That actually is a hard one to answer. The Bhopal disaster happened on terra firma and the exact number of deaths attributed to it is still a subject of discussion. Many estimate that the number killed from the immediate explosion as more than died in the Twin Towers 9/11 attack, many sources also claim that [...]

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I was born in 1955 and during the past 55 years I have been stunned by the huge advances in the field of medicine. At the age of 12 I watched a TV news report about a South African surgeon named Christiaan Barnard, he had performed an operation thought impossible, a heart transplant. Today, while [...]

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I have to admit that I am rapidly becoming a believer that every time a see a BP or government official spew forth the latest update, I see their nose’s grow. BP had to remove Tony Hayward, his nose would no longer fit on the CNN TV set! The well is capped, well sort of. [...]

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As the narrator explains in the opening minutes of this educational video, the story of oil stretches across a “gulf of unimaginable time” with carbon as the main character. The film is conveniently broken into three 30-minute chapters, including: 1. The Age of Oil 2. The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight 3. Back to the [...]

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Unlike the US, where our priests would rarely preach about anything more serious than “Jesus loves you”, here in the Philippines, our clergy is politically active. And one of the latest campaigns in our district is to oppose a local casino. So the sermon in our church this week was “No to Casinos, No to [...]

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“I do spend some of my time on bottled water… but I have other responsibilities as well,” says Lauren Robin, the one employee at the FDA in charge of ensuring that the bottled water industry meets federal safety guidelines. But since 60-70% of bottled water is produced and sold within state lines, the FDA has [...]

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I was puzzled to read that a study showed an increase in cancer if one takes a certain medicine for one’s blood pressure. The devil is in the details, of course, but the headlines blaring out cancer risk, but the details in these articles admit that the risk is tiny. From Reuters: Overall, they found [...]

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I had written before about foolhardy publicity stunts which are cheered on and encouraged by the willingness of the media to publicize them. ABC (US) news is an example of this. Their headline proclaims: Rescued Teen Sailor: ‘Since When Does Age Create Gigantic Waves and Storms?’ Family Happy to Hear From 16-Year-Old Plucked From Indian [...]

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The British media and commentariat is working itself into a frenzy over President Obama’s attack on BP. The Mayor of London, the patrician Boris Johnson, has said “I do think there’s something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America … when you consider the huge exposure of British pension [...]

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The Middle East figures Obama is a patsy and is vieing for who can hate Israel the most (the reborn Ottoman Empire, or the reborn Persian Empire?). At the same time, Obama’s oil spill policy gets ripped in the Rolling Stone of all places. There go the baby boomers. Time for a distraction, folks. Certain [...]

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I was bemused when a minor lambast against “pacifists” trying to start a war against Israel led to this comment: “…the Israelis steadfastly refuse to publish a list of allowed goods and appear to change their minds daily on what is allowed. Eg. Hair conditioner is banned at the moment…” Oh my, no wonder the [...]

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In the olden days, we learned in school the folly of King Canute who sat on the seashore and ordered the tide to stop coming in, but all that happened was that he got wet. The real story Canute had learned that his flattering courtiers claimed he was “So great, he could command the tides [...]

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Yes, no longer will the Democratic party have to support private bloggers to promote his political agenda at their site. We now have pro Obama propaganda articles at a new “blog” at America.gov, a website connected with the State Department. Yes, your taxpayer dollars are now paying for such propaganda such as a gushing article [...]

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I almost swallowed my teeth. The Headline states: Earth Day Facts: When It Is, How It Began, What to Do There it was, a large photo heading an article on the NatGeo webpage: The caption accompanying the photo states: Ira Einhorn—a leader of nonviolence, drug, and free-love movements in the 1960s—speaks at Philadelphia’s first Earth [...]

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“Just saw a commrcl 4 EarthHour Mar 27…going 2leave my lights on that whole hour” -Join us! Let’s show Al Gore and all the other Global Warming nuts that they can take their theory and …well, shove it!

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For years now we’ve been told that Diabetes is a lifestyle disease; in effect, the result of our reliance on the “meat-sweet” diet and our avoidance of regular exercise. While our “lifestyle” certainly plays a role in the onset of diabetes, according to several new studies, the actual cause may in fact be the result [...]

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To anyone who still has their children enrolled in public school and/or is not actively involved in what is being taught to them on a daily basis, I introduce you to the result of blindly trusting the public education system with your children for the last 20 years:Eric Greenberg is the author of this wonderful [...]

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A small headline in the news: Guinea pig touted as solution to Congo food crisis. …it’s not known how or when guinea pigs — native to South America — arrived in Congo, but CIAT (the Colombia-based agricultural research institute, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture) researchers discovered them last year being kept as “micro-livestock” in [...]

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A small item in the Washington Post tells us: The Obama administration will ask Congress to improve childhood nutrition by ridding school vending machines of sugary snacks and drinks and giving school lunch and breakfast to more kids. Where to begin? Once, in the past, children actually packed a lunch box to eat lunch at [...]

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One of the neglected areas of my medical education was “ethnic” and “racial” aspects of medicine. One example of this is lactose intolerance.Only IndoEuropeans (and one small tribe in Uganda) are able to digest milk without problems.In the modern world, this means a lot of folks diagnosed with “irritable bowel” syndrome were actually lactose intolerant; [...]

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What does one do with a country like Haiti, where years of occupation, corruption, and many different types of aid from outside hasn’t worked? Lots of “it’s your fault” type stuff all over the internet: a lot of it uses the left wing’s meme of “Blame America” (and the right shouts back “Blame France”). Not [...]

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Information gleaned from Wikipedia should always be taken with a grain of salt.  As much as open-sourcing a knowledge base has certainly given the site a well-deserved reputation for being a first-stop in doing research, this situation points out (again) that bias can creep in, even with multiple hands contributing. Lawrence Solomon at the National [...]

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Way back in 2001, letters containing powdered anthrax were sent to a bunch of news reporters and Congressmen, and because the powder was so fine several innocent people, mainly those who worked in the Post Office, died from the infection. Despite initial worries that it was terrorism, later reports assured the American people that it [...]

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 Americans have been vilified and conditioned to believe that they are the worst polluters on the planet.   The USA has the assignment; worlds whipping boy for any and all environmental abuse on the earth.  Somehow it’s all our fault that 16 of the worlds 20 most polluted cities are in China.     None of the top [...]

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Just when you thought animal lovers couldn’t get more ridiculous comes this story, via NPR. Holy Baboon! A ‘Mystical’ Moment In Africa by Robert Krulwich. It tells the story of baboons who were romping down to a lake, and suddenly they all stopped and were quiet. After a few minutes, they started down again to [...]

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James Cameron is credited with making some of the most spectacular films in recent memory: Titanic, Terminator and Terminator 2.  Moreso he may be known for making some of the most expensive films in history.   Avatar squarely falls in the latter category and does so for many reasons. Avatar is the story of Jake Sully [...]

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Do you want to know the real reason behind all the meeting and agreements and doomsaying being done at the Copenhagen climate change confab?  Listen to the applause. First, the warm-up act, so to speak, with hints of what was to come. But before [Australian climate change minister Penny Wong] rose to speak the conference [...]

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I am fascinated by what the US blogs are calling “Climategate”. It seems that  one of the main scientific research labs behind Global warming, indeed the one whose data was one of the lynchpins  proving “climate change” was occuring, manmade, and severe, had their emails hacked and put on line. When the emails were taken [...]

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I’m not really following the Copenhagen conference on global warming. My specialty was public health, and I see both the problems of chemicals and pollution destroying people’s health, but I have worked enough in third world countries to think that a little pollution might be worth it if it helps poor people live a bit [...]

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We all know about the problem. You buy a nice item, usually an electronic gizmo but sometimes a toy, and you can’t open it. Knives won’t cut it, and you need sharp heavy duty scissors to cut it open. Yet even then, the cut areas won’t bend easily, and the edges of the plastic packaging [...]

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