Brainstormy
Brainstormy's JournalIs God messing with Glenn Beck?
After reading about Beck's throat paralysis yesterday I had a brief "Wow, maybe there is a god!" moment. It passed, but it brought me back again to what I consider the most puzzling quality of committed believers. This is the ability to interpret everything positive as evidence of an intervening personal deity while absolving that same deity from anything negative. The mental acrobatics required to do this are sometimes just amazing. How, for example, could Beck NOT interpret this as a sign from god telling him to STFU?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/11/glenn-becks-vocal-cords-temporarily-paralyzed-tearful-monologue-cue-cards_n_3421174.html?ir=Politics&ref=topbar
BTW: about a year ago Beck announced he had macular degeneration and would probably be blind in a year. Whatever.
Impact of Sequestration on the National Institutes of Health
Source: National Institutes of Health
On March 1, 2013, as required by statute, President Obama signed an order initiating sequestration. The sequestration requires NIH to cut 5 percent or $1.55 billion of its fiscal year (FY) 2013 budget. NIH must apply the cut evenly across all programs, projects, and activities (PPAs), which are primarily NIH institutes and centers. This means every area of medical research will be affected.
Read more: http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2013/nih-03.htm
Food Choice By the Numbers
If you're like me you may get tired of hearing about fat, lazy Americans and our horrible food choices. I think too many of our food choices are being made for us.
Corporate control of agriculture means farmers have fewer choices in what they grow, significantly reducing consumer choice in foods we can buy economically and deciding for us what goes into processed foods. It eliminates choice by destroying biodiversity, leaving us fewer varieties and species from which we can eat, and requiring us to consume more toxins, antibiotics, hormones, and pesticides. Corporate strangleholds on Washington and our politicians mean that our own tax dollars are being used to subsidize a very few commodity crops--the ones that are fueling the obesity epidemic, driving up health care costs, and further driving up our taxes.
Here are a few numbers that show how our choices are being narrowed.
10 corporations control nearly 70 percent of the world's seed market.
If you eat corn, there’s an 80 that the seeds came from Monsanto.
If you eat anything made from soybeans, there’s a 93 percent chance it came from Monsanto.
90 percent of the world’s transgenic crops are now owned by Monsanto.
90 percent of US farm subsidies fund only 5 crops.
More than 50 percent of the beef, pork and turkey markets are concentrated in just 4 companies.
80 percent of the antibiotics sold in the US go to food animals, not people.
A full 95 percent of the calories we eat now come from only 30 varieties of plants..
Up to 60 percent of processed foods already have some genetically engineered ingredients that many consumers would like to avoid.
6 companies control 80 percent of the pesticide market.
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