Vitamin D linked to pain

Pain is the leading cause of disability in America.

The Mayo Clinic reports that patients who required narcotic pain medication, and who also had inadequate levels of vitamin D, were taking much higher doses of pain medication — nearly twice as much.

Physicians who care for patients with chronic, diffuse pain that seems musculoskeletal — and involves many areas of tenderness to palpation — should strongly consider checking a vitamin D level.

“For example, many patients who have been labeled with fibromyalgia are, in fact, suffering from symptomatic vitamin D inadequacy.”

Vigilance is required…

We’re just not pissed off enough

Some say there’s a witchhunt:

Last year, I made 115k salary plus a 135k bonus (250k total, which does not go as far as you think in Manhattan). After taxes, the bonus was 75k cash.

You really don’t get it, do you?

You’re getting hysterical over a six-figure income in a country with one of the worst infant and maternal mortality rates in the developed world.

I don’t usually get this harsh, but I don’t know what else to say?

There are people here who choose between medication and food, who go without necessary medical care, who have not purchased brand-new clothing in decades, who are losing their homes (renters, too, as this affects landlords), who are losing their jobs, whose children go to sucky schools, whose only “spa treatment” is their morning shower.

And you think we should care that you’re going to be in a spot of trouble over a bonus…?

The virtues of public anger and the need for more – Glenn Greenwald

Connected to a rock

John Gardner:

Not long ago, I read a splendid article on barnacles:

“The barnacle” the author explained “is confronted with an existential decision about where it’s going to live. Once it decides… it spends the rest of its life with its head cemented to a rock…”

End of quote.

Gardner’s wiki

Who do you love?

A good prince, it has been said for centuries, … should not try to instill fear in but to win the love of his subjects.

Machiavelli argues instead that a prince should ‘know well how to use the beast and the man.’ With similar daring, he discarded the doctrine that a good prince must be generous, lavishing gifts and favors on his friends, [writing that he] will succeed only in flattering a few hangers-on and bankrupting his estate. … Machiavelli writes that a prince should certainly hope to be considered merciful and kind, but that cruelty [could be] ‘well-used.’ … It is difficult to be loved and feared at the same time, but ‘it is much safer to be feared than loved, if one has to lack one of the two.’ … [Further], princes who have readily broken their word have ‘done great things’; and have triumphed over princes who have kept their word. … In short, he wants a prince who knows how to win.

If we define them, broadly, as the undead—spirits who rise, embodied, from their graves to torment the living—they have been part of human imagining since ancient times. – The New Yorker

Holding tyrannic control

In Corpora, to put in a body as the Romans might say, and we give that body rights.

But how did we let corporations become so powerful?

When the United States was born, corporations beared little resemblance to the powerful trans-national companies we are familiar with today.

Corporations were chartered by the states for specific purposes to be accomplished within specific time frames; they could not conduct business or acquire assets that did not directly relate to their charter; their charters could be revoked if they broke the law or caused harm to the public good; and the personal assets of shareholders were not immune to the consequences of corporate behavior.

The goal of these limitations was to prevent corporations from holding tyrannic control over the American economy as the East India Company had done during colonial times. This goal failed miserably.

Mini-Madoffs

US federal regulators have warned of a “rampant Ponzimonium” as they disclosed they are investigating hundreds of possible scams in the aftermath of Madoff.

Contrary to party line, there is such a thing as manipulation in the commodity markets.

The Commodities Futures Trading Commission is “seeing more of these scams than ever before” in commodities and other futures markets.

The CFTC, which patrols commodities and financial futures markets such as derivatives on stocks and foreign exchange, was investigating “hundreds of individuals and entities, many of which were related to Ponzi scams”

We’re not pissed off enough

There IS a time-honored way to get people not to talk about the big picture and what’s really important.

“Mixing politics, self-dealing, kickbacks and billions in taxpayer funds is nothing short of the perfect public integrity storm.”

“Yes folks, this scam has been happening all along, building up over many years.”

“So while you’re focused on AIG and all the other smoke and mirrors, the Mother of all stealth scams is happening right under your noses using your pension contributions.”

We’re really not pissed off enough

The global economic crisis isn’t about money – it’s about power.

Matt Taibbi, Rolling Stone, Mar 19, 2009

The Big Takeover: How Wall Street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution.

In the final three months of last year, the company lost more than $27 million every hour. That’s $465,000 a minute, a yearly income for a median American household every six seconds, roughly $7,750 a second.

And all this happened at the end of eight straight years that America devoted to frantically chasing the shadow of a terrorist threat to no avail, eight years spent stopping every citizen at every airport to search every purse, bag, crotch and briefcase for juice boxes and explosive tubes of toothpaste.

Yet in the end, our government had no mechanism for searching the balance sheets of companies that held life-or-death power over our society…

So it’s time to admit it: We’re fools….

Iran on Nowruz

After committing his administration to a future of honest and respectful diplomacy, he continues on to address Iran’s leaders directly:

“You, too, have a choice. The United States wants the Islamic Republic of Iran to take its rightful place in the community of nations. You have that right — but it comes with real responsibilities, and that place cannot be reached through terror or arms, but rather through peaceful actions that demonstrate the true greatness of the Iranian people and civilization. And the measure of that greatness is not the capacity to destroy, it is your demonstrated ability to build and create.”

Reposting: “Listening to the bird”

Many of us fail to notice we can be devastated merely neglecting to change lanes on the way downtown. We fail to notice we can be hammered each day merely by glances and comments. We manage tiny details and we fret over a bit of confidence. We are not so strong.

Hemingway said,
If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that it will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

So it is a cruel place here. To stand with children. To reconcile death and dilute death in the cup of your heart. We are not built for this. It is an imperfect world we make better in our good ways. You have been this courage.

Graham Greene said,
‘Oh,’ the priest said, ‘that’s another thing altogether—God is love. I don’t say the heart doesn’t feel a taste of it, but what a taste. The smallest glass of love mixed with a pint pot of ditch-water. We wouldn’t recognize that love. It might even look like hate. It would be enough to scare us—God’s love. It set fire to a bush in the desert, didn’t it, and smashed open graves and set the dead walking in the dark. Oh, a man like me would run a mile to get away if he felt that love around.’

We are tender things, inside a nuclear star, shielded by so little. You are this courage.

Fine Art Friday - Listening to the Bird, RedClayIt is a simple world too. Great complex things may not happen here. It might be that only ordinary things can exist under this cosmic storm pressed to dirt by gravity!

A glimpse says we are honored. Another says we have touched a heart. A friend is tender or we are tender with a friend. A spring warmth begins us again. We were brave and did not notice winter.

There is another thing. Love. Oh why is this omitted from every Constitution? There’s nothing in us but love. It is our cellular engine, some say, and burst the Universe days ago, some believe, and is our quest under the onion’s peel. We haven’t said much of it. Oh why is our love not the entire curricula? It is what we know too little of and what we most require. We are all siblings here, with you; not one of us is finished in this schooling.

What can be said? “Grant me the abandon to be a fool in this loving moment! I demand to revel in this loving moment! Do not dare to take this loving moment!” Our next day a necklace of these stubborn jewels, some pearls on the floor, and some links broken, and some love to never be… to have loved and lost and a’ that…. We’re fools for it, nuts for it, lost in it, breathing bliss and blues….

Hillel says,
If I am for myself only, what am I?
If I am for others only, who am I?
If not now, when?

I’m saying we will always be nervous, incapable, foolish…. And so what? They say the difference between a good dancer and a bad dancer is the good dancer isn’t paying attention to themselves but to dancing.

Was it Kahlil Gibran or Rudyard Kipling?

Earth. You invite me to joy and then deny it.
That is like saying, “Turn the goblet and spill it not.”

Reflate Down

This link is burdensome, but it speaks to my worry about inflation. Unless there’s a newly and great G20/IMF, how could inflation across currencies be prevented after all this? The economy is now slow, but demand continues.

Perhaps a deft and temperate global finance system can manage a clamor for commodities when credit is loosed in months or months ahead, unless, of course, credit is never loosed or only under much restrained and strict terms.

As if our old idea of a stingy banker goes global, they once said a banker has gold in his teeth, silver in his hair and lead in his ass. I wonder.

All culture will be different soon. No? Naked Capitalism

American Common Sense

Letter to the Editor, New York Times

The Financial Times reported recently (February 4th) that many U.S. bankers are “enraged” because of pay limitations that are part of the newly passed stimulus package. Some bankers are warning that these pay caps will lead to a “brain drain,” causing these high-minded financial titans to fly the coop, leaving banks bereft of their greatest minds.

Brain drain? What brains?

Tom L. Clark
Berkeley CA

Next?

Yo! J-Walk found a list. “From White House to Big House“.

  1. Scooter Libby – Cheney’s chief-of-staff
  2. David Safavian – GSA chief-of-staff
  3. Italia Federici: Aide to secretary of the interior
  4. Steven Griles – #2 guy at Interior Department
  5. Bob Stein – Comptroller of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq
  6. Brian Doyle – Deputy press secretary at DHS
  7. Dusty Fago – Former executive director of the CIA
  8. Felipe Sixto – Special assistant to Bush

OK, Concentrate

The second meeting of the Middle Class Task Force, dealing with the Recovery Act and the middle class, concluded this afternoon.

From the White House:

White House Middle Class Task ForceOver the past decade, and to degree the last three decades, median family income has become decoupled from productivity in the broad economy. The Recovery Act goes beyond simply providing a generic stimulus to the economy, and instead provides countless avenues by which to correct that underlying disconnect.

The Recovery Act is primarily focused on providing a foundation for the long-term health of the middle class and providing a structure for the middle class to be a full stakeholder in the economy’s success again.

When If We

However poor my thinking, I want the President to care for our octuplets, yes. Top must. Bottom is.

Rent A Nuke

Portable nulear power‘Just because something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the Earth surface’, this is posted at the EnglishRussia blog:

“Not many know, but Russian engineers constructed mobile nuclear power plants on tracks and on wheels. Small sized self moving fully functional atomic power plants with a small reactor inside were successfully used in distant parts of Russia.

“Just imagine, small nuclear power plants that could reach the destination points by themselves.”

High incidence of deformities

Nuclear fails if for no other reason than it defers its dirt, a public cost, an overwhelming shadow, a policy of dark.

“In this case we found a high incidence of deformed animals.”

“We were amazed to see that there had been no studies on this subject,” says Anders Moller, a researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research in France, who led the study.

“Ours was the first study to focus on the abundance of animal populations.”

Researchers say they had compared animal populations in radioactive areas with less contaminated plots and found that some were nearly completely depleted of animal life.

“There are areas with an abundance of 100 animals per square meter,” Moller said. “And then there are areas with less than one specimen per square meter on average; the same goes for all groups of species.”

Atoms For Peace, completely depleted.