Robert Paterson's Weblog

Drug-Resistant Bugs Found in Organic Meat - Or Why Grass Fed is the key

If you’re paying premium prices for pesticide- and antibiotic-free meat, you might expect that it’s also free of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Not so, according to a new study. The prevalence of one of the world’s most dangerous drug-resistant microbe strains is similar in retail pork products labeled “raised without antibiotics” and in meat from conventionally raised pigs, researchers have found.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), a drug-resistant form of the normally harmless S. aureus bacterium, kills 18,000 people in the United States every year and sickens 76,000 more. The majority of cases are linked to a hospital stay, where the combination of other sick people and surgical procedures puts patients at risk. But transmission also can happen in schools, jails, and locker rooms (and an estimated 1.5% of Americans carry MRSA in their noses). All of this has led to a growing concern about antibiotic use in agriculture, which may be creating a reservoir of drug-resistant organisms in billions of food animals around the world.

via wired.com

If you feed a cow grain - you less with its gut flora and encourage bad bacteria. They are designed to eat GRASS not CORN. So it matters not if you feed a cow Organic Corn - you are still messing with its gut flora.

It's simple - feed animals what they are meant to eat and keep them in surroundings that fit their nature and they will be well - this applies to you and me too!

There is "School" and then there is this - You choose!

We think that learning is all about institutions. Hey we think that health is too. But how do we learn best? From a person. 

LEARN from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

So if we give up all our learning to institutions such as schools - we miss the opportunity. If we give up our health to "health care" we get sick.

Children’s A.D.D. Drugs Don’t Work Long-Term - What about the cause?

Putting children on drugs does nothing to change the conditions that derail their development in the first place. Yet those conditions are receiving scant attention. Policy makers are so convinced that children with attention deficits have an organic disease that they have all but called off the search for a comprehensive understanding of the condition. The National Institute of Mental Health finances research aimed largely at physiological and brain components of A.D.D. While there is some research on other treatment approaches, very little is studied regarding the role of experience. Scientists, aware of this orientation, tend to submit only grants aimed at elucidating the biochemistry.

Thus, only one question is asked: are there aspects of brain functioning associated with childhood attention problems? The answer is always yes. Overlooked is the very real possibility that both the brain anomalies and the A.D.D. result from experience.

Our present course poses numerous risks. First, there will never be a single solution for all children with learning and behavior problems. While some smaller number may benefit from short-term drug treatment, large-scale, long-term treatment for millions of children is not the answer.

Second, the large-scale medication of children feeds into a societal view that all of life’s problems can be solved with a pill and gives millions of children the impression that there is something inherently defective in them.

Finally, the illusion that children’s behavior problems can be cured with drugs prevents us as a society from seeking the more complex solutions that will be necessary. Drugs get everyone — politicians, scientists, teachers and parents — off the hook. Everyone except the children, that is.

via nytimes.com

ADD etc for me represent the heart of the paradigm that is in our way. In our way for a healthier life.

As medicine is practised today, we all ignore why we get ill. Instead we call symptoms a disease and look for a pill.

Perversely we can accept that if we drank water contaminated with sewage that we woud get ill - but we cannot make the link to the reality that if we eat bad food, give up control of our lives, become isolated, and never use our bodies or go outside - that we will also get ill.

The next revolution in health is this. The simple fact is that we are designed to be healthy - so long as we live according to our design. We accept this in the physical realm of clean water but not the rest of how we live. If we stop eating processed food and in particular the all the sugar and grains - if we made our social world important and if we were more active we would be well.

All the vast costs and burdens of our health system woud fade away. But of course THEY don't want that and this is why THE constantly reinforce the myth.

I think all the time of the Church back in 1450 - THEY said that the only way to go to heaven was through the Church. Luther made the mad counter offer - that we could find God all by ourselves.

Today in 2012, we are faced with the same choice and the same pressures.

Bees - Don't take them for granted

 

Chart of the Day: The Baltic Dry Index - Fasten you seat belts

Statistics from the Office of National Statistics this morning showed that the UK went into reverse in the last quarter of 2011, when the economy shrank by 0.2% – but as the Baltic Dry Index shows, the global economy is looking even more worrying.

Chart of the Day: Shipping rates fall off a cliff

The index – often used as a proxy for the health of the global economy as it reflects the prices charged for shipping commodities such as metals, coal or grain around the world – has fallen by 61% since October.

The index was at 842 at yesterday’s close – down from its 12-month high of 2173 last October.

Nick Bullman, managing partner at risk consultant Check Risks, said the index is a good way of looking at the risks to the global economy, “as it tends to be where they hit first”.

via efinancialnews.com

2012 - a hard year ahead

How squeamish are you?

I took this survey to find out how easily I am disgusted. In essence the survey tests your response to the natural world.

Our reactions to odd food, odd people, odd situations that involve things not being as clean as they could be.

I am the green on the left - the blue is the average of "Liberals" - the Red the average of "Conservatives".

Here is the link to the survey. 

This illustrates that many people with strong Christian beliefs tend to see themselves as special and apart from nature and the natural world. The natural world tends to be disgusting to them. 

I worry that this is part of the challenge that we face as our understanding of the natural world and our place in it is the key to solving many of the problems today.

This leads me into an intuition that I will expand on.

That the modern machine world of the 1% is causing a reaction. On the one hand are people like me who look ahead to a new context based on nature and so on networks and on rediscovering our own nature. And on the other people who want to escape BACK into the simpler world that preceded the modern world where God is in his heaven and women know their place and where there is no science but only the BOOK.

So in North America we see the growth of religiosity and a rejection of science and of thinking. Much like in the medieval period. We see fundementalists in the west and also in the Moslem world and even in Israel. 

It helps to recall that in the 14th century the Moslem world was where all the wisdom, knowledge and enlightenment existed. But the advent of the fundementalists have put the Moselm world into a backwater since then.

There is a lot at stake with 3 global cultures fighting it out.

On Burns Day - My favourite song and singer

 

 And by my favourite band - The Black Dyke Mills Band

 

So wistful and so full of longing

Property tax freeze sought by seniors - What will we all do when most on low fixed income?

A senior couple living in Charlottetown is wondering where they will get the money to pay a property tax increase this year.

Homeowners across the Island are facing increased costs for municipal services in May, both on the tax bill — up 2.9 per cent — and in the charge for garbage collection from Island Waste Management — up 2.5 per cent.

"It makes me feel really disgusted," 64-year-old Donna DesRoches told CBC News Tuesday.

She and her 75-year-old husband Bob DesRoches live on seniors' pensions. The couple lives in their own home on a combined income of about $21,000 a year.

Charges on a $150,000 Charlottetown home

	2011	2012
Taxes	$2,704.85	$2,784.32
Waste Watch	$205	$210
Total	$2,909.85	$2,994.32

Bob DesRoches doesn't know where he'll find the extra cash.

"I'm not getting enough money to keep things going," he said.

"After I pay oil and food and lights and all the stuff like that there's not enough money coming in from the pension that I'm getting."

The DesRoches want the province to freeze taxes for seniors, rather than tie it to the consumer price index as the province does now, but Finance Minister Wes Sheridan said that is not possible.

"It makes no sense with regard to the market value versus the taxable value," said Sheridan.

Sheridan noted if a senior were to stay in their home for 20 years, the difference between the market value and the taxable value would become too great.

Sheridan said if seniors find it hard to pay their taxes they have the option of deferring payment until they sell their home.

via cbc.ca

I think that this is the thin end of the edge. In 10 years about half of Islanders will be over 60. Property tax is one of the greatest risks we face. If it is not thought through, it will mean that Islanders will be pushed out of their homes.

Where will they go? Into Manors? That costs today about $35,000 a year. Impossible.

We aslo know that the best way to keep seniors active and healthy is for them to stay in their homes.

So time to to sit down and think our way through this. It is surely possible to think our way into a better solution

The New House - Do what Jefferson did - start with a "Tiny House"

Jefferson did not start with a mansion but with a "Tiny House".

The black outline is the original home.

Now with house prices so high - wages low and job certainty low - do we need all the expense of a big house?

The Tiny House Movement is a response to this.

 

Now think about PEI. You could have oh 10 acres and a tiny house for $35 - 40K - Back to the Land II - On your 10 acres you could grow all your own food and enough to sell as well.

Another view

 

Or this - your Hobbit Home

 

Next Frontier in Piracy: Downloading Physical Objects to Your 3D Printer |

Getty Images

Exciting times, friends. While we’ve been cleaning up the proverbial ticker tape left behind by jubilant celebration over the recently-stalled antipiracy bills, the Pirate Bay – arguably the premier resource for pirating digital content – has already moved on to the next big thing.

The site has announced a new category called “Physibles” that houses digital files that can be downloaded and used in conjunction with 3D printers to print out actual, physical objects:

We believe that the next step in copying will be made from digital form into physical form. It will be physical objects. Or as we decided to call them: Physibles. Data objects that are able (and feasible) to become physical. We believe that things like three dimensional printers, scanners and such are just the first step. We believe that in the nearby future you will print your spare parts for your vehicles. You will download your sneakers within 20 years.

As of right now, the Physibles section of the Pirate Bay has only a few odds and ends – a 3D model of a camera lens, a model 1970 Chevelle hot rod and a whistle, to name a few – but as the prices of 3D printers continue to fall and people one day get used to the idea of, say, purchasing an otherwise tangible product from Amazon and then printing that object out themselves, you can see where a site like the Pirate Bay could really start to ruffle some retail feathers.

(MORE: What ‘Ownership’ Means for Digital Media)

The site spins the announcement with a more humanitarian outlook, however:

The benefit to society is huge. No more shipping huge amounts of products around the world. No more shipping the broken products back. No more child labour. We’ll be able to print food for hungry people. We’ll be able to share not only a recipe, but the full meal.

Such a future is still several, if not tens, of years off, but the ability to print relatively simple objects (even food) is already here and will continue to get more refined over time. Even questions about intellectual property as it pertains to 3D printing have already been raised.

You may recall last year that Shapeways.com, a site that lets users share 3D printer files with one another, found itself associated with a legal scuffle between one of its users and Paramount Pictures. The user had apparently recreated a prop from Paramount’s movie Super 8 and, according to Paramount, was offering to sell 3D printouts of it.

Now imagine a day when everyone has a 3D printer at home. We’ll surely be able to purchase 3D printer files from people and companies far more adept at creating models of printable objects than we are, and assuming these files will be relatively easy to duplicate due to their digital nature, we’re bound to witness plenty of litigation over what’s legal to copy and what’s not.

As Shapeways points out when commenting on the Pirate Bay news, “Being able to download product files is not new, Shapeways has had downloadable models for years, as has Thingiverse and Google Warehouse, but let’s see how this affects the 3D printing IP debate. “

(MORE: Roll Over, Movie Bootleggers: It’s All About 3D Prop Printing Now)

via techland.time.com

I don't buy CD's anymore - I download digital from Netflix or the cloud. I don't buy books much either. I use my Kindle.

Many objects will be in digital form. THIS will be the real revolution.

Imagine the fuss too. SOPA will be nothing on this