Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Which is why it is so striking to talk to Delos M. Cosgrove, the heart surgeon who is the clinic’s chief executive, about the initiative. Cosgrove says that if it were up to him, if there weren’t legal issues, he would not only stop hiring smokers. He would also stop hiring obese people. When he mentioned this to me during a recent phone conversation, I told him that I thought many people might consider it unfair. He was unapologetic.

“Why is it unfair?” he asked. “Has anyone ever shown the law of conservation of matter doesn’t apply?” People’s weight is a reflection of how much they eat and how active they are. The country has grown fat because it’s consuming more calories and burning fewer. Our national weight problem brings huge costs, both medical and economic. Yet our anti-obesity efforts have none of the urgency of our antismoking efforts. “We should declare obesity a disease and say we’re going to help you get over it,” Cosgrove said.

You can disagree with the doctor — you can even be offended — and still come to see that there is a larger point behind his tough-love approach. The debate over health care reform has so far revolved around how insurers, drug companies, doctors, nurses and government technocrats might be persuaded to change their behavior. And for the sake of the economy and the federal budget, they do need to change their behavior. But there has been far less discussion about how the rest of us might also change our behavior. It’s as if we have little responsibility for our own health. We instead outsource it to something called the health care system.

Kitty’s been saying this for 10 years.

Wake up FATTYAmerica!

How communism works

The Five-Year Plans for the National Economy of the USSR (Russian: пятилетка, Pyatiletka) were a series of nation-wide centralized exercises in rapid economic development in the Soviet Union. The plans were developed by the Gosplan based on the Theory of Productive Forces that was part of the general guidelines of the Communist Partyfor economic development. Fulfilling the plan became the watchword of Soviet bureaucracy. (See Overview of the Soviet economic planning process) The same method of planning was also adopted by most other communist states, including the People’s Republic of China, and India‘s pro-Soviet government in the 1950–60s. In addition, severalcapitalist states have emulated the concept of central planning, though in the context of a market economy, by setting integrated economic goals for a finite period of time. Thus are found “Seven-year Plans” and “Twelve-Year Plans”.

Aporkalypse Now

Fred Einaudi

  akubizone…  candy-injection:  swisserswatter:  rabbyte: kazukij: deadgirls: astrangerscandy: defixiones 
McClatchy points out that 6 0f the 8 genetic segments in the current swine flu come from a 1990′s outbreak on a large North Carolina pig farm: 

The new H1N1 influenza virus that continues to spread through the U.S. has ancestry in a swine flu outbreak that first struck a North Carolina hog farm more than 10 years ago, according to scientists studying the strain’s genetic makeup….

Two of the segments, [Raul Rabadan, a Columbia University scientist] said, appear to come from Eurasia and are somewhat mysterious in origin. The other six can be traced to the North American pig outbreak, which turned out to include a combination of avian, swine and human flu…

“Pigs are amazing mixing bowls for creating new viruses,” said Bob Martin, senior officer at the Pew Environmental Group. Martin was executive director of the study.

“It’s a matter of when, not if,” Martin said of the creation of new viruses on factory hog farms. “The structure of the system is the problem.”

The industrial pig farming industry, of course, as well as scientists on the payroll, all swear that industrial pig farming is safe, and that the viruses would happen no matter how the pigs are raised. This is untrue (see this, this and this).

If the factory meat industry is not forced to clean up its act or shut down, then some new, lethal cocktail of viruses will eventually be unleashed from one of these farms which does create a lethal pandemic for humans.

Just as the financial collapse resulted from ignoring the repeated warnings of those who described what was really going on, we will eventually be brought to our knees by a virus incubated at a factory meat facility unless we change the way we raise meat.

Afterword: The FDA approved cloned meat in January of 2008, and no one really knows whether or not cloned meat is already on the market (it probably is).

Cloned meat production, along with genetically modified foods which can disrupt entire insect populations and cause other problems, are additional examples of the fact that the food industry will create more and more dangerous frankenfoods – and disease-creating facilities – unless the public stands up and demands safe food production and real food.
From George Washington’s blog

 daniela uhlig via cgunit via akubizone

Hog Wild

from George Washington’s Blog by George Washington

A theory about the swine flu which is gaining rapid support is that the flu was spread by flies swarming around the hog manure ponds at the giant Granjas Carrol hog farm in Vera Cruz, Mexico. Granjas Carrol raises 950,000 hogs per year at the facility. These industrial-scale hog farms – where pigs are jammed together so tightly that they can barely turn around.

There are so many of them that they produce many tons of manure, which is just dumped into giant manure ponds.

This is the Wall Street of hog farming. On both Wall Street and at giant meat production farms, the hogs feed at the public trough. With the hog farms, like Wall Street:

• A couple of giant companies dominated the landscape

• Regulators allowed the companies to run amok

• The profits were privatized, and the losses socialized. In the case of the hog farms, the profits from the mega-farms were pocketed by the companies, while the costs of the swine flu epidemic will be borne by the taxpayers

As one blog commentator wrote:

Agribusiness needs to be held accountable. They are following the same rules as bankers; keep the profits and dump losses (in the form of mad cow or now swine flu) on the public. Factor in a few million dead and maybe locally produced food from small farms is not so expensive after all.

beehive

Robo-Shūchishin: New idol-pop trio

from Pink Tentacle by Pink Tentacle

A pair of Robonova-1 kit robots teamed up with “Chi” (Naoki Nokubo) of the defunct pop-idol trio Shūchishin (羞恥心) for a special performance on Fuji TV’s “The Best House 1-2-3″ variety show last night. (Watch it.)

cherry blossoms

AIG gets all the Easter eggs

A boombox can change the world

how much better you would feel

The Great Gate of Kiev

Chadwick Tyler     via ponyboy

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