big on love, tolerance, and the human potential
A full head of hair provides surprisingly low protection from the sun, Australian researchers warn.
Color made no difference.
Short hair provides slightly more protection than long hair; the weight of long hair exposes more of the scalp.
Scalp melanomas are 13% of melanomas.
Hair Protection Factor? 5 to 17
“No one should ever sit in this office over 70 years old, and that I know” – Dwight D. Eisenhower
EcoGeek points out, “Lots of people are getting excited about all the various technologies for using biofuels of one sort or another as a replacement for fossil fuels, and they may present a short-term option.”
But look!
Biofuels fail the Miles Per Acre test.
Without displacing one food producing acre, solar systems are hands down the winner. Yes, biofuels are needed, for alternative chemical feedstock and geo-favored fleets or power, but it’s clear that solar technology “produces 1000x more energy per acre than soybeans”.
Mainstream media publishes flurry of investigative reports revealing John McCain is lying, Sarah Palin is lying, mistakes, cynicism, foolishness abounds.
McCain-Palin
“They lean to their corporate masters,” notes DailyKoss.
And lie to us.
Roger Ebert stated in the Chicago Sun Times:
I think I might be able to explain some of Sarah Palin’s appeal. She’s the “American Idol” candidate.
There’s a reason “American Idol” gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could be me up there on that show!
My problem is, I don’t want to be up there. I don’t want a vice president who is darned near good enough. I want a vice president who is better, wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an opinion on Iraq. Someone who doesn’t repeat bald- faced lies about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere.
Five different schools in six years. What was that about?
And how can a politician her age have never have gone to Europe?
But some people like that. She’s never traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa, South America or Down Under? That makes her like them. She didn’t go to Harvard? Good for her!
I trust the American people will see through Palin, and save the Republic in November.
Obama’s Campaign is asking us to think about 170 lobbyists moving into the White House.
A 65-page .pdf report from the Democratic National Committee, “No Reformer” finds that McCain’s employees are lobbyists and his Campaign Chairman is a bank lobbyist.
“McCain has his own herd of more than 170 lobbyists that are managing his campaign, speaking for him, directing his policy or fundraising.
McCain’s crew of lobbyists, now campaign surrogates, would be familiar to all of us if McCain were elected. [story]
If raped, you have to pay to get your rapist convicted. And if he impregnated you, you would have to have his child. Screwed three times!
The only town in Alaska
Under Sarah Palin’s administration, Wasilla cut funds paid for rape kits and medical exams and began charging victims $500 to $1200 fees.
New Evidence:
Palin Had Direct Role.
Palin fired police chief Irl Stambaugh and replaced him with Charlie Fannon, who with Palin’s knowledge slashed the budget for the exams and began charging the city’s victims of sexual assault. Palin read and signed the new police budget.
A year later, alarmed Alaska lawmakers passed legislation outlawing the practice.
For victims of rape and incest and all women, Palin’s policy only allows abortion if the life of the mother is in danger. “This is my personal opinion,” she told ABC.
Palin said she “owes it to Americans” to explain her personal opinion which “may end up different than what the policy in an administration might be.”
Personal opinion over facts? And very, very different after she replaces McCain!
Barriers must come down.
Superstitious policies must stop.
65% to 80% of femicide victims were abused.
Getting in the way of reporting abuse increases the number of murdered women.
Could We Have Known?
Barack Obama’s Platform:
PREVENTING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN
Reducing Domestic Violence:
One in four women will experience domestic violence in her lifetime. Family violence accounted for 11 percent of all violence between 1998 and 2002. Barack Obama introduced legislation to combat domestic violence by providing $25 million a year for partnerships between domestic violence prevention organizations and Fatherhood or Marriage programs to train staff in domestic violence services, provide services to families affected by domestic violence, and to develop best practices in domestic violence prevention.Strengthening Domestic Violence Laws:
Approximately 1,400 women a year – four every day – die in the United States as a result of domestic violence. And 132,000 women report that they have been victims of a rape or attempted rape, and it is estimated that an even greater number have been raped, but do not report it. Senator Obama co-sponsored and helped reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. Signed into law in January 2006, the bill funds and helps communities, nonprofit organizations, and police combat domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking. The legislation establishes a sexual assault services program and provides education grants to prevent domestic violence.Fighting Gender Violence Abroad:
The genocide in Darfur has had particularly devastating consequences for women. Tens of thousands of women have been killed, raped, and displaced since the conflict began in 2003. Barack Obama has been a leading voice in Washington urging the end of genocide in Sudan. He worked with Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) on the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, a version of which was signed into law. Obama has traveled to the United Nations to meet with Sudanese officials and visited refugee camps on the Chad-Sudan border to raise international awareness of the ongoing humanitarian disaster there. He also worked with Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) to secure $20 million for the African Union peacekeeping mission.
Global Facts:
Who said this?
“We have drastically, drastically reduced our earmark request since I came into office.”
But your state is highest by far.
We sure are — and this is what — you go out and you ask any Alaskan this. This is what I’ve been telling Alaskans for these years that I’ve been in office, is no more.
But, genetics of harbor seals, money to study the mating habits of crabs?
Those requests, through our research divisions and fish and game and our wildlife departments and our universities, those research requests did come through that system, but wanting it to be in the light of day, not behind closed doors, with lobbyists making deals with Congress to stick things in there under the public radar.
And then what did she say?
That’s the abuse that we’re going to stop. That’s what John McCain has promised over and over for these years and that’s what I’m joining him, also, saying, you’re right, the abuse of earmarks, it’s un-American, it’s undemocratic, and it’s not going to be accepted in a McCain-Palin administration. Earmark abuse will stop.
Oh.
McSame Administration
“She can see Russia from Alaska” is dopey and embarrassing and this is dopey and embarrassing too.
Somebody figure it out:
Man changes name to dodge airport security.A Quebec businessman whose name is one of the many that have erroneously landed on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s flight passenger watch list has decided to change his name to avoid lengthy security hassles at the airport.
Mario Labbe, an executive with a Montreal-based record company, says his Canadian passport triggers a red alert on the computers of U.S. customs agents every time he tries to board a flight to the U.S. – which is about once a month for the past seven years.
“I was pulled aside in a room … and you have to wait your turn to finally be released,” Labbe said. “An hour, an hour and a half, two hours, whatever it is after. Once I was caught in Miami like that for six hours.
He wasted lots of time trying get off the list. No luck.
“So now, my official name is Franois Mario Labbe,” he said. “Then you have to change everything: driver’s license, social insurance, medicare, credit card – everything.” Although it’s not a big change from Mario Labbe, he said it’s been enough to foil the U.S. customs computers.
It’s a good thing the terrorists aren’t allowed to change their names.
It’s a good thing we can change governments.
Is Russia building a new aggressive empire?
We should know before we vote.
In a blunt three-hour interview over lunch, Vladimir Putin turned the air blue and denied claims he is building a new Soviet empire as he defended his ’embattled and encircled’ country.
Should we taunt Russia with might, er, media?
We should know before we vote.
ABC news – Sarah Palin wants Georgia and Ukraine in NATO noting that if attacked again the United States would go to war with Russia.
Can we live in peace?
We should know before we vote.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia has a 9/11 too, “like the attacks on New York and Washington in 2001”.
8-8-08?
Russia had not sought a war, Mr Medvedev said.He said the world had learned lessons from the attacks in the US on 11 September 2001 and hoped the same would happen for Russia’s situation.
“The world has changed and it occurred to me that 8 August 2008 has become for Russia as 11 September 2001 for the United States. This is an accurate comparison corresponding to Russian realities.”
He said the balance of power in the world is out of date.
I’m not saying Russia is meek or clear or capable of cooperation because of a speech or two. I’m saying a speech or two reveals Sarah Palin isn’t federal material and I wouldn’t imagine her shtick on the global scene.
But don’t worry too much.
John McCain can take over in a pinch.
“I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time.”
Yes. Yes. Yes. Read that twice!
McCain doesn’t think mayors or governors can handle it. And that’s no lie.
Master and the Maverick?
Republican Weevils?
A sexist thing?
No, curtail.
Weevil not tolerate horrible puns.
Progress is man’s ability to complicate simplicity. – Thor Heyerdahl
You can see Russia from Alaska, duh, so what does the world think about this election?
Barack Obama to John McCain by an average of 4 to 1.
The BBC World Service poll shows NATO allies the most hopeful for Obama.
Which nations would like to vote for Barrack Obama?
Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Mexico, Australia, India, China, Panama, Brazil, Poland, Turkey, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, and yes, Russia.
I’ve noticed this since I was young.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscience studies show we never see the same thing twice.
One of the central questions of how the brain recognizes objects and faces is that you never essentially see the same image twice,” says James DiCarlo.
They want to sell robots but I’m interested in understanding. MIT says we are “gathering a host of different snapshots of the same object” none the same. “We don’t see the same image twice“.
And never twice.
It’s not easy for me.
I do not shrill the morning
and I lay calm at night.
Effort of a lifetime.
Then why sour my blog citing corrupt mafia and scorn politics?
Because America is worth our effort.
How can we not dump our priorities for awhile,
come away for awhile
from the great task of civility,
and just kick some butt!?
America is worth our effort.
Alarming, I say to myself,
feeling nude in the mall,
to argue instead of walk gently, yes,
outright telling ’em off,
to revel against foe,
to discover proof to a lie,
a blemished flaw,
a tryst in the penthouse.
I do not like the taste of politics.
Ashamed,
I say to myself, why am I here,
hallways of cheap,
corrupt pathology,
gilt lies?
I do not like politics.
Well, America is worth it.
I’ll recover.
I’ll celebrate Hope and Change.
Would you like to see just one journalist unafraid of asking questions?
There’s two great things here. A reminder of what we really like and what we really like.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6LMsc7iic&hl=en&fs=1]
Downhill every day.
Gallup:
“No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating.”
America’s Decline
“Can you name another administration as poor?”, asks j-walk blog. “”Who is the worst president if not George. W. Bush?”
Premature Evacuation
Party loyalists blame the man not the Republican Party:.
The numbers may say that, but people hated Nixon whereas Bush seems more like the national shoe stepped in dog dirt.
Pictures Speak Loud, Louder, Change.
[Press Release – White House – FDA – Neighborhood Grandpa Watch Program]
Phillip Carmichael, 58, pleaded guilty for thousands of indecent images of children on his computer, but walked free from court yesterday, after a judge ruled that dopamine-stimulating drugs he had been taking to treat Parkinson’s disease was responsible for his crime. “It was clear that Mr Carmichael had not acted under his own volition.”
I’m posting this with compassion, to alert us to side-effects in a complex and murky drug market.
Not in USA major media:
Prime Minister Gordon Brown … welcomed Senator Obama’s “progressive” new ideas for helping people weather the economic storm … provoked a protest to the British embassy in Washington by the McCain team.
What part of the American flag is Ford, GM or Chrysler?
Let Detroit fund its own damned projects!
Big Auto has fought environmental laws and beaten down attempts to modernize the US industry to produce more fuel efficient cars. They sell fuel efficient cars overseas but always find reasons why they can’t sell them in the US. Now that their brilliant plan to only produce gas hogs has failed, look who is lining up for $50 billion worth of help, as if there’s cash laying around for the taking. If we were to prop up these colossal failures, we ought to insist that they are truly on the cutting edge of environmental, safety and efficiency and not just up to our backwards current standards. Otherwise, why bother?
Begging for government aid in hard times were big corporations who were the strongest opponents of ‘big government’.
Well, here we go again.
Automakers ask for for government loans of up to $50bn.
GM, Ford and Chrysler also lobby Congress for a $3.75bn on top of the $25bn in loans authorized for the industry last year to escape Union pledges.
Bush’s Treasury is negotiating windfall payments for the execs of failed Fannie and Freddie too?
“Under no circumstances should the executives of these institutions earn a windfall at a time when the U.S. Treasury has taken unprecedented steps to rescue these companies with taxpayer resources,” Obama wrote.
John McCain is not actually running for president.
He’s running for Senate majority leader. All his passion is directed at defects in the legislative process. He’s been a military man or a senator for virtually all of his adult life, and listening to him talk, you get the definite impression that the two great threats of the 21st century are Islamic extremism and the appropriations committee.
It’s no wonder Rhode Island Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee called Sarah Palin a “cocky wacko”.
[Breaking ABC news story]
Sarah Palin wants Georgia and Ukraine in NATO noting that if attacked again the United States would go to war with Russia:
Asked by Gibson if the U.S. would go to war with Russia Palin said “Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help…. [As a] NATO ally if another country is attacked you’re going to be expected to be called upon and help,” she said.
Not in USA media:
In a blunt three-hour interview over lunch, Vladimir Putin turned the air blue and denied claims he is building a new Soviet empire as he defended his ’embattled and encircled’ country.
Reminding his guests that he had been at the Olympics in Beijing when the crisis broke out, Mr Putin said he was “astonished, astounded,” by the world media silence on the Georgian aggression. “What did you expect us to do? Respond with a catapult? We punched the aggressor in the face, as all the military text books prescribe.”
At this meeting, he seemed particularly intent on his new job as Prime Minister which he presented as being mainly responsible for Russia’s economy. Russia was facing problems today, he said, which demanded new solutions. “The solutions of the past wouldn’t do.” State infrastructure, housing, health and education all needed to be overhauled.
OK, don’t flame me, the point is Provocateur Palin should not enter the White House except to bring Obama her bear skin.
Blueprint for American Prosperity:
“Mountain Megas: America’s Newest Metropolitan Places and a Federal Partnership to Help Them Prosper” describes and assesses the new supersized reality of the Intermountain West – efforts to build a uniquely Western brand of prosperity that is at once more sustainable, productive, and inclusive than past eras of boom and bust. [heaps of pdf Brookings Institution]
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said mastermind of 9/11 in jail.
What makes people vote Republican?
Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? [See, Republicans cost us money]
Diagnosis is a pleasure.
We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.[See Altemeyer, Authoritarianism]
Here’s Professor Altemeyer’s free book: The Authoritarians – “The greatest threat to American democracy today.”People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity”—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.
Who are the opponents of science and how have they have taken control of the Republican Party to redefine science, to undermine science, and to misconstrue science even to the point of dismissing scientific consensus in favor of increasingly discredited fringe ideas?
Last month a Pew Research Institute survey reported a decline in the number of Americans who want churches and other houses of worship involved in political matters. The survey also found that most of the drop in the past four years comes among conservatives. [link]
In politics, what begins in fear usually ends in folly:
‘People react to fear, not love. They don’t teach that in Sunday School, but it’s true.’ – Richard Nixon
The phenomenon of misplaced fear in American culture is not uncommon, asserts sociologist Barry Glassner, author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things.
“A vibrant and functional democracy depends on the honest dissemination of information. The corporate media, in its rightward drift and easy compliance to political power, is failing the general populace.”
Fourteen Republicans
Over the past few years, corruption has become a significant political issue, with interest peaking in early 2007. In the 2006 mid-term elections, exit polls showed that 42% of voters called corruption an extremely important issue in their choices at the polls, ahead of terrorism, the economy, and the war in Iraq. With the downturn in the economy, however, voters’ attention is unsurprisingly more focused on pocketbook issues than on congressional misconduct. Nevertheless, ethics still matter…