May 11, 2015

Invite Some Germs to Dinner

WITH the recent recalls of millions of gallons of ice cream as well as several tons of hummus, pine nuts, frozen vegetables and various meat products, you might think the American food supply is an unholy mess. It’s not. It’s arguably the safest in the world.

Yet despite continually improving processing methods and quality controls, the number of cases of food-borne illness has remained stubbornly high since the 1990s, with the incidence of people getting sick from some pathogens increasing. Some experts wonder if we’ve reached a point of diminishing returns in food safety — whether our food could perhaps be too clean.

Industrial food sanitation practices — along with home cooks’ antibacterial veggie washes, chlorine bleach kitchen cleaners and sterilization cycle dishwashers — kill off so-called good bacteria naturally found in foods that bolster our health. Moreover, eliminating bad or pathogenic bacteria means we may not be exposed to the small doses that could inoculate us against intestinal crises.

“No one is saying you need to eat a peck of dirt before you die to be healthy,” said Jeffrey T. LeJeune, a professor and head of the food animal research program at Ohio State University in Wooster, Ohio. “But there is a line somewhere when it comes to cleanliness. We just don’t know where it is.”

The theory that there might be such a thing as “too clean” food stems from the hygiene hypothesis, which has been gaining traction over the last decade. It holds that our modern germaphobic ways may be making us sick by harming our microbiome, which comprises all the microscopic beasties — bacteria, viruses, fungi, mites, etc. — that live in and on our bodies.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/10/sunday-review/invite-some-germs-to-dinner.html

May 10, 2015

Porn and video game addiction are leading to 'masculinity crisis'.

A leading psychologist has warned that young men are facing a crisis of masculinity due to excessive use of video games and pornography.

Psychologist and professor emeritus at Stanford University Phillip Zimbardo has made the warnings, which form a major part of his latest book, Man (Dis)Connected.

In an interview on the BBC World Service's Weekend programme, Zimbardo spoke about the results of his study, an in-depth look into the lives of 20,000 young men and their relationships with video games and pornography.

He said: "Our focus is on young men who play video games to excess, and do it in social isolation - they are alone in their room."

"Now, with freely available pornography, which is unique in history, they are combining playing video games, and as a break, watching on average, two hours of pornography a week."

Zimbardo says there is a "crisis" amongst young men, a high number of whom are experiencing a "new form of addiction" to excessive use of pornography and video games.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/porn-and-video-game-addiction-are-leading-to-masculinity-crisis-says-stanford-prison-experiment-psychologist-10238211.html

May 10, 2015

Scottish nationalists tell Cameron: Ignore Scottish landslide at your peril

After sweeping almost all the seats in Scotland in Thursday's British election, the leader of the secessionist SNP cautioned Prime Minister David Cameron on Saturday: Ignore the wishes of Scottish voters at your peril.

Cameron's Conservatives stormed to a surprise overall majority in the national parliament, but scraped only one seat in Scotland while the Scottish National Party, less than nine months after losing an independence referendum, grabbed half of all the votes cast north of the border.

"My message today to Westminster is this: Scotland's voice will be heard in Westminster now more loudly than it has ever been before," SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon said in the shadow of the Forth Bridge outside the Scottish capital.

"As I told the prime minister when I spoke to him yesterday, it simply cannot be and will not be business as usual when it comes to Westminster's dealing with Scotland."

http://news.yahoo.com/scottish-nationalists-tell-cameron-ignore-scottish-landslide-peril-145908092.html

I'm fascinated by the narrative we encounter that scottish nationalism is good, but english nationalism is bad.

May 10, 2015

Prince releases Freddie Gray protest song ‘Baltimore’

Prince released his much-anticipated protest song about “Baltimore” on Saturday — one day before his scheduled “Rally 4 Peace” concert in the troubled city.

Oddly, the music he wrote to match his socio-political message could barely be more breezy.

Contrasting lyrics inspired by the death of Freddie Gray and the subsequent riots in Baltimore, Prince’s like-named song has the light, pop-rock panache of hits like “Raspberry Beret.”

It’s catchy — in this case, to a fault. Listeners may have trouble putting together its sober lyrics with the sometimes flighty tune, enlivened by several rousing guitar solos.

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/prince-releases-freddie-gray-protest-song-baltimore-article-1.2216360

BALTIMORE recorded at Paisley Park Studios, Chanhassen, Minnesota on www.myfoxtwincities.com/story/2895594…9kEJc.twitter. The original recording subsequently became a demo when Prince, that very same night - all alone in Studio A, played all the instruments on an entire new version of the song. The next morning Joshua Welton and Kirk Johnson transferred Prince's tracks in2 Studio B. and mixing began. As the song neared completion at Prince's behest Eryn Allen Kane graciously flew in on a moment's notice and graced the track with her angelic presence.

Speaking of presence, Prince was not during Eryn's vocal sessions. After being given the green light by Prince, via the studio intercom, Ms. Kane basically listened down 2 the track a few times and instinctively knew what was needed.

A powerhouse vocal arranger and producer in her own right - check this out:

the song grew wings instantly once Her had been laid down. The only thing left 2 do now was 2 find an ace mixing engineer who has a love 4 the smooth wave of analog but would still pack the punch the performances deserve. Dylan Dresdow was the 1st and only choice.
He instantly understood the importance of the song and did an excellent job in the delivery of this "baby."

Please know that all involved in this project never take for granted the privileges we have in this country. Let's all continue to fight the good fight and confront inhumanity on every level until the day it is no longer.

https://soundcloud.com/prince3eg/baltimore

May 10, 2015

NATO military exercises aim to send message of resolve to Russia

NATO countries are staging massive air, land and sea exercises across Russia's northern borders this month in response to warnings from the Kremlin and strategic analysts that President Vladimir Putin's threats to use nuclear weapons are more than bluster.

The exercises in Estonia, Lithuania and Norway involve more than 21,000 troops and state-of-the-art military hardware. Coupled with U.S. training of Ukrainian forces and the recent activation of a 3,000-strong rapid-reaction force to defend Eastern Europe, they appear intended to send a message to Moscow that the alliance is ready to defend its new members in Russia's backyard.

Troops, trainers and readiness testers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization have been bolstering defenses along what Eastern Europeans call the new Iron Curtain. Although it still divides East from West, this time there are former Soviet subjects on the western side of the ideological border.

NATO's widening presence along Russia's frontiers is a reaction to Putin's aggressive actions against Ukraine over the last year, which have rattled nerves throughout the arc of states that still has painful memories of postwar Soviet domination.

http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-russia-nato-nuclear-threat-20150507-story.html#page=1

May 10, 2015

California water cuts ignore past changes by some cities

In California's second-largest city, memories are still fresh of a devastating drought 25 years ago that saw the area's water supplies slashed by about a third.

Billions of dollars were invested to prepare for the next drought, an effort that included building the Western hemisphere's largest desalination plant, which opens this fall.

Yet the moves count for nothing under sweeping statewide cuts to urban water use approved this week that require hundreds of cities, counties and local agencies to reduce consumption between 8 percent and 36 percent from 2013 levels, starting June 1. The largest per-capita users must make the biggest percentage cuts, no matter how and where they get their water.

San Diego isn't the only place complaining. The Orange County Water District, which serves 2.4 million people near Los Angeles, wanted credit for sending wastewater through ground basins for drinking. It started recycling water in 2008 and is boosting production to 100 million gallons a day from 70 million.

http://www.kcra.com/news/california-water-cuts-ignore-past-changes-by-some-cities/32909872

May 10, 2015

Hillary Clinton the Populist Begins Courting the Plutocrats

One of Hillary Clinton's biggest applause lines in her early days on the campaign trail has come when she talks about getting big money out of politics—even when she's talking to the big-money donors.

It's one of the paradoxes of a campaign that regularly employs populist rhetoric while courting plutocrats. Clinton can't change the system unless she wins the election, a campaign official argued, and the only way to win the election is with the help of deep-pocketed allies.

Clinton's message on the campaign trail, where she's focused on casting herself as a "champion" for "everyday Americans" could get complicated by her courting of the one percent. That tension ramped up this week as Clinton arrived on the West Coast for a series of fundraisers for her campaign committee (to which individual donors can legally give a total of $5,400)—as well as some smaller meetings in Los Angeles and San Francisco with potential donors to Priorities USA Action, the Democratic super-PAC that can collect checks in unlimited amounts on her behalf.

Clinton put off fundraising for the first several weeks of the campaign in favor of living room and kaffeeklatsch politicking. Now, she's schmoozing with some of her party's highest rollers while some in her party are pushing her to take a more militant tone on behalf of the have-nots. Clinton's one-time Senate campaign manager, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, will be in Washington on Tuesday to unveil a liberal campaign manifesto with Senator Elizabeth Warren. Clinton has moved aggressively to preempt attacks from the left.

http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-05-08/hillary-clinton-s-big-donor-paradox

May 9, 2015

China's Maglev Train Prototype Could Reach Speeds of 1,800 MPH

Source: Gizmodo

A research team in China just successfully tested a blisteringly fast transportation concept: super-maglev, a high speed train that could theoretically hit speeds of up to 1,800 miles per hour. That's three times the speed of a passenger jet.

The concept, put forth by the Applied Superconductivity Laboratory of Southwest Jiaotong University, uses the same technique proposed for Elon Musk's Hyperloop: run the train inside a vacuum tube, removing air resistance and enabling super high speeds uninhibited by wind resistance. Research shows that, for vehicles traveling faster than 250 MPH, up to 83 percent of the energy used goes toward fighting aerodynamic resistance.

But with a (highly theoretical) top speed of 1,800 MPH, super-maglev would blow the doors off of Musk's 300 MPH trains. That's because the train inside the Evacuated Tube Transport loop only encounters one tenth of the air resistance of the outside environment.

Dr. Deng Zigang, who led the project, envisions applications beyond land-based transportation. He proposes similar vacuum tube technology could be used to launch vehicles into outer space, or enable super high speeds for military weapons.



Read more: http://gizmodo.com/chinas-maglev-train-prototype-could-reach-speeds-of-1-8-1574030943#

May 9, 2015

70th VE Day anniversary: Remembering Georgy Zhukov

Today is “V-E Day”, which is the cool guy 1940s newspaper man way of taking the phrase “Victory in Europe Day” and making it sound like an event some hospital put together to raise awareness for gonorrhea. Exactly seventy years ago today, the last shattered fragments of the Wehrmacht leadership sat in the demolished ruins of their burned-out capital and signed documents unconditionally surrendering to Allied Forces, thus marking the end of World War II in Europe and the final destruction of Nazi Germany once and for all. Naturally, the United States and U.K. immediately went to work jerking each other off about how they’d single handedly won the war by riding a Surfboard of Freedom into Normandy and then ruthlessly dick-slapping Nazis with their unstoppable Capitalist boners, even though anybody with a working knowledge of the Dewey Decimal System and/or an iPad can probably tell you that a vast majority of the heavy lifting in World War II was undertaken by the Fascist-demolishing warriors of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

Well the USSR hasn't exactly forgotten about the twenty million casualties they suffered in their inexorable grinding onslaught towards Berlin – there’s a reason the Russians refer to WWII as “The Great Patriotic War” – and every year since 1945 they’ve chosen to celebrate the anniversary of their victory in one of the most badass ways possible: by having those huge-ass awesome parades where they drive tanks and nuclear missile trucks right through the heart of Red Square in a formal and coordinated display of their giant armor-plated nutsacks:

The Moscow Victory Parade is an awesome thing to behold, and holding such a balls-out display of military force in such close proximity to that one building from Tetris honestly scared the fucking piss out of most Americans for the vast majority of Cold War. So, as the Russians prepare to hold the 70th anniversary of the event tomorrow, it’s probably as good a time as any to talk about the man who, among all the soldiers and commanders who served in any capacity for any country during World War II, probably contributed the most to making Victory in Europe a possibility: Marshal Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.

And if you have any questions as to whether or not the man who engineered some of Hitler’s most crushing military defeats was a hardcore badass in his day-to-day life, take a look at this and judge for yourself:

- See more at: http://badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=18699086166#sthash.paCiuisF.dpuf

May 9, 2015

VE Day anniversary: Church bells ring across UK

Source: BBC

Churches and cathedrals across the UK are ringing their bells as part of 70th anniversary commemorations of VE Day, the end of World War Two in Europe.

Bells rang out at St Paul's Cathedral for 70 minutes from 11:00 BST on the second day of celebrations.

A 1940s-themed concert will be held later at London's Horse Guards Parade.

Celebrations are also being held on the Channel Islands - the only part of the British Isles that was occupied by Nazis in WW2.


Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-32670639

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VE Day: Vladimir Putin thanks WWII allies at Moscow parade despite Western boycott

Russia has staged its largest military parade since the break-up of the Soviet Union to commemorate the 70th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.

Around 16,000 troops took part in the parade on Red Square that also showcased cutting-edge weapons, such as the next-generation Armata T-14 tank, in one of the biggest Victory Day celebrations in decades.

President Vladimir Putin thanked Russia's key WWII allies — the United States, Britain and France — at the huge parade amid a Western boycott.

In what is seen as punishment for Kremlin meddling in Ukraine, Russia's World War II allies boycotted the festivities, leaving Mr Putin to mark the day in the company of the leaders of China, Cuba and Venezuela.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-09/ve-day3a-moscow-marks-anniversary2c-putin-thanks-wwii-allies/6457856