flasp-flasd

2011-10-24T13:44:00.001-07:00

flasp-flasd: Meditation

2011-05-26T15:09:00.000-07:00

flasp-flasd: Meditation

2011-04-30T09:48:00.001-07:00

2011-04-30T09:46:00.001-07:00

Johnny Cash - We'll Meet Again

2011-03-31T23:35:00.000-07:00

Leizi

2011-02-27T17:54:00.000-08:00

Leizi/Lieh Tzu:

Tian Qi was holding a feast for a thousand guests. Fish and geese were being served at the head table. Tian looked at the fare and sighed as he said,
“Heaven is so indulgent to humans! For our use it generated the five grains and gave birth to the fish and fowl!”
The guests all responded their echoing approval. But a Mr. Bao’s twelve year-old son stepped forward from the group and said,
“Sir, what you say is mistaken; all the kinds of beings of heaven and earth are the same as humans. No species is intrinsically precious or mean. It is simply a matter of size, cunning, or strength that lets one dominate the others, that lets one eat the others.

It is not that one particular being is born designated for another’s use. Humans catch what is suitable to eat, and eat it. But can we take that to mean that heaven created them specifically for man’s benefit?
On the other hand, mosquitoes and gnats bit his skin; tigers and wolves eat his flesh. But we don’t assume that heaven created man for the good of the mosquitoes and gnats or to provide meat for the tigers and wolves.”
齊田氏祖于庭，食客千人。中坐有獻魚雁者。田氏視之，乃嘆曰：「天之于民厚矣！殖五穀，生魚鳥，以為之用。眾客和之如響。鮑氏之子年十二，預于次，進曰：「不如君言。天地萬物，與我并生類也。類無貴賤，徒以小大智力而相制，迭相食；非相為而生之。人取可食者而食之，豈天本為人生之？且蚊蚋噆膚，虎狼食肉，非天本為蚊蚋生人、虎狼生肉者哉？」

Meditation

2010-11-28T11:03:00.000-08:00

New York Subway - Hilda Morley

2010-11-18T04:09:00.000-08:00

New York Subway

by Hilda Morley

The beauty of people in the subway
that evening, Saturday, holding the door for whoever
was slower or
left behind
(even with
all that Saturday-night
excitement)
& the high-school boys from Queens, boasting,
joking together
proudly in their expectations
& power, young frolicsome
bulls,
& the three office-girls
each strangely beautiful, the Indian
with dark skin & the girl with her haircut
very short and fringed, like Joan
at the stake, the corners
of her mouth laughing
& the black girl delicate
as a doe, dark-brown in pale-brown clothes
& the tall woman in a long caftan, the other day,
serene & serious & the Puerto Rican
holding the door for more than 3 minutes for
the feeble, crippled, hunched little man who
could not raise his head,
whose hand I held, to
help him into the subway-car—
so we were
joined in helping him & someone,
seeing us, gives up his seat,
learning
from us what we had learned from each other.
"New York Subway" by Hilda Morley, from To Hold My Hand: Selected Poems 1955-1983. © The Sheep Meadow Press, 1983.

Silence - A poem by Edgar Lee Masters - American Poems

2010-11-15T12:29:00.000-08:00

Silence - A poem by Edgar Lee Masters - American Poems

Writing on Silence by Sri Chinmoy

2010-11-15T11:32:00.000-08:00

Writing on Silence by Sri Chinmoy

" An ordinary man thinks either that silence cannot be achieved or that it is of no avail. But a seeker knows that silence can be achieved on the strength of his inner cry. He also knows that silence is of tremendous importance, for without silence we cannot see the face of Truth or grow into the very image of Truth and Light. Silence is within but we have to discover it. Unless and until we discover our inner silence, we cannot feel that we are of God and for God. Inner silence is not just the absence of thoughts. No! Silence is the blossoming of our indomitable inner will. Silence is our inner wisdom-light. This wisdom-light is our conscious and constant surrender to the Will of our Inner Pilot, who inspires us, encourages us and guides us to the Shores of the Golden Beyond. "

2010-11-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

http://support.pcrm.org/miller_letter

2010-09-20T16:21:00.000-07:00

http://support.pcrm.org/miller_letter

Séraphine

2010-04-25T22:03:00.000-07:00

Alison Krauss / Cat Stevens

2010-02-19T20:19:00.000-08:00

literally going green...so cool!

2010-01-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

STOLEN GREENThe kleptomaniac sea slugElysia chlorotica feeds on algae by sucking out the innards of filaments. The slug takes in the little algal organelles for photosynthesizing and, researchers now say, can also manufacture the compound, chlorophylla.

A Legal Challenge to Animal Research

2009-12-16T14:05:00.000-08:00

"Animal rights law courses may threaten the use of animals in medical research."

Aussie scientists find coconut-carrying octopus

2009-12-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

"It's another example where we can think about how similar humans are to the rest of the world," Robson said. "We are just a continuum of the entire planet."

Don't be shy

2009-12-09T13:59:00.000-08:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/flasp-flasd/4155538503/

"Wait! I'm not ready!

2009-12-09T13:57:00.000-08:00

Nicholas Kristof's Advice for Saving the World

2009-12-08T12:03:00.000-08:00

What would happen if aid organizations and other philanthropists embraced the dark arts of marketing spin and psychological persuasion used on Madison Avenue? We'd save millions more lives.

Proceedings of the Second American Conference on Human Vibration

2009-12-03T12:41:00.000-08:00

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

There is a saying, "If it moves, it vibrates." This is especially true in our modern industrial environments, where workers use powered tools, machinery, vehicles, and heavy equipment. How workers are affected by these elements of the industrial working environment is a concern of health professionals, governments, and scientists around the world. How to adequately assess the effects of human vibration exposure is an equally important issue. The human body comprises a dynamic structure that is living, intelligent, and complex. Consequently, it is not unreasonable to consider that exposing the body to an array of vibration environments would result in outcomes that are not necessarily simple or easily predictable. Sensations caused by vibration may include nausea, annoyance, discomfort or pain, and exhilaration or pleasure. Many factors contribute to the effects of vibration on humans, including the characteristics of the motion and the exposed individual, the activities of the exposed individual, and various elements of the environment. There have been attempts to summarize the effects of occupational vibration exposures by simply recommending the avoidance of certain frequencies of vibration or by providing a graphical method, i.e., a single curve displaying all human responses to all frequencies. However, such efforts have not withstood the scrutiny of scientific research and analysis. Thus, attendees and participants at this professional gathering now have the rare opportunity to benefit from the technological advances and new scientific research to enhance their understanding of human responses to vibration that suggest more than a simplistic approach. In the tradition of the First American Conference on Human Vibration (1st ACHV) held in Morgantown, WV, June 2006, the 2nd ACHV provides a forum for scientists, engineers, medical doctors, industrial hygienists, and educators to learn and advance research and education in the specialized area of human body vibration. The conference was organized by the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department, University of Illinois at Chicago, with support from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), Pittsburgh Research Laboratory. As with the first conference, the 2nd ACHV provides the unique opportunity to learn about the current activities of peers and colleagues and to exchange information on topics of interest such as human response, human modeling, experimental design, sensors, new technologies, and epidemiological studies of human responses to hand-transmitted and whole-body vibration. The conference organizers hope that the publication of these conference proceedings continues to foster new research and technological advances to reduce health hazards associated with occupational vibration exposures.

Author(s): Amirouche-F, Mayton-AG
Reference: Amirouche F; Mayton AG, eds., Pittsburgh, PA: National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, 2009 Jun; :1-137

Top 10 (Recent) Developments On Factory Farming And Vegetarianism

2009-12-01T15:07:00.000-08:00

"On Thanksgiving, I spent some time taking stock of my life and the world around me and, as we're supposed to do over the holiday, giving thanks for all the joys -- little and big -- in my life. One of the larger joys for which I am giving thanks is all of the recent attention that has been lavished on a topic that is near and dear to my heart -- the cruelty and environmental harm involved in raising animals for food."

STOMP : BROOMS

2009-11-29T22:59:00.000-08:00

Animal, Vegetable, Miserable - NYT

2009-11-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

LATELY more people have begun to express an interest in where the meat they eat comes from and how it was raised. Were the animals humanely treated? Did they have a good quality of life before the death that turned them into someone’s dinner?

Some of these questions, which reach a fever pitch in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, pertain to the ways in which animals are treated. (Did your turkey get to live outdoors?) Others focus on the question of how eating the animals in question will affect the consumer’s health and well-being. (Was it given hormones and antibiotics?)

None of these questions, however, make any consideration of whether it is wrong to kill animals for human consumption.

UPM Forest Life

2009-11-22T10:00:00.000-08:00

http://w3.upm-kymmene.com/upm/forestlife/index.html

Billionaires Learn Giving Is Only a Start - NYT

2009-11-12T12:53:00.000-08:00

“BILL GATES: The Real Secretary of Education,” ran a recent headline on the state of education reform in America, prompted by the unhappiness of teachers’ unions about the growing influence of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in Washington, D.C.. This reflects a new phase in the development of this generation of megadonors, in which the success or failure of their philanthropic agendas may be determined by their ability to master the dark arts of politics.

Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain

2009-11-10T11:30:00.000-08:00

"We’ve all heard the story of the third Little Pig, who foiled the hyperventilating wolf by building his house out of bricks, rather than with straw or sticks as his brothers had done. Less commonly known is that the pig later improved his home’s safety profile by installing convex security mirrors at key points along the driveway."

Quiet inside - Andy Tubman

2009-11-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I93PkZ8D3Vc

I couldn't make colors match today
I don't know what eles to say
except I tried and they can't say I didn't
I don't like the stuff they are feeding me
they don't like the things I say
but I don't think I need to be forgiven

But I am quiet inside
though they drag me by a wire
through the storm that cracks the sky
I am quiet inside

I used to be so hart to find
rge and tears filled my eyes
but now i believe I see much clearer
my clarity did not come easily
my sell was knocked into me
but now at least I know who's in the mirror

I am quiet inside
though they drag me by a wire
through the storms cracks the sky
I am quiet inside

I am quiet inside
though they drag me by a wire
through the storms cracks the sky
I am quiet inside

ye I'm quiet inside
I am quiet

I couldn't make colors match today
I don't know what else to say

ZORBA'S DANCE composed by Miki Theodorakis based on the tune ARMENOHORIANOS SYRTOS composed by the cretan musician Giorgis Koutsourelis (1914-1994)

2009-11-05T17:31:00.000-08:00

Foer's Call to Arms

2009-11-04T19:29:00.000-08:00

Novelist Jonathan Safran Foer talks to Jane Ciabattari about his new nonfictionbook, the horrors of factory farming, deciding what to feed his son, and why killing animals is just wrong.

The Carnivore’s Dilemma - NYT

2009-10-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

IS eating a hamburger the global warming equivalent of driving a Hummer? This week an article in The Times of London carried a headlinethat blared: “Give Up Meat to Save the Planet.” Former Vice President Al Gore, who has made climate change his signature issue, has even been assailed for omnivorous eating by animal rights activists.

Bob Barker donates $1 million for professorship on animal rights at Drury University

2009-10-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

Former television game show host Bob Barker, who ended episodes of "The Price is Right" by asking viewers to spay and neuter their pets, donated $1 million to Drury University to establish a professorship on animal rights that he hopes will lead to a full undergraduate degree program.

Mum’s veggie-rich diet may protect baby from diabetes

2009-10-29T17:05:00.000-07:00

Mothers-to-be should eat a vegetable-rich diet in order to protect their babies from type 1 diabetes, according to results of a new Swedish study.

Missing animal protein?

2009-10-29T14:44:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan: Natalie Portman

2009-10-29T14:30:00.000-07:00

Jonathan Safran Foer's book Eating Animals changed me from a twenty-year vegetarian to a vegan activist. I've always been shy about being critical of others' choices because I hate when people do that to me. I'm often interrogated about being vegetarian (e.g., "What if you find out that carrots feel pain, too? Then what'll you eat?").

I've also been afraid to feel as if I know better than someone else -- a historically dangerous stance (I'm often reminded that "Hitler was a vegetarian, too, you know"). But this book reminded me that some things are just wrong. Perhaps others disagree with me that animals have personalities, but the highly documented torture of animals is unacceptable, and the human cost Foer describes in his book, of which I was previously unaware, is universally compelling.

The human cost of factory farming -- both the compromised welfare of slaughterhouse workers and, even more, the environmental effects of the mass production of animals -- is staggering. Foer details the copious amounts of pig shit sprayed into the air that result in great spikes in human respiratory ailments, the development of new bacterial strains due to overuse of antibiotics on farmed animals, and the origins of the swine flu epidemic, whose story has gripped the nation, in factory farms.

I read the chapter on animal shit aloud to two friends -- one is from Iowa and has asthma and the other is a North Carolinian who couldn't eat fish from her local river because animal waste had been dumped in it as described in the book. They had never truly thought about the connection between their environmental conditions and their food. The story of the mass farming of animals had more impact on them when they realized it had ruined their own backyards.

But what Foer most bravely details is how eating animal pollutes not only our backyards, but also our beliefs. He reminds us that our food is symbolic of what we believe in, and that eating is how we demonstrate to ourselves and to others our beliefs: Catholics take communion -- in which food and drink represent body and blood. Jews use salty water on Passover to remind them of the slaves' bitter tears. And on Thanksgiving, Americans use succotash and slaughter to tell our own creation myth -- how the Pilgrims learned from Native Americans to harvest this land and make it their own.

And as we use food to impart our beliefs to our children, the point from which Foer lifts off, what stories do we want to tell our children through their food?

I remember in college, a professor asked our class to consider what our grandchildren would look back on as being backward behavior or thinking in our generation, the way we are shocked by the kind of misogyny, racism, and sexism we know was commonplace in our grandparents' world. He urged us to use this principle to examine the behaviors in our lives and our societies that we should be a part of changing. Factory farming of animals will be one of the things we look back on as a relic of a less-evolved age.

I say that Foer's ethical charge against animal eating is brave because not only is it unpopular, it has also been characterized as unmanly, inconsiderate, and juvenile. But he reminds us that being a man, and a human, takes more thought than just "This is tasty, and that's why I do it." He posits that consideration, as promoted by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma, which has more to do with being polite to your tablemates than sticking to your own ideals, would be absurd if applied to any other belief (e.g., I don't believe in rape, but if it's what it takes to please my dinner hosts, then so be it).

But Foer makes his most impactful gesture as a peacemaker, when he unites the two sides of the animal eating debate in their reasoning. Both sides argue: We are not them. Those who refrain from eating animals argue: We don't have to go through what they go through -- we are not them. We are capable of making distinctions between what to eat and what not to eat (Americans eat cow but not dog, Hindus eat chicken but not cow, etc.). We are capable of considering others' minds and others' pain. We are not them. Whereas those who justify eating animals say the same thing: We are not them. They do not merit the same value of being as us. They are not us.

And so Foer shows us, through Eating Animals, that we are all thinking along the same lines: We are not them. But, he urges, how will we define who we are?

The Ethics of Climate Change

2009-10-28T16:30:00.000-07:00

When it comes to setting climate change policy, science can only tell us so much. Ultimately, a lead report author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change writes, it comes down to making judgments about what is fair, equitable, and just.

by richard c. j. somerville

Lobsters and Crabs Feel Pain, Study Shows

2009-10-27T13:17:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

Ripping the legs off live crabsand crowding lobsters into seafood market tanks are just two of the many practices that may warrant reassessment, given two new studies that indicate crustaceans feel pain and stress.

The findings add to a growing body of evidence that virtually all animals, including fish, shellfish and insects, can suffer.

Robert Elwood, the lead author of both papers, explained to Discovery News that pain allows an individual to be "aware of the potential tissue damage" while experiencing "a huge negative emotion or motivation that it learns to avoid that situation in the future."

Both pain and stress are therefore key survival mechanisms.

Elwood, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at The Queen's University in Belfast, and colleague Mirjam Appel studied hermit crabscollected from rock pools in County Down, Northern Ireland. All of the crabs survived the experiments and were later released back into their native habitat.

Getting prepared for Halloween?! "I'll Put A Spell On You"

2009-10-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

I put a spell on you
Because you're mine

Stop the things ya do
Huh-ha-ha-ha, watch out!
I ain't lyin'!

Yeeaaah!
I can't stand!
Wooo!
No runnin' around

I can't stand
A-no puttin' me down
I put spell on you
Because you're miiiine!

Whoa-ooh-yeah!
Mmm-uuuuh!
Stop the things ya do
Mmm-huh-huh-huh-huh
Watch out!
I ain't lyin'!
Uuuh-oooh!

I love you!
I love you!
I love you!

Baby, how-oow?
I don't care if you don't want me
I'm yo's!

Right now, i put spell on you
Because you're mine!
Miiiiine!
Miiiiine!

Ow, hoo!
Uuuh!
Oh! you're mine
Uuuh, uuh.

Opening the door to Bt brinjal, a step towards disaster

2009-10-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

Rational opposition to Bt brinjal doesn't arise from a knee-jerk rejection of genetic engineering, but is based on good science. Sound, established science tells us that we don't know enough about the effects of insertion of alien genes on the recipient organism, about the risk of transfer of those genes to human organ systems or viruses -- and hence about the impact on human and animal health and the environment.

How Green Is Tofu? You'd be surprised to know.

2009-10-25T18:41:00.000-07:00

By Nina Shen Rastogi
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009

Lately, I've been eating a lot of tofu in an attempt to cut back on my meat consumption. But tofu doesn't exactly grow on trees—I'm guessing it takes a lot of energy to turn fresh soy beans into soft, white stuff. Am I really helping global warming by switching from chicken breasts to bean curd?

Go Veggie!

2009-10-22T18:33:00.000-07:00

The beauty of a smile

2009-10-22T18:20:00.000-07:00

Lion whisperer at work in South Africa

2009-10-22T11:27:00.000-07:00

Never underestimate a MOM

2009-10-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Balboa Park, San Diego, California

2009-10-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

It was such a beautiful day in the park!

Le renard et l'enfant

2009-10-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

The fox gets second billing to the scenery in this lush children's film from France.

Scientists Help Cut the Mystery Behind Pruning

2009-10-14T15:18:00.000-07:00

Teams in Canada and Europe provide new understanding of why cutting plants can encourage their growth. Second of two parts. Transcript of radio broadcast:
12 October 2009.

The Vegan Monologues - Ben Shaberman

2009-10-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

"There’s nothing funny about being vegan, unless you’re humorist Ben Shaberman. From dog chases to fornicating grasshoppers to chicken stock sabotage, he explores the lighter side of the meat-free lifestyle. Shaberman’s reflections will put a smile on the faces of vegans and omnivores alike."

Truthout Interview With Ralph Nader: "Only the Rich Can Save Us"

2009-10-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

Ralph Nader will always be remembered by his critics as the man whose bid for the White House in 2000 gave us eight years of George W. Bush. The disdain many liberals have for Nader still runs deep nearly a decade later.

But there's no denying the positive impact his activism has had on this country over the past half-century. Without Ralph Nader there wouldn't be an Environmental Protection Agency, an Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a Consumer Product Safety Commission, a Safe Drinking Water Act and so on.

Incy vegetarian spider is a scientific first

2009-10-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

From The Sunday Times
October 11, 2009
Johnathan Leake

Scientists have discovered the world’s first known vegetarian spider.
Bagheera kiplingi, a South American species, lives almost exclusively on leaf buds and is thought to be the only spider of about 40,000 species to have rejected a carnivorous diet.
Instead it has developed a laidback lifestyle based on nutritious wild acacia plants — and has no need to spin a web to catch its prey.

Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts

2009-10-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

By Brandon Keim
on Wired Science

"Imagine if the first person on the moon had proclaimed, “That’s one small step for woman, one giant leap for mankind.”
It could have happened. In the late 1950s, the United States government contemplated training women as astronauts, and newly released medical test results show that they were just as cool and tough as the men who went to the moon.

Eating Fish Does Not Protect Against Heart Attacks

2009-10-14T10:51:00.000-07:00

In a study out this month, researchers found that consuming fish does not reduce the risk of heart failure. After 11 years of follow-up of 5,000 men and women, almost 670 had heart attacks. Those who consumed the most fish had no protective effect, compared with others. This research was part of the Rotterdam Study in the Netherlands where, like all Western nations, heart failure is common.

Dijkstra SC, Brouwer IA, van Rooij FJA, Hofman A, Witteman JCM, Geleijnse JM. Intake of very long chain n-3 fatty acids from fish and the incidence of heart failure: the Rotterdam Study. Eur J Heart Fail. 2009;11:922-928.

Britain's Got Talent - Gin the clever funny dog

2009-10-13T10:50:00.000-07:00

Rocky and Bullwinkle

2009-10-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

Razão, crença e dúvida - Contardo Calligaris

2009-10-08T10:57:00.000-07:00

Onde se manifesta a razão? Na arrogância de certezas absolutas ou na capacidade de duvidar?

Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home

2009-10-08T09:54:00.000-07:00

the art of peaceful transformation

Polar Bear Tatqiq - San Diego Zoo

2009-10-05T20:43:00.000-07:00

This is Tatqiq, who along with twin cub Kalluk, were rescued from Alaska after their mother was killed by a hunter. Twin cubs Kalluk and Tatqiq were only three months old when they were found orphaned in Alaska. Together they were brought to the World-Famous San Diego Zoo to be cared for. Playful and curious, Kalluk and Tatqiq have won the hearts of more than three million people who visit the zoo each year. Whether they're diving into the water, rolling in the dirt, or sliding down a snowdrift, these adorable bears are an absolute highlight on any visit to the San Diego Zoo.
Special thanks to kjdrill's
and Ebe's photostream.
Polar Cam live from the San Diego Zoo.

Physiotherapist uses Boto, the Amazon river dolphin, to treat children

2009-10-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

A volunteer work in the Rio Negro, Amazonas, Brazil.
Contact with animals helps children to acquire self-confidence.

(in portuguese)
http://www.globoamazonia.com/Amazonia/0,,MUL1328590-16052,00.html#

University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, develops artificial skyn to avoid tests in animals

2009-10-03T17:47:00.000-07:00

Um laboratório da USP desenvolveu uma pele artificial que pode substituir testes de cosméticos em animais e ajudar também em sua redução nos testes farmacológicos.

Simon & Garfunkel El Condor Pasa

2009-09-29T16:41:00.000-07:00

I'd rather be a sparrow than a snail
Yes i would, if i could, i surely would
I'd rather be a hammer than a nail
Yes i would, if i only could, i surely would

Away, i'd rather sail away
Like a swan that's here and gone
A man gets tied up to the ground
He gives the world its saddest sound
Its saddest sound

I'd rather be a forest than a street
Yes i would, if i could, i surely would
I'd rather feel the earth beneath my feet
Yes i would, if i only could, i surely would

Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets

2009-09-29T15:39:00.000-07:00

Craig WJ, Mangels AR; American Dietetic Association. (2009) J Am Diet Assoc. 109(7) 1266-82.

Web URL: View this and related abstracts via PubMed here

Abstract: It is the position of the American Dietetic Association that appropriately planned vegetarian diets, including total vegetarian or vegan diets, are healthful, nutritionally adequate, and may provide health benefits in the prevention and treatment of certain diseases. Well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the life cycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence, and for athletes. A vegetarian diet is defined as one that does not include meat (including fowl) or seafood, or products containing those foods. This article reviews the current data related to key nutrients for vegetarians including protein, n-3 fatty acids, iron, zinc, iodine, calcium, and vitamins D and B-12. A vegetarian diet can meet current recommendations for all of these nutrients. In some cases, supplements or fortified foods can provide useful amounts of important nutrients. An evidence- based review showed that vegetarian diets can be nutritionally adequate in pregnancy and result in positive maternal and infant health outcomes. The results of an evidence-based review showed that a vegetarian diet is associated with a lower risk of death from ischemic heart disease. Vegetarians also appear to have lower low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of hypertension and type 2 diabetes than nonvegetarians. Furthermore, vegetarians tend to have a lower body mass index and lower overall cancer rates. Features of a vegetarian diet that may reduce risk of chronic disease include lower intakes of saturated fat and cholesterol and higher intakes of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, soy products, fiber, and phytochemicals. The variability of dietary practices among vegetarians makes individual assessment of dietary adequacy essential. In addition to assessing dietary adequacy, food and nutrition professionals can also play key roles in educating vegetarians about sources of specific nutrients, food purchase and preparation, and dietary modifications to meet their needs.
http://www.fabresearch.org/view_item.aspx?item_id=1383&list_id=list1-81&list_index=1

A Vegan Chef’s Avocado Recipes for Diabetes - NYT

2009-09-28T09:34:00.000-07:00

"A 2006 study published in Diabetes Care compared a low-fat vegan diet to a standard diet following the traditional American Diabetes Association guidelines. Both diets improved glycemic and lipid control in patients with diabetes, but the low-fat vegan diet produced the best results."

quotation days

2009-09-26T21:49:00.000-07:00

"Humans are unique in having ability to learn from the experience of others, and are also remarkable for a disinclination to do so." (Douglas Adams)

"My house is a mess... but my homepage is fantastic."

Van Gogh to his brother Theo:
"I almost think that these canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words.“

"Life is made of magic and pasta" (Federico Fellini).

One intelligent reason for high heels: altitude eliminates latitude.

"I'm not bossy, I just know what you should be doing".

More to come, hopefully!

“When you come to the edge of all the light you have known and are about to step out into the darkness, FAITH is knowing one of two things will happen… There will be something to stand on or You will be taught how to fly.”

"I'M ADORABLE, AGED TO PERFECTION, AND I DRINK COFFEE IN ORDER TO DO DUMB THINGS FASTER."

ACOEM WEBNARS

2009-09-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

The American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM) is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to sponsor continuing medical education for physicians. The following programs offer continuing medical education (CME) and detailed information may be found in each of the specific programs.

Should contraception qualify for climate funds?

2009-09-22T13:13:00.000-07:00

Contraception would be the cheapest and most effective way to reduce carbon emissions worldwide between 2010 and 2050, according to a study by the London School of Economics.

Aguas de Marco

2009-09-20T20:53:00.000-07:00

Which are the best Brazilian songs ever? Seven among
the 10 best were composed by Tom Jobim, according to
a panel of experts. The big winner: Águas de Março.

Águas de Março

"É pau, é pedra,
é o fim do caminho
É um resto de toco,
é um pouco sozinho

É um caco de vidro,
é a vida, é o sol
É a noite, é a morte,
é o laço, é o anzol

É peroba do campo,
é o nó da madeira
Caingá candeia,
é o matita-pereira

É madeira de vento,
tombo da ribanceira
É o mistério profundo,
é o queira ou não queira

É o vento ventando,
é o fim da ladeira
É a viga, é o vão,
festa da cumeeira

É a chuva chovendo,
é conversa ribeira
Das águas de março,
é o fim da canseira

É o pé, é o chão,
é a marcha estradeira
Passarinho na mão,
pedra de atiradeira

É uma ave no céu,
é uma ave no chão
É um regato, é uma fonte,
é um pedaço de pão

É o fundo do poço,
é o fim do caminho
No rosto o desgosto,
é um pouco sozinho

É um estrepe, é um prego,
é uma ponta, é um ponto
É um pingo pingando,
é uma conta, é um conto

É um peixe, é um gesto,
é uma prata brilhando
É a luz da manhã,
é o tijolo chegando

É a lenha, é o dia,
é o fim da picada
É a garrafa de cana,
o estilhaço na estrada

É o projeto da casa,
é o corpo na cama
É o carro enguiçado,
é a lama, é a lama

É um passo, é uma ponte,
é um sapo, é uma rã
É um resto de mato,
na luz da manhã

São as águas de março
fechando o verão
É a promessa de vida
no teu coração

É uma cobra, é um pau,
é João, é José
É um espinho na mão,
é um corte no pé

São as águas de março
fechando o verão
É a promessa de vida
no teu coração

É pau, é pedra,
é o fim do caminho
É um resto de toco,
é um pouco sozinho

É um passo, é uma ponte,
é um sapo, é uma rã
É um belo horizonte,
é uma febre terçã

São as águas de março
fechando o verão
É a promessa de vida
no teu coração"

Jobim himself re-wrote these lyrics for the English version. It's a whole new poem:

Waters of March

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road,
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

It's a sliver of glass,
It is life, it's the sun,
It is night, it is death,
It's a trap, it's a gun

The oak when it blooms,
A fox in the brush,
A knot in the wood,
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind,
A cliff, a fall,
A scratch, a lump,
It is nothing at all

It's the wind blowing free,
It's the end of the slope,
It's a beam, it's a void,
It's a hunch, it's a hope

And the river bank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of the strain,
The joy in your heart

The foot, the ground,
The flesh and the bone,
The beat of the road,
A slingshot's stone

A fish, a flash,
A silvery glow,
A fight, a bet,
The range of a bow

The bed of the well,
The end of the line,
The dismay in the face,
It's a loss, it's a find

A spear, a spike,
A point, a nail,
A drip, a drop,
The end of the tale

A truckload of bricks
in the soft morning light,
The shot of a gun
in the dead of the night

A mile, a must,
A thrust, a bump,
It's a girl, it's a rhyme,
It's a cold, it's the mumps

The plan of the house,
The body in bed,
And the car that got stuck,
It's the mud, it's the mud

Afloat, adrift,
A flight, a wing,
A hawk, a quail,
The promise of spring

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
It's the joy in your heart

A stick, a stone,
It's the end of the road
It's the rest of a stump,
It's a little alone

A snake, a stick,
It is John, it is Joe,
It's a thorn in your hand
and a cut in your toe

A point, a grain,
A bee, a bite,
A blink, a buzzard,
A sudden stroke of night

A pin, a needle,
A sting, a pain,
A snail, a riddle,
A wasp, a stain

A pass in the mountains,
A horse and a mule,
In the distance the shelves
rode three shadows of blue

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the promise of life
in your heart, in your heart

A stick, a stone,
The end of the road,
The rest of a stump,
A lonesome road

A sliver of glass,
A life, the sun,
A knife, a death,
The end of the run

And the riverbank talks
of the waters of March,
It's the end of all strain,
It's the joy in your heart.

Who You Callin' Vegangelical?

2009-09-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

Ari Solomon

Recently I've heard some perplexing criticisms of veganism. They go something like this: vegans are extremists, vegans are so preachy, veganism is like some fanatical religion, veganism is a cult.. There obviously is some misunderstanding going on and I'd like to try and stamp out this issue once and for all. I realize I can't possibly speak for all vegans, but this is how I see it:

First of all, veganism is clearly not some religion or cult. There is no Church of Vegan. Veganism is a philosophy. Donald Watson first coined the term "vegan" in 1944. This was how he defined it:

The word "veganism" denotes a philosophy and way of living which seeks to exclude -- as far as is possible and practical -- all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose; and by extension, promotes the development and use of animal-free alternatives for the benefit of humans, animals and the environment. In dietary terms it denotes the practice of dispensing with all products derived wholly or partly from animals.
Sounds pretty simple right? Well, nowadays people become vegan for all different reasons. They might go vegan because of health reasons, or perhaps they've read that animal agriculture is the number one cause of global warming. But, if someone is an ethical vegan, that means they've chosen to open their mind and heart to the suffering of animals. They want to alleviate unnecessary suffering where they can. (There are actually some people who feel that unless you go vegan for ethical reasons that you're not really "vegan", but that's a whole other story.)

Here's where things get interesting. While many of us may feel a certain attachment to the food we eat (cheese, anyone?), there is actually no human dietary requirement for animal foods. It's true. You don't need to eat meat, dairy or eggs to live.

In fact, Dr. Colin Campbell, who conducted the foremost study on human nutrition for over 40 years, detailed in his book The China Study how a vegan diet is actually better suited for optimal human health. This means that people eat animals not because they have to, but because they want to. Now, of course I'm not talking about people who live in countries where food is scarce and they'll die unless they eat animal foods. I'm talking about you and me. People who shop at the supermarket where tofu, beans, rice, grains, fruits and vegetables are mere feet from meat, dairy and eggs. We have a choice.

In case you're not up to speed, over 98% of all meat, dairy, and eggs produced in the US comes from factory farms. The conditions in these places are truly horrendous. Animals are crammed in spaces so tight they can't turn around. They literally go insane, lying around all day and night in their own feces. They never see sunlight, have their beaks, horns and genitals cut off (without anesthetic) and are horribly abused by stressed and desensitized farm workers. We kill 10 billion animals for "food" a year in this country, that's over 27 million animals a day. Most of those animals are birds, and all poultry (chickens, turkeys, ducks, and rabbits... yes, rabbits are considered poultry under the law) are excluded from the barely enforced Humane Slaughter Act.

Now, before you start at me with some "humane meat" "happy meat" bullshit please take note that all animals, whether they are raised in the nastiest of factory farms or grass-fed, free-range, blah blah blah, are all sent to the same slaughterhouses. That's right, your organic steer is being sent to the same hell as a downer cow and will meet the same ghastly end. If you are a "humane meat" consumer, please take a moment and meditate on the whole concept of humane killing... bloody, fearful, struggling, screaming, despairing humane killing. It's never pretty and it certainly isn't "humane."

There is a video making rounds on YouTube that shows a lone cow shaking in terror as she contemplates walking down the kill chute. She walks forward, then back. Animals can hear and smell the violence and death that awaits them. Their last moments are ones of abject horror and suffering. If you wouldn't condemn your dog or cat to such a fate, how can you pay for others do it to these poor animals?

So. When a vegan is talking to a meat-eater about these issues, he or she is not "preaching", "trying to convert", or any such thing. We're not telling you what to eat. We're telling you what you're eating.

Since animals can't speak a language humans can understand (though I think the screams and terrified moans that fill slaughterhouses should be pretty much universal -- all living beings want to live) it's up to us to tell their stories and inform people of the suffering that goes on conveniently out of the public eye.

If, as a meat-eater, being exposed to this reality bothers you, it is not the fault of the vegan. Lashing out or making up endless excuses doesn't change the stark scientific fact that animals are suffering because of our taste buds. Your neatly packaged chicken breast, all wrapped in pristine plastic, was once part of an animal that felt fear and pain. It's called responsibility and culpability, and we're all to blame.

Now, you may try to argue that eating animals is a matter of personal opinion or choice, but again I'd have to disagree -- this is not about your opinion versus my opinion, this is about animal suffering. You can't discuss your "personal choice" of eating animals while leaving animals completely out of the conversation.

Think of it this way, if you were walking down the street and saw someone beating their dog, would you try to do something to stop it? The same principle applies here. Since eating animal foods is a question of want and like versus need, killing a sentient being, when there is absolutely no need -- except for someone's pleasure -- becomes simply unnecessary and merciless.

And if we say we care about cruelty to animals then it's time we start caring about all animals. Yes, dogs and cats are companion animals but in terms of suffering our canine and feline friends feel the same as a pig, cow, chicken, lamb, or turkey. To pick and choose species in terms of whose pain we care about is incredibly hypocritical and inconsistent. Sorry, but if you're eating veal parmigiana or turkey sandwiches, you don't really care about animals. You may care about dogs and cats but you certainly don't care about birds and baby cows.

So, who's the real extremist? The person who tries to stop unnecessary suffering by cutting out animal products, or the person who says, "I like the way that tastes, so a sentient being needs suffer and die?"

Who's the real fundamentalist? The person who simply speaks the truth about where food comes from, or the person who knowingly chooses to ignore it, listening only to the falsehoods of the meat and dairy clergy? Isn't the latter more akin to choosing to believe the earth is 5,000 years old despite clear evidence to the contrary?

The reality is that veganism couldn't be more different from religion. While religion is based on faith, veganism is based on facts. Animal suffering is not some ethereal concept, it's very real.

All animals deserve to be free from unnecessary pain, fear, and suffering at the hands of humans. How can anything less claim to be humane? Do I want more people to go vegan, is that why I talk and write about it? Of course, but it has nothing to do with me or some group that I belong to. It has to do with the animals who suffer everyday so that we can eat them, wear them, and do whatever we want to them simply because we can.

Veganism is the practical response to a social injustice. Instead of vegangelical, the word should be veganlogical.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ari-solomon/who-you-callin-vegangelic_b_290582.html

Lindy McDowell: Why it's good children see a lamb led to slaughter

2009-09-17T17:58:00.000-07:00

Rule number one: never give your dinner a pet name. The intriguing case of Marcus the lamb, hand-reared by a group of primary school children before being sent to the abattoir for recycling into prime cuts has divided the nation.
Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/opinion/columnists/lindy-mcdowell/why-its-good--children-see-a-lamb-led--to-slaughter-14493965.html?r=RSS#ixzz0RPpAPyOw

Sally Fletcher, harpist

2009-09-16T16:50:00.000-07:00

Harp MP3 Downloads

Elis Regina, Águas de Março

2009-09-16T12:30:00.001-07:00

RUBBER JUNGLE

2009-09-16T12:17:00.000-07:00

With Soap and Water or Sanitizer, a Cleaning That Can Stave Off the Flu - NYT

2009-09-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

By TARA PARKER-POPE
Published: September 14, 2009

It sounds so simple as to be innocuous, a throwaway line in public-health warnings about swine flu. But one of the most powerful weapons against the new H1N1 virus is summed up in a three-word phrase you first heard from your mother: wash your hands.

Feeding Europe’s Muslims is a growing business - The Economist

2009-09-13T21:37:00.000-07:00

http://www.economist.com/businessfinance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14460095

Halal food

Cut-throat competition

Sep 17th 2009 | PARIS
From The Economist print edition

Feeding Europe’s Muslims is a growing business

CorbisBetter learn to spell it

JUST before the beginning of Ramadan, the month-long Muslim fast which ends this weekend, an unusual advertisement appeared on French television. Panzani, a pasta-maker, was touting its Zakia line of halal ready-meals. In a secular nation it seemed like “a little revolution”, as Le Parisien, a newspaper, put it. The French can presumably take it in their stride. The trade in halal food is growing fast, and is likely to continue to do so.

Big food producers have long catered to Muslims, a market worth some $630 billion globally according to KasehDia, a consulting company that specialises in the trade. Nestlé has produced halal goods since the 1980s; 75 of its 456 factories now have a halal certification. But only recently have big European shops followed suit. Carrefour, the world’s second-largest retailer, launched a new range of products just in time for Ramadan. Casino, a French supermarket chain, has a halal line, and British outfits Tesco and Sainsbury’s carry halal products. KFC, an American fast-food chain, is conducting a trial of halal food in eight of its British restaurants. All its French ones are already halal certified.

The main reason for growth is demographic. Although many European countries do not tally Muslims or any other religious group (estimates in France range from 4m to 7m) it is clear that Muslim populations have grown quickly as a result of immigration and higher birth rates. Many of the people who sought asylum in Western Europe in the first half of this decade were Muslims from Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia. Mohammed, Muhammad and Mohammad were all among the 100 most popular baby boys’ names in England and Wales last year.

Although Muslims are disproportionately poor, they spend plenty of money on food. Islam is associated with a strong tradition of communal feasting. Antoine Bonnel, who runs the Paris Halal Expo, reckons that the average French Muslim spends a quarter of his or her income on food, compared with 12-14% for non-Muslims.

Nearly a third of the money goes on meat. That demand, which contrasts with a drop in meat-eating among health-conscious Christians and godless folk, has helped transform the global livestock market. The slaughtering of all lamb and goat meat in Australia for export is now done in accordance with halal custom, which involves killing animals with a single cut and draining their blood. A tenth of Australia’s total meat exports, worth about $570m a year, is halal. Brazil dominates the global market with a 54% share of exported halal meat, according to KasehDia.

As the halal market grows, two problems are emerging. The first is the lack of broad standards. Halal regulations vary widely both between countries and within them. In Australia, all slaughter for halal meat is regulated by the government. In France, by contrast, there are over 50 certification bodies, all in competition with one another. Mr Bonnel describes it as “a huge nightmare” that can lead to charges of impurity. The Malaysian government’s Halal Industry Development Corporation has tried to create a global standard, with little success so far.

The second problem is squeamishness among non-Muslims. Animals slaughtered according to halal custom are supposed to be alive when their throats are cut, a practice that animal-rights groups condemn. Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden forbid it outright. Some governments have reached a compromise that allows for animals to be partly stunned before being killed. But not all Muslims are happy with this. The halal market may be buoyant, but the waters are choppy.

"For there was never yet philosopher
That could endure the toothache patiently"
[Much Ado About Nothing, Scene Five, Act One (Leonato speaking)]

The Globalization of Agribusiness and Developing World Food Systems

2009-09-07T17:22:00.000-07:00

The issue of the global concentration of agribusiness is crucial to the future of the food systems of developing (and poor, non-developing) countries. These countries have been a target of corporate investments from the outset of the industrial food system. This process has been uneven — at different times corporate investment has focused on one or another part of the food system. Today, this uneven and often uncoordinated foray of metropolitan corporate capital is still subjugating the agriculture and domestic food markets of many developing countries, particularly smaller, peripheral ones undergoing rapid urbanization, to the needs of global agribusiness. For some of the larger developing countries, however, national capitalists are the principal force behind the emerging urban food system. In addition, the state has been playing a key role in the consolidation of the urban food system in certain emerging economies.

PETA wants to flavor tofu with George Clooney's sweat

2009-09-06T15:09:00.000-07:00

Things got sticky for George Clooney when PETA received a towel apparently used by the actor at a Washington, D.C., gym (a supporter sent it to the animal-rights group thinking they could sell it at auction).

PETA President Ingrid Newkirk wrote Clooney a letter requesting his approval to turn sweat from the towel into flavoring for tofu. Newkirk, who referred to the group as "big fans" of the actor, wrote:

The technology actually exists to take your perspiration and make it into George Clooney-flavored tofu (CloFu). We could do that and give the tofu away. Of course, your fans would swoon at the idea of eating CloFu, but what interests us most is that we would attract many people who don't try tofu because they worry that it would be bland or that they wouldn't know how to cook it. ...

The science is pretty straightforward. According to Dr. Kevin Keener of Purdue University, all animals -- including human beings -- have unique odor profiles. Dr. Harry Lawless of Cornell University reports that if you use a sample of human perspiration, it is "no different than making artificial chicken flavor for instant gravy."

Gas chromatography can be used to confirm stability of a stimulant matrix, in this case your sweat. There are trained panels of individuals with sensitive noses who can describe smells to a very precise degree. They could evaluate your sample and quantify the various odors in order to replicate them and use them to flavor batches of bean curd.

Writing on PETA's blog, Liz Graffeo says "CloFu could make your taste buds and your heart melt. Of course, what's even better is that after everyone gets a piece of George and realizes how delicious tofu truly is, diets will be revolutionized."

Responding through a representative to the Washington Post, Clooney said simply, "As a mammal, I'm offended."

--Lindsay Barnett

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/unleashed/2009/03/peta-clooney.html

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/theappetizer/archive/2009/03/13/peta-proposed-george-clooney-tofuc.aspx

What Vegans Can Learn from the Gay Rights Movement's Successes

2009-09-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

"These are heady times for gay and lesbian rights. Four states now provide for same-sex marriage, and the number is likely to increase in the near future. A Republican conservative who acted as President George W. Bush's Solicitor General is currently bringing a court challenge to the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in that state. Though sexual orientation discrimination continues, much has changed in a country in which, just 23 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Georgia criminal sodomy law and specifically approved its selective application to homosexual couples."

Carta de Clarice Lispector para sua irma Tania - and why you should know Clarice Lispector

2009-09-03T11:51:00.000-07:00

"(...)Eu mesma não queria contar a você como estou agora, porque achei inútil. Pretendia apenas lhe contar o meu novo caráter, ou falta de caráter, um mês antes de irmos para o Brasil, para você estar prevenida. Mas espero de tal forma que no navio ou avião que nos levar de volta eu me transforme instantaneamente na antiga que eu era, que talvez nem fosse necessário contar.
Querida, quase quatro anos me transformaram muito. Do momento em que me resignei, perdi toda a vivacidade e todo o interesse pelas coisas. Você já viu como um touro castrado se transforma num boi? assim fiquei eu..., em que pese a dura comparação. Para me adatar (sic) ao que era inadatável (sic), para vencer minhas repulsas e meus sonhos, tive que cortar meus aguilhões - cortei em mim a força que poderia fazer mal aos outros e a mim. E com isso cortei também a minha força. Espero que você nunca me veja assim resignada, porque é quase repugnante. Espero que no navio que nos leve de volta, só a idéia de ver você e retormar um pouco minha vida - que não era maravilhosa, mas era uma vida - eu me transforme inteiramente.

(...)Minha irmãzinha, ouça meu conselho, ouça meu pedido: respeite a você mesma mais do que aos outros, respeite suas exigências, respeite mesmo o que é ruim em você - respeite sobretudo o você imagina que é ruim em você - pelo amor de Deus, não queira fazer de você uma pessoa perfeita - não copie uma pessoa ideal, copie você mesma - é esse o único meio de viver. Eu tenho tanto medo que aconteça com você o que aconteceu comigo, pois nós somos parecidas."

WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW CLARICE LISPECTOR

THE ABOLITIONIST PROJECT - David Pearce

2009-09-01T12:07:00.000-07:00

INTRODUCTION

This talk is about suffering and how to get rid of it.
I predict we will abolish suffering throughout the living world.
Our descendants will be animated by gradients of genetically preprogrammed well-being that are orders of magnitude richer than today's peak experiences.
First, I'm going to outline why it's technically feasible to abolish the biological substrates of any kind of unpleasant experience - psychological pain as well as physical pain.
Secondly, I'm going to argue for the overriding moral urgency of the abolitionist project, whether or not one is any kind of ethical utilitarian.
Thirdly, I'm going to argue why a revolution in biotechnology means it's going to happen, albeit not nearly as fast as it should.

Preparing for the Swine Flu - NYT

2009-09-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

Our own take is this: A swine flu epidemic this fall and winter is likely to infect more people than a normal flu, but the virus will not be abnormally lethal. If it spreads rapidly after schools open, we will have to face it without vaccine, which will not arrive in substantial quantities until the swine flu epidemic has peaked.

Kennedy's dogs will be missed on Hill

2009-08-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) was years ahead of the curve when it came to Take Your Dog to Work Day. The constant presence of his three Portuguese water dogs in his Russell building office helped humanize their owner and brought a sense of fun to a workplace known for rules and formalities.

Getting Real About the High Price of Cheap Food - TIME.COM

2009-08-27T17:10:00.000-07:00

Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics.

Updates

2009-08-26T14:22:00.000-07:00

American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (ACOEM)

Brazilian Farmers Offered Cash to Fight Deforestation - NYT

2009-08-23T09:19:00.000-07:00

"The forests are felled to help feed the world's growing population and meet its growing appetite for meat. Much of Brazil's soy is bought by American-based companies like Cargill or Archer Daniels Midland and used to feed cows as far away as Europe and China."

Your family dog may be smarter than your toddler

2009-08-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

(CNN) -- Your dog may not actually be smarter than somebody's honor student -- popular bumper stickers aside. But your canine companion might well be smarter than their toddler, according to a growing body of research on how dogs think.

THE BOTTLE OF WINE

2009-08-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

Sally was driving home from one of her business trips in Northern Arizona when she saw an elderly Navajo woman walking on the side of the road.

As the trip was a long and quiet one, she stopped the car and asked the Navajo woman if she would like a ride.

With a silent nod of thanks, the woman got into the car.

Resuming the journey, Sally tried in vain to make a bit of small talk with the Navajo woman. The old woman just sat silently, looking intently at everything she saw, studying every little detail, until she noticed a brown bag on the seat next to Sally.

'What in bag?' asked the old woman.

Sally looked down at the brown bag and said, 'It's a bottle of wine.. I got it for my husband.'

The Navajo woman was silent for another moment or two. Then speaking with the quiet wisdom of an elder, she said:

'Good trade . . . . . '

Calling Home for Even Less

2009-08-19T13:48:00.000-07:00

In the five months since I wrote about cheap ways to phone home in “Staying in Touch Internationally, on the Cheap” (March 24), much has changed in the world of making affordable, even free, calls while traveling. And not all of it is good.

The National Health Museum

2009-08-18T15:23:00.000-07:00

http://www.accessexcellence.org/

Fat Free

2009-08-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

After reading STEPHAN GUYENET post "Vegetable Oil and Weight Gain" and much more here, I am delighted with the savory recipes in fatfree vegan recipes.

Flickr

2009-08-07T21:21:00.001-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Terrariuns

2009-08-06T15:45:00.000-07:00

2009-08-05T16:22:00.000-07:00

Why Food Inc. Fails: Documentary Bites Off More Than It Can Chew

GET SMART

2009-08-05T16:18:00.000-07:00

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence

"IN PHARMACOLOGY, TOO, the future is already here. One of the most prominent examples is a drug called modafinil. Developed in the 1970s, modafinil—sold in the U.S. under the brand name Provigil—appeared on the cultural radar in the late 1990s, when the American military began to test it for long-haul pilots. Extended use of modafinil can keep a person awake and alert for well over 32 hours on end, with only a full night’s sleep required to get back to a normal schedule.

While it is FDA-approved only for a few sleep disorders, like narcolepsy and sleep apnea, doctors increasingly prescribe it to those suffering from depression, to “shift workers” fighting fatigue, and to frequent business travelers dealing with time-zone shifts. I’m part of the latter group: like more and more professionals, I have a prescription for modafinil in order to help me overcome jet lag when I travel internationally. When I started taking the drug, I expected it to keep me awake; I didn’t expect it to make me feel smarter, but that’s exactly what happened. The change was subtle but clear, once I recognized it: within an hour of taking a standard 200-mg tablet, I was much more alert, and thinking with considerably more clarity and focus than usual. This isn’t just a subjective conclusion. A University of Cambridge study, published in 2003, concluded that modafinil confers a measurable cognitive-enhancement effect across a variety of mental tasks, including pattern recognition and spatial planning, and sharpens focus and alertness.

I’m not the only one who has taken advantage of this effect. The Silicon Valley insider webzine Tech Crunch reported in July 2008 that some entrepreneurs now see modafinil as an important competitive tool. The tone of the piece was judgmental, but the implication was clear: everybody’s doing it, and if you’re not, you’re probably falling behind."

A-HA forever

2009-08-05T12:42:00.000-07:00

stay on these roads

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U9-uDJB7_M&feature=player_embedded

The cold has a voice
It talks to me
Stillborn by choice
It airs no need
To hold

Old man feels the cold
Oh baby don't
'Cause I've been told
Stay on these roads
We shall meet I know
Stay on these roads
We shall meet I know
I know

Where joy should reign
These skies restrain
Shadow your love
The voice trails off again

Old man feels the cold
Oh baby don't
'Cause I've been told
Stay on these roads
We shall meet, I know
Stay on...my love
You feel so weak, be strong
Stay on, stay on
We shall meet, I know
I know
I know, my love, I know

Winter's calling at my home
Stay on these roads

10 Cruelty-Free (or Diminished Cruelty) Bar Soaps

2009-06-23T15:52:00.001-07:00

1.LUSH soaps are all handmade with fresh, organic fruits and veggies. They have invigorating scents like ginger, sea vegetable, and even porridge. Vegan products are clearly labeled on their site, too, so shopping is a breeze. Available in LUSH shops and online. Find a store.

2. Kiss My Face
Classic and long-lasting, Kiss My Face is the first natural soap I used when I started buying only cruelty-free products. They have several nourishing olive formulas, including chamomile, lavender, green tea, and more. Find a store.

3. Clearly Natural
Vegetable glycerin soaps that come in a multitude of colors and scents—as well as unscented. They are really gentle on sensitive skin, and they also have special formulas for acne-prone skin. Available online and at many health food stores for typically less than $2 a bar.

4. Dr. Bronner’s Magic Soap
Available at most health food stores and online, they come in therapeutic scents like eucalyptus, peppermint, almond, rose, tea tree, citrus, and lavender. They even have a special mild formula for babies.

5. The Body Shop
Possibly as close as your nearest mall, The Body Shop has TONS of fruity and creamy soaps—coconut being my personal favorite. Find a store.

6. Crabtree & Evelyn
Walking into a Crabtree & Evelyn store is just about as relaxing as using one of their natural moisturizing soaps. And their cocoa butter body bar smells like a cookie—but don’t eat it! Find a store.

7. L’OCCITANE
For a special treat, pamper your skin with some creamy shea butter soap from L’OCCITANE. It’s good for sensitive skin, and the Verbena variety has a nice energizing citrus scent that helps wake you up in the morning. Find a store.

8. Method
Try rich moisturizing formulas like Olive Leaf and Almond Flower in convenient 4-packs for only about $10 (that’s just $2.50 a bar!). Find a store.

9. Palmer’s
For problematic and acne-prone skin, try Palmer’s Skin Success complexion bar. It will help you have—as its namesake suggests—skin success! Great for budget shopping, one bar is typically around $2. Find a store.

10. Tom’s of Maine
Available in moisturizing, clear, and deodorant varieties, Tom’s soaps are popping up in major department and drugstores everywhere these days. Great when on a budget because they are long-lasting and usually under $4. Find a store.

El perico que habla

2009-06-23T15:50:00.000-07:00

Suffering for science

2009-06-03T17:10:00.000-07:00

Animal testing

May 7th 2009
The Economist

Europe votes for better regulation of animal experiments

June 5, 2009
The Times

Animal experiments could end in a generation

Better Running Through Walking

2009-06-02T08:23:00.000-07:00

This sounds perfect to me!

In The New York Times today.

Amazon rain Forests pay the price as demand for beef soars

2009-05-31T19:13:00.000-07:00

A three-year survey by Greenpeace shows that western demand for beef and leather and an increase in cattle ranching is leading to intensified deforestation in the Amazon. Source: guardian.co.uk

Optimism is Good for Your Brain

2009-05-27T11:06:00.000-07:00

A skeptical analysis of the self-esteem and positive-thinking movement. (Skeptic magazine Vol. 14, No. 4)

The Placebo Effect (The Sceptic)

2009-05-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

The Placebo Effect

by Harriet Hall, MD

Jane D. was a regular visitor to our ER, usually showing up late at night demanding an injection of the narcotic Demerol, the only thing that worked for her severe headaches. One night the staff psychiatrist had the nurse give her an injection of saline instead. It worked! He told Jane she had responded to a placebo, discussed the implications, and thought he’d helped her understand that her problem was psychological. But as he was leaving the room, Jane asked, “Can I get that new medicine again next time instead of the Demerol? It really worked great!”

What’s going on here? What is the placebo effect and how does it work?

The term “placebo effect” is unfortunate; it leads to misunderstandings. Placebos themselves don’t have any effect. They are inert: that’s what placebo means. The word placebo comes from the Latin for “I please.” You can think of it as the opposite of “I benefit.” What we really mean by “the placebo effect” is not some mysterious effect from giving an inert treatment, but the complex web of psychosocial effects surrounding medical treatment. Those effects occur with effective treatments too, not just with inert treatments.

Mark Crislip, MD, thinks the placebo effect is a myth. “I think that the placebo effect with pain is a mild example of cognitive behavioral therapy; the pain stays the same, it is the emotional response that is altered … Ain’t no such thing as a placebo effect, only a change in perception.”1 He’s correct in saying that the placebo effect does nothing to change the pain signals in the nerves. But most people think the change in perception is the placebo effect and is worth pursuing.

There is a big difference between pain and suffering. A woman’s labor pains hurt, but with a joyful end in sight she may not suffer as much as a man who has milder pain sensations but is worried that his injured leg may need to be amputated. Some people say that morphine doesn’t relieve pain so much as make you not care about it. The experience of pain and the meaning of pain for the patient matter as much as the strength of the pain stimulus. If the placebo effect can do anything to divert the patient’s attention or help him reframe the meaning of his pain, his altered perception can reduce his experience of suffering.

Beecher Says Placebos Are Powerful

In 1955, Dr. Henry Beecher published a seminal paper entitled “The Powerful Placebo” in the Journal of the American Medical Association.2 He reviewed studies that compared an active treatment to a placebo, and found that on average 35% of patients improved with the placebo. So any study that doesn’t have a placebo group for comparison is likely to give a false positive result. The placebo-controlled trial is now one of the cornerstones of medical science. It’s not enough to show that Miracle-mycin works; we have to show that it works better than a dummy pill that looks like Miracle-mycin but only contains sugar.

Beecher’s paper has been widely cited as evidence that 35% of patients respond to placebos, but that’s not really what it showed. He wasn’t measuring the placebo effect in isolation — he was actually measuring a combination of the placebo effect, the natural course of disease, and other factors. The patients who apparently responded to placebo included patients who showed improvement for other reasons. Reasons like spontaneous improvement, fluctuation of symptoms, regression to the mean, answers of politeness, experimental subordination, conditioned answers, misjudgment, etc.

Hrobjartsson Says Placebos Are Powerless

To tease out how much of that 35% should be attributable to placebo, we need to know how many patients might have reported improvement without any treatment. In 2001 two Danish researchers, Asbjorn Hrobjartsson and Peter Gotzsche, published a paper entitled “Is the Placebo Powerless?” in the New England Journal of Medicine.3 They reviewed studies that included a no-treatment group, and they compared the improvement with placebos to the improvement with no treatment. They “found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects.”

For studies with a binary outcome (improved versus not improved) there was no significant difference between the placebo and no treatment groups. For studies with continuous outcomes, there was some apparent effect of placebo; but not so for objective outcomes that could be measured by someone else, such as blood pressure, but only for subjective outcomes that depended on self-reports, such as pain. They weren’t even sure about that, however, because the effect was greater in smaller trials, indicating possible bias.

An excellent guide to the confusions and contradictions of alternative medicine written with clarity, integrity and authority. ORDER the book

But Placebos Do Work, Don’t They?

It’s hard to reconcile a study like this with what we know about placebos from experiences like the case of Jane D. They do seem to work, and they seem to work very dramatically at times.

In a study of pain after dental surgery, patients were given either intravenous morphine or a saline placebo. If they were told that the saline was a powerful new painkiller, they got just as much relief as the patients who received morphine. In another study, all patients were given morphine for post-op pain, but only half were told they were getting it. The patients who didn’t know they were getting it only experienced half as much pain relief. In a study of acupuncture for post-op dental pain, there was no difference between the “real” acupuncture and placebo “sham” acupuncture groups, but when they asked patients which group they thought they were in, they discovered that those who believed they were in the “real” group reported significantly more pain relief than those who believed they were in the “sham” group — regardless of which group they were actually in!

We not only know placebos “work,” we know there is a hierarchy of effectiveness:

Placebo surgery works better than placebo injections
Placebo injections work better than placebo pills
Sham acupuncture treatment works better than a placebo pill
Capsules work better than tablets
Big pills work better than small
The more doses a day, the better
The more expensive, the better
The color of the pill makes a difference
Telling the patient, “This will relieve your pain” works better than saying “This might help.”
In one study patients were given the same aspirin in either a brand name bottle or an unlabelled bottle; it worked better if it was labeled as a brand they recognized. Our pharmacy used to stock two different brands of allergy pills that were made in the same factory and were identical except that one was green and the other was blue. When a patient said it wasn’t working any more, we’d switch him to the other brand and it would start working again.

Along with placebo effects, there are nocebo (“I harm”) effects. People getting inert treatments often report new symptoms. A friend of mine stopped taking her homeopathic sleep remedy because she thought it was causing side effects. (Homeopathy is the ultimate placebo because its remedies usually contain nothing but water.) In the Women’s Health Initiative study of postmenopausal hormone treatment, when the treatment was stopped, 63% of the women taking hormones reported withdrawal symptoms, but so did 40% of the women taking a placebo. If we tell patients a treatment may cause nausea, they are far more likely to report nausea than if we don’t mention that possibility.

The placebo effect is mainly subjective. Placebos don’t work on patients who are asleep or unconscious. You have to know you’re being treated. Placebos don’t keep women from getting pregnant. They don’t cure cancer, heal broken bones, or do anything you can measure objectively. They work for more elusive complaints like headache, depression, itching, shortness of breath, tension, indigestion, and other symptoms that require us to accept the patient’s self-report of what he is experiencing.

That doesn’t imply that those symptoms are not real. Some misguided doctors have tried to use placebo response as a test to diagnose whether a patient is really sick or not. That test doesn’t work, and even if it did it would be unethical.

Some researchers believe that placebos can have objective effects. When doctors painted warts with an inert dye and told patients the wart would disappear when the color wore off, the warts disappeared. Patients with newly implanted pacemakers improved even before the pacemakers were turned on. Asthmatics’ airways dilated when they were told they were getting a bronchodilator. Colitis patients treated with placebo not only reported feeling better but actually had less inflammation of the intestines visible on sigmoidoscopy. Patients with ulcers healed faster when given two placebo pills instead of one.

Harvard University medical researcher Herbert Benson believes that the placebo effect yields clinical improvement for 60–90% of diseases, including angina, asthma, herpes simplex, and ulcers. Studies that have not been replicated have suggested that the placebo effect can influence things like swelling, movement disorders, temperature, pulse, blood pressure, cholesterol, blood sugar, and exercise tolerance.

So far the evidence for objective placebo effects is weak. Another hypothesis is that the placebo effect is only subjective, but that these subjective effects can indirectly lead to objectively measurable effects. For example, if you are in pain and the placebo effect decreases your perception of that pain, you might expect your pulse and blood pressure to drop. If you are asthmatic and are wheezing, any psychological factor that reduces your anxiety level or helps you relax might indirectly ease your breathing symptoms and even allow your constricted bronchi to dilate. In this view, the placebo effect doesn’t really cause objective effects, it allows you to have a different experience of your symptoms and it is that different experience that indirectly affects your physiology. Semantic quibbling, perhaps.

Placebo surgery is another controversial subject. Forty years ago, a young Seattle cardiologist named Leonard Cobb conducted a unique trial of a procedure then commonly used for angina, in which doctors made small incisions in the chest and tied knots in two arteries to try to increase blood flow to the heart. It was a popular technique — 90% of patients reported that it helped — but when Cobb compared it with placebo surgery in which he made incisions but did not tie off the arteries, the sham operations proved just as successful. The procedure, known as internal mammary ligation, was soon abandoned.4

In a more recent study, sham arthroscopic surgery was compared to real arthroscopic surgery for knee osteoarthritis. The patients who had only a skin incision got just as good results. One patient who was told he had the sham procedure still refers to it as the surgery that cured him.

Some people question whether studies like these really show that surgery has a placebo effect. Maybe the surgery was unnecessary and patients would have improved anyway.

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ORDER the back issue

How Could It Work?

If the placebo effect is real, what might the mechanism be? We can’t just write it off as delusions of hyper-suggestible patients. There’s evidence that several things might be going on. The main hypotheses are: expectancy, motivation, conditioning, and endogenous opiates.

Expectancy is an established psychological phenomenon. It even affects vision: we are more likely to see what we expect to see. Wine tastes better if the price is higher. Kids like fast food better if it comes in a McDonald’s wrapper. If we expect to feel pain we are more likely to feel pain. If we are told to expect a strong painkiller, we’re more likely to get pain relief.
Motivation, the need or desire to improve health or get relief, has been shown to contribute independently to the placebo response. Patients who are strongly motivated to get well are more compliant and follow health advice more conscientiously. And patients who are more compliant about taking their placebo pills regularly get a stronger placebo response.
Conditioning is what Pavlov did to his dogs. People learn to associate pills and medical treatments with relief of symptoms. The body even learns physiologic responses: dogs salivate when injected with morphine; after they become conditioned, injecting a placebo makes them salivate, although not as much.
Endogenous opiates are pain-relieving chemicals produced in the brain that mimic the effects of opium-like drugs (morphine, etc.). There is some evidence that when patients respond to placebos, their brains produce more of these chemicals. Imaging studies have shown activation of opioid receptors in the brain when people are told that a placebo is a painkiller. And there is evidence that giving a drug that blocks the effect of narcotics can also block the placebo effect.
Dopamine levels increased in the brains of Parkinson’s patients after taking a placebo; and patients who said they felt better released higher levels of dopamine. In another brain imaging study, researchers had patients play a game and estimate their chances of winning. The same reward areas in the brain lit up in subjects who thought they would win as in patients who were most convinced that the placebo painkiller would work. Another study of patients who preferred either Coca Cola or Pepsi found that brand information was processed in a different part of the brain than taste from blind taste tests. We may be seeing clues about how the brain handles anticipation, expectation, optimism, previous experience, or who knows what. There may be genetic differences or differences in dopamine receptor responsiveness. Brain imaging is a blunt tool, and it’s too soon to know what these studies mean, but it’s a promising avenue of research.

Can Animals Respond to Placebos?

Believers in homeopathy and acupuncture tell us that animals respond to those treatments and animals can’t respond to placebos, so that must mean those treatments are effective. But the veterinary literature accepts the reality of placebo response in animals, and there are plausible explanations:

They can develop a learned physiologic response to a drug and then respond similarly when a placebo is substituted.
They respond to attention and care from humans.
Human owners can experience the placebo effect for their pets by perceiving a response where there really is none.
Since animals can’t talk, we have to interpret an animal’s behavior as indicating relief of pain; this may not always be accurate.
What About Ethics?

Some people don’t even want to know whether a treatment is a placebo or not. If they feel better, that’s all that matters to them. In Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine, R. Barker Bausell argues that the primary benefit of alternative therapies is a placebo effect, often enhanced by ritual and impressive pseudoscientific jargon.

If we can give patients a placebo and relieve their pain, what’s wrong with that? If a little white lie benefits the patient, why not lie? The answer is that it’s unethical for doctors to lie to patients or prescribe ineffective treatments, and because deception undermines the doctor-patient relationship in the long run. Also, as Bob Carroll of The Skeptic’s Dictionary points out, “the placebo can be an open door to quackery.”5

Based on Carroll’s website (skepdic.com), the Dictionary is the definitive short-answer debunking of nearly every thing skeptical. A must for every bookshelf. ORDER the book

In a recent study in Denmark, 48% of doctors reported prescribing a placebo at least 10 times in the last year, including antibiotics for viral infections and vitamins for fatigue. Specialists and hospital-based physicians were less likely to prescribe them. A 2004 study of physicians in Israel found that 60% reported using placebos for reasons like “fending off” requests for unjustified medications or calming a patient.

What if doctors were honest? If they told patients a treatment was a placebo, would that destroy the placebo effect? Maybe not. After clinical trials, patients who were told they’d been taking the placebo have asked if they could keep taking it. In one study patients were told one pill was inert and would only serve as a “dose extender” (i.e., a placebo that would allow a lower dose of the effective pill); patients accepted it and were able to lower their dose. What if a doctor tells a patient a treatment is not supported by any scientific evidence but some people believe it has helped them? Placebos raise ethical dilemmas on which doctors do not agree.

In a recent court case, the proponents of a particular form of quackery known as Q-rays admitted their device was bogus, but argued that since the placebo effect was effective they were justified in selling it. The court disagreed.

Is there any ethical way doctors can use the placebo effect to help their patients? Yes, of course. They already do. The placebo effect is an integral part of every doctor-patient interaction. Good doctors have always gained their patients’ trust and given them hope and reassurance.

What’s effective is not the placebo, but the meaning of the treatment. We enter into a human relationship with a caring person who offers to help us. We may be given a token of that caring in the form of a prescription. We may have a conditioned response to expect improvement because we have been helped in the past. We get a story, a narrative that explains why we feel sick and what we can do to get better. We get hope, support, human warmth, touch. All these factors might lead to an actual physiological response in which our pulse rate drops, we relax, our stress hormones decrease, and other changes facilitate healing, or at least comfort. One study supposedly showed that patients recovered faster if their window looked out on trees rather than a brick wall; even if they didn’t recover faster, wasn’t it nice to give them a view? Even if we can’t document a quantifiable effect on patient outcome, the quality of life is important.

Effective treatments have placebo effects too. A substantial percentage of the effects from antidepressants may be placebo effects. Morphine works even better if your doctor tells you it’s strong.

We can’t isolate placebo effect from conventional medicine — it gets us thinking the wrong way. As the neurologist Robert Burton says, “Even given our advanced state of medical knowledge, much of routine medical care — from treating backaches to the common cold — relies primarily upon reassurance and hope, not disease- specific treatments … we need to reconsider how to facilitate the placebo effect with minimal risk and cost, and without deception.”6

References

^ Crislip, Mark. “The Placebo Myth.” Science-Based Medicine, July 3, 2008.
^ Beecher, HK. “The Powerful Placebo.” Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 159, No. 17. 1955.
^ Hrobjartsson A, Gotzsche PC. “Is the Placebo Powerless? An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with no Treatment.” New England Journal of Medicine. 2001; 344:1594–1602.
^ Talbot M. “The Placebo Prescription.” New York Times magazine. Jan. 9, 2000.
^ Carroll R. “The Placebo Effect.” The Skeptic’s Dictionary.
^ Burton R. “Why ‘Placebo’ is Not a Dirty Word.” Salon.com. August 1, 2008.

flasp-flasd

flasp-flasd: Meditation

Johnny Cash - We'll Meet Again

Leizi

Meditation

New York Subway - Hilda Morley

Silence - A poem by Edgar Lee Masters - American Poems

Writing on Silence by Sri Chinmoy

Writing on Silence by Sri Chinmoy

http://support.pcrm.org/miller_letter

Séraphine

Alison Krauss / Cat Stevens

literally going green...so cool!

A Legal Challenge to Animal Research

"Animal rights law courses may threaten the use of animals in medical research."

Aussie scientists find coconut-carrying octopus

Don't be shy

"Wait! I'm not ready!

Nicholas Kristof's Advice for Saving the World

Proceedings of the Second American Conference on Human Vibration

Top 10 (Recent) Developments On Factory Farming And Vegetarianism

STOMP : BROOMS

Animal, Vegetable, Miserable - NYT

UPM Forest Life

Billionaires Learn Giving Is Only a Start - NYT

Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain

Quiet inside - Andy Tubman

ZORBA'S DANCE composed by Miki Theodorakis based on the tune ARMENOHORIANOS SYRTOS composed by the cretan musician Giorgis Koutsourelis (1914-1994)

Foer's Call to Arms

The Carnivore’s Dilemma - NYT

Bob Barker donates $1 million for professorship on animal rights at Drury University

Mum’s veggie-rich diet may protect baby from diabetes

Missing animal protein?

Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals Turned Me Vegan: Natalie Portman

The Ethics of Climate Change

When it comes to setting climate change policy, science can only tell us so much. Ultimately, a lead report author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change writes, it comes down to making judgments about what is fair, equitable, and just.

Lobsters and Crabs Feel Pain, Study Shows

Getting prepared for Halloween?! "I'll Put A Spell On You"

Opening the door to Bt brinjal, a step towards disaster

How Green Is Tofu? You'd be surprised to know.

Go Veggie!

The beauty of a smile

Lion whisperer at work in South Africa

Never underestimate a MOM

Balboa Park, San Diego, California

Le renard et l'enfant

Scientists Help Cut the Mystery Behind Pruning

The Vegan Monologues - Ben Shaberman

Truthout Interview With Ralph Nader: "Only the Rich Can Save Us"

Incy vegetarian spider is a scientific first

Right Stuff, Wrong Sex: NASA’s Lost Female Astronauts

Eating Fish Does Not Protect Against Heart Attacks

Britain's Got Talent - Gin the clever funny dog

Rocky and Bullwinkle

Razão, crença e dúvida - Contardo Calligaris

Peaceable Kingdom: The Journey Home

Polar Bear Tatqiq - San Diego Zoo

Physiotherapist uses Boto, the Amazon river dolphin, to treat children

University of Sao Paulo, Brazil, develops artificial skyn to avoid tests in animals

Simon & Garfunkel El Condor Pasa

Position of the American Dietetic Association: vegetarian diets

A Vegan Chef’s Avocado Recipes for Diabetes - NYT

quotation days

ACOEM WEBNARS

Should contraception qualify for climate funds?

Aguas de Marco

Which are the best Brazilian songs ever? Seven amongthe 10 best were composed by Tom Jobim, according toa panel of experts. The big winner: Águas de Março.

Who You Callin' Vegangelical?

Lindy McDowell: Why it's good children see a lamb led to slaughter

Sally Fletcher, harpist

Elis Regina, Águas de Março

RUBBER JUNGLE

With Soap and Water or Sanitizer, a Cleaning That Can Stave Off the Flu - NYT

Feeding Europe’s Muslims is a growing business - The Economist

Cut-throat competition

Feeding Europe’s Muslims is a growing business

The Globalization of Agribusiness and Developing World Food Systems

PETA wants to flavor tofu with George Clooney's sweat

What Vegans Can Learn from the Gay Rights Movement's Successes

Carta de Clarice Lispector para sua irma Tania - and why you should know Clarice Lispector

Which are the best Brazilian songs ever? Seven among
the 10 best were composed by Tom Jobim, according to
a panel of experts. The big winner: Águas de Março.