7 genetically modified animals that glow in the dark - The Week

Why? Why? Oh, why do we do these things? Does this really further medical science? It seems many think so. Glow in the dark animals created from transgenic engineering are intensely weird to me. Here is an article I found:
7 genetically modified animals that glow in the dark - The Week

Monopolistic Utilities Know Renewable Energy Will Cut Their Profits, So They Stall It

There's one overhwelming dirigible-size reason for-profit (and often monopolistic) utility companies -- that transmit and sell most of America's energy -- generally discourage, if not crush, residential solar (and other renewable) energy: fear of large scale loss of profit.

Last Friday, I wrote a commentary on a Hawaii for-profit electrical utility company that was taking new measures to dampen the selling (called "net metering" in the industry) of excessive solar energy back for distribution to other utility customers. The commentary was entitled, "Booming Solar Energy Halted by Hawaii Utility Because Sun Produces Too Much Power!" 

The BuzzFlash at Truthout column was based on information provided in a Scientific American (no bastion of leftist bias) article entitled, "A Solar Boom So Successful, It's Been Halted: Photovoltaics proved so successful in Hawaii that the local utility, HECO, has instituted policies to block further expansion." Thus far, the BuzzFlash at Truthout commentary has received 11,000 Facebook likes and a lot of shocked readers. 

However, there was a small number of alleged electrical engineers (and they may have very well been, instead of paid company shills which has become a common and legal practice in comments sections) who objected to both the Scientific American article and the BF/TO account of it.  They argued that "liberals" and "eco-types" don't know about how complicated and aged the electrical grids in the US generally are (although this was conceded in both the BF and Scientific American accounts).  That was the claim of the Hawaiian utility in question, HECO, which asserts on their website that they are avid supporters of renewable energy, just like Chevron or Shell does.

Read entire article here:

Monopolistic Utilities Know Renewable Energy Will Cut Their Profits, So They Stall It

Mo' Fresh. Mo' Betta.™

Heavy use of herbicide Roundup linked to health dangers-U.S. study

TOP NEWS

Heavy use of herbicide Roundup linked to health dangers-U.S. study

Thu, Apr 25 13:49 PM EDT

* Study says chemical residues linked to disease

* Roundup developer Monsanto says glyphosate is safe

* Researchers say more study is needed

By Carey Gillam

April 25 (Reuters) - Heavy use of the world's most popular herbicide, Roundup, could be linked to a range of health problems and diseases, including Parkinson's, infertility and cancers, according to a new study.

The peer-reviewed report, published last week in the scientific journal Entropy, said evidence indicates that residues of "glyphosate," the chief ingredient in Roundup weed killer, which is sprayed over millions of acres of crops, has been found in food.

Those residues enhance the damaging effects of other food-borne chemical residues and toxins in the environment to disrupt normal body functions and induce disease, according to the report, authored by Stephanie Seneff, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Anthony Samsel, a retired science consultant from Arthur D. Little, Inc. Samsel is a former private environmental government contractor as well as a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

"Negative impact on the body is insidious and manifests slowly over time as inflammation damages cellular systems throughout the body," the study says.

We "have hit upon something very important that needs to be taken seriously and further investigated," Seneff said.

Environmentalists, consumer groups and plant scientists from several countries have warned that heavy use of glyphosate is causing problems for plants, people and animals.

The EPA is conducting a standard registration review of glyphosate and has set a deadline of 2015 for determining if glyphosate use should be limited. The study is among many comments submitted to the agency.

Monsanto is the developer of both Roundup herbicide and a suite of crops that are genetically altered to withstand being sprayed with the Roundup weed killer.

These biotech crops, including corn, soybeans, canola and sugarbeets, are planted on millions of acres in the United States annually. Farmers like them because they can spray Roundup weed killer directly on the crops to kill weeds in the fields without harming the crops.

Roundup is also popularly used on lawns, gardens and golf courses.

Monsanto and other leading industry experts have said for years that glyphosate is proven safe, and has a less damaging impact on the environment than other commonly used chemicals.

Jerry Steiner, Monsanto's executive vice president of sustainability, reiterated that in a recent interview when questioned about the study.

"We are very confident in the long track record that glyphosate has. It has been very, very extensively studied," he said.

Of the more than two dozen top herbicides on the market, glyphosate is the most popular. In 2007, as much as 185 million pounds of glyphosate was used by U.S. farmers, double the amount used six years ago, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data.

Heavy use of herbicide Roundup linked to health dangers-U.S. study

Mo' Fresh. Mo' Betta.™

My New Years Resolution

Video: GMO seeds grow into big fight on Kauai

Video: GMO seeds grow into big fight on Kauai | Watch PBS NewsHour Online | PBS Video

Farming 808: Green America:The Skinny on Alternative Sweeteners...

Farming 808: Green America:The Skinny on Alternative Sweeteners...: Fifty to sixty percent of US sugar comes from sugar beets—and almost all of that comes from a genetically modified (GM) version of the plant...

Mo' Fresh. Mo' Betta.™

7 Worst Ingredients in Processed Foods

 By Dr. Mercola

More than 3,000 food additives -- preservatives, flavorings, colors and other ingredients -- are added to US foods, and this is one of the key reasons why I recommend avoiding most of the processed foods that contain them.

While many well-meaning nutritionists will teach you the importance of reading food labels, the easiest way to eat healthy is to stick with foods that need no food label at all… When was the last time you saw an ingredients list on a grass-fed steak or a bunch or broccoli?

There’s a good chance, though, that you do eat some processed foods, and if this is the case reading the label is invaluable. There are literally thousands of ‘red flags’ to watch out for in the foods you eat, but a handful take the proverbial cake for worst of the worst.

The Seven Worst Ingredients in Processed Foods

Andrea Donsky, founder of NaturallySavvy.com, did a wonderful job of highlighting seven ingredients you should avoid eating in the infographic above. She refers to them as the "Scary Seven."1 If you see any of these on a food label, promptly put itback on the shelf; if you value your health, you don’t want to be putting these in your body. Let’s take a look at each in detail:

1. Artificial Sweeteners

Experiments have found that sweet taste, regardless of its caloric content, enhances your appetite, and consuming artificial sweeteners has been shown to lead to even greater weight gain than consuming sugar. Aspartamehas been found to have the most pronounced effect, but the same applies for other artificial sweeteners, such as acesulfame potassium, sucralose and saccharin.

Yet, weight gain is only the beginning of why artificial sweeteners should generally be avoided. Aspartame, for instance, is a sweet-tasting neurotoxin. As a result of its unnatural structure, your body processes the amino acids found in aspartame very differently from a steak or a piece of fish.

The amino acids in aspartame literally attack your cells, even crossing the blood-brain barrier to attack your brain cells, creating a toxic cellular overstimulation, called excitotoxicity, similar to MSG.

Further, inflammatory bowel disease may be caused or exacerbated by the regular consumption of the popular artificial sweetener Splenda (sucralose), as it inactivates digestive enzymes and alters gut barrier function.2

Previous research also found that sucralose can destroy up to 50 percent of your beneficial gut flora.3 While you certainly don’t want to overdo it on sugar, there's little doubt in my mind that artificial sweeteners can be even worse for your health than sugar and even fructose.

Read entire article here:
7 Worst Ingredients in Processed Foods

Dramatic Health Recoveries Reported | Vitality Magazine | Toronto Canada alternative health, natural medicine and green living

Are genetically modified (GM) foods making you sick – I mean really sick? Up until recently, all that we could say was thank goodness you’re not a lab rat; GM feed messes them up big time. GMOs (genetically modified organisms) appear to trigger the immune systems of both mice and rats as if they were under attack. In addition, the gastrointestinal system is adversely affected, animals age more quickly, and vital organs are damaged. When fed GM foods, lab animals can also become infertile, have smaller or sterile offspring, increased infant mortality, and even hair growing in their mouths. Have I got your attention?

Biotechnology corporations such as Monsanto try to distort or deny the evidence, sometimes pointing to their own studies that supposedly show no reactions. But when scientists such as French toxicologist G.E. Seralini re-­analyzed Monsanto’s raw data, it actually showed that the rats fed GM corn suffered from clear signs of toxicity – evidence that industry scientists skillfully overlooked. Today, thousands of physicians and nutritionists do just that, and they report that a wide variety of health conditions improve after people make the change. Here’s some recent examples:

1) Trial consultant LaDonna Carlton, had to take two pills, three times a day to suppress the painful cramps and constant diarrhea associated with her irritable bowel syndrome. “My doctor told me I would be on this forever,” says LaDonna. But then she met a new doctor, internist Emily Lindner, MD. “The first thing she did,” says LaDonna, “was take me off GMOs,” including soy, corn, canola oil, and sugar. “Within two months,” she says, “I didn’t need the medication any longer.”

- See more at:

Dramatic Health Recoveries Reported | Vitality Magazine | Toronto Canada alternative health, natural medicine and green living

Farming 808: American Revolution

Farming 808: American Revolution: Mo' Fresh. Mo' Betta. Foods.™

The Ultimate Guide to Traveling When You’re Broke

Think you don’t have enough money to travel? Think again. Travel guru Matt Kepnes puts that myth to rest with this guide to traveling on little (or no) money.

Money

This is something I hear from everyone I talk to.

“Matt, I simply don’t have enough money to travel.”

This problem and how to overcome it probably my most asked question.

I answer this question in a plethora of posts, e-mails, tweets, and Facebook posts. Long-term readers might even be getting sick of me discussing this subject because it is one I talk about so much. One of the questions on my recent Q&A was about how someone who doesn’t work in travel can actually afford to travel. “What can they do?” they asked me.

Since this question comes up so often, I like to constantly remind people of this fact:

You do not need to be rich to travel. Let’s repeat that.

See the whole article here:
The Ultimate Guide to Traveling When You’re Broke

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a Corporate Coup in the Making

Trade agreements that emphasize openness should be treated with caution. When the term partnership is used, an even warier eye should be cast at texts, negotiations, and agreements. Where is the pin that underlies the agreement?

On November 13, 2013 WikiLeaks released the draft text of the entire Intellectual Property Rights Chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). As noted in the preamble, “This chapter published by WikiLeaks is perhaps the most controversial chapter of the TPP due to its wide-ranging effects on medicines, publishers, internet services, civil liberties and biological patents.”

The document’s wording has the recognizable features of the Obama administration’s trade policy, an unsurprising fact given that much of it was authored by United States Trade Representative Michael Froman. It says virtually nothing about the rights of individual citizens, and everything about the rights of states and corporations. An interesting feature of the draft text is the extent to which it discloses various disagreements of the parties.

Tiny and at times plucky New Zealand was none too thrilled by a range of the US positions in the chapter, a position that has gotten sharper as negotiations have gone on. Two-hundred and fifty references involving New Zealand are featured, of which 60 show support for the US position. Peru, Vietnam, Chile, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei tended to keep company with NZ at many a turn.

- See more at: The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a Corporate Coup in the Making

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The video Shell doesn't want you to see from Greenpeace on Vimeo.

Shell's priceless Grand Prix moment BREAKING: Our @Shell Grand Prix ceremony video has been banned from YouTube. So, we put it back up Grab it while you can. And reupload it. Tell Shell what we think of #censorship" Join the movement to savethearctic.org

The Conversation: Mark Smallwood, Rodale Institute | BUSINESSWEEKLY

J.I. Rodale founded the Rodale Institute in Maxatawny Township as a place to study ways to grow food that would be in line with nature. He started with a simple philosophy: healthy soil, healthy food, healthy people. And Mark Smallwood says that remains Rodale's mantra today. Smallwood sat down recently, during the institute's off-season, when the place isn't buzzing with farm activities, to talk about the growth of the organic food industry and to chop down some myths about the benefits of genetically modified crops.

Business Weekly: If J.I. Rodale were here today, what would he say about how far the organization has come and how far agriculture has come?

Mark Smallwood: If he were here today, I think he would be very pleased. When he began to investigate agriculture in the organic realm, he was the first person in North America to use these two words together: "organic agriculture." The industry was at zero. Today, just in the United States, it is a $31 billion industry. There's about 15,000 certified organic farmers recognized by the USDA. So I think he would be jumping for joy for what's been accomplished.

BW: The word "organic" in food labeling has become like a marketing buzzword. What's your thought on how accurately we're labeling food today?

Smallwood: Organic has a seal. It's recognized by the USDA; it is to be trusted, and it is highly regulated. We get inspected every year because we're certified organic. So does every organic farm. That is not necessarily the case for any farmer that grows conventionally. There's no inspector on their farm every year. There is no designation for the word "natural" in the food industry. The USDA does not recognize it, and so I could put the label "natural" on my car, and it would be acceptable.

BW: 100 percent natural?

Smallwood: My car actually is all natural, and so I can say that, too. The other buzzword that has come to light most recently is "local." It doesn't necessarily mean that locally grown food is necessarily safe or more healthy. It would depend upon the farmer's practices, and so we would say organic and local trump everything. So if you can get both of those together, you're in pretty good shape, and the organic label is the one that you can trust.

BW: Is the government too strict? Are there too many rules? Some farmers will say, "I grow naturally, I don't use pesticides, but I don't want to deal with the government to be certified organic."

Smallwood: That's one of the barriers to being certified: the paperwork, the regulations. Farmers tend to be very independent people, and they don't want the government necessarily in their business and in their life. But if you're going to be certified organic, that's part of it.

BW: Let me get your thoughts on genetically modified crops. Have they been a good thing or a bad thing for the food system?

Smallwood: OK, good question. Let me just give you some facts and not opinion. About 75 percent of what you find in the grocery store contains genetically modified ingredients. So you shop tomorrow, look in your cart, and about ¾ of what you purchased, especially the processed foods, have genetically modified ingredients. We have been growing conventional right next to organic for 32 years. We've been looking at things like yields, economic values, energy uses, leaching of pesticides into the groundwater and so on. Five years ago, we switched out our farming systems trial and began to grow genetically modified corn and soy right next to organic, and now we have five years of data coupled with 27 years of data previous to that, and here's what we know 1. After 32 years, the yields are no different. So when Monsanto and the other large ag seed companies say to the farmers, "You're going to increase your yield," it's just not true, and we've proven it. During periods of drought, we have outperformed even the GMO seed that was meant to be marketed as drought resistant. We use 45 percent less energy mainly because we don't use any of the petroleum-based pesticides and synthetic fertilizers. One more fact: You plant genetically modified corn, for example. It does perform, and it works really well in the beginning, and it may outperform organic in the beginning. But what we're finding out is that the yields go down and costs go up because the weeds are becoming resistant, and we saw that in just our third year here. After the third year, we had to spray Roundup plus Atrazine, which is a carcinogen; it's toxic, it's poison. My guys have to get dressed up in suits to go out and spray it.

BW: So genetically modified crops: bad.

Smallwood: Just stating the facts. This is information that we have gathered here at the Rodale Institute on our farm in our trials. That's what we know.

Entire article is here:
The Conversation: Mark Smallwood, Rodale Institute | BUSINESSWEEKLY

Feinstein to Obama: Move without Congress on GMOs

Feinstein to Obama: Move without Congress on GMOs

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is urging President Obama to use the power of his office to require labels on food containing genetically engineered ingredients.

Legislation pending in both the House and Senate would force companies to tell consumers which products contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs), though there is no clear path forward in the divided Congress.

Major agriculture and biotechnology firms oppose the effort, and have poured millions of dollars into campaigns to defeat state ballot initiatives seeking to mandate a labeling system.

But Feinstein contends that imposing a federal labeling system could be achieved through a simple directive from the president to his Food and Drug Administration.

“Your administration should re-evaluate the Food and Drug Administration’s outdated policy that genetically engineered food does not need to disclose this fact on required labels,” the California Democrat wrote Friday in a letter to Obama.

“It is my view that the FDA does have the authority to require labeling for genetically engineered food products,” she said.

Specifically, Feinstein argues that the Food, Drug, & Cosmetic Act (FD&C) prohibits the misbranding of food, including “misleading” labels. Any label that fails to reveal material facts about the product is misleading, according to the statute.

Current FDA policy, rooted in a 1992 policy decision, does not consider a product’s inclusion of GMOs ingredients as material information that must be disclosed.

But Feinstein said the use of genetically enhanced ingredients has changed in the years, and she pointed to a July New York Times poll that found 93 percent of Americans favor GMO labeling.

The FDA has remained largely silent on the issue. Michael Taylor, the agency’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine, formerly worked for the biotechnology firm Monsanto and has recused himself from the issue.