Category: interesting

How will corruption be reduced when the official salary of a very top oil official in Nigeria is less than $25,000 a year? James Ibori, governor of one of Nigeria’s premier oil producing regions, has been arrested for corruption and money-laundering. How could it have been otherwise? Nigeria offers low wages, meager services and provides no pension to public officials. [story at BBC]

Caregivers suffer “extraordinary” rates of depression and have the lowest level of wellbeing of any group in society.

Their dissatisfaction with all aspects of life is more pronounced than other groups such as the unemployed who live alone and people on very low incomes.

“This is truly sad stuff,” said Robert Cummins, of the school of psychology at Deakin University.

“We have been doing research in this area for more than six years … and I’m not aware of any group that has ever been found to have a wellbeing score as low as carers.”

Not from the deceitful pursuit of glory where hormones are illicitly used to enhance sports performance, blood doping might also build happiness.

A new study published in Biological Psychiatry introduces a potential new antidepressant agent erythropoietin (Epo), a hormone naturally produced by the kidneys that increases the amount of red blood cells.

Kamilla Miskowiak: “Although depression is often related to problems in the chemistry of the brain, recent evidence also suggests that there may be structural problems as well with nerve cells not being regenerated as fast as normal or suffering from toxic effects of stress and stress hormones.”

Be warned, though naturally occurring, Epo can be dangerous.

“The percentage of whole blood that is occupied by the red blood cells is referred to as, the hematocrit. A low hematocrit means dilute (thin) blood, and a high hematocrit mean concentrated (thick) blood. Above a certain hematocrit level whole blood can sludge and clog capillaries. If this happens in the brain it results in a stroke. In the heart, a heart attack. Unfortunately, this has happened to several elite athletes who have used EPO.”

It’s important to continue research to decrease depression which affects just over 3% of the population, similar to diabetes, asthma or arthritis, and is 12% of all disability. The number of people who cycle in and out of depression is five to 10 times greater.

It’s also been shown that feeling seriously blue is the most disabling of all chronic diseases.

Babies born by Caesarean section may miss hormonal and physiological changes induced during labor.

A study of 34,000 births revealed that babies are up to 400% more likely to develop breathing problems. Labor seems to help mature the lungs. [story at BBC]

Maybe the great totem speakers of the Coast Salish were thinking of something else, but this picture reminds me that sticking your tongue out is important. Children do it easily.

Unlike flicking the finger, our tongue says more….

Angry about clear cutting Canadian forests, I asked a school friend for leverage in order to find a job in the logging business. I wanted to learn. And infiltrate.

His father was an executive VP of MacMillan Bloedel [wiki]. Now merged into Weyerhouser, MacBlo was the largest logging firm in rainforests of western Canada [pic gallery]. In the early spring of 1963, I packed

xx

A MacMillan Bloedel forester explains, “The reason we won’t do alternative forestry here is that we would be admitting that we know how.”

VP of engineering for Google in Europe:

What we see happening in the world:

• 250+ million broadband users worldwide; wireless

• “We manage to put twice as much info in the same digital space every 13 months — in 2020 a device the size of the iPod will hold all the knowledge ever created.”
• currently daily about 60 billion e-mails, 33 billion IM.
• 250 million actively using a social network, 3 teenagers out of 4.
• 3.7 million pictures a day uploaded to Flickr every day.

Phillipe Stark said,

“We need to do an exercise every morning as mutants. If you walk like a robot, but look at your feet, you stumble. If you look a bit ahead, you don’t trip, it just works for itself. If you look ahead then can work can speak can exchange can interact. But now your duty is to raise your angle of view so that you see farther than the horizon. You are in the territory of intelligence, the range of humanity. It’s about the angle of view.”

Talk is psychosis of deed.
Speech is the neurosis of belief.
Our whispers hold the truth we share.

I can see a lie.
I hate being fooled.
It’s always been difficult.

They shot him.
I believed he was good.

He’s famous.
I believe he is bad.

We are again.
Today.

Who recruits localities and families?

Teaser [licensed] mortgage [regulated] rates hustled by 10s of 1000s of eager [licensed] agents in local [licensed] real estate [regulated] beehives brought a [regulated] heated market spurring 10s of millions of [regulated] sales.

How many [licensed] lenders knew the [regulated] market was heating?

A [regulated] foreclosure costs a [licensed] bank up to $75,000.

Who rescues [free] localities and [cherished] families?

Learning what eyes do

he pressed his nose.

One hundred forty three countries have agreed to protect the world’s uncontacted and indigenous tribes from annihilation.

There are 10 nations that could care less.

1. Indonesia,
2. Botswana,
3. Brazil,
4. Peru,
5. Paraguay,
6. Malaysia,
7. Australia,
8. Canada,
9. New Zealand,
10. and the USA.

These are the ten nations against the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

1. The Indonesian military is raping, torturing and killing isolated tribes to take their land.

2. The government of Botswana has evicted the ancient Bushmen from their land.
3. Brazil ranchers are hiring gunmen to take Guarani Indian land.
4. Peru is taking forests of the world’s last uncontacted tribes and all of them are facing extinction.
5. Paraguay is destroying forests of the last uncontacted tribes south of the Amazon.
6. Malaysia is forcing nomadic tribes of Sarawak off their land for oil palm plantations.
7. Australia,
8. Canada,
9. New Zealand
10. and the USA are buying the timber, the biofuel, the beef.

A scathing report shames Australia’s 1990s government for neglect of native rights. The study examines the health and wellbeing of indigenous peoples in all over the world.

You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there. – Yogi Berra

Perhaps useful for mass transit as well, Toyota is developing transport environments called the ‘Personal Relaxation Seat’.

“These seats seek to create a ‘healing effect’ where occupants can enjoy a personal space with a canopy encasing their heads.

“Equipped with functions to refresh the occupants, such as an enriched oxygen supply, refreshing aromas and a vibrator, the seats provide video and audio that only the occupants can enjoy, personal air conditioning, and realize a space with a significant ‘healing effect’.”

via techEblog

Crime is like a seed that’s planted and watered and grows into a shoot.

Q: But how do you like your criminals?
A: Organic.

Leaders believe in themselves. Some leaders only believe themselves. Poor leaders ‘make believe’.

For example, Mike Huckabee is confident that if he becomes President you will believe too.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were “brave people, most of whom, by the way, were clergymen.”

Wrong. Of 56 signers, only Witherspoon was a clergyman.

To discover what people really believe, try these:

I am a Christian, but
I am a Christian, but I am learning about Islam and Muslims to understand them.
I am a Christian, but I believe you must obey Jesus.
I am a Christian, but I have an open mind.
I am a Christian, but respect the rights of others.
I am a Christian, but some days I am so disgusted by my fellow Christians…
I am a Christian, but I love the Harry Potter series!

I am a Muslim, but
I am a Muslim, but don’t ask me for the solution.
I am a Muslim, but good.
I am a Muslim, but I am against—1000 times against—fundamentalism.
I am a Muslim, but I am not ashamed…
I am a Muslim, but the point is…
I am a Muslim, but I’m not easily offended.
I am a Muslim, but I think pigs are cute.

inspired by j-walk

Here’s text from the blurb at the Cotton Companies, a firm specializing in emergency fire and water damage.

The new director of the company is Michael Brown, the infamous head of FEMA during the Katrina hurricane fiasco.

“Cotton features cutting edge technology, state of the art equipment, and the latest in management/personnel techniques….”

via j walk

Any misogynist nearby will laugh uncomfortably, flip the remote to the comfort of FOX News, boast the taking of two… but this post is about other justice. The eye. That orb rolling.

Any pundit standing up for this while standing down for that will step to warn the strip search gulag will eavesdrop habits soon… but this post is about other contraband. The eye. That orb rolling.

The Rise, Fall and Reverse Apotheosis of the Domesticated Artist and the State of Cultural Entropy and Cultural Dark Matter… There follows, a disordered monologue, lacking in empathy, empiricism, factuality, restraint, historical perspective or measure – meant to confound, irritate, exasperate or bore its target audience of over-educated, alcoholic, drug addicted, and by turns sex obsessed and/or sex disinterested, gluttonous, anorexic, vain, self-obsessed, self-aggrandizing, self doubting, compulsive, self-loathing, numbed-by any-means-immediately-available. Dedicated to all the imaginarily murderous, wishfully incestuous, secretly all-powerful, exquisitely self-subordinated bicycle seat sniffers.

A bank buys radio until Pacifica dies. Picasso tilts over casino check-in. Himmler’s best still under the ice at Eagle’s Nest… but this post is about what’s not yet made. The eye. That orb rolling.

A young fan may be just as devout and dedicated no matter if he bought it or stole it. – 50 Cent

Scientology is “an organization that is not compatible” with the constitution of Germany.

Ministers of Germany’s sixteen states along with the national government have formally agreed that Scientology is not a religion but a “commercial enterprise that takes advantage of vulnerable people”.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agencies have been ordered to prepare a dossier to “possibly serve as the basis for a ban of the sect” because “Scientology pursues anti-constitutional goals in an aggressively fierce manner that run counter to human rights and dignity.”

Story at Deutsche Welle
Story at International Herald Tribune
Story at Globe and Mail
Story at BBC
Story at Associated Press
Story at Reuters
Hmmm, no story at the LATimes?

Berlin established an office to deal with complaints about Scientology. Seeing it as “a cult masquerading as a church to make money”, Scientology has been monitored by German intelligence agencies for more than ten years.

Joe Garofoli notices that journalists can be unhappy about American mainstream media.

One journalist whines, “The average American gets their news from FOX, CNN and the talking heads at ABC, NBC and CBS. What has taken the place of real journalism is reporting that is safe and will keep the public calm.”

Exiled to the BBC, Greg Palast moans, “I’m seriously concerned that people see Florida 2000 as a fluke. But in fact, what we see is a systematic manipulation of the electoral system.”

“His voice sounding like an ocean playing a cello concerto in a black hole“, God asks a San Francisco writer to floss the debris from Oral Roberts University.

God: [“sounding like two dump trucks mating in a hailstorm”]

“So here’s the plan: I want you to write up something scathing and funny and pointed about how God visited you, in person, and you broke bread and shared a nice bottle of host’s blood or whatnot, and I told you in no uncertain terms that Richard Roberts is a world-class charlatan with a rabid case of elephantiasis of the false spirit.

“I want you to ring the alarm, raise the roof, send out an S.O.S., put a message in a bottle, whatever the hell it is you writer people do. I’m getting tired of this.”

Answering the call, Mark Morford says,

“I was, I have to say, a little taken aback.”

Facebook is a borg.

define:borg
possessing the single-minded intent to “assimilate” other species

Can you cancel a Facebook account? Brian Oberkirch has deactivated the juggernaut of the Faceborg pseudo-service:

Many, many of my colleagues are far too sanguine about FaceBorg. They are condescending about people’s privacy concerns. They mistake a lack of awareness or inaction with consent. They act as though the clumsiest brand presence schemes are breakthrough marketing. They abandon the open principles that built the Web in the first place. FaceBorg is the Golden Calf of the Valley. & you can have it.

In no way do I want to support something that is so contra my love of the Web or so against the principles I espouse about how to treat people using a service you build.

A report by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic – the impaired ability to comprehend written words.

The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

Early in the morning of March 10, 2003, after a raucous party that lasted into the small hours, a groggy and hung over 20-year-old named Ryan Holle lent his Chevrolet Metro to a friend. The friend used the car in a robbery and murder.

Ryan Holle was convicted of murder too.

He is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Prosecutor David Rimmer convicted under the practice of ‘a killing by an accomplice’, “No car. No crime.”

Jack Shafer at Slate:

“If I were maximum dictator,
I would force every newspaper editor, every magazine editor, and every television producer in the land to read Ben Wallace-Wells’ 15,000-word article in the new (Dec. 13) issue of Rolling Stone, titled ‘How America Lost the War on Drugs.'”

All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs – with very little to show for it.

Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used.

Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack.

We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes – a twelvefold increase since 1980 – with no discernible effect on the drug traffic.

Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana – and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible.

In the course of fighting this war, we have allowed our military to become pawns in a civil war in Colombia and our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends.

Those we are paying to wage the drug war have been accused of ­human-rights abuses in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In Mexico, we are now ­repeating many of the same mistakes we have made in the Andes.

…
For all the money the government has spent and all the people it’s jailed, it’s still failed to make a long-term impact on the availability of drugs.

The militarized drug-control techniques favored by the Bush administration have increased violence and political corruption abroad, violated human rights, and destabilized several Latin American nations.

Shafer continues:
There is no reason that this project couldn’t have been conceived and executed by any newspaper in America. No reason except that too many editors, most of whom have indulged in illicit substances, fear the consequences of telling their readers the truth about drugs (canceled subscriptions, invective from Limbaugh and O’Reilly, loss of respect at the country club or university club).

Wallace-Wells believes that a heavily subsidized drug-treatment program, think-tanked to the top of the Clinton administration’s policy pile, could have reduced crime and drug use if Newt Gingrich and the Republicans hadn’t taken complete control of Congress.

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.

The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday….

Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.

“You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know,” she said. “It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We’re thankful it wasn’t, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out.”

via Paranoia in full flour