Health | Ain't Complicated

BwaHaHaHa!

Going veggie can slash your carbon footprint: study

Giving up meat could drastically reduce your carbon footprint, with meat-eaters’ diets responsible for almost twice the emissions of those of vegetarians, a German study said on Tuesday.

A diet with meat is responsible for producing in a year the same amount of greenhouse gases as driving a mid-sized car 4,758 kilometres (2,956 miles), the Institute for Ecological Economy Research (IOeW) said.

But the food a vegetarian consumes in 12 months is responsible for generating the same emissions as driving 2,427 kilometres, the IOeW said in a study commissioned by independent consumer protection group Foodwatch.

😆

OK, I’m sure that’s a serious study. But I still think it’s kinda funny.

Oh, and if you’re wondering about the “photo” at the top, it goes with this story:

Neanderthals were not stupid

Neanderthals were not as stupid as they have been portrayed, according to new research Tuesday showing their stone tools were as good as those made by the early ancestors of modern humans, Homo sapiens.

When I saw that headline, I wondered if it had some sort of potentially-humorous connection to the veggie/carbonfootprint story. I assumed ole Neander and Friends were meat consumers…and look what their carbon footprint got them.

Anyway, I went beyond the headline into the story itself and found this gem of a concluding paragraph:

Other studies have claimed that Neanderthals may have died out because they struggled with changing conditions brought by increasingly cold temperatures, failing to adapt their hunting methods when species such as mammoth and bison fled south and a once-forested Europe changed into a sparsely vegetated landscape during the last Ice Age.

So there you are. If they would have increased their meat consumption, they would have increased their carbon footprint. That would have resulted in more global warming which might have reversed those “increasingly cold temperatures.”

Maybe they weren’t so smart after all. 🙄

Oh well.

West Coast Sunset

No, I’m not posting any of my spectacular sunset pictures. Not in this post, anyway.

License to Kill:

Most inhumanities start small, like the beginning of a tsunami, but then build, as they head toward inevitable and unstoppable destruction.

It is difficult to pinpoint the precise beginning of the cultural tsunami that has devalued human life. Did it begin with the subjugation of women? Did it begin with slavery? The Nazis made their contribution with the Holocaust and Josef Mengele’s hideous human experiments. Surely unrestricted abortion added to the growing list of inhumanities.

Now we have the next wave. Randy Stroup is a 53-year-old Oregon man who has prostrate cancer, but no insurance to cover his medical treatment. The state pays for treatment in some cases, but it has denied help to Stroup. State officials have determined that chemotherapy would be too expensive and so they have offered him an alternative: death.

Adds new meaning to what Governor Tom McCall famously said on national TV way back in the 70s:

“Come visit us again and again. But for heaven’s sake, don’t come here to live.”

Yup, we’re the Pacific Wonderland, alright.

Got Colgate?

Companies import poisonous Chinese toothpaste in disguise

Four defendants pleaded guilty yesterday to importing from China more than a half million tubes of toothpaste falsely labeled as the popular brand Colgate and containing a toxic chemical found in antifreeze.

According to a U.S. Department of Justice statement, the defendants were responsible for 518,028 tubes of toothpaste worth an estimated $730,419 that were shipped into the country and distributed to bargain retail stores in several states last year.

[…]

The toothpaste itself was nearly indistinguishable in its packaging color and design from Colgate, but a few spelling errors and a false label statement that the product was made in South Africa identified the counterfeit.

The toothpaste was actually manufactured in China, which has a long and grisly history of manufacturing poisonous toothpaste, prompting the FDA last year to warn consumers from using any toothpaste made in the communist country.

[…]

Colgate-Palmolive, which sells toothpaste and toothbrushes in more than 200 countries, according the Department of Justice report, has inspected several thousand discount stores over the past year to identify and remove the counterfeit toothpaste marketed under its name.

Welcome to Today!

Oooops! 😯 Maybe that’s not such a good photo to go with the title!

Here, this next one is better:

Today is our daughter Dora’s twentieth birthday. So I made the above wallpaper with her in mind because of this transition from her teens to her twenties. Of course, it’s a good verse for all of us.

Now…two news items to start out your day….

Happiness is key to longer life

“Happiness does not heal, but happiness protects against falling ill” says Ruut Veenhoven of Rotterdam’s Erasmus University in a study to be published next month.

After reviewing 30 studies carried out worldwide over periods ranging from one to 60 years, the Dutch professor said the effects of happiness on longevity were “comparable to that of smoking or not”.

That special flair for feeling good, he said, could lengthen life by between 7.5 and 10 years.

The finding brings a vital new piece to a puzzle currently being assembled by researchers worldwide on just what makes us happy — and on the related question of why people blessed with material wealth in developed nations no longer seem satisfied with their lives.

And this less happy story:

Russia vs Georgia

A fragile cease-fire appeared even more shaky as Russia’s foreign minister declared that the world “can forget about any talk about Georgia’s territorial integrity.”

The declaration from Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov came simultaneously with the announcement that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was meeting in the Kremlin with the leaders of Georgia’s two separatist provinces.

“One can forget about any talk about Georgia’s territorial integrity because, I believe, it is impossible to persuade South Ossetia and Abkhazia to agree with the logic that they can be forced back into the Georgian state,” Lavrov told reporters.

[…]

Russian troops also appeared to be settling in elsewhere in Georgia.

[…]

The scene underlined how closely the soldiers Russia calls peacekeepers are allied with its military.

I said two news items, but here’s a third one to end on a more positive note:

Anything into oil

“Working with the USDA we’ve identified enough waste material around the country, we truly believe we can make the United States totally energy independent of foreign countries in about five years,” he said.

WND originally reported on the project in March as Bell, an agricultural researcher, confirmed he’d isolated and modified specific bacteria that will, on a very large scale, naturally and rapidly convert plant material – including the leftovers from food – into hydrocarbons to fuel cars and trucks.

That means trash like corn stalks and corn cobs – even the grass clippings from suburban lawns – can be turned into oil and gasoline to run trucks, buses and cars.

Make it a good day today!

To Start Your Day

Russia Says Ceases Fire

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered a halt to military operations in Georgia on Tuesday, saying Moscow had achieved its objectives by punishing Tbilisi.

Just before meeting French President Nicolas Sarkozy for peace talks at the Kremlin, Medvedev issued instructions to Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to “stop the operation to force Georgian authorities to peace.”

“The aim of the operation has been achieved,” Medvedev said in televised remarks. “…The aggressor has been punished and has suffered very considerable losses.”

Close U.S. ally Georgia entered conflict with Russia last week after launching an offensive to retake the pro-Russian region of South Ossetia, which broke away from Georgian rule in 1992. Moscow responded with a huge counter-offensive.

In other good news:

Good News…

…followed by bad.

Potential Leukemia Breakthrough

Australian scientists said Monday they had mapped a blood cell structure which could hold the key to improved drug treatments for diseases such as leukaemia, asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

[…]

“We hope that this discovery will lead to targeted therapies, more specific to the malfunctioning cells seen in diseases such as leukaemia.”

Lesbian, Atheist, Muslim to “Attempt” Christian Life

A new television program being broadcast this month follows a group of 13 non-Christian volunteers, who, on camera, attempt to “live by the teachings of the Bible for three weeks.”

“Make Me a Christian,” broadcast in a three-part series, asks the participants to be mentored by four pastors from a variety of backgrounds – Anglican, Catholic, Evangelical, and Pentecostal – as they attempt to live like Christians, an effort that runs in stark contrast to many of the participants’ backgrounds.

The 13 volunteers who will make the effort include a tattooed militant atheist biker, a man who converted from Christianity to Islam, a lesbian schoolteacher, a lap-dancing witch with a lust for expensive shoes, a middle-class yuppie couple that can’t find time to spend with their children and a party animal who claims he’s slept with over 150 women.

Whether people can be made into Christians by a three-week crash course in discipleship, however, remains a matter of debate.

[…]

The show’s website concludes with the teaser line, “All this is just the start of their three hard weeks. Can they embrace Christian ideals and learn to live in a different way or will their old lives prove just too strong to resist?”

You cannot live the Christian life without Jesus.

There is no Christian life without Christ. Not in real life. And certainly not in for-TV life.

Help Us

As a Russian jet bombed fields around his village, Djimali Avago, a Georgian farmer, asked me: “Why won’t America and Nato help us? If they won’t help us now, why did we help them in Iraq?”

A similar sense of betrayal coursed through the conversations of many Georgians here yesterday as their troops retreated under shellfire and the Russian Army pressed forward to take full control of South Ossetia.

Note to other countries: Who will go to war against Russia for you? 😯

US-Russian Tensions “Worsen”

Dozens of Russian warplanes staged air raids in Georgia on Monday, officials said, but Prime Minister Vladimir Putin accused the United States of trying to undermine Russia’s mounting military offensive.

[…]

Russia and Georgia pursued their attacks as diplomatic tensions worsened. US President George W. Bush, Georgia’s biggest western ally, said he had told Russia’s influential prime minister that its bombing of Georgia was “unacceptable.”

Putin responded by accusing the US of trying to disrupt the Russian military operation by transporting Georgian troops from Iraq into the “conflict zone.”

“I regret that some of our partners are not helping us but in fact are trying to impede us,” Putin said directly referring to the US flights of Georgian troops.

[…]

The UN refugee agency said up to 80 percent of Gori’s population of 50,000 have fled the city because of Russian attacks.

[…]

Russia, which has already moved battleships to the Black Sea and said it has sunk a Georgian navy vessel, is preparing to deploy 9,000 troops to bolster its forces inside a second separatist Georgian region, Abkhazia, a military spokesman was quoted as saying by Interfax.

It will send more than 350 armoured vehicles to add to what is officially a Russian peacekeeping force in the breakaway region, the spokesman said.

“What is officially a Russian peacekeeping force” highlights a concept I’ve found difficult to grasp for years. Look at Russia’s track record through fairly recent history and who wouldn’t consider their “friendly” military presence anywhere without at least some trepidation?

PS to Putin: So some of your partners aren’t helping you? Well, what’s the US to do when it’s also partners with your adversary? Ah, the strange world of geopolitics. And of plain ole politics. 🙄

Well, may the good news from Australia result in new and effective cures for leukemia. Amen.

August 1

1980 — Ruby Yoder married me and thus became the Mrs. Roth she still is.

1988 — The national Rush Limbaugh Show starts.

2006 — Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rejects a UN Security Council resolution that gives his nation until August 31 (2006, of course) to suspend uranium enrichment. 🙄

2007 — An Interstate bridge collapses into the Mississippi.

2008 — Thousands of people gather across Arctic regions, Siberia and China to see a total eclipse of the sun, despite Chinese warnings that it could augur bad luck.

2008 — The United States reaffirms a weekend deadline for Iran to answer an international offer to freeze its nuclear drive. 😯

2008 — A German medical team announces it had performed (on July 25-26) what it called the world’s first transplant of two full arms, on a farmer who (six years ago) had lost both his limbs in an accident.