1. Be Impeccable with your Word
Speak with
integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the Word to speak
against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your Word
in the direction of truth and love.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a
projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune
to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of
needless suffering.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.
Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid
misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you
can completely transform your life.

4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be
different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any
circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment,
self-abuse, and regret. (04/27/09)
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Thom Hartmann writes: Over six million people are now out of work, and unemployment figures released today show that now-record number is continuing to climb. Meanwhile, still-profitable American corporations manufacture goods for American consumption using Chinese labor and pay virtually no income tax by keeping their profits offshore.

A hundred years ago, Republican President Theodore Roosevelt tried to reign in some of the most toxic behaviors of capitalists that he found incompatible with modern democracy by pushing through congress a law that banned the practice of corporations giving money to politicians. He slowed down the robber barons a bit, but three consecutive Republican presidents in the 1920s led us straight into the Republican Great Depression.

Franklin Roosevelt, his distant cousin, rebooted capitalism in the 1930s, ushering in an era of regulated capitalism - embraced by Republicans like Eisenhower and Democrats like JFK - that brought us the largest, strongest, and most stable middle class ever seen. We also became the world’s economic superpower, as the world’s largest importer of raw materials, exporter of finished goods, and banker to the world. We imported iron ore and exported televisions and cars and washing machines. The rest of the world was in debt to us. A worker with a high school diploma could find a job that paid enough to raise a family and have a safe and comfortable retirement.

The Reagan Revolution of the 1980s was the third “rebooting” of capitalism in the 20th Century, and continues to this day. Scorning the “regulated” part of “regulated capitalism,” economic Reaganites from the Gipper himself to GHW Bush to Bill Clinton to GW Bush flipped our economy upside down. Today, after just thirty years of “free trade” and “right to work” and other oxymoronic nostrums applied as policy, we’ve become the world’s largest importer of finished goods and the world’s largest debtor. We now export minerals to Asia, and import back from them televisions, cars, and washing machines.

So now the big question: Will Obama reboot capitalism anew? Will he move us into a new realm of capitalism, back toward regulated capitalism, or continue the slide toward a poverty-ridden Dickensian economy that Reagan started?

At the moment, nobody knows. (04/27/09)
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BBC Medical Science – The 500,000th pacemaker operation in the UK has taken place - at the same hospital, St George’s, London, which carried out the first such procedure in 1958. …

Mrs Trudie Lobban, founder of the Arrhythmia Alliance, said: “Although implants have increased in the UK by 5% each year, we need an increase of 15% per annum to be in line with European implant rates by 2016. 100,000 sudden cardiac deaths occur in the UK every year, yet 80% of these could possibly be avoided if diagnosed and treated appropriately.” …

Previously the size of the devices meant they had to be worn, normally around the neck, with connecting wires into the heart to deliver electrical impulses. The earliest pacemakers were even plugged into mains electricity, leaving patients stuck in hospital and at the mercy of the electricity supply.

The first implanted pacemaker in the UK was the size of a pram wheel. Now devices are smaller than a matchbox and weigh between 20 - 50g. Today, pacemakers are software-controlled, allowing them to be programmed from a small external computer and their batteries last seven years without a recharge.

The 500,000th fitting was one of the latest generation of pacemakers, a biventricular ICD. It was received by Karl Sidhu from Camberley, Surrey, to resynchronise his heart muscle function, which was not working as well as it should after a series of heart attacks.

As well as preventing his heart from going too slowly, the pacemaker will improve co-ordination between the upper and lower chambers, and right and left sides of the heart.

David Ward, the senior consultant cardiologist at St George’s Hospital, said: “Implanting pacemakers has become almost routine in the UK, but there is nothing routine about it for patients. Mr Sidhu represents one of the tens of thousands of people in Britain who have had their lives improved thanks to a pacemaker and this milestone should be celebrated.” (04/27/09)
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BBC Medical Science — Vitamin D is an effective treatment for prostate cancer in some patients, a UK study suggests. A once daily dose reduced PSA level - an indicator of severity of disease - by as much as half in 20% of patients. There has been much interest in vitamin D in prostate cancer after studies linking lower risk of the disease to higher sunlight exposure, the researchers said.

One expert agreed the findings were encouraging but said it needed to be tested in a bigger population. The trial - results of which are due to be published in the journal BJU International - was set up after one patient got better when his wife bought him some vitamin D tablets.

Professor Jonathan Waxman, said the example had prompted him to assess the effects in a wider group of patients. Out of 26 men with recurrent prostate cancer, who took a daily dose of vitamin D2 bought from the chemist, five responded to the treatment. In two the PSA level, fell by more than half, in two by 25-50% and in one man it fell by less than 25%. The effects in one man were sustained for 36 months.

Study leader Professor Jonathan Waxman, from Imperial College London, said vitamin D therapy was effective and well-tolerated. “It’s very interesting - there has been no significant trial of vitamin D. This is a treatment which is unlikely to have significant toxicity and is a welcome addition to the therapeutic options for patients with prostate cancer.”

He agreed that a further trial in a larger number of patients, comparing vitamin D with a dummy pill was warranted. One theory is that vitamin D interferes with the effect of the androgen receptor, which is stimulated by hormones such as testosterone and implicated in prostate cancer.

John Neate, chief executive of The Prostate Cancer Charity, said it was not the first study looking at vitamin D in the disease but a consensus on the benefits had not been reached. “This small scale study investigating the use of vitamin D as a ’stand alone’ treatment for men with progressive prostate cancer provides a valuable additional perspective. Many men with prostate cancer may wonder whether they should take vitamin D supplements to control their disease. This study does not answer that question, but maintaining a good level of vitamin D is recommended as part of a generally healthy lifestyle.” (04/27/09)
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BBC Technology — A disc that can store 500 gigabytes (GB) of data, equivalent to 100 DVDs, has been unveiled by General Electric. The micro-holographic disc, which is the same size as existing DVD discs, is aimed at the archive industry. But the company believes it can eventually be used in the consumer market place and home players.

Blu-ray discs, which are used to store high definition movies and games, can currently hold between 25GB and 50GB. Micro-holographic discs can store more data than DVDs or Blu-ray because they store information on the disc in three dimensions, rather than just pits on the surface of the disc.

The challenge for this area of technology has been to increase the reflectivity of the holograms that are stored on the discs so that players can be used to both read and write to the discs.

Brian Lawrence, who leads GE’s Holographic Storage said on the GE Research blog: “Very recently, the team at GE has made dramatic improvements in the materials enabling significant increases in the amount of light that can be reflected by the holograms.”

The higher reflectivity that can be achieved, the more capacity for the disc. While the technology is still in the laboratory stage, GE believes it will take off because players can be built which are backwards compatible with existing DVD and Blu-ray technologies.

In a statement the firm said: “The hardware and formats are so similar to current optical storage technology that the micro-holographic players will enable consumers to play back their CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs.”

”GE’s breakthrough is a huge step toward bringing our next generation holographic storage technology to the everyday consumer,” said Mr Lawrence in a statement. “The day when you can store your entire high definition movie collection on one disc and support high resolution formats like 3D television is closer than you think.” (04/27/09)
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BBC Health
– The United States and the European Union have urged
travellers to Mexico to exercise caution, amid concerns over the spread
of the swine flu virus. … Cases are also confirmed in Canada, the US
and Spain. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the US - which has
40 confirmed cases - was taking the issue “very
seriously”.

World Health Organization (WHO) experts
are meeting to consider raising the global pandemic alert level. The UN
has warned that the virus has the potential to become a pandemic. But
it says the world is better prepared than ever to deal with the
threat.

Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said on
Monday that 149 people - all aged between 20 and 50 - had now died of
suspected swine flu and that number was expected to continue to rise.
He said only 20 of the deaths had been confirmed to be from swine flu
and test results were due on the rest. …

Earlier,
the WHO said there were 40 laboratory-confirmed cases of swine flu in
the US, 26 in Mexico, six in Canada and one in Spain. Tests are also
being carried out on individuals or groups in New Zealand, Australia,
Brazil, Britain and Israel who fell ill following travel to Mexico.
…

There is currently no vaccine for this new
strain, but severe cases can be treated with antiviral medication. The
WHO said it had not made any recommendations about travel restrictions.
But spokesman Gregory Hartl said the fact that an emergency committee
meeting had been brought forward by a day showed the urgency with which
the organisation was treating the issue.

The
committee could decide to raise the pandemic level from its current
level of three, if it believes the virus is showing a sustained ability
to pass from human to human. The WHO is advising all countries to be
vigilant for seasonally unusual flu or pneumonia-like symptoms among
their populations - particularly among young healthy adults, a
characteristic of past pandemics. A top US health official warned that
there could be worse to come.

“From what we
understand in Mexico, I think people need to be ready for the idea that
we could see more severe cases in this country and possibly deaths,”Richard Besser, acting head of the US Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, told ABC television. (04/27/09)
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There are number of indications that the U.S. economy is showing signs
of life, but it will be weeks — if not months — before these glimmers
may assemble into a firm recovery. At that point, it would be a minimum
of an additional three months before a U.S. recovery could foster a
global recovery. This means that for the second quarter, STRATFOR is
able to take a pass on this part of our forecast. Either this quarter
will be the dark before the dawn, or it will be the dark before
midnight. Either way, it will be dark. A noticeable recovery will have
to wait until the third quarter. …

Undoubtedly, there is plenty of bad news — stock market surges tend to be the first major sign that the U.S. economy is healing, but the stock market cannot seem to find its feet, and employment remains well off ideal levels. Yet in the latter half of the first quarter, there were several developments indicating that the credit chokehold that caused the American recession to go global has begun to slacken. The availability of credit is the critical issue when evaluating this recession. Until firms and consumers can reliably borrow, economic growth cannot recover.

There are limited signs that credit is indeed loosening, and that some life is creeping back into the U.S. economy. Recent changes in accounting rules in the United States and Europe should grant banks the confidence they need to resume lending, independent of anything the governments might attempt. The Obama stimulus package — albeit far from perfect for actually stimulating the economy — is beginning to take effect. Retail sales have been surprisingly buoyant and since consumer spending comprises 70 percent of the American economy, this is a critical factor. Even more important is the fact that the stock of inventories has dropped for six consecutive months (September 2008 to February 2009, the latest month for which data is available) in the steepest decline on record. With inventories low, producers will soon be getting orders. That is how economic recoveries begin. There are even flickers of activity in the most moribund U.S. economic sector: housing.

But even if the United States economy is indeed showing signs of life, four caveats must kept in mind.

First, even a robust resumption in U.S. growth will not begin on any specific date. Instead, there will be increasingly bright glimmers of light here and there that will not be fully recognized until six months after the fact. It appears that the second quarter may be a transition quarter for the United States, with the more noticeable growth happening later in the year.

Second, the future of the American automotive industry his shifted from bleak to dark, with General Motors Corp. in particular planning for imminent bankruptcy (and GM is not the worst off of the Detroit Three). The dislocations caused by this industry’s implosion will be felt far and wide and even if they somehow do not delay the recovery, they are certain to have a material impact on how serious the average American views the recession as being.

Third, a resumption in growth in the United States historically does not mean an immediate rebound in either income or employment figures — both tend to be lagging indicators — particularly if the automotive industry breaks apart. Therefore, even if the recession does let up in the second quarter and growth turns nominally positive, that does not mean that most Americans will feel like the situation has improved. Bear in mind that it did not become conventional wisdom that the United States’ 2001 recession — which actually ended in October 2001 — had ended until 2004. Dispelling Americans’ mental gloom required more than two years of strong and sustained growth.

Fourth, while STRATFOR is certain that the U.S. economy will lead the world out of recession — the roughly $10 trillion American consumer market will demand products from, and thus generate growth in, Asia and Europe — STRATFOR is equally certain that there will be a lag of one to three quarters between a U.S. recovery and a global recovery. Most of Asia has suffered export plunges of at least 50 percent, and industrial output is down by a third the world over. Even if the Americans already have eaten through existing inventory, it will take some time for foreign suppliers to spin their industrial bases back up. The global system does not turn on a dime.

This means in the quarter ahead STRATFOR actually gets to opt out of taking a hard stance on this issue. If the United States does not recover, the world will remain mired in recession. If the United States begins to recover, the world will remain mired in recession and will begin pulling out later in the year. Either way, the second quarter is not going to be a comfortable time; it just might be slightly less uncomfortable for the Americans. (04/23/09)
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The Nation — When Michelle
Obama began planting an organic garden on the South
Lawn of the White House recently, there was no doubt she was sending a
message, but the message was more subversive and far-reaching than most
American media coverage recognized. On March 20, joined by a class of
local fifth graders, the first lady lifted the first shovels of dirt onto a
1,100-square-foot plot that will feature fifty-five kinds of vegetables,
including spinach, peppers, arugula, kale, collards and tomatoes (but no
beets–the president reportedly does not like beets). Various herbs and
berries will also be grown in the garden, which is fully visible to the
thousands of tourists and other pedestrians that pass by the White House
daily. (There will also be two boxes of bees for pollination.)

Michelle Obama’s stated message was simple and was clearly aimed at her fellow
Americans: fresh food tastes better and is better for you,
so kids and grown-ups alike should eat lots more of it. “A real,
delicious heirloom tomato is one of the sweetest things you’ll ever
eat,” she told the 10-year-olds, adding that freshly picked
vegetables were what prompted her daughters to try new kinds of
foods.

What made Obama’s message so subversive was something she left
unsaid: the food most Americans eat nowadays is not fresh, tasty
or healthy. The superiority of fresh ingredients may be obvious to
Italians, but it is a truth most Americans long ago forgot, if they ever
knew it in the first place. Over the past fifty years, the United
States has been transformed into a fast food nation, in author Eric
Schlosser’s phrase. What the typical American eats is not so
much food as it is highly processed food derivatives that have traveled
thousands of miles since leaving the farm, losing along the way most of
the flavor and nutritional value they once possessed. To disguise such
losses, food manufacturers overload products with fats, salts and
sweeteners, especially corn syrup–additives that, along with the
massive portions typically served in the United States, help explain why
nearly one in three Americans is obese.

Now, by publicly championing fresh local food, Michelle Obama clearly hopes
to entice Americans away from their junk food past to a healthier, more
delicious future. And that is what makes her message so far-reaching.
Change America’s eating habits and you can change the world.

Shifting to a greener diet would be good not only for the health of
America’s children and families but the health of the planet. (04/21/09)
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BBC Ocean Science – “If you encourage a man to fish to abandonment, he will deplete the
oceans in a day; but if you encourage him to fish for a sustainable
profit, he will manage his stocks for a lifetime.” …

The European Commission’s green paper on reforming the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is about as honest a piece of analysis as you will see from a governmental body. Stocks “have been overfished for decades”, and the fleet remains “too large for the available resources”. Overall poor performance - ecologically and economically - is “due to chronic overcapacity, of which overfishing is both a cause and a consequence”. Narrow, short-term political concerns have led EU member governments to “request countless derogations, exceptions and specific measures” - a fragmented picture that makes sustainable management impossible.

The commission’s headline statistics are scary: 30% of EU fish stocks are outside safe biological limits (ie at risk of collapse), and 88% are fished beyond their maximum sustainable yield (ie heading towards eventual collapse, and yielding less profit than they would if they were more robust). For North Sea cod - the touchstone stock for UK consumers - 93% of fish are caught before they can reproduce. Yes, you read that correctly - 93%.

In fact, just about every facet of the green paper could have been written by one of the environmental organisations that have been publicising the parlous state of EU fisheries for more than a decade. Except for one, and that’s the most important facet of all - the solution.

I must try here to avoid lumping all environmental NGOs into one basket - they’re as different as fishermen themselves - but it’s not uncommon, shall we say, to read prescriptions that are entirely top-down - mandating quotas, mandating limits on days at sea, mandating types of gear. All those things have their place. But among the commission’s favoured solutions is something that has traditionally been anathema to many regulators and environmental groups alike - working with the industry.

To first borrow and then distort a famous phrase of the development movement: if you encourage a man to fish to abandonment, he will deplete the oceans in a day; but if you encourage him to fish for a sustainable profit, he will manage his stocks for a lifetime. The logic is that if fishermen have an incentive to preserve stocks for a later day, they will. Some countries (including, among EU states, Denmark) have established transferable quota schemes, where fishermen are given the right to fish a portion of the stock for many years - perhaps for ever.

There are many variants of the basic idea, and it isn’t a complete solution - but broadly speaking, the evidence from Iceland and New Zealand and the US and Australia is that it can be part of a solution. (04/21/09)
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RealClimate: A Book Review — Did you know that in 1965 the U.S. Department of Agriculture planted
a particular variety of lilac in more than seventy locations around the
U.S. Northeast, to detect the onset of spring — in turn to be used to
determine the appropriate timing of corn planting and the like? The
records the USDA have kept show that those same lilacs are blooming as
much as two weeks earlier than they did in 1965. April has, in a very
real sense, become May. This is one of the interesting facts that
you’ll read about in Amy Seidl’s book, Early Spring,
a hot-off-the-press essay about the impacts of climate change on the
world immediately around us – the forest, the birds, the butterflies in
our backyards.

The brilliant title of Seidl’s book was one of the reasons that it
caught my attention. The other was that I have realized I need to
better educate myself about the impact of climate change on everyday
life. I’ve been dismissive of the idea that the average person can
really detect the impacts of recent warming on, for example, the timing
of the apple-blossom season, but I’ve been taken to task by several of
RealClimate’s readers for this. If you are paying attention, they have
argued, the changes are actually rather obvious.

Of course, Amy Seidl is not the average person. Rather, she’s a
trained ecologist with a Ph.D. (as well as an avid gardener) and she’s
clearly paying extremely close attention. Her book is the first one I
have read that effectively brings home the tangible impacts that global
warming will have – is having – on our everyday lives. “We are
increasingly familiar,” she writes, of images of melting glaciers, “but
how do we give them relevance in our lives? From my window I see no
glaciers.” She answers her own question with a series of vignettes,
some from her own experiences, many more from her extensive research
(well referenced throughout the book).

Cardinals, robins and cowbirds are all arriving earlier in Vermont
than they did a century ago. Kingfishes, fox sparrows and towhees are
not. Why the difference? The answer, as Seidl explains, is that the
former group has the ability to respond ecologically to the changes,
because these birds cue their arrival to temperature. The latter, it
appears, respond more directly to temporal cues, that won’t change even
as climate does. It’s obvious from this example that the make up of
bird life in Vermont – the species distribution – will change over
time. This may not necessarily be a bad thing of course. On the other
hand, it turns out that the robins are the most important host for West
Nile virus; the early bird gets the worm, so to speak, and passes it
along to humans.

Maple seedlings need about 100 days of below-freezing weather. As
this becomes rarer, fewer maples will populate the forests. This, Seidl
explains, is why species-range models predict the decline and eventual
loss of sugar maple (at least in New England) in the future. But, she
notes, the models don’t take into account the full complexity of the
system, such as the impact of competition among different species. So
we don’t really know what will happen, or how fast. What we do know is
that maple-sugar farmers have noticed – and documented – an earlier
maple sugaring season over the last few decades.

There are many other examples in Early Spring both of clear
climate-related changes (such as the early arrival of robins), and of
less clear-cut changes (the maple sugaring season). Seidl doesn’t make
the common mistake of assuming that the more ambiguous examples are
necessarily due to climate change. For example, she quotes a
maple-sugarer who points out that technological changes have allowed
them to tap maples earlier, and hence that the timing of sugaring is a
weak measure of climate change. The point though, is that even rather
minor changes are, after all, being noticed. And if much larger changes
do occur, as predicted, they will most certainly have impacts we can’t
ignore, even if we don’t live in the Arctic or in Bangladesh. In other
words, Seidl tells us, listen to the farmers and gardeners, and the
observations of regular people: they are meaningful. (04/19/09)
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