Saturday, July 31, 2010
Women's hormone cream can screw up your kids, pets
Amplify’d from bodyodd.msnbc.msn.com
Women's hormone cream can screw up your kids, pets
Kim Campbell Thornton writes: The hug of a middle-aged woman might affect nearby kids and pets in alarming ways -- and it has nothing to do with menopause mood swings.
On Thursday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning that children who are inadvertently exposed to an estrogen spray to ease hot flashes can develop an upsetting reaction – premature puberty. The FDA has received 8 reports involving children ages 3 to 5 whose reactions have included nipple swelling and breast development in girls and breast enlargement in boys. Pets exposed to the hormone spray have turned up with nipple enlargement and swelling of the vulva in females.
A recent report by the Veterinary Information Network also warns that some pets are inadvertently ingesting topical hormone sprays, creams or gels by licking the area or being petted after the product is applied and then grooming themselves. Side effects have included undersized penises in males and fur loss.
Estrogen and testosterone aren’t the only hormones that cause problems. A psoriasis cream called Dovonex, a derivative of vitamin D — itself a hormone — can cause unusual thirst, appetite loss, and severe vomiting or diarrhea when pets lick it off the skin or chew on the tube, says Michael Stone, an internal medicine specialist at Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in Grafton, Mass.
To avoid the problem, women shouldn’t let children or pets come in direct contact with the area where the medication was applied, or they should wear clothing that covers it. If contact does occur, wash the child’s skin with soap and water right away, the FDA says. We assume the same goes for pets.
Do you use these kinds of hormone sprays, creams or gels? Will you stop, or just take extra precautions? Leave your comments here.
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Iranian woman facing stoning: 'I'm afraid of dying'
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Amplify’d from www.cnn.com
Iranian woman facing stoning: 'I'm afraid of dying'
London, England (CNN) -- In a room thousands of miles from her prison cell in northeastern Iran, the fear that has gripped Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani for years was clear and almost palpable.
"The day I was given the stoning sentence, it was as if I fell into a deep hole and I lost consciousness," said a human rights advocate, reading aloud from a letter attributed to Ashtiani. "Many nights, before sleeping, I think to myself how can anybody be prepared to throw stones at me; to aim at my face and hands? Why?"
Ashtiani, a 43-year-old mother of two, was set to be stoned to death for allegedly committing adultery in Iran. Members of the International Committee Against Executions, who have launched a public campaign for her freedom, held a news conference Friday to share a letter they said was from Ashtiani, who is being held in a Tabriz prison, and court documents from her case.
"I thank all of you from Tabriz prison," the letter said. Referring to advocate Mina Ahadi, Ashtiani wrote, "Mrs. Ahadi, tell everyone that I'm afraid of dying. Help me stay alive and hug my children."
The group also presented court documents it said refuted a July 8 statement from the Iranian government that denied Ashtiani would be executed by stoning.
Ashtiani was convicted of adultery in 2006 and was originally sentenced to death by stoning, but the sentence was put on hold earlier this month after an international outcry. Protesters rallied worldwide on July 24 in support of her, pushing for her release.
Next week, the Iran judiciary may release their final judgment in the Ashtiani case, deciding whether to reinstate her sentence of death by stoning, execute her by another means, or possibly even grant her a reprieve, according to human rights groups.
Earlier this month, her attorney Mohammad Mostafaei told CNN that his client confessed to the crime after being subjected to 99 lashes. She later recanted the confession and has denied wrongdoing, he said.
"I am now quiet and sad because a part of my heart is frozen," Ashtiani's letter says. "The day I was flogged in front of [my son] Sajjad, I was crushed and my dignity and heart were broken."
Mostafaei himself has gone into hiding since last weekend after being interrogated by Iranian authorities, human rights groups say. Advocates says his wife and brother-in-law are being held by Iranian authorities.
"I think it is a very dangerous situation for Mr. Mostafaei," Ahadi has said. "If he were to present himself to the authorities he might receive 10 to 15 years in prison, and I think we must put pressure on the Islamic regime so that his wife and brother will be released."
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Friday, July 30, 2010
Should my 90-year-old mom refuse medical tests?
This is a subject I've spent a lot of time thinking about. My mom has said to me that she doesn't want to endure anymore surgeries. My mom has lost both her legs and numerous organs to surgical intervention over the years. I know without a doubt I'd not have my mom today if medical science didn't have these options available. The night when my mom felt pain in her right leg that she knew instantly was another blockage in her veins we both cried a lot. Sobbed in fact. My mom had always said that if she ever had to lose her remaining leg she'd rather die than lose it. I sobbed outside and in because I knew how difficult she was going to be about it all. I came to a decision inside my heart that I wanted her to have a say in what was going to happen. In the past she had refused surgical intervention and I personally begged her to do it. I told here I wasn't ready to lose her. Now with the idea of losing her remaining leg I forced myself to not think about my fear but look at hers. When I looked at hers I knew that if she didn't do this because she wanted to life was going to be on a downhill course. If not physically, her quality of life would go to new lows. I was cut out of the ability to have a voice by my dad because I supported what Mom wanted. I wanted to listen to her. I wanted to do what she wanted. Though she is one of the most valuable parts of my life and this surgery would affect me--It was about HER. She was the one that was going to have live with these choices. All the more reason for every single choice to have been her own. I lost out in a battle of wills with my dad. I still think about it. I love both my parents. But their lives don't belong to me anymore than my life belongs to them. I hate the euthanasia debate with a passion because it makes me uncomfortable. I want to believe that no matter how crappy life is my Mom will want to keep fighting for me.
Amplify’d from www.salon.com
Should my 90-year-old mom refuse medical tests?
My brother thinks we should force her to undergo procedures, but she's tired of being poked and prodded
Dear Cary,
My mother is almost 90 years old and lives alone in her apartment a few minutes' drive from my home. She has some serious health problems but is managing to care for herself and her home with some help from my husband and me. Her mind is sound and she is a reasonable person. I take her to her frequent medical appointments. She doesn't hear well and often misses or misunderstands what the medical professionals tell her so it is important for me to be a good listener as well as her advocate. We always spend time after her appointments reviewing my notes and going over what was said.
She was recently diagnosed with a "new" condition by her internist and was referred to a specialist. The specialist wants to do additional procedures that will be invasive and painful, but might reveal a more serious condition. She is resisting this advice. The new condition is not causing her any pain or distress (at least at this time) and she says she is tired of being poked, prodded and tested and she just wants to live her life. She is concerned about the cost of her medical care, although she has good health insurance and financial resources.
I am supporting my mother's decision to hold off on any more tests or procedures but my brother is upset by her decision. He wants me to "force" her to go ahead with the procedures. He lives a long distance away, sees her infrequently and calls her occasionally. My mother values and depends on my advice and would probably go ahead with the tests if I insisted but I can see how stressful it is for her and how tired she is of the medical interventions. I think that as long as she is feeling relatively well and isn't in pain or distress her decision to forgo the procedures is reasonable at her age.
Am I doing the right thing by supporting the "do nothing" decision? What do I say to my brother?
A Concerned Daughter
Dear Concerned Daughter,
Yes, I think you are doing the right thing. Your mom has the right to make her own decisions.
There may be room for compromise. It would be nice to know more about what this new serious condition is. It may be that in two or three weeks, or a couple of months, things will change. But your mother has the right to decide how much poking and prodding from doctors she will endure.
What do you say to your brother? Well, I would say two things. I would say, Let's just wait and see; maybe she will change her mind, and maybe the situation will become clearer. And I would also say, Why don't you come here now and spend some time with her?
She doesn't have forever. This opportunity to be with her will not return. Now is the best time there is. He should come and spend some time with her. That's what I would say to him.
It's not right to force people to undergo medical procedures they don't want to undergo. As long as people can understand the risks, they are free to refuse.
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Monogamy unnatural for our sexy species
I think...well it doesn't matter much what I think. But this article flared some very strong opinions!!
Amplify’d from www.cnn.com
Monogamy unnatural for our sexy species
Editor's note: Christopher Ryan is a psychologist, teacher and the co-author, along with Cacilda Jethá, of "Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality," published by Harper Collins.
(CNN) -- Seismic cultural shifts about 10,000 years ago rendered the true story of human sexuality so subversive and threatening that for centuries, it has been silenced by religious authorities, pathologized by physicians, studiously ignored by scientists and covered up by moralizing therapists.
In recent decades, the debate over human sexual evolution has entertained only two options: Humans evolved to be either monogamists or polygamists. This tired debate generally devolves into an antagonistic stalemate where women are said to have evolved to seek male-provisioned domesticity while every man secretly yearns for his own harem. The battle between the sexes, we're told, is bred into our blood and bones.
Couples who turn to a therapist for guidance through the inevitable minefields of marriage are likely to receive the confusing message that long-term pair bonding comes naturally to our species, but marriage is still a lot of work.
Few mainstream therapists would contemplate trying to persuade a gay man or lesbian to "grow up, get real, and stop being gay." But most insist that long-term sexual monogamy is "normal," while the curiosity and novelty-seeking inherent in human sexuality are signs of pathology. Thus, couples are led to believe that waning sexual passion in enduring marriages or sexual interest in anyone but their partner portend a failed relationship, when in reality these things often signify nothing more than that we are Homo sapiens.
This is a problem because there is no reason to believe monogamy comes naturally to human beings. In fact, for millions of years, evolutionary forces have cultivated human libido to the point where ours is arguably the most sexual species on Earth.
Our ancestors evolved in small-scale, highly egalitarian foraging groups that shared almost everything. Anthropologists have demonstrated time and again that immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies are nearly universal in their so-called "fierce egalitarianism." Sharing is not just encouraged; it's mandatory.
Most foragers divide and distribute meat equitably, breast-feed one another's babies, have little or no privacy from one another, and depend upon each other every day for survival. Although our social world revolves around private property and individual responsibility, theirs spins toward interrelation and mutual dependence. This might sound like New Age idealism, but it's no more noble a system than any other insurance pool. Compulsory sharing is simply the best way to distribute risk to everyone's benefit in a foraging context. Pragmatic? Yes. Noble? Hardly.
For nomadic foragers who might walk hundreds of kilometers each month, personal property -- anything needed to be carried -- is kept to a minimum. Little thought is given to who owns the land, or the fish in the river, the clouds in the sky, or the kids underfoot. An individual male's "parental investment," in other words, tends to be diffuse in societies like those in which we evolved, not directed toward one particular woman -- or harem of women -- and her children, as conventional views of our sexual evolution insist.
But when people began living in settled agricultural communities, social reality shifted deeply and irrevocably. It became crucially important to know where your property ended and your neighbor's began. Remember the 10th Commandment: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that [is] thy neighbor's." With agriculture, the human female went from occupying a central, respected role to being just another possession for men to accumulate and defend, along with his house, slaves and asses.
The standard narrative posits that paternity certainty has always been of utmost importance to our species, whether expressed as monogamy or harem-based polygyny. Students are taught that our "selfish genes" lead us to organize our sexual lives around assuring paternity, but it wasn't until the shift to agriculture that land, livestock and other forms of wealth could be kept in the family. For the first time in the history of our species, biological paternity became a concern.
Our bodies, minds and sexual habits all reflect a highly sexual primate. Research from primatology, anthropology, anatomy and psychology points to the same conclusion: A nonpossessive, gregarious sexuality was the human norm until the rise of agriculture and private property just 10,000 years ago, about 5 percent of anatomically modern humans' existence on Earth.
The two primate species closest to us lend strong -- if blush-inducing -- support to this vision. Ovulating female chimps have intercourse dozens of times per day, with most or all of the willing males, and bonobos famously enjoy frequent group sex that leaves everyone relaxed and conflict-free.
The human body tells the same story. Men's testicles are far larger than those of any monogamous or polygynous primate, hanging vulnerably outside the body where cooler temperatures help preserve standby sperm cells for multiple ejaculations. Men sport the longest, thickest primate penis, as well as an embarrassing tendency to reach orgasm when the woman is just getting warmed up. These are all strong indications of so-called sperm competition in our species' past.
Women's pendulous breasts, impossible-to-ignore cries of sexual delight, or "female copulatory vocalization" to the clipboard-carrying crowd, and capacity for multiple orgasms also validate this story of prehistoric promiscuity.
"But we're not apes!" some might insist. But we are, in fact. Homo sapiens is one of four African great apes, along with chimps, bonobos and gorillas.
"OK, but we have the power to choose how to live," comes the reply. This is true. Just as we can choose to be vegans, we can decide to lead sexually monogamous lives. But newlyweds would be wise to remember that just because you've chosen to be vegan, it's utterly natural to yearn for an occasional bacon cheeseburger.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Christopher Ryan.Read more at www.cnn.com
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Thursday, July 29, 2010
Gruesome charges detailed against suspected Nazi
Amplify’d from www.msnbc.msn.com
Gruesome charges detailed against suspected Nazi
Samuel Kunz was indicted on charges linked to the killing of 430,000 Jews
BERLIN — The world's third most wanted Nazi suspect was involved in the entire process of killing Jews at the Belzec death camp: from taking victims from trains to pushing them into gas chambers to throwing corpses into mass graves, a German court said Thursday.
Samuel Kunz, an 88-year-old who has lived undisturbed for decades, was indicted last week on charges of involvement in the killing of 430,000 Jews — after a career as an employee in a government ministry and obscurity in a quiet village just outside the former West German capital of Bonn.
On Thursday the court in Bonn that indicted him revealed more details of the charges against him, describing in gruesome detail some of the crimes the suspected former death camp guard allegedly committed in occupied Poland from January 1942 to July 1943.
"The accused was deployed in all areas of the camp," Bonn court spokesman Matthias Nordmeyer told The Associated Press.
Kunz's case only came to the attention recently of prosecutors and the world's major Nazi-hunting organization, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, when prosecutors were poring through World War II-era documents as they built their case against retired autoworker John Demjanjuk, now being tried in a high-profile case in Munich.
The discovery prompted the Wiesenthal center to list Kunz in April as the world's No. 3 most wanted Nazi due to the fact that he was allegedly involved personally in the killings and to the "enormous scope" of the killings, said the center's chief Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff.
The court also announced Thursday that Kunz has been charged in a German youth court because he was a minor at the time — meaning he could be brought to trial as an adolescent and face a more lenient sentence.
Kunz was 20 years old when he allegedly started working as a guard at Belzec in January 1942. According to German law, people between 18 and 21 can be brought to trial either as minors or adults.
"It will be up to the judge to decide whether he will be sentenced as an adolescent or an adult," Nordmeyer said.
In its statement, the court described the deadly routine at Belzec, claiming that Kunz supposedly participated as a camp guard in all areas of the Nazis' organized mass murder of Poland's Jewry.
After the victims arrived by train at the death camp, they were told that before they could start working they had to be deloused and take a shower, the statement said, describing the terrifying killing process that by now is well known.
"Threatening them with pistols, whips and wooden clubs, the victims were told to hurry up. ... They had to undress ... the women had their hair cut off, and then first the men, then women and children were pushed into the gas chambers," the statement said.
After the victims were killed, "the corpses were searched for gold and valuables and then thrown into prepared graves."
In addition to being charged with participating in the execution of the Holocaust, Kunz is also accused of "personal excesses" in the alleged shooting of 10 Jews.
"In July 1943, the defendant is accused of having shot two persons who had escaped from a train going to the death camp and had been captured by guards," the statement said.
Between May and June 1943, he reportedly killed eight others who had been wounded but not killed by another guard at Belzec.
"The defendant then took the weapon from the other guard to shoot the wounded victims to death," according to the statement.
Kunz had long been ignored by the German justice system, with authorities in the past showing little interest in going after relatively low-ranking camp guards. But in the past 10 years, a younger generation of German prosecutors has emerged that wants to bring all surviving Nazi suspects to justice.
While Kunz ranked fairly low in the Nazi hierarchy, he is among the top most wanted due to the large number of Jews he is accused of having a role in killing — which the prosecutor's office in Dortmund puts at 430,000 — and the fact that he was personally involved, Zuroff said.
The highest-profile guard on trial now is Demjanjuk, the 90-year-old retired autoworker being tried as an accessory to the murder of 28,060 Jews as a guard at the Sobibor death camp in occupied Poland. He denies he was ever a camp guard.
Authorities stumbled over Kunz's case when they studied old documents from German postwar trials about the SS training camp Trawniki.
That discovery made the Wiesenthal center aware of his case and prompted it to include him on their wanted list in April, Zuroff said.
Prosecutors allege that both Kunz and the Ukrainian-born Demjanjuk, who was deported to Germany from the U.S. last year, trained as guards at the Trawniki SS camp.
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Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Power and Light
Getting Iraqis and Afghans on the grid could have helped build peace, but the Americans couldn’t quite deliver.
Amplify’d from www.newsweek.com
Power and Light
Getting Iraqis and Afghans on the grid could have helped build peace, but the Americans couldn’t quite deliver.
An electricity pole in Kabul.
Electricity is not a religion, of course, but it’s a world changer. You want to transform the culture of the Afghan hinterland? Let little girls there watch TV. You want to keep the bad guys off the streets in Baghdad? It helps if their air conditioners work, so they want to stay in the cool of their homes. Winning hearts and minds in the modern world is not about generating gratitude; it’s about getting people on the grid, even and especially when there is no grid, so they have the desire to change their lives and the ability to follow through.
That the United States has been unable to deliver this basic utility is a failure with truly far-reaching consequences—an early and enduring proof of superpower impotence. The expectations of the people in Afghanistan in 2001 and in Iraq in 2003, whatever other misgivings they may have had about the U.S.-led invasions of their countries, were that the Americans could at least get basic infrastructure up and running in short order. The United States had the technology, the know-how, the money. And in both countries there were huge needs.
In Iraq most of the population was used to having electricity, clean water, good roads, but all that had withered away after decades of war and sanctions and then the orgy of looting that followed the fall of Saddam Hussein. In Afghanistan, the vast majority had never known such advantages, and fewer than 10 percent had any access at all to electricity apart from what they could eke out of sputtering little generators burning expensive diesel or gasoline.
But more than seven years after American troops rolled into Baghdad, Iraq still doesn’t have electricity 24 hours a day. Indeed, the average citizen is lucky to have six hours and often gets only four. In June, as temperatures soared over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, protests about electricity shortages erupted all over the country. Two people were killed by police in Basra, and, trying to defuse the political crisis, the caretaker government declared that the pampered international residents of the Green Zone would have to suffer along with everyone else.
In Kabul earlier this year, a power plant came online that Hinks’s company helped build as a subcontractor. Its price tag was $305 million. Hinks told the commission it “should have cost $130 million.” Part of the expenditure was on runaway security costs, even though it’s right on the outskirts of the capital. But another big problem was wildly unrealistic goals set in 2007 as part of what many in Afghanistan saw as a U.S.-backed effort to win support for President Hamid Karzai in the August 2009 elections. The plant was supposed to be up and running by December 2008. (Some critics in Kabul called the power plant his “winter coat.”) It did not actually open until May of this year.
Meanwhile, as the Associated Press reported in an exhaustive investigation published earlier this month, the Afghan capital now gets most of its electricity from Uzbekistan and other neighbors. When Kabul does run the U.S.-built plant, it has to burn diesel it imports from abroad. “I don’t think it was sensible to build a diesel power plant in Kabul,” Hinks told the commission. He said he couldn’t understand why it doesn’t use natural gas, which is available in Afghanistan. And still 90 percent of the country cannot access any central source of power.
Why has supplying this basic public utility proved so difficult? Hinks said he could not go into too many details about Kabul because his company is in the midst of contentious international arbitration with the prime contractor there. But having built transmission lines in some of the most dangerous parts of Iraq during the most dangerous years (from 2003 to 2007), he had a few key points he wanted to make. Though technical and administrative, what they came down to is the fundamental question of priorities. Washington never quite realized, or at least never firmly decided, that turning on the lights should be at the top of its list. And when the great military-industrial contracting machine did focus attention, in short spurts, it tended to throw money away on private security contractors and wildly expensive air transport of heavy machinery and even trailers to house personnel.
According to Hinks, the whole process got bogged down in a system of overpriced contracts with the U.S. government that generated huge amounts of money for the biggest contractors but relatively little electricity. These virtually open-ended “cost-plus” deals allow the contractors who get them to keep billing as costs rise, and to take a commission on what’s paid, so the more they spend, the more they pocket. Poor performance is rewarded at government expense. “If the contractor makes mistakes, it does not lose anything as a consequence,” said Hinks. “It is like giving your children whatever money they ask for. A cost-plus contractor will lose any appreciation for the value of money.” In room 106 of the Dirksen building, Hinks told the commission—which is only too well aware of this pervasive approach to government contracting in war zones—that he thinks most deals should have firm fixed prices, which are the type he normally gets.
At the same time, he said, too little effort has been made to bring Iraqis and Afghans into the process of building, protecting, and running power networks. Security contractors are often hired as part of the cost-plus process, and they keep running up expenses to protect workers, equipment, and themselves against the locals. Hinks turned that process on its head in Iraq in order to get the job done. “In many cases we worked with tribal leaders who managed the work in their areas of influence,” he said. “In some of the most volatile areas of the country, the local sheiks became Symbion’s partners.” People who worked on the project told me last year that Hinks had the towers built in Fallujah by a man well connected with local tribal leaders. Each agreed to support the erection of towers in his territory, getting paid for water, sand, and other construction materials. Their people got jobs, too. At the height of the project, 2,700 were employed. The lines got built, and they stayed up.
On the ground in Afghanistan, beleaguered provincial-reconstruction teams understand such concepts and have embraced the idea of micro-hydro projects: small generators locally made in Afghanistan and Pakistan that can be hooked up to primitive irrigation networks to provide villages with enough hydroelectric power to light them at night, power their TVs, and even run the sewing machines of local industries. The interest in this small-is-beautiful technology is great, as evinced by some of the the WikiLeaks documents and also by studies on how to put a bunch of these things in place in the very troubled, very strategic Nangarhar province between Kabul and the Khyber Pass. People want to protect an installation that helps to change their lives. There’s no culture clash involved, no overt politics, and the Taliban doesn’t offer anything so good.
But 160 micro-hydro generators installed so far in the entire country are hardly enough to turn Afghanistan around. What’s needed is a concerted effort to bring light to both rural and urban populations. As the war intensifies, that is ever harder to do, and until there’s more power and light for the people, showing them the value of peace and the possibilities for the future, the war is likely to continue to intensify.
In the months and years ahead, as the Obama administration continues trying to extricate U.S. troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ll probably see the same signs posted above the desks of U.S. officials in Baghdad and Kabul that we saw in the past in Saigon and Beirut. “Last one out please turn out the lights,” they’ll read. This time the message will have an added irony, since so few of the lights ever went on.
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Monday, July 26, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
Monday, July 19, 2010
Man arrested at Mexico City airport with 18 tiny endangered monkeys stuffed inside girdle http://amplify.com/u/7vdf
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
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