Later On

UPDATE: This list includes no meat or poultry because the list was created by the FDA, which does not regulate those foods—they fall under the Dept of Agriculture.

In descending order, from this WebMD report:

• Leafy greens, involved in 363 outbreaks and ~13,600 cases of illness.
• Eggs, involved in 352 outbreaks and 11,163 reported cases of illness.
• Tuna, involved in 268 outbreaks and 2,341 reported cases of illness.
• Oysters, involved in 132 outbreaks and 3,409 reported cases of illness.
• Potatoes, involved in 108 outbreaks and 3,659 reported cases of illness.
• Cheese, involved in 83 outbreaks and 2,761 reported cases of illness.
• Ice cream, involved in 74 outbreaks and 2,594 reported cases of illness.
• Tomatoes, involved in 31 outbreaks and 3,292 reported cases of illness.
• Sprouts, involved in 31 outbreaks and 2,022 reported cases of illness.
• Berries, involved in 25 outbreaks and 3,397 reported cases of illness.

Ryan Singel in Wired:

When 22-year-old programmer Aaron Swartz decided last fall to help an open-government activist amass a public and free copy of millions of federal court records, he did not expect he’d end up with an FBI agent trying to stake out his house.

But that’s what happened, as Swartz found out this week when he got his FBI file through a Freedom of Information Act request. A partially-redacted FBI report shows the feds mounted a serious investigation of Swartz for helping put public documents onto the public web .

The FBI ran Swartz through a full range of government databases starting in February, and drove by his home, after the U.S. court system told the feds he’d pilfered approximately 18 million pages of documents worth $1.5 million dollars. That’s how much the public records would have cost through the federal judiciary’s pay-walled PACER record system, which charges eight cents a page for most legal filings.

“I think its pretty silly they go after people who use the library to try to get access to public court documents,” Swartz said. “It is pretty silly that instead of calling me up, they sent an FBI agent to my house.”

The feds also checked Swartz’s Facebook page, ran his name against the Department of Labor to figure out his work history, looked for outstanding warrants and prior convictions, checked to see if his mobile phone number had ever come up in a federal wiretap or pen register, and checked him against the records in a private data broker’s database.

The Great Court Records Caper began last year when …

Continue reading.

Andrew Sullivan blogs:

A few months ago, Marie Myung-Ok Lee wrote about giving her autistic son pot. She follows up:

I don’t consider marijuana a miracle cure for autism. But as an amateur herbalist, I do consider it a wonderful, safe botanical that allows J. to participate more fully in life without the dangers and sometimes permanent side effects of pharmaceutical drugs; now that we have a good dose and a good strain. (“White Russian”—a favorite of cancer patients, who also need relief from extreme pain). Free from pain, J. can go to school and learn. And his violent behavior won’t put him in the local children’s psychiatric hospital—a scenario all too common among his peers.

What we have in this country is a government attempting to punish people for trying to fight pain and incarcerate people for seeking harmless pleasure. It’s insane. There are no arguments for Prohibition that make even the slightest sense. And yet, doing the right thing is apparently a non-starter for the current federal Congress. Because the Democrats, by and large, are a bunch of principle-free panty-waists. And because the Republicans, who should be defending individual freedom, have sold their soul to a bunch of puritans and hypocrites.

Megs just today got moved to twice-a-day feeding (in preparation for the transition to homemade raw cat food), and she’s letting me know that she doesn’t think it’s a good idea. At all.

Very interesting article by Bob Holmes in New Scientist:

Editorial: Earth will be OK, but for us it’s not so good

WHEN Nobel prize-winning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen coined the word Anthropocene around 10 years ago, he gave birth to a powerful idea: that human activity is now affecting the Earth so profoundly that we are entering a new geological epoch.

The Anthropocene has yet to be accepted as a geological time period, but if it is, it may turn out to be the shortest – and the last. It is not hard to imagine the epoch ending just a few hundred years after it started, in an orgy of global warming and overconsumption.

Let’s suppose that happens. Humanity’s ever-expanding footprint on the natural world leads, in two or three hundred years, to ecological collapse and a mass extinction. Without fossil fuels to support agriculture, humanity would be in trouble. "A lot of things have to die, and a lot of those things are going to be people," says Tony Barnosky, a palaeontologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In this most pessimistic of scenarios, society would collapse, leaving just a few hundred thousand eking out a meagre existence in a new Stone Age.

Whether our species would survive is hard to predict, but what of the fate of the Earth itself? It is often said that when we talk about "saving the planet" we are really talking about saving ourselves: the planet will be just fine without us. But would it? Or would an end-Anthropocene cataclysm damage it so badly that it becomes a sterile wasteland?

The only way to know is to look back into our planet’s past. Neither abrupt global warming nor mass extinction are unique to the present day. The Earth has been here before. So what can we expect this time? …

Continue reading.

Do we really need the service academies? I would say "No." I went to college across the street from the US Naval Academy and later lived for several years in Annapolis, so this post from Tom Ricks’s blog caught my eye:

Prof. Bruce Fleming checks in from Annapolis with this report on how officials at the Naval Academy are reacting to his charge that the academy is bending admissions standards:

I’m writing now to ask if you’re interested in rattling the cage again, perhaps in your blog, as a next step on the "diversity" issue I raised this summer. I have to assume you are up on my own contributions to this topic — first an op-ed in the local (Annapolis) paper, this was widely reported in the Post, USA Today, Navy Times etc. I was asked to post a long piece on the USNI blog, which I did. It threw the admin for a loop, apparently, and beyond: I hear my name came up at all-hands meeting(s) at the Pentagon where the CNO was asked, "What about Professor Fleming’s assertions?" He adopted what the admin has chosen to adopt as their "shut down the discussion" mantra, namely something along the lines of "Professor Fleming doesn’t have the facts." After that I asked USNI if they were interested in a second posting by me using an internally-generated PowerPoint with facts and figures direct from the horse’s mouth to show that Prof Fleming DID have the facts, or enough to make the main points (minor procedural details may have shifted since my time on the Board, 5 years ago, but current statistics and graphs show that the basics are still there, namely what the administration itself calls "streamlined" admission for self-identified racial minorities, who come in one of only two ways, NAPS or "direct" — not true for non-athlete whites). USNI asked for this, then kept it, then now doesn’t even respond to my e-mails saying "are you running this?"

Meanwhile the Dean, a new one who just arrived, has gone out of his way to deny me both of the two merit pay steps recommended by my dept and its chair (two is the max; it’s possible to be recommended for two and get one if there just aren’t enough available to be given out, but it’s unheard of to take someone out of the rankings and move him to the bottom, as he has done). I’ve filed, last week, a federal whistleblower’s protection complaint with the OSC, on the grounds that this has every appearance of being retaliation for my saying in print that this kind of race-based admissions and two-tracking is illegal. I don’t know if this grinds slowly or fast, but it’s in the works. So they’re upset because I’m raining on their parade.

Read the rest of this entry »

I blogged this earlier, but it’s worth another look: the conservative effort to remove from the Bible "liberal" ideas, such as:

• Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. [Matthew 5:9]
• Resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. [Matthew 5:39]
• I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despite-fully use you, and persecute you; [Matthew 5:44]
• If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to cast a stone at her. [John 8:7]
• Do not judge, lest you too be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. [Matthew 7:1 & 2.]
• Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy [Matthew 5:7]
• But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses. [Matthew 6:15]
• Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions. [Luke 12.15.]
• Truly, I say unto you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 19:23]
• You cannot serve both God and Money. [Matthew 6:24.]
• Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s. [Matthew 22:21]
• Love your neighbor as yourself. .[Matthew 22:39]
• So in everything, do to others as you would have them do to you. [Matthew 7:12.]
• If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. [Matthew 19:21]
• But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. [Luke 14:13&14.]

Selection is from this post, which is worth reading.

Amanda Terkel gives in ThinkProgress yet another example of why Republicans cannot be taken seriously:

Every single Republican in the House voted against the $819 billion Recovery Act in January. Among the Republican senators who voted against the stimulus were Texas’ Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn. Both of them complained that they wanted to see more tax cuts rather than government spending.

But now, both Hutchison and Cornyn are pressuring the Obama administration to give Texas $3 billion in stimulus funds. The co-signers on the letter are a bipartisan group of the Texas delegation in the House, including 19 Republicans, all of whom also voted against the funds for which they’re now begging. The letter was drafted and circulated by GOP Rep. Pete Olson. From the letter: …

Continue reading. Think that’s the only example? Far from it. From Crooks & Liars (with a video of Rachel Maddow at the link):

From the Rachel Maddow Show Oct. 5, 2009. Rachel reiterates this report from TPMDC–The GOP’s New Foreign Policy: Undermine American Diplomacy:

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Joanne Mariner at FindLaw:

George Orwell once said that the natural language of politics was euphemism. In his era, bombing campaigns were termed "pacification"; later decades saw civilian deaths be reduced to "collateral damage," and kidnappings become "rendition operations."

With the war on terror, a phrase that is itself worthy of scrutiny, euphemism flourished. Senior US officials were the innovators—speaking of "enhanced" and "alternative" interrogation techniques, when what was going on was torture—but the media followed close behind.

"We do not torture," said President Bush in 2005, in response to mounting evidence of abuse. It was a straightforward, declaratory statement, the kind that Orwell liked, except it was also a bald lie. The following year, when Bush announced that 14 "high value" detainees were being transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo, he said that the CIA had not tortured them, but had used an "alternative set of procedures."

The interrogation methods the CIA used were, in his words, "tough," "safe," "lawful," and "necessary."

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Marci Hamilton at FindLaw:

When it comes to child sex abuse, the world is divided into two groups: the adults who are taking action to end this scourge, and the adults who protect the abusers. Sadly, many of the power players of Hollywood — with all of its money, power, and access to the media – fall into the latter category.

First, as I discussed in a prior column, we had Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson producing HBO’s "Big Love," which merely winks at the sexual degradation of girls in the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints enclaves, but never shows the system in an accurate light that would reveal its true, abhorrent nature. If the pretty fictions were stripped away, the show would be unrelentingly bleak and horrifying: a portrait of a male-dominated society that is inherently inimical to women’s rights, progress, and power.

Now, we have the specter of many in Hollywood rushing to Roman Polanski’s defense for his proven statutory rape. Three decades ago, as has been widely reported, Polanski admitted to drugging a 13-year-old girl with Quaaludes and alcohol before proceeding to have sex with her. After being turned in, he first pled down the charge and then skipped the country to avoid his punishment. Yet much of Hollywood seems to think his evasion of justice is just fine, and ought to continue forever.

Currently, Polanski is sitting in a Swiss prison fighting extradition after finally being arrested for his crime. His lawyers are fighting to keep him from having to face United States law. And many among Hollywood’s elite are signing petitions in his favor. He is a great artist, they and the French say, so just leave him alone.

Therein lies the recipe for the perpetuation of child sex abuse. If you close your eyes to the first known victim, then you are choosing to let the child predator move on to the next one. Adults who prey on adolescent and teenage children rarely limit themselves to one victim, and Polanski is no different. He had a "romantic relationship" – to use the common euphemism here — with Nastassja Kinski when she was only 15. Do the Hollywood icons rushing to his defense believe that he limited himself to sex with only two underage girls? Come on. The safe money is that they even know of some of the other victims.

Once again, the adult’s self-interest is being used to rationalize treating proven child sex abuse as though it is trivial, as though it leaves no lasting mark on a child’s psyche or soul. Hollywood’s defense of Polanski is no different than the Catholic Bishops’ shifting of child predators from parish to parish…

Continue reading.

I never understood the appeal of convertibles, a ride in which strikes me as delivering too much sun, too much wind, and too much dirt and dust. But some people like them—at the risk of their hearing. Kathleen Doheny at WebMD:

Convertible lovers who take to the open road with the top down may be risking hearing damage, according to a new study out of the U.K.

"If you are exposed for long periods above 85 decibels [of sound], you have the potential for hearing loss," says Philip Michael, MD, an ear-nose-throat surgeon at Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcestershire, U.K., and the study’s lead author. In his study, he found that the noise level with the top down was higher than 85 decibels. "The maximum noise was at 70 miles per hour and that was 89 decibels. It has the potential for causing long-term hearing loss.”

To put those decibel levels in context, a normal conversation is about 60 decibels; a rock concert is about 115 decibels.

Michael is slated to present the study — which was funded by the Worcestershire Royal Hospital –  at the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery annual meeting in San Diego.

Previous research done by others about motorcyclists’ noise exposure, coupled with his own love of convertibles, prompted the study, Michael tells WebMD. Motorcycle riders tend to wear earplugs, he finds…

Continue reading.

Interesting. I wonder what the GOP and the remaining band of Bush fans think of this story by Patricia Reaney of Reuters:

The United States is the most admired country globally thanks largely to the star power of President Barack Obama and his administration, according to a new poll.

It climbed from seventh place last year, ahead of France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Japan which completed the top five nations in the Nation Brand Index (NBI).

"What’s really remarkable is that in all my years studying national reputation, I have never seen any country experience such a dramatic change in its standing as we see for the United States for 2009," said Simon Anholt, the founder of NBI, which measured the global image of 50 countries each year.

He believes that during the previous administration of George W. Bush the United States suffered in the world ranking with its unpopular foreign policies but since Obama was elected, and despite the recent economic turmoil, the country’s status has risen globally.

"There is no other explanation," Anholt said in an interview, referring to the impact of Obama…

Continue reading.

Steve D at Booman Tribune:

Three Americans won the Nobel prize for Medicine the other day. (Cue U-S-A! U-S-A! chants). They received the award for discovering the existence and role an enzyme, telomerase, plays in repairing damaged DNA strands (actually something quite important for the future of medical treatments for genetic diseases and many cancers). Yet one of them, Elizabeth Blackburn, wasn’t good enough for our last President George Bush, because he fired her from the Federal government’s Council on Bioethics. Why? Because she didn’t toe the GOP line on stem cell research which made her persona non grata to the Bush and the Republican party’s faith based version of what science should be:

Blackburn spoke out about the Council of Bioethics, demonstrating that despite its written mission to be a body that monitors research developments and recommends appropriate guidelines, it was really just a tool for parroting the Bush Administration’s positions on certain hot-button issues — particularly embryonic stem cell research. Thus, Blackburn played a central and important role in revealing the extent of the political interference in science that pervaded the Bush Administration.

We, as a country are lucky that Elizabeth Blackburn, chose to immigrate to the united States from Australia (oh, that’s right, she’s an immigrant, as well, another Republican bugaboo)…

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Bruce Mirken at the Marijuana Policy Project Blog:

The International Association for Cannabis as Medicine just concluded its 5^th Conference on Cannabinoids in Medicine in Cologne, Germany. The conference included significant new evidence that marijuana is a safe, effective medicine for certain conditions, some of which can be found in the conference abstracts, now available online.

Canadian researcher Mark Ware presented results of a yearlong safety study known as the COMPASS study, which compared 215 patients who used marijuana to manage chronic pain with comparable control patients who did not use marijuana. Ware and colleagues report “no difference in serious adverse events” between the two groups, concluding, “Cannabis use for chronic pain over one year is not associated with major changes in lung, endocrine, cognitive function or serious adverse events.”

A much-awaited study came from the University of California, San Francisco, where Donald Abrams and colleagues tested the effects of adding marijuana to the therapeutic regimen of chronic pain patients on long-term morphine or oxycodone therapy. Unfortunately, because the researchers were crunching numbers right up until the conference, the abstract doesn’t include a lot of details. But the study shows that marijuana did indeed add significant pain relief on top of that already provided by the narcotic painkillers. The scientists conclude, “Cannabinoids may augment the analgesic effects of opioids, allowing longer treatment at lower doses with fewer side effects.”

Meanwhile, British researchers added to the body of evidence indicating that marijuana can aid the treatment of multiple sclerosis. Two-hundred and seventy-nine patients received either a standardized cannabis extract, given orally, or a placebo. Patients receiving the extract were twice as likely to experience relief of muscle stiffness, and also reported relief of body pain, spasms, and sleep problems.

The MPP is a heads-up organization leading a good fight. Make a small donation so you can help.

I bought a 1000-watt meat grinder ($100 including shipping; found it on eBay) primarily to make food for Megs and Molly, but now that I have it—and in the wake of the articles on the dangers of buying ground meat (save at Costco)—I’m thinking that I will be doing some grinding for myself. For example: not only hamburgers, but also lambburgers and ground pork. And a nice rib-eye steak, a nice boneless pork chop, and a nice piece of veal can be ground together for a good meatloaf.

Of course that doesn’t square with a plant-based diet, but who knows? I might long for a meatloaf at some point.

Good article at Consumer Reports Health.org:

Green beans. Spinach. Peas. Green beans. Spinach. Peas. We all know that vegetables are a staple of a   healthful diet, but getting them on your plate everyday can be a challenge—and eating the same ones day-in and day-out can be downright boring. We don’t always have the time, know-how, or budget to perk up a simple salad or side of broccoli. And it’s hurting us. According to a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, fruit and vegetable consumption is down. Only 27 percent of Americans get the recommended 3 or more servings of vegetables per day.

A diet rich in colorful vegetables can help you live longer and fight heart disease, stroke, some types of cancer, and type 2 diabetes. Vegetables can keep you looking your best, too. Vitamin A in carrots, spinach, sweet potatoes, red peppers, winter squash, kale, and collard greens can help keep eyes and skin healthy, and protect against infections.

Our staff came up with some creative ways to beat veggie boredom. Here are seven of my favorites—one for everyday of the week: …

Continue reading.

Who would have thought?

Sitting up straight in your chair isn’t just good for your posture – it also gives you more confidence in your own thoughts, according to a new study. Researchers found that people who were told to sit up straight were more likely to believe thoughts they wrote down while in that posture concerning whether they were qualified for a job.

On the other hand, those who were slumped over their desks were less likely to accept these written-down feelings about their own qualifications.

The results show how our body posture can affect not only what others think about us, but also how we think about ourselves, said Richard Petty, co-author of the study and professor of psychology at Ohio State University.

"Most of us were taught that sitting up straight gives a good impression to other people," Petty said. "But it turns out that our posture can also affect how we think about ourselves. If you sit up straight, you end up convincing yourself by the posture you’re in."

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A search of your home by police or Federal agents can be punishment enough. Consider this story by Brian Walsh in the Washington Times:

"You don’t need to know. You can’t know." That’s what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris’ longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with – get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.

That’s right. Orchids.

By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary – based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids.

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I just received the following email:

 

When 9-year-old Beth* was sexually abused by her stepfather, she told the prosecuting attorney that someone else knew about it — but that he couldn’t talk. She was referring to her beloved cat, Oreo.

Beth explained that Oreo would bravely lie outside her door at night and hiss whenever her attacker appeared. In trying to protect her, the loyal black and white cat also became another victim of violence; Beth’s stepfather would always brutally kick Oreo away from the door.

Beth’s revelation gave the prosecutor an idea. She decided to have Oreo examined by a veterinarian. The results were chilling. Sure enough, poor Oreo had sustained injuries consistent with being physically abused.

When the prosecutor submitted the veterinarian’s report to the jury as evidence showing a pattern of violence in the home, Beth’s allegations gained credibility. In a way, Oreo was able to testify, convincing the jury that the traumatized little girl had been telling the truth.

Beth’s stepfather was convicted and received a long prison sentence. Meanwhile, Beth and Oreo were finally able to experience what every child and animal deserves: a safe home.

The prosecutor in Beth’s case was Allie Phillips, who now works for American Humane as vice president of our Public Policy Office. She and our staff regularly conduct trainings for attorneys, judges, veterinarians, social workers, domestic-violence counselors and other social services providers on what American Humane calls The Link® between violence to people and violence to animals, increasing awareness of the powerful role it can play in unmasking and preventing abuse.

It’s a vital message — one that Allie and our Link team are uniquely qualified to spread on behalf of abuse victims everywhere. But she can’t do it alone.

Please help Allie and our team continue to educate others about The Link and stop the cycle of violence affecting innocent people and animals alike. Donate today!

* This is a true story. However, the child’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.

Very interesting post by Cynthia Kouril at Firedoglake:

We enjoy a constitutional right to free speech in the country. It is not an absolute right to say just anything we want, though. For example, we cannot falsely defame someone, we cannot falsely shout “fire” in a crowded movie theatre and spark a stampede, we cannot incite to riot.

It is this last example that I want to talk about right now. The New York Times is reporting:

On Thursday, F.B.I. agents descended on a house in Jackson Heights, Queens, and spent 16 hours searching it. The most likely reason for the raid: a man who lived there had helped coordinate communications among protesters at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh.

The man, Elliot Madison, 41, a social worker who has described himself as an anarchist, had been arrested in Pittsburgh on Sept. 24 and charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime. The Pennsylvania State Police said he was found in a hotel room with computers and police scanners while using the social-networking site Twitter to spread information about police movements. He has denied wrongdoing.

Thus far, there is no allegation that this man asked anyone to riot; I do not know if his communications helped any lawbreakers to evade arrest, but it would seem to be the opposite. The police were monitoring his transmissions, so it would seem that it would make it easier for the police to track the protesters’ movements; doesn’t it? …

Continue reading.