat cows. He set about to steward a cow through it’s short life-cycle in the meat industry and the results were, well, listen to that fascinating broadcast here (51 minutes).

Dig in del.icio.us for more native plants links: http://del.icio.us/tag/native+plants

(OT: I very highly recommend Traditional Medicinals’ ginger teas, esp. Ginger Aid. Get em at your locally owned health food store or websites such as VitaCost.com which I found through Google’s Product Search.)

Around that time, I learned that “dry cleaning” doesn’t mean “dry.” It means “without water.” What is used as a substitute for water and soap (or detergent in this case, which often contains synthetic toxins itself) is a chemical commonly known as PERC. Its full chemical name is percholroethylene, and as its name implies, it’s a highly toxic petroleum distillate.

PERC has been banned in California and the United States is in the process of phasing it out through the rest of the country. It is absorbed both through inhalation and absorption through the skin and can build up in one’s system to contribute to a significantly increased risk of developing cancer.

There are alternatives to PERC (2nd source) and I found when I called cleaners within two miles of my home that there were indeed businesses that had already moved on to safer solutions. Unfortunately, PERC is very soluble in water and has been found in U.S. water supplies and not all water filtration systems are capable of filtering it out.

~ ~ ~

(Are you interested in what real soap is like? Check out this article by my favorite soap maker, Dr. Bronner’s. And here is their dramatic demonstration of an unreliable GHB drug testing kit that turns out to be an effective test of real versus fake soaps.

For more information regarding toxins in general, take a look at these two pages of links I’ve created: http://del.icio.us/bobodod/toxins and http://del.icio.us/bobodod/nontoxic)

Charming and Aloof, Huckabee Changed State

By ADAM NOSSITER and DAVID BARSTOW

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — In more than a decade of presiding over this state, Mike Huckabee produced a legacy like few other Republican governors in the South, surprising even liberal Democrats with his willingness to upend some of Arkansas’s more parochial traditions.

A review of his record as governor shows that, beginning in 1996, he drove through a series of changes that transformed education and health insurance in Arkansas, achievements that were never tried by most of his predecessors, including Bill Clinton.

But he is also remembered in the state for a style of governing that tended to freeze out anyone of any party who disagreed with his plans. He did not, for example, seek Mr. Clinton’s conciliatory middle, or try to court skeptical state lawmakers. Though he was considered as persuasive a speechmaker as he had been a pastor, Mr. Huckabee largely kept his own counsel — in politics, ethics and a singular clemency policy that continues to haunt him.

Against the political advice of his party and his aides, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of hundreds of convicts, including murderers, sometimes over the heated objections of prosecutors and victims’ families. He was cited five times by the state ethics commission for financial improprieties, and unapologetically accepted tens of thousands of dollars worth of clothes and other gifts while he was governor.

Republicans in Arkansas, a beleaguered minority, gleefully greeted his ascendancy but wound up embittered, in many cases, over a governor who “sided with liberal Democrats,” as one put it.

Mr. Huckabee is a son of small-town Arkansas, yet he deeply angered many in his rural constituency, touching the third rail of the state’s politics by shutting down money-draining, redundant school districts in the hinterlands. Protesters rallied at the state Capitol, fearful of losing schools, football teams, and age-old identities, but the governor insisted his way was the best and the schools were closed.

He proclaimed himself a fiscal conservative, but startled legislators with his proposals to raise taxes — for roads, in 1999, and for schools, prisons and other services three years later. He sought the electoral defeat of Republicans who opposed him, according to some in the party.

A constant throughout was his presence at the microphone, the former television preacher delivering his word from the pulpit though hardly mingling in the Capitol’s marble halls.

“He would go out and stump and do his shtick and tell his jokes and charm you,” said State Senator Jimmy Jeffress, a Democrat and critic of the former governor. “He has the gift of gab. He’s the only person I know, other than Bill Clinton, who can pick up a rock and give you a 10-minute talk on it.”

Follow the link for more:  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/22/us/politics/22huckabee.html

The Red and the Mondegreen

Legend: Misheard lyrics to Christmas songs are immortalized as ‘mondegreens.’

Origins: The term ‘mondegreen’ — representing a series of words resulting from the mishearing of a statement or song lyric — is generally attributed to Sylvia Wright, who is credited with coining the neologism in a 1954 Harper’s column. Ms. Wright was chagrined to discover that for many years she had misunderstood the last line of the first stanza in the Scottish folk ballad “The Bonny Earl of Murray,” which reads:

Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,
Oh! Where ha’e ye been:
They ha’e slain the Earl of Murray,
And they laid him on the Green.

Ms. Wright misheard this stanza as:

Ye Highlands and ye Lawlands,
Oh! Where ha’e ye been:
They ha’e slain the Earl of Murray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

From the disappearance of Sylvia Wright’s tragic heroine, Lady Mondegreen, came the term for describing unconventional interpretations or understandings of oral repetition, usually in the form of song lyrics.

Christmas carols and other holiday songs, rife as they are with seldom-heard words and phrasings and clever wordplay, are fertile fields for the sowing of mondegreens — especially when children, with their limited vocabularies, are involved. (We note that Mondegreens are based upon a genuine misunderstanding of lyrics, a distinctly different phenomenon than the deliberate creation of parodic lyrics such as “Jingle Bells, Batman smells, Robin laid an egg,” or “We three kings of Orient are; tried to smoke a rubber cigar.”)

Over the years we’ve collected a variety of Christmas mondegreens from books, Internet postings, and reader e-mail. The table displayed below presents mangled Christmas lyrics (with the mondegreened lines bolded and italicized) in the left-hand column, while the correct lyrics are shown in the right-hand column.

Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2007

Follow the link to see the Christmas carol mondegreens: http://www.snopes.com/holidays/christmas/humor/mondegreens.asp

Al Sears, MD 12794 Forest Hill Blvd., Suite 16 Wellington, FL 33414

December 17, 2007

I recently wrote about a report out of a university in Nebraska showing that vitamin D has the potential to lower the risk of all cancers in women by 77%.1

In the last 15 months, 5 more bombshells exploded showing the power of vitamin D to stop cancer. Here’s the rest of the timeline:

• In February, researchers at UC San Diego released the results of two key studies on breast and colon cancer. They said you can lower your risk of breast cancer by 50%, and colon cancer by more than 65%,simply by boosting your vitamin D levels through sunlight, diet, or supplements.2,3

• In October of last year, scientists published compelling discoveries linking sun exposure and lowered cancer risk in the journal Anticancer Research. They found that plain old sunlight– about 20 minutes a day for fair-skinned folks, and two to four times that much for those with dark skin – can reduce the risk of 16 types of cancer in both men and women.4

• A Harvard-sponsored report published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in September 2006 uncovered a connection between low vitamin D levels and increased cancer risk. It revealed that when men raise their vitamin D intake, they can lower their overall risk of cancer death by 29%, drop rates of “digestive tract” cancers by 43% (throat, stomach, and colon), and reduce death rates from these cancers by 45%.5

The response was tremendous… in Canada. After the Creighton report last summer, the Canadian Cancer Society decided it was time to get the word out. They launched a nationwide campaign recommending that every Canadian citizen start taking 1,000 IEUs of vitamin D every day. (You should, too.) Vitamin D was flying off the shelves all over the country.

On this side of the border, the silence was deafening.

Forget about a national vitamin D awareness campaign in this country, because there isn’t one. Instead, let’s look at a recent report from a relatively small group, the Metropolitan Chicago Breast Cancer Task Force. It’s made up of over 100 doctors and nurses. Their goal is to inform black women about the risks of breast cancer and what they can do to prevent it.6

In Chicago, black women die from breast cancer at a rate 68% higher than white women. Yet in its 113-page report, the Task Force doesn’t mention vitamin D once. This is particularly upsetting when you consider that black women are especially vulnerable to vitamin D deficiency.

Think about it: a large, vulnerable segment of the female population in the US is missing out on the biggest, most affordable cancer prevention bonanza to come along in years.

And this is just one small example of mainstream medicine’s handling of cancer prevention, from a “task force” whose stated goal is to help a group especially at risk. So you can see why I think the healthcare industry is doing the American public a major disservice.

To remedy the situation, let’s review what you can do to bolster your vitamin D levels and drive your risk of all kinds of cancer through the floor:

• Eat a “D-rich” diet – fish, eggs, milk (wild-caught, free-range, and organic) all have plenty of vitamin D.
• Take supplements – available on line or in health food stores – at least 1,000 IEUs per day.
• Get 20 minutes of sunlight if you’re fair-skinned, or up to twice that much if you’re dark-skinned.

When it comes to vitamin D and cancer, it’s no exaggeration to say that the American medical establishment’s silence is more than deafening – it’s deadly.

To Your Good Health,

Al Sears, MD

(Update:  More vitamin D news blogged on 11 March, 2008.)

iPod touch breakdown reveals sky high margins once again

January:  Dozens of “Certified Organic” candidates sworn into office

February:  Field trials of experimental biotech grass halted

March:  Monsanto’s genetically engineered alfalfa banned

April:  USDA bans cloned foods from organics

May:  Consumers successfully pressure congress on country of origin labels

June:  Factory farm has organic certification yanked

July:  Congress preserves local food and crop safety laws

August:  Beer giant goes organic

September:  OCA declares victory in its “Frankenbucks” campaign

Ocbtober:  Class action lawsuit in 27 States launched against factory farms

November:  rBGH being driven off the market:  “rBGH-Free” labeling protected

December:  Massive NAIS threat to family farmers held off

I feel like my congresspeople are whoring me and my Country out:

The INQUIRER: FCC Chairman is owned by media conglomerates

FreePress.net petition & Facebook community

ConsumerAffairs.com: FCC Votes To Relax Media Ownership Rules

DailyKos.com: Making the World Safe for Rupert

Reuters via Truthout.org: FCC Votes to Ease Media Ownership Restrictions

Ellen Page at AllMovie.com

Why weren’t more of our representatives – on either side of the aisle – adamant about protecting the Constitution in this case? Do the phone companies have so much power that everyone wanted to protect them more than the people of the U.S.? Where are the congresspeople who work for us (the people)?

This seems an issue that should have been dear to conservatives. I have always understood the Republican party to traditionally be the party to protect citizens’ privacy and curb government intervention in our lives.  Where are the Republicans in fighting this injustice? If the perception of what happened in the Senate is accurate, then there was only one person, a Democrat (and without much help from the other Democrats, either), who kept this bill from being passed at this time. It’ll come around again in January.

Chris Dodd’s my hero today.

Articles:

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Threat Level blog @ Wired

Crooks and Liars (MSNBC Countdown video w/great talking points)

Chris Dodd’s voting record at Project Vote Smart – certainly not squeaky clean (supports PATRIOT act? Oh boy)

Boing Boing

The Raw Story

The erotic appeal of the Lands’ End catalog.

by James Stegall

November 20, 2007

The Lands’ End Fall catalog is porn for the heartsick man. Who thought sixty pages of stylish-yet-practical clothing would employ models that are disturbing approximations of the lovely, thirty-something woman who doesn’t want to put up with your shit anymore?

But there she is: kicking leaves on a crisp day, sipping coffee in an immaculate breakfast nook, nestling a golden baby and smiling like the most perfect family photo on a young executive’s desk.

These are images more invasive than any Victoria’s Secret spread, because they don’t inspire lust. This is a pornography of regret, and the longer you stare, the more seductive it becomes. These sixty pages are a self-pity trap; any sane lonely man would do well to avoid them.

But there it waits in the mailbox — two copies, in fact — waiting to snap its poisoned jaws. Why am I receiving this? you might ask. Then you remember that she bought products from his company, and on first glance it’s easy to see why: this is Spiegel-light, clothing for the multi-tasking young mom when she’s not wearing Petite Sophisticate at the office.

These women have long green fields waiting fuzzily in the background. They gaze into the distance; they smile ruminatively downward; they hold confident eye contact with the camera. These are women who aren’t afraid to wear flannel pajamas. They are comfortable in their roles as accomplished, sexy everything-women.

You have to look closer to see what truly makes the models special, though, what elevates them above Victoria’s Secret: they have wrinkles around their eyes. These women have laugh lines, taut necks, and that slight tummy that can be so, so sexy. These are not the airbrushed dolls of ignorant fantasy. These women are real.

And their eyes: Is it pain in their eyes? Are there any illusions left there — about life, about men?

©2007 James Stegall and Nerve.com

[This essay progresses in language meant for adults and includes images from Land's End: "Personal Inventory: the erotic appeal of the Lands' End catalog" – Thank you Sarah!]

In geek heaven, everything will be made of Legos, and George Lucas will be forced to remake episodes 1 through 3 until he gets them right. Here on Earth, you can come pretty close to paradise with the new Motorized Walking AT-AT. Powered by six AA batteries, the brick-bodied Imperial Walker strides forward and backward and moves its head up and down just like in the movies. Its rotating laser canons are capable of destroying entire rebel bases, while the massive feet stomp on Alliance soldiers and Stormtroopers alike with a cold, unyielding robot logic that knows neither pity nor malice. The Walker comes with an AT-AT pilot, a Snowtrooper, the hated General Maximilian Veers, and a wee Luke Skywalker — a tiny grappling line lets him dangle from the giant’s belly and storm the cockpit with his lightsaber. It’s the closest thing to nerdvana this side of the planet Hoth.

According to a recent PC World article mentioned on The PC Decrapifier’s website, backlash from consumers is now strong enough for at least one of these PC makers to offer an opt-out option – though it appears a complicated process. PC World goes into further detail about this greedy behavior, noting that none but one of the companies involved would comment specifically except to say “it’s a feature!”

Well, I know exactly where they can put their features.

~ ~ ~

The PC Decrapifier has enjoyed fairly steady development since its introduction. It removes a long list of common junkware. Please be careful and read the documentation if you decide to enlist its help in the fight to take back your new PC.

What’s the difference between yesterday and today? Nothing much, if you consider it on a day by day basis. Just 26 years after the first cellular (mobile) network was launched, we have reached 3.3 billion mobile subscriptions. That’s half the population of the world, many of whom never had any form of telecommunications just ten years ago. Today there are mobile networks in 224 countries.

The first mobile network was launched way back in August 1981 in Sweden and Norway. The network was based on the NMT-450 (Nordic Mobile Telephony) standard, and the first mobile phone was the Mobira Senator 450 by Nokia. The Mobira Senator 450 weighed 10 kilos! Think about that the next time you say a Nokia phone is “heavy”.

Originally publishing “The Israel Lobby” as an essay in the London Review of Books in March 2006, John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt’s analysis of the Israel Lobby and its influence on U.S. foreign policy was one of the most controversial articles in recent memory. Having deepened and expanded their argument to confront recent developments in Lebanon and Iran, Mearsheimer and Walt join the World Affairs Council for a public exchange in San Francisco, where they will discuss their contention that the material and diplomatic support provided by the United States to Israel is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. They argue that this lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East-in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The discussion is available in streaming video via RealPlayer and in downloadable MP3 format. Note that the MP3 doesn’t have the correct file extension and the filename must be appended with “.mp3″ (without the quotes). The entire show is just over an our long and counts as college credit somewhere, I’m sure. It’s getting a bullet point on my resume no matter what. Either way, please take my word for it, it’s worth the time.

(For Windows computers, I highly recommend Real Alternative in place of the invasive RealPlayer, and Foobar2000 for playing all audio files. Mac OS-based systems will receive my enlightened recommendations once someone donates a MacBook Pro with 15.4″ LED LCD, 2.4GHz CPU, hologram projector and flux-capacitor at 1.21 Jigawatts.)

According to the Wikipedia article on the subject, okay comes from “oll korrect,” a conscious misspelling of “all correct,” coined by Boston journalists in the late 19th century.

Now, before anyone flames me for scoffing at this nonsense, please note that I learned RLS is a real illness, though rare. It’s completely different from the nervous-energy-triggered, bouncing-leg behavior someone exhibited during every minute of every class period in highschool.

Acid Reflux may be real as well and not just symptoms of the crazy modern diet. (I doubt it.) But the ads by Megapharmacorp, Inc. are propaganda, cut and dry. I’m not being naïve. I will never quit expecting people to behave ethically and scrupulous. And in this country (USA), corporations are legally people, too (more so, even).

Insect experts at the [London] Natural History Museum reveal that termites, the creatures famous for building enormous mounds and eating houses, are in fact cockroaches.

Termites have long baffled scientists as to their place in the natural world and their relationship with other insects. Although they are part of a large ‘superorder’ that includes cockroaches, they were classified separately in a group called Isoptera .

This new research puts termites into the same group as cockroaches, (Blattodea). Termites are now classed as a new family of cockroaches called Termitidae . Isoptera is no longer valid.

Social insects

Termite diet, social behaviour and ecology are very different from their kitchen infesting cockroach counterparts. Confusingly also known as ‘white ants’, termites show many behavioural similarities with ants, wasps and bees as they are ‘social’ insects. They produce offspring to carry out specialised tasks such as foraging, mound building, defence or reproduction.

DNA analysis

Dr Paul Eggleton, Daegan Inward and George Beccaloni carried out the most comprehensive DNA study to date . They studied 107 different species of termites, cockroaches and mantids, another group of animals thought to be closely related.

‘The key change in the termites’ evolution from their cockroach ancestors seems to be when they developed the ability to eat wood ,’ said Paul, Museum termite expert, ‘they gradually lost their characteristic egg case, and some of their offspring became sterile workers and soldiers’.

Changing appearance and behaviour

‘It may seem surprising that termites are actually social cockroaches since they look so different, but it is not unusual for animals to change in appearance as their behaviour evolves over time. Perhaps the most famous social insects, ants, evolved from solitary predatory wasps.’

Dr George Beccaloni, the Museum’s cockroach expert adds, ‘It is very rare that such a major change is proposed to how a group of animals is classified by biologists. If our findings are correct the textbooks will need to be rewritten.’

The paper Death of an order: a comprehensive molecular phylogenetic study confirms that termites are eusocial cockroaches is published online in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

This video does a great job of lining it out (Google Reader is the program shown in the video tutorial below, though there are many, many more).:

Address by Mayor Ross C. “Rocky” Anderson

October 27, 2007

City & County Building

Salt Lake City, Utah

Today, as we come together once again in this great city, we raise our voices in unison to say to President Bush, to Vice President Cheney, to other members of the Bush Administration (past and present), to a majority of Congress, including Utah’s entire congressional delegation, and to much of the mainstream media: “You have failed us miserably and we won’t take it any more.”

“While we had every reason to expect far more of you, you have been pompous, greedy, cruel, and incompetent as you have led this great nation to a moral, military, and national security abyss.”

“You have breached trust with the American people in the most egregious ways. You have utterly failed in the performance of your jobs. You have undermined our Constitution, permitted the violation of the most fundamental treaty obligations, and betrayed the rule of law.”

“You have engaged in, or permitted, heinous human rights abuses of the sort never before countenanced in our nation’s history as a matter of official policy. You have sent American men and women to kill and be killed on the basis of lies, on the basis of shifting justifications, without competent leadership, and without even a coherent plan for this monumental blunder.”

“We are here to tell you: We won’t take it any more!”

“You have acted in direct contravention of values that we, as Americans who love our country, hold dear. You have deceived us in the most cynical, outrageous ways. You have undermined, or allowed the undermining of, our constitutional system of checks and balances among the three presumed co-equal branches of government. You have helped lead our nation to the brink of fascism, of a dictatorship contemptuous of our nation’s treaty obligations, federal statutory law, our Constitution, and the rule of law.”

“Because of you, and because of your jingoistic false ‘patriotism,’ our world is far more dangerous, our nation is far more despised, and the threat of terrorism is far greater than ever before.

It has been absolutely astounding how you have committed the most horrendous acts, causing such needless tragedy in the lives of millions of people, yet you wear your so-called religion on your sleeves, asserting your God-is-on-my-side nonsense – when what you have done flies in the face of any religious or humanitarian tradition. Your hypocrisy is mind-boggling – and disgraceful. What part of “Thou shalt not kill” do you not understand? What part of the “Golden rule” do you not understand? What part of “be honest,” “be responsible,” and “be accountable” don’t you understand? What part of “Blessed are the peacekeepers” do you not understand?

Because of you, hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, many thousands of people have suffered horrendous lifetime injuries, and millions have been run off from their homes. For the sake of our nation, for the sake of our children, and for the sake of our brothers and sisters around the world, we are morally compelled to say, as loudly as we can, ‘We won’t take it any more!’ ”

“As United States agents kidnap, disappear, and torture human beings around the world, you justify, you deceive, and you cover up. We find what you have done to men, women and children, and to the good name and reputation of the United States, so appalling, so unconscionable, and so outrageous as to compel us to call upon you to step aside and allow other men and women who are competent, true to our nation’s values, and with high moral principles to stand in your places – for the good of our nation, for the good of our children, and for the good of our world.”

In the case of the President and Vice President, this means impeachment and removal from office, without any further delay from a complacent, complicit Congress, the Democratic majority of which cares more about political gain in 2008 than it does about the vindication of our Constitution, the rule of law, and democratic accountability.

It means the election of people as President and Vice President who, unlike most of the presidential candidates from both major parties, have not aided and abetted in the perpetration of the illegal, tragic, devastating invasion and occupation of Iraq. And it means the election of people as President and Vice President who will commit to return our nation to the moral and strategic imperative of refraining from torturing human beings.

In the case of the majority of Congress, it means electing people who are diligent enough to learn the facts, including reading available National Intelligence Estimates, before voting to go to war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will jealously guard Congress’s sole prerogative to declare war. It means electing to Congress men and women who will not submit like vapid lap dogs to presidential requests for blank checks to engage in so-called preemptive wars, for legislation permitting warrantless wiretapping of communications involving US citizens, and for dangerous, irresponsible, saber-rattling legislation like the recent Kyl-Lieberman amendment.

We must avoid the trap of focusing the blame solely upon President Bush and Vice-President Cheney. This is not just about a few people who have wronged our country – and the world. They were enabled by members of both parties in Congress, they were enabled by the pathetic mainstream news media, and, ultimately, they have been enabled by the American people – 40% of whom are so ill-informed they still think Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks – a people who know and care more about baseball statistics and which drunken starlets are wearing underwear than they know and care about the atrocities being committed every single day in our name by a government for which we need to take responsibility.

As loyal Americans, without regard to political partisanship — as veterans, as teachers, as religious leaders, as working men and women, as students, as professionals, as businesspeople, as public servants, as retirees, as people of all ages, races, ethnic origins, sexual orientations, and faiths –we are here to say to the Bush administration, to the majority of Congress, and to the mainstream media: “You have violated your solemn responsibilities. You have undermined our democracy, spat upon our Constitution, and engaged in outrageous, despicable acts. You have brought our nation to a point of immorality, inhumanity, and illegality of immense, tragic, unprecedented proportions.”

“But we will live up to our responsibilities as citizens, as brothers and sisters of those who have suffered as a result of the imperial bullying of the United States government, and as moral actors who must take a stand: And we will, and must, mean it when we say ‘We won’t take it any more.’”

If we want principled, courageous elected officials, we need to be principled, courageous, and tenacious ourselves. History has demonstrated that our elected officials are not the leaders – the leadership has to come from us. If we don’t insist, if we don’t persist, then we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens in a democracy – and our responsibilities as moral human beings. If we remain silent, we signal to Congress and the Bush administration – and to candidates running for office – and to the world – that we support the status quo.

Silence is complicity. Only by standing up for what’s right and never letting down can we say we are doing our part.

Our government, on the basis of a campaign we now know was entirely fraudulent, attacked and militarily occupied a nation that posed no danger to the United States. Our government, acting in our name, has caused immense, unjustified death and destruction.

It all started five years ago, yet where have we, the American people, been? At this point, we are responsible. We get together once in a while at demonstrations and complain about Bush and Cheney, about Congress, and about the pathetic news media. We point fingers and yell a lot. Then most people politely go away until another demonstration a few months later.

How many people can honestly say they have spent as much time learning about and opposing the outrages of the Bush administration as they have spent watching sports or mindless television programs during the past five years? Escapist, time-sapping sports and insipid entertainment have indeed become the opiate of the masses.

Why is this country so sound asleep? Why do we abide what is happening to our nation, to our Constitution, to the cause of peace and international law and order? Why are we not doing all in our power to put an end to this madness?

We should be in the streets regularly and students should be raising hell on our campuses. We should be making it clear in every way possible that apologies or convoluted, disingenuous explanations just don’t cut it when presidential candidates and so many others voted to authorize George Bush and his neo-con buddies to send American men and women to attack and occupy Iraq.

Let’s awaken, and wake up the country by committing here and now to do all each of us can to take our nation back. Let them hear us across the country, as we ask others to join us: “We won’t take it any more!”

I implore you: Draw a line. Figure out exactly where your own moral breaking point is. How much will you put up with before you say “No more” and mean it?

I have drawn my line as a matter of simple personal morality: I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has voted to fund the atrocities in Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who will not commit to remove all US troops, as soon as possible, from Iraq. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has supported legislation that takes us one step closer to attacking Iran. I cannot, and will not, support any candidate who has not fought to stop the kidnapping, disappearances, and torture being carried on in our name.

If we expect our nation’s elected officials to take us seriously, let us send a powerful message they cannot misunderstand. Let them know we really do have our moral breaking point. Let them know we have drawn a bright line. Let them know they cannot take our support for granted – that, regardless of their party and regardless of other political considerations, they will not have our support if they cannot provide, and have not provided, principled leadership.

The people of this nation may have been far too quiet for five years, but let us pledge that we won’t let it go on one more day – that we will do all we can to put an end to the illegalities, the moral degradation, and the disintegration of our nation’s reputation in the world.

Let us be unified in drawing the line – in declaring that we do have a moral breaking point. Let us insist, together, in supporting our troops and in gratitude for the freedoms for which our veterans gave so much, that we bring our troops home from Iraq, that we return our government to a constitutional democracy, and that we commit to honoring the fundamental principles of human rights.

In defense of our country, in defense of our Constitution, in defense of our shared values as Americans – and as moral human beings – we declare today that we will fight in every way possible to stop the insanity, stop the continued military occupation of Iraq, and stop the moral depravity reflected by the kidnapping, disappearing, and torture of people around the world.

[More on Mayor Ross Anderson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Anderson]

Source: http://www.eff.org/press/releases/2007/09#005443

* Two Leading Technologists Join EFF Board of Directors

Free Culture Leader John Buckman and Privacy and Security Expert Lorrie Faith Cranor Sign on to Distinguished Team

San Francisco – The Board of Directors of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has elected two leading technologists to join its executive board: free culture leader John Buckman and privacy and security expert Lorrie Faith Cranor.

John Buckman is a programmer, an entrepreneur, and the founder of Magnatune.com — an online record label that strives to be fair to both recording artists and consumers alike. The Magnatune site provides web-based distribution to over 250 recording artists and features an innovative tool for online music licensing for film, television, and new media. This Creative Commons-backed business model has helped establish Buckman as a leader in the free culture movement. Buckman is also the founder Bookmooch.com, an online community for the exchanging of used books. His past accomplishments include having founded email software company Lyris in 1994, which he sold to JL Halsey in 2005. He also created Tile.net, an early web site directory that was purchased by Internet.com in 2001.

“EFF fights to protect the rights of artists and fans who use technology to make and enjoy creative works,” said Buckman. “I’m happy to join them in taking on these cutting-edge issues.”

Lorrie Faith Cranor is an Associate Research Professor in the School of Computer Science and the department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She has played a key role in building the usable privacy and security research community, having co-edited the seminal book “Security and Usability” and founded the Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS). Cranor has authored over 80 research papers on online privacy, phishing and semantic attacks, spam, electronic voting, anonymous publishing, usable access control, and other topics. She has also testified as an expert in lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Internet “harmful to minors” laws. In 2003, Cranor was named one of the top 100 innovators 35 or younger by Technology Review magazine. She was previously a researcher at AT&T Labs Research and taught in the Stern School of Business at New York University.

“The privacy and security policy decisions made now will have far-reaching implications in the years to come,” said Cranor. “I’m pleased to work with EFF as they champion the public interest in these important debates.”

Other members of EFF’s executive board include John Perry Barlow, David Farber, Edward W. Felten, John Gilmore, Brewster Kahle, Joe Kraus, Lawrence Lessig, Pamela Samuelson, Shari Steele, and Brad Templeton.

“EFF is so fortunate to have such a distinguished Board of Directors, comprised of leaders in technology, policy, and law,” said EFF Executive Director Shari Steele. “John and Lorrie bring a wonderful wealth of experience to EFF and will help us continue to think about our role in relation to emerging technologies.”

Laura Ingram rarely buys anything new, but last spring the 58-year-old Oakland landlord sprang for 16 feet of new oak bookcases to line the walls of her backyard studio-office.

“There was no problem in the showroom, when I was standing there with huge stacks of shelves,” she said. “But when the shelves arrived, they provoked such a violent allergic reaction in me after delivery that the vendor had to come and get them the next day and put them on a loading dock for three weeks to off-gas.”

The bookcases came back, and Ingram paid a carpenter to install them and a helper to move 35 boxes of books. Still, her chest would hurt, her lips would swell, she’d get confused and feel as if she had the flu.

So the furniture sat in her yard for three more months while she waited for the chemical odor to dissipate. It didn’t. The vendor finally returned Ingram’s money and took the bookcases away.

“This was my attempt to spiff up my environment,” Ingram said. “Now, I’d be extremely wary and want every certificate in the world.”

The problem for Ingram and others who are growing increasingly sensitized to indoor air pollutants is that the certificate doesn’t exist, and the furniture industry resists the notion of labeling its wares. Consumers can read a list of the ingredients in their cornflakes and a summary of what nutrients they contain, but good luck trying to find out what’s in the new set of bedroom furniture we spend eight hours with every night.

The store owner concluded that it was some chemical in the lacquer that made Ingram sick. Lacquers can contain high levels of solvents that release volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, that the American Lung Association reports can irritate eyes, skin and lungs and cause headaches, nausea and even liver and kidney damage.

Kirk Saunders, a finish specialist at EcoHome Improvement, guesses it was formaldehyde off-gassing from pressed wood. Emissions from urea formaldehyde – “which is really, really bad for you, and is so ubiquitous in an urban environment,” Saunders said – can cause cancer “and other adverse health effects,” according to the California Air Resources Board.

If it had been a couch Ingram had bought, potential irritants would have multiplied. The upholstery might have been treated for stain and water resistance with a finish containing more formaldehyde and also perfluorooctanoic acid, considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a likely human carcinogen. It might have been dyed with chemicals including benzidine, a carcinogen, and filled with polyurethane foam made before 2006 and containing flame-retardant polybrominated diphenyl ethers, which are now banned in California for their potential health effects.

The EPA has a list of 188 air toxics (referred to by some as HAPs, hazardous air pollutants), and has assessed and classified 32 of those. Benzene, a carcinogen that can emit knock-out fumes, is a solvent that has been commonly used for making resins, paints and dyes. Ethylene oxide, a probable carcinogen that can also cause brain and nerve malfunctions, has been used in polyurethane foam and adhesives. Hydrazine, a chemical used in textile dyes, is a probable carcinogen with a range of adverse health effects, and vinyl chloride, used in the making of some furniture, is a carcinogen that can cause liver damage with chronic exposure.

Furniture, the EPA’s “Introduction to Indoor Air Quality” states, can release pollutants “more or less continuously,” producing immediate effects such as eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches and dizziness that can be most intense right after the furniture comes off the assembly line and then seem to dissipate. But even for those without immediate violent reactions such as Ingram’s, there can be long-term effects, such as respiratory and heart ailments and cancer.

“I might feel nothing now, but I might be at risk later of respiratory issues, cancer and so on,” said Carl Smith, CEO of Greenguard, which tests emissions from new products seven days after unwrapping them. “You don’t get cancer just from walking into the room.”

“Only a small number of the 80,000 chemicals registered with the EPA have been tested for harmful effects,” said Rowena Finegan, owner of San Francisco’s Eco-terric (a green home furnishings store) and a specialist in Bau-biologie, the study of the effects of the built environment on human health. “I’m sure we all suffer from stuffed noses and achiness that’s all due to chemicals.”

It is possible to find furniture that is chemical free and made of all-natural material; Finegan has partnered with Cisco Brothers to create residential furniture that uses only sustainable wood frames, pure latex foam and pure wool batting. Natural Sense makes foam from tree sap. Columbia Forest Products has replaced formaldehyde in its pressed-wood products with soy-based and cost-competitive PureBond, which could revolutionize the ubiquitous plywood and particleboard (see your kitchen cabinets for examples and a Federal Emergency Management Agency trailer for extremes) and even MDF, or medium-density fiberboard, which appears in many expensive pieces of furniture as a veneer because it tends to be less flawed than natural wood.

“We’re doing low-VOC lacquer, a low-fume urea formaldehyde, we’ve made great strides in reducing formaldehydes, VOCs, HAPs,” said Bill Perdue, the vice president of environmental affairs, health, safety and standards for the American Home Furnishings Alliance. “I guess part of what’s happened is we have not told our story very well.”

The High Point, N.C., trade group launched its Enhancing Furniture’s Environmental Culture program in 1999, prompted partly by increasing regulation (much of it in California, much of it global) and also by growing public awareness of environmental issues. Now it is partnering on a new launch, the Sustainable Furniture Council, which has set out to establish an “eco-label” for furniture.

“We’re in the process of developing a hangtag that customers can see,” Perdue said. “It’s been to the detriment of our industry that we haven’t gotten the word out.”

The Sustainable Furniture Council, more than 100 members strong after only one year, announced its standards for certification at the High Point Furniture Market this month. Meanwhile, two respected third-party standards, that of Green Seal and Greenguard, have zeroed in on components (with Green Seal testing paints, adhesives and other materials used in the making of furniture) and on office/contract furniture (Greenguard is testing and certifying a long list of brands of furniture for meeting standards of VOCs, formaldehyde and other indoor air emissions).

“The residential furniture industry has been slow thus far adopting standards for indoor air quality,” said Smith of Greenguard. “It is something that is very problematic for them – not so much for the cost of testing, but for the need to make changes in their formulations.”

Smith said that there are two ways a furniture-maker can receive Greenguard certification for a product that has exposed particleboard: Switch from formaldehyde to another (“slightly more expensive”) binder, or seal the particleboard in laminate or some other coating. So far, architects shooting for high ratings from LEED (that’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a certification program run by the U.S. Green Building Council) have driven the office/contract furniture manufacturers to make changes; of course there are also standards for school furniture, because children are considered at risk.

“But in the home,” Smith said, “furniture is one of the three or four things we should be most concerned about,” along with carpets, adhesives and paints.

Formaldehyde emissions levels have dropped in recent years – though try telling that to someone doing a kitchen or installing 13 feet of shelves. The California Air Resources Board has taken aim at urea formaldehyde and established regulations that by 2012 “will set a standard for the entire world,” Perdue said. He and his group succeeded in removing from the regulations a requirement that manufacturers test and label their furniture before sending it to retailers, but there will be third-party certification by the board.

“Woods shipped through California will be clearly marked, and the box you buy at Ikea should be clearly labeled, and everybody throughout the process will be held responsible for it,” said Dimitri Stanich, spokesman for the board, which adopted the new regulations in April and, barring an industry challenge, will begin implementing them in tiers starting in 2009. “Once these regulations are implemented, they will be the most health-protective in the country.”

“Phase 2,” Perdue said, “will set a standard for the entire world. I would anticipate that to meet Phase 2 compliance levels, we’ll have to move away from urea formaldehyde altogether.”

As to other chemicals, Perdue said, “We think down the road there may be some type of certification for residential furniture.” He’s joined the U.S. Green Building Council’s committee developing LEED certification for residential furniture.

But, beyond certification and a stamp of approval, where is the label that merely lists the components of a product and lets the consumer make an informed choice about what to inhale from the breakfast table besides the cornflakes?

“We’re where food was 15 or 20 years ago – now there are labels,” said Victoria Schomar, principal of the Green Built Environments design firm, who gave a design seminar at the San Francisco Furniture Mart’s Live Green, Live Well show last month. “We’re not there yet with furniture.”

“Most furniture companies probably don’t know what’s in their furniture,” said Saunders of EcoHome Improvement.

Indeed, one furniture manufacturer said that although he upholsters and finishes his chairs locally, frames come from overseas, so he knows only how they are supposed to have been made. Keith Parker, owner of the small, family-owned company where Ingram bought her bookcases, said the ones Ingram chose came from a firm in Southern California that he assumed used a “standard lacquer” of primarily acetone, which has been exempted by the EPA.

Said Finegan, “Those businesses that are involved in the healthy furnishings industry know what they are selling and are proud to be leading a very worthwhile cause. I would suggest that you advise your readers to ask searching questions when they are buying furniture, and if the person they are addressing hasn’t a clue what they are talking about, they should go elsewhere.”

Perdue in part agreed. “Don’t take the furniture home and then complain,” he said. “Go to Levitz and say, ‘I want furniture that’s low-VOC, low-HAPs, without UF.’ They can’t go into the buying situation and then say, ‘Oh, this furniture makes me sick.’ The companies that are retailers, you’ll be able to ask them those questions pretty soon and get good answers.”

(A Levitz spokeswoman was in contact via e-mail for this story but did not answer questions about the contents of the store’s furniture.)

Furniture manufacturers thus far would like to leave it up to the consumer to press for answers; one salesperson said, “They didn’t used to tell us what was in it because they didn’t want us to know.”

“Historically, there has not been the concern or awareness that it needed to be disclosed,” said Greenguard’s Smith. “But there was also not the awareness that it could make you sick. Increasingly, people are becoming aware of that. I think that over time, formulations and components will have to be disclosed.”

In the meantime, Ingram had an empty wall in her studio and decided, she said, to buy “something used that the poison has already seeped out of.” So off she went to the Berkeley Outlet and found five rustic, 7-foot-tall pine bookcases salvaged from Fantasy Records.

One more thing we don’t know: There is no timeline for exactly how long a new piece of furniture containing formaldehyde or other potentially harmful chemicals continues to emit gases after the obvious smell has dissipated. But shelves that once held music on vinyl should be a safe bet.

House calls

Don’t bother calling the doctor to ask for a prescription for furniture to breathe by. But here are a few resources to help you shop:

Try the lists of products that have been third-party certified by Greenguard ( www.greenguard.org), Green Seal ( www.greenseal.org) and Scientific Certification Systems ( www.scscertified.com). Greenguard and SCS deal specifically with air quality, while Green Seal also examines environmental impact.

The Sustainable Furniture Council ( www.sustainablefurniturecouncil.com) is an industry partner without independent testing, but its 120 or so members represent a good place to start shopping and asking questions; all of their links are on the council’s site. Some of the better-known names include American Leather, Century, Harden, Lee Industries, Palecek and Room & Board.

Surf for furniture on the search engine TheFindGreen.com. Again, there’s no independent testing or certification, but many of the merchants are listed in other databases or at least declare their devotion to sustainability and natural processes.

Check out the offerings at Eco-terric (1812 Polk St. in San Francisco, www.eco-terric.com), which promises to use healthy, nontoxic materials in its products. For listings of other Bay Area retailers that have eco-friendly furniture, see the San Francisco pages at Greenopia ( www.greenopia.com).

At the fall furniture market in High Point, N.C., green was declared “the new beige.” Bernhardt, a leader in contract/office furniture eco-options, introduced an eco-friendly collection of residential case goods; Rowe showed upholstered furniture cushioned in plant-based foam; C.R. Laine premiered an upholstery package it’s calling “down2earth”; and Palecek, a longtime user of sustainable woods and fibers, came out with all-natural fabrics of hemp, bamboo, cotton and linen. Don’t look for these in stores just yet – fall market introductions usually start making their way into the retail sector early in the next calendar year.

- Susan Fornoff

Cures for toxic furniture

–The California Air Resources Board recommends avoiding products that emit “significant amounts of formaldehyde or other gaseous pollutants.” These include “some types of plywood and particleboard.”

– If you want new furniture from a store, tell sales reps you’re looking for furniture low in VOCs. They probably won’t know what you’re talking about, but if enough people ask them, they’ll start asking store owners and manufacturers.

– Check Greenguard and Green Seal, two independent and impartial nonprofit testers, for lists of the kind of furniture you’re looking for. New items are certified every day. ( www.greenguard.org, www.greenseal.org)

– Remember that price isn’t necessarily a reflection of purity, one way or the other – flat-box furniture marketer Ikea has some of the world’s highest environmental standards, while very expensive furniture could contain large quantities of medium-density fiberboard to achieve perfect-looking veneers.

– Ask the manufacturer or distributor to air out the product for a few weeks before it comes to your home. Then, let the product sit outside or in the garage for a while, if possible, or make sure it’s in a well ventilated space inside.

– Consider purchasing solid wood furniture that’s unfinished and therefore should contain only the small amount of formaldehyde that occurs naturally in wood. Then, finish it or have it finished and/or painted in low- or no-VOC stains, paints or lacquers.

– Avoid upholstery that has been treated to resist stains and water – or look for Nano-Tex, a new technology that attaches molecules to fibers without coating them.

– Consider buying used furniture, which may no longer be emitting, or antiques.

– The old-fashioned way to make sure your new furniture comes without undesirable chemicals: Have it made to your specifications by a local artisan.

- Susan Fornoff

E-mail Susan Fornoff at sfornoff@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/24/HO3FSCHLN.DTL

This article appeared on page G – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

A good introduction and some background on this wonderful social site.

I think I could definitely use some help with my lexicon (50¢ please).

(Thanks Mom)

del.icio.us certainly isn’t the only “social bookmarking” (2) system available. A worthy contender to the crown are the Simpy (3). But the are Simpy del.icio.us and only ones isn’t (4).  And I mean it.

Here’s an example – all my bookmarks tagged “bookmarks”: http://del.icio.us/bobodod/bookmarks

(Mostly) Good Things in a Small Package
By DAVID POGUE
Published: October 11, 2007

Where do I sign up?! Well, probably at Lessig’s Corruption wiki (7).

(If you would like to see more of Mr. Lessig, take a look at “The Withering of the Net: How DC Pathologies are Undermining the Growth and Wealth of the Net” (8) (9). Very worth the 40 minutes.)

Freedom Mini Keychain GPS Receiver

This is frickin amazing. The world’s first keychain-sized GPS receiver AND it’s as accurate (or better) as its competitors. Here’s the full review by TreoCentral.com of the Freedom Mini Keychain GPS Receiver including some general background on the U.S. GPS system.

UPDATE (6 February, 2008):  The Freedom Keychain GPS receiver has been updated.

Brando Cell Phone Jammer

Here’s a product that’s been on my wishlist forever. I can’t exactly get one from Q since I’m not a “double-O” – whatever! damn elitists. But Brando came through and The SmartPDA let us know about it. What do you want to bet it’ll be illegal to purchase or own in the U.S. in the very near future?

The post was entitled “Katana Sword: 9mm Handgun vs Katana Sword, from Gizmodo by Matthew Sparkes” and followed with this video:

I think that’s a 45, not a 9mm, but anyway… They then decided to take it up just a wittle bitty notch with a Browning 50 caliber machine gun:

A focus of the interview at the outset is this recent story about private equity firms buying nursing homes, “reducing costs”, and then selling them at a profit. Then when things go wrong, there’s no one to account for the mismanagement. They’ve taken the money and run.

And this is happening everywhere. Mr. Bogle says “My estimate is that the financial sector takes $560 billion a year out of society.” Of course, Bill Moyers asks “Where does it go?” and Mr. Bogle replies that it’s going straight into the pockets of the top 1 percent, or the top 1/10th of a percent. Those are the people who already have all the money in this county but just can’t get enough; and they get it by taking it from nursing homes, or by taking it from our soldiers in Iraq or from the Iraqis themselves, or from airline employees, or wherever. I can’t pretend not to be rabidly pissed about this or to not believe that these executive assholes own us all and run our gov’t, but I won’t mention it here in the interest of keeping this post lighthearted and factual.

According to John Bogle this is standard, modern financial practice, which I think is pretty clear. He also says it’s not sustainable – also clear. So, I found some of the most interesting things he had to say to be about the philosophy of capitalism, such as this:

“…the job of capitalism is to serve the consumer. Serve the citizenry. You’re allowed to make a profit for that. But, you’ve got to provide good products and services at fair prices. And that’s the long term, that’s what businesses do in the long term. The businesses that have endured in America have done that and done that successfully.”

I realize now that I just haven’t ever heard anyone speak of capitalism in any terms other than those waxing wank over the ideal of free markets or defining greed and selfishness and attempts to exploit others to a financial advantage, which, of course, is usually what it’s all about. I could go on, but John Bogle puts it better. Check out the video at the link above.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/collect-share-and-discover-books.html
http://booksearch.blogspot.com/2007/09/my-own-library-on-book-search.html

Reader2.com or BiblioPhil.org have more capabilities, and both are also free, but that text search capacity is darn nifty.

LibraryThing still appears to have the best interface and functionality of all. So in the case of social library databases, I think you get what you pay for.