From The ’Better Late Than Never’ File...FDA Issues Warning @ Mercury Fillings.
Category: News and Politics

In the ear-splitting words of Gomer Pyle:
"Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!"

First...
Please Remember This
(If you've heard me say it before... Sorry, but it bears repeating.):

The FDA is Not Your Friend.

Needless to say, any Federal Agency charged with the task and the responsibility of insuring the safety of food, beverage and pharmaceuticals before they are mass-produced, proliferate store shelves nationwide and eventually end up inside you or someone you know and love or even someone you don't know...

Any Federal Agency with this absolutely necessary and vital duty (Like the FDA)
that would give it's approval to a vile substance called "Olestra" - later found in so-called "Fat-Free" Lay's Potato Chips and such - which came with a warning label for potential consumers that the fat-free product they were about to consume might "...cause anal leakage." (Eww! I guess that's the fat being freed?)
Or, that would approve a pharmaceutical drug for the market that is intended to ease rheumatoid arthritis discomfort, called "Humira", that lists among it's awful side-effects: Lymphoma (Cancer of the Lymph Nodes)...

Any Federal Agency that would blow its Primary Job Description with such impunity needs to be reduced to rubble and rebuilt from scratch...
Oh, and it needs to be run by people with no conflicts of interest... such as being former Monsanto or Big Pharma executives.

That said, after far too many years of insisting in that less-than-reassuring "Trust Us, We Know Best" Way - as only the FDA can - that mercury amalgam dental fillings are safe and pose no threat to anyone's health - even though Mercury has been linked in studies to high blood pressure, infertility, fatigue, disorders of the central nervous system, MS and Alzheimer's disease...
The FDA has done something virtually unprecedented...
They have reversed their less than credible claim of safety and have issued a health warning in which they've, apparently, finally woke up and smelled the mercury vapor.

* Sidenote *
Guess where I found the first mention of this big, American story?
No, Not On American Radio... Not American Network News...
I found it on the Independent U.K website... I love those guys!

Peace and See Ya at the Dentist.
L.


From: www.independent.co.uk/

US Issues Health Warning Over Mercury Fillings

They're in millions of mouths worldwide, but have been linked to heart disease and Alzheimer's. Now a report concedes they may have a toxic effect on the body

By Geoffrey Lean, Environment Editor
Sunday, 29 June 2008

Amalgam dental fillings – which contain the highly toxic metal mercury – pose a health risk, the world's top medical regulatory agency has conceded.


After years of insisting the fillings are safe, the US government's Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued a health warning about them. It represents a landmark victory for campaigners, who say the fillings are responsible for a range of ailments, including heart conditions and Alzheimer's disease.

Earlier this month, in an unprecedented U-turn, the FDA dropped much of its reassuring language on the fillings from its website, substituting: "Dental amalgams contain mercury, which may have neurotoxic effects on the nervous systems of developing children and foetuses." It adds that when amalgam fillings are "placed in teeth or removed they release mercury vapour", and that the same thing happens when chewing.

The FDA is now reviewing its rules and may end up restricting or banning the use of the metal.

Mercury is placed in tens of millions of teeth worldwide each year. About 125 tons of it is used annually in dental treatments in the EU alone. And it was used in eight million fillings (including one million in children and young people) in Britain in 2002-03, the last year for which the British Dental Association (BDA) can produce figures.

The association continues to insist that amalgam is "safe, durable and cost-effective" and "does not pose a risk of systemic disease", though it advises pregnant women to avoid "any dental intervention or medication". However, Norway and Denmark banned mercury from fillings earlier this year. Sweden has cut its use by more than 90 per cent over the past decade, and mercury use is also heavily restricted in Finland and Japan.

Mercury makes up about half of an amalgam filling, where it is mixed with silver and small amounts of copper and tin. The combination – which has now been used for some 150 years – is extremely durable, and its supporters used to stress that it locked in the mercury. They now accept, however, that mercury vapour escapes, is breathed in, and gets into the bloodstream and organs, but they also stress that levels are very low. Opponents argue that the metal accumulates in the body and no safe level is known.

Some research suggests that mercury from dental fillings may be linked to high blood pressure, infertility, fatigue, disorders of the central nervous system, multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's disease. Dentists have been found to have high levels of mercury in their bodies as well being more susceptible to brain tumours and problems with concentration and manual dexterity.

However, a study that followed 507 Portuguese and American children for seven years after they received amalgam or mercury-free fillings found no differences in the rates of neurological symptoms between the two groups.

Nevertheless, more and more dentists – now some 500 in Britain – are setting up mercury-free practices, and more patients are demanding alternative fillings made of resin and glass.

The alternatives are more expensive and not as strong as amalgam, which leads the defenders of mercury to say that only mercury will do for molars, which carry most of the burden of chewing. And some have released another toxic material, the gender-bending chemical bisphenol A. But the alternatives are getting stronger, and the chemical is being used less in the newer products.

Even the BDA now says that the alternatives "have improved over time", adding: "Trends towards greater use of these materials imply that there is to be a sustained reduction in the use of dental amalgam."

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CERN Collider Scientists: "Trust Us."... Umm... No. (Not with the Earth.)
Current mood: thoughtful
Category: News and Politics

Greetings from San Francisco!

The PRIDE Parade is going on as I write this.
This year's festivities are extra special, as our Higher Court recently fullfilled it's duty as Blind Protector of Equality and Justice and agreed that laws forbidding same-sex couples from getting married were UN-Constitutional.
Hallelujah!
I must admit that, at first, I was a bit worried which way the Justices would decide... After all, most of them had been appointed under Republican leadership.
But, in a ruling that both happily surprised me and restored my faith that "Equal Justice under the Law" wasn't dead - in spite of the Bush Administration's efforts - the Court adhered to the elevated ideal of Separation of Church and State and granted same sex couples the same rights and protections as hetero couples.
In the witty words of The Late Late Show's quite handsome, very funny and yet somehow creepy host, Craig Ferguson, "It's a Great Day in America, Everybody!".

Simply put: There is absolutely no place for Discrimination and Bigotry - regardless of whether it's from personal ignorance/fear or the bully pulpit - in our sentient and civilized society.

And, I have the greatest hope and unwavering faith that the good and fair people of California (who are registered to vote) will vote down the ignorant and cruel ballot initiative to re-write the State Constitution so that it makes gender-based bigotry the law.

And, in case anyone was wondering about any personal bias I might have...
Well, I'm not gay, straight or bi... I'm simply disinterested.

What I am interested in is standing up for Equality and Justice... for Everyone.

******************************************************
Back to the Blog...
This is an ongoing international story.
In case you've been living in a cave, on a desert island or have just been distracted by all the flashing pictures and loud noises emanating from your TV screen...

There's this big... I mean HUGE - in size, in scope and in $Billions of Dollars$ ($5.8 billion) - scientific experiment planned to begin in November.
It's called the Large Hadron Collider and it's expected to be the most powerful atom-smasher ever built.
It's in Switzerland... The country that brought the world yodeling, great timepieces, neutrality... oh, and LSD.

Basically, some myopic, self-inflated, Ivy-League-bred, particle-theory physicists - with their minds in the clouds and their heads up their asses have gone and constructed a machine that:
Good News: Will possibly help them better understand the nature of the universe and possibly help them prove or rule-out String Theory...
Bad News: It Possibly - although, according to them, 'highly unlikely' - might just produce a Black Hole or many Micro Black Holes...
Whereby these thoughtless theorists would immediately be given a better understanding of - No, not the genesis of the Earth, but destruction of it.

Like I said, there's Lots of Money being poured into this thing.
Worse than that, the U.S. Dept. of Energy is involved...
That's like having Enron decide the fate of our Energy Policy...
An Exceptionally Bad Idea.

Over the last year, I've seen a constant stream of stories being produced in which scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - laugh, pooh-pooh and wave off the idea that the LHC could bring about our planet's destruction. "Ha! Ha! Ha! C'est Ridiculous!" (insert haughty French accent), they chime, individually and en mass.

Particle Theory is Complex.

My Concerns and those of the LHC's critics are Simple.

What CERN scientists want to do with the LHC is all about Theory.
They want to test some theories. They want to prove or disprove some theories. They hope to prove or disprove the existence of various theoretical particles.
In other words, they Don't Know Exactly What Will Happen when they power the mechanical monster up.

They can claim it is safe, that it poses no threat to the Earth until we land a man on the Moon... er, Mars! They can pass out as many CERN-backed studies that support their claims as they want.
It all means Nothing.
When it comes to Protecting Our Planet and the Fragile Life and Ecosystems on Her...
Nothing should be taken for granted.
Claims of Safety that are based solely upon theory and assumption aren't good enough.

All their pronouncements of "Trust Us, We're Physicists. It's Completely Safe." and their ridiculing of their critics makes me think of another Amazing and Brilliant Mind: William Shakespeare...

"Methinks thou doth protest too much!"

Oh, in an interesting (?) sidenote... I just saw a picture of a fabulous statue at the CERN site. It was a gift from India. It's a gorgeous, golden figure of the Hindu God named "Shiva". Shiva has a few titles. The first one that comes to mind? "Lord Shiva, the DESTROYER." I'm not kidding.
Peace.
L.

(From: http://news.wired.com/.)

Jun 28, 3:08 PM EDT

Scientists: Nothing to fear from atom-smasher

By DOUGLAS BIRCH
Associated Press Writer

MEYRIN, Switzerland (AP) -- The most powerful atom-smasher ever built could make some bizarre discoveries, such as invisible matter or extra dimensions in space, after it is switched on in August.

But some critics fear the Large Hadron Collider could exceed physicists' wildest conjectures: Will it spawn a black hole that could swallow Earth? Or spit out particles that could turn the planet into a hot dead clump?

Ridiculous, say scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by its French initials CERN - some of whom have been working for a generation on the $5.8 billion collider, or LHC.

"Obviously, the world will not end when the LHC switches on," said project leader Lyn Evans.

David Francis, a physicist on the collider's huge ATLAS particle detector, smiled when asked whether he worried about black holes and hypothetical killer particles known as strangelets.

"If I thought that this was going to happen, I would be well away from here," he said.

The collider basically consists of a ring of supercooled magnets 17 miles in circumference attached to huge barrel-shaped detectors. The ring, which straddles the French and Swiss border, is buried 330 feet underground.

The machine, which has been called the largest scientific experiment in history, isn't expected to begin test runs until August, and ramping up to full power could take months. But once it is working, it is expected to produce some startling findings.

Scientists plan to hunt for signs of the invisible "dark matter" and "dark energy" that make up more than 96 percent of the universe, and hope to glimpse the elusive Higgs boson, a so-far undiscovered particle thought to give matter its mass.

The collider could find evidence of extra dimensions, a boon for superstring theory, which holds that quarks, the particles that make up atoms, are infinitesimal vibrating strings.

The theory could resolve many of physics' unanswered questions, but requires about 10 dimensions - far more than the three spatial dimensions our senses experience.

The safety of the collider, which will generate energies seven times higher than its most powerful rival, at Fermilab near Chicago, has been debated for years. The physicist Martin Rees has estimated the chance of an accelerator producing a global catastrophe at one in 50 million - long odds, to be sure, but about the same as winning some lotteries.

By contrast, a CERN team this month issued a report concluding that there is "no conceivable danger" of a cataclysmic event. The report essentially confirmed the findings of a 2003 CERN safety report, and a panel of five prominent scientists not affiliated with CERN, including one Nobel laureate, endorsed its conclusions.

Critics of the LHC filed a lawsuit in a Hawaiian court in March seeking to block its startup, alleging that there was "a significant risk that ... operation of the Collider may have unintended consequences which could ultimately result in the destruction of our planet."

One of the plaintiffs, Walter L. Wagner, a physicist and lawyer, said Wednesday CERN's safety report, released June 20, "has several major flaws," and his views on the risks of using the particle accelerator had not changed.

On Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department lawyers representing the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation filed a motion to dismiss the case.

The two agencies have contributed $531 million to building the collider, and the NSF has agreed to pay $87 million of its annual operating costs. Hundreds of American scientists will participate in the research.

The lawyers called the plaintiffs' allegations "extraordinarily speculative," and said "there is no basis for any conceivable threat" from black holes or other objects the LHC might produce. A hearing on the motion is expected in late July or August.

In rebutting doomsday scenarios, CERN scientists point out that cosmic rays have been bombarding the earth, and triggering collisions similar to those planned for the collider, since the solar system formed 4.5 billion years ago.

And so far, Earth has survived.

"The LHC is only going to reproduce what nature does every second, what it has been doing for billions of years," said John Ellis, a British theoretical physicist at CERN.

Critics like Wagner have said the collisions caused by accelerators could be more hazardous than those of cosmic rays.

Both may produce micro black holes, subatomic versions of cosmic black holes - collapsed stars whose gravity fields are so powerful that they can suck in planets and other stars.

But micro black holes produced by cosmic ray collisions would likely be traveling so fast they would pass harmlessly through the earth.

Micro black holes produced by a collider, the skeptics theorize, would move more slowly and might be trapped inside the earth's gravitational field - and eventually threaten the planet.

Ellis said doomsayers assume that the collider will create micro black holes in the first place, which he called unlikely. And even if they appeared, he said, they would instantly evaporate, as predicted by the British physicist Stephen Hawking.

As for strangelets, CERN scientists point out that they have never been proven to exist. They said that even if these particles formed inside the Collider they would quickly break down.

When the LHC is finally at full power, two beams of protons will race around the huge ring 11,000 times a second in opposite directions. They will travel in two tubes about the width of fire hoses, speeding through a vacuum that is colder and emptier than outer space.

Their trajectory will be curved by supercooled magnets - to guide the beams around the rings and prevent the packets of protons from cutting through the surrounding magnets like a blowtorch.

The paths of these beams will cross, and a few of the protons in them will collide, at a series of cylindrical detectors along the ring. The two largest detectors are essentially huge digital cameras, each weighing thousands of tons, capable of taking millions of snapshots a second.

Each year the detectors will generate 15 petabytes of data, the equivalent of a stack of CDs 12 miles tall. The data will require a high speed global network of computers for analysis.

Wagner and others filed a lawsuit to halt operation of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC, at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in 1999. The courts dismissed the suit.

The leafy campus of CERN, a short drive from the shores of Lake Geneva, hardly seems like ground zero for doomsday. And locals don't seem overly concerned. Thousands attended an open house here this spring.

"There is a huge army of scientists who know what they are talking about and are sleeping quite soundly as far as concerns the LHC," said project leader Evans.

© 2008 The Associated Press.

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The Old Gray Gelding, He Ain’t What He Used To Be... Or Is He?
Current mood: peaceful
Category: Life

This isn't exactly Earth-Shaking...

Hmm...

Let me re-phrase that... since I live in earthquake country...

This isn't necessarily "Stop The Presses!" stuff...

But, I got a kick out of it...

Maybe you will, too.

This Just In...

(From: www.goldengatefields.com/)

" 'Motel Staff', an 11-year-old gelding who simply loves the turf course at Golden Gate Fields, recorded his ninth career victory on the surface Wednesday when he won the seventh race in wire-to-wire fashion."

Motel Staff's record is pretty impressive, too.
He's never finished worse than 2nd Place in 10 starts at Golden Gate Fields - in Berkeley - including eight victories.

Just out of curiosity, I looked up the average age of active racehorses.
And I discovered that most racehorses have finished their careers by the time they are 5 years old!

Personally, I feel that the horse-racing industry, not unlike dog-racing, is simply glorified animal abuse.
But I still admire and am amused by Motel Staff's performance.

I just hope he is allowed to retire soon...
Before he gets injured (often equivalent to a death sentence for a horse).
And, May he be allowed to retire to open, green pastures...
NOT a rendering plant. (which is a grotesque, unappreciative and disrespectful way to reward a horse for working it's ass off for you.)

Peace.
L.

7:43 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

The PRADA Connection: Weird Coincidence Or Proof that the End Times are Here?
Current mood: amused
Category: News and Politics

Happy Monday!

Well... Actually it's now officially Tuesday...
But, saying "Happy Tuesday!" just doesn't feel the same...

Anyway... Back to My Blog:

"The PRADA Connection: Weird Coincidence Or Proof that the End Times are Here?"
(Insert Dramatic & Spooky Music in Background here.)

Last week, while I was hunting for inventory for my eBay page...

(For those who aren't aware... I sell vintage and designer clothes, shoes, etc. on eBay.
To check out my listings, do a member search for SFGrrl283)

... and I happened to acquire a great pair of authentic Prada shoes - in unworn condition - and for an unbelieveably reasonable price!
They're made of ultra-luxe suede and are in a shade of brilliant green.

Back at Home...
I examined them thoroughly, did some research on Prada (and their 'Prada-ucts') and then began creating a description of them for my eBay page listing.

It was my first encounter with the Italian Legend that is PRADA...
... and it got me thinking about another Italian of legend...
... The Pope!

And, I suddenly remembered watching a short, investigative segment somewhere on TV that looked into an alleged questionable connection between PRADA and the Pope.

Numerous people had noticed that the current CEO of the Catholic Church in Rome was frequently photographed with a stunning pair of glossy, red leather, PRADA loafers peeking out from underneath his robes... and some of them were voicing their concerns over him sporting a pair of shoes that cost more than what many people around the world can make in a year.

... A legitimate concern, I believe. Anyway, I forget what exactly the Vatican's explanation was for the Pope's posh peds... Something about it all being completely acceptable because PRADA donated the shoes, or maybe it was that PRADA's been shoeing the Pope's for years... whatever.

Anyway...
As I recalled this Papal-PRADA Connection...
The title of a recent best-selling-book-turned-movie came to mind...
"The Devil Wears PRADA"...

And, I couldn't help but ponder what it all meant...

What we know:

The Pope wears PRADA...

and...

The Devil Wears PRADA...

And...

No one has EVER seen both the Pope and the Devil in the same room... at the same time...

Hmmm...

Peace.
L.

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SF Bay To Breakers: The Aftermath
Category: Life

I chose "Bay To Breakers: The Aftermath" as the title of this Blog because it's Short, Sweet and (I hope...) Stimulates Curiosity.

My Second Runner Up for the Title is a bit less Professional...
But, it's Passionate and a lot more Personal and it goes something like this:

"Bay To Breakers: ... Some of You are Sooo Lucky That I Have an Aversion to Going to Prison"

First, allow me to offer some background - for those unfamiliar with "The Bay To Breakers" - an Annual, Highly-Anticipated, Foot-Race with an Anything-Goes Dress Code.

Following the devastating 1906 earthquake and subsequent fire that nearly obliterated all of San Francisco, many people feared that The City was gone for good.
But, San Franciscans are amazing people. Rebuilding began immediately and various events were planned to keep up public morale. One of them, called the "Cross City Race" was first run in 1912. It consisted of fewer than 200 participants.
In 1964, it was dubbed the SF Bay to Breakers and, in recent times, had evolved into a you've-gotta-see-it-to-believe-it event. For generations, this Original Amazing Race has been a festive celebration of athleticism, friendship and fun as it stretched (and, in some instances... streaked) across the City from the Bay to the Ocean.

It's one of the world's biggest foot-races - with more than 65,000 participants and more than 100,000 cheering spectators lining the route each year. Its participants include athletes from around the world, many of whom probably enter with the goal of being the first to cross the Finish Line... But, this being San Francisco... thousands of participants show up in colorful and creative costumes of endless variety... pretty much anything you could imagine... and several things you could do well without imagining, let alone actually seeing.

... Back to my Blog...

First, let me say that I have nothing against this perennial promenade/party. I am thrilled when I see people find creative and truly original ways to express themselves or even to just be fearlessly silly in public.

I celebrated when, in 2007, elite runner Edna Kiplagat became the first female in Bay to Breakers history to cross the finish line... ahead of the men.

That said... What I witnessed in the Aftermath of the 7.46-mile race caught me completely off guard and caused an instantaneous reaction or two... three maybe.

I had avoided venturing out of doors that Sunday until mid-afternoon. The previous few days had been unusually hot and uncomfortably sunny.
(for me anyway... I prefer it in the 50s, swirling winds filled with dense fog that you'd swear you could climb up onto it as it enshrouds the hills and its long, finger-like tendrils creep into and fill the valleys... )

It was somewhat cooler on that Sunday, but there was another reason I wasn't looking forward to going outside... The Bay To Breakers was out there... which, in and of itself isn't intolerable, but... in recent years, the event has been attracting a growing number of uncouth people who aren't participating so much in the foot-race as in their own City-wide beer bust.

(Not that there's anything wrong with that either... If held at the proper venue… at a bar, your own home, the home of a friend... Or, even better, in another state.

I've lived through a few BTB's here and I've learned that - after they reach the finish line... No...Seriously?
Forget the Finish Line... When the weekend warriors get tired of pushing their kegs around in shopping carts - many of the revelers - boosted by that ''Runner's High" - Or, again, seriously… some other kind of 'High' - decide to spend the remainder of their Sunday afternoon staggering around our neighborhoods and parks
in various states of being trashed.

For some reason, the during and after-partying seems to fill Golden Gate Park or the Panhandle Park… Both are beautiful oases of lush, green, fields and towering trees that are, thankfully, protected open-space.
By then, costumes are being discarded - where ever the wearer happens to be standing.

When I first reached Oak Street, which borders one side of the Panhandle Park, later that afternoon... my jaw dropped… followed by my heart.

I'd never seen such a gut-wrenching, man-made mess as I did in the Park that day. I was speechless. I was horrified. I was angry. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to scream. I wanted to CHOKE those responsible with my own hands.

The POS partyers were nowhere to be seen… A few joggers and cyclists occasionally passed by… But, the Park… Our Beautiful Panhandle Park, where people play Frisbee, practice martial arts or tightrope-walking, play with their dogs, have picnics with family and friends… Our Peaceful Place had been, in a word, raped.

I cursed the rabid revelers repeatedly... for leaving their waste scattered across the park... within steps of trash cans and dumpsters. I cursed their parents... for their abject failure to raise their spawn to become decent human beings.
As a rule, I do not wish people harm... So, I wished the littering losers to be STERILE... "Please let them be sterile!... and/or of Short Life Span... so that they aren't given a long life in which to trash the Earth."

I was there with Jessi the Dog. I unhooked Jessi's leash and let her run around... Keeping an eye on her to make sure she didn't start eating any of the bones left from the carnivores' carnival. I picked up one of the countless, plastic bags that were left and began to pick up their trash... No one else was doing it... no Parks and Recs employees, no City employees, No One but Me. I spent the next Two Hours picking up trash... the stuff that isn't biodegradeable... big, red, plastic cups; foil wrappers from energy bars; empty, white plastic bags... I'm sooo glad they will soon be banned here... I gathered empty beer bottles by the dozen and put them back into their cardboard cases and carried them from the grass and left them by the trash cans - I know the local recyclers will come by and pick them up.

One of the Worst Offenders was the group of rocket scientists who gathered in the Park between Schrader and Cole Streets and filled a large, rectangle, aluminum tray with coals and, apparently, had a cook-out. I wouldn't have cared... EXCEPT that they not only left about 2 dozen beer bottles in a big pile... right next to an empty cardboard box... but, they left the still-burning, Red-Hot coals in the tray... on the grass! When I picked it up - dropping it once 'cause I hadn't realized there were hot coals in it - I saw that it had Burned the grass black underneath.
Jesus Christ, you assholes!
If you had a functioning cell of gray matter between you, you might have noticed that there are dogs running through the Park... there are little kids running around... there are people playing Frisbee... and You Dirtbags leave a tray of HOT coals right in the middle... I picked it up again and carried it over to a dirt clearing by the trash can and called the Fire Department... I didn't have any water and was afraid someone would get injured by it... or that it might start a fire.

I'm close to reaching a point where I am going to have a mental health moment and physically assault the next idiot who trashes my neighborhood... Our Neighborhood... Our Parks... Our Planet.
Or, maybe I'll just follow them home, make note of where they live... go gather their trash (and then some) and trash their home/car/yard with a sign that says, "You dropped this!"; Or, I'll pay someone to kick their ass... I haven't decided yet...

One More Thing:
Event producer Tom Howard said organizers put up nearly 500 porta-johns along the route - or 100 more than last year.
That's all well and good, but... when you know the turnout numbers 65,000 and Up 500 Port-o-Potties is Not Nearly Enough!

That said...
You "people" (guys and girls) who were seen Urinating and Defecating in Parking Lots and in Parks...
Will soon be Starring on YOU TUBE!!!!!

... Just kidding... I Wish!... Then again, maybe someone caught them on tape and will do the honors... those asses deserve it.

Peace.
L.

1:43 PM - 0 Comments - 0 Kudos - Add Comment

Rx for Addiction: Drug-Dealing, Congress-Lobbying & Marketing Direct To YOU.
Category: News and Politics

"Spare any Change?"...

Utter those three, innocuous, little words - here in San Francisco, anyway - and you risk getting written up by the local beat cops for what is called "Aggressive Panhandling".

"Buds?"...
Of course, offering to sell people street drugs might get you three hots and a cot with a view of the cell facing yours.

But, if you happen to be aggressively selling pharmaceutical drugs...

Well, then there's quite a different outcome...

If you're an American pharmaceutical company, you need never fear being sent to prison for spending millions of dollars enticing citizens of all ages - via an endless barrage of flashy tv commercials and magazine ads - to take drugs that they not only do not need... but to pay exorbitant prices for and to take drugs that may not work... or, if they do have effects... some turn out to be much worse than the initial issue that they are taking the drug for.

Did you know that it's only in America and New Zealand that drug companies are allowed to do DTC advertising ("Direct-To-Consumer").

I used to get annoyed at the endless barrage of car commercials...
But, they were for cars... and I skateboard, the S.F. Bay Area has an extensive public transit system and tooting your horn about your cars getting a whopping 30mpg is not impressive nor toot-worthy... it's tragic and disappointing.

I haven't done a scientific survey...
But, I'm pretty sure that those glossy, smiling, happy, warm-fuzzy, drug-dealing, big Pharma ads are aiming to outnumber car ads 2-to-1.

Listening to the dialogue being uttered in them, I want to scream. I find them sneaky and misleading. What is actually said in the ads and what it sounds like they are saying are very different things. It also bothers me that they give out a grocery list of symptoms, so that you are now well-informed and can go report these symptoms to your doctor and possibly get a Rx written whether or not you really have them. Then, there's the laundry list of possible side-effects, which is as long as the rest of the commercial, but is squeezed into and speed-read in less than four seconds.

There's one that is utterly mind-boggling to me and, apparently, not many others since it's still on the air. It's for a product called "Humira", I believe. Something marketed as being used to affect symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. Anyway, one of the many possible and horrible side-effects associated with this medication is lymphoma...

That's LYMPHOMA, people... Cancer of the Lymph Glands!... A "possible Side-Effect"?
I don't know about you... but I'd rather deal with sore joints and take Advil or get Acupuncture... than deal with CANCER.

I often have said... and still stand behind my statement that, "The FDA is NOT Your Friend." And, sadly, Congress is, thus far, too well-lobbied to take action to make measureable changes in how Big Pharma does its drug-testing and dealing.

Thankfully, there are Real People who are looking out for your health and mine... and they aren't dressed in white lab coats and wearing stethoscopes...
Former NY Times journalist Melody Petersen has written a thoughtful, well-researched and very timely book on the subject: Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Sarah Chrichton Books).

I recommend it. Some of what she reveals might make you angry, but, at least you'll be better informed... and that alone is empowering.

Peace.
And Here's to Your Informed, Good Health.
L.

(From: www.huffingtonpost.com/.)
Our Daily Meds: Navigating the Polypharmacy
Derek Beres
Posted April 17, 2008 | 12:21 AM (EST)



In the 1970s, Professor J. Scott Armstrong put forth a conundrum to close to 2,000 business school students and executive trainees. Intrigued by the corporatizing of the pharmaceutical industry, he created a scenario (based on an actual 1969 incident) in which a company has a new drug with a projected $20 million profit. The catch: For each million the company nets, there is one death from side effects. The first twenty million meant twenty deaths, and so on thereafter.

Students and trainees were given five options, ranging from immediately pulling the drug from shelves--regulators stated cheaper, more effective pills without such grave side effects exist--to downplaying risks and promoting the drug heavily, creating a media-driven whitewash in which consumers could not discern problems, and therefore readily open their pockets.

The results? Zero took the first option; 79% chose the latter. As former NY Times journalist Melody Petersen writes in her new book, Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs (Sarah Chrichton Books), "For these students and trainees, who were playing the roles of the executives they would soon become, profits took precedence over patients."

As one can imagine by the book's subtitle, the above is not an isolated case study. In fact, it shows how the drive to maximize profits at any expense is built into the educational system by which students become executives. Petersen spends the majority of her book citing such examples, moving from hard facts and statistical data to personal interviews with people who have fallen victim to the marketing of pharmaceutical companies or, worse, have lost loved ones during the same process.

The varied and often disguised layers of pharmaceutical marketing and maneuvering begin at the outset, when Petersen reminds us that Americans spent $250 billion in 2005 on prescription drugs -- twice as much as we paid for higher education or new cars. This total is also greater than the population of "Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina combined." Sadly, this is due in part because our federal government is the only office in the developed world that does not control prescription drug prices. It leaves that to the companies themselves, a process that belittles the integrity of the medical profession--which is supposed to be about healing--by sticking to the idea that "the few the options, the higher the price; the greater the desperation, the greater the suffering, the higher the price."

Even more depressing are corporate payouts to doctors, the men and women who are supposed to represent the pinnacle of the healthcare profession. Petersen cites numerous examples of doctors receiving payola for prescribing certain drugs, like Dr. B.J. Wilder, who received a $401,350 check from Warner-Lambert to send himself and 125 medical residents to a luxury resort in Florida, or Dr. Ilo Leppik, who received a stipend of $303,600 to publish his book on epilepsy. Both were awarded those sums for the support they gave to Neurontin -- a drug that Pfizer (which came to own Warner-Lambert) had to pay $430 million in court fees for illegally marketing. An estimated 90% of prescriptions of the drug were for uses that the drug was not approved to treat, including attention deficit disorder and sexual dysfunction. Originally developed to combat epilepsy (and even then, not very well), it became a hit for the company for a variety of other "illnesses" which it did nothing for.

Again, this is not an isolated case by any means. Buying off doctors to promote prescriptions -- a practice which takes numerous forms, including "scientific" reports written by marketing companies and signed off by supposedly respected professionals, as well as partnering with them to help create diseases that don't necessarily exist--affects the majority of the industry. As Petersen often reminds us, paying off DJs to play music was regulated thanks to governmental intervention. When dealing with substances that can, and are, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans (the healthcare industry is the third biggest killer in the country, behind heart failure and cancer), however, the government and FDA remain mute.

I found myself getting angry at each page I turned. Yet it was an empowering rage, one based in knowledge. The book is like lifting the veil of ignorance that hangs over a country inundated with bright, colorful advertisements with perky stuffed animals and light violet skies promising us peace, equanimity and fun. The reality is anything but. In 2003, an executive from GlaxoSmithKline said that more than 90% of drugs "only work in 30 or 50 percent of the people," and their own tests found that certain drugs were only 25% effective. To maximize profits, though, they've encouraged the creation of a polypharmacy, where a person is on multiple prescriptions.

Often people are given one drug to battle one problem, and then another to counter the side effects of the first pill, and so on. This is bad enough when pushed on seniors, who rely on their doctors to help them enjoy their later years in as good of health as possible (and who, by the way, Petersen points out, are rarely if ever tested clinically when companies are trying out new drugs; these tests are almost always on young and healthy men and women). When our children became the focus of such marketing--between 2000-2004, prescriptions for sleeping pills in children age 10-19 increased 85% -- it is inexcusable.

Tragically, a drug often works no better than a sugar pill, yet the pharmaceutical industry is driving -- let's make that dominating -- our economy. Petersen projects that by 2015 one in every five dollars we earn will be feed back into healthcare. This might be justifiable if it meant that our health was getting better. To the contrary, we're actually declining in health as a nation, as our life expectancy rates have fallen far from the top of the list of "developed" worlds. How developed a nation can be when a small percentage of business executives is knowingly and purposefully promoting drugs that are killing fellow humans remains a question that Petersen does not, and cannot, answer. Thankfully, with this elucidating book, we can take that question into our own hands, and decide for ourselves how hooked on their tether we remain.

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I’m With Einstein... Letter Reveals His View of Religion.
Category: News and Politics

... I'm thrilled (and grateful) to say that I've finally reached a point in my ongoing evolution/enlightenment where I do not seek out nor need approval or confirmation from outside sources that I am OK or that what I believe is OK.

That being said...

I'm equally thrilled to have just found out that my own personal views on organized religion mirror those of Albert Einstein.

My early religious experience was similar to his. And, like Einstein, I began to question - at an early age - the biblical stories that I was being taught and which everyone around me seemed to swallow - hook, line and sinker - without question. At the time, I lived in 'The Bible Belt' and, on weekends, it was hard to find anything entertaining on TV amid all of the televangelists and 'healers' (who were passionate - and, to me, utterly ridiculous - about scamming the poor and gullible for money) and other from-the-pulpit church programs (Thank Gd for PBS!... Hee Hee.). I attended services at Jewish synagogues and Baptist churches. Even then, in my young mind, I couldn't understand why so many otherwise rational people believed these stories to be... well, 'the Gospel Truth', so to speak. Not only was the Bible full of contradictions... How could the same God that made the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill." be the same God that - at various times - told people to go into another land and kill every living thing there or the same God that killed countless numbers of people Himself all over the ancient world?

More recently, I've done a great deal of self-directed research into the development of conventional religions... and what I discovered only steeled my view of religion as irrational, uninformed and blind acceptance of what can only be described as - if you look from a neutral position deeper into its history - superstition.

I discovered that, during Christianity's early years, it was a very small group of powerful and educated white men who took it upon themselves to decide what and who's early accounts/stories would become part of the canon as well as what stories were considered 'heresy' and their authors/followers 'heretics'. The latter was to be sought out and destroyed and the proponents/followers of the heresies were to be killed.

Thankfully, more people are realizing that most of the traditions/holidays/stories that so many hold dear in conventional monotheistic, patriarchal religions have their origin in earlier and much older, pagan or pantheistic belief systems... This is because the early 'Convert or Die' Crew had figured out that it would be easier to indoctrinate conquered peoples into their New and Improved, Goddess-Free, Father-God Religion if it contained a numerous familiar aspects from their own, now-banned beliefs.

And, I'm not even going to go into conventional religion's history of utterly misogynistic views towards and treatment of women (perhaps it's fear/envy-based? I guess the early church fathers couldn't comprehend how it it could be that women alone, not men - had the God-like ability to bring Life into the World... and boy, were they mad about it.) or the centuries of Witch Burnings - whereby the church immediately confiscated all possessions of the as-good-as-condemned at the moment of accusation. There are modern-day examples of this misogyny... Although women won the right to vote last century and there's currently a viable female candidate for President of the U.S.... Women are still forbidden from attaining the position of Rabbi - in Judaism; of Priest - in Catholicism... and, in some interpretations of Islamic law, rather than insisting that men be respectful of women and to take responsiblity for their own behavior ... the women are ordered to cocoon themselves... I mean, my Gd!... in some communities... women and girls are routinely executed (given the misnomer 'honor-killing') for being raped!

Good People of Planet Earth... There is No God or Allah or All-Knowing/All-Powerful Creator in All That Is who would condone such cruel, vicious and abhorrent treatment of anyone, let alone innocent victims of violent crimes... But, ignorant, evil, little men who are afraid of losing their unjustified influence and control over women might tell themselves and each other that God/Allah/The Creator did.

I also agree with Einstein that no one group can seriously hold claim as 'The Chosen People'... at least not based solely upon their collective religious beliefs.
Honestly, if there are any "Chosen People", they are the people - both women and men - who consciously choose to do Good... Those who naturally and consistently do The Right Thing because it is The Right Thing To Do whenever the opportunity or need arises... and They do so with no thought about receiving any credit or reward... even if it necessitates them going a little out of their way or taking more time than they planned.

... But, I digress...

The existence of the letter was a surprise to most. It came from a private collection and is scheduled to be auctioned in London this week. Einstein had written the letter to the philosopher Eric Gutkind on January 3, 1954, after Gutkind had sent a copy of his book, Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt.


Albert Einstein, pictured in 1953. Photograph: Ruth Orkin/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Einstein is My Co-Pilot.
Peace.
L.

From: www.guardian.co.uk/.

"Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." So said Albert Einstein, and his famous aphorism has been the source of endless debate between believers and non-believers wanting to claim the greatest scientist of the 20th century as their own.

A little known letter written by him, however, may help to settle the argument - or at least provoke further controversy about his views.

Due to be auctioned this week in London after being in a private collection for more than 50 years, the document leaves no doubt that the theoretical physicist was no supporter of religious beliefs, which he regarded as "childish superstitions".

Einstein penned the letter on January 3 1954 to the philosopher Eric Gutkind who had sent him a copy of his book Choose Life: The Biblical Call to Revolt. The letter went on public sale a year later and has remained in private hands ever since.

In the letter, he states: "The word god is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this."

Einstein, who was Jewish and who declined an offer to be the state of Israel's second president, also rejected the idea that the Jews are God's favoured people.

"For me the Jewish religion like all others is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything 'chosen' about them."

The letter will go on sale at Bloomsbury Auctions in Mayfair on Thursday and is expected to fetch up to £8,000. The handwritten piece, in German, is not listed in the source material of the most authoritative academic text on the subject, Max Jammer's book Einstein and Religion.

One of the country's leading experts on the scientist, John Brooke of Oxford University, admitted he had not heard of it.

Einstein is best known for his theories of relativity and for the famous E=mc2 equation that describes the equivalence of mass and energy, but his thoughts on religion have long attracted conjecture.

His parents were not religious but he attended a Catholic primary school and at the same time received private tuition in Judaism. This prompted what he later called, his "religious paradise of youth", during which he observed religious rules such as not eating pork. This did not last long though and by 12 he was questioning the truth of many biblical stories.

"The consequence was a positively fanatic [orgy of] freethinking coupled with the impression that youth is being deceived by the state through lies; it was a crushing impression," he later wrote.

In his later years he referred to a "cosmic religious feeling" that permeated and sustained his scientific work. In 1954, a year before his death, he spoke of wishing to "experience the universe as a single cosmic whole". He was also fond of using religious flourishes, in 1926 declaring that "He [God] does not throw dice" when referring to randomness thrown up by quantum theory.

His position on God has been widely misrepresented by people on both sides of the atheism/religion divide but he always resisted easy stereotyping on the subject.

"Like other great scientists he does not fit the boxes in which popular polemicists like to pigeonhole him," said Brooke. "It is clear for example that he had respect for the religious values enshrined within Judaic and Christian traditions ... but what he understood by religion was something far more subtle than what is usually meant by the word in popular discussion."

Despite his categorical rejection of conventional religion, Brooke said that Einstein became angry when his views were appropriated by evangelists for atheism. He was offended by their lack of humility and once wrote. "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility."

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Which Came First... The Mountain Lion or the Subdivision?
Category: News and Politics

Oh No... Not Again...

...In the ad nauseum replayed words (...more or less) of Reverend Wright:
"No... Not 'God Bless 'Them'... 'God Dam* Them!...'".

Well...

Chalk another violent and unnecessary death of a Priceless and Incredibly Beautiful Wild Creature of Nature to those Stupid, Self-Centered, Brutal, Egomaniacal, Clueless, Self-Destructive... (...Nix that)... Globally-Destructive HOMO-SAPIENS!

(I'm a little annoyed.)

Why?

****BREAKING NEWS****

A big local News Event around here (San Francisco Bay Area) is the appearance of a mountain lion in a Hayward, CA residential area.

It's the second appearance of one of the big cats showing up amidst houses and fenced yards in two weeks.

The first wild wonder didn't fare too well.

It found itself cornered by the local police and.... Well, what else do the police do when facing a situation that's not in their handbook... it was shot to death in a barrage of handgun bullets.

My first thought was... "Where the hell were the Fish and Game people with their tranquilizer guns?"

Sadly - I've since found out - Fish and Game wouldn't have blinked.

With this new appearance-
The announcement heard on all the local news stations goes something like this:

"Another mountain lion was spotted in a Bay Area neighborhood yesterday. Fish and Game experts have been called in to set traps for the animal and residents have been told to stay in their homes, not to approach the cat if they see it and to call 911 if they do."

I have a few issues with these statements.

First:
What they don't tell you (and what I found when I looked at the video on the screen) is this...

The aforementioned "neighborhood" isn't a well-established, concrete jungle where the only 'wildlife' people "spot" are scavenging pigeons and the occasional rodent (usually around fast-food restaurant dumpsters)... No.

This is, apparently, a sparsely-populated outcropping of urban sprawl that's only just begun creeping into the rolling, green, tree-dotted hills that have been home to mountain lions and all kinds of wildlife for Hundreds of Years.

A Thump On The Head to whomever wrote that news script being recited.

If you looked at the video that the film crew shot...
You'd see that the TRUTH of the situation is NOT that the mountain lion (a 2-3yr. old 90-lb. male youngster) has wandered into our 'civilized' society... No.

The TRUTH is that the so-called 'civilized' society has wandered into the mountain lion's territory and is now crying "Wolf!"... or "Mountain Lion!"

And... What about Fish and Game?

Don't wait for them to come to the rescue of the poor creature.

They're gunning for it, too. Two baby goats are missing/assumed killed and the mountain lion is being blamed. For that reason, Fish and Game are planning on trapping it and then "euthanizing the animal". Fish and Game have been quoted as saying that, "Trapping and releasing the animal is not feasible."

"...Not Feasible?!"...

What the hell?

It only weighs 90-lbs.... I could move it!

The humans are the ones who are tresspassing in it's territory. This means that it can't be too far from home and they wouldn't have to go too far.

Which is EXACTLY why it showed up there...
And probably why they don't consider it "feasible" to release it back into the wild. People will be continue to tresspass further into the hills and continue to be shocked to find wildlife... So, why bother relocating it... It'll just end up in trouble again.

People keep moving into and claiming what were formerly wild-only areas and then act shocked and awed when the long-time residents come by to check them out.

Not only that, if they are raising small livestock in open, unprotected areas with no herding dogs to protect them...

Well, duh!... It's a Mountain Lion! You've moved your clan into where the big cat's relatives have been living, mating and hunting small, furry animals for generations!

Now... Who's the TRESSPASSER?

These Human-Wild conflicts are the perfect preface to a Serious Global Crisis that's been irking me for a long time.

Human Beings are quick to decide when, in their eyes, a population of a particular wild species has gotten too big and needs to be reduced. They then will either kill off a certain number of those animals themselves or let hunters do it.

They've missed one. The One Super-Sized Population that Human Beings urgently need to look at is their own. They need to recognize and admit that it's teetering on ridiculous... if not self-and-globally destructive and take decisive steps to begin controlling it.

Ignoring the immediate and urgent Global Threat is begging for big trouble.

People have started and will start wars for the planet's resources - especially the finite ones.

Shortages of Food; Clean, drinkable water; Healthy soil able to grow crops; Endless demands for Energy; Air that's safe to Breathe... We're only seeing the faintest of hints at what problems might develop... and the top contributor to these problems is uncontrolled human population growth.

Case in Point:
For example: When I see those obnoxious commercials from Christian Children's Fund... you know the ones... They are filmed in a poverty-stricken slum in Brazil. The kids are skinny and barefoot and digging through landfill... The old, white man on the screen is asking for you to help support one of the countless children in the same horrible predicament... Incredibly, at one point, he starts to refer to the potential child you send financial support to as, "... your child."... I hate that. It's manipulative and a lie.

I want to see Christian Children's Fund using some of it's resources to really help poor families and provide Family-Planning Information and Birth Control options to people who need it and/or don't have access to/can't afford it.

Here's my contribution: They can call it The Christian Condom Fund!

Oh, in another related item...

If you have to tell someone that they shouldn't approach a Mountain Lion, Grizzly Bear or any other Wild and Dangerous Animal... Humanity Does Not Need Them!

I'm not kidding. Whether or not it sounds harsh, it's the TRUTH.

Mother Nature, God or Who/Whatever Created All That Is... Included in Her/His/Their Creation a little Fact of Life called: "Survival of the Fittest". This is why carnivorous predators choose to hunt the weak members of a herd... A Bonus: It makes the gene pool of the herd Healthier and Stronger. A Win-Win situation!

Well-meaning and/or lawsuit-fearing human beings have totally screwed this part of the Divine Plan up.

I feel the same about safety labeling on things...

Like plastic bags...

If someone doesn't have enough common sense/survival instinct to know that a plastic bag is not a toy... We don't need them and we don't need their common sense-lacking genetic contribution in the gene pool.

(Please note: I am talking about adults, not children.)

Thanks... I've needed to get that off my chest for a long, long time.

Peace.
L.

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Will Collider Create Black Holes That Destroy Us?... Ah, Sweet Sarcasm.
Category: News and Politics

"Hola!" (...In honor of my Madre, who is learning Espanol.)

I stumbled upon the following article... The title alone is enough to make one want to... well, uh... never mind.

Let's just agree that it's excessive and, in all honesty, belongs on the cover of one of those grocery checkout rags with their stories of hybrid dog-boys and perpetual celebrity deathbeds... not The Boston Globe.

I believe that the author of the article chose to use that title because it lays out in the open a very real fear that a fair number of people have regarding an upcoming scientific experiment that involves smashing two protons together at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland.

Those people who are feeling various degrees of fear and dread about the event are concerned because - in smashing the protons and releasing their bits and pieces - due to Einstein's E=mc{+2} - one could theorize that a large amount of mass in a little space could result a black hole.

That would be bad... and not just for Switzerland and France.

The author offers several logical-sounding reasons in an effort to debunk the belief that the experiment might result in the creation of black holes, saying such thoughts are completely 'irrational'.

... These rebuttals include the 'argument' that... well, basically that there's no reason to fear the creation of black holes because... (drum roll, please) Black Holes still only exist in theory... They aren't REAL.

... Whoa, wait a minute... he's right! No one has ever brought one into the classroom in a brown paper bag for 'Show-and-Tell'...

You've got be kidding me!

If Black Holes don't exist (and I'm not insisting that they do)... well, then, NASA and numerous other people with access to the most powerful telescopes known to humankind have been wasting a lot of time mapping them and announcing each new one discovered.

The author's first couple of arguments might have been somewhat re-assuring to a few people... even to me.

But, when he offered up the 'Silly people...Black Holes are only theoretical' argument as a reason that we should not worry that some whack-a-doo scientists - who obviously have yet to learn that: "Just because you can do something... doesn't mean that you should!" (Like the transgenic-obsessed idiots who make small furry animals that glow in the dark.) - ... that was when I started to both laugh and really worry.

May those CERN (Mad) Scientists decide not to tempt The Fates in such a foolish endeavor... (Hey, if "it happens everyday, all around us..." as the author claims... Why re-create it in a large collider?)
... Or, may they fail fabulously... for all of our sakes.

* If those of us who are concerned about things like this are labeled 'irrational'... so be it...
I'd rather be called irrational, err on the side of caution and Live... than be conceited, 'rational' and possibly cause the obliteration of everything.

Peace.
L.

P.S.- Then again, I might just be tired... Buenos Noches!


From: The Boston Globe

Ask Dr. Knowledge

Will New Collider Create Black Holes That Destroy Us All?
(insert heavy sarcasm)

April 21, 2008


The Large Hadron Collider is a particle accelerator collider being built at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, or CERN, straddling the French-Swiss border near Geneva. It should be completed and ready to start producing data sometime this summer. In it, scientists will be able to smash protons travelling at more than 99.99 percent of the speed of light with protons traveling in the opposite direction at the same speed.

Protons are actually pretty complicated objects, made of little bits and pieces, and in a collision of two protons it can happen that two of the little pieces find themselves very close together. Those pieces carry a lot of energy, and due to Einstein's E=mc{+2} one might imagine that a lot of mass in a little space could lead to a black hole.

The odds of this actually happening are pretty much zero for several reasons. First of all, the theorists who worry about such things happening make assumptions that the energy needed to make a black hole is vastly less than what we would expect in the real world as we know it. This possibility only arises in theories with what are called "large extra dimensions," and there is no evidence at all that these describe reality.

A second reason: Black holes, strictly speaking, are theoretical constructs. Nobody has ever seen a black hole. Things that are black hole candidates are objects which are known to be small and to have very high masses, but if one is very honest, there are a lot of problems with the black hole concept, and we don't yet know for sure that they really exist. One particularly vexing problem is that time is predicted to slow down as one approaches a heavy object, so that bits of matter falling into a heavy collapsing object actually take an infinite amount of time to fall in from the point of view of an observer outside.

A third reason is that while we physicists are all excited about the collisions to take place at CERN soon, such collisions take place all the time on Earth, the moon, and everywhere else due to ultrahigh energy cosmic rays. In other words, the experiments people worry about at CERN have been going on now and then at random all over the place for billions of years, and things seem to be fine!

Dr. Knowledge is written by physicists Stephen Reucroft and John Swain, both of Northeastern University. E-mail questions to drknowledge@globe.com or write Dr. Knowledge, c/o The Boston Globe, PO Box 55819, Boston, MA 02205-5819.

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This Might Hurt A Little: Supreme Court Allows Injection for Execution
Category: News and Politics

(From: www.nytimes.com)
Supreme Court Allows Lethal Injection for Execution

By LINDA GREENHOUSE
Published: April 17, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld Kentucky's method of execution by lethal injection, rejecting the claim that officials there administered a common sequence of three drugs in a manner that posed an unconstitutional risk that a condemned inmate would suffer acute yet undetectable pain.

Today's news that the Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's method of executing those on death row is big news here in California. There has been an unofficial hold on state executions for about a year now, as states waited for the High Court's decision on the practice of execution by lethal injection. (The method used by 35 of the 36 states that allow for the death penalty.)
The challenge wasn't so much to the consititutionality of lethal injection as it was to the details of the injection's administration. The appeal was brought on by two men on Kentucky's death row, each of whom were convicted of double murders.

My feelings about capital punishment have changed over the years. In my first year of college, in a Reasoning and Critical Thinking class, I chose to write a paper in support of capital punishment. But, I didn't know then what I know now. Since writing that paper, I've researched and studied the arguments for and against it at length. I understand - as best I can - wanting blood to be spilled for blood that was spilled. We all have heard the horrific and gruesome details of countless violent crimes committed against innocent men, women and children. Believe me, when I hear about a woman or child being raped and murdered and dismembered, I fantasize about how I would like the guilty piece of shite to be dispatched. It's easy to understand the feelings of the victim's loved ones to feel that the only justice would come from the death of the guilty... and that seeing them executed is still letting them off easy.

But, I also now know that the penalty of death is the sentence handed down more often to people of color than to white defendants, for similar crimes.

And, with the development of DNA evidence being able to be examined and compared, there have been a great number of cases where someone on death row has been found to have been wrongly convicted, and the actual perpetrator identified.

So, my present feeling is that, unless we truly know, without a shadow of doubt, that the person facing execution is undeniably the person who committed the crime(s), then I believe we should refrain from executing them.

Then, there's the common sense statement that - if you keep your emotions in check - makes complete sense: "You cannot teach people that killing is wrong by killing them."

That said...
I can't help but be somewhat annoyed and incredulous at the gall of convicted murderers (with DNA evidence) who, like a recent death row inmate at San Quentin, complained (through their ambulance-chasing mouthpiece lawyer) that just because they might experience some degree of pain during their execution... that we should not execute them (the "cruel and inhuman punishment" cry).

My response is simple:
There are numerous occasions when you or I or anyone has been at the dentist or being seen by a doctor...
and have been informed by the dentist, doctor or nurse that, simply put: "This might hurt a little."
And, it did hurt... sometimes a little and sometimes a lot... but, hey, we get over it and go on with our lives.
In the case of death row inmates, in the 'death chamber', about to be executed...
What the Hell! Just tell 'em, "This might hurt a little." and get on with it! They are being executed! For heinous crimes. They aren't going to wake up in a few minutes and yell, "Damn! That hurt a lot!". They will be gone.
And it will have been a lot less painful than some of the methods of execution that I've imagined for them.

Peace.
L.

(From: www.mercurynews.com)

Executions in California Could Resume With Supreme Court Ruling

By DON THOMPSON, Associated Press Writer

SACRAMENTO—Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday's U.S. Supreme Court decision to allow lethal injections for death row inmates affirms California's capital punishment procedure and would allow executions to resume.

They have been on hold for two years because of legal challenges in federal and state court.

"I will continue to defend the death penalty and the will of the people, and I am confident that California's lethal injection protocol will be upheld," the governor said in a statement.

The Supreme Court voted 7-2 Wednesday to reject a challenge to the execution procedure in Kentucky, which uses three drugs to sedate, paralyze and kill inmates.

California is among the roughly three dozen states that uses a similar procedure. Executions have been delayed in California because of similar arguments claiming the drugs might not always work as intended, leaving inmates to die a painful death.

California has the nation's largest death row, with 669 convicts awaiting execution, including 15 women and 654 men.

In February 2006, California corrections officials halted the execution of convicted rapist and murderer Michael Morales hours before he was to be put to death.

Attorneys for Morales had challenged the three-drug sequence California used for its lethal-injection procedure one month before his scheduled execution.

They wrote that if the drugs were not administered properly it could leave Morales "paralyzed but
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conscious and suffering death from ... burning veins and heart failure."

In response, U.S. District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel recommended that the state monitor the execution with two anesthesiologists. One would be in the execution chamber and another nearby to make sure Morales was unconscious before the two remaining drugs were injected.

Morales' execution was delayed for a day and ultimately canceled after the anesthesiologists refused to participate because of ethical concerns.

"There has been a de facto moratorium," said Seth Unger, a spokesman with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. "The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling opens the door for us to proceed with the Morales case in California."

The next step is a hearing in Fogel's courtroom in San Jose, scheduled for June 12. At that time, the judge could set a schedule for reviewing the state's proposed execution procedure.

In December 2006, he ruled that California's procedure was so badly designed and carried out that it was likely to cause pain and suffering.

Since then, the state has taken a number of steps to address the concerns, including building a better-lighted death chamber at San Quentin State Prison.

Corrections official submitted a new execution plan, but it was invalidated last fall by a Marin County Superior Court judge.

Attorney Brad Phillips sued the state in Marin County, home to San Quentin, on behalf of two condemned inmates. Judge Lynn O'Malley Taylor agreed with Phillips that state prison officials had failed to gather public comment and take other required steps in forming their new execution plan.

The state is appealing the Marin County ruling. In the meantime, Unger expects the lethal-injection case before the federal court in San Jose to proceed.

David Senior, one of Morales' attorneys, said he expects the federal judge to delay a decision until California state courts resolve the pending administrative challenge.

"California may ultimately choose a procedure which is completely different from the state of Kentucky's," he said.

No judge in California has scheduled an execution since the one was halted for Morales, who was sentenced in 1983 for the rape and murder two years before of 17-year-old Terri Winchell in a Lodi vineyard.

"There are four people who have basically exhausted all their appeals ... and for whom we could set dates once the Morales litigation is resolved," said Gareth Lacy, spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office.

State attorneys reviewing the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in the Kentucky case preliminarily believe it also will end challenges to California's procedure, Lacy said.

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