Now he weighs 4st and trundles round on a toy truck blowing smoke rings - too unfit to run with other kids.
Mum Diana, 26, wept: "He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick."
The M3 figures - which include broad range of bank accounts and are tracked by British and European monetarists for warning signals about the direction of the US economy a year or so in advance - began shrinking last summer. The pace has since quickened.
The stock of money fell from $14.2 trillion to $13.9 trillion in the three months to April, amounting to an annual rate of contraction of 9.6pc. The assets of insitutional money market funds fell at a 37pc rate, the sharpest drop ever.
"It’s frightening," said Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research. "The plunge in M3 has no precedent since the Great Depression. The dominant reason for this is that regulators across the world are pressing banks to raise capital asset ratios and to shrink their risk assets. This is why the US is not recovering properly," he said.
The US authorities have an entirely different explanation for the failure of stimulus measures to gain full traction. They are opting instead for yet further doses of Keynesian spending, despite warnings from the IMF that the gross public debt of the US will reach 97pc of GDP next year and 110pc by 2015.
Go ahead, let your kids play in the dirt, it could make them smarter.
After conducting a series of experiments, researchers have found exposure to specific bacteria in the environment could increase learning behavior, ScienceDaily.com reported.
“Mycobacterium vaccae is a natural soil bacterium which people likely ingest or breathe in when they spend time in nature," Dorothy Matthews of The Sage Colleges in Troy, N.Y., said.
Previous studies on M. vaccae involving mice showed stimulated growth of some neurons in the brain that resulted in increased levels of serotonin and decreased anxiety.
"Since serotonin plays a role in learning, we wondered if live M. vaccae could improve learning in mice," Matthews said.
Matthews and her colleagues discovered they were on the right track.
"Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business," President Calvin Coolidge told journalists in March 1929.
If Coolidge suddenly sprang to life today, he would look around and drop dead.
Washington Democrats are minding their own business . . . and everyone else's. In this Era of Unlimited Government, the Obama administration and Congressional Democrats stick their snouts anywhere they will fit, without the guidance of common sense, frugality or any sense of priorities. For today's federal government, it's everything, all the time.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, has moved to cap ATM fees at 50 cents per transaction. Between 1999 and 2009, the number of money machines has exploded from about 227,000 to 425,000 nationwide, reports CNNMoney.com. Independent operators spend $9,000 to $50,000 to purchase each ATM and $12,000 to $15,000 annually to operate it. If Congress slaps price controls on ATM transactions, these businesses will shrivel -- perhaps fatally. And then who will install and maintain ATMs?
Although the D.C. Circuit Court ruled April 6 that the Federal Communications Commission has no jurisdiction over the Internet, FCCniks nevertheless want to regulate cyberspace via the Communications Act of 1934, which was adopted to oversee telephones. The Internet does not pollute, nor force people to purchase plane tickets online, nor locate lovers with a mouse click. So why can't the FCC back off and go enjoy some Internet pornography, just as did 28 on-duty Securities and Exchange Commission staffers? Instead, Democrats want to eclipse one of this economy's few glimmers of sunlight. This is net brutality.
Man it has been a slow few days here at TFoP headquarters. Literally nothing. However while scouring the internet for something that angered me enough to write about, I came across this pretty sweet study:
‘Thirst for knowledge’ may be opium craving
The brain’s reward for getting a concept is a shot of natural opiates
Neuroscientists have proposed a simple explanation for the pleasure of grasping a new concept: The brain is getting its fix.
The “click” of comprehension triggers a biochemical cascade that rewards the brain with a shot of natural opium-like substances, said Irving Biederman of the University of Southern California. He presents his theory in an invited article in the latest issue of American Scientist.
“While you’re trying to understand a difficult theorem, it’s not fun,” said Biederman, professor of neuroscience in the USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences.
“But once you get it, you just feel fabulous.”
The brain’s craving for a fix motivates humans to maximize the rate at which they absorb knowledge, he said.
“I think we’re exquisitely tuned to this as if we’re junkies, second by second.”
Biederman hypothesized that knowledge addiction has strong evolutionary value because mate selection correlates closely with perceived intelligence.
Frankly, if this is true, it explains a lot. People are so knowledge/concept driven that it really makes you question what the payoff is for knowing so much. Well a little hit some chemical opiates is a pretty good payoff I’d say. I’m going to try and teach my self something new everyday, maybe this way I’ll be a little bit more pleasant.
I’m waiting for actual photos of the event from the official photographer, but for now I’ll make do with what can be found on the Internet. For those who don’t know, the Oxford Union is the top of the food chain for scholarly debate. This is a significant win.
The Oxford Union Debate Chamber - image from Wikimedia
Founded in 1823 at the University of Oxford, but maintaining a separate charter from the University, The Oxford Union is host to some of the most skillful debates in the world. Many eminent scholars and personalities have come and either debated or delivered speeches in the chamber. Monckton was invited as part of the formal Thursday debate.
It is described as follows:
The Union is the world’s most prestigious debating society, with an unparalleled reputation for bringing international guests and speakers to Oxford. It has been established for 182 years, aiming to promote debate and discussion not just in Oxford University, but across the globe.
At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.
Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.
The trend is not sustainable.
“You have a sitting U.S. congressman who has made a very specific allegation, numerous times that someone inside the Obama White House offered him what amounts to a bribe in order to manipulate the Pennsylvania Senate primary,” Issa said in a statement to POLITICO.
“The attorney general’s refusal to take action in the face of such felonious allegations undermines any claim to transparency and integrity that this administration asserts.”
Issa, one of the most vocal critics of the Obama administration on Capitol Hill, has been trying to draw attention to the alleged Sestak job offer for months, but he hasn’t been able to shed much light on the allegations beyond what Sestak and the White House have already said publicly, largely because Sestak and the White House have continuously dodged questions about any conversation.
Issa first sent a letter to White House General Counsel Robert Bauer in March, demanding information, but he never received a response. He then sent a second letter, in which he pressed Bauer for a reply and criticized White House press secretary Robert Gibbs for downplaying the issue to reporters.
May 24 (Bloomberg) -- Speculators are buying gold faster than the world’s biggest producers can mine it as analysts forecast a 27 percent rally that may extend the longest run of annual gains since at least 1920.
Exchange-traded products backed by bullion added 41.7 metric tons in the week to May 14, the most in 14 months, data from UBS AG show. China, Australia and the 15 other largest mining nations averaged weekly output of 41.6 tons last year, researcher GFMS Ltd. estimates. Even though prices have fallen 4.6 percent to $1,191.65 from a record $1,249.40 an ounce May 14, the median in a Bloomberg survey of 23 traders, analysts and investors shows it will reach $1,500 by the end of the year.
Buying accelerated as the MSCI World Index of 23 developed nations’ stocks tumbled as much as 16 percent since mid-April and the euro weakened to a four-year low against the dollar. Holders of ETPs, including George Soros and John Paulson, accumulated a record 1,938 tons by May 21, eclipsing all but four of the biggest central-bank holdings.
“You could see gold go up another $1,000,” said Evan Smith, who helps manage $2 billion at U.S. Global Investors Inc. in San Antonio and in 2006 correctly predicted that gold
Solicitor General Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court should founder unless she adequately explains why she quite literally put "International/ Comparative Law" ahead of the U.S. Constitution. Senators should question Ms. Kagan in great depth about her views on the applicability of foreign law in American courts.
Increasing references to international laws and norms in American courts have become controversial in recent years, and deservedly so. During the confirmation hearings for new Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Ms. Sotomayor tried to weasel away from past support for judges using the "ideas" of foreign law, and she made a rather categorical statement: "Foreign law cannot be used as a holding or a precedent, or to bind or to influence the outcome of a legal decision interpreting the Constitution or American law."
That's right: She said foreign law should not even "influence" a U.S. court decision. That statement is correct, even if Justice Sotomayor's actual record doesn't support it. Ms. Kagan should be held to the standard set by Justice Sotomayor's testimony.
The available evidence suggests that Ms. Kagan's views don't comport with that judicial principle. The first clue came during her confirmation hearings for her current position of solicitor general. Here's what she said: "At least some members of the court find foreign law relevant in at least some contexts. When this is the case, I think the solicitor general's office should offer reasonable foreign law arguments to attract these justices' support for the positions that the office is taking."
The tragedy of the interwar years in Germany was that the Social Democrats - then the world’s foremost socialist party - became fatally tainted by acquiescing in Bruning’s deflation torture from 1930 to 1932. They did so, of course, because they dared not confront the orthodoxies of the Gold Standard.
By then the fixed-exchange mechanism had gone horribly wrong - in much the same way that EMU has gone horribly wrong - because the surplus countries were not recycling demand to maintain equilibrium. It had become a job-destruction machine. The result in Germany was the Reichstag election of July 1932 when the Communists and Nazis won over the half the seats.
As historian Simon Schama wrote over the weekend in the Financial Times - "The world teeters on the brink of a new age of rage: we face a tinderbox moment" - there is typically a lag-time between economic shocks and social fury. Luckily there is no Fascist threat this time. It is the (more benign) Marxist Left that stands to gain.
Perma-slump has already chipped at the left flank of the ruling Socialists in Portugal. The Communist Party (PCP) and the Maoists and Trotskyists of the Left Bloc together won 18pc of the vote in September 2009, leaving premier Jose Socrates with the lonely task of enforcing yet more austerity by minority government.
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The economic collapse of Greece is a wake-up call. The unsustainable combination of a bloated public bureaucracy, high deficit spending and unfunded pension obligations busted Greece's government bubble. Now the birthplace of modern democracy is on the brink of becoming a failed state.
The Bank of England recently warned that the U.S. is on the road to the same fiscal failure as Greece, and the Obama administration's insistence on massive public spending and increasing deficits is the reason.
At this rate, the U.S. government will be the next economic bubble to burst. We've seen similar downturns: the information technology bubble in 2000, housing in 2007 and Wall Street in 2008. If unchecked, America's government bubble will depress our economy with higher interest rates and defaulting state and local governments.
Politicians Aren't Businessmen
Federal spending alone this year accounts for 25% of our nation's gross domestic product. If you add state and local spending, the number is closer to 50%. No economy can thrive when nearly half of all economic output is directed by politicians rather than entrepreneurs and small businesses.
After big government spending, government employee unions pose a serious threat to America's fiscal health. Over the past 30 years, union membership has declined significantly, from 23% of all workers in 1980 to about 12% today. But the percentage of union members working for government has soared: Over 50% of all union workers in the U.S. are employed by the government compared with only 17% in 1980.
Support for repeal of the new national health care plan has jumped to its highest level ever. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 63% of U.S. voters now favor repeal of the plan passed by congressional Democrats and signed into law by President Obama in March.
Prior to today, weekly polling had shown support for repeal ranging from 54% to 58%.
Currently, just 32% oppose repeal.
The new findings include 46% who Strongly Favor repeal of the health care bill and 25% who Strongly Oppose it.
While opposition to the bill has remained as consistent since its passage as it was beforehand, this marks the first time that support for repeal has climbed into the 60s. It will be interesting to see whether this marks a brief bounce or indicates a trend of growing opposition.
Thirty-three percent (33%) of voters now believe the health care plan will be good for the country, down six points from a week ago and the lowest level of confidence in the plan to date. Fifty-five percent (55%) say it will be bad for the nation. Only three percent (3%) think it will have no impact.
The Political Class continues to be a strong supporter of the plan, however. While 67% of Mainstream voters believe the plan will be bad for America, 77% of the Political Class disagree and think it be good for the country.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it's in the news, it's in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 22-23, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Exactly a century after rumours of his death turned out to be entirely accurate, one of Mark Twain's dying wishes is at last coming true: an extensive, outspoken and revelatory autobiography which he devoted the last decade of his life to writing is finally going to be published.
The creator of Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and some of the most frequently misquoted catchphrases in the English language left behind 5,000 unedited pages of memoirs when he died in 1910, together with handwritten notes saying that he did not want them to hit bookshops for at least a century.
That milestone has now been reached, and in November the University of California, Berkeley, where the manuscript is in a vault, will release the first volume of Mark Twain's autobiography. The eventual trilogy will run to half a million words, and shed new light on the quintessentially American novelist.
It is considered one of the most stressful experiences of childhood.
But standing up to bullies and classroom enemies can help children develop, psychologists claim.
A study has shown that youngsters are more popular and more admired by teachers and friends if they return schoolyard hostility in kind.
Tormentor: Harry Potter faces off with his nemesis Draco Malfoy. Research has found children who stand up to bullies can be more popular and mature
Although the researchers accept that bullying can be damaging to children, leading to depression and anxiety, those who are not afraid to stand up for themselves can benefit from being picked on.
'Mutual dislike' can help students develop healthy social and emotional skills - and can sometimes have a bigger impact on their development than friendships, the researchers claim.
In a study of American children aged 11 and 12, researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, compared those who stood up to aggressors with those who did not.
Children who returned hostility with hostility appeared to be the most mature, the researchers found.
Boys who stood up to bullies and schoolyard enemies were judged more socially competent by their teachers.
Three weeks ago in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, President Obama's Interior Department dispatched "SWAT" teams to conduct emergency inspections of all 29 deepwater oil drilling platforms in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf waters of the Gulf of Mexico that use Subsea Blowout Preventers.
The announcement of the SWAT teams received much media attention because it came as the White House was being criticized in some quarters for a tardy response to the explosion that killed 11 crew members on the platform and the ensuing massive oil spill that followed the structure's sinking in 5,000 feet of water.
But have you noticed we haven't heard much at all about the results of those inspections? Maybe that's because the SWAT teams found virtually nothing of significance?
Voters may never know what job Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate Joe Sestak was offered in exchange for dropping out of the primary he just won.
Sestak, a two-term congressman from the Philadelphia suburbs, made the Sunday talk show rounds and stuck to the same answer he gave The Washington Examiner when asked what job, if any, the Obama administration had waved in front of him to stop him from challenging incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican-turned-Democrat who lost Tuesday's primary.
On NBC's "Meet the Press," there was this exchange:
Host David Gregory: "Yes or no. Straightforward question. Were you offered a job and what was the job?"
Sestak: "I was offered a job. I answered that."
Gregory: "You said no, you wouldn't take the job. Was it the Secretary of the Navy job?
Sestak: "Anything that goes beyond that is for others to talk about."
By "others" Sestak meant White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, who was not much help either.
Gibbs was grilled about the job offer on CBS's "Face the Nation" and gave an equally unhelpful answer.
Disturbing news from Afghanistan: The US Army says it has opened a crimi nal probe into the role of a group of American soldiers in the deaths of three Afghan civilians.
Equally disturbing: Those American soldiers can no longer assume that they'll be treated fairly.
Details from the probe are few (as they probably should be) -- but Pentagon brasshats are certainly operating from a place of limited credibility when it comes to prosecuting GIs.
Witness their willingness to railroad three Navy SEALs (since exonerated) on trumped-up charges that they gave an Iraqi terrorist in their custody a fat lip.
In that case, a prosecutor actually argued in court that convictions were needed to show "why we're better than the terrorists."
What's more, there are troubling signs that operations in Afghanistan as a whole are entering silly season.
Afghan civilian casualties have always been a touchy subject; both the Taliban and President Hamid Karzai have long exploited them to score propaganda points at America's expense.
But top US commanders in the theater now appear to be on the verge of making timidity a virtue.
A command spokesman confirmed this month that brass were considering issuing a special decoration for "courageous restraint" -- i.e., "where [soldiers] refrain from using lethal force, even at risk to themselves, in order to prevent possible harm to civilians."
What utter nonsense.
Obviously, discretion is part of valor. But it's not hard to see killing the enemy start to slide further down the list of Pentagon objectives.
You can bet the Taliban and al Qaeda have noticed.
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "It introduces a terrible idea using racial profiling as a basis for law enforcement. I agree with the president (Barack Obama) who says the new law carries a great amount of risk with the core values that we all care about are breached." -- Mexican president Felipe Calderon addressing joint meeting of Congress in the House of Representatives, May 20, 2010
"(WOLF) BLITZER: So if people want to come from Guatemala or Honduras or El Salvador or Nicaragua, they want to just come into Mexico, they can just walk in? (FELIPE) CALDERON: No. They need to fulfill a form. They need to establish their right name. We analyze if they have not a criminal precedent. And they coming into Mexico. Actually…
BLITZER: Do Mexican police go around asking for papers of people they suspect are illegal immigrants? CALDERON: Of course. Of course, in the border, we are asking the people, who are you?
BLITZER: So in other words, if somebody sneaks in from Nicaragua or some other country in Central America, through the southern border of Mexico, they wind up in Mexico, they can go get a job…CALDERON: No, no.
BLITZER: They can work. CALDERON: If-if somebody do that without permission, we send back-we send back them."-- The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer, CNN, May 20, 2010
"In the 21st century we are defined, not by our borders, but by our bonds."-- President Barack Obama, addressing Felipe Calderon, May 19, 2010
At one point in my life I worked in advertising, which is all about something called "branding." Truly successful branding is that which clearly defines a particular product or service so clearly that the consumer thinks about that product or service by its brand name above all other considerations. For example, most Americans say "Kleenex" with realizing that they're really referring to a paper tissue that could be called anything.
This is not the culture war of the 1990s. It is not a fight over guns, gays or abortion. Those old battles have been eclipsed by a new struggle between two competing visions of the country's future. In one, America will continue to be an exceptional nation organized around the principles of free enterprise -- limited government, a reliance on entrepreneurship and rewards determined by market forces. In the other, America will move toward European-style statism grounded in expanding bureaucracies, a managed economy and large-scale income redistribution. These visions are not reconcilable. We must choose.
It is not at all clear which side will prevail. The forces of big government are entrenched and enjoy the full arsenal of the administration's money and influence. Our leaders in Washington, aided by the unprecedented economic crisis of recent years and the panic it induced, have seized the moment to introduce breathtaking expansions of state power in huge swaths of the economy, from the health-care takeover to the financial regulatory bill that the Senate approved Thursday. If these forces continue to prevail, America will cease to be a free enterprise nation.
I call this a culture war because free enterprise has been integral to American culture from the beginning, and it still lies at the core of our history and character. "A wise and frugal government," Thomas Jefferson declared in his first inaugural address in 1801, "which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." He later warned: "To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." In other words, beware government's economic control, and woe betide the redistributors.
The federal government is arguing in a gun-rights case pending in federal court in Montana that state plans to exempt in-state guns from various federal requirements themselves make the laws void, because the growing movement certainly would impact "interstate commerce."
The government continues to argue to the court that the Commerce Clause in the U.S. Constitution should be the guiding rule for the coming decision. The argument plays down the significance of both the Second Amendment right to bear arms and the 10th Amendment provision that reserves to states all prerogatives not specifically granted the federal government in the Constitution.
WND has reported both on the lawsuit filed by Montana interests seeking affirmation of the 2009 Montana Firearms Freedom Act as well as the growing movement that has seen six other states, Wyoming, South Dakota, Idaho, Utah, Tennessee and Arizona, follow with similar laws.
South Korea's president convened an emergency national security meeting Friday, a day after an official report concluded that North Korea was responsible for the deadly sinking of a naval patrol ship.
North Korea, for its part, spoke of war for a second straight day, while U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was on the way to the region and tensions on the Korean peninsula were expected to dominate her agenda.
South Korea accused North Korea on Thursday of sinking the patrol ship Cheonan with a torpedo in late March in what was the deadliest attack on the South since the Korean War ended in 1953.
The left is aghast at today's Tea Party movement. How could Americans of any stripe be so appalled at the exercise of the constitutional right to speak out against big, intrusive - yet unresponsive - government? Our Founders would no doubt be amused at the irony. It was after all, those same issues that provoked them in the first place. Of course, today's liberals would have hated that Tea Party, too.
Lumped together, the left's real criticism of the Tea Party movement is that it is "politically incorrect." That is hardly surprising, considering the source. To liberals, the height of incorrect politics is someone who doesn't share theirs.
It has never been the left's goal to advance accuracy in politics, but uniformity - their uniformity. They keenly know that defining the terms of debate means largely determining its outcome. The greater the threat of the right's substance, the further they seek to retreat from it. So, while it maybe impossible to dismiss the Tea Party movement politically- as Rand Paul's landslide victory Tuesday in the Kentucky Senate primary demonstrates - liberals are trying to dismiss it as politically incorrect. However, if they think this one is politically incorrect, they should have seen the first one.
The first Tea Party, which took place in Boston on Dec. 16, 1773, was an eruption within a larger tax protest. The Colonial protesters refused to buy tea taxed by the English government.
The hottest new trend in climate change may be global cooling, some researchers say.
Contrary to the commonly held scientific conclusion that the Earth is getting warmer, Dr. Don Easterbrook, emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University and author of more than 150 peer-reviewed papers, has unveiled evidence for his prediction that global cooling is coming soon.
“Rather than global warming at a rate of 1 F per decade, records of past natural cycles indicate there may be global cooling for the first few decades of the 21st century to about 2030,” said Easterbrook, speaking on a scientific panel discussion with other climatologists. This, he says, will likely be followed by “global warming from about 2030 to 2060,” which will then be followed by another cooling spell from 2060 to 2090.
Easterbrook spoke before a group of about 700 scientists and government officials at the fourth International Conference on Climate Change. The conference is presented annually in Chicago by the Heartland Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank that actively questions the theory of man's role in global warming. Last year the Institute published Climate Change Reconsidered, a comprehensive reply to the United Nations' latest report on climate change.
"Global warming is over -- at least for a few decades," Easterbrook told conference attendees. "However, the bad news is that global cooling is even more harmful to humans than global warming, and a cause for even greater concern."
Easterbrook made several stunning claims about the effects of the coming cold. There will be twice as many people killed by extreme cold than by extreme heat, he predicted, and global food production will suffer because of the shorter, cooler growing seasons and bad weather during harvest seasons.
But not everyone is breaking out the overcoat and mittens.
Six months after "climategate" called into question the science underpinning claims of global warming, the National Academy of Sciences said Wednesday the science is sound, human-caused warming is already occurring, and the U.S. must take urgent action.
Trying to end the scientific debate and set the stage for action, the National Research Council, an arm of the Academy, took the unusual step of recommending specific political moves. The council called for lawmakers to set a price on carbon dioxide emissions through either a tax or a cap-and-trade system, and to adopt an emissions-reductions target similar to the one proposed by President Obama.
"Climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for - and in many cases is already affecting - a broad range of human and natural systems," the scientists concluded in one of several congressionally mandated reports released Wednesday.
The report comes three years after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that global warming is real and very likely manmade. But that report, and the temperature record underlying many of its conclusions, have come into question with the revelation of e-mails from a leading British climate research project that seemed to suggest scientists manipulated data. Critics labeled the e-mails "climategate."
The planet has never been warmer than it is right now, if you believe what global warming alarmists have to say. Mankind's selfishness in producing "excessive" amounts of carbon dioxide has set us on a path toward global cataclysm, they insist. The problem with this tale is that it neither fits with the historical record nor with a growing body of scientific evidence.
The alarmists must imagine that 50 years before the birth of Christ, men like Julius Caesar spent their summers strolling the streets of Rome wearing sweaters to guard against catching a chill - instead of abandoning the sweltering capital in favor of temperate seaside villas. A study published in the March 8 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science casts further doubt on the warmist premise by concluding that the sun beat down more harshly on the Caesars than it did on anyone else in the past 2,000 years.
Instead of using tree rings as a proxy for air temperature, the study's authors extracted data from sea shells preserved in deep sedimentary layers, using them as a proxy for sea temperature in the North Atlantic over the course of two millennia. According to the study, the "reconstructed water temperatures for the Roman Warm Period in Iceland are higher than any temperatures recorded in modern times." The heat lasted from approximately 230 B.C. to 140 A.D. After that, temperatures rose and fell over time with a second peak taking place during the better-known Medieval Warm Period.
President Lee Myung-bak vowed "stern action" for the provocation following the release of long-awaited results from a multinational investigation into the incident. North Korea, reacting swiftly, called the results a fabrication and warned that any retaliation would trigger war.
Investigators said evidence overwhelmingly proves North Korea fired a homing torpedo that caused a massive underwater blast that tore the Cheonan into two on March 26. Fifty-eight sailors were rescued from the frigid Yellow Sea waters near the Koreas' maritime border, but 46 perished.
Sports Illustrated
December 26. 1960
The Soft American
By President-elect John F. Kennedy
Beginning more than 2,500 years ago, from all quarters of the Greek world men thronged every four years to the sacred grove of Olympia, under the shadow of Mount Cronus, to compete in the most famous athletic contests of history—the Olympian games.
During the contest a sacred truce was observed among all the states of Greece as the best athletes of the Western world competed in boxing and foot races, wrestling and chariot races for the wreath of wild olive which was the prize of victory. When the winners returned to their home cities to lay the Olympian crown in the chief temples they were greeted as heroes and received rich rewards. For the Greeks prized physical excellence and athletic skills among man’s greatest goals and among the prime foundations of a vigorous state.
Thus the same civilizations which produced some of our highest achievements of philosophy and drama, government and art, also gave us a belief in the importance of physical soundness which has become a part of Western tradition; from the mens sana in corpore sano of the Romans to the British belief that the playing fields of Eaton brought victory on the battlefields of Europe. This knowledge, the knowledge that the physical well-being of the citizen is an important foundation for the vigor and vitality of all the activities of the nation, is as old as Western civilization itself. But it is a knowledge which today, in American, we are in danger of forgetting.
The first indication of a decline in the physical strength and ability of young Americans became apparent among United States soldiers in the early stages of the Korean War. The second came when figures were released showing that almost one out of every two young American was being rejected by Selective Service as mentally, morally or physically unfit. But the most startling demonstration of the general physical decline of American youth came when Dr. Hans Kraus and Dr. Sonja Weber revealed the results of 15 years of research centering in the Posture Clinic of New York’s Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital—results of physical fitness tests given to 4,264 children in this country and 2,870 children in Austria, Italy and Switzerland.
The findings showed that despite our unparalleled standard of living, despite our good food and our many playgrounds, despite our emphasis on school athletics, American youth lagged far behind Europeans in physical fitness. Six tests for muscular strength and flexibility were given; 57.9% of the American children failed one or more of these tests, while only 8.7% of the European youngsters failed.
A Consistent Decline
Especially disheartening were the results of the five strength tests: 35.7% of American children failed one or more of these, while only 1.1% of the Europeans failed, and among Austrian and Swiss youth the rate of failure was as low as .5%.
As a result of the alarming Kraus-Weber findings President Eisenhower created a Council on Youth Fitness at the Cabinet level and appointed a Citizens Advisory Committee on the Fitness of American Youth, composed of prominent citizens interested in fitness. Over the past five years the physical fitness of American youth has been discussed in forums, by committees and in leading publications. A 10-point program for physical fitness has been publicized and promoted. Our schools have been urged to give increased attention to the physical well-being of their students. Yet there has been no noticeable improvement. Physical fitness tests conducted last year in Britain and Japan showed that the youth of those countries were considerably more fit than our own children. And the annual physical fitness tests for freshman at Yale University show a consistent decline in the prowess of young American; 51& of the class of 1951 passed the tests, 43% of the class of 1956 passed, and only 38%, a little more than a third, of the class of 1960 succeeded, in passing the not overly rigorous examination.
Of course, physical tests are not infallible. They can distort the true health picture. There are undoubtedly many American youths and adults whose physical fitness matches and exceeds the best of other lands.
But the harsh fact of the matter is that there is also an increasingly large number of young Americans who are neglecting their bodies—whose physical fitness is not what it should be—who are getting soft. And such softness on the part of individual citizens can help to strip and destroy the vitality of a nation.
For the physical vigor of our citizens is one of America’s most precious resources. If we waste and neglect this resource, if we allow it to dwindle and grow soft then we will destroy much of our ability to meet the great and vital challenges which confront our people. We will be unable to realize our full potential as a nation.
Do we need to care for the earth? Yes, that is among Adam’s charges. Do we need the Church to be directed by government, to fulfill the deceitful schemes of thieving profiteers seeking global, Marxofascist governance? I know you can answer that question, too.
Alas, the above were only a few minutes of Glenn Beck’s program, Tuesday 5/18/2010. His guests, Liberty University President, Jerry Falwell, Jr., J.D. and Peter Lillback,, Ph.D., President of Westminster Seminary and author of George Washington’s Secret Fire, were excellent. Lilliback suggests to Christians which, unlike the aforementioned Wallis, generally accept the actual words of the Bible, in the order God had them put, that they look into the Manhattan Declaration regarding Christians’ role in our society (something I signed a few weeks or months ago, or so, thank the drafters). I am writing this just after the 1am Central Time rerun of Beck and manhattandeclaration.org is not coming up for me. I think it is very busy. Excellent.
Another suggestion, to fight man-made global Marxofascism, please ask and promote The Three SOVEREIGNTY NOW Questions meekly offered you. I mean please ask these questions of your politicians and candidates and promote them to electoral action groups and to your compatriots, so they may do the same. Thank you. Kentucky’s Rand Paul talks about the importance of upholding the critical American sovereignties and how they are being attacked by global, anti-American interests, and look how he just won the Republican nomination for U.S. Senator. Americans can welcome real solutions, when they are presented.
Would Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan outlaw "Common Sense"? Ms. Kagan's work on First Amendment free-speech issues suggests she might restrict Thomas Paine, circa 1776, from distributing his famous pamphlet. Solicitor General Kagan likewise might outlaw "The Federalist Papers" if Founding Fathers James Madison and Alexander Hamilton refused to say who paid to publish their essays. These views on the First Amendment are troubling enough to raise serious doubts as to whether the Senate should confirm her for the high court.
It was President Obama who deliberately put the focus on Ms. Kagan's First Amendment theories by highlighting her efforts to restrict the ability of corporate entities to engage in political speech. As former Gov. Frank White of Arkansas once put it, the president thus "opened a whole box of Pandoras." Ms. Kagan's First Amendment work repeatedly promotes the idea that speech rights are granted by government rather than inherent in the God-given nature of man.
Is America losing its taste for bacon?
When it comes to the congressional variety, members of the powerful appropriations committees are finding that holding the nation's purse strings — and the power the positions afford in doling out pork-barrel projects back home — are no guarantee these days for re-election.
Six of the 13 members of the Senate Appropriations Committee up for re-election this year have announced they'll retire or have lost a primary challenge. A seventh, Sen. Arlen Specter, Pennsylvania Democrat, is trailing challenger Rep. Joe Sestak in the polls heading to Tuesday's primary. The committee has 30 total members.
In the House, powerful Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey, Wisconsin Democrat, announced this month that he won't seek a 22nd term in office.
Even Rep. Alan B. Mollohan, an appropriations committee veteran who hails from one of the most pork-barrel-friendly states — West Virginia — couldn't keep his job, losing last week in his state's Democratic primary.
The notorious and formerly funny movie director Woody Allen is apparently frustrated with the cumbersome operations of American democracy too.
The one-time-father-now-husband-of-his-daughter tells the Spanish-language magazine La Vanguardia that the United States' Democratic Smoker-in-Chief could accomplish a whole lot more from his White House if he didn't have so many disorderly, annoying people objecting, distracting and criticizing him all the time.
Such social messiness has been known to occur in functioning democracies, even cinematic ones, although less often on celebrity-strewn movie sets under the direction of a dictatorial director.
"It would be good...if (Obama) could be dictator for a few years because he could do a lot of good things quickly," Allen is quoted as saying.
Allen is also said to have said:
I am pleased with Obama. I think he is brilliant. The Republican Party should get out of his way and stop trying to hurt him.
Phoenix Mayor Phil Gordon, who opposes his state's controversial new immigration law, blames the Regan-era Federal Communicastions Commission, at least in part, for the law's passage.
In a Center For American Progress forum May 14, Gordon said the seeds of the law go back to 1987, when
the FCC scrapped the fairness doctrine as unconstitutional. "I think it goes back to the Reagan era when the
fairness doctrine was dropped," he said, "and instead of rquiring both sides of a debate to be aired, only one side
was given the chance depending on who was providing that."
He said that even more important was the change in tone stemming from that decision. "Language that was never
acceptable became maintstream," he said. "Those that were deemed to be in disagreement with those on television or radio were demonized as traitors and extremists and hateful and language that we have never heard seen."
The result, he said, was that such demonization became "acceptable in the mainstream media and acceptable in
debates."
The National Hispanic Media Coalition last year asked the FCC to investigate what they said was hate speech on
radio and TV, particularly as directed at the immigrant community. But they also said they were not looking to re-
imposed the doctrine, which required broadcast stations, radio and TV, to seek out opposing viewpoints on issues of national importance.
(CNN) -- J.D. Moyer decided recently to conduct a little experiment with artificial light and his sleep cycle.
The sleep-deprived Oakland, California, resident had read that strong light -- whether it's beaming down from the sun or up from the screens of personal electronics -- can reset a person's internal sleep clock.
So, for one month, whenever the sun set, he turned off all the gadgets and lights in his house -- from the bulb hidden in his refrigerator to his laptop computer.
It worked. Instead of falling asleep at midnight, Moyer's head was hitting the pillow as early as 9 p.m. He felt so well-rested during the test, he said, that friends remarked on his unexpected morning perkiness.
"I had the experience, a number of times, just feeling kind of unreasonably happy for no reason. And it was the sleep," he said. "Sure, you can get by with six or seven hours, but sleeping eight or nine hours -- it's a different state of mind."
Moyer may be onto something.
More than ever, consumer electronics -- particularly laptops, smartphones and Apple's new iPad -- are shining bright light into our eyes until just moments before we doze off.
KNOWING THE TARGET AUDIENCE
It is always easier to convince people to act upon something they already believe than to convince them to act on something they do not yet believe…
Environmental concerns may not be important to the advocate’s audience, in which case the advocate must determine what is important to this audience and frame the message to tap into it. For example, an advocate may wish to frame the message around such issues as religion (stewardship), public health, people’s livelihoods, children, or cultural and historical preservation.
The tip comes from a toolkit distributed by ISAR: Resources for Environmental Activists. The organization was founded in 1983, as the Institute for Soviet and American Relations, to encourage citizen diplomacy and facilitate exchange between the US and the Soviet Union.
The resource for community organizers whose agenda is environmental activism was translated into French, Swahili, Portuguese, Russian and Arabic.
The producer of the 111 page manual for activists is the Environmental Law Institute (ELI)
According to the document the natural allies of the activist are labor groups, religious organizations, youth groups, women’s rights groups, or even tourism organizations.
EAs are encouraged to participate in networking where database of people with different connections is created:
Opportunities for networking: meeting someone for lunch; talking with someone while walking to the same destination; sharing a taxi or bus ride from a meeting; inviting someone to one’s office or home; participating with someone in a group work activity; attending events involving extended family; and even taking part in church activities. The advocate should always keep detailed notes about networking contacts for future reference.
The time spent on networking is considered investment. The toolkit insists that anyone can be lobbied including newspaper editors, church leaders, representatives of donor organizations and businesspeople. The message should be clear and short. Talking points and slogans are considered very effective tool ensuring all activists are on the same page.
Goodbye America, hello Greece. . .
The U.S. national debt will soon reach 100% of GDP, the IMF predicts in a new report.
The following graph shows the sharp rise in U.S. debt starting in around 2006. By 2015, the IMF suggests, debt could reach well over 100% of GDP.
The IMF predicts that the U.S. would need to reduce its structural deficit by the equivalent of 12% of GDP,a much larger portion than any other country analyzed except Japan. Greece, in the midst of a financial crisis, needs to reduce its structural deficit by just 9% of GDP, according to the IMF’s analysis.
The report, released yesterday, also wades into the debate over healthcare reform, questioning the CBO’s analysis that healthcare reform would reduce the U.S. deficit.
“There are some risks to the CBO estimates, however, including that the substantial decrease in Medicare payment rates to health care providers may prove difficult to implement,” the report reads.
Immigrant advocates say crackdown on unlicensed drivers unfair
By JULISSA McKINNON
May 15, 2010Adrianna Castellon, 16, stood on the sidewalk of a busy Moreno Valley street on a recent school night, yelling at cars rushing past.
"Checkpoint! Checkpoint ahead!" she screamed. "Turn back while you can!"
The high school student was among protesters hoping to help illegal immigrants whose vehicles were about to be impounded by police because they were driving without a license. California law got tougher in 1993, requiring a social security card and other identification to get a license and barring most illegal immigrants from applying.
Isn’t that outrageous! Imagine having to have identification before being allowed to get a license which allows you to drive a lethal weapon. This is just like Nazi Germany.
Now the stricter license requirements and a rising number of checkpoints across the Inland area and state are stirring controversy that has reached a fever pitch in some cities with a large Latino population.
Critics say most Inland checkpoints economically punish illegal immigrants whose cars often are impounded for 30 days — the maximum time allowed — and can ill afford the approximately $2,000 to retrieve the vehicle. Protesters point out that drunken drivers usually lose their car for only one day. They say racial profiling is at play where checkpoints are placed.
Inland authorities said softer penalties, such as citations, for unlicensed drivers don’t work because many illegal immigrants lack identification and can’t be found if they skip court. Police say impounding cars is needed to deal with drivers without licenses, who account for about 40 percent of the nation’s hit-and-run crashes based on statistics of hit-and-run drivers who were caught. And police say that traffic volume, not a neighborhood’s racial composition, determines checkpoint locations.
The article doesn’t bother to mention that these illegal aliens also do not bother to have auto insurance, which is required in California.
SCIENTISTS have discovered the “Methuselah” genes whose lucky carriers have a much improved chance of living to 100 even if they indulge in an unhealthy lifestyle.
The genes appear to protect people against the effects of smoking and bad diet and can also delay the onset of age-related illnesses such as cancer and heart disease by up to three decades.
No single gene is a guaranteed fountain of youth. Instead, the secret of longevity probably lies in having the right “suite” of genes, according to new studies of centenarians and their families. Such combinations are extremely rare — only one person in 10,000 reaches the age of 100.
The genes found so far each appear to give a little extra protection against the diseases of old age. Centenarians appear to have a high chance of having several such genes embedded in their DNA
“Long-lived people do not have fewer disease genes or ageing genes,” said Eline Slagboom of Leiden University, who is leading a study into 3,500 Dutch nonagenarians. “Instead they have other genes that stop those disease genes from being switched on. Longevity is strongly genetic and inherited.”
Slagboom and her colleagues recently published studies showing how the physiology of people in long-lived families differs from normal people. Other studies, showing the genetic causes of those differences, are due for publication soon.
“People who live to a great age metabolise fats and glucose differently, their skin ages more slowly and they have lower prevalence of heart disease, diabetes and hypertension,” she said.
“These factors are all under strong genetic control, so we see the same features in the children of very old people.”
NEW ORLEANS - For a leak that’s spilled millions of gallons, the oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster is pretty hard to pin down.
Satellite images show most of an estimated 4.6 million gallons of oil has pooled in a floating, shape-shifting blob off the Louisiana coast. Some has reached shore as a thin sheen, and gooey bits have washed up as far away as Alabama. But the spill is 23 days old since the Transocean Ltd.-owned, BP-operated rig exploded April 20 and killed 11 workers, and the thickest stuff hasn't shown up on the coast.
So, where's the oil? Where's it going to end up?
Government scientists and others tracking the spill say much of the oil is lurking just below the surface. But there seems to be no consensus on whether it will arrive in black waves, mostly dissipate into the massive Gulf or gradually settle to the ocean floor, where it could seep into the ecosystem for years.
When it comes to deepwater spills, even top experts rely on some guesswork.
One of their tools, a program the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration uses to predict how oil spills on the surface of water may behave, suggests that more than a third of the oil may already be out of the water.
About 35 percent of a spill the size of the one in the Gulf, consisting of the same light Louisiana crude, released in weather conditions and water temperatures similar to those found in the Gulf now would simply evaporate, according to data that The Associated Press entered into the program.
The model also suggests that virtually all of the benzene — a highly toxic flammable organic chemical compound and one of the chief ingredients in oil — would be stripped off and quickly vaporize.
Last month, a team of South Korean scientists led by professor Bae Myung-jin of Soongsil University's Sound Research Lab announced their conclusion that the Republic of Korea navy corvette Cheonan probably was sunk by a Chinese Yu-3 heavy torpedo, presumably fired by a North Korean submarine. And just last week, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il's heavily tinted and armored train was spotted entering and leaving Beijing's Central Train Terminal. It looks as if Mr. Kim made a round trip to Beijing on a resupply mission. It wouldn't be the first time.
On April 22, 2004, within hours of Mr. Kim's train passing through on the return leg from another Beijing visit, the train station at Ryongchon, 10 miles inside North Korea, blew up with a thunderous explosion. Initial reports were that 3,000 people were killed or badly wounded. By the time international observers got to the scene some days later, the bodies of at least 76 dead children had been dug out of the rubble. Before-and-after overhead photos of the Ryongchon Primary School showed that it was effectively destroyed. The blast caused extensive damage for a mile in all directions. Anything within 500 yards of the explosion was leveled. The huge crater in the middle of the railroad yard was easily seen from overhead, and airborne debris drifted over several neighboring countries.
The question of causation led to immediate speculation by international observers. Considering how closely this disaster followed Mr. Kim's train passing through the station, was this a botched assassination attempt? Or was this just an unfortunate accident with agricultural fertilizer or mining explosives? Or was it something altogether different?
The 2010 midterm elections will be bad for Democrats. But the question is, will their losses be worse than the post-World War II average of 24 House and four Senate seats lost by the party that holds the White House?
The answer isn't locked in yet—and will depend on the confluence of many elements. Here are several that matter.
The most important metric is presidential job approval. President Obama is now at 51% in Gallup and 47% in Rasmussen. When Democrats lost 54 seats in 1994, Bill Clinton's job approval was at 46%. Every president has been lower by the midterm than at the start of that year. Mr. Obama was at 50% in early January. Add a persistently high jobless rate and it points to a worse-than-normal year for Congressional Democrats.
Longtime readers of Axis of Right know that I’ve contended for a while that the worst of the economic crisis of 2008-2009 is ahead of us, not behind us. The massive amount of money infused into our economic system over the last two years, the coming insolvency of entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security (not to mention ObamaCare), along with the fact that we haven’t even gotten rid of the troubled assets that were supposed to be dealt with by TARP foreshadows a collapse of epic proportions.
Robert Samuelson has written a piece that expands on the idea that we are heading to a second great depression, or as he calls it, Depression 2.0. He points to the situation in Greece as an indicator of what is to come, and draws parallels between the economic situation leading up to the Great Depression and those of the current day. Sure, we could end up with a period of relative recovery between now and the great collapse, but if we do not change course, that collapse is inevitable. Even if a resurgent GOP is able to peel back government and cut spending, it may not be enough. We are so interlinked with the rest of the world that their problems will become our problems. If Europe, for example, ends up collapsing under its own heavy nanny-state burdens, then the market for America’s goods and services will decrease.
The traditional children's party game pin the tail on the donkey is under threat because parents consider it a health and safety risk.
The claim comes from retailers and parenting experts who say mothers and fathers are increasingly reluctant to put pins into the hands of youngsters.
The notion that today's children have to be wrapped in cotton wool and cannot be trusted with a pin will surprise the millions who played the game as children.
