I hate air pollution.
When I travel in Manila, I have to use an asthma inhaler to stop an attack. Here in the provinces, I only have to use an inhaler in spring, when they burn off the weeds in the fields.
However, science reporting on “green” issues often is so inaccurate that a lot of […]

read more from this topic.....

It rained last night, and more coming. In some ways, this is good news, because it means we don’t have to pay so much to irrigate our “dry season” crop. But it is bad news for the south, which is still recovering from the devestating storm that killed over a thousand people..
Superficially, the storm makes […]

read more from this topic.....

Contrary to recent media reports, the Brazilian Blowout hair treatment is safe for use.
You’d never know it, though, because the mainstream media has been perpetuating one myth after another about Brazilian Blowout while ignoring the facts. Last time, I wrote about a hatchet job made to appear as a legitimate study […]

read more from this topic.....

I am bemused to see that there is a moderate earthquake in Oklahoma making the news.
Such things are not unknown, of course, but the “Green” oriented blogs are all blaming the earthquake on “fracking”.
This is a “hot” item, since the oil shales of North Dakota and Pennsylvania are potential “black gold” that will rewrite the […]

read more from this topic.....

While CNN International is the “Michael Jackson trial” 24/7, and Google News’ major story is about someone called Amanda Knox, the story here in SE Asia is the floods from the typhoons.
Here in the Philippines, large areas remain flooded, partly due to the fact that the irrigation dams are still open to drain the run […]

read more from this topic.....

In my previous post, I wondered if the protesters on Wall Street had proposals of how to fix things, or if they were theoreticians from Nephelokokkygia.
So exactly what do those Wall Street protesters want?
A proposed list of demands can be found at their website. They don’t want much.
Demand one: Restoration of the living wage. This […]

read more from this topic.....

Here in the rice lands of Luzon, the latest news is bad. You probably read in the news that we were hit by Typhoon Pedring, but this time Manila was not devestated as in Typhoon Ondoy two years ago.
Manila Bay’s affluent waterfront properties were damaged when the storm wall failed, but Manila was not as […]

read more from this topic.....

Yum! Mushrooms. Who doesn’t like them (if cooked properly, even kids will eat them).
The problem? Well, the Epicurious blog has an article on the joys of mushroom picking.
It seems that a lot of yuppies in the Pacific Northwest have decided that the economic downswing is a good reason to take up this hobby.
Professional foragers […]

read more from this topic.....

Paranoia kills. And the internet, which allows anyone to post any conspiracy theory without having to include minor things like facts, is a growing problem for doctors, because our patients who google sometimes end up at conspiracy theory sites for their medical information.
And this ignorance is one reason why Bachman is now no longer […]

read more from this topic.....

How do respond to the bravery of men who catch a man eating crocodile, to protect their children from harm?
You tell them they should be ashamed of themselves, and that they should let the dangerous animal go free.
Yes, the foreigners who pay all that nice money to PETA to get foreign women to dance half […]

read more from this topic.....

I had written two skeptical articles on the issue of “isolated tribes” in the Amazon region.
In the first article, I pointed out that the idea that these people can and should remain isolated (by keeping out the governments and do gooders and developers) is wrongheaded, because that won’t stop the bad guys from moving in […]

read more from this topic.....

On today’s program we were down a panel member, Ashley F. Brooks. However Mannie Barling and I were not deterred. We plowed on regardless!
On today’s menu of Political Food was Monsanto and its long political tentacles. It is said that money buys influence, but just how much? In the case of Monsanto, it […]

read more from this topic.....

I am bemused when the sins that we recognized in the past are now being redefined by the modern world.
Greed, of course, is behind our “addiction” to oil, the war in the Middle East (no blood for oil”)  and the manipulation  of the stock market.
Lust however is still being touted by the NYTimes as good […]

read more from this topic.....

A lot of Americans seem puzzled about why NATO is so eager to get rid of Khadafi in Libya. Yes, he was behind the TWA bombing, but why get rid of him now?
But what the US press also misses is why Libyans are angry. To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the corruption, stupid. Khadafi has billions […]

read more from this topic.....

Los Alamos, with it’s nuclear facility, has been evacuated again. The NMNational Guard is busy helping with the fires near Alamagordo, as is the California, Colorado and North Carolina Air National Guard. From the BBC:

The town outside Los Alamos National Laboratory was evacuated on Monday.
On Wednesday, there were expected to be between 600 to 800 […]

read more from this topic.....

 The man was well until his wife baked him a “healthy recipe” from the NYTimes “Healthy recipe section: Fava bean and artichoke stew.
He soon became pale and jaundiced, and it took awhile for the ER doc to figure out why the man was sick. He had an acute hemolytic crisis, where his red blood cells […]

read more from this topic.....

Many years ago, conspiracy theorists claimed the US was fighting in Viet Nam in order to exploit the oil fields in the Spratlys islands.
This fact allowed the anti war humanitarians to dismiss the story that the US was there because a communist takeover of the region that would result in hundreds of thousand sent to […]

read more from this topic.....

The outbreak of E Coli induced Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome by those who ate salads in northern Germany is still a puzzle.
First they blamed Spain for dirty cucumbers (implications: Spaniards are not as clean as Germans). This has caused a lot of financial problems for Spanish farmers, and it doesn’t help that it’s now found it […]

read more from this topic.....

It is hard to believe that it was one year ago today that the Gulf disaster struck. Early reports indicated that a oil rig had a serious problem. As the hours ticked by we learned that 11 people had lost their lives in an explosion and ensuing fire. Everyone in the Gulf region, and indeed […]

read more from this topic.....

I am aghast when I read at MSNBC Money the “good” side of higher oil prices.
Summary: it will make you buy a smaller car, not travel as much, and so you will be healthier from walking and Mother Gaia will be  less polluted.
Yet the real cluelessness is that the writer sees high oil prices as […]

read more from this topic.....

ArcheologyNews reports that a researcher claims Henry VIII didn’t die of a combination of syphillis, obesity related diabetes and malaria, (and perhaps a bit mentally unstable from cerebral syphilis and the mercury used back then to treat it).
No, they claim it was a rare complication of the Kells’ antigen called McLeod syndrome.
Research conducted by […]

read more from this topic.....

the news of the Japanese earthquake is terrible.
US Navy Photo from StrategyPage.
But a few stories below the fold show how such disasters sometimes bring out the best in people.
BelmontClubBlog points out how the US Navy is there, assisting the Japanese Navy in areas where the infrastructure makes other ways to deliver aid difficult:

“…The […]

read more from this topic.....

The ecosystem in the Philippine island of Palawan is unique, and to make it worse, the island has only recently been cleared of terrorists and reopened for tourism, so there is worry that the terrible scars from mining will destroy tourism too.
A couple months back, a reporter and civic leader was assassinated because he had […]

read more from this topic.....

If you live in the US, mark your calenders: It’s the Great American Shake- out drill.

check out this link for more information.
so what do you do when an earthquake strikes?

when I lived in Minnesota, we always kept emergency supplies in our car (in case we got caught in a snowstorm or skidded off the […]

read more from this topic.....

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, James Anaya, has urged Panama’s government to ensure the safety of indigenous peoples, farmers and others protesting against new reforms to the country’s mining code.
Dozens of men, women and children  have been injured and arrested since the protests began on February 7, when Panama’s […]

read more from this topic.....

I always say: “Follow the money”.
A couple of days ago, a lot of my green bloglinks were rhapsodic about those isolated Amazon tribes who were filmed from a plane. So when I checked on the group that released the photos and story, voila, sure enough: they are run by folks with very European/white American names, […]

read more from this topic.....

Despite the fact that the shooting in Arizona was caused by a mentally ill person, the spin was followed by a week of Sarah Palin bashing.
With the State of the Union address, it’s calmed down a bit, but nevertheless Time Magazine decided it was important news to complain that Sarah Palin put the flag on […]

read more from this topic.....

I originally picked this book up at my local library to review it for a future column in the Senior News newspaper. My monthly column covers books that are either written by Texas authors, set in Texas, or of interest to Texans. Space limitations mean I have four hundred words maximum to cover two books […]

read more from this topic.....

It took years, and an enterprising reporter to check on the facts, but now it’s official: The  “MMR vaccine causes Autism”paper was not only flawed, but was made up. It was part of a money making scam concocted by a lawyer who hoped to make money off of a class action lawsuit, with the help […]

read more from this topic.....

This week on Surviving The 21st Century was a little different from our regular health and nutrition program. Joining my regular panel of the writing and research team of Mannie Barling and Ashley F. Brooks was a musician, Jaime Michaels.
I am always amazed at the way life has this uncanny habit of working out to […]

read more from this topic.....