Everyone believes very easily whatever he fears or desires. – Jean de La Fontaine
Hormones in bottled water
Define:
- estrogen – a general term for female steroid sex hormones that are secreted by the ovary and responsible for typical female sexual characteristics. wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn
- estrogen – A group of hormones produced mainly in the ovaries that are necessary for female sexual development and reproductive functioning. www.nutros.com/nsr-05zzz.html
Plastic water bottles contaminate drinking water with estrogenic chemicals.
These findings, which show for the first time that substances leaching out of plastic food packaging materials act as functional estrogens, are published in Springer’s journal Environmental Science and Pollution Research.
Creepy little buggers
Bugs and ulcers. Now it’s bugs and heart attacks!
Several studies have suggested there is a connection between organisms that cause gum disease, known scientifically as periodontal disease, and the development of heart disease, but few studies have tested this theory.
A study conducted at the University at Buffalo, where the gum disease/heart disease connection was uncovered, now has shown that two oral pathogens in the mouth were associated with an increased risk of having a heart attack, but that the total number of germs, regardless of type, was more important to heart health.
Results of the study at ScienceBlog.
Revolving Hospitalization
Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy! After a hospital stay, one in five are forced to return.
No. It’s worse:
- 19.6% are readmitted within 30 days of discharge,
- 34 percent within 90 days, and
- 56.1 percent within a year.
Studying nearly 12 million Medicare records, analysts discovered we “pay for quantity of service, not quality.”
Billions are paid for these uncomfortable and dangerous errors, twenty percent of our yearly costs!
Imperial Gumming
China is making a strategic move of huge consequence at the G-20. France and Germany not so much.
Let’s be clear: the U.S. has overspent. It is a debtor nation, dependent on the kindness of foreigners.
Somehow it believes it can still lead the world and is trying to strong-arm the rest of the G-20 into believing that stimulus must be the order of the day when the Europeans clearly want regulation.
Yes, stimulus is important, but outside of the United States and the U.K., most see this depression as one caused by Anglo-American-style laissez-faire capitalism and the need now is for more regulation.
These things don’t happen overnight, but we are certainly now witnessing the end of American hegemony.
Oh good. Now we can achieve something more than global rank. But power is rude, and scorn against so-called Anglo-American errors is just populism.
As Central Banks reign in leaky zeros and as national governments extend authority, in five or twenty years we’ll have fewer pirates and more vinegar in our institutions. What else is on the table?