World Of Technology

Atheist Shoe

2012-02-01T06:34:00.000-08:00

My atheist shoe

Made from calfskin, as soft as a kitten's testicles

You see, atheists have soles too!

The beginning

After one week spent settling on the last - beginning to take shape

On my feet

The Ultimate Battlefield 3 PC Case Mod

2012-01-31T07:06:00.000-08:00

Wooden USB Stick

2012-01-31T07:05:00.000-08:00

Recovering Soldier Reunites with His Dog from Afghanistan

2012-01-30T07:07:00.001-08:00

A wounded soldier and Purple Heart recipient who recently returned home from Afghanistan has now been reunited with a puppy he adopted while on the front lines thanks to the efforts of The Puppy Rescue Mission, a group that helps bring soldiers back together with their overseas pets.

Donny Eslinger, 20, traded three cigarettes for the dog while on a tour in Afghanistan. He took care of the dog, whom he named "Smoke Pup Barbarian," until he was critically injured in a mortar attack.

Eslinger suffered from a broken leg, broken ribs, and other internal injuries in the blast.

Smoke Pup was left behind when Eslinger was flown out of Afghanistan to Germany and then back to the United States where he was admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

President Obama awarded Donny with a Purple Heart when he was in hospital after he was hit by mortar fire while on patrol in September, suffering a penetrating chest wound, a head injury, broken ribs and leg.

That's when Eslinger's squad leader, Staff Sergeant Daniel, wrote to Puppy Rescue Mission. In the letter, Daniel described how he sent Esligner and three other wounded soldiers home while the unit was engaged in a "pretty intense fight with no visible enemy."

In the letter, Daniel described the special relationship Donny and other soldiers in his unit formed with Smoke Pup:
Smoke was the only bit of moral that made these kids forget were they were and cope with the tragedy we just experienced. It is amazing how therapeutic a little creature can be. Donny took care of that dog up until he was injured. Many of us in his Platoon would love nothing more than to see Smoke reunited with Donny. It would be the only decent thing we would see come from this place ... Donny will have a lot to deal with over the next year and Smoke could be a catalyst for recovery.

The Puppy Rescue Mission arranged for Smoke Pup to be flown to Florida and then to Bethesda, Maryland, where Eslinger is still receiving treatment for his injuries.

Lively Sculptures made out of Chicken Wire

2012-01-30T05:56:00.000-08:00

A french artist, Cedric Le Borgne, who already showed his artworks in more than 35 international displaying events now comes up with an interesting idea for sculptures that are displayed at a 4-day light festival held at Durham, England. The sculptures are art made of chicken wire, perfectly articulated to take the human form (Les Voyageurs), a deer (La Biche) or a monkey (Les Naufragés).

How to grow a Rainbow Rose, Naturally

2012-01-30T05:55:00.000-08:00

In 2004, two dutch companies, River Flowers and F.J. Zandbergen, experimented and successfully grew a rose that had its petals rainbow colored. As petals get their nourishment through stem, the idea is to split the stem into several channels and dip each one in a different colored water. This way all the colors will be drawn by the stem into petals and resultant rose will have all the colors in it.

Lamps by Giles Godwin-Brown

2012-01-29T08:54:00.000-08:00

Product and lighting designer Giles Godwin-Brown is a recent graduate and has designed two high-quality modern lamps.

The Nepa Lamp is a two-dimensional “lamp silhouette” that stands six feet. It’s wall-mounted and equipped with friction hinges to allow the piece to pivot away from the wall. Constructed of birch plywood and stainless steel with some aluminum details, it utilizes high-powered LED lighting.

The Candor Lamp is also wall-mounted and is constructed of cotton and timber. Wired with LED lighting as well, this lamp features a transparent strip that generates a “halo-like” glow on the wall it is mounted on.

Man Wants to Live Like Bear Grylls for a Year, Dies in Less than a Month

2012-01-29T08:53:00.001-08:00

Nature has always been about the ‘survival of the fittest’, but sometimes even the fittest cannot survive its harsh conditions. What happened with David Austin is a classic example of how merciless the outdoors can truly be. He had embarked upon a year-long survival challenge in the Scottish wilderness, but was found dead within a month.

The 29-year-old from Derby was on a mission inspired by English adventurer Bear Grylls. Sadly however, his body was discovered on December 31st by a track worker in a remote mountain hut located in Corrour, Highland Perthshire. The condition in which the body was found suggests that it had been lying there for several weeks, unnoticed. According to post mortem reports, the most plausible cause for death was hypothermia.

Austin is said to have known what he was getting into. Apparently, he had taken a few courses on bushcraft skills and outdoor survival for the past two years. It was always his dream to rough it out for a whole year, and he had taken time off of work to accomplish this. He wanted to be at the mercy of the harsh winter so badly that he did not even carry a mobile phone with him. Last November, he had informed his family that he would be heading north on a survival mission and now the news of his death has left them dumbfounded. Austin’s mother was unable to contain her grief when she spoke of her son. “He loved his survival, climbing, that sort of training. I knew what he was going to do but I did not expect this. I’m distraught, I can’t believe it. You don’t expect this and I don’t know how to deal with it.”

Although Austin’s trail remains unknown, it is speculated that he headed to Glasgow from Derby and then went on to Corrour, UK’s highest mainline station. The first heavy snow fall of the season occurred during this time. As he was heading towards the next railway station at Rannoch, he may have started facing difficulties. He might have taken shelter at the hut during this time, but what happened after that remains a mystery.

People say that he was well equipped, and yet fell prey to the extreme weather conditions. Even survival school instructors say that the chances of anyone surviving a Highland winter outdoors and living off the land are pretty slim. It seems that Austin had the courage to take on the rough conditions, but courage is hardly what’s needed to survive the cold. It sure is tragic the way he died, all by himself.

Hubble Space Telescope power interface console on eBay

2012-01-29T06:37:00.000-08:00

If you're working on a DIY version of the Hubble Space Telescope, this may come in handy. It's apparently the Vehicle Power Interface Console used at the Goddard Flight Center during pre-launch testing of the HST, and you can buy it now on eBay for $75,000. From the listing:

Everything is housed in a very substantial 3 rack metal cabinet with lockable 3 door access in the back.

Cabinet is completely hand wired, as only NASA can do, it's a thing of beauty!

All pieces of equipment have wire seals that have not been tampered with

There are three large Heat Vent Stacks with internal fans on the top of the cabinet.

This console is large, and has quite an impressive Presentation!

Ebay

15 Worst Internet Privacy Scandals of All Time

2012-01-29T06:34:00.000-08:00

These high-profile privacy scandals involve many underlying technologies, from search to social media, e-mail to voice mail, mobile phones to Webcams to GPS. But at the heart of all of these privacy scandals are companies collecting personal data without the user's knowledge or consent and then either sharing it with third parties or simply failing to keep it safe.

The latest company to come under the privacy microscope is Google, which revealed a new privacy policy on Tuesday that clarified how it is combining user data across its services.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday the European Union unveiled stiffer penalties and higher fines for U.S. firms that fail to meet their privacy rules for cloud computing and social media applications.

With online privacy expected to remain a high-profile issue in 2012, here's our list of the biggest online privacy breaches of all time:

1. Sony CD Spyware

Sony BMG ran into a major privacy flap in fall 2005 because of the anti-piracy measures called XCP that it added to music CDs. When a customer played one of these CDs on a Windows PC, the CD installed hidden rootkit software onto the PC that communicated the CD being played and the IP address of the PC back to Sony. This so-called spyware also created vulnerabilities on PCs for worms or viruses to exploit. Critics said Sony had created a backdoor onto its customers' machines, leading Sony to recall the CDs and offer a free removal tool for the rootkit software. Class action lawsuits were filed against Sony in Texas, New York and California. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission required Sony to pay $150 to any consumer whose PC was damaged by the software as part of a settlement for violating federal law.

2. The Craigslist Experiment

In February 2006, Seattle Web developer Jason Fortuny posed as a woman seeking sex on Craigslist to see how many responses he would get in 24 hours. He received 178 responses, including photos, names, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers of the men who answered the ad. Fortuny then published all of these responses on a Web site called Encyclopedia Dramatica. The incident received a significant amount of mainstream media coverage, including the Associated Press and MSNBC. Fortuny was later sued in Illinois court by an anonymous plaintiff, and in May 2009 Fortuny ended up receiving a $75,000 default judgment.

3. AOL Search Leak

In August 2006, AOL released a file containing 20 million search keywords used by 650,000 of its users over a three-month period. The file was supposed to be anonymous data available for research purposes, but personally identifiable information was available in many of the searches making it possible to identify an individual and their search history. AOL admitted it was a mistake to release the data and removed it from its Web site after three days, but by then the data had been mirrored at sites across the Internet. AOL's CTO Maureen Govern quit two weeks later. In September 2006, a class action lawsuit was filed - that's still lingering in California courts -- against AOL demanding $5,000 per user.

4. Google Street View

In May 2007, Google added its Street View feature to Google Maps, and it has been battling privacy complaints, paying fines and facing audits ever since. Google Street View provides panoramic views of streets gathered by webcams. It prompted privacy worries for showing men leaving strip clubs, people entering adult bookstores, and people picking up prostitutes, among other activities. Google allows users to flag worrisome images for removal and added a blurring feature for faces and license plates. Nonetheless, Street Views has run into privacy battles with Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany and South Korea, to name a few countries. France fined Google the equivalent of $142,000 in March 2011 related to Street Views, but an August 2011 review by the U.K. government gave Google positive marks for improving the privacy of Street View. Meanwhile, Google must undergo regular privacy audits mandated by the FTC for the next 20 years as the result of a settlement over improper privacy disclosures in its now-defunct Buzz social media service.

5. Hotmail Hot Mess

One of the biggest privacy scandals in terms of scale involved Microsoft's Hotmail free e-mail service. In October 2009, Microsoft urged hundreds of millions of its Hotmail users to change their passwords due to a privacy breach. Microsoft said it discovered that users' details from 10,000 e-mail accounts were posted on the www.pastebin.com Web site as the result of a likely phishing scheme. Microsoft urged users of email accounts ending in @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com to begin changing their passwords every 90 days.

6. Webcamgate

A Pennsylvania school district that used built-in Webcams to monitor the use of several thousand Apple laptops that it provided to students for their use at home ran afoul of online privacy issues and was forced to pay up. The school district admitted it had over 56,000 photos and screen grabs gathered by the Webcams and security software installed on the laptops. These photos were taken without the knowledge or consent of the students, including in their bedrooms and in various stages of undress. In April 2010, high school sophomore Blake Robbins filed a class action lawsuit against the Lower Merion School District for invasion of privacy. In October 2010, the school district agreed to pay $610,000 to settle two lawsuits related to the incident.

7. Facebook Apps

The popular social media site has been plagued by privacy issues over the years. Its highest-profile problem was in October 2010, when Facebook admitted that its top 10 most popular applications including FarmVille and Texas Hold`em shared user data, including names and friends' names, with advertisers. A Wall Street Journal investigation uncovered the Facebook privacy breach and said it affected tens of millions of users, including some that had used Facebook's most stringent privacy settings. Facebook had previously been in trouble for transmitting user ID numbers to advertising companies when users clicked on ads. In November 2011, Facebook settled a case with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission about several incidents and agreed to 20 years of third-party privacy audits (

8. Patient Data Exposed

In March 2011, California-based insurer HealthNet announced a privacy breach for nearly 2 million of its customers, exposing their names, addresses, Social Security numbers, health and financial data. The data were unencrypted and stored on hard drives that have gone missing from contractor IBM's data center. A nationwide class action suit was filed against HealthNet and IBM as a result of this incident. It was HealthNet's second big data breach in two years, having lost the Social Security numbers of 1.5 million policyholders stored on a hard drive in 2009. HealthNet isn't the only healthcare provider to lose private medical data or inadvertently post it online. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says personal medical data for more than 11 million people have been exposed online in the last two years.

9. Behavior Targeting is Targeted

A new area of concern for privacy advocates is behavioral targeting by online advertising services. These services create behavioral profiles based on anonymous data of how computer users surf the web and then serve up targeted ads based on these profiles. The FTC ruled in 2009 that these services must provide consumers with notice about the collecting of behavioral data and provide them with the ability to opt out. In March 2011, the FTC reached its first behavioral profiling settlement with advertising network Chitika for deceptive opt-out practices. Chitika said it mistakenly programmed the opt-out setting for 10 days, instead of the intended 10 years.

10. iPhone Tracking

Apple received so much criticism about how its iPhones and iPads were collecting and storing user location data that then-CEO Steve Jobs made a rare apology in April 2011. Jobs conceded Apple's mistakes in dealing with the location data after security researchers discovered an unencrypted file inside the devices contained a cache of locations visited over the last 12 months. Jobs emphasized that Apple was not tracking its customers: "Never have. Never will," he said, in response to the criticism from Congress and others. Apple provided a free software update to users to fix the glitch. But that wasn't the last time that location data gathered by mobile devices from Wi-Fi hotspots has come under fire. Google and Microsoft later admitted that they store the same kind of user location data on their mobile operating systems, too. (

11. PlayStation Network Hacked

Also in April 2011, Sony announced that hackers had stolen personal data from 77 million PlayStation subscribers. Although this was a security breach of Sony's PlayStation Network, the privacy implications were significant given that the intruder had stolen names, addresses, email addresses and birthdates for so many customers. Sony said it was unclear whether credit card data was stolen, and it warned customers to be on the lookout for identity theft. Security experts said the Sony privacy breach was one of the largest on record. Sony estimated that the incident cost the company $171 million to rebuild its computers and purchase credit protection services for its customers.

12. Disney Violates Kid Data Rule

U.S. Web sites that target children for subscriptions or sales must comply with special rules aimed at gathering permission from parents under the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In May, 2011, Disney's Playdom, Inc. had the dubious honor of paying the largest-ever COPPA fine, which was a $3 million civil penalty from the FTC for gathering and sharing personal information about hundreds of thousands of children without parental consent. Playdom, which runs the popular Pony Stars site, collected kids' ages and email addresses and allowed them to post their full names and locations. Other sites that have run afoul of COPPA rules include blogging outlet Xanga.com and mobile app developer Broken Thumbs.

13. Carrier IQ

The year 2011 closed out with another privacy-oriented brouhaha, this time surrounding Carrier IQ, which sells analytics software for mobile devices. The software is used in an estimated 142 million smartphones. A systems analyst/amateur security researcher discovered this software on his smartphone, and found that it was capturing battery life, connections, text messages, emails and other actions. A slew of accusations followed, with Carrier IQ and its carrier customers being taken to task for allegedly keylogging, spying and tracking. But more detailed analysis by other professional security researchers found that the systems analyst who originally raised the issue was confusing Carrier IQ's actions with those of debug statements mistakenly left in the Android code by phone maker HTC's programmers. As it turns out, Carrier IQ was simply collecting performance data for optimizing the end users' experience. Nevertheless, the original discovery prompted Sprint and HTC to reportedly no longer include the Carrier IQ software on their devices.

14. GM to Sell Vehicle Data

General Motors has run into privacy issues with its OnStar GPS-based system, which may continue to track vehicles even after a customer cancels the service. General Motors changed its OnStar privacy policy in December 2011, indicating that it reserves the right to share data it has collected - such as a vehicle's speed, location, odometer reading, seat belt usage and airbag deployment - with other companies. This is true even for customers who have cancelled the OnStar service unless they explicitly ask for the two-way communications link to be disabled. General Motors says the data would be anonymous and aggregated before being sold. Vehicle-based telematics systems like OnStar are an emerging area for privacy concerns, with new worries about the possibility of misuse of data.

15. Voicemail Hacking

One of the biggest stories of 2011 was the shuttering of News Corps' weekly U.K. publication, News of the World, as the result of widespread hacking of the mobile voicemail accounts of politicians, celebrities and crime victims in the pursuit of stories by the tabloid publication. Investigations of this illegal behavior are ongoing, but have already led to several high-profile arrests and resignations of News Corps executives. Reporters apparently hacked into the voicemail accounts by using the default PINs that shipped with the phones.

Nanotechnology: Will it kill us all?

2012-01-29T06:33:00.001-08:00

You can’t look at internet news lately without seeing the latest and greatest in nanotechnology developments. Everything these days is being manufactured smaller, faster, more durable, and under more and more human control with the help of science. Nanotechnology is a giant rising star in business, already cresting $225 billion dollars in product sales as of 2009 with exponential growth continuing. It’s the cure-all, the golden egg, or the philosopher’s stone, if you will, of the modern world of science. As such, every other industry wants a piece of this new revenue pie and is developing nanotech faster than we can think about it.

What’s not understood, however, is the effects that nanomaterial will have on humans and the environment. More than anything else, that’s a cause for concern that everyone should pause and take note of.

Chances are you have been using products that contain nanomaterials for a couple years now, from clothing to cosmetics to even paint. Building objects from the atomic level adds a layer of customization and refinement that we’re not able to find in nature, not to mention many substances are shown to have abnormal and useful qualities when shaped in such a form, like self-cleaning t-shirts and plaque-fighting silver in toothpaste.

But nanomaterial’s strength in its size is also its weakness. They can be easily ingested or absorbed through the skin and can bleed into the environment at any point between manufacturing and use. This behavior and its effects are not entirely understood by science at this point, and the gap is only going to get wider as more and more industries delve into nanotech to enhance and build their products.

Lack of funds for research that evaluates risk is the main culprit of this, as well as the fact that companies that are tasked with researching that risk are also the companies whose livelihoods depend upon promotion of nanotechnology, creating a hand in the cookie jar scenario that we’ve all seen before.

An advisory panel of the National Academy of Sciences is calling for a four-part research push in the the areas of identifying sources of nanomaterial releases, processes that affect exposure and hazards, nanomaterial interactions at subcellular to ecosystem-wide levels, and ways to accelerate research progress.

To ask for such a wide array of topics to be diligently looked into should be some cause for alarm to any consumer, because the assumption then is that there is no hard data on these topics at all. According to Nano.gov, over 800 everyday commercial products already rely on nanomaterials, from baseball bats to anti-wrinkle clothing to sunscreen and — get this — nanocomposites in food containers.

It’s probably safe to say that we’re ingesting these products already, and science has no clear indication if that’s a bad thing or not.

It gets worse, as well. Future applications of nanomaterials include purifying drinking water and the very air we breathe, among other things. Is this a situation where the cure is worse than the malady? How do we know?

Hopefully in the coming months a plan will be devised to explore the potential effects that nanomaterials have on us and our environment. Hopefully it won’t be too late, but on the bright side, maybe we can use nanotechnology to clean out nanomaterials some day.

It’s a chilling thought, isn’t it?

Monsanto & Cancer Milk: FOX NEWS KILLS STORY & FIRES Reporters

2012-01-29T06:05:00.000-08:00

FOX NEWS Reporters (Reporters Steve Wilson & Jane Akre) uncover that most of the Milk in the USA and across some parts of the world is unfit to drink due to Monsanto Corporation's POSILAC®, which has been proven to be a cancer-causing growth hormone.(known in short as "BGH" "BST" or "rBGH" ), but they were fired for attempting to inform people of the truth.

(Important note: After a long court battle, the Court dismissed the whistle blowers protection for the reporters because the Court stated that there was no law to force that the NEWS state the truth. NEWS was/is no different than other TV shows/reality shows.)

This is type of deceitful corruption is not just FOX news but includes almost all MSM (Main Stream Media).

Self researched, alternative news and information (from multiple sources) is one of the best methods to stay well informed.

Never trust or follow MSM/mega corporations such as Monsanto.

The corrupt FDA has once again turned it's back on the American public and has actually assisted in suppressing the dangers of this issue.

If you consumed or fed regular milk to your family today , there is more than a 90% chance that it was from a cow injected with BGH.

(Bovine somatotropin developed by using recombinant DNA technology).

You could be killing or harming your child every time you pour them a glass of milk, the same as pouring them a glass of slow acting poison.

Please take action to ensure our children's safety, for they can not protect themselves. Remember too, that pus (exudate, infection discharge) is almost always present cow's milk... think about this fact the next time you feed your child this supposedly healthy product.

For great healthy alternative to animal's milk, try Almond, Coconut or Hemp milk (organic).

Health Benefits of Pumpkin Seeds

2012-01-29T00:53:00.000-08:00

Pumpkin seeds are edible kernels of pumpkin fruit. The seeds, in-fact, are concentrated source of numerous health benefiting minerals, vitamins and anti-oxidants. Pumpkin fruit, native to Mexico, is a squash-like gourd of the Cucurbitaceae family.

The pumpkin fruit, in general, is grown as a field vegetable crop; and its seeds, nevertheless, are used as food and to extract useful pumpkin seed oil. In some parts of central Europe (Styrian province in Austria, Slovenia and Hungary) where it is cultivated as major oil seed crop.

Pumpkin fruit is allowed to mature completely to get good quality seeds. Each fruit contains up to 500 cream-white husked seeds located at its central hollow cavity interspersed in between net like mucilaginous fibers. The seeds are semi-flat, have typical oval shape with conical tip. Inside, the edible kernel has olive-green color. The kernels have sweet, creamy nutty flavor enjoyed in deserts, as snack, in savory dishes etc. In Central America, hulled and roasted pumpkin seeds known as pepita.

Health benefits of pumpkin seeds

Crunchy pumpkin seeds are high in calories, about 559 calories per 100 g. In addition, they are packed with fiber, vitamins, minerals, and numerous health promoting antioxidants.
Their high caloric content mainly comes from protein and fats. On the positive side, the nuts are especially rich in mono-unsaturated fatty acids (MUFA) like oleic acid (18:1) that helps lower bad LDL cholesterol and increase good HDL cholesterol in the blood. Research studies suggest that Mediterranean diet, which is rich in monounsaturated fatty acids helps to prevent coronary artery disease and strokes by favoring healthy blood lipid profile.
The seeds contain good quality protein. 100 g seeds provide 30 g or 54% of recommended daily allowance. In addition, the seeds are excellent source of amino acids tryptophan and glutamate. Tryptophan is converted in to serotonin and niacin. Serotonin is a beneficial neuro-chemical often labeled as nature's sleeping pill. Further, tryptophan is precursor of B-complex vitamin, niacin (60 mg of tryptophan = 1mg niacin).
Glutamate is required in the synthesis of γ-amino butyric acid (GABA). GABA, an anti-stress neurochemical in the brain, helps reducing anxiety, nervous irritability, and other neuroses conditions.
Pepitas are very good source of anti-oxidant vitamin E; contain about 35.10 mg of tocopherol-γ per 100 g (about 237% of RDA). Vitamin E is a powerful lipid soluble antioxidant. It prevents tissue cells from the free radical mediated oxidant injury. Thus, it helps maintain the integrity of mucus membranes and skin by protecting from harmful oxygen free radicals.
Pumpkin kernels are also excellent source of B-complex group of vitamins such as thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid, vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine) and folates. These vitamins functions as co-factors for enzymes during cellular substrate metabolism in the body. In addition, niacin help reduce LDL-cholesterol levels in the blood. Along with glutamate, it enhances GABA activity inside the brain, which in turn help reduce anxiety and neurosis.
Furthermore, its seeds contain very good levels of essential minerals like copper, manganese, potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, zinc and selenium. Just as pine nuts, pumpkin seeds are very rich in manganese (provide 4543 mg per 100 g, about 198% of daily-recommended intake), pines are one of the richest sources of manganese. Manganese is an all-important co-factor for antioxidant enzyme, superoxide dismutase. It is therefore, consumption of pumpkin kernels helps body develop resistance against infectious agents and scavenge harmful oxygen free radicals.

Medicinal values of pumpkin seeds.

Research studies suggest that pumpkin seeds have DHEA (Di hydro epi-androstenedione) blocking actions. This may be helpful in preventing prostate and ovarian cancers.
In addition, experimental studies suggest that certain phytochemical compounds in pumpkin seed oil may have role in prevention of diabetic nephropathy (kidney disease).

Selection and storage

Pumpkin seeds are available in the stores all around the year. You may find whole seeds (un-hulled), hulled, and roasted seeds displayed in the grocery stores. In the Latin American world, hulled and roasted pumpkin seeds are referred as pepita.

While buying whole seeds look for uniform sized, compact, cream-white, or light yellow color seeds that feel heavy in hand and feature good metallic sound.

Avoid thin, small sized, shriveled seeds as they yield poor quality kernel. They should be free from cracks, mold, and spots and free of rancid smell.

Completely un-hulled seeds keep well for few months placed in cool dry place. However, hulled pumpkin kernels deteriorate soon if exposed to warm, humid conditions; therefore, should be placed in an air-seal container and stored inside the refrigerator.

Culinary uses

Whole as well as hulled pumpkin kernels are used in variety of recipes worldwide.

Here are some serving tips:

Raw kernels can be enjoyed as healthy snacks. Whole seeds can equally be enjoyable when roasted.
In addition, the kernels can be salted or sweetened. In Mexico, the seeds are usually toasted and flavored with salt, lime, or chili peppers for light snack.
Pumpkin seeds are one of the ingredients that have been added into Mexican mole sauce.
Just like other nuts and seeds, they can also used in granolas, biscuits, breads, cookies, casseroles or baked goods.
The seeds also used in salads especially sprinkled over fruit/vegetable salads.
You may add them to desserts, particularly sundaes and other confectionary.
The seeds are frequently added to meat, poultry, rice, and vegetable dishes.
Pumpkin seed oil is used in salad dressing as well as in cooking. In Austrian-Styria, the oil is mostly used to add to soups and salad dressings along with vinegar, salt and minced garlic.

Fish Oil Supplements

2012-01-29T00:51:00.002-08:00

What is Fish Oil?

Fish oil is derived from the tissue of fatty fish. Fish oil contains Omega 3 fatty acids called EPA and DHA, which are “essential” to the human diet because our bodies can’t make them. As with a number of essential nutrients, some people don’t eat enough fish to have the levels of EPA and DHA necessary for optimal functioning and performance. This is where fish oil supplements can be very helpful.

Fish oil supplements are sold either in soft gels or in liquid form. Soft gels are usually the preferred form because of their convenience and lack of rancidity that comes from exposing the oil to air. The capsules block the oxygen and therefore delay the rancidity of the fats.

Benefits of Fish Oil Supplements: From Depression to Fat Loss

Fish oil’s implications for health benefits have been widely researched. The benefits of taking fish oil range from decreasing Depression and Alzheimer’s, to decreasing mortality from heart disease, to helping people improve their body composition.

Here’s a quick list of the benefits of fish oil supported by research:

Decrease the incidence of depression and anxiety
Decrease Blood Pressure
Reduce the Stress response
Assist in the treatment of psoriasis and dry skin
Assist in decreasing your body’s insulin response to food
Decrease whole body inflammation as marked by C-Reactive Protein
Decrease Triglyceride levels
Help with treating ADHD
Assist in activating fat burning genes
Assist in Muscle Protein Synthesis

Besides the overall health benefits, fish oil may also help improve lean body composition in a number of different ways. What this means is that if you’re a guy with more than 15% body fat or a woman with more than 25% body fat, fish oil may help you lose fat faster while also helping to stabilize any blood sugar issues you may have. In addition to helping you lose fat, fish oil may also help you put on muscle at a quicker rate. While in its infancy, recent research has shown that supplementing with 3 grams of EPA and DHA per day helped increase muscle protein synthesis within the muscle cells, which may help you add more muscle.

What Does Fish Oil Do For Your Body? How Does It Work?

The proper functioning of the 10 trillion cells in your body influences your health in a wide array of ways. It’s on the outside membrane of your cells that Fish Oil, or more importantly the Omega 3 fatty acids EPA and DHA, exert their influence.

Each cell membrane is made up of fat, which also holds a number of transport proteins. You can compare this cell membrane to a large party tent that has a number of entrances into and out of the tent. The doors into the tent are the transport proteins. In this tent example though, some doors only allow protein to come in and others only allow insulin to move through it.

You’ve no doubt heard the term, “You are what you eat.” In the case of cell membranes, the saying is quite literal. The fats you eat, whether they be saturated fats, Omega 6′s or Omega 3′s will then make up the composition of your cell membranes. The normal North American diet filled with many processed foods and oils, causes an over-abundance of Omega 6 fatty Acids to make up your cell membrane. For much of human evolution, the ratio of Omega 6 to Omega 3 fatty acid profile was close to 1.5 to 1. The current ratio is between 15 or 17 to 1. This altered ratio of Omega 6 and Omega 3 fatty acids cause an increase in cellular inflammation markers.

What this means is that those doors in and out of the cell are not easily accessible to the things that the cell needs. Bodyguards (inflammation) now stand guard blocking admission both outside the doors and also inside the tent. So instead of a fun party where things are going in and out of the tent as needed, everything going into and out of the tent is checked. This includes caterers, the guest of honor and everyone else in between. Needless to say this causes a back up of things coming and going and causes a hassle.

This is what happens when you have inflammation markers. The things that are supposed to be going into the cell (protein and insulin) are having a harder time getting in while things that are supposed to be leaving, waste products, stay around longer.

80,000 Year-Old Tree

2012-01-29T00:51:00.001-08:00

A clonal colony of quaking aspen in Utah has been estimated to be 80,000 years old. So what does that estimate mean in human terms? Ten thousand years ago, there were an estimated five million homo sapiens on Earth. (Now it is over seven billion, and growing.)

About 60,000 years ago, it is theorized a group of homo sapiens related to modern humans migrated out of Africa, dispersing to the areas known today as the Middle East, India and some moving into the Sinai peninsula and then gradually into Europe. (Recent evidence suggests this movement could have been 120,000 years ago.) If it occurred 60,000 years ago, Pando already would have been 20,000 years old. This is about the time Homo Sapiens are thought to have begun interbreeding with Neanderthals.

Called Pando, for “I spread”, the aspen colony is located in the Fishlake National Forest. Some believe Pando is not the oldest quaking aspen colony, and others that are far older may be discovered and documented. Though the many aspen trees appear to be individuals they are part of one huge living organism, with a massive root system. Another unique feature of aspen is that below their bark is a green photosynthetic layer which allows them to utilize sugars and continue growing during winter months.

Aspen grow in large colonies throughout North America, and can endure both very low and very high temperatures. They are called quaking aspen, because their leaves flutter frequently, even in a slight wind. The Pando colony covers 106 acres and the average age of the individual trunks is approximately 130 years, and the root system is the oldest part. Pando lives at 8,800 feet above sea level.

Aspen are very successful in asexual reproduction, which makes them able to survive direct attacks such as destructive attempts with bulldozers, fire, and even exposure to toxins. One of the only proven methods of killing aspen is injecting herbicides into the root system. Even heavy browsing by elk and deer only damages of kills individual aspen but not the self-renewing root systems. In nature on of the few true controls on aspen is pocket gophers in significant numbers, because they can chew through the roots systems faster than the grow.

World's largest emerald 57500 carat

2012-01-28T08:24:00.001-08:00

Gun can fire 3 rounds at once

2012-01-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

Land as a mirror

2012-01-27T07:41:00.000-08:00

Salar de Uyuni (or Salar de Tunupa) is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 square kilometers (4,086 sq mi). It is located in the Potosí and Oruro departments in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes, and is elevated 3,656 meters (11,995 ft) above the mean sea level.

Chinese Boy With Cat Like Eyes That Can See In The Dark Discovered In China

2012-01-26T05:31:00.001-08:00

A boy has stunned medics with his ability to see in pitch black with eyes that glow in the dark.

Doctors have studied Nong Youhui's amazing eyesight since his dad took him to hospital in Dahua, southern China, concerned over his bright blue eyes.

Dad Ling said: "They told me he would grow out of it and that his eyes would stop glowing and turn black like most Chinese people but they never did."

Medical tests conducted in complete darkness show Youhui can read perfectly without any light and sees as clearly as most people do during the day.

The Master of Shadows

2012-01-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

The Contemporary Art of Rashad Alakbarov, who may just be referred to as "the master of shadows".

Pancakes can be addicting

2012-01-24T05:18:00.000-08:00

Lucky Driver (5 pics)

2012-01-24T05:17:00.000-08:00

Belgian Beer Cathedral

2012-01-23T07:38:00.000-08:00

Healthy Benefits of Cilantro

2012-01-22T03:18:00.000-08:00

Settle your stomach. Cilantro oils help to produce special enzymes, acids and juices that stimulate the digestion process. So it's no surprise that Dr. James A. Duke, a former botanist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, believes that cilantro banishes bellyaches. Simply drink a cup of tea made by steeping a handful of cilantro in boiling water to find relief.

An abundance of antioxidants. According to the scientific journal Plant Foods for Human Nutrition, cilantro contains high levels of antioxidants called carotenoids. These naturally occurring pigments found in fruits and veggies protect the body against heart disease, stroke and cancer.

Strengthen liver function. Cilantro contains two important compounds known to promote healthy liver function: cineole and linoleic acid. The latter is an essential polyunsaturated fatty acid, which is a nutrient your body needs to function, but can't manufacture on its own.

Defend against diabetes. Coriander (the cilantro plant) is often referred to as an "anti-diabetic." That's because this powerful anti-inflammatory flora can stabilize insulin secretion and lower blood sugar. It has also been shown to lower levels of LDL-"bad"-cholesterol while raising HDL-"good"-cholesterol levels in the body.

Rose hip could help cut heart disease

2012-01-22T03:14:00.000-08:00

A daily dose of rose hip could help cut the risk of heart disease by lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels, researchers say.

In a study, obese patients who consumed a drink made with rose hip powder every day for just six weeks saw their blood pressure and cholesterol levels drop significantly.

The tiny berries, which sprout at the end of the rose-blooming season, have been used for centuries as a folk remedy for conditions like arthritis.

They are packed with vitamin C and are thought to have powerful anti-inflammatory properties.

Scientists at Lund University in Sweden recruited 31 obese men and women to see if a daily concoction made with rose hip powder would reduce their risks of developing type two diabetes and heart disease.

Each one spent six weeks drinking the rose hip solution, made with 40 grammes of rose hip powder, followed by six weeks on a drink make from apples and grapes.

At the end of each experiment, researchers measured patients’ body weight, blood pressure, blood fat levels and glucose tolerance - a test to see if they are in the early stages of diabetes.

After six weeks on the rose hip drink, patients saw their blood pressure drop an average of 3.4 per cent, a small but significant decline, and their total cholesterol levels drop by almost five per cent.

Further tests revealed a bigger drop - six per cent - in levels of LDL cholesterol, the ‘bad’ type of blood fat thought to heighten heart disease risks.

Scientists estimated that the drop in cholesterol and blood pressure combined would reduce the risk of heart disease in obese patients by 17 per cent.

And they said if further studies confirmed the cardiovascular benefits of the common garden berry, it could even be used as an alternative therapy for patients who are unable to take the anti-cholesterol drugs statins due to side effects.

“The findings may have important health implications. They may represent an attractive alternative to statin treatment for people that, because of muscle pain and increases in liver and muscle enzymes, do not tolerate statins,” the Daily Mail quoted the researchers as saying.

“The same is true for people at risk of developing diabetes, as statins recently were shown to increase the risk of diabetes,” they added.

The finding has been published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Top 5 Negative Calories Food to Reduce Your Weight

2012-01-22T03:13:00.000-08:00

1. Onions: Might Make You Teary But Are Worthy Food Ingredients

Onions are among the most valued of herbs, known for their culinary and medicinal value. Onions are rich in water and fiber and nearly devoid of any calories. Further, they tend to raise the metabolism of the body. This is why onions are recommended for preventing cardiovascular disease, i.e. by raising the metabolic rate onions reduce the risk of developing blood clots. A faster metabolism means that more calories are being burned to fuel the body's energy demands. The more pungent the onion, greater are the chances of finding high concentrations of immunity-promoting phytochemicals apart from immunity-boosters like sulfides.

2. Lettuce: Your Perfect Daily, Calorie-busting Companion

Perhaps, the easiest of Negative Calorie Foods to be consumed daily, lettuce has a very low calorie count. It is primarily composed of inedible fiber and water. This kind of fiber is very difficult to be digested and is eventually directed towards the large intestine to be expelled. The fiber content exerts pressure on impacted stools, helping the body to get rid of toxins. Besides this, lettuce is loaded with Vitamin K and chlorophyll, apart from vitamins B2, C, A, B1 and folic acid and minerals like manganese and chromium.

3. Cucumber: No Calories In This Cool Customer

Cucumbers contain a high concentration of caffeic and ascorbic acids. These agents fasten the overall metabolism and prevent water retention. Being primarily composed of water and fiber, cucumbers offer negligible amount of calories. However, they are enriched with nutrients like folic acid, vitamins A and C. The skin of cucumber is a good source of molybdenum, magnesium, silica and potassium apart from trace minerals like silica.

4. Cauliflower: Calorie Buster to the Core

One-cup of cauliflower contains nearly two grams each of fiber and protein and only 26 calories! Cauliflower doesn't contain any kind of fat and its fiber content ensures that the body burns a lot of calories to digest it. Cauliflower is recommended because of its high concentrations of calcium, folate, selenium and potassium. It is among the few vegetables suspected to have a notable anti-cancer effect due to the presence of a substance called indole-3-carbinol.

5. Watermelon: Tastiest of Negative Calorie Foods

Watermelon is among the best-tasting foods in this list, being refreshing and fulfilling, that can easily take care of your hunger pangs without contributing many calories. Watermelon is among the richest sources of lycopene in the natural world. This compound utilizes the body's natural fat content to be fully metabolized.

10 Health Foods with More Sugar Than Coke

2012-01-22T03:07:00.000-08:00

As far as you're concerned, you're having a pretty healthy day. You start off with a glass of orange juice and a bowl of whole-grain cereal. By mid-morning, when you've got the munchies, you reach for some mini rice cakes and a cup of yogurt, and lunch is just a smoothie and an energy bar. You end the day with some spaghetti drizzled with marinara. Truth is, you might as well have just eaten ice cream and cookies all day, because all of these foods have added up to an insane 200 grams (50 teaspoons) of sugar. Here are 10 ostensibly "healthy" foods that often have even more sugar than a can of Coke.

Milk

You down that glass of cow's milk every day thinking about how the calcium and vitamin D are so good for you - and they are. But just a single 8-ounce serving of plain old 1% milk contains 12 grams of sugar. That's 3 teaspoons hiding in a very unexpected place. The real trouble comes along when you add any kind of flavoring, like chocolate or strawberry. A carton of flavored milk is a popular "healthy" option for children's school lunches, yet either option contains between 25 and 30 grams of sugar. For reference, a can of Coca-Cola Classic clocks in at 27 grams. Non-dairy milk tends to fare a little better. Silk brand soymilk has 6 grams of sugar per cup, while So Delicious brand coconut milk contains 7 grams. The original flavor of Rice Dream has 10 grams of sugar, and the vanilla kind has 12. Get the unsweetened version of Almond Breeze and you won't be taking in any sugar at all, but the chocolate version is nearly as bad as dairy chocolate milk at 20 grams.

Cereal

Take a stroll through the cereal aisle and you'll see box after box of sugary confections that look more like desserts than breakfast. Of course, all of those glazed mini cinna-buns and marshmallows are clearly not healthy, but what about the whole grain oats, shredded wheat and flax flakes? General Mills' Oatmeal Crisp Crunchy Almond is "whole grain guaranteed," but the ingredients include brown sugar, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and honey, making it 27% sugar. Kellogg's Raisin Bran may be mostly wheat flakes, but it still has just as much sugar as Lucky Charms at 19 grams. In contrast, Kashi 7 Grain Whole Puffs has zero grams of sugar, and Cheerios have just 1.

Yogurt

Greek yogurt is kind of having a moment. It's rich, it's creamy and it's good for you, packed with protein as well as probiotics that maintain bacterial balance in the gut. The plain versions offered by brands like Fage or Chobani contain a lot of saturated fat (up to 16 grams per serving - as much as three Snickers bars) but the low and no-fat kinds taste just as good. Then, of course, there's the sugar. 6-ounce pineapple, peach and blueberry flavored yogurt cups contain 18, 19 and 20 grams, respectively. Ouch. Other types of yogurt, unsurprisingly, are even more sickly-sweet. A 6-ounce container of Stonyfield Farm vanilla yogurt has 25 grams, and a cup of Yoplait Original Blueberry has the exact same amount of sugar as a can of Coke. But the worst by far is another flavor offered by Stonyfield Farm: fat-free "Chocolate Underground," at 35 grams of sugar. Add in any of your own sugary toppings, like granola, and you might as well be having ice cream for breakfast.

Granola

The word "granola" is used to this day to describe people who are wholesome, down-to-earth and health conscious. This may be a bit of a misnomer, at least when it comes to the last point. Mixing rolled oats with dried fruit, nuts and sugar or honey can produce a product that's got more sugar than soda and more fat than french fries. An 8-ounce cup can contain as much as 30 grams of sugar and granola bars, which are often globbed together with even more sugar, can be even worse. Look for low-sugar options or make your own.

Fruit Juice

Squeezed straight from fresh oranges, apples, pineapples and other fruits, juice should be one of the healthiest foods on the planet. It can't be that bad if there's no added sugar, right? Wrong. These fruits are naturally full of sugar, meaning they don't need any help to be sweeter than soda. Apple juice has a whopping 10 teaspoons of sugar in just 12 ounces, and orange juice has 8. Grape juice actually beats Coca-Cola by half, with 15 teaspoons or an unbelievable 60 grams. And, as anyone who has ever comparison shopped for juice knows, 100% pure fruit juices are outnumbered by all of the varieties that contain added sugar. An 8-ounce glass of Ocean Spray Cranberry Cocktail has more sugar than a can of soda at 33 grams, while an 8 ounce bottle of Minute Maid Cranberry Grape juice, which is "25% fruit juice", contains 38 grams.

Energy Bars

You're halfway through a long workout and can't stop thinking about food. It's the perfect time to break out an energy bar, which provides the protein, fats and carbs that your body needs for optimal performance, and after all, you've earned it. But be careful. Nutritional bars contain lots of sugar to help you power through a workout, but those grams still count toward your daily limit. A fruit and nut Boomi Bar in Apricot Cashew flavor has 19 grams of sugar, a Kashi Go Lean roll has 14 and a Kind Fruit & Nut Delight contains 11 grams. Grab a Clif Bar in the enticing seasonal flavor of Iced Gingerbread and you'll be taking in 24 grams of sugar, or 6 teaspoons.

Packaged Fruit

Popping dried fruit instead of candy? You might benefit from the extra vitamins and minerals, but you're still getting about the same amount of sugar. It would seem that canned or jarred fruits packed in syrup would be among the worst packaged fruits on the sugar scale, but a small cup of Del Monte diced pears has 17 grams and it only gets worse from there. Motts apple sauce has 23 grams of sugar in a small serving cup, and just 1/3 cup of Ocean Spray's Craisins dried cranberries contains 29 grams.

Oatmeal

On the road without a pre-packaged breakfast, what's a health-conscious traveler to do? If you're desperate, the oatmeal options at either Starbucks or McDonald's might be tempting but don't give in. McDonald's oatmeal cup, ostensibly made up of just oats, milk, brown sugar and fruit, actually has 11 ingredients and more sugar than a Snickers bar at 32 grams. In fact, it has just 10 fewer calories than a McDonald's cheeseburger or Egg McMuffin. Meanwhile, at Starbucks, the "optional dried fruit topping" has 20 grams of sugar, and you can add even more with a packet of brown sugar. Eating at home? A packet of instant oatmeal might be slightly better than the drive-in options, but it's still far from healthy. Quaker's raisin, date and walnut variety has 11 grams of sugar and the strawberries and cream kind has 12. Try the low-sugar, varieties instead, or choose Kashi brand, which averages 6-7 grams per serving.

Smoothies

You probably don't need anyone to tell you that smoothies from McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts aren't anywhere near as wholesome as claimed. Sure, there's "real fruit" in a McDonalds strawberry banana, mango pineapple or wild berry smoothie, but there's also 49 grams of sugar. A 16-ounce Dunkin Donuts strawberry banana smoothie has 69 grams of sugar and the same size Jamba Juice Sunrise Banana Berry smoothie contains 59 grams.

Pasta Sauce

Tomatoes don't have many calories, so why would crushed tomatoes in a jar add up to over 100 calories per serving? It's partially the olive or other vegetable oils, but another culprit is up to 6 teaspoons of sugar. The 9 grams of sugar in Classico's Sweet Basil sauce or the 11 grams in Ragu's Sundried Tomato and Sweet Basil may not send you into a sugar crash on its own, but they definitely add up fast.

Rice Cakes

Long thought of as the ultimate diet food, rice cakes typically resemble nothing so much as round slices of styrofoam. But in a bid to catch health-conscious shoppers, manufacturers have begun releasing these puffed rice snacks in a wider range of flavors from sour cream and onion to caramel corn. Quaker's Vanilla Creme Brulee mini rice snack cakes pack 8 grams into a serving.

A Giant Mirrored Building Facade Turns Anyone into Spiderman

2012-01-21T06:50:00.000-08:00

Bâtiment (Building) is a mirrored installation by artist Leandro Erlich.

Living on the Edge (18 pics)

2012-01-20T08:09:00.000-08:00

A two-faced cat with built-in mustache

2012-01-20T08:05:00.000-08:00

Popo Falsa

2012-01-19T21:59:00.000-08:00

Death Masks of the Famous People (12 pics)

2012-01-18T03:27:00.000-08:00

Nicola Tesla

Ludwig van Beethoven

Alfred Hitchcock

Abraham Lincoln

Ned Kelly

Thomas Paine

Woodrow Wilson

Dante Alighieri

Oliver Cromwell

Richard Wagner

Stanford Leland Jr

The Making of...

Baby Seals Rescued

2012-01-18T03:25:00.000-08:00

Baby seals were washed up on a beach in Denmark. Fortunately, they were rescued by locals.

12 Simple Ways to Reduce Food Waste

2012-01-18T02:36:00.000-08:00

It happens to all of us. You’re cleaning out the fridge and discover a container whose contents have started to turn into an alien life form. Or maybe you totally over ordered while dining out but can’t stomach putting your leftovers into a Styrofoam container. Food waste can feel like a fact of life, but if we become more mindful of what’s on our plates and in our pantries, we can take control of our food waste and make a big difference!

We waste one third of the food produced worldwide each year. In a world struggling to feed a population of 7 billion, that is a big problem. Luckily, we have a lot of power as consumers to curb our food waste. Here are some easy ways that you can waste less to save money and help the planet.

1. Eat those leftovers! Whether you eat them as-is or turn them into something new, don’t toss those leftovers in the trash bin.

2. Compost. All of those food scraps from prepping you meals are too valuable to throw away. Compost them instead, even if you don’t have space for a compost heap. Apartment-dwellers can still get in on the composting action.

3. Grow your own. Part of the waste in our food supply occurs because of spoilage during shipping. When you grow food yourself, you cut back on food miles and on waste. You don’t need a huge garden to grow some of your own food! If you have a small yard or live in an apartment, try growing food in containers.

4. Eat less meat. Meat production wastes food. How? Rather than eating beans and grains directly, we feed them to livestock. It’s a much less efficient way to produce food. Try eating more meatless meals to waste less.

Another aspect of food waste is the packaging that goes along with convenience foods and even with takeout. It’s important to be mindful not of just what you’re buying and how much but how much packaging is going straight into the bin after you eat packaged foods.

5. Bring your own doggie bag. Restaurants tend to serve notoriously large portions. Next time you’re eating out, pack some containers to bring that extra food home, and don’t forget to eat those leftovers once you get them there! You’ll be able to skip the disposable takeout container and stretch that restaurant food into another meal, reducing waste and saving you money.

6. Don’t just look at the “best by” date on packaged food. No one wants to eat food that’s spoiled, but those dates are an estimate.

7. Don’t shop without a list. Grocery shopping can be stressful if you’re wandering the aisles, trying to decide how to feed your family for the week. You also end up buying a lot of food that doesn’t get eaten. Instead, take some time to plan out what you’re going to be cooking and snacking on that week while you’re home. Inventory the pantry and fridge to see what food you need to cook in the next few days to keep it from spoiling, and go from there to plan your shopping list.

8. Don’t shop hungry. Isn’t grocery shopping the worst when you’re hungry? I tend to want to buy the whole store! Have a snack before you leave the house or grab a granola bar to eat on the way, so your list and your brain are in charge at the store, not your grumbly stomach.

The way that we shop for and store our food can make a big difference in terms of waste. Take a look at where your food is coming from and at your pantry to waste less food. You’ll save money in the end and make a positive impact!

9. Try preserving. Did the CSA send you WAY too many turnips? Did you accidentally buy more carrots than you needed for the week? Can, pickle, or freeze extra produce to buy yourself more time and avoid spoilage.

10. Join a CSA. What does a community supported agriculture (CSA) program have to do with food waste? Conventional food outlets reject “ugly” produce, which adds up to tons of waste. At a CSA, your farmer is most likely not going to toss a thing. You get to support a local food producer and opt out of grocery store waste at the same time. Win-win!

11. Get the most out of your produce. Did you know that you can make pesto out of the tops of carrots and that you can cook up the greens from beets, turnips, or Brussels sprouts? There are lots of ways to cook with fruit and vegetable scraps.

12. Get organized. When we grocery shop, we tend to just stick our purchases into the fridge and pantry. Instead, make sure that you put the food that’s closer to spoiling front and center, so you’ll remember to use it before it turns.

15 Surprising Ways To Improve Your Cholesterol

2012-01-18T02:32:00.000-08:00

The Fountain of Youth may be fiction, but there really is a magic gene pool in northern Italy. A few decades ago, researchers discovered that, despite unhealthy cholesterol levels, 40 inhabitants of the village of Limone sul Garda were seemingly immune to heart disease. Turns out it wasn't the famed Mediterranean diet at work, but rather a variation of a protein in HDL cholesterol (the good kind) called ApoA-1 Milano. In less scientific terms, the villagers were born with self-cleaning arteries.

Researchers immediately went to work creating a synthetic version of the plaque-busting protein. And in 2003, they created one. Problem is, the drug is still too expensive to mass produce.

Luckily, you don't have to wait for a magic drug to improve your cholesterol. Here are 15 ways to raise your HDL or lower your LDL (the bad cholesterol) today. The best part: Doing so will literally cost you peanuts--or even less.

1. Eat more nuts.

In an analysis of 25 different studies on walnuts, pecans, almonds, peanuts, pistachios, and macadamia nuts, researchers at Loma Linda University found that eating 67 grams of nuts per day--that's a little more than two ounces--increased the ratio of HDL to LDL in the blood by 8.3 percent. And Australian scientists found that when men replaced 15 percent of their daily calorie intake with macadamia nuts--12 to 16 nuts a day--their HDL levels went up by 8 percent. Even better: You can eat nuts covered in chocolate or rolled in cocoa powder; a Japanese study found that the polyphenols in chocolate activate genes that increase HDL production.

2. Boost your endurance.

Researchers in Japan found that exercising for 20 minutes a day increases your HDL by 2.5 points. That's not much, but for every additional 10 minutes per day you keep huffing in the gym, you add an extra 1.4 points to your HDL. It doesn't matter whether you pull a rowing machine or power through a tough barbell routine, just keep your activity level at a point where you're panting but not out of breath.

3. Build killer quads.

Ohio University researchers discovered that men who did lower-body work--squats, leg extensions, leg presses--twice a week for 16 weeks raised their HDL levels by 19 percent. For legs and HDL levels that are something to look at, follow the lead of the men in the study: Do three sets of six to eight repetitions of the half squat, leg extension, and leg press, resting no more than 2 minutes between sets. Use a weight that's about 85 percent of the amount you can lift just once.

4. Pop a milk pill.

In a study published in the American Journal of Medicine, people who took a daily 1,000-mg calcium supplement saw their HDL-cholesterol levels rise by 7 percent. Choose a brand that contains calcium citrate (not coral calcium) and 400 international units of vitamin D for maximum absorption.

When Canadian researchers compared a steady diet of whitefish with regular consumption of lean beef and chicken, they found that the fish-eating folks experienced a 26 percent increase in HDL2, a particularly protective form of HDL. Remember: Fish sticks aren't health food--unless they're baked.

6. Learn how to pronounce "policosanol" (poly-CO-sanol).

This mixture of alcohols derived from sugarcane wax is the rare natural supplement that may actually live up to its hype. Doses of 10 to 20 mg a day can increase HDL by up to 15 percent, according to David Maron, M.D., a cardiologist at Vanderbilt University medical center. Two brands to try: Naturals and Nature's Life, both sold at health-food stores.

7. Drink cranberry juice.

University of Scranton scientists found that volunteers who drank three 8-ounce glasses a day for a month increased their HDL-cholesterol levels by 10 percent, enough to cut heart-disease risk by almost 40 percent. Buy 100 percent juice that's at least 27 percent cranberry.

8. Eat grapefruit.

One a day can reduce arterial narrowing by 46 percent, lower your LDL cholesterol by more than 10 percent, and help drop your blood pressure by more than 5 points.

9. Don't let your tank hit empty.

A study in the British Medical Journal found that people who eat six or more small meals a day have 5 percent lower LDL cholesterol levels than those who eat one or two large meals. That's enough to shrink your risk of heart disease by 10 to 20 percent.

10. Eat oatmeal cookies.

In a University of Connecticut study, men with high LDL cholesterol (above 200 mg/dL) who ate oat-bran cookies daily for 8 weeks dropped their levels by more than 20 percent.

11. Switch your spread.

Buy trans fat-free margarine, such as Smart Balance Buttery Spread. Researchers in Norway found that, compared with butter, no-trans margarine lowered LDL cholesterol by 11 percent.

12. Take the Concord.

University of California researchers found that compounds in Concord grapes help slow the formation of artery-clogging LDL cholesterol. The grapes also lower blood pressure by an average of 6 points if you drink just 12 ounces of their juice a day.

13. Swallow phytosterols or phytostanols.

Both substances--derived from pine trees and soy--lower bad cholesterol levels by an average of 10 to 15 percent. Besides being available in supplements, the compounds are in cholesterol-lowering spreads like Benecol and Take Control.

14. Be a part-time vegetarian.

Researchers in Toronto found that men who added a couple of servings of vegetarian fare such as whole grains, nuts, and beans to their diets each day for a month lowered their LDL cholesterol by nearly 30 percent.

15. Switch to dark chocolate.

Finish researchers found that consuming 2.5 ounces of dark chocolate each day boosts levels of HDL by between 11 and 14 percent.

One final tip: Your heart will benefit more from a few long-term health improvements than from a flurry of activity followed by a return to the dangerous norm. Above are the tools to protect yourself. Work five of them into your daily routine over the next month. When they become second nature, try five more. By year's end, you will have given your heart a beating chance.

The right fats for your body

2012-01-18T02:31:00.000-08:00

You want most of your fat intake to come from whole-food, unheated, unsaturated sources.

These fats are the ones that consistently show up as cardio-protective because they either lower cholesterol or they come with other gifts like antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals.

Just remember that they are best for you in their natural, unheated, unsalted state, particularly hemp seeds, the only commonly used seed that contains GLA, a crucial, hormone-regulating fat that is rare in other foods.

OILS (extra virgin olive oil for salads and grapeseed for higher temperature cooking): Grapeseed oil’s temperature can be raised quite high before it begins to smoke so it is less damaged by the heat. It also may help prevent the oxidation of cholesterol. This oxidation is what does the damage to the cardiovascular system, and there is some evidence that the antioxidants in grape seeds help protect blood vessel damage that occurs with high blood pressure.

But there is one caveat: your brand must be minimally processed and you must heat it in a specific manner. You want to heat your pan first to medium or high heat without any oil in it. Have your ingredients ready to go in before you add the oil and add the food as quickly as you can after you add the oil. This will prevent sticking, preserve the oil, and give a better colour and texture to your food.What’s not to like? Extra virgin olive oil is an excellent source of unsaturated fats. However, you only get the benefit if it is cold pressed and served raw and unheated.

AVOCADOS: Avocados are loaded with good (monounsaturated) fat. Again, during the fatphobic1980s, people were scared off avocados by the fact that they have loads of calories, but with these you get loads of super-nutrients. Avocados are normally eaten raw so you are getting the good fat at its peak. They also contain potassium to regulate blood pressure and the nutrient folate for heart health. Adding some avocado to your salad makes the fat-soluble vitamins more available to your body.

Health Benefits of Vitamin Enhanced Waters?

2012-01-18T02:30:00.000-08:00

The health benefits attributed to the growing number of vitamin enhanced waters currently on the market is considerable. These claims include increased mental awareness and improved physical stamina, as well as improved concentration and prolonged endurance. In addition to providing the vitamins and minerals that might be lacking in one’s diet, manufacturers such as Coca Cola, makers of Vitaminwater, and Reebok, which produce Fitness Water, tout health benefits that go beyond hydration, many of which are not backed by scientific data. Although the ingredients that manufacturers provide for consumers is straight forward enough, the health benefits claimed, or implied, by these manufacturers, can be misleading and have recently generated a certain amount of controversy.

Tricked out in a variety of eye-catching colors, with names like Defense and Revive, vitamin enhanced waters are typically made with artificial colors, artificial flavorings, in addition to a variety of sweeteners, which frequently translates into a considerable caloric intake. Coca Cola’s Vitaminwater contains 33 grams of sugar per 20 ounce serving; while the government’s daily recommended sugar dosage is approximately 44 grams. If the premise behind enhanced water’s purported health benefits is to replenish the body’s depleted vitamins and minerals, it is contrary to scientific data that suggests the actual benefits are minimal at best. According to the government’s 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published in June, a supplement “does not offer health benefits to healthy Americans,” except in cases where osteoporosis or an iron deficiency is present. And further, in some instances, “mineral/vitamin supplements have been associated with harmful effects and should be pursued cautiously.”

In fact, according to an article published by the Mayo Clinic, health benefits derived from vitamin enhanced water are largely negligible, provided one is eating a balanced diet and taking an over the counter multivitamin. As for individuals who are trying to lose weight, the increased calories that attend consumption of these beverages will only be a liability. Additionally, sometimes vitamin enhanced water is produced with what is essentially caffeine, although this might not be immediately clear from the label. According to an article in the Washington Post by Jennifer Larue Huget, Vitaminwater’s Dragonfruit “boasts that its taurine content is an energy booster”. Taurine is an amino acid that occurs naturally in breast milk. There is speculation that it can improve athletic performance, and that if mixed with caffeine it can aid mental performance as well, but this claim is controversial and as yet unfounded.

Cop Turns Off Video Equipment, Beats 66-Yr-Old Man w/ Dementia

2012-01-17T06:46:00.000-08:00

The video shows an officer attacking a 66–year-old man who is suffering from dementia.

In the video, Melbourne police Officer Derek Middendorf is shown giving Albert Flowers a front kick to his stomach.

Middendorf then punched Flowers repeatedly while he was on the ground.

In a report, Middendorf said Flowers walked towards him in an aggressive manner at a fast pace and he couldn't tell whether he had a knife in his hands.

Flowers' nephew, Garrick Flowers, said he yelled at the officer to stop and told him his uncle has dementia.

"He's 66 years old, he had triple bypass, I think he's killing him," said Garrick Flowers.

Flowers owns a lawn care business, and said an employee called the police because he said Flowers pulled a knife on him during a fight about money.

When police arrived, the family said Flowers never pulled a knife and that the issue had been resolved.

"Everything was taken care of. If he forgot, I was there to take care of whatever," said Garrick Flowers.

The family said Middendorf was choking Flowers, and the video shows another officer running over and tasing Flowers in the face.

The family said Flowers was hospitalized for close to a month.

The officer turned off his video and audio equipment before the beating. The department was able to extract the video from the hard drive, but not the audio.

The only disciplinary record the officer received for the incident was a written reprimand for turning off the recording equipment.

Flowers was charged with battery on a law enforcement officer.

"It's ridiculous. Clearly from this video there was no assault on a law enforcement officer. We asked for a speedy trial. We want a jury to see this video," attorney Paul Bross said.

The police chief said he could not comment on the allegations of excessive force, because he had not yet seen the complaint, which was filed.

Your iPhone Was Built, In Part, By 13 Year-Olds Working 16 Hours A Day For 70 Cents An Hour

2012-01-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

We love our iPhones and iPads.

We love the prices of our iPhones and iPads.

We love the super-high profit margins of Apple, Inc., the maker of our iPhones and iPads.

And that's why it's disconcerting to remember that the low prices of our iPhones and iPads — and the super-high profit margins of Apple — are only possible because our iPhones and iPads are made with labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.

And it's also disconcerting to realize that the folks who make our iPhones and iPads not only don't have iPhones and iPads (because they can't afford them), but, in some cases, have never even seen them.

This is a complex issue. But it's also an important one. And it's only going to get more important as the world's economies continue to become more intertwined.

(And the issue obviously concerns a lot more companies than Apple. Almost all of the major electronics manufacturers make their stuff in China. One difference with Apple, though, is the magnitude of the company's profit margin and profits. Apple could afford to pay its manufacturers more or hold them to higher standards and still be extremely competitive and profitable.)

Last week, PRI's "This American Life" did a special on Apple's manufacturing. The show featured (among others) the reporting of Mike Daisey, the man who does the one-man stage show "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," and The NYT's Nicholas Kristof, whose wife's family is from China.

You can read a transcript of the whole show here . Here are some details:

The Chinese city of Shenzhen is where most of our "crap" is made. 30 years ago, Shenzhen was a little village on a river. Now it's a city of 13 million people — bigger than New York.

Foxconn, one of the companies that builds iPhones and iPads (and products for many other electronics companies), has a factory in Shenzhen that employs 430,000 people.

There are 20 cafeterias at the Foxconn Shenzhen plant. They each serve 10,000 people.

One Foxconn worker Mike Daisey interviewed, outside factory gates manned by guards with guns, was a 13-year old girl. She polished the glass of thousands of new iPhones a day.

The 13-year old said Foxconn doesn't really check ages. There are on-site inspections, from time to time, but Foxconn always knows when they're happening. And before the inspectors arrive, Foxconn just replaces the young-looking workers with older ones.

In the first two hours outside the factory gates, Daisey meets workers who say they are 14, 13, and 12 years old (along with plenty of older ones). Daisey estimates that about 5% of the workers he talked to were underage.

Daisey assumes that Apple, obsessed as it is with details, must know this. Or, if they don't, it's because they don't want to know.

Daisey visits other Shenzhen factories, posing as a potential customer. He discovers that most of the factory floors are vast rooms filled with 20,000-30,000 workers apiece. The rooms are quiet: There's no machinery, and there's no talking allowed. When labor costs so little, there's no reason to build anything other than by hand.

A Chinese working "hour" is 60 minutes — unlike an American "hour," which generally includes breaks for Facebook, the bathroom, a phone call, and some conversation. The official work day in China is 8 hours long, but the standard shift is 12 hours. Generally, these shifts extend to 14-16 hours, especially when there's a hot new gadget to build. While Daisey is in Shenzhen, a Foxconn worker dies after working a 34-hour shift.

Assembly lines can only move as fast as their slowest worker, so all the workers are watched (with cameras). Most people stand.

The workers stay in dormitories. In a 12-by-12 cement cube of a room, Daisey counts 15 beds, stacked like drawers up to the ceiling. Normal-sized Americans would not fit in them.

Unions are illegal in China. Anyone found trying to unionize is sent to prison.

Daisey interviews dozens of (former) workers who are secretly supporting a union. One group talked about using "hexane," an iPhone screen cleaner. Hexane evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.

Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers' hands no longer work, obviously, they're canned.

One former worker had asked her company to pay her overtime, and when her company refused, she went to the labor board. The labor board put her on a black list that was circulated to every company in the area. The workers on the black list are branded "troublemakers" and companies won't hire them.

One man got his hand crushed in a metal press at Foxconn. Foxconn did not give him medical attention. When the man's hand healed, it no longer worked. So they fired him. (Fortunately, the man was able to get a new job, at a wood-working plant. The hours are much better there, he says — only 70 hours a week).

The man, by the way, made the metal casings of iPads at Foxconn. Daisey showed him his iPad. The man had never seen one before. He held it and played with it. He said it was "magic."

Importantly, Shenzhen's factories, as hellish as they are, have been a boon to the people of China. Liberal economist Paul Krugman says so. NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof says so. Kristof's wife's ancestors are from a village near Shenzhen. So he knows of what he speaks. The "grimness" of the factories, Kristof says, is actually better than the "grimness" of the rice paddies.

So, looked at that way, Apple is helping funnel money from rich American and European consumers to poor workers in China. Without Foxconn and other assembly plants, Chinese workers might still be working in rice paddies, making $50 a month instead of $250 a month (Kristof's estimates. In 2010, Reuters says, Foxconn workers were given a raise to $298 per month, or $10 a day, or less than $1 an hour). With this money, they're doing considerably better than they once were. Especially women, who had few other alternatives.

But, of course, the reason Apple assembles iPhones and iPads in China instead of America, is that assembling them here or Europe would cost much, much more — even with shipping and transportation. And it would cost much, much more because, in the United States and Europe, we have established minimum acceptable standards for the treatment and pay of workers like those who build the iPhones and iPads.

Foxconn, needless to say, doesn't come anywhere near meeting these minimum standards.

If Apple decided to build iPhones and iPads for Americans using American labor rules, two things would likely happen:

The prices of iPhones and iPads would go up

Apple's profit margins would go down

Neither of those things would be good for American consumers or Apple shareholders. But they might not be all that awful, either. Unlike some electronics manufacturers, Apple's profit margins are so high that they could go down a lot and still be high. And some Americans would presumably feel better about loving their iPhones and iPads if they knew that the products had been built using American labor rules.

In other words, Apple could probably afford to use American labor rules when building iPhones and iPads without destroying its business.

So it seems reasonable to ask why Apple is choosing NOT to do that.

(Not that Apple is the only company choosing to avoid American labor rules and costs, of course — almost all manufacturing companies that want to survive, let alone thrive, have to reduce production costs and standards by making their products elsewhere.)

The bottom line is that iPhones and iPads cost what they do because they are built using labor practices that would be illegal in this country — because people in this country consider those practices grossly unfair.

That's not a value judgment. It's a fact.

So, next time you pick up your iPhone or iPad, ask yourself how you feel about that.

Crack kills

2012-01-15T08:03:00.001-08:00

SPD dash-cam video shows questionable conduct by officers

2012-01-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

2 Seattle, WA cops on dashcam dragging passenger from car & tasing him for refusing to give them ID when he legally didn’t have to then arresting his mom for telling them to call their supervisor.

In the blink of an eye, what began as a routine police check turned into a chaotic scene.

The dash cam video, exclusively obtained by KOMO News, shows more questionable conduct by Seattle police.

The footage shows two dock workers waiting for work get handcuffed. One is hit with a Taser, and both are arrested by police just because the passenger "lips off" to police.

KOMO News uncovered what the American Civil Liberties Union calls a classic case of "contempt of cop." This type of contact, which starts off as a minor stop and quickly escalates to use of force and arrests, is at the heart of what critics say is wrong with Seattle police.

Officer Harris was suspicious when he saw two dock workers, a mother and her son, sitting in a parked car for more than ans hour. They were waiting for a work call-out.

Harris and another officer approached the pair, and the situation quickly turned violent when the son appeared to to ignore the officer's demands for ID.

"You're gonna get Tased," an officer is heard saying.

"I'm not doing nothing! I'm getting out! Stop! My ankle," the man is heard yelling.

One officer used his Taser in the touch-stun mode, and the two wrestled the passenger to the ground where he suffered cuts to his forehead. The man's mother is seen getting out of the car, repeatedly asking for the officer's boss to be called.

"You guys are really out of line," the woman says.

"Sit down," says an officer.

"You're out of line, you know," says the mother.

"You are under arrest for obstructing," the officer says.

"I'm not doing anything," says the woman.

The ACLU and two defense attorneys reviewed the footage, and they both agree the use of force was unnecessary.

"Completely unnecessary," said attorney LeGrand Jones.

"Never had to happen," said ACLU Deputy Director Jennifer Shaw. "It appears that it's a training problem. Certainly, it's a supervision problem."

The incident appeared to have started when the passenger failed to provide his identification. But Jones says he didn't have to.

"Clearly, there was no obligation on the son's part to produce identification. He was a passenger. He really didn't even have to speak to police," he said. The only time one must produce an identification is when one is stopped by a police officer while driving.

All three attorneys believe the real reason the situation escalated is clearly defined by the officer himself.

"And from the very start, you were lipping off," the officer is heard saying.

In the wake of a review by the Department of Justice, Seattle Police Chief John Diaz said this type of confrontation was a missed opportunity and the focus of re-training for the entire department.

"They could have handled it better, and they should have handled it better," he said. "We were having burglaries in that area. These were people that could be the eyes and ears of the department. So that was an opportunity that we could have made more friends out in the community."

An internal investigation determined this incident involved a misuse of force, and the primary officer received a letter of reprimand.

The police chief said more than 450 officers have already gone through additional crisis-intervention training, and the department plans to continue adding to that number.

Female bodyguard training in China

2012-01-14T07:38:00.000-08:00

9 foods that keep you awake

2012-01-14T00:26:00.000-08:00

Do you dread bedtime, because you spend hours tossing and turning? If you have difficulty falling asleep, or difficulty getting back to sleep, or wake up exhausted every morning, your diet may be to blame.
The nine foodstuffs often associated with insomnia include:

bacon
cheese
sugar and sweet foods
ham
tomatoes
caffeinated drinks
large amounts of any liquids
any greasy foods
spicy foods

It comes as no surprise that researchers have now found that all that tossing and turning may have more to do with your tummy, than with your head. Now, evidence from the US-based Mayo clinic has determined a link between insomnia and gastrointestinal disorders. These include indigestion, heartburn and irritable bowel syndrome.
The reasons why some people don't sleep well are well-documented and include:

Depression
Stress and anxiety
Medication
Chronic disorders, including sleep disorders
Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol
Lack of exercise

What you eat, how much, and most importantly, when you eat, may all contribute to the quality of your sleep, say the researchers. Heavy eating, especially during the holiday season, can cause indigestion and heartburn. Try to slow down on greasy, sweet or spicy foods. And avoid heavy meals near bedtime.
But the news is not all bad - many bowel syndromes can be controlled by means of lifestyle changes and medication.

Foods that insomniacs should avoid
Foods that are best avoided by those who have difficulty sleeping, include bacon, cheese, sugar, ham and tomatoes, among others. Scientists say they contain an amino acid called tyramine. This releases a substance that stimulates the brain and keeps you awake.

Foods that help you sleep
The old remedy for sleeplessness, namely a glass of milk, is actually effective. The reason for this, scientists say, is that milk contains an ingredient called tryptophan that helps the body produce melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that helps you sleep. Honey, turkey, egg whites and tuna also contain tryptophan and are recommended as late-night snacks for insomniacs.

Definite no-nos
Then, of course, there are those foods (and drinks) that are more or less guaranteed to keep you from having a good night's sleep:

Stimulants like caffeine (cola, chocolate, coffee). Caffeine is best avoided from two to six hours before bed time.
Nicotine. Like caffeine, nicotine is a stimulant, so smoking before bed time is not recommended.
Alcohol. The tradition of a ''nightcap" before bed time also causes sleepless nights. Alcohol is a sedative, so you'll probably sleep better for an hour or so. However, specialists warn that the body processes alcohol quickly, so the effect soon wears off. This means remaining rest can be fragmented. You'll wake up frequently. Best is to avoid alcohol for at least two hours before retiring.
Other fluids. Avoid drinking too much of anything shortly before bed time as doing so increases the likelihood that you'll have to get up during the night to urinate.

For those who have difficulty dozing off and staying dozed off for their required seven of eight hours, it might be an idea to find out where in your area there is a sleep clinic.

How dirty are your hands?

2012-01-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

According to the Hygiene Council over 30% of child deaths in developing nations, specifically in Africa, are caused by preventable communicable diseases. A communicable disease is an illness caused by a virus or bacteria being transferred from person to person by direct contact. Examples include pneumonia, influenza, chickenpox and diarrhoea. The World Health Organization estimates that 3.5 million children die from diarrhoea and lower respiratory-tract infections each year.
That’s why Global Hand-Washing Day was decreed: the first line of defence against many of these diseases is as simple as washing your hands. Something we all do, right?

According to a global survey conducted by the Global Hygiene Council, 53% of the respondants said they wash their hands for 10 seconds or less after using the toilet. About 24% for said they washed for five seconds and 29% for 10 just over seconds. The optimal time for washing your hands is 20 seconds.

Dettol, another supporter of Global Hand-Washing Day, has developed a partnership with The Children’s Hospital Trust, and will be donating R1 for every 150ml or 250ml Dettol liquid hand-wash sold. All proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross Children’s Hospital and Paediatric Healthcare in the Western Cape.
According to Dettol, 60% of child deaths in South Africa are from diarrhoea and pneumonia. It is also estimated that 17% of African children under five die from diarrhoea and 14% from pneumonia.
Fifty percent of pneumonia cases in children younger than five can be prevented by hand-washing. Another alarming statistic is that 24% of South Africans wash their hands with running water only, which is not enough to shift bacteria. An anti-bacterial soap is essential for keeping your hands hygienically clean.

When to wash your hands
The Hygiene Council says we need to wash:

Before eating, feeding children, applying contact lenses, or giving medication or First Aid

After using the toilet or changing a child’s nappy, handling domestic animals, contact with blood or body fluids, coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose.

Before and after handling raw food or tending to someone who is sick.
Here is how to do it properly:
Step 1: Wet your hands with clean running water and work up a generous lather of soap. If there’s anti-bacterial soap to hand, so much the better.
Step 2: Rub together your palms, wash the backs of your hands and fingers, wash between your fingers, and clean your nails by softly scratching them on the palm of your hand.
Step 3: Rinse and dry thoroughly.

No drip dry
It is also important to dry your hands. Because bacteria and viruses love moist, damp areas, they will spread to damp hands – so getting your hands dry is just as important as cleaning them.
It’s also vital to clean objects that we interact with on a daily basis, including

Computer keyboards
Telephones
Cell phones
Toothbrushes (should be replaced every 3 months)
TV remote controls
Kitchen sponges, dishcloths, sinks and cutting boards
Rubbish bins

Keep in mind that a completely sterile home is neither achievable nor desirable. Without germs we wouldn’t have a well-developed immune system. But basic hand hygiene gives you a better chance of keeping a whole host of nasties at bay.

Top 10 Revolutionary Medical Treatments To Happen In Future

2012-01-14T00:24:00.000-08:00

The change in the climatic conditions, lifestyle, eating habits and the development of technology are increasing the risk of developing new diseases. For example, increased use of machinery is contributing to various sorts of pollution which in turn is the cause for prevailing global warming and respiratory diseases. Scientists are trying hard to develop revolutionary medical treatments to combat these diseases. This article lists the top 10 revolutionary medical treatments that Mankind can enjoy in future

1. Nanotechnology to fight against wound infections: Exposed wounds without proper dressing are sites of infection. To prevent wound infections scientists at Frenchay Hospital in Bristol are working hard to design an advanced wound dressing capable of fighting against infections. This wound dressing is designed with nanocapsules of antibiotics. Once the wound is covered with this dressing, the disease causing microorganisms present in the wound trigger the release of antibiotics from these nanocapsules. These antibiotics fight against the bacteria and prevent the infection. The best part of this dressing is it changes its color after the release of the antibiotics which alerts the doctors about the presence of infection. This nanotechnology based wound dressing is expected to help in easy curing of burns without the risk of toxic shock syndrome.

2. Pharmacogenomics for tailor-made drugs for every individual: Pharmacogenomics that studies the influence of genetic makeup on the action of a particular drug states that apart from the diet, lifestyle and age, genetic makeup of an individual has profound influence on his response to a particular drug. Thus, by understanding the genetic makeup of an individual it would be possible to design tailor-made drugs for every individual as per his genetic makeup. These personalized drugs ensure safety, increased efficiency, appropriate usage of required dosage and reduced medical expenses.

3. Robot assisted surgeries for lesser pain and scarring: Certain surgeries such as those performed to remove cancer affected region of prostate and cardiac surgeries are hard to perform through traditional surgical procedures and laparoscopy. To easily perform these surgeries the assistance of robots is being taken. These robot assisted surgeries are less invasive, take less time, reduce the period of hospital stay, less pain and result in less scarring. However, these surgeries are very expensive. Doctors are being trained in performing robot assisted surgeries so as to bring these surgeries in the reach of everyone.

4. Embryonic stem cells for disease identification and drug screening: Stem cells which have the capability to regenerate all other types of body cells can be used to identify the genes that went wrong for a particular disease. These cells can also be used to identify potential drugs for a particular disease. For example, to identify the genes that went wrong in Parkinson’s disease, skin cells from the patient are taken to turn them into stem cells. Now, these cells lines are allowed to turn into neurons that are genetically identical to the brain cells of the patient. So, anything wrong in these cells would help to identify the actual cause of the disease and accordingly design drugs. This type of study is highly helpful to study diseases for which animal models cannot be used.

5. Gene therapy to treat genetic disorders: Diseases that develop due to alterations in the genetic code are termed as genetic disorders. Changes in genetic code result in synthesis of altered proteins which fail to carry out the normal body processes resulting in a disease. Through gene therapy this defective gene is replaced with the normal gene by using viral vectors or the defective gene is repaired through reverse mutations. Introduction of the normal gene restores the normal body process. Gene therapy is still in the stage of clinical trials.

6. Treating tooth decay without drilling and filling: Repair of decayed teeth involves drilling and filling of the microscopic pores to prevent further damage. However, this act of drilling and filling threatens many people and they even avoid visiting the dentist. Now, this painful process of drilling and filling can be avoided with the help of peptide based fluid designed by scientists at the University of Leeds. This fluid has a peptide p11-4 which has the capability to regenerate the degenerated tooth tissue. The peptide assembles to form a gel like framework that attracts calcium so as to regenerate the damaged tooth tissue. The procedure is yet to be tested on a large group of patients so as to allow it to use on all patients.

7. Cancer treatment using Rotational Field Quantum Magnetic Resonance therapy: Use of chemotherapy in cancer treatments results in death of normal cells along with the tumor cells resulting in several complications. Now, Cytotron therapy that is based on the RFQMR therapy activates the internal mechanism of tumor suppression. This will regulate the growth of tumor cells without any side effects by activating the tumor suppressor genes and proteins responsible for apoptosis.

8. NeoGraft device for automated hair transplantation: In traditional method of hair transplantation a large amount of skin and hair is removed from the back of the head and is used in the areas of implantation. But, with NeoGraft individual follicles are removed and are placed at the desired location eliminating the need for removal of larger section of skin from the back of scalp.

9. The science of SENS to fight aging: Every one of us desire to live long. But, the natural aging process comes in the way of fulfilling this desire. Now, the science of SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) is helping to clear the roadblocks in the fight against aging. For example, the stem cell therapy is helping in identification of genes responsible for various diseases, use of gene therapy to modify the ends of telomeres and to repair the damaged mitochondrial DNA. All these efforts are still under study and if all these trials turn out successful then you continue to remain young for a long time.

10. Stem cell therapy to treat cardiovascular diseases: Stem cells which have the ability to generate any type of cells can be used to generate heart tissue so as to treat cardiac diseases such as coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure and cardiomyopathy. This therapy is expected to improve the functioning of heart by about 70%. In this therapy, the heart cells developed from the stem cells of the patient are inserted into the heart through a catheter.

The benefits of napping

2012-01-14T00:23:00.000-08:00

Napping gets a bad rap.
Many associate a small afternoon siesta with slacking. Some would even call it childish, or question if the napper is ill.
But Jennifer Eyre White, author of the humorous book "The Practical Napper," won't take these nap jabs lying down.

"People think it's important to look productive at all times, and napping just doesn't look (or feel) very productive, although it actually is," says White via email. "It's been shown to have all kinds of cognitive and medical benefits."

In a 24/7 world in which everything and everyone is wired, White sees the need for a nap more than ever.
"Modern life is so frantic and stressful that we really need the downtime," White says.
According to the National Sleep Foundation, more than 85 percent of mammals are polyphasic sleepers, or those who sleep in short segments throughout the day.

Western civilization followed this segmented pattern prior to the Industrial Revolution, but then, with the advent of electric lighting, abandoned it for the monophasic sleep most people subscribe to today.
Many countries, most notably Spain, still center their schedule around a siesta. Most Chinese schools program a half-hour nap right after lunch.

And Google, The Huffington Post and The New York Times are just a few companies that have devoted office space to napping on the job.
"A lot of people still don't understand that napping at work can increase your productivity and creativity, maybe even make you smile at your co-workers more," White says.
A 2008 study by the University of New York found memory function can be improved by a 45-minute daytime nap. Other research has shown that naps can lower blood pressure.
And most of the benefits are incalculable, White says.
"It's like a restart to your day -- things just seem more manageable afterwards," White says. "Napping is popular partly because our bodies are just physically wired to nap," White explains.
Teenagers, meanwhile, are the most steeped in sleep. Research shows that teens are less likely to be depressed if they get sleep.

However, sleep isn't synonymous with happiness as a 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center shows that unhappy people are more likely to nap on a given day than happy people (43 percent, compared with 31 percent).
Not everyone is in the position to rest recumbently, however.
For new parents, who, on average lose between 400 and 750 hours of sleep in their first year, White suggests to follow their baby's lead and nap when he or she does.

Don't give up

2012-01-13T07:46:00.000-08:00

Beaver Computer

2012-01-13T07:45:00.000-08:00

Overheard On The Goldman Sachs Elevator --- Anonymous Goldmans employee opens Twitter account to share comments allegedly overheard at work

2012-01-13T05:39:00.001-08:00

An anonymous career banker inside Goldman Sachs opened a twitter account (@GSElevator) with the intention of revealing the hilarious banter that takes place in the privacy of the GS elevators. Since then, the account has evolved to include things overheard on trading floors, bullpens, lobbies and bars. Some of the conversations involve more than one person, and the participants are distinguishable by their number (#1, #2, #3). Here are some from the past several months…

#1: She’s only about 3 weeks of anorexia away from looking hot.
#2: Maybe 4.

#1: Hey fat fuck, I already know what your resolution is.

#1: Can we please stop calling them ‘hipsters’ and go back to calling them ‘pussies?’

#1: Groupon… Food stamps for the middle class.

#1: A guy came up to me at the gym and asked me what event I was training so hard for. Life, motherfucker.

#1: If you can only be good at one thing, be good at lying… because if you’re good at lying, you’re good at everything.

#1: Blacking out is just your brain clearing its browser history.

#1: My garbage disposal eats better than 98% of the world.

#1: Walking around the protesters outside makes me feel like how a black guy must feel in the gym shower.

#1: Age is just a number. The more important number is how hot she is out of 10.

#1: Hermes ties are like Jordans for white people.

#1: I don’t care how into the environment she says she is. No chick wants to be picked up in a Chevy Volt.

#1: You’re going to Hell in just about any religion.
#2: First class, baby…

#1: Living my life is like playing Call of Duty on Easy. I just go around and fuck shit up.

#1: Sober girls are the worst. So are really drunk ones… The sweet spot is 4 white wines and a Zanny.

#1: I heard the Euro was spotted at Disney World wearing a Make-A-Wish t-shirt.

#1: Bareback is the new 3rd base.

#1: I never give money to homeless people. I can’t reward failure in good conscience.

#1: Fuck that. When I was an analyst, I had to eat an entire ‘wasabi roll’. What we called team building, you faggots call bullying.

#1: Handshakes and tie knots. I don’t have time for someone that can’t master those basic skills.

#1: Two weeks of family time. I’m ready for a FBT to let some bad out.
#2: FBT?
#1: Fake Business Trip.

#1: When it doesn’t matter how much the drinks cost, it’s always happy hour.

#1: Money might not buy happiness, but I’ll take my fucking chances.

#1: Obama’s gone golfing 90 times in less than 3 years as president. That’s about three months of golf.

#1: Almost time for children to learn a valuable life lesson. Santa loves rich kids more.

#1: By now, protesters just look like pigeons to me.

#1: Fact. Nearly 50% of all American workers have less than $10k saved for retirement.
#2: Fuck. That wouldn’t cover a ski weekend.

#1: Anyone that puts CFA and MBA on their business card is a cunt.

#1: Don’t bitch about your apartment. If you want a gated house on a golf course, go be some dogshit CFO in Cleveland.

#1: I asked him what his life goal is, and he said “to make the obituary in The Economist.”
#2: Great answer. Hired.

#1: From my experience, most people really should have lower self-esteem.

#1: My charity work begins & ends with black tie galas. And if drunk me is the highest bidder on a signed Springsteen guitar, so be it.

#1: Let’s get one thing straight. Mark Zuckerberg is a fucking loser.

#1: Black Friday is the Special Olympics of capitalism.

#1: The only reason I have a home phone is so I can find my cell phone.
#2: Our maid does that.

#1: Getting laid off from Goldman is like being traded by the Yankees. You’ll probably still make millions, but it’s just not the same.

Love fatty foods? Blame your taste buds

2012-01-13T01:07:00.000-08:00

Our taste buds can recognize fat and some people may even have a preference for it due to variation in genes that can make certain persons more or less receptive to the taste of fat in foods.

These findings were made in a study by researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Investigators found that people with a particular variant of the CD36 gene are far more sensitive to the presence of fat than others.

The researchers studied 21 people with a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, which is considered to be obese. Some participants had a genetic variant that led to the production of more CD36 protein. Others made much less. And some were in between.

Participants were asked to taste solutions from three different cups. One contained small amounts of a fatty oil. The other two contained solutions that were similar in texture to the oil but were fat-free. Subjects were asked to choose the cup that was different.

“We did the same three-cup test several times with each subject to learn the thresholds at which individuals could identify fat in the solution,” said first author M. Yanina Pepino, PhD, research assistant professor of medicine.

“If we had asked, ‘does it taste like fat to you?’ that could be very subjective. So we tried to objectively measure the lowest concentration of fat at which someone could detect a difference,” she said.

Her team masked input that might help participants identify fat by sight or smell. To eliminate visual cues, they lit the testing area with a red lamp. Study subjects also wore nose clips so that they could not smell the solutions.

It was found that subjects who made the most CD36 were eight times more sensitive to the presence of fat than those who made about 50 percent less of the protein.

“The ultimate goal is to understand how our perception of fat in food might influence what foods we eat and the quantities of fat that we consume,” senior investigator Nada A. Abumrad, PhD, of the Dr. Robert A. Atkins Professor of Medicine and Obesity Research said.

“In this study, we’ve found one potential reason for individual variability in how people sense fat. It may be, as was shown recently, that as people consume more fat, they become less sensitive to it, requiring more intake for the same satisfaction.

“What we will need to determine in the future is whether our ability to detect fat in foods influences our fat intake, which clearly would have an impact on obesity,” Abumrad said.

Dr Abumrad was the first to identify CD36 as the protein that facilitates the uptake of fatty acids. She says better understanding of how the protein works in people could be important in the fight against obesity.

The study was published online in the Journal of Lipid Research.

Grapes may help stave off age-related visual degeneration

2012-01-13T01:06:00.000-08:00

Grapes provide more antioxidant protection for the eyes and may help prevent the onset of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), a new study has found.

The study compared the impact of an antioxidant-rich diet on vision using mice prone to developing retinal damage in old age in much the same way as humans do. Mice either received a grape-enriched diet, a diet with added lutein, or a normal diet.

The researchers found that grapes proved to offer dramatic protection – the grape-enriched diet protected against oxidative damage of the retina and prevented blindness in those mice consuming grapes. While lutein was also effective, grapes were found to offer significantly more protection.

“The protective effect of the grapes in this study was remarkable, offering a benefit for vision at old age even if grapes were consumed only at young age,” Silvia Finnemann, the principal investigator from Fordham University in New York, said.

Finnemann noted that results from her study suggest that age-related vision loss is a result of cumulative, oxidative damage over time.

“A lifelong diet enriched in natural antioxidants, such as those in grapes, appears to be directly beneficial for RPE and retinal health and function,” she said.

Age-related macular degeneration is a progressive eye condition, leading to the deterioration of the centre of the retina, called the macula. It is the leading cause of blindness in the elderly. Aging of the retina is associated with increased levels of oxidative damage, and oxidative stress is thought to play a pivotal role in the development of AMD.

This study showed that adding grapes to the diet prevented blindness in mice by significantly decreasing the build-up of lipofuscin and preventing the oxidative damage to the RPE, thus ensuring optimal functioning of this critical part of the retina.

“Preserving eye health is a key concern as we age and this study shows that grapes may play a critical role in achieving this,” Kathleen Nave, president of the California Table Grape Commission, said.

“This is good news for consumers of all ages who enjoy grapes, and adds to the growing body of evidence that grapes offer an array of health benefits,” Nave added.

The study has been published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine.

Good foods for the brain of children

2012-01-13T01:03:00.000-08:00

Eggs

Eggs does the protein food sources but also rich in choline, needed for the implementation of the function of brain cells. Most young children are eating taro under different forms processing, thus maintaining this regular menu.

Salmon

Salmon is very good food for people in general and small children in particular. Salmon oil is rich foods omega 3 fatty acids DHA and EPA, these are nutrients help brain development, enhance information processing functions. Contact If you have children can eat a capacity (equivalent to a small bowl) a week or eat often as possible.

Oat

Oats is a world ranked super nutritious food because it is not only rich in energy but rich in nutrients such as vitamins B, E, potassium, zinc … Help for brain development and work well. From breakfast to children should eat oats, gives the body more energy during the day, help children listen to lectures, being tired than eating other foods.

Vegetables, fruit dark color

This is a group of fiber-rich foods, vitamin E, A, C and minerals, helps brain development, is not the lack of food groups in each meal. Attention to group berries, dark color, rich in protein, but eye-catching children’s tastes.

Pure food

Pure food group or food full menu is good for the brain, because this is a fiber-rich food groups and energy. For example, choose bread food pure or pure grain brown rice will be more beneficial for health.

Food granular

This food group is very diverse as peanuts, sesame, red beans … rich in fiber, antioxidants and vitamins, minerals. For example, pumpkin seeds, pumpkin melon-rich zinc helps brain development of children, help children sighted and do not forget questions of disease, confusion.

Milk

Calcium in milk is considered extremely important nutrients for children, food groups is indispensable. Calcium works to help strengthen bones, teeth, nails foot … Also milk is rich in food sources of protein, vitamin B needed for the development of brain cells. If children are not provided sufficient milk, can add yogurt, cheese in the diet daily.

Foods rich in iron

Like calcium, iron important for intellectual development, especially to help improve memory. In addition, iron also helps the body make hemoglobin in red blood cells bring oxygen to their duties throughout the body. If iron deficiency will lead to anemia, causing fatigue, impact directly to memory, and the education of children. Foods rich in iron are red meat, red beans, spinach, whole grains … Additional full of vitamin C helps the body absorb iron better, the source of this vitamin in many citrus fruits and tomatoes.

Water

To help your baby healthy and balanced development of both physical and mental, apart from the nutrients, the food above, you need to complete additional water daily for young children. Water may be water, fruit juice or canned beverages, but should limit drinks containing high do gas natural sweet as it is not good for the body, easily addictive and causes obesity.

7 Foods You Didn't Know Contained Sugar

2012-01-13T01:01:00.000-08:00

Finding healthy foods for yourself and your family can easily turn into a full-time job, as grocery shopping and cooking can take hours out of your week. Having staples to stock in the kitchen is a great way to save time, but unfortunately some favorites aren't as good for you as they seem. Check out the ingredient lists and you'll be shocked to discover that many products labeled as "healthy," "natural" and "pure" contain sugar. Here are seven savory foods that sneak in unnecessary sweetness.

Peanuts and Peanut Butter

Nuts and their butters are a great choice when you're looking for a filling, protein-rich snack. Though they taste great on their own, sugar is often added to make them a little sweeter (and more addictive). The organic, raw options tend to be sans sucre, but be sure to check.

Energy/Protein Bars

Bars are convenient when you're in a rush or on the go, but even the kinds that contain mainly fruit, nuts and grains also contain various forms of liquid sugar to make them more exciting. Look for bars that are sweetened with dates, make your own, or just have a handful of nuts instead.

Pasta Sauce

Tomatoes, oil and herbs are all the ingredients you expect to find in your favorite pasta topping, but sugar is sometimes included to balance out the acidic properties (even though tomatoes are naturally sweet). It can be challenging to find a good organic and sugar-free jar, so consider making a big batch of your own. Afterall, it's quite easy to do.

Ketchup

Another tomato based food that you wouldn't expect to find sugar in is ketchup, but that explains why it tastes so good on salty dishes like fries and burgers. And watch out, because many brands are made with high fructose corn syrup, so opt for agave when possible (or whip up some yourself).

Dressings

When you top your favorite lettuces with a savory dressing you probably think you're eating super healthy, but think again - even low-fat varieties contain an average of 5 grams of sugar. Save yourself the trouble and whip up a homemade bottle by mixing oil, vinegar and your favorite herbs.

Fruit and Vegetable Juices

Fruit juices really need no artificial sweeteners, but unless it says 100% juice there's likely some in there. And while vegetables juices are meant to be savory, sugar is commonly added to compliment the added salt (which doesn't need to be there either!). Stay away from "juice drinks" or cocktails and stick with the pure options. Healthiest route is to make fruit or veggie juices yourself, or visit a place that makes them fresh in front of you.

Canned and Dried Fruit

Keep an eye out for fruit in cans or glass jars, like applesauce or pineapple, as well as dried fruit - these foods are already sweet but sugar is added to make them more of a treat. Fortunately it's easy to find unsweetened options - it just takes a moment to read the label.

Biggest lesson from these examples: Always read the labels, even on foods that seem healthy. Many of these items can easily be made at home, which will not only allow you to control the ingredients but also saves money and a trip to the store!

12 Top Ingredients to Avoid in Personal Care Products

2012-01-13T01:00:00.001-08:00

The average personal care product contains about 12 chemicals. From shampoo and lotion to sunscreen and mouthwash, the products we lather, rub and spray onto ourselves may not be healthy. If you think there’s no cause for concern, you might be wrong–more than one-third of all personal-care products contain at least one ingredient linked to cancer, and less than 20 percent of the chemicals in personal-care products have been tested for safety. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t regulate or limit the use of chemicals in personal-care products or require that all of the ingredients be listed on the label. Despite this, many manufacturers do list ingredients on product packaging and on their websites. Check the labels on your personal care products; if you see any of these 12 chemicals, it might be wise to avoid it.

Ingredients to Avoid

Prefixes Ethyl, Methyl, Butyl or Propyl
What It Is: Parabens
Health Risks: Endocrine disrupters that mimic estrogen; linked to weight gain and breast cancer
Found In: Lotions and shampoos

Fragrance, DEHP, DHP, DBP 5, Dibutyl Phthalate
What It Is: Phthalates
Health Risks: Sperm damage, infertility
Found In: Nail polish, shampoo, deodorant, lotion

Dyes: Blue 1, Green 3, Yellow 5 & 6, Red 33
What It Is: Coal tar
Health Risks: Carcinogenic
Found In: Hair color, medicated shampoos

Triclosan, Chloro, Phenol, Irgasan
What It Is: Triclosan
Health Risks: Endocrine and thyroid disrupter; promotes antibiotic-resistant bacteria; bioaccumulates in the body
Found In: Antibacterial soap, shampoo, facial cleanser, toothpaste, deodorant

3-(4-methylbenzylidene)-camphor (4-MBC), octyl-methoxycinnamate (OMC), octyl-dimethyl-PABA (OD-PABA), bexophenome-3 (Bp-3), homosalate (HMS)
What It Is: Sunscreen chemicals
Health Risks: Estrogenic activity; enhances the potential for pesticides to penetrate the skin
Found In: Sunscreens

Polyethylene glycol (PEG, PPG, Cocoate), propylene glycol, polyoxyethylene, polyethoxyethylene, polyethoxyethylene mineral oil
What It Is: Petroleum byproducts
Health Risks: Carcinogen; liver and kidney effects
Found In: Lotions

Petrolatum
What It Is: Derivative of petroleum
Health Risks: Endocrine disrupter; carcinogen
Found In: Lotions

Lead acetate, thimerosal, mercurius solubilis, mercurius sublimates, mercurius corrosives, mercuric chloride
What It Is: Lead and mercury
Health Risks: Found in higher levels in women with breast cancer; neurotoxin
Found In: Hair color, wound treatments, artificial tears

Isobutene
What It Is: Propellant made from petroleum processing
Health Risks: Carcinogen
Found In: Moisturizer, shaving cream, foot spray, breath freshener

Placenta
What It Is: Placenta, placental enzymes, placental extract
Health Risks: Filled with hormones that upset your own balance and increase estrogen
Found In: Skin and hair conditioner

Hydroquinone
What It Is: Hydroquinone
Health Risks: Can cause a skin disease called ochronosis
Found In: Skin whitener

Nano zinc oxide <100mm
What It Is: Nanoparticles
Health Risks: The safety of nanoparticles has not been tested, but they can cross the blood/brain barrier and move along nerves.
Found In: Sunscreens, lotions

Top 12 Detox Superfoods

2012-01-13T00:58:00.000-08:00

Even if you don’t plan on doing a detox program, your health will benefit from adding more detox superfoods to your daily diet. There are many great superfoods with detoxifying properties, but here are my top 12 picks. And, they’re delicious too.

Almonds—are high in fiber, calcium, magnesium, and useable protein that helps stabilize blood sugar and remove impurities from the bowels.

Avocados—lower cholesterol and dilate blood vessels while blocking artery-destroying toxicity. Avocados contain a nutrient called glutathione, which blocks at least 30 different carcinogens while helping the liver detoxify synthetic chemicals. Researchers at the University of Michigan found that elderly people who had high levels of glutathione were healthier and less likely to suffer from arthritis.

Beets—contain a unique mixture of natural plant chemicals (phytochemicals) and minerals that make them superb fighters of infection, blood purifiers, and liver cleansers. They also help boost the body’s cellular intake of oxygen, making beets excellent overall body cleansers. Aphrodite, according to legend, ate beets to retain her beauty. She was definitely on to a good thing since beets, in addition to all the benefits listed above, also help stabilize the blood’s acid-alkaline balance (pH), which in turn supports healthy detoxification.

Blueberries—contain natural aspirin that helps lessen the tissue-damaging effects of chronic inflammation, while lessening pain. Blueberries also act as antibiotics by blocking bacteria in the urinary tract, thereby helping to prevent infections. They have antiviral properties and are loaded with super-detoxifying phytonutrients called proanthocyanidins.

Cabbage—contains numerous anti-cancer and antioxidant compounds and helps the liver break down excess hormones. Cabbage also cleanses the digestive tract and soothes the stomach, which could in part be due to its antibacterial and antiviral properties. Cruciferous vegetables like cabbage (kale is another excellent choice—see below) demonstrate powerful detoxification activity, including neutralizing some of the damaging compounds found in cigarette smoke (and second-hand smoke). They also contain a compound that helps the liver produce adequate amounts of enzymes for detoxification.

Cranberries—have powerful antibiotic and antiviral substances to help the body cleanse harmful bacteria and viruses from the urinary tract.

Flaxseeds and Flaxseed Oil— are loaded with essential fatty acids, particularly the omega-3s. They are essential for many cleansing functions and maintaining a healthy immune system. They are also critical to maintaining a healthy brain. The health of every cell in your body is dependent on getting adequate amounts of essential fatty acids.

Garlic—helps cleanse harmful bacteria, intestinal parasites, and viruses from the body, especially from the blood and intestines. It also helps cleanse buildup from the arteries and lowers blood pressure. Garlic has anti-cancer and antioxidant properties that help detoxify the body of harmful substances. It also helps cleanse the respiratory tract by expelling mucous buildup in the lungs and sinuses. I am referring to fresh garlic, not garlic powder, which has virtually none of the above properties.

Kale—contains powerful anti-cancer and antioxidant compounds that help cleanse the body of harmful substances. It is also high in fiber, which helps cleanse the intestinal tract. Like cabbage, kale helps neutralize compounds found in cigarette smoke and contains a substance that jump-starts the liver’s production of cleansing enzymes.

Legumes—are loaded with fiber that helps lower cholesterol, cleanse the intestines, and regulate blood sugar levels. Legumes also help protect the body against cancer.

Lemons— are superb liver detoxifiers. In addition, they contain high amounts of vitamin C, a vitamin needed by the body to make a substance called glutathione. Glutathione helps ensure that phase 2 liver detoxification keeps pace with phase 1, thereby reducing the likelihood of negative effects from environmental chemicals. Vitamin C and other antioxidants found in lemons are integral to ward off cancer, fight the effects of pollution and cell damage. Fresh lemon juice contains more than 20 anti-cancer compounds and helps balance the body’s pH levels.

Seaweed—could be the most underrated vegetable in the Western world. Studies at McGill University in Montreal showed that seaweeds bind to radioactive waste in the body so it can be removed. Radioactive waste can find its way into the body through some medical tests or through food that has been grown where water or soil is contaminated. Seaweed also binds to heavy metals to help eliminate them from the body. In addition, it is a powerhouse of minerals and trace minerals.

Eccentric animal lover moves pony into semi-detached house

2012-01-12T11:05:00.000-08:00

Stephanie Noble has horrified neighbours in Back, Lewis, after moving in her pet pony as a lodger.

Awesome Inventions

2012-01-12T11:04:00.003-08:00

During her second week at the job, a city manager of a small Tennessee town ends prayer services for employees during work hours

2012-01-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

Mt. Pleasant’s city manager has asked the town’s chaplain to refrain from holding prayer services at City Hall while employees are on the clock, a move she attributes to the separation of church and state.

Michelle Williams, who is serving in her second week as city manager, said the request is not aimed at ceasing acts of worship at City Hall. She said any time before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m. would be appropriate times for prayer.

“We have no problem with them praying, it’s just they need to do it on their own time,” Williams said. “So, I have asked the chaplain to come in before or after (office hours).”

Williams said she doesn’t think her decision will have an impact on the community and citizens should be “happy” about the decision.

“Ultimately, their tax dollars are spent to pay city employees’ salary,” she said. “I would think (citizens) would want them working while they are getting paid.”

Chaplain Jack Taylor, who has served in the volunteer position for about two years, said he has come to an agreement with the city over when he can pray with city officials. Taylor said the situation was a misunderstanding and he does not want to get mixed up in a church and state issue. It is important to pray for city workers and officials, but it’s at the city’s discretion to allow it during business hours, Taylor said.

Mt. Pleasant City Attorney Tom Hardin said the separation of church and state is a basic fundamental constitutional provision, and the city allowing prayer during business hours could be construed as promoting religion.

“It is my opinion that permitting or condoning prayer sessions for certain employees during the workday could certainly be considered a violation of that constitutional provision,” Hardin said.

When asked if prayer would be allowed before city meetings, he said those prayers are considered a tradition. It is customary to open legislative sessions with prayer and it is legally defensible by case law, as opposed to conducting prayer sessions during the work day, which is not, Hardin said.

City Commissioner Bob Shackelford said praying should be allowed if it is not a nuisance and does not interfere with the employee’s job.

“The city manager would have been better off to let this matter go,” he said. “If the fire department and the police department are okay with it … it seems like an unwise decision to interfere if it’s okay with the department heads.”

In 1927 William Smith, a college student received two enrollment forms for Georgia Tech, and decided to make an imaginary student with the second form. Over the years, the imaginary student has received multiple degrees

2012-01-12T09:22:00.000-08:00

George P. Burdell is a fictitious student officially enrolled at Georgia Tech in 1927 as a practical joke. Since then, he has supposedly received several degrees, served in the military, gotten married, and served on Mad magazine's Board of Directors, among other accomplishments. Burdell at one point even led the online poll for Time's 2001 Person of the Year award.He has evolved into an important and notorious campus tradition; all Georgia Tech students learn about him at orientation.

The credit for George P. Burdell's origins go to William Edgar "Ed" Smith, BS in Ceramic Engineering, 1930. Ed conceived the idea for Burdell when he received two Georgia Tech enrollment forms. In a 1977 Atlanta Newspaper interview, Smith said that he originally intended to enroll his ARC (Academy of Richmond County - Augusta, Georgia) high school principal, George P. Butler. He decided against it and changed the last name to Burdell, the maiden name of his best friend's mother.

After enrolling him, Smith signed Burdell up for all the same classes he had. Smith would do all schoolwork twice, changing it slightly to avoid professors catching his sham. When he had a test, he would take it twice and then turn it in under both namesBy 1930, Burdell had earned his bachelor's and, only a few years later, received his master's degree He became an official alumnus, even though his name has remained on the active student rolls ever since.In 1930, Burdell was admitted to the ANAK Society, Georgia Tech's oldest secret society.

One of the first pranks to use Burdell's name came after someone was snubbed by a fraternity he had intended to join. "That irritated [him]. He went out and ordered a truckload of furniture to be delivered c.o.d. to that fraternity. Of course, the order was made by George P. Burdell."

During World War II, George P. Burdell served in the armed forces on many fronts, his name appearing around the world. He was listed on the flight crew of a B-17 bomber, flying twelve missions over Europe with the 8th Air Force in England. However, when a Georgia Tech graduate became the new operations officer for the crew, he immediately recognized the name on the flight log, and Burdell's flying days were over.

George P. Burdell and equally fictitious Agnes Scott College student Ramona Cartwright announced their engagement in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 1958, a prank by Agnes Scott's senior class. The 50th wedding anniversary, of "Mr. and Mrs. George P. Burdell from Atlanta," was acknowledged in the September 23, 2006 broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion.

George P. Burdell is listed as a basketball letterman from 1956 to 1958 in the Georgia Tech Basketball yearbook. In 1969, Georgia Tech computerized its class registration, believing it had successfully found a way to keep George from registering for class that semester. As it turned out, hackers registered him for every class in the Institute that quarter, over 3,000 credit hours.And George did so several times, including in 1975 and 1980.

George P. Burdell was listed on Mad magazine's Board of Directors from 1969 until 1981.Also, when Time magazine was attempting to select their Person of the Year for 2001, George Burdell was the leading candidate (holding at least 57% of the votes) until the magazine removed him from the running.In addition, a check from Kraft Foods was signed by George.Burdell has even obtained a number of credit cards in his name, and subscribes to myriad magazines and music clubs.

More recently, Burdell has participated in music and politics; George P. is a longstanding staff member of WREK, the Georgia Tech student radio station, and he played baritone on the 1995 album Jesus Christ Superstar: A Resurrection, which was made in Atlanta by musicians from the Atlanta alternative scene. In 2000, George was the alternate delegate to the Democratic National Convention from Georgia.Burdell was also a member of the choir of the 2006 album There is a Place. He is also listed in the Faculty and Staff list on Georgia Perimeter College's website. Currently, George's "son," George P. Burdell Junior, is an active proctor for several classes every term.Burdell is also currently listed as a production assistant for the South Park website.

Burdell is a campus icon, and his name is revered among the students on campus.Incoming freshmen are introduced to him as one of the greatest alumni to graduate from the school. George P. Burdell is often paged by first year marching band students during football games and also at airports, bars, and hotels. Georgia Tech students or alumni often use his name as an alias when they do not want to disclose their real name. There is a store in Georgia Tech's student center named "Burdell's," pictured above.

Photos When Niagara Falls ran dry

2012-01-11T06:01:00.000-08:00

At a Romney Event Yesterday, I Was Removed and Arrested. I Still Don't Know Why.

2012-01-11T04:43:00.000-08:00

I’d been in New Hampshire for the past several days to follow the campaign and see some of the candidates in-person. Yesterday morning, I was chatting up a Romney campaign staffer before an event at the Gilchrist Manufacturing Company in Hudson, NH, when a police officer approached. Sir, we have to ask you to leave the premises.

“Sir, is this about my backpack? I’d be happy to show you – there’s nothing dangerous in there.”

“No, sir – we’ll explain it to you outside.”

I gathered my things and walked past a group of citizens and press, humiliated and confused.

Outside, the officer said, “Sir, the campaign has identified you as someone who was at a protest at Romney’s office in Manchester.”

Now I was really confused. Protest? I didn’t even know there had been protests at Romney’s headquarters, and if there had been, I certainly hadn’t been at them. (Later, after I got out of jail, I looked on the web; I still haven’t found any news stories about protests at Romney’s offices here, though Occupy protesters have attended several of his events.)

I explained to the officer – his name was Lamarche, and his partner’s was Ducie – that there must have been some misunderstanding. Could I speak to someone from the campaign to clear this up? No. I’d have to leave immediately.

I asked about his authority to remove me. “We’re working for the Romney campaign,” he said. I asked if he was on-duty; he said he was. My confusion deepened. So was he working for the town of Hudson today, or for the campaign? “Both.” (Later, I think I got it straight: the campaign hired the police for the day, sort of like a private security detail.)

I thought about Romney’s campaign staff inside. They had mistaken me for someone else, and that was enough – I was out. They had imagined trouble and whisked it away, out of sight. And the police – my police – were being paid to do their bidding.

I asked again to speak to someone from the campaign or the company who owned the plant. The officer refused; the company had delegated authority to the campaign, and the campaign had authorized the police to remove anyone the campaign didn’t want present. But wouldn’t it be simple for me to just talk to someone and explain the mistake? Too many people around, the cop said. Apparently it would be too big a bother. I either had to leave or face charges for criminal trespass.

My reason-seeking brain couldn’t take in what was happening. I had come here to be a part of the primary process, to see it first-hand and to write about it. I came because I was curious, and on my own nickel. I wasn’t part of any protest group or in anyone’s employ. Couldn’t we just have a reasonable conversation and figure this out?

I asked another question or two, and the cop had had enough: “You’re under arrest.” He took my things, handcuffed me behind my back, searched me, and tucked me into a nearby cruiser. A few minutes later, an officer removed me from the cruiser and had me lean up against another police car and spread my legs for a second search. Two or three TV crews had their cameras trained on us; I felt ashamed in a wholly unfamiliar way. I wanted to look directly at the cameras and explain what had happened, but I feared the police officers’ reaction.

I was tucked into the second cruiser and driven away. The camera crews continued filming. A protester – oh, did I mention that there was an actual protest there? – yelled, “Free the prisoner.”

*

At the police station, I was put in a cage and asked to remove my shoes, belt, and sweatshirt. An officer named Manni and another officer processed my paperwork. As they did so, they told me not to go back to “that area” when I was released. I indicated that I understood I wasn’t permitted to be on the company’s land or facilities, but surely I could go back to the street if I so chose – it’s public property, after all. Don’t go back to that area, they said. If you go back, you might cause a disturbance or a riot, and you could be arrested for disorderly conduct.

I tried to keep calm and ask even-keeled questions. Were they telling me I wasn’t even permitted in the street near the facility? And if so, on what grounds? (I wondered, Is the Romney campaign just permitted to cordon off a whole neighborhood?)

And then the following exchange took place. I began to ask, “If I express my First Amendment freedoms –

And Officer Manni interjected, “You’ll probably be arrested.”

I couldn’t locate words. (I’m not entirely sure he said ‘probably,’ but I want to give him the benefit of the doubt.)

It was clear to me that the two officers had no interest in discussing what the law actually said, or what my rights actually entailed. I was paperwork, and they wanted to get it over with. That didn't sit well with me, so I kept asking questions. One of the officers then opened up the New Hampshire legal code and read me the definition of disorderly conduct. He read the words dully, as if they were just syllables, with no interest at all in what they meant.

I asked the officer if he could help me connect what he’d just read with my situation and understand why it would be a problem to return to the street outside the event. He told me that I might return and say things that “aren’t what others think.” It was incredible – he actually paused before he said those words, as if searching for something politically correct to say. I don’t think he realized that the words he found had so little to do with the letter and spirit of our laws and Constitution.

*

Nearly four hours after all of this began – after time spent in an actual cell, and then even more time back in the cage – the bail bondsman arrived. He set up an arraignment date, drove me to an ATM so I could extract the $40 bond, and dropped me off at my car. As we parted, he repeated the officers’ advice from earlier: “Don’t hang around this area.” Apparently, even hours after the event had ended, the Romney campaign and the local police were still present, nibbling away at my freedoms.

Top German cop installed spyware on his daughter's computer to monitor her Internet usage, gets hacked in retaliation

2012-01-11T04:41:00.000-08:00

Trojans—they're not just for hackers anymore. German police, for instance, love them; a scandal erupted in Parliament last year after federal investigators were found to be using custom spyware that could potentially record far more information than allowed by law. The story made headlines, but it lacked a certain sense of the bizarre.

Fortunately for connoisseurs of the weird, Der Spiegel revealed a stranger story in its magazine yesterday. According to the report, a top German security official installed a trojan on his own daughter's computer to monitor her Internet usage. What could possibly go wrong?

Nothing—well, at least until one of the daughter's friends found the installed spyware. The friend then went after the dad's personal computer as a payback and managed to get in, where he found a cache of security-related e-mails from work. The e-mails, in turn, provided the information necessary for hackers to infiltrate Germany's federal police.

That was bad, but it got worse. The hackers got into the servers for the "Patras" program, which logs location data on suspected criminals through cell phone and car GPS systems. Concerned about security breaches, the government eventually had to take the entire set of Patras servers offline.

One moral of the tale: parents, think hard before taking technical measures against your own kids. There's a better than average chance that they—or their friends—know more than you do.

TSA Top 10 Good Catches of 2011

2012-01-10T05:22:00.000-08:00

Have you wondered what $1.2 billion in airport security gets you?

The TSA Proves its Own Irrelevance: A compilation of its own "Top 10 Good Catches of 2011" -- 'not a single terrorist on the list. Mostly forgetful, and entirely innocent people'

10) Snakes, turtles, and birds were found at Miami (MIA) and Los Angeles (LAX). I’m just happy there weren’t any lions, tigers, and bears…

9) A science project shut down a checkpoint at Omaha (OMA). I wonder if mentioning the shutting down of the checkpoint added enough flare to his presentation to score him some bonus points?

8) An artfully concealed non-metallic martial arts weapon called a “Tactical Spike” was found in the sock of a passenger at Pensacola (PNS) after being screened by a body scanner. The only thing I keep in my sock is my foot.

7) Inert landmines were found at Salt Lake City (SLC). I always travel with mine, don’t you???

6) A stun gun disguised as a smart phone was found at Los Angeles (LAX). Not very smart to travel with this stunning device.

5) A flare gun with seven flares was found in a passenger’s carry-on bag at Norfolk (ORF). Hmmm… pressurized cabin + 7 live flares = no good can come from this.

4) Two throwing knives concealed in hollowed out book were found at Washington National (DCA). Killer book…

3) Over 1,200 firearms were discovered at TSA checkpoints across the nation in 2011. Many guns are found loaded with rounds in the chamber. Most passengers simply state they forgot they had a gun in their bag.

2) A loaded .380 pistol was found strapped to passenger’s ankle with the body scanner at Detroit (DTW). You guessed it, he forgot it was there…

1) Small chunks of C4 explosives were found in passenger’s checked luggage in Yuma (YUM). Believe it or not, he was brining it home to show his family.

And the TSA decided not to mention its stupidest confiscations:

TSA confiscates a butter knife from an airline pilot. TSA confiscates a teenage girl's purse with an embroidered handgun design. TSA confiscates a 4-inch plastic rifle from a GI Joe action doll on the grounds that it’s a "replica weapon." TSA confiscates a liquid-filled baby rattle from airline pilot’s infant daughter. TSA confiscates a plastic "Star Wars" lightsaber from a toddler.

Dear Customer Who Stuck Up For His Little Brother

2012-01-10T05:09:00.000-08:00

You thought I didn't really notice. But I did. I wanted to high-five you.

Yesterday I had a pair of brothers in my store. One was maybe between 15 and 17. He was a wrestler at the local high school. Kind of tall, stocky and handsome. He had a younger brother, who was maybe about 10 to 12 years old. The only way to describe him was scrawny, neat, and very clean for a boy his age. They were talking about finding a game for the younger one, and he was absolutely insisting it be one with a female character. I don't know how many of y'all play games, but that isn't exactly easy. Eventually, I helped the brothers pick a game called "Mirror's Edge." The youngest was pretty excited about the game, and then he specifically asked me, "Do you have any girl color controllers?" I directed him to the only colored controllers we have, which include pink and purple ones. He grabbed the purple one, and informed me purple was his FAVORITE.

The boys had been taking awhile, so their father eventually came in. He saw the game, and the controller, and started in on the youngest about how he needs to pick something different. Something more manly. Something with guns and fighting, and certainly not a purple controller. He tried to convince him to get the new Zombie game "Dead Island" and the little boy just stood there repeating, "Dad, this is what I want, OK?" Eventually it turned into a full-blown argument complete with Dad threatening to whoop his son if he didn't choose different items.

That's when big brother stepped in. He said to his dad, "It's my money, it's my gift to him. If it's what he wants, I'm getting it for him, and if you're going to hit anyone for it, it's going to be me." Dad just gave his oldest son a strong stern stare-down, and then left the store. Little brother was crying quietly. I walked over and ruffled his hair (yes, this happened all in front of me). I said, "I'm a girl, and I like the color blue, and I like shooting games. There's nothing wrong with what you like. Even if it's different than what people think you should." I smiled, he smiled back (my heart melted!). Big brother then leaned down, kissed little brother on the head, and said, "Don't worry, dude."

They checked out and left, and all I can think is how awesome big brother is, how sweet little brother is, and how Dad ought to be ashamed for trying to make his son any other way.

Thailand car bomb

2012-01-10T04:16:00.001-08:00

A car bomb explodes as a member of a Thai bomb squad was inspecting it in Narathiwat province, south of Bangkok.

The officer, who was wearing a protective suit, was attempting to open the front passenger door of the parked car when the bomb exploded.

Authorities arrived at the scene after receiving a tip-off about the abandoned car, which was left in a no-parking zone.

The bomb disposal expert despite being lawn away nearly 10-meters by the explosion, picked himself up and walked away. He was treated for minor injuries.

Authorities said the bomb was triggered by remote from someone near the scene.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attacks so far, but the incident was believed to be linked to Muslim militants.

There has been a recent increase in the number and scale of attacks with Muslim villagers, soldiers and police among the victims of roadside blasts and ambushes.

About 4,600 people have been killed and nearly 9,000 wounded in violence since 2004.

Ethnic Malay Muslims, represent the majority of the population in the southernmost provinces of predominantly Buddhist Thailand, have long complained of discrimination, especially in education and job opportunities.

An Awesome Studio Apartment

2012-01-10T04:14:00.001-08:00

The Wonder Herb You Aren't Using

2012-01-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

Lemongrass is one of the important element of Asian and Caribbean cuisine. There exist several varieties of lemon grass but Cymbopogon citratus is the pungent and aromatic grass that is used for cooking. Lemongrass is a popular herbal medicine which is commonly used to treat 'cough and cold' in India and other Asian countries. Lemongrass is an invariable part of Thai food. Here is an overview of health benefits of lemongrass.

Health Benefits of Lemongrass

Lemongrass tea is known for its refreshing aroma and taste. This tea from the eastern world has gained immense popularity among westerners for its medicinal properties. Lemongrass carries anti-bacterial and antifungal properties which are useful in treating various skin conditions. Here is a list of uses and benefits of lemongrass plant.

'Detoxification of liver, pancreas, kidneys, bladder and the entire digestive tract' is one of the important benefits of lemongrass tea.

Lemongrass tea helps relieve nausea and severe menstrual cramps.

The tea acts as a diuretic as well.

The tea helps maintain normal cholesterol levels in the body.

It promotes removal of toxins and excessive fat from the body.

The tea helps improve digestive health and in turn the overall health.

Lemongrass tea helps relieve common cough and cold. It helps relieve nasal and chest congestion.

Regular intake of lemongrass tea helps prevent acne and other skin problems.

Lemongrass is used to manufacture herbal soaps, lotions, perfumes and deodorants.

Since everyone cannot get the fresh herb, lemongrass essential oil is used in several ways, as it also carries medicinal properties.

Lemongrass oil is used in aroma therapy as it comes with a light and fresh citrus fragrance.

Benefits of lemongrass essential oil are attributed to its analgesic, anti-bacterial, carminative (relieves gas), deodorizing, febrifuge (alleviating fever), fungicidal, antiseptic, antidepressant, astringent, diuretic, galactagogue, insecticidal, antipyretic (alleviating fever), antimicrobial and sedative properties.

Lemongrass oil helps calm and relax the muscles. It works great for jet lag and stress.

One of the significant lemongrass oil uses is that it helps relieve symptoms of depression, anxiety and panic attacks.

It is used to treat edema (because of diuretic property), gas and acidity.

It improves digestive health by relieving constipation.

It helps prevent internal as well as external infections.

Use of lemongrass oil helps prevent excessive sweating and body odor.

Experts believe that lemongrass kills cancer cells without destroying healthy cells. But more research is needed to prove this.

The oil carries analgesic and sedative properties. So it offers relief from headaches, migraines, menstrual cramps and muscle strains.

Lemongrass oil helps soothe broken or inflamed skin. When applied topically, it speeds up the process of blood clotting and helps prevent excessive loss of blood.

Lemongrass oil carries astringent properties. It therefore encourages contraction of gums, hair follicles, muscles, skin and blood vessels. In this way it helps prevent loosening and fall of teeth and hair. It helps maintain flow of blood through vessels. You can thus reap the benefits of lemongrass for hair. Regular use of lemongrass can help lower the cholesterol levels and improve blood circulation.

Lemongrass uses also include use of lemongrass oil as an insecticide, disinfectant and household cleaning and deodorizing agent. You can put some drops of oil in an oil burner or vaporizer, and it will work as a refreshing room deodorizer. When applied on pet's coat, it helps prevent fleas and ticks. Citronellal in the oil makes it a good insect repellent. The oil also works as an effective mosquito repellent and a food preservative. Lemongrass is commonly available and easy to grow, even in a small pot. So, bring home a lemongrass pot or get a bottle of lemongrass oil and enjoy the benefits.

Facts About Child Hunger And Child Poverty

2012-01-10T01:14:00.001-08:00

#1 According to one recent study, approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States were living below the poverty line in 2010. In the UK and in France that figure is well under 10 percent.

#2 According to the U.S. Census, the number of children living in poverty has gone up by about 2 million in just the past 2 years.

#3 Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

#4 It is being projected that approximately 50 percent of all U.S. children will be on food stamps at some point in their lives before they reach the age of 18.

#5 It is estimated that up to half a million children may currently be homeless in the United States.

#6 More than 44 million Americans are currently on food stamps. That is an all-time record and that number is 18 million higher than it was back at the beginning of 2007.

#7 48 percent of the 44 million Americans that are now on food stamps are children.

#8 According to Feeding America's 2010 hunger study, more than 37 million Americans are now being served by food pantries and soup kitchens.

#9 The number of Americans that are going to food pantries and soup kitchens has increased by 46% since 2006.

#10 According to Feeding America, 50.2 million Americans lived in "food insecure households" during 2009.

#11 Even with tens of millions of Americans on food stamps there are still large numbers of Americans that go hungry each night. According to the BBC, 15% of all U.S. households experienced a shortage of food at some point during 2009.

#12 More than 20 million U.S. children rely on school meal programs to keep from going hungry.

#13 One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one government anti-poverty program.

#14 The poorest 50% of all Americans collectively own just 2.5% of all the wealth in the United States. Statistically, there are more children in poor households than in wealthy ones.

#15 Child hunger is a major problem all over the world. Approximately 1 billion people around the world go to bed hungry each night.

#16 A lack of food among pregnant women in developing countries results in one out of every 6 babies being born with a low birth weight.

#17 Approximately 28 percent of all children in developing countries are considered to be underweight or have had their growth stunted as a result of malnutrition.

#18 More than 3 billion people, close to half the world's population, live on less than 2 dollar a day.

#19 Somewhere in the world someone starves to death every 3.6 seconds, and 75 percent of those are children under the age of five.

#20 Almost 9 million children around the world died before they reached their fifth birthday during 2008. Approximately a third of all of those deaths were attributed to hunger and malnutrition.

Arsenic in apple juice

2012-01-10T01:08:00.000-08:00

New reports on arsenic in apple juice may leave parents confused about what they should be pouring into their children's glasses.

Although the Food and Drug Administration continues to say it is "confident in the overall safety of apple juice consumed in this country," the agency also recently acknowledged it is considering new policies on arsenic in juice.

In the meantime, some consumer groups are advising parents to dilute their juice, vary the brands they serve and limit children's juice consumption.

Other children's health experts say parents should worry more about juice's impact on childhood obesity than about its arsenic content. Already, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends no juice for children younger than 6 months, no more than 4 to 6 ounces a day for kids under 6 and no more than 8 to 12 ounces for older children.

The recent concerns about arsenic arose after consumer groups reported that their testing found levels in apple juice that exceed the FDA standard of 10 parts per billion for bottled water. The agency has no standard for arsenic in apple juice, something the groups would like to change.

The reports have been controversial, in part because arsenic comes in two forms. The inorganic type is harmful, while organic forms are considered relatively harmless.

Pesticides are a source of inorganic arsenic, as is soil and groundwater pollution. But because some arsenic occurs naturally in the environment, it would be nearly impossible to eliminate it from foods completely.

In the case of apple juice, the FDA considers 23 parts per billion of inorganic arsenic to be a "level of concern" that could trigger regulatory action. Samples of apple juice that test above 23 ppb for total arsenic are sent back for retesting to check levels of inorganic arsenic.

Data provided by the FDA show that 6 percent of the 160 samples of apple juice tested from 2005 to 2011 were above 23 ppb for total arsenic. A spokeswoman said results of retesting for inorganic arsenic were "not readily available."

Consumer Reports, the group that reported its testing results this week, said it tested 79 samples of apple juice and nine of grape. No sample exceeded 23 ppb for total arsenic, but nine exceeded 10 ppb for total arsenic, the national standard for bottled water.

The organization's advocacy arm, Consumers Union, and other groups argue that the FDA's level of concern is too lax and that it should set stringent standards for juice based on total arsenic levels.

Consumers Union urged the government to set a level of concern of 3 ppb for total arsenic, a level met by 41 percent of its juice samples.

That standard, the group said, would "better assure that a child … would not exceed his or her daily exposure limit for arsenic based on lung and bladder cancer risks."

The FDA says its level of concern is based on the effects of short-term exposure, not on cancer risk. Its new apple juice assessment "will take cancer outcomes into account," the agency said.

A flurry of interest in the issue was set off this fall when celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz announced on his television show that testing had found high levels of arsenic in samples of apple juice.

The FDA countered at the time that "it would be irresponsible and misleading for 'The Dr. Oz Show' to suggest that the apple juice contains unsafe amounts of arsenic based solely on tests for total arsenic."

But last week, in a letter sent to the show and consumer groups, the FDA acknowledged that a University of Arizona study and its own research has turned up at least nine samples of apple juice in which the predominant arsenic was the inorganic type. Consumer Reports also said "most" of the arsenic found in its study was inorganic.

The FDA is now "seriously considering setting guidance or other level for inorganic arsenic in apple juice," the letter stated.

It also said that at least two types of organic arsenic found in apple juice are considered harmful and that it will count those types along with inorganic arsenic in its continuing evaluations.

This was welcome news to Urvashi Rangan, director of safety and sustainability at Consumer Reports.

"They have certainly done a lot of thinking at the agency since they came out with their statement ," Rangan said. "We are encouraged by this. And I think they are coming around to acknowledging the fact that this is an issue they need to look at more closely."

The Empire State Consumer Project and Food and Water Watch are joining Consumers Union in the call for stricter standards.

Although recent testing has focused on apple juice, the FDA says it will soon expand its testing to other juices as well. The latest Consumer Reports study found that grape juice actually contained higher levels of arsenic than apple juice.

Pediatricians who specialize in environmental health expressed some concern over arsenic levels found in juice and sympathized with concerned parents.

"In general we want to reduce kids exposures to anything toxic," said pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp, who wrote "The Happiest Baby on the Block" and serves on the board of the Environmental Working Group.

But Karp and other child health advocates say juice's sugar content is more alarming.

"Children do not need any juice whatsoever," said Jerome Paulson, who chairs the American Academy of Pediatrics' council on environmental health. "If you look at the nutrition levels on juice and soda, with the exception of some vitamins they are identical. Most parents would not countenance giving their kids soda every day, but they do give them juice every day. Kids need fruits and vegetable, not juice. Don't drink an apple. Eat an apple."

Juice is seen as more risky than raw apples because arsenic can be concentrated in juice.

Another reason for concern about apple juice is the high percentage of imported juice coming into the U.S. food supply. Food and Water Watch estimates that 70 percent of American apple juice came from China by 2009.

The FDA said that it "issued an Import Bulletin to significantly increase the number of juice products sampled and analyzed for arsenic under the Toxic Elements program."

Orange Juice's 'Secret Ingredient' Worries Some Health-Minded Moms

2012-01-10T00:54:00.000-08:00

Natalya Murakhver, a New York food writer and mother of an 18-month year old daughter, loved her premium brand orange juice -- the "100 percent pure" and "not from concentrate" kind that comes in the colorful carton and tastes consistently delicious.

That is, until she said she learned from her first-time moms group that there's a "secret ingredient" in premium orange juices that companies are not required to put on their labeling.

"One of the moms said she had read about [how the juice is made] and they held it in tanks for up to a year and it pretty much lost all of its flavor and had to be reinvigorated with these flavor packs, which are essentially chemicals," said Murakhver, 40, and co-author of "They Eat What?: A Cultural Encyclopedia of Weird and Exotic Food from around the World."

In Murakhver's case, the juice her family drinks, Whole Foods' "365," apparently bucks common industry practice. Whole Foods told that it does not include flavor packets in its juices, nor does it use long-term storage tanks before shipping juice to customers.

But the industry as a whole says that the methods generally are essential for keeping up with consumer demand for orange juice.

For the last 30 years, the citrus industry has used flavor packs to process what the Food and Drug Administration identifies as "pasteurized" orange juice. That includes top brands such as Tropicana, Minute Maid, Simply Orange and Florida Natural, among others.

Murakhver said the addition of the flavor packs long after orange juice is stored actually makes those premium juices more like a concentrate, and consumers need to know that.

Experts estimate two-thirds of all Americans drink Florida orange juice for breakfast, and companies spend millions on their marketing campaigns touting its health benefits.

The "not from concentrate" brands appeared on store shelves sometime in the 1980s to differentiate them from frozen juice and other bottled concentrates. Despite its high price tag -- now up to $4 a carton -- sales of the premium brands have soared.

But those juices don't just jump from the grove to the breakfast table.

After oranges are picked, they are shipped off to be processed. They are squeezed and pasteurized and, if they are not bound for frozen concentrate, are kept in aseptic storage, which involves stripping the juice of oxygen in a process called "deaeration," and kept in million-gallon tanks for up to a year.

Before packaging and shipping, the juice is then jazzed up with an added flavor pack, gleaned from orange byproducts such as the peel and pulp, to compensate for the loss of taste and aroma during the heating process.

Different brands use different flavor packs to give their product its unique and always consistent taste. Minute Maid, for example, has a distinctive candy-sweet flavor.

Kristen Gunter, executive director of the Florida Citrus Processors Association, confirmed that juices are blended and stored and that flavor packs are added to pasteurized juice before shipping to stores.

Flavor packs are created from the volatile compounds that escape from the orange during the pasteurization step.

But, she said, "It's not made in a lab or made in a chemical process, but comes through the physical process of boiling and capturing the [orange essence]."

The pasteurization process not only makes the food safe, but stabilizes the juice, which in its fresh state separates. Adding the flavor packs ensures a consistent flavor.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) grades the quality of the juice based on color, flavor and defects.

"To get grade A, we have to blend it," she said. "Because oranges and their growing seasons vary, both the Valencia -- 'king of the oranges' -- and its lesser cousin, the Hamlin, are combined in the process.

"A processor is faced with harvesting the crop and giving the consumer some sense of what [he or she] might be getting," she said. "You buy branded orange juice, you kind of want it to taste, generally, the same. That expectation is met by blending different varieties and, in order to blend, storage is involved."

FDA Insists on Warnings for Fresh-Squeezed Juice

The Food and Drug Administration does not require adding flavor packs to the labeling of pasteurized juice (which includes the from-concentrate as well as the not-from-concentrate versions), because, "it is the orange," said Gunter.

Non-pasteurized juice must be labeled as such, with warnings about potential pathogens. These regulations have been in place since 1963, she said.

As for the New York City mothers, Gunter said, "I don't think there has been a large outcry."

"If consumers have the false impression that pasteurized orange juice is not heated or treated because they have a picture of an orange on the carton, then they are not informed," said Gunter.

"There's a lot of literature and movies taking the food manufacturers to task on food preparation," she said. "We have left the farms and it's just not possible to feed everybody. I love the raw-food crowd, but we cannot get that many oranges out to that many people before they go bad in refrigeration."

But Alissa Hamilton, a former food and policy fellow at the Institute of Agriculture and Trade, said that modern technology is so "sophisticated" that these flavor pack mixtures "don't exist in nature."

"They break it down into individual chemicals," she said. "The flavor of orange is one of the most complex and is made up of thousands of chemicals."

"They are fine-tuned so each company has its trademark flavor," said Hamilton, who is author of the 2009 book, "Squeezed: What You Don't Know About Orange Juice."."

One that is used in a variety of foods, including alcoholic beverages, chewing gum and as a solvent in perfumes, is ethyl butyrate.

According to Doug Kara, a spokesman for the FDA's food safety division, the chemical is "generally recognized as safe as a food additive for flavoring."

"The orange juice companies market their premium brands as fresh-squeezed and better than concentrated," said Hamilton. "But it's a heavily processed product."

She advises , that the freshest orange juice can be bought in May when the bright and flavorful Valencia oranges are harvested and have "not spent months in storage."

She adds that consumers can eat a whole Florida orange, which is higher in vitamin C than processed juice and much tastier.

As for any health concerns, Hamilton said, "I don't know," but many of the oranges used for juice come from mega-producer Brazil, where regulation of pesticides is not as stringent as in the U.S.

Still, according to the FDA's Karas, "We do screening of imports, and imported foods need to meet the same standards as do foods grown or produced domestically."

Mothers such as 36-year-old Yujin Kim, who has a 3-year-old and a 4-month-old, said she is concerned about what is in her orange juice.

"It's not arsenic but still something I didn't know I was drinking, so I ended up researching juice machines and bought one today," said Kim, who lives in New York City. "I definitely will not be buying any juice from now on."

"It makes sense that they would need to add chemicals for it to last through the transit time and for the consumers to buy and store at home," she said. "It's just wrong that they aren't being transparent about it. We as a consumer have a right to know exactly what's in the foods we are buying."

Her friend, Murakhver, said she wrote to Whole Foods and got an email response, which she shared.

Whole Foods spokesman Julie Campbell wrote that she was unable to disclose the name of the company that makes its orange juice, "as that information is proprietary."

"Flavor Packs are typically made by fractional distilling the oil from orange peel; essentially concentrating the components," she wrote. "Flavor packs are used by other brands to standardize their products. We accomplish the same thing by blending orange juice from different varieties and parts of the season together."

"I don't know what that means," said Murakhver. "If how they make it is proprietary, there is no transparency."

Though Whole Foods later clarified directly that it does not use flavor packets in the juice, Murakhver remained unsettled by what she said were the company's ambiguous statements to her.

"There hasn't been a day in the last three years that we've not had it in the fridge and at the top of the shopping list with the milk," she said. "We are going to get a juicer and eat fresh fruit every morning and try to get our sugar high from fresh fruit."

"I like vintage champagne, not vintage orange juice," she said.

20 Surprising Artificially Colored Foods

2012-01-10T00:25:00.000-08:00

As the FDA reviews the possible link between artificial food coloring and behavior problems in children, you may not realize just how many everyday foods contain artificial tints. Artificial food dyes - and their suspected link to behavior problems like ADHD in some children - are under fire again, as an FDA expert panel re-examines their safety in a two-day review. The panel will look at studies on the links between artificial coloring and health problems and possibly recommend policy changes, including warning labels on foods that contain them.

Controversy over artificial food colorings, many of which were first approved by FDA in 1931, is nothing new. The debate dates back to the 1970s when California pediatrician Benjamin Feingold claimed a link between dyes and hyperactivity in children and suggested a diet that eliminated them.

FDA has weighed in on artificial food coloring in the past (in 1982, in 1986, and in 2007) and concluded that further research was needed to confirm a link between additives and hyperactivity. Today's panel is being held in response to a 2008 petition from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) asking FDA to ban color additives or, at the very least, require warning labels on the packaging.

"The continued use of synthetic food dyes is hardly worth the risk," Michael Jacobson, CSPI executive director said in a statement. "Why, when we're medicating so many children for hyperactivity, would we let food manufacturers worsen some children's problems? Behavioral problems aside, animal studies indicating that dyes pose a cancer risk provide another reason for banning those chemicals."

But health experts are still debating the link between food dyes and kids' behavior problems, and the merit of the scientific studies that cite such associations. Lawrence Diller, MD, a behavioral pediatrician, told The New York Times that there was minimal to nonexistent evidence that diet plays a big role in most childhood behavioral disorders. "These are urban legends that won't die," Dr. Diller said.

According to the Times, FDA experts have suggested that, rather than being innately toxic, food dyes may cause allergic reactions in certain people because they have an intolerance to the dyes.

Should You Ban Food Dyes from Your Diet?

Regardless of what the FDA panel decides, most nutritionists would agree it's wise to limit your intake of artificial dyes, if only because they tend to be found in processed foods that also contain other unhealthy ingredients, like added sugar and sodium.

If you're trying to watch your kids' intake of processed foods, it's a good idea to read nutrition labels not just for calorie and fat counts, but for artificial dyes (such as Blue 1, Blue 2, Green 3, Red 3, Red 40, Yellow 5 and Yellow 6) in ingredient lists.

You can also shop at stores like Whole Foods, Trader Joe's , food co-ops, farmers' markets, and other outlets that sell products free of artificial coloring. Some big food manufacturers are rolling out packaged foods without added colors, according to the Times. Kraft, for example, has introduced Kool-Aid Invisible and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Organic White Cheddar. NECCO has switched to natural colors for its wafers, and Frito-Lay is testing dye-free snacks, according to CSPI.

While it's obvious that such foods as Froot Loops, Skittles, and Jell-O contain artificial coloring, you may be surprised by many of the popular items named in the CSPI report. Here's a sampling:

Grocery Items

Hunt's Snack Pudding, Vanilla (Yellow 5, Yellow 6)
Yoplait Whips Light & Fluffy (Yellow 5, Blue 1)
Quaker Oatmeal to Go, Apples & Cinnamon (Yellow 6)
Post Honeycomb cereal (Yellow 5)
Eggo Blueberry Waffles (Blue 2, Red 40)
Betty Crocker Cheesy Lasagna with Beef (Yellow 5, Yellow 6)
Oscar Mayer Lunchables Pizza & Treatza (Blue 1, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 40)
Lean Pockets Ham & Cheddar (Yellow 5, Yellow 6)
Hostess Blueberry Streusel Muffins (Blue 2, Red 40)
Edy's Classic Real Strawberry Ice Cream (Blue 1, Red 40)
Minute Maid Lemonade (Yellow 5)
Pillsbury Flaky Cinnamon Twists with Glaze (Yellow 5, Red 40)
Duncan Hines Whipped Frosting Chocolate (Red 40, Yellow 5, Blue 1)

Restaurant Items

McDonald's Spicy Buffalo Sauce (Red 40)
Burger King Mott's Strawberry Flavored Applesauce (Red 40)
Wendy's Dill Pickles (Yellow 5, Blue 1)
KFC Sweet and Spicy Wings (Red 40)
KFC Potato Salad (Blue 1)
Subway Red Wine Vinaigrette (Red 40, Blue 1)
Jack in the Box Mozzarella Cheese Sticks (Yellow 5, Yellow 6)

10 surprising things that affect your mood

2012-01-10T00:23:00.000-08:00

Food intolerance

Food intolerances are responsible for a wide range of physical conditions including nausea and abdominal pain, but they can also affect your mood, causing irritability, mood swings, lack of focus, aggression, nervousness or hyperactivity. If you suffer from regular mood swings, try keeping a food diary – noting what you eat as well as any changes in mood – to see if you can identify a link.

Your home decor

If you want to give your mood a boost, try changing your home decor as your surroundings can heavily influence your mood. While red can make some people feel irritable or hostile, yellow communicates happiness and blue aids relaxation, so try accessorising your home with colours that enhance your mood. Research has also suggested that hanging up soothing pictures — such as beautiful landscape paintings —can positively affect a person’s mood and reduce stress and anxiety.

Getting promoted

While many of us dream of getting a promotion in work, the reality may not be as rosy as you think. A study by researchers at the University of Warwick has found that rather than improving quality of life for workers, following a job promotion employees suffered from increased mental strain and there was on average a 10 per cent decrease in people’s mental health.

Late nights

Many of us are aware that lack of sleep can contribute to a low mood; however, research suggests that when you go to sleep could be almost as important as how much sleep you get. According to a study published in Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences, night owls are almost three times as likely as early birds to experience severe symptoms of depression, so try getting some early nights to boost your mood.

Nutrient deficiencies

While depression can be caused by a number of things, symptoms can be worsened or improved by your diet. Deficiencies in vitamin D, the B vitamins (particularly B6, B12 and folate) and omega-3 fatty acids can all lead to feelings of depression and anxiety. Try introducing more foods rich in these nutrients into your diet to see if symptoms improve.

Your friends

You might think that spending time with your friends is a great mood booster; however, that could all depend on their mood. Research has found that emotions – both positive and negative – are contagious and easily passed from person to person, often without you being aware of it. Furthermore, you don’t even need to see your friends to catch their mood, as a study suggests that the emotions of Facebook users directly affect the emotions of their friends for up to three days.

The pill

A study by researchers from Monash University has found that women who take birth control pills are twice as likely to be depressed as those who don’t. For some, certain birth control bills can also lead to mood swings, increased anger and loss of libido. If you think that your mood has changed for the worse since you began taking the pill, visit your GP to discuss the alternatives.

Smoking

We all know that smoking causes cancer, heart disease and premature ageing, but it is less well known that cigarettes can also affect your mental health. According to the results of a large study conducted by New Zealand researchers, people who smoke cigarettes may increase their risk of developing depression, and those who are addicted to nicotine may be more than twice as likely to have depressive symptoms than those who are not.

Sunlight

Most of us have heard of seasonal affective disorder (SAD) caused by dark winter days, but did you know that sunlight can also bring on the blues? While summer SAD is thought to affect less than 1% of the population (compared to the 5% affected by the winter version) it can be a serious condition for those it affects, bringing on insomnia, decreased appetite and depression.

Your bedside lamp

If you regularly fall asleep reading or watching TV, this can have repercussions on your mood the next day. Research has shown that night time light can suppress the production of melatonin; a mood-regulating hormone which is only produced during darkness. So, try investing in some heavy curtains and make sure you turn off all lights at night to give yourself a happiness boost.

Crazy Man in 1800s San Francisco proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States" and "Protector of Mexico"

2012-01-09T09:52:00.001-08:00

Crazy Man in 1800s San Francisco proclaimed himself "Emperor of these United States" and "Protector of Mexico" and was treated as such by the residents of the City, who even accepted currency issued in his name. Even Police Officers saluted him when he passed by...

So much has been written about Emperor Norton, and interest in this ninteenth-century character continues into the twenty-first century.

Many of the “decrees” attributed to Norton I were fakes; written in jest by newspaper editors at the time for amusement, or for political purposes. Those “decrees” listed here were, we believe, actually issued by Norton.
September 17, 1859 – Joshua A. Norton, who lost his money in an attempt to corner the rice market, today declared himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico.

December 2, 1859 – Norton I dismissed Gov. Wise of Virginia for hanging John Brown and appointed John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky to replace him.

February 1, 1860 – Decree from Norton I ordered representatives of the different states to assemble at Platt’s Music Hall to change laws to ameloriate the evils under which the country was laboring.

July 16, 1860 – Decree from Norton I dissolved the United States of America.

October 1, 1860 – Decree from Norton I barred Congress from meeting in Washington, D.C.

February 5, 1861– Norton I changed the place of his National Convention to Assembly Hall, Post and Kearny, because Platt’s Music Hall had burned.

September 17, 1861 – A new theater, Tucker’s Hall, opened with a performance of “Norton the First,” or "An Emperor for a Day."

October 1863 – Death of Lazarus, Emperor Norton’s dog.

February 14, 1864 – Norton I arrived in Marysville to join the celebration of the opening of the railroad.

November 11, 1865 – Mark Twain wrote an epitaph for Bummer, the long-time companion of Lazarus.

January 21, 1867 – An overzealous Patrol Special Officer, Armand Barbier, arrested His Majesty Norton I for involuntary treatment of a mental disorder and thereby created a major civic uproar. Police Chief Patrick Crowley apologized to His Majesty and ordered him released. Several scathing newspaper editorials followed the arrest. All police officers began to salute His Majesty when he passed them on the street.

July 25, 1869 – Decree from Norton I that San Franciscans advance money to Frederick Marriott for his airship experiments.

August 12, 1869 – Decree from Norton I dissolved and abolished the Democratic and Republican parties because of party strife now existing within our realm.

December 15, 1869 – Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, left San Francisco to seek his yearly tribute from the legislature and lobbyists. He inspected the new capitol during the gala ball celebrating the buildings’ inauguration.

December 16, 1869 – Decree by Norton I demanded that Sacramento clean its muddy streets and place gaslights on streets leading to the capitol.

August 1, 1870 – Norton I was listed by the Census taker with the occupation of “emperor,” living at 624 Commercial St.

September 21, 1870 – Decree from Norton I that the Grand Hotel furnish him rooms under penalty of being banished.

March 23, 1872 – Decree by Norton I that a suspension bridge be built as soon as convenient between Oakland Point and Goat Island, and then on to San Francisco.

September 21, 1872 – Norton I ordered a survey to determine if a bridge or tunnel would be the best possible means to connect Oakland and San Francisco. He also ordered the arrest of the Board of Supervisors for ignoring his decrees.

January 2, 1873 – Decree from Norton I that a worldwide Bible Convention be held in San Francisco on this day.

March 18, 1873 – David Belasco made his stage debut at the Metropolitan Theatre playing Emperor Norton in the play “The Gold Demon.”

January 8, 1880 – Norton I dropped dead on California St. at Grant Ave. He was on his way to a lecture at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

January 9, 1880 – Headline in the Morning Call: “Norton the First, by the grace of God Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico, departed this life.”

January 10, 1880 – Norton I was buried today at Masonic Cemetery. The funeral cortege was two miles long. 10,000 people turned out for the funeral.

June 30, 1934 – Emperor Norton I reburied in Woodlawn Cemetery by citizens of San Francisco.

January 7, 1980 – The city marked the 100th anniversary of the death of its only monarch, Emperor Norton, with lunch-hour ceremonies at Market and Montgomery streets.

German Hackers Are Building a DIY Space Program to Put Their Own Uncensored Internet into Space

2012-01-09T09:51:00.000-08:00

There’s more than one way to stick it to The Man. There’s civil disobedience, subversive propaganda, political art, outright violent revolt--each possessing its own degree of difficulty and consequence. In a decidedly 21st-century twist, team of German hackers bent on fighting the powers that be has chosen a rather ambitious means of taking the power back: building a hacker-owned and -operated space program, complete with a constellation of communications satellites beaming uncensored Internet to users on the ground.

The Hackerspace Global Grid was borne out of a call to action at the Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin, where hackers of all stripes gather to mull the issues of the day as they relate to their craft. Hacker activist Nick Farr--motivated by legislation like the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S.--called on the community to contribute to a project that would remove the power of censorship from governments and corporations by creating an uncensored Internet in the free frontier of space.

Of course, building both a space program capable of placing satellites in orbit and a terrestrial network of tracking stations is easier said than done. Then again, it’s easier now than it’s ever been. Space--and even low earth orbit--has long been the dominion of state entities with the resources and large-scale organizations capable of very big undertakings.

But amateur rocketeers are already skirting the upper atmosphere with homemade rockets, and the idea that amateurs will soon be able to reach low earth orbit is by no means outside the realm of possibility. And even piggybacking on existing space launches, like ISS resupply runs and satellite launches, is growing less expensive, especially for smaller payloads.

Furthermore, if there’s anyone suited to the task of building--from the ground up--a system of software and hardware for tracking satellites and establishing a network infrastructure, it’s probably a team of highly skilled hackers. That’s where the Hackerspace Global Grid is starting. The group is aiming to provide ground stations on a non-profit basis for 100 euros (about $130), and plans to have three of them deployed this year for testing. And it has already begun trying to build the software infrastructure necessary to track satellites and communicate with them.

The trick will be in the placement of the satellites themselves. Placed in low earth orbit by an amateur launch, the satellites would move too quickly to be of any real use in streaming Internet data to the ground. Placed higher up in geostationary orbit (more than 22,000 miles up), the signal lag becomes great enough to restrict what kind of Internet applications can be executed. And there’s also a touchy legal issue at play here, as the BBC points out. The unregulated nature of space means the Hackerspace group can do what they want. But should a nation like China decide it doesn’t want uncensored Internet streaming to its shores from space, there’s nothing really stopping it from blasting the satellites out of the sky either.

Still, the very notion is undeniably awesome: a DIY space program patched together via a loose affiliation of hackers building an open source generation of space-faring electronics and satellite communications infrastructure that would provide free-flowing information for all. Given recent developments like SOPA, uprisings across the Arab world, and the actions of oppressive regimes like that in Belarus, its clear that the free and fair Internet is both a tool for individual empowerment and an entity whose future is uncertain. Naturally, any effort to secure a free flow of information for all and to build a DIY space program in the offing is going to get an enthusiastic nod of approval from us.

Watch for blind

2012-01-07T03:03:00.001-08:00

Design by: Julien Bergignat

A great number of blind people use watches whose glass can be lifted so that blind people can know what time it is from the position of the needles, their fingertips slipping over the dial. But once the needles are shifted and even if they do it carefully the needles may be deformed if not broken, which increases the fact of making mistakes.

The word «TIME» is inscribed in Braille characters as the first benchmark (indicating the direction of reading). The hours are marked by the central circle with a point larger than the secondary circle showing the minutes.

This watch shows the advantage of using Braille, as tactile landmarks, which replaces the needles by sensory points to enable the blind to know how to tell the time.

I designed this watch as a useful object of everyday life. Its form and appearance contribute to the integration of blind people in the outside world.

Target Truck Drives into Icy Pond

2012-01-07T03:01:00.001-08:00

Some days at work leave a person cold -- literally.

That's how it is for John Nettifee, a truck driver for Target, who lost control of his rig and fell into an icy pond.
Today's accident happened around 6:30 a.m., near Monticello, Minn., on Interstate 94 when the truck driven by Nettifee, 35, crossed over lanes of oncoming traffic and skidded onto the pond.
Eric Roeske of the Minnesota State Patrol says the semi slid 100 to 200 yards across the ice before breaking through into the chilly water.

Nettifee crawled to safety across the frozen surface, and was taken to the hospital, treated, and released shortly thereafter.

The freight truck settled in about seven feet of water and workers began removing it in stages from the pond later in the morning.The slipup clogged up traffic on the westbound lane of I-94 for most of the morning, as highway patrol investigators reconstructed the accident.

People Who Are 100 Years Old

2012-01-06T07:26:00.000-08:00

All these people are 100 years old.

A Year-Long Exposure of the Toronto Skyline

2012-01-06T07:23:00.001-08:00

On January 1st of last year, photographer Michael Chrisman began shooting a solargraph by placing a pinhole camera in the Port Lands of Toronto and aiming it at the city’s skyline. Over the next 365, the rising and setting sun slowly exposed the photo paper inside. The total exposure time? 31,536,000 seconds. Instead of developing the image using traditional darkroom chemicals, he instead used a scanner to capture the extremely overexposed image — destroying the original image in the process — and ended up with the photo you see above. Those yellow lines you see in the sky shows the gradual shifting of the sun’s path over the course of 2011.

Tricks Restaurants Play to Separate You From Your Money

2012-01-05T23:52:00.000-08:00

1 First in show. You are more likely to order the first item on a list in a given section of the menu (such as the "chicken" or "beef" section.) That's where many restaurants place the most profitable dish of that type.

2 Menu Siberia. Unprofitable dishes, on the other hand, tend to get banished to a corner that's less noticeable.

3 Visual aids. Many menus box off something they want to promote, because if you draw a line around it, people will order it. Photos also sell dishes.

4 Package deals. Even if only a small percentage of the McDonald's customers spend some extra dollars on a meal package, that translates to millions in additional revenue.

5 Dollar-sign avoidance. Some menus avoid dollar signs and decimals -- keeping money abstract makes spending less threatening.

6 The small plate-large plate conundrum. A restaurant may offer two sizes of the same dish; that price differential is almost pure profit.

7 Ingredient embroidery. If the menu makes each ingredient sound ultra-special, it will sell better; it may be the same dish you would get anywhere else, but you'll start to think you can only get it there.

New study widens debate on the value of mammograms

2012-01-05T23:46:00.000-08:00

The American Cancer Society and other influential organizations say getting a mammogram is "one of the most important things a woman can do to protect her health."

A study and editorial in New England Journal of Medicine offers a more restrained view: The decision to undergo breast cancer screening is a close call.

The study, by researchers from Norway and Harvard University, expands the never-ending debate over the value of mammograms. Previously, the debate centered on women in their 40s, when breast cancer is relatively rare but often aggressive. The new study concludes that screening doesn't save many lives, even among women aged 50 to 69, who are at higher risk of the malignancy.

Screening this postmenopausal age group for a decade reduced breast cancer deaths by a "modest" 10 percent, which translates to one life saved per 2,500 women who got the breast X-rays, according to the analysis of Norway's cancer registry. Previous studies have estimated this "mortality benefit" to be about 25 percent.

The new study did not look at the risks of screening - namely, overdiagnosis and overtreatment. However, the editorial said that in the United States, about 1,000 of every 2,500 women screened for a decade would have at least one false alarm, 500 of them would undergo an unnecessary biopsy, and five or more would be treated for cancers that would never have become lethal.

"The test is surely a close call, a delicate balance between modest benefit and modest harm," H. Gilbert Welch, a Dartmouth Medical School primary-care physician, wrote in his editorial.

That message could be misinterpreted, worried Emily F. Conant, chief of breast imaging at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.

"Women are looking for reasons not to get their mammograms," Conant said. "We know mammography works. To cut back now, when we know how to hone and make it even better, is going back in time." Ultrasound, MRI imaging, and digital technology are now used to clarify ambiguous mammograms.

Much of the mammography debate rests on now-outdated studies done from the 1960s through the 1980s in which women were randomly assigned to get mammograms or not.

The latest study, in contrast, uses data from Norway's public health-care system, which gradually phased in breast cancer screening across the country starting in 1996. (Before that, mammograms were mostly used to diagnose palpable lumps.) Unlike U.S. health plans, Norway covers the test only for women ages 50 to 69, and only every other year.

The nine-year phase-in of the program enabled researchers to tease out how much of the reduction in deaths was due to earlier cancer detection with mammography, vs. greater awareness and better treatments. The study analyzed data from more than 40,000 women of all ages who developed breast cancer in the decades before and after screening was introduced. Of these, 4,791 died of the disease.

It turned out that overall, breast cancer mortality fell 28 percent in the decade after screening began, but it dropped even among women who weren't getting mammograms.

The researchers concluded that 10 percent of the overall mortality reduction - about a third - was directly linked to screening, while the rest was due to better, more timely treatment, such as surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy.

Lead researcher Mette Kalager, a biostatistician with Norway's cancer registry, speculated that the growth of screening raised awareness of the importance of checking out breast abnormalities.

"We're actually taking better care of ourselves now than we did 20 years ago," she said. "That could be a spin-off effect of screening."

Last year, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force set off a controversy by issuing updated screening advice. It said women in their 40s who are at average breast cancer risk should consider forgoing mammograms because of the risk-benefit tradeoffs.

Given the latest study, Welch said, doctors and advisory groups should strive to inform women, and accept that some will opt not to be screened.

"It's one of the few areas where doctors go beyond cajoling and become coercive," Welch said. "They say, 'What, you don't care about your health?' " if a woman declines a mammogram.

Preventive Services task force member Sanford Schwartz, a physician and health-care expert at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, offered the bottom line: "Mammograms still work, but not as well as doctors thought - and nowhere near as well as most women think."

The shocking true story of how Pringles are made

2012-01-05T23:39:00.000-08:00

Pringles may be one of the most sci-fi foods of our time. So thin, so homogeneous, so regularly shaped that they can be stacked perfectly, these chips are truly the food of the future. But how are they made?

First, to understand what Pringles (and other stackable chips) are, you have to develop a Zen detachment from the idea of potato chips coming from actual potatoes in any recognizable way. In fact, the Pringles company once argued that their high amount of processing and low potato content actually made Pringles technically not potato chips. (For those wondering, they made this self-sabotaging argument to avoid taxes. 'Snacks' are recognized as necessary in the UK, and so they aren't taxed. Potato chips, on the other hand, are luxury food, and so they are taxed.)

Instead of shaving bits off of a potato and deep frying them, the company starts with a slurry of rice, wheat, corn, and potato flakes and presses them into shape. So these potato chips aren't really potato at all. The snack-dough is then rolled out like a sheet of ultra-thin cookie dough and cut into chip-cookies by a machine. The cut is complete enough that the chips are fully free of the extra dough, which is lifted away from the chips by a machine.

The chips move forward on a conveyor belt until they're pressed onto molds, which give them the curve that makes them fit into one another. Those molds move through boiling oil and fry for a few seconds. Then they're blown dry, sprayed with powdered flavors, and at last, flipped onto a slower-moving conveyor belt in a way that allows them to stack. From then on, it's into the cans (with usually a good inch of empty space at the top) and off towards the innocent mouths of the consumers.

The Smallest Woman In The World

2012-01-05T08:00:00.000-08:00

Jyoti Amge - 18-year-old student from India. She is known as the smallest woman now living in the world. It is officially registered in the Guinness Book of Records. Growth record holder is only 62.8 cm

Jyoti suffers from a disease known since ancient times - achondroplasia - skeletal system. One manifestation of this disease is dwarfism. The disease in humans can not be cured.

Remarkable rainbow cloud towers over Mount Everest

2012-01-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

Hovering in the sky, this rainbow cloud over Mount Everest took an astonished astronomer by surprise. Oleg Bartunov, 51, caught the spectacle on camera during a Himalayas expedition in Nepal.

Lost over 120 pounds in 1 year

2012-01-04T06:34:00.000-08:00

Chinese earthquake captured in wedding photos

2012-01-04T06:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes even construction vehicles need a hobby

2012-01-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

Liebherr Excavator climbing tower

Lamborghini unboxing!

2012-01-02T07:04:00.000-08:00

This is how you will get your Lamborghini