StumbleUpon | dysviz's blog posts

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/37492329/

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:19:14 -0800

http://www.curingdeath.com/research/Scientists_discover_influenzas_Achilles_heel_Antioxidants.asp

As the nation copes with a shortage of vaccines for H1N1 influenza, a team of Alabama researchers have raised hopes that they have found an Achilles' heel for all strains of the flu-antioxidants. In an article appearing in the November 2009 print issue of the FASEB Journal http://www.fasebj.org) they show that antioxidants-the same substances found in plant-based foods-might hold the key in preventing the flu virus from wreaking havoc on our lungs.

"The recent outbreak of H1N1 influenza and the rapid spread of this strain across the world highlights the need to better understand how this virus damages the lungs and to find new treatments," said Sadis Matalon, co-author of the stud

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36933490/

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:34:19 -0700

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36734079/

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:42:39 -0700

By buhdydharma
http://www.justicefornone.com/
Never has the divide between the Ruling Class and the "Underclasses" been so transparent, so stark, and so great.

The debacle in Iraq and the torture arising from it has limned the Military Industrial Class. The Financial ruination the Economic Class has wrought has outlined them in a bright spotlight. The hypocrisy at the heart of the Religious and Cultural (including the media) Class, whose rhetoric is used to divide the "Underclasses" is being exposed. And of course the corruption of OUR government, government as owned by the Ruling Class is now glaringly obvious.

It is obvious in the battle for health care, and obvious in the financial crisis. It is obvious, and they are vulnerable, for one main reason, this time they are not just going after the "Lower" Classes, they have made the critical mistake of "going after" (affecting adversely to a grievous extent) the Middle Class as well.

Masses of people are now suffering at the hands of the system the Ruling Class has created to give them power and line their pockets. Foreclosure, unemployment, lack of good jobs and benefits for the employed and underemployed....and bill after bill of legislation for the Rich that ignores the plight, the plight that the Ruling Class created, of what they obviously consider to be literally the Lower Classes. The Health Care fight is just the most obvious and egregious battle of the Class War. But it can no longer be honestly denied.Class War is now out in the open.

This dynamic, this willingness of the one or two percent of the wealthiest Americans to screw the rest of America...and the world...merely to line their own pockets and increase their power touches literally every aspect of our lives. From the very personal aspects of getting decent affordable health care and to putting food on our families...to the greater spheres of politics, foreign policy and the survival of the planet itself.

The cultural controls and societal memes and conditioning are still effective in 'controlling' most of the GenPop, the "Underclasses"... and keeping them from uniting to even a small extent and rising up against The Ruling Class... are still in effect.

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36734022/

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:40:26 -0700

Except, perhaps, to some extent....among a burgeoning, hyper-informed online segment of the GenPop. Teh Bloggers. WE are, in our chaotic fashion, telling the story. Getting the word out, albeit in dribs and drabs, when no one else will

But there is one thing, one galvanizing force still missing. Just as we have discussed here to some extent with fighting for torture prosecutions...there is no unified narrative of what is happening in the Class War.

And of course that is where the media, or lack of it, comes in. With the death of Walter Cronkite and the media retrospectives that followed, we were reminded of his greatest contributions. Walter was the one who provided the narrative to the masses on two of the most important events of his time. The Vietnam war and Watergate. Ben Bradlee credits Walter, as highlighted in this piece, with pulling the narrative together and making it...well, real. Real to enough of the population that it could not be ignored or swept under the rug.

Today's media just does not do that. All of the stories of corruption and financial theft and the lies used to get us into iraq and the torture that followed are out there, But there is no one to pull them together into a comprehensive portrait of what has, and what is, really occurring in America.

A portrait that would make the Class War and all of its ancillary scandals and horrors into a narrative that cannot be ignored. That demands action. The larger picture is divided and diffused. Leaving the Underclasses divided and confused. And allowing the Ruling Class to not just continue the Class War that they are waging against us. to succeed, but also giving their PR armies time to do damage control, to seep the scandals under the rug and be minimized and forgotten.

Without a concerted effort by the one force they truly fear, the voice of the bloggers and their few but rapidly growing number of allies in government and the traditional media, the Ruling Class may succeed yet again in escaping the scrutiny they deserve. And the reforms to the system that are necessary not just to rein them in, but to break their hold on our economy, our media, and our government.

And incidentally...to prevent them from stopping efforts to save the planet from Climate Crisis before it is too late. For all of us. And our children.

The Ruling Class, the oligarchy/plutocracy have once again gone too far in their greed and exposed themselves. They are vulnerable. The new voices on the internet are doing a great job in exposing them and attempting to hold them accountable. But not yet quite good enough. The confusion and division they are so expert at sowing are still working, still preventing a clear narrative of the scope and tactics of their control of the economy and the government from emerging.

What more can we do to expose them? How can we weave the stories of groups like C Street and K Street and the MIC and the Banksters and their media pawns together into a compelling and powerful narrative that cannot be ignored?

How can we comprehensively expose how the current corrupt system works, and having exposed it, bring about the real Change that we need to finally realize the promise of American democracy and achieve true justice and equality for all?

It is perhaps, the true challenge of our time. It is certainly an opportunity, now that they are vulnerable and exposed, at least for the moment, that is just too essential to ALL of us to let pass.

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36733928/

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 11:35:26 -0700

Not Your Normal Leading Economic Indicator

Chris Puplava took a good hard look at the LEI in Fool Me Once, Shame on You. Fool Me Twice, Shame on Me.
One of the things that many market commentators and research houses have pointed at to support their bullish outlook on the stock market are the leading economic indicators. I have had the sneaky suspicion that the aggressive and unprecedented actions on the part of the Fed have played a significant role in the LEI given a misleading signal as to an economic turnaround it is forecasting, while the economic components would likely paint a different picture. It is important to understand the makeup of the Conference Board's Leading Economic Index (LEI) and the weights that each component makes up of the LEI. Below is the breakdown of the ten indicators that make up the LEI and their respective weights in the index. As seen below, the three financial indicators make up approximately 50% of the LEI while the seven economic components make up the other 50%, with the M2 money supply alone making up 35.8% of the total LEI. Money makes the world go round, I guess, according to the LEI.

Shown below are the YOY rate of change growth rates in the Conference Board's LEI and my indexes of the economic and monetary components separated out. What is a clear take away is that the monetary LEI is doing the heavy lifting as the economic LEI remains in negative territory.

What you can also see is that beginning in the 1980s the growth rate between the monetary and economic LEI began to show a greater disparity in their growth rates than they did in the 1970s. What this would tend to imply is that a greater level of monetary stimulus measures were needed to translate into improved economic growth rates. This aligns with the second chart below that shows the dollar increase in debt per dollar increase in GDP, which shows higher amounts of debt were needed to produce a dollar of GDP, and we are fast approaching the "Zero Hour" in which rising debt does not translate into increased economic growth, or the "pay the piper" moment for our economy.

Zero Hour - Debt Fails To Add To GDP

Further illustrating the notion that it is taking record stimulus just to keep growth going is the YOY growth rate difference between the Monetary LEI and the Economic LEI, with the disparity between the two growth rates at the highest level in the last half century.

The above charts simply illustrate that our economy is fundamentally weak and instead of allowing our economy to sober up after its debt binge, our monetary and governmental authorities are trying to keep the economy drunk and chugging along, using greater amounts of monetary alcohol than ever before.
There is much more in Chris' article including a series of charts on consumer confidence numbers.

Inquiring minds will want to take a look, here:
http://www.financialsense.com/Market/cpuplava/2009/0930.html

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36732354/

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:23:46 -0700

http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2009/10/just-say-no-to-mcchrystal.html
Military force is the worst possible means of combating terrorism. As the analysts at the globally respected Rand Corporation stated in 2008, the best way to proceed in our so-called "war" on terror is with "a light U.S. military footprint or none at all."

There is no such thing as a "successful" counterinsurgency campaign. More than two and a half years into the Iraq surge, Iraq's government and security forces are corrupt and incompetent, and there's not a glimpse of a solution on the horizon.

The worst mistake we made in Iraq was to go into the enterprise with the goal of decapitating its political leadership. Saddam Hussein was nobody's idea of a new-deal Democrat, but he didn't need a field manual to figure out how to run his country. By invading Iraq and deposing Hussein, we let a herd of cats out of the corral and we'll never figure out how to re-combobulate the situation.

I grew weary of the no-fly zone and maritime embargo operations over Iraq that spanned the decade and change between Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom (I did three tours of that abject nonsense), but they beat the bloody snot out of the Iraqi squirrel cage we're tangled in now. We'd have been far, far better off to let Hussein, who we now know was a toothless tyrant when we invaded, stay in power. It's too late to give Iraq back to Hussein, but it's not too late to give Afghanistan back to Mohammed Omar and his Taliban.

We need to learn what conquerors throughout history have known. The best way to occupy a country is to not occupy it. Leave the local burgomasters in charge and keep a low-profile praetorian governor around to collect the tribute on schedule.

We have managed to discard the history of war and reverse that process. We traipse into a country, kick out the folks who know how to run things, insert puppets, and rather than collect tribute we throw reams of bribe money at everybody so they won't shoot us or our anointed stooges. (That's how "Teflon General" David Petraeus created the illusion of a "successful" surge in Iraq.)

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36533459/

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:44:07 -0700

via oikos
Even though prospective home buyers want the benefits of new, more efficient homes, they are unwilling to pay much more for a "green" home, according to a recent member survey from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB).

"Although we are seeing significant interest in green building, cost effectiveness is clearly a key concern among home buyers," said NAHB Chairman Joe Robson, a home builder and developer in Tulsa, OK. "Builders said that among buyers who are willing to pay more for green features, more than half--57 percent--are unlikely to pay more than an additional two percent."

The August survey coincides with news that the NAHB National Green Building Program continues to grow. More than 400 homes, developments and remodeling projects have been certified by the NAHB Research Center, which administers the program and trains and accredits local project verifiers. Of those projects, 43 have been certified to the National Green Building Standard, approved earlier this year by the American National Standards Institute.

Preferences for specific green building techniques are decidedly regional, with builders in the West reporting much more interest in water efficiency than builders in other areas. Interest in homes built with recycled materials is particularly high in the Northeast (the region where the fewest new homes are built) and low in the South (the region with the highest number of housing starts).

Only 11 percent of builders nationwide indicated that their customers ask about environmentally friendly features, according to the survey. "Fortunately, our members are increasingly taking the initiative to educate the home-buying public about the benefits of green construction," Robson said.

Overall, energy efficiency continues to be the primary factor driving the green building movement, squaring with previous NAHB surveys of home builders when asked about buyer preferences.

"More and more, our members are able to convince their clients of the benefits of a home built with efficiency and sustainability in mind," Robson said. "However, when buyers prepare to sign on the dotted line, cost-effectiveness clearly drives their decisions. We need to make sure that our energy policies reflect that reality so that builders have the flexibility to use lot and site design, high-efficiency heating and cooling equipment and other features to achieve the desired results at the right price," he continued.

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36533421/

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:42:05 -0700

via oikos
Working to prevent or slow down climate change should continue to be a major focus of the building industry, but that is no longer enough, according to Alex Wilson and Andrea Ward in a new article in Environmental Building News (EBN). We also need to address how to adapt our buildings and communities to the impacts of those changes, which are already underway, they argue in a September 2009 feature article entitled, "Design for Adaptation: Living in a Climate-Changing World."

"Even if carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions were to be somehow turned off tomorrow," Wilson points out, "warming temperatures, more intense storms, flooding and other impacts of climate change will continue--and we need to address that in our design practices."

The EBN article makes the case that climate change is not only happening, but it is happening at a more rapid rate than even the most pessimistic climate models predicted just a few years ago.

"The reality of climate change is unequivocal," according to Jonathan Overpeck, Ph.D., co-director of the Institute of the Environment at the University of Arizona, who was quoted in the article. He and other experts interviewed for the article, including Stephen Schneider, Ph.D., of Stanford University, argue that adaptation to a changing climate is a high priority today.

The article describes 36 specific strategies for addressing adaptation to climate change, organized into five major headings. These headings and a sampling of the specific strategies are listed below:

Warmer temperatures

Design cooling-load-avoidance measures into buildings;
Model energy performance with higher cooling design temperatures;
Plan for termites extending their range to the north;
Drought and water shortages

Plumb buildings for graywater separation;
Plant native, climatically appropriate trees and other vegetation;
More intense storms, flooding and rising sea levels

Expand stormwater management capacity and rely on natural systems;
Design buildings to survive extreme winds;
Specify materials that can survive flooding;
Wildfire

Eliminate gutters or design and maintain them to minimize fire risk (for wildfire-prone areas);
Avoid vented roofs or protect vents from ember entry (for wildfire-prone areas);
Power interruptions

Design buildings to maintain passive survivability;
Provide dual-mode operability with high-rise buildings;
Plan and zone communities to maintain functionality without power.
"We are fortunate," says Wilson, "that many of the strategies available for adapting to climate change offer other benefits, such as lower building operating costs, better environmental performance and improved durability."

The article argues that these strategies are also relatively straightforward and eminently doable. "It makes sense to incorporate these into our design palette today," concludes the article.

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36533389/

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:39:35 -0700

http://scobleizer.com/2009/10/01/google-wave-crashes-on-beach-of-overhype/

http://dysviz.stumbleupon.com/review/36349961/

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:31:24 -0700

So, Stephen Harper and his ministers were defending possible war crimes and crimes against humanity, while Michael Ignatieff and senior Liberals were staying mostly mum. And much of our mainstream media were averting their gaze from, or excusing, the possible crimes.

Now, no less an authority than Richard Goldstone, former chief prosecutor with the war crimes tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, says that the three-week Israeli onslaught on Gaza eight months ago amounted to "war crimes and possibly, in some respects, crimes against humanity."

Releasing his report Tuesday, he said: "As a Jew with a long-standing affiliation with Israel, it's obviously a great disappointment to me, to put it mildly, that Israel behaved as described in the report."

His four-member United Nations panel found that both Israeli and Palestinian groups committed war crimes, the latter by rocketing Israeli civilian areas. But the panel reserved its harshest judgments for Israel: Its Dec. 27-Jan. 18 attack was "directed at the people of Gaza as a whole," not just at Hamas militants (as Israel claimed).

In fact, Israeli operations were "carefully planned in all their phases as a deliberately disproportionate attack designed to punish, humiliate and terrorize a civilian population, radically diminish its local economic capacity to work and to provide for itself, and to force upon it an ever increasing sense of dependency and vulnerability."

Israel was following its Dahiya Doctrine - "the application of disproportionate force and the causing of great damage and destruction to civilian property and infrastructure, and suffering to civilian populations."

Goldstone has pronounced Israel guilty of:

Attacking residential areas, water wells, rooftop water tanks, agricultural land, citrus groves, chicken farms, greenhouses, business factories and police stations.
Using phosphorous incendiary shells on a UN compound sheltering more than 600 civilians.
Using phosphorous and high explosive artillery shells on Al-Quds hospital. (He rejected the contention that Hamas or other militants were using the hospital.)
Attacking a crowded mosque during evening prayers. (He rejected the contention that arms and militants were inside.)
Using flechettes, 4-cm metal darts fired from missiles, planes or tanks "that penetrate straight through human bone and can cause serious, often fatal, injuries."
Using Palestinians as human shields in house searches.
Goldstone urged the UN Security Council to ask both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities to hold transparent investigations and report back in six months.

Failing that, the council should turn the matter over to the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court.

Israel had boycotted the panel and refused it entry into Israel. Panellists entered Gaza via Egypt for inspections and interviews. They went to Jordan to meet Palestinian Authority officials from the West Bank. They heard testimony from Israelis, including some victims of Hamas attacks, by flying them to Geneva.

The 575-page report (Adobe Reader required) - based on 188 interviews, 10,000 pages of documentation, 1,200 photographs and satellite imagery - is not easily dismissed. But Israel and its defenders are trying, with a smear campaign:

What else would you expect from a report done for the anti-Israeli UN Human Rights Council? Where was the need for a UN inquiry when Israel has conducted more than 100 of its own?

The former South African Supreme Court and Constitutional Court judge is not easily cowed into silence. "It is grossly wrong to label a mission or to label a report critical of Israel as being anti-Israel." He urges "fair-minded people" to read the report for themselves. (Go to the UN website, UN.org, and search for the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza conflict.)

Goldstone's report is a condemnation not only of Israel but also its apologists in Canada, including the media. The latter are now busy burying the report under an orches