Though health care providers usually encourage breast-feeding as the healthiest alternative, teaching it to well pre-pubescent girls goes well beyond the good taste boundaries. Some would argue that it’s better than other dolls; ones that teach little girls that bottle feeding is the norm. I think both camps are missing the point.

I have another, more civilized idea. Let’s stop making dolls that teach young girls how to take care of babies. Are we not pushing these girls into earlier pregnancies because they are convinced they know how to take care of a baby, and because these stupid dolls don’t teach them that they need to wipe baby ass every hour on the hour? This romanticized notion of baby-rearing, is dangerous especially in underprivileged, less informed families, who are much more likely to have un-wed, immature teens who think they can handle it.

Maybe Berjuan’s next product will be a doctor’s set for boys, where they can give male dolls pretend prostate exams. In the same spirit of addressing important life issues through the mindset of a child.

Incidentally the baby name, “Bebe Gloton,” translates to “gluttonous baby.” I am undecided if that adds insult to injury here.

You can read more here.

We all want to eat healthier and not die of cancer or nutrient deficiency. We seldom stop to wonder just how it is that these, 3 times more expensive, miracles of modern agriculture are made healthier. Perhaps we picture a farmer lovingly planting individual tomatoes. Perhaps we picture a farmer lovingly watching individual tomatoes and flicking the bugs off them to keep them pesticide free. Maybe we thought that the farmer hand picks every “organic” product, and then quickly hand-delivers them to our local grocer.

Ever wonder why the industry likes to use generic terms like “organic” or “natural”, instead of something specific like “pesticide free”, “E. Coli free”, “Salmonella free”, “Miracle-Gro free”?

Here is some food for thought. To prove something “not organic” the company would basically have to be selling you a rock. Any life on earth (plant, animal, insect) that contains carbon, would fall into the organic category. Your dog’s shit is organic, but that doesn’t mean you should be paying extra to eat it. So unless someone is trying to sell rocks, they can call whatever it is, organic. If, however, one were to make a claim of being “pesticide free”, or free of growing additives, or preservatives, that could be checked and companies can be sued. Makes me think the organic food industry is staffed by ex-politicians.

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSTRE56S3ZJ20090730

34 radio stations have been closed down, 200 more stand threatened with broadcast license revocation.

In addition to bankrupting his country, turning himself into God with no term limits, this ex-coca farmer also give weapons to Colombian drug runners to kill and kidnap civilians in Colombia. I wonder if it’s related to the fact that he is an ex coca farmer and the FARC make all their money selling coke?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/world/americas/03venez.html?ref=global-home

He was quick to demonize Bush, deserved as it may have been, but turned out to be just as big an asshole. Just goes to show you, every socialist haven, is one power-mad shithead away from a fascist dictatorial state. I myself, am eagerly awaiting the UN Security Concil resolution that will be passed most expeditiously to deal with this threat to security and stability of another country. On second thought, all they have time for is anti-Israel resolutions, so probably not.

Instead of picking up a book, or learning to surf the internet, or getting a dog, this woman sought to, likely, ease her loneliness by lying to fertility doctors, and getting pregnant and giving birth at 66. This completely selfish and hateful act, has now left two children orphans and in the care of relatives only 3 years later. She has passed the torch of loneliness on to her kids, so they can suffer for the next 20 years without a mom or a dad, being raised by relatives that were not too pleased with the mom in the first place.

It’s times like this I wish there really was a Hell or some other kind of end-of-life atonement for the havoc we wreak in other people’s lives. It’s also events like this, that should make civilized countries re-examine the laws surrounding the responsibility of doctors for the outcomes of their practice.

That fertility doctor and his entire family should now be responsible for the care or at least the financial well being, of these children. Through no fault of their own, the children are now doomed to live a life of underprivilege and want. One relative is currently trying to raise money for their care by selling their story to a television program, turning the kids lives into a spectacle just to give them some sort of head start.The doctor, meanwhile, likely bought his wife something nice, went on vacation, made another payment on his Rolls Royce, or added to his kid’s college fund with the money he got for performing a procedure that is pretty much an abomination, a dereliction of his duties as a doctor, and a perversion of the miraculous gift of life.

It’s sad when doctors act like prostitutes, thinking only about the next trick, after their current client has gotten his rocks off.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532742,00.html?mrp

The official position is that, “the use of the encyclopedia to advance personal agendas – such as advocacy or propaganda and philosophical, ideological or religious dispute – or to publish or promote original research is prohibited.” This clause is what was used as the justification for the bans.

While hating all religious institutions with equal zeal, I do wonder if the Church of Scientology is getting a fair shake. Are they policing the various other organized religious cults, from making ingratiating edits about their religions? Who is to say that the entries on Islam, Catholicism, Hinduism or Judaism are any more objective? The Church of Scientology has fought hard since it’s inception to be recognized and treated the same as every other religion, and is always facing negative criticism and being labeled a cult. It has always struck me as odd that they are looked down upon and are openly discriminated against, simply because their numbers are smaller than most other organized religions. Isn’t the fact that the members of Scientology perceive their beliefs as valid and important, enough for us to afford them the same protections that all other religions currently enjoy? Who is anyone else to say that their religion and ridiculous superstitions, are any dumber than burning bushes giving people the 10 commandments, wine being magically made out of water, or some prophet coming to inform his people of what god has told him. Imagine if we first made Muslims and Christians prove that their religion is not full of, and built on, bullshit before offering them the protections to practice as they see fit that they now enjoy?

Tolerance is what we preach, not what we practice.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/05/29/wikipedia_bans_scientology/

How are we to believe that their networks are choking requiring the molestation of our connections, while they keep offering speeds that should in theory choke their network even further? Retorical question folks. We should not believe them.

Incidentally, World of Warcraft is a pay/month service that uses P2P traffic to spread updates between their members. Are the world’s millions of WOW players being unfair penalized when they are using their P2P for completely legitimate purposes? Is there, or more importantly, should there be an effort to force Bell/Rogers/Comcast/Verizon to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate P2P traffic? I think the burden should be on them to not filter the kind of traffic I was just discussing.

If you don’t know where you heart is, do you really deserve to even have one?

“Overall, people knew less basic anatomy than the researchers expected — even those patients being treated for a specific condition involving that organ.” Can you believe that people who have some sort of affliction of a particular organ still don’t know where it is or what it looks like?

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/06/15/body.knowledge.survey/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think adoption is a great and completely under-rated tool when it comes to increasing one’s family. I also don’t personally have anything against Madonna, or at least I didn’t until now. I have a problem with ignoring the needs of children inNorth America who live in poverty, misery, abuse, and malnutrition because it doesn’t have the same PR potential. One plane trip to Africa with her entourage would probably feed a hungry North American child for life. It could probably also put an underpriviledged young adult through college.

Over the last few decades as the problems in Africa have become better publicized due to concerts, charity work, and Hollywood, anything to do with that country gives you instant street cred as a humanitarian. Madonna has always been a supremely intelligent opportunist, and her tongue-swapper on stage with Britney Spears, during Brit’s breif period of mental illness, is proof of this fact. Yet no one called on her for exploiting Britney Spears’ clearly vulnerable mental state for the sake of publicity and a great photo op. If it was a male performer in his 50s open mouth kissing a 20 year old on national television, the headlines would have been pretty base and predictably exploitative.

Justice was done here, and I really trully do hope that this child has  a good life without her.

http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=1562000

National Post story:  http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=1551378&p=1

Thought the gains in performance are subjective to various factors, and are by no means earth shattering, overall the children who were on drugs performed better academically than those that did not. Any why wouldn’t they? A drug enhanced power to concentrate, pay attention, recall information quicker and easier, would give any student an obvious advantage.

The article asks the question, why not give stumulants to everyone to increase performance in life? I want to ask the question what makes doctors and pharmacists any different from a street dealer? And why is it when used recreationally there is so much stigma associated with it but when we are using it to “treat” that annoying kid in class it’s okay? The answer is perception, deception, and lots of money from very powerful organizations.

ADHD medication and some over the count medications, like the Vicks inhaler decongestant and Ritalin specifically,  are derivatives of the same substances that give us Speed, MDMA (ecstasy), and other illegal stimulants. So if the effects are the similar, and they come from similar chemical compositions, they surely have the same negative side effects and the same potential consequence for long term brain damage? Don’t they? I mean the risks don’t go away simply because you have a “legal” avenue (aka Big Pharma monopoly) of obtaining them do they?

And yet, our kids are taking them in record numbers, military personal are given “go pills” to increase alertness and performance, and the pharmacists, and pharmaceutical companies keep getting richer. Anti-depressant, ADHD, and other mood altering medications now make up the bulk of Big Pharma profits. There are some serious questions that we should be asking the authorities in society given the power to determine what drugs are harmful and what drugs should be available but controlled by doctors. The dangers of abuse and likelihood of addiction are self-evident, and yet if it went through a doctor, or the army, or your psychiatrist first it’s okay. We have a duty to question people’s objectivity and to more closely examine the relationships between health authorities, doctors and the pharmaceutical industry.

Why is there such a double standard and why are we putting people in jail for selling/using drugs while doctors and Big Pharma has a free hand to dispense them as they see fit. Maybe drug dealers needs their own lobbyists. Maybe drug dealers should pay doctors for refferals or send them on vacations if doctors start pushing patents to them instead of Big Pharma.

A little known fact is that the popular ‘Vick inhaler’ contains 50mg of methamphetamine (described on the label by the synonym deoxyephedrine) in free base oil form, and that’s not a prescription medication. Professor David Nutt, chairman of Brittain’s Home Office’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs and thus the UK Government’s chief drug policy adviser, recently joked about the ridiculous nature of having MDMA on the same list of banned substances as heroin when there are very few recorded deaths from it. His words were something along the lines of ”more people are getting injured from riding horses, if we really care about people getting hurt, we should ban horse riding”. Reading between the lines, he wasn’t saying that drugs are good, he was saying that it’s a heavily politicized way to score points with the powerful drug lobbies and the unquestioning masses that buy into mass hysteria without doing their own reading. Until the 1980s, and even beyond covertly, some psychiatrists have been using MDMA to help with couple and trauma councelling because it encourages a patient to open up and discuss otherwise unpleasant feelings and emotions. I fondly remember the old tv anti-drug commercials that warn of reefer-madness for marijuana smokers, and now it’s okay for certain medical patients if they have a doctor’s permission. Does that imply that anything you are allowed to do, you are only allowed to do because it’s okay with doctors? There has never been a proven death related to reefer use in any country and yet it’s illegal in almost every country. There are many people who get injured as a result of adverse reactions to medications that remain available by prescription.

My only real point is that you should question what you are told, especially when your information comes from authorities that shut out debate and take campaign contributions from powerful people. The “authorities” are not really authorities on anything but merely place holders from one election to the next.

The figures below come from the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Draw your own conclusions. What were those guys who went to the hospital for marijuana smoking? Must have been a pretty good crop. Hey comparitively speaking, Angel dust seems pretty safe.

A 5 year old boy, who is patiealnt zero in the swine flu outbreak, has done what the drug cartels, rampant and far-reaching corruption and lots of recent bad press could not. He has single handedly ground the Mexican economy to a screeching half, with president Calderone ordering all non-essential workers to stay home for 5 days.

Edgar Hernandez lives in the southern Mexican town of La Gloria, where more than 450 people — out of a population of 3,000 — have complained of respiratory problems.

The corruption and complete ineptitude of Mexican law enforcement were made quite clear over the last couple of years. Reports of foreigners being killed, imprisoned, or robbed have either been ignored, swept under the rug, or more repugnantly, the problems were just blamed on the foreigners altogether.

We are therefore, likely not shocked that Mexican health authorities are just as terrible as their law enforcement counterparts. Personally, I still don’t see why tourists, especially Canadians, continue to flock there for vacation when several murders of Canadian tourists, some right on resorts, have gone unsolved.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518347,00.html