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The rapidly approaching Olympic Games have brought an unwelcome spotlight on China’s environmental situation.Beijingwon its Olympics bid with the promise of the world’s first “green” games. Five years later, there is no talk of a green Olympics, only of how extensive a shutdown of industry and transportation will be needed in Beijing and surrounding provinces just to ensure that the athletes can breathe.
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China’s leaders are tapping into anti-foreign and nationalist sentiments to deflect attention from their own failures. When a Chinese nongovernmental organization released a list of 2,700 companies cited for violations of China’s water regulations in late October, the ensuing media frenzy focused exclusively on the 33 multinationals |
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a 20-year-old ban on ozone-depleting chemicals has been extremely effective at curbing greenhouse gases as well. In fact, it has already had more impact than a fully implemented Kyoto Protocol would have accomplished the class of compounds known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) traps 5000 to 14,000 times more heat, pound for pound, than carbon dioxide One group, hydrochlorofluorocarbons or HCFCs, is easier on the ozone layer, but its members are also powerful greenhouse gases. A third category, hydrofluorocarbons, are even worse atmospheric heat collectors than CFCs, but because they don't affect ozone, Sarma says, the Kyoto partners must address them. |
clipped from www.washingtonpost.com'Fighting Global Warming One House at a Time'
March 2, 2007
Chesapeake Climate Action Network's Mike Tidwell describes how he and his wife save energy by using solar power and heating their home with a corn stove.
clipped from pt.wkhealth.comAbstract:
Results show that the ankle was the most common injured body site in 24 of 70 included sports, especially in aeroball, wall climbing, indoor volleyball, mountaineering, netball and field events in track and field.
In sports injuries throughout the countries studied, the ankle was the second most common injured body site after the knee, and ankle sprain was the most common type of ankle injury. The incidence of ankle injury and ankle sprain was high in court games and team sports, such as rugby, soccer, volleyball, handball and basketball.
clipped from hussmanfunds.comLonger term, however, the risk of U.S. dollar crisis (essentially a sharp depreciation of the dollar against other currencies) should not be overlooked. We've fed a habit in recent years whereby the U.S. has run enormous trade deficits with China and Japan, and these countries, in turn, have lent us back the money (by accumulating U.S. debt securities) so that we can maintain our standard of consumption through increased indebtedness. This is not an equilibrium, and disequilibrium situations have a tendency to produce painful adjustments.
clipped from hnn.usForeign observers of Israel tend to focus so intently on the dangers the country faces from its Arab neighbours that they have largely missed an astonishing story that has been accelerating over the past few months: that of the Jewish state’s possible move toward internal collapse.
There certainly has never been such a deep crisis of leadership in the country that touts itself as the only democracy in the Middle East.
clipped from www.washingtonpost.comSnow seems to treat his encounters with the press more like a cable show than as an opportunity to provide the public with a fuller picture
His prime goal seems to be to "win the half hour" -- which generally entails out-talking and mocking your opponent, rather than mustering facts and actually staking out a persuasive position.
clipped from www.washingtonpost.comThe Washington Redskins introduced newly signed middle linebacker London Fletcher yesterday and agreed to a contract with cornerback Fred Smoot, securing their two top free agent targets. But Coach Joe Gibbs doused any expectations of a repeat of the heavy-spending free agent periods of past years by characterizing the team's approach to the rest of the signing period as measured and reserved.
Davis, 28, who said he would go home to Texas to decide between the Redskins and Cowboys
clipped from www.washingtonpost.comIn some ways, the shooting of Paul Joyal last week in a quiet, middle-class enclave of Prince George's County would seem like nothing more than a random act of violence.
But for those who know the 53-year-old expert on Russian intelligence and former staff member of the U.S. Senate's intelligence committee, the shooting has raised suspicions that his background might be behind the incident.
The shooting occurred four days after Joyal alleged in a television broadcast that the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin was involved in the fatal poisoning of a former KGB agent in London.
clipped from www.washingtonpost.comThe government is on track to approve a new antibiotic to treat a pneumonia-like disease in cattle, despite warnings from health groups and a majority of the agency's own expert advisers that the decision will be dangerous for people.
In the mid-1990s, overriding the objections of public health experts from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the drug agency approved the marketing of two drugs, Baytril and SaraFlox, for use in poultry
Before long, doctors began finding fluoroquinolone-resistant strains of campylobacter in patients hospitalized with severe diarrhea. When studies showed a link to poultry, the FDA sought a ban. But while Abbott Laboratories, which made SaraFlox, pulled its product, Baytril's manufacturer, Bayer Corp., pushed back.
clipped from www.washingtonpost.comKABUL, Afghanistan -- A suicide car bomber attacked an American convoy in eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, and up to eight Afghans were killed and 22 injured in the blast or by subsequent gunfire from militants or U.S. soldiers, officials said.
U.S. soldiers at the scene deleted photos taken by a freelance photographer working for The Associated Press and video taken by a freelancer working for AP Television News. Neither the photographer nor the cameraman witnessed the suicide attack or the subsequent gunfire.
clipped from africanamericanopinion.comCherokee voters may remove descendents of freed slaves off of their blue Cherokee citizenship cards
What we’re gonna do right here is go back…WAY back…back into time…
Cherokees, along with Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles, were long known as the “Five Civilized Tribes” because they adopted many of the ways of their white neighbors in the South, including the holding of black slaves.
clipped from www.brunchma.comHow Whites Shape Black-Indian Relations
What I found interesting about the Washington Post article on the vote was the way that it showed how the stage for the present situation was set in significant part by the actions of white people and their governments. And this stage-setting happened in complex ways that can't be reduced to seeing the wrong outcome of today's vote as a simple transferrence of white racism.
clipped from forum.cheapbooks.comQuestion: What online service did the RIAA claim should be shut down because it has no legal use, and is primarily used to share illegal files?
Answer: The World Wide Web (circa 1994)
Few people remember this, but in the early days of the web, the RIAA proposed shutting down the web. That's right; if the RIAA had its way in the early 1990's, the web as we know it would cease to exist.
The RIAA claimed in the early 1990's that the primary purpose of the web was for students to pirate music.
RIAA started complaining about how the web was used for sharing illegal files, and they argued that since the web had no legal commercial use, it should be shut down.
clipped from www.marginalrevolution.com"New Zealanders who emigrate to Australia raise the IQ of both countries." - Sir Robert Muldoon, former Prime Minister of New Zealand.
clipped from pt.wkhealth.comTwo randomized studies[2,3] investigating the effect of stretching before the main exercise session concluded that this did not decrease injury risks. Regarding the reduction of delayed onset muscular soreness (DOMS), only one study observed reduction in soreness;[4] however, this occurred 72 hours after maximum eccentric knee flexion. Results from this study should be interpreted with caution because, not only did it take a long time for the beneficial effects to be noticed, but the sample size was also very small (ten females). Recent reviews[5-9] have suggested that stretching exercises do not protect against injury, nor do they diminish DOMS or enhance performance.
Various studies, with total stimuli duration varying from 120 to 3600 seconds, found that stretching exercises preceding the main strength activity significantly decreased performance.[10-30]
Decreases in strength ranged from 4.5% to 28%, irrespective of the testing mode
In contrast to these results, other authors[35-40] did not observe any detrimental effects of stretching on strength. The total stimuli duration in these studies was shorter, ranging from 30 to 480 seconds.
Flexibility and strength are fitness components that are fundamental in many sports modalities and even for common daily motor tasks. Training for flexibility and strength is widely recommended for those who wish to attain good fitness levels and a better quality of life. Many activities rely heavily on strength, but strength performance may be diminished by a preceding stretching routine; therefore, it is important to understand this phenomenon when prescribing physical exercise programmes. There appears to be substantial evidence suggesting a decrease in strength following stretching. Studies used different stretching techniques, duration and targeted different muscle groups, and were tested with isotonic, isometric or isokinetic devices. However, the number of exercises, duration of each exercise and number of sets (i.e. the total duration of stretching) was much longer than the ranges normally used in practice and what is recommended in the literature. This makes evident the need for further studies with designs that do not threaten their external validity. Training studies should also be conducted in order to assess whether the decreases in strength observed during the training session will have long-term consequences (i.e. suboptimal gains in strength when compared with training without prior stretching).
Furthermore, the safety of the participants should be taken into consideration in the recommendation of stretching exercises. When the possible effects of these exercises are analysed, it seems that many of the mechanisms responsible for maintaining the myo-osteo-articular integrity, such as muscle, tendon and joint receptors, are inhibited following stretching. Tolerance to pain also seems to be increased, allowing range of motion to be greater and closer to the maximal limit of the stretched structures, and consequently, closer to injury risk. The hypothesis that flexibility exercises preceding other physical activities may lead to greater injury risks should be considered and investigated in future studies.
Many mechanisms underlying stretching exercises still demand investigation so that links between the observed effects, their causes and consequences may be constructed.
clipped from www.youtube.comVINITA, Okla. -- J.D. Baldridge, 73, has official government documents showing him to be a descendant of a full-blood Cherokee. He has memories of a youth spent among Cherokee neighbors and kin, at tribal stomp dances and hog fries. He holds on to a fair amount of Cherokee vocabulary. " Salali," Baldridge says, his face creasing into a smile at the word. "Squirrel stew. Oh, that was good."
What Baldridge, a retired Oklahoma county sheriff, also has is at least one black ancestor, a former slave of a Cherokee family. That could get Baldridge cast out of the tribe, along with thousands of others.
The 250,000-member Cherokee Nation will vote in a special election today whether to override a 141-year-old treaty and change the tribal constitution to bar "freedmen," the descendants of former tribal slaves, from being members of the sovereign nation.
clipped from en.wikipedia.orgThe neoconservative or "neocon" movement has been associated with Trotskyism by independent Australian Internet author Peter Myers, paleoconservative Justin Raimondo, and others because of the Trotskyist background of some key neoconservatives, such as Irving Kristol. [4], [5], [6]
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Karsner's job is to implement the Advanced Energy Initiative, announced by President Bush in his State of the Union address. The proposal calls for both the mandated cut in gasoline use and a 22% increase in clean-energy research to make clean energies competitive with those from fossil fuels. Karsner says his approach is "the opposite of what the legacy has been." He believes that since the 1970s the government has focused only on research and development, and needs to now shift more resources to commercialization and deployment. "It's time for a mass diffusion of new energy and technology into the American economy," he said in a Feb. 21 speech to alternative energy industry leaders and investors in New York. "Free-enterprise capitalism is the most effective route to bring clean energy into the economy."
clipped from www.cosmosmagazine.com"By eliminating free radicals from our [body], we interfere with some essential defensive mechanisms," read the study. The antioxidant supplements are synthetic and not subject to the same toxicity studies as other pharmaceutical agents.
"Beta carotene, vitamin A, and vitamin E given singly or combined with other antioxidant supplements significantly increase mortality," wrote the authors, led by Goran Bjelakovic of the Centre for Clinical Intervention Research at Copenhagen University Hospital. "Our findings contradict the findings of observational studies, claiming that antioxodiants improve health."
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clipped from www.nature.comThe Internet has already become a place for people to share knowledge, opinions, music and videos. Now, in a slightly geekier aspect of the same trend, social software is allowing people to share data too. More than 1 million data sets have been uploaded to the data-sharing site Swivel since its launch in December. And on 23 January, IBM labs launched Many Eyes, which allows users to visualize their data with tools previously available only to experts.
The idea is to make data analysis more democratic, as tools such as Google Earth have done for geographic visualization
Making such tools available will not only empower individuals, Viégas predicts, the collective intelligence and expertise of users will result in new insights.
The CU Police Department would like to inform everyone in the campus community of a -gift card scam- that could make someone's holidays less than happy.
This information has been available for some time and has been reported in news sources such as the Wall Street Journal, but it bears repeating at this time of year when gift card purchases are common.
Information has been received from sources that indicate thieves have been going into stores and have been writing down gift card serial numbers from gift cards that are openly displayed for sale on racks or counters. The thieves do not take the card; rather they leave it for some unsuspecting customer to purchase. The thieves then periodically check the card web site to determine when the card has been bought, activated and a balance made available on that card for use. Once the balance is available, the thieves strike quickly, using the card number for online purchases and tapping out the card balance as quickly as they can, leaving the holder of the card with little or no value on the card.
Security experts suggest that if gift cards are purchased, that they be obtained from a stock of cards not kept out in the open or that the gift card has security features that would prevent this type of scam from happening.
Some gift cards have a scratchable covering over the serial number, and that covering is removed at the time of purchase, revealing the serial number. This type of card can help prevent such scams as it is easy to see a card that has been tampered with due to the serial number covering being missing at the time of purchase.
The New Middle East Cold War: Saudi/Israel/Lebanon versus Iran/Syria/Iraq/Hizbullah
Helene Cooper with Hassan Fattah of the NYT has the scoop that Saudi King Abdullah told US VP Dick Cheney two weeks ago that if the US withdrew precipitately from Iraq, the kingdom would have little choice but to support the Sunni Arab guerrillas. The Saudi government had pledged to the US not to do so as long as US troops were in Iraq. But it is alleged that Saudi oil millionaires privately already send money to the guerrillas. Saudis, as Wahhabi Muslims, belong to a sect that is to the right of Sunnism. But the Wahhabi tradition dislikes Shiites and in any Sunni-Shiite struggle, the Wahhabis will come in on the Sunni side.
This item is no surprise, of course, and I have brought up this likelihood a number of times myself. What is remarkable is that it is being stated by the Saudi leadership and published in the press. The Saudis are usually circumspect. If they are leaking this sort of thing, their hair must be on fire with anxiety.
Whatever the truth about our warming planet, it is clear there is a tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. There has been no decree from on high or piece of legislation outlawing climate change denial, and indeed there is no need to criminalise it, as the Australian columnist suggests. Because in recent months it has been turned into a taboo, chased out of polite society by a wink and a nod, letters of complaint, newspaper articles continually comparing climate change denial to Holocaust denial. An attitude of ‘You can’t say that!’ now surrounds debates about climate change, which in many ways is more powerful and pernicious than an outright ban. I am not a scientist or an expert on climate change, but I know what I don’t like - and this demonisation of certain words and ideas is an affront to freedom of speech and open, rational debate.
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For all the talk of simply preserving the facts against climate change deniers, there is increasingly a pernicious moralism and authoritarianism in the attempts to silence certain individuals and groups. This is clear from the use of the term ‘climate change denier’, which, as Charles Jones argued, is an attempt to assign any ‘doubters’ with ‘the same moral repugnance one associates with Holocaust denial’ ...
Structure is good.
Procedures are good in that they create structure for structure. Of course we are all well versed in how procedure is bad. It is bad in the same vein that structure is bad. Hence the phrase thinking out side the box. A box is a structure.
