Good news.
Or is it?
Overweight now outnumber under-fed around the world – Times online
Category: bad news
“Australia has lost a wonderful and colourful son”
The tribute quote by the Australian Prime Minister rings true to me. I always enjoyed the Crocodile Hunter’s performances.
Farewell Steve Irwin and condolences to his family and friends.
more photos – BBC
contractors in Iraq make war costs balloon
As a teen someone taught me that — when you want to know why decisions are made — follow the money.
The rip-offs have never been greater in the history of the world than in Iraq.
Where are the billion$ going?
newsobserver.com | Contractors in Iraq make costs balloon
tobacco companies increased nicotine
Surprise, surprise.
Tobacco companies increased nicotine in kids’ and minorities’ cigs
A new study shows that tobacco companies have been quietly increasingly the nicotine in the brands most smoked by kids and minorities for the past decade, increasing the toxicity and addictiveness of their products.
Boing Boing: Tobacco companies increased nicotine in kids’ and minorities’ cigs
2006
Monsanto should be terminated
Playing with Mother Nature is rarely a good policy.
This is bound to end in diaster.
… I believe Monsanto is going too far with this evil … Yes, I said evil. To prevent a farmer’s seed from previous harvests from germinating just to maintain a strong grip on the marketplace is sick, and one strong reason GM food is looked at with distrust and hatred in the rest of the world.
Terminator technology or anything that disrupts the proper development of any plant should be illegal.
Beyond protecting intellectual property, this is all about greed, plain and simple.
Dvorak Uncensored » Monsanto continues to pursue controversial “Terminator” seed-control technology
movie – Hotel Rwanda
I finally saw the acclaimed film Hotel Rwanda.
Though painful, I recommend it, especially if you do not know the story.
This is the Hollywood treatment of the Rwandan Genocide where over 800,000 were killed — many hacked to death with $.10 machetes — during a period of 100 days from April 6th through mid-July 1994.
The man in charge of peace-keeping at the time, Canadian Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire was hand-cuffed by the United Nations. The few UN troops on hand were ordered to stand by without intervening.
President Clinton later described US inaction as “the biggest regret of my administration.”
This was only 12-years-ago.
It’s unbelievable.
Rent the movie.
are newspapers dying?
A reporter said to me recently that his paper would not exist in 10 years.
I hope that’s not the case. There is a nostalgia effect I get when opening the big, awkward dead tree media. It’s like comfort food for me.
On the other hand, newspapers deserve to die.
The local paper in St. Paul, MN did not cover the USA Gymnastics Championships Sr. Women’s division because it finished at 9PM. When I checked the following day, it was still not covered because now it was old news.
This is very, very bad news coverage.
You will need something special to convince me to buy a paper now.
A Primeval Tide of Toxins – Los Angeles Times
A very scary article.
In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.
A Primeval Tide of Toxins – Los Angeles Times
peace in the Middle East
I travelled the Middle East in the early 1990s. At that time I did a good deal of research and reading on the situation.
My analysis?
There will be no peace in the Middle East in my lifetime. The best we can hope for is to keep things at a low simmer rather than boiling over.
Not that it would ultimately solve much, but I’d love to see as many Israelis as would choose to depart decamp for another part of the world. Northern Canada, perhaps. Or another little-populated part of the world. I feel certain they would work miracles wherever they landed.
Jon Stewart on Net Neutrality
It seems the traditional American media near ignored the astonishing lack of understanding of Ted Stevens, chairman of the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
Gladly, we have one “journalist” putting this dinosaur’s feet to the fire.
I say again, the USA is in trouble because of their legislative process. Perhaps they should try democracy and free market economics.
The TWITs weigh in on their podcast.
Rick McCharles 