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Black Turtle Bean: The Healthiest Bean on Earth?

April 9, 2013, 1:10 am
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Black turtle beans, commonly known as black beans, are a variety of the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Like all common beans, black beans are loaded with protein, fiber, molybdenum, zinc, and copper. But the health benefits of black turtle beans go way beyond the call of duty as these little black gems offer extraordinary antioxidant benefits resulting from their high concentration of anthocyanins. Anthocyanins are flavonoid pigments that give many black and blue fruits, berries and legumes their extraordinary health benefits.
Note: Like all common beans, raw black turtle beans contain toxic lectins and therefore you should always cook them properly before eating them.

Black Beans Top the List of Antioxidant-Rich Beans

A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2003 investigated the antioxidant activity of 12 common varieties of dry beans. Black beans came out on top, having more antioxidant activity, gram for gram, than the other beans. The researchers also found that the darker the seed coat of the bean, the higher the flavonoid content (in general). Among the tested varieties, white beans had the lowest levels of flavonoids and yielded the weakest antioxidant activity.
Health benefits of eating black beans
The black bean has more antioxidant activity than any other bean.
The strong antioxidant properties of black turtle beans are largely attributable to their high concentration of anthocyanins such as delphinidin, petunidin, and malvidin. The overall anthocyanin content of black beans is estimated to be around 214 milligrams per 100 grams1. Anthocyanins are healthful flavonoid pigments that give foods like blueberries, blackcurrants, raspberries, red grapes — and black beans — their intense color and superior antioxidant properties. In terms of antioxidant capacity, anthocyanins have even been shown to beat Trolox, which is a vitamin E analog and which often serves as a control antioxidant in research studies2.
But what exactly are the health benefits of eating antioxidant-rich foods like black turtle beans? Antioxidants protect cells from free radicals which are harmful atoms that can cause damage to the cells in your body. The cellular damage caused by free radicals can lead to a number of degenerative and chronic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, many cancers, heart disease, immune system problems, atherosclerosis, dementia, diabetes, thrombosis, and even certain eye disorders.

Black Beans Offer Beauty Benefits

Apart from providing protection against diseases, the free radical fighting properties of anthocyanins and other flavonoids present in black turtle beans can deliver beauty benefits by preventing sign of premature aging of the skin induced by an overdose of sunlight. When your skin is exposed to ultraviolet light, it produces enzymes called metalloproteinases which help repair sun-damaged collagen fibers. That said, not all metalloproteinases are beneficial; some of them break down collagen and elastin, which can eventually cause wrinkles. Free radicals are known to stimulate the production of these harmful metalloproteinases.
In addition to providing antioxidants that can help keep wrinkles at bay, black beans provide lots of protein as well as zinc and copper which are among the best nutrients for fighting wrinkles.

Molybdenum in Black Beans Has Detoxifying Poperties

If the health benefits of black turtle beans discussed above are not enough to convince you to add these lovely legumes to your diet, consider this: black beans provide a substantial amount of molybdenum. Molybdenum — which was discovered in 1778 by Karl Scheele, a Swedish chemist — is a trace mineral that plays an essential role in human health. Molybdenum is needed to form and activate several important detoxifying enzymes in the human body, including aldehyde oxidase and sulfite oxidase.

Aldehyde oxidase neutralizes acetaldehyde, a toxic substance that is released when yeast, alcohol and fungi are metabolized. The damaging effects of acetaldehyde range from cancer-causing properties to an ability to deactivate an enzyme that is responsible for the conversion of linoleic acid into gamma linolenic acid. Gamma linolenic acid is an anti-inflammatory substance with strong health promoting properties.

Sulfite oxidase converts sulfites (potentially harmful) into sulfates (harmless). The potentially harmful sulfites enter the body through diet as they are commonly used as a preservative in foods and alcoholic drinks. In sensitive individuals, sulfites have been shown to trigger asthma symptoms ranging from mild wheezing to potentially life-threatening asthmatic reactions.

Black Beans Rank Low on the Glycemic Index

With a glycemic index value of 30, black beans are considered a low glycemic food. The glycemic index, or GI, ranks foods and beverages based on their blood glucose raising potential. Foods that are high on the glycemic index (such as white rice, boiled parsnips, and white bread) break down with ease and cause blood sugar and insulin levels to surge after meals, which is followed by rapidly dropping blood sugar levels. The sharp 'rise and fall' effect on blood sugar levels can put extra strain on the body and ultimately lead to several health problems such as adult-onset diabetes, increased cravings for sweets, altered mood, tiredness, and cardiovascular disease.

Black beans and other low GI foods, on the other hand, are absorbed slowly into the bloodstream, which helps keep your blood sugar levels stable. This in turn helps prevent cravings for sweet foods and control mood swings. Additionally, low GI foods like black beans can fight insulin resistance associated with diabetes and lower your risk of developing heart disease and stroke.
But the health benefits of eating low GI foods such as black turtle beans do not end there. 

Substituting low GI foods for high GI foods also offers great weight loss benefits. When the carbohydrates in our food cause our blood sugar levels to rise, a hormone called insulin is produced by the body. The purpose of insulin is to decrease the concentration of glucose in the blood by stimulating the uptake of glucose by the body's muscle and liver cells. These cells are responsible for storing glucose, in the form of glycogen, for later use as energy. However, the body's total storage capacity for glycogen is limited. If you're an average person, you can store about 300-400 grams of carbohydrate in your muscles and about 60-100 grams in your liver. To get rid of any excess carbohydrates that cannot be stored in the muscles or liver, the body will convert them into fat and store the fat in your butt, belly and thighs.
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Nutritional Differences Between Frozen & Fresh Vegetables

April 9, 2013, 1:20 am
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Are there nutritional differences between frozen and fresh vegetables and fruits? Interestingly, research shows that the nutritional differences between fresh and frozen produce depend largely on for how long you are planning to store the food in the fridge or refrigerator before you cook and eat it. In general, fresh produce starts to rapidly lose its nutritional value within hours after harvest. Fresh spinach, for example, loses 75% of its vitamin C within seven days of harvest when stored at stored in the refrigerator at 4°C (39°F).
Vegetables and fruits that are chosen for freezing, on the other hand, are typically blanched and frozen immediately after harvesting, which means they still have a high nutritional value when the blanching begins. However, the blanching process – which is used to deactivate spoilage-causing bacteria before the food is frozen; will cause loss of nutrients. This nutrient loss can vary significantly among different vegetables. The actual freezing will usually not have a significant impact on the nutritional value of the vegetables.
Let's look at some nutrition facts about common fresh vegetables and how they compare to their frozen counterparts:

Fresh vs. Frozen Broccoli

Vitamin C begins to degrade immediately after harvest. According to a study published in the journal Food Chemistry in 1998, fresh broccoli loses 56% of vitamin C (on a dry weight basis) during the first 7 days after picking if it is stored at 20°C (68°F). However, according to the same study, storing broccoli in the refrigerator at 4°C (39°F) can reduce the vitamin C loss to almost zero during the same seven day period.
According to a study published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture in 2000, broccoli loses about 50-55% of its vitamin C content during blanching and subsequent freezing. Furthermore, a 1998 study published in the journal Food Chemistry found that frozen broccoli loses a further 10% of its vitamin C when stored at –20°C (–4°F) for 12 months.

Fresh vs. Frozen Green Beans

According to a UC Davis study, green beans can lose as much as 77% of their vitamin C content when stored at 4°C (39°F) for seven days. This loss will increase to a whopping 90% if the beans are stored for 16 days in the refrigerator, says a 1999 study published in the Journal of Food Science. In contrast, green beans lose only about 28% of vitamin C during blanching and subsequent freezing.
Whether fresh or frozen, green beans are a good source of carotene. Steam blanching is thought to result in little or no loss in beta-carotene, and according to a 1992 study published in the Journal of Food Quality, freezing will not have a significant effect on the beta-carotene content of green beans, either. The losses of beta-carotene are minimal also when fresh beans are stored in the refrigerator (around 10% on average when refrigerated for 16 days, according to a 1999 study published in the Journal of Food Science.

Fresh vs. Frozen Spinach

Even when refrigerated properly, the fine leaves of spinach lose their impeccable nutritional value very fast. Fresh spinach is an excellent source of folate, a nutrient many women are deficient in, but the vegetable starts to lose its folate the moment it is harvested. A 2004 study published in the journal Food Chemistry and Toxicology found that only 53% of folate in packaged spinach was retained after 8 days of storage at 4 °C (39°F). If the spinach was stored at 10 °C (50°F), the folate concentration was reduced to 23% already within six days.
When steam-blanched (instead of water-blanched) and frozen promptly after harvesting, spinach will retain much of its folate content.
If you only compare the folate concentration of fresh vs. frozen spinach, you will likely conclude that frozen spinach is the better option unless, of course, you are able to source spinach directly from a farmer. However, if you compare other nutrients in spinach, it is no longer clear that opting for the frozen product is the best way to go. Let's look at vitamin C: According to a study published in the journal Food Chemistry in 1998, fresh spinach loses 75% of its vitamin C when refrigerated for a week at 4°C (39°F). However, the loss of vitamin C will be almost equal (61% according to a study published in the International Journal for Vitamin and Nutrition Research) when spinach is blanched and frozen. Additionally, a 1998 study published in the journal Food Chemistry has shown that frozen spinach can lose a further 30% of its vitamin C if stored at –20°C (–4°F) for 12 months.

So What's the Conclusion?

Research shows that there are significant nutritional differences between frozen and fresh vegetables and fruits; however, it is difficult to prove any claims that one would be better than the other. If you are wondering whether you should choose a fresh vegetable or its frozen counterpart for your next healthy meal, make an estimate of how long it has been since the vegetable was harvested. Additionally, think about which vitamins and minerals that vegetable is famous for. Vitamin C, for example, is not as sensitive to the blanching and freezing process as it is to continued storage in the fridge.
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9 Ingredients Nutritionists Won't Touch

April 9, 2013, 1:21 am
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1. Potassium benzoate: When you crave something sweet, bubbly, and perhaps caffeinated but don't want the calories, it can be tempting to crack open a diet soda-but resist that urge. "Sodium and potassium benzoate are added to some diet soft drinks and fruit drinks," Leslie Bonci, R.D., says. "They can form benzene, which is a carcinogen when combined with vitamin C, the ascorbic acid in juice or soda."

In addition, research shows that there may be a link between diet cola consumption and weight gain, as well as cancer and diabetes, so if you're a diet soda junkie, try to cut back.

If you don't drink soda, you're not safe, though: Potassium benzoate often shows up in seemingly innocuous foods such as apple cider, low-fat salad dressings, syrups, jams, olives, and pickles, so read labels.


2. Corn: Don't panic-you can enjoy your corn on the cob if it's non-GMO; we're talking about modified cornstarch, dextrose, maltodextrin, and corn oil here. All are high in omega-6 fatty acids, which can promote inflammation, cancer, and heart disease. While your body needs both omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids to perform at its full potential, most experts recommend an omega-6 to omega-3 ratio of 1:1-currently most Americans consume about 15 times more omega-6 acids than omega-3s, according to Valerie Berkowitz, R.D., director of nutrition at the Center for Balanced Health and author of The Stubborn Fat Fix.

Unfortunately corn products and other foods high in omega-6s are hard to avoid. "Because they're cheap, they're in almost every product you buy, and therefore you eat more of them," Berkowitz says. However you can cut back by gradually phasing out foods such as margarine, vegetable oil, and soy, and, while you're at it, boost your omega-3 intake by adding salmon, grass-fed beef, halibut, chia seeds, and walnuts to your diet.

3. Soy: Although it's often lauded as a healthy, cholesterol-free, cheap, low-fat protein alternative to meat, not all soy is healthy for you, Berkowitz says. "Soy protein, soy isolate, and soy oil are present in about 60 percent of the foods on the market and have been shown to impair fertility and affect estrogen in women, lower sex drive, and trigger puberty early in children," she says. "Soy can also add to the imbalance between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids."

The main problem is that 92 percent of soy products in the U.S. are genetically modified, Berkowitz adds. "If you really can't avoid it or are considering going vegetarian or vegan, try to stick with organic soy and don't eat more than three servings a week." She recommends beans, nuts, or sprouted grains such as quinoa or millet as good vegan protein sources, as well as cage-free eggs for vegetarians.

4. BHA: Any processed food that has a long shelf life is often filled with butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA), says dietitian Julie Upton. "This is added to foods to prevent fats from spoiling."

Although it has GRAS (generally recognized as safe) status by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it's been shown to cause cancer in animals, raising concerns among the healthy living community that the additive could be carcinogenic to humans as well. Upton recommends minimizing the amount of oil-containing processed foods you eat because they're bound to include BHA.

5. Fractionated palm kernel oil: Fractionating oil is a process most often used on palm and palm kernel oil that involves heating the oil, then cooling it quickly so that it breaks up into fractions (hence the name). The fractioned oil is then passed through a filtration process, during which it's separated into liquid palm olein and solid palm stearin components. Don't worry if you're confused (we are too!). The key thing is that the filtration process separates out most of the liquid part of the oil, leaving a high concentration of solid fat behind.

Fractionated oil is great in preventing the chocolate coating on candy and protein bars from melting, but unfortunately it's not so kind to your waistline or health: "Palm kernel oil is about 80 percent saturated fat and leads to increased LDL (bad) cholesterol," says Christine Gerbstadt, M.D., R.D., a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. So avoid both fractionated and regular palm kernel oil.

Palm fruit oil, however, has less saturated fat and some vitamin E (a player in maintaining a healthy immune system and metabolism), so it's better for you, but still not as healthy extra-virgin olive, canola, avocado, or almond oils, all of which are made up of a majority of mono- or polyunsaturated fats and have medium or high smoke points, making them safe to cook with.

6. MSG: Made famous by the "Chinese restaurant syndrome," MSG is a flavor enhancer commonly added to Chinese foods and products, as well as canned vegetables and soups and some meats. It's officially recognized as a food that's safe to eat in small quantities, but because a proportion of the population experiences an adverse reaction, including migraines and increased appetite, it remains controversial within the healthy living community. For this reason, it's required to be on the label whenever it's added to a food, and it's not allowed to be added to infant formula or foods for toddlers.


7. Artificial flavorings: Artificial flavorings offer absolutely no nutritional value and are the markers of processed food, says registered dietitian and author Dawn Jackson Blatner. They show up in almost everything today, including bread, cereals, flavored yogurt, soups mixes, and cocktail mixers, so they can be hard to avoid.

Your best bet is to go for the real thing whenever possible. "For example, if you want to have whipped cream, have a little bit of real whipped cream, not whipped topping, which is also full of hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup, or instead of spray butter, cook with a little bit of real butter or olive oil," Jackson Blatner says.

8. Sodium nitrites and nitrates: "Nitrites are added to meats such as hot dogs, bacon, and deli meats as a preservative, but they may form nitrosamines when in the body, which may promote cancer growth," Dr. Gerbstadt says. In fact, a 2009 study found that kids who ate cured meats or fish more than once a week had a 74 percent greater risk of leukemia than children who rarely ate those foods.

Try to limit your consumption of cured meats to no more than three per week and avoid hot dogs entirely if you can: A 2011 study found that even organic and "natural" hot dogs contained anywhere from one-half to 10 times the amount of nitrites than conventional hot dogs did, and that natural bacon had between a third and three times the amount of nitrites of conventional bacon. But don't worry about the nitrates and nitrites found naturally in vegetables-the antioxidants in veggies inhibit them from converting into harmful compounds.
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Top 10 Migraine Triggers

April 9, 2013, 1:24 am
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Headaches might just be the most oppressive common malady there is. About 40 percent of us routinely suffer ordinary tension-type headaches, which range from the sensation of a tightening band to outright pounding around the head. Ninety-three percent have these headaches at least once or twice a year.

It gets worse for the additional 50 million Americans who endure migraines, which pulse and throb relentlessly on one side of the brain. Accompanied by nausea, dizziness, numbness, neck pain and a host of other physical symptoms — even hallucinations — migraines can be mild or can grind life to a halt for hours or days at a time. The most severe migraines keep people home, in darkened bedrooms, and unable to drive, withstand the light of day, work or care for their kids. About 6 million people suffer migraines every day of their lives.

A perfect cure for headaches may not be within our grasp anytime soon. But by embracing the wide range of treatments available now — from avoiding triggers and taking supplements to trying medical interventions when warranted — all but the most intractable headaches can be controlled.

Dietary Triggers: Top 10 List
David Buchholz, MD, of Johns Hopkins University, points to the top 10 migraine triggers found in food:



Caffeine. Found in coffee, tea, colas and certain other sodas. Going off caffeine suddenly can also trigger headaches.

Chocolate. Anything with cocoa. Chocolate contains phenylethylamine, which may cause blood vessels to expand and contract.

Nuts. From almonds to pistachios, they can all be culprits, as can nut butters.

Monosodium glutamate. Famously found in Chinese food, but also in seasoned salt, salty snacks, prepared soups, many low-fat and low-cal foods, and even veggie burgers. Steer clear of hydrolyzed vegetable, soy or plant proteins, which can contain similar compounds.

Deli meats and fish. If it has been aged, canned, cured, fermented, marinated, smoked or tenderized, it may trigger headaches, says Buchholz. Preservation with nitrites or nitrates is a no-no. Avoid beef livers and chicken livers, as well.

Dairy products, especially cheese. This includes all kinds of hard cheeses and foods prepared with cheese. The more aged the cheese, the worse the trigger. White cheeses, including cottage cheese, ricotta and cream cheese, have not been implicated, but yogurt has.

Red wine. Too much red wine or any dark alcohol can stack the decks against you. Of all drinking alcohols, vodka is tolerated best. Also avoid vinegar; balsamic is the most problematic, but white should be OK.

Certain fruits and vegetables. In his book Heal Your Headache, Buchholz lists the fruits and vegetables most implicated in triggering headaches. Among the problematic fruits: citrus fruits and fruit juices, bananas, raisins and other dried fruits preserved with sulfites, raspberries, red plums, papayas, passion fruit, figs, dates, and avocados. Vegetable culprits include sauerkraut, pea pods and beans (from fava to navy to lentils). The worst vegetable offender may be onions, though baby onions are OK.

Freshly baked breads risen with yeast. Especially problematic is sourdough. Also look out for bagels, doughnuts, pizza dough and soft pretzels less than 24 hours out of the oven.
Aspartame. Found in many diet soft drinks and artificial sweeteners, aspartame contains excitotoxins known to affect nerve cells.

Natural Cures
Eager to prevent your headaches before they start? These are the top five most effective and scientifically validated supplements:

Riboflavin, otherwise known as vitamin B2. Two hundred milligrams of B2 twice a day has been shown to help a significant subset of patients with migraines, says neurologist Richard Lipton, MD, of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. The key to success, experts say, is taking the vitamin every day, whether you have a headache or not.

Butterbur, a root extract from the plant Petasites hybridus. Researchers compared butterbur with a placebo in 245 headache patients. Over the course of four months, migraine attack frequency was reduced by 68 percent for those receiving 75 milligrams of the supplement twice a day.

Magnesium. Crucial for many cellular processes. When magnesium is deficient, a headache may result. Numerous studies show that patients taking magnesium supplements have significantly fewer migraine attacks, lose fewer days to pain, and can greatly reduce the amount of medication they take for migraines. Neurologist Alexander Mauskop, MD, director of the New York Headache Center, recommends daily doses of up to 600 milligrams.

Coenzyme Q10. European researchers compared migraine sufferers treated with this antioxidant with a placebo group. After three months of treatment, half of the migraine patients had fewer attacks and less nausea than the control group. The recommended dose is 300 milligrams, three times a day.

Feverfew, made from the plant Tanacetum parthenium, has long been used for headaches. The active ingredient, parthenolide, prevents blood vessel constriction, a leading cause of headaches. At the same time, parthenolide inhibits two headache triggers implicated in the inflammatory process: arachidonic acid and prostaglandins. Mauskop recommends a dose of 100 milligrams, taken up to four times a day.
Not every supplement will work for every patient, notes Mauskop. He recommends mixing these preventives for the best effect. Though the formula varies by patient, his favorite supplement cocktail tends to include 50 milligrams of feverfew, 200 milligrams of riboflavin, 150 milligrams of coenzyme Q10 and 200 milligrams of magnesium, taken twice a day with food. As with any treatment regimen, you should consult with your healthcare provider before proceeding.

Easy Fixes Worth Trying
  • Avoid caffeine drinks and chocolate.
  • Eliminate diet soda and other products with aspartame.
  • See an acupuncturist.
  • Try biofeedback.
  • Eat breakfast and schedule regular meals.
  • Stop wearing perfume and avoid scented products.
  • Don’t oversleep or undersleep.
  • Stay away from MSG (monosodium glutamate) and remember that many diet products are loaded with it.
  • Get regular aerobic exercise.
  • Check your home for fumes.
  • Embrace stress-management techniques like yoga, meditation or deep breathing.
  • Identify and eliminate food to which you have intolerances or sensitivities.
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Kindergartner suspended for his haircut

April 9, 2013, 4:57 am
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When 5-year-old Ethan Clos showed up at school with a short, spiky mohawk last week, his fellow kindergarteners thought it was cool. But administrators at Reid Primary and Middle School in Springfield, Ohio, deemed the edgy cut too disruptive, and ordered him home until he adopted a tamer style.

His mom, Keshia Castle, said that school officials suspended her son on Wednesday. After he begged her for the hairstyle, she finally let him get it over spring break.

"They seen his hair like it was," she told WHIO-TV on Friday. "All the little kids were going over and feeling on it and everything."
Superintendent Gregg Morris says that's exactly why they had to send little Ethan home.
"Our dress and grooming policies are designed to ensure that clothing and hairstyles do not cause a distraction to the learning environment," Morris said in a statement.

The school's handbook states that "Hair shall be worn above the eyebrows and must be kept clean, neat and trimmed" and specifies that boys may not wear their hair longer than the bottom of their shirt collars. It also says: "Hair styling or coloring arrangements which are disruptive or distracting are not permissible."
“Our policy clearly states that any dress or grooming which is disruptive or distracting to the educational process is not acceptable," Morris verified to WHIO-TV. "In this particular case, the student’s hairstyle did provide disruption to the classroom."
Ethan's grandmother, Joyce Wells, thinks the suspension was too harsh a penalty to pay for a hairstyle. A mohawk, she said, isn't really that different from other styles where the hair is cut close to the scalp, especially if the mohawk itself is short.
"I could understand if it was colored, and if it stood up off longer of his head," his grandmother said. "But I don't see nothing wrong with this."

This isn't the mile-high, stiffly gelled punk look of the past. (In fact, if they hadn't used styling product to give his mohawk some definition, Ethan's hair would probably have looked much like a typical military cut.) The child's stylist may have taken a cue from celebrity kids like Maddox Jolie-Pitt and Willow Smith, both of whom have sported the spiky look, to mixed reviews. Kingston Rossdale (son of rockers Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale), Madonna's 4-year-old son David Banda, and Cruz Beckham (whose parents are sport-and-style icons David and Victoria Beckham) have also sported modified mohawks, where the sides are cut close, rather than shaved bare, and a strip of hair on the top is left a bit longer.

In 2009 (and again in 2011), a volunteer football coach at the local high school wore a blond-tipped Mohawk to motivate his team. When a WHIO-TV reporter asked Morris why the coach's hair was acceptable while the kindergartener's was not, Morris said that the two situations are totally different.
“One involved an extracurricular spirit initiative designed to motivate our kids in the football playoffs a year ago," Morris explained. "Classrooms were not disrupted. The other poses a disruption to the learning environment as well as violates the student dress code."

Ethan's mom told WHIO-TV that her son would return to school on Monday, after she has his head shaved, but the style shouldn't have been such a big deal.
"He's a 5-year-old little boy who chose to wear his hair a certain way," she told the news station.
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Following Obama on Twitter? Guess again

April 9, 2013, 4:59 am
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The 29,503,030 people who follow Barack Obama's Twitter account might see his picture, see his name, see that little blue verified account badge and think they're following the President — but it's not him. All of the president's named social media accounts, in fact, have been handed over to a non-partisan, not-for-profit group that isn't overly concerned if you didn't notice the transition. As the first sitting President with a Twitter account, the murky handover raises questions that didn't exist ten years ago — Can a politician legally hand over his valuable online identity to an outside group? Is it ethical? — but makes clear federal regulators are unprepared to answer them.

Obama was one of the first politicians to recognize the potential of social media in communicating with voters. His Twitter account was created by a staffer on March 5, 2007, two months before he formally announced his candidacy. Throughout that contest, his first term, and second campaign for the presidency, Obama's campaign staff used it to share news about the president's policy priorities and to try and engage Americans in his efforts. Then, in January, it handed the reins to Organizing for Action, a new entity that took over much of Obama's campaign apparatus: website, social media accounts, email list — even the abbreviated shorthand of "OFA." The organization updated the bios associated with the social media accounts ("This account is run by Organizing for Action staff") and then kept tweeting and Facebooking, with a new emphasis on joining — and, ideally, contributing to — the new OFA. Without skipping a beat, a brand-new organization gained millions of followers on social media. It's like the president, mid-conversation, handed his phone to a telemarketer who does a great Obama impression. Or, to be more accurate, one telemarketer — the campaign — handed the phone to another one.

But to the government, OFA and the Obama campaign are very different legal creatures. Organizing For Action was created earlier this year as a 501(c)(4) non-profit under IRS code — the same as other political non-profits, like the conservative groups FreedomWorks and Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS. There are particular things a 501(c)(4) can and cannot do. It can raise scads of money, which is appealing to political organizations. But it cannot expressly advocate for a political candidate, which some organizations tend to consider a bit of an impediment. What a 501(c)(4) can do politically is what's known as issues advocacy, pressuring elected officials and candidates on issues for the "promotion of social welfare." This vague-sounding phrase is legally vague as well, and has generally been interpreted to allow for pretty much any sort of political statement short of "Vote For Candidate X." So if Organizing For Action wants to, say, convince Congress to support background checks, it can send material to voters in a senator's district, requesting that they call their senator and demand he vote the right way.

Or, easier, they can tweet a similar request.
Tell Congress: 92% of Americans support universal background checks—and it's time to pass them now. OFA.BO/rYQWAp#VoteGunSense
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 2, 2013
If you're someone who started following the president during last year's election, this could easily appear to be a request from the President of the United States — or, perhaps obviously, one of his staffers — asking that you contact your Congressmember. It isn't. He may not even agree with what it says.

This is an unprecedented development. In part because of the novelty of social media, no major candidate for office has transitioned his political campaign's online communication into an external advocacy organization. The federal regulators who watch campaign and non-profit activity haven't addressed the practice. Nor has the organization said much about the relationship.

Here's how it works. There are three entities involved: the president, his campaign, and the non-profit OFA. The campaign has always owned and operated the social media accounts, since their instantiation. During the last year's election, staffers for the campaign, Obama For America, managed the social media presence, under the ultimate direction of the president.
According to an OFA official who asked not to be identified, that changed in early February. On the sixth of that month, OFA "made arrangements" with the campaign for use of the website and operation of the social media accounts — an agreement that may include "leases or sales" of those assets to OFA, which income would show up in the campaign's FEC filings.
In summary, then, the president — independent of both of the other two organizations — receives the benefit of political action from OFA as he did from the campaign. The campaign entity allows OFA to use the accounts, which will likely result in a financial relationship between the two. Both OFA and the campaign receive contributions from donors.
It's an arrangement complex and specific enough that there's little question it falls within the letter of the law — perhaps in part because the law lags badly behind technology and political campaigns in considering the role of social media in politics.
(A note: This article focuses primarily on OFA's Twitter account. The organization also controls the barackobama.com domain and its presences on Facebook and Tumblr, but Twitter is the most interesting example, and a broadly representative one.)

@BarackObama and the law

The body responsible for determining when organizations and elected officials break campaign finance law is the Federal Elections Commission. The FEC is a non-partisan body comprised of six commissioners — three Democrats, three Republicans — that evaluates gray areas of campaign activity and renders judgment.
There are two reasons that the FEC opinion usually trails political activity, as it very much is in the case of social media. The first is that it is necessarily responsive. Some organizations seek prior approval for situations that lie on the borders of existing law, but many apply a "ask forgiveness, not permission" mantra. The other reason the FEC trails is that it's a body comprised of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans. In Washington, D.C., that's a sure-fire formula for ties — and at the FEC, a tie goes to the status quo.
The agency's primary concern is ensuring voters know who pays for what, who, for example, "approves of this message." But their antennae are mostly focused on money, not perception. Since there is value in @barackobama's 29 million followers — if you were to buy that number of followers from an online site like FollowerSale.com, it would cost you in excess of $153,000 — how it might change hands is important, regardless of the name it carries. (The organization does have its own Twitter account, @OFA, which is much less popular.)

Jason Kaune, a partner at the California law firm Nielsen Merksamer, specializes in political law and ethics. Political campaigns, he told me, "have gotten much more aggressive, and both the IRS and the FEC have given them room to do it." Obama, while not eligible for reelection, is still subject to the candidate rules that those two agencies develop. And "when something's given to a candidate they have to pay for it."
But, he notes, "this is the reverse, a sitting candidate gave something to a (c)(4)" — namely, the social media accounts. Obama is getting political benefit, but not any economic benefit — so the FEC wouldn't care. This also explains why OFA will likely pay for use of the accounts. In that case, there's no gift at all.

More importantly, OFA has no FEC obligation to be explicit in each tweet that @barackobama isn't actually Barack Obama. First of all, FEC rules only apply to electoral activity. But regardless, no FEC decision or issued rule clarifies how campaigns may or may not use social media. In 2010, Roll Call reported that the agency wasn't "in any particular hurry to map out" that uncharted territory. "The closest the FEC has come to entering the brave new world of social networking," it reported, "was a 2002 advisory opinion on text messaging, well before the method was notably used in the 2008 election by Barack Obama’s presidential campaign." In that case, an opinion from the vice chairman suggested that text messages are exempt from standard disclaimers required on ads "since text messages are so small." That's about it.

If OFA treads into political territory, things change. Let's say that Barack Obama endorsed Elizabeth Colbert Busch for Congress in South Carolina against Mark Sanford. If the group were to tweet from @barackobama, "Voters in South Carolina, don't forget to go vote for Elizabeth Colbert Busch tomorrow!" — that would be a violation, even though it's theoretically "Barack Obama" tweeting it. As a (c)(4), OFA can't officially endorse or expressly advocate for a candidate. (This, too, is a blurry line that's not worth getting into for the purposes of this article.) It's perfectly fine for a group to tweet an endorsement or call to electoral action without a disclaimer; the FEC doesn't care about that. But OFA can't because of its IRS status. If OFA were not a non-profit, it could tweet endorsements for candidates in the president's name to its heart's content. Whether or not the president supported the candidate, but that's a question for later on.
Kaune notes that Obama's clearly getting a benefit from OFA's advocacy, but it's not one that the FEC captures. As he says, "I think its more in the 'there oughtta be a law' category than 'a law is being broken.'"

The ethics of @BarackObama

The letter of the law notwithstanding, there's clearly a question of whether or not the seamless transition from an organization directly linked to the president to one that is wholly independent and reliant on donations is ethical. And the response to that is subjective.
Technically, OFA does reveal that it isn't controlled by the president. But you only see that if you visit the account page, which most Twitter users wouldn't. At the time that @BarackObama changed hands, this was the only tweet that referred to OFA.
Organizing for Action is the next step in our grassroots movement, crucial to finishing what we started. Be part of it: OFA.BO/Lk1pEf
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 21, 2013
Far from being an explanation in the change of ownership, it's the telemarketer taking over with a sales pitch.
It's also worth noting that the bio still says, "Tweets from the President are signed -bo." That inclusion helps blur the distinction between the president and the account. If he still tweets from @BarackObama, it must still be associated with him, right? The last time the account included a "-bo" tweet was the day of his second Inaguration — before the handover.
I'm honored and grateful that we have a chance to finish what we started. Our work begins today. Let's go. -bo
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) January 21, 2013
If you open any tweet from @BarackObama, it's clear that the distinction between the account and the president is lost on a lot of people. There are regular requests for the president to follow users back, for example, and praise for policy measures. There doesn't appear to have been a time at which OFA responded in an effort to clarify ownership of the account.
"The @BarackObama twitter account clearly states in its description that it is controlled by Organizing for Action," the OFA official told us, "and this is a twitter handle that has been controlled and used for years by a nongovernmental organization — Obama for America — without any problems with confusion."
Kaune points out that OFA's management of @BarackObama is "no different than Senator So-and-so who doesn't know how to use an account and has a staffer do that." But in that case, the social media-savvy staffer works directing for the senator. OFA and Obama have no official relationship.

The role of Obama in OFA

The arms-length relationship between Obama and Organizing For Action is based on its legal status as a non-partisan organization. As Politico reported in February, the organization updated its guidelines to make that point clearly.
The organization on Wednesday quietly posted new guidelines on its website formally declaring its intention to stay out of campaign politics.
“Neither OFA nor its chapters will be involved in any way in elections or partisan political activity,” OFA wrote. “Its exclusive purpose is public policy advocacy and development, and in particular, both enactment of President Obama’s legislative agenda and the identification and advancement of other goals for progressive change at the state and local level.
How OFA ensures its in sync with that legislative agenda has been covered before. OFA is run by Jim Messina, the man who also managed the president's reelection campaign. Leaders in the organization — measured in part by how much they contribute — meet regularly with the president and his advisors to learn about their priorities. But, according to the official we spoke with at OFA, actual coordination is minimal. "Generally speaking, Organizing for Action, as a private and independent organization, does not coordinate its digital communications, including those on Twitter, with the White House," said the OFA official. "When the President or the First Lady communicates directly with Organizing for Action's supporters, the White House is necessarily involved in reviewing those communications."
This is not dissimilar from other organizations that work to promote components of the president's agenda – though OFA may have less trouble getting someone on the phone.

Twitter verification fails again


It's not only OFA's fault that people think they're talking to Barack Obama on Twitter — Twitter's telling them that, too. Despite having no legal or personal relationship with the president, the account is verified by Twitter. Despite repeated emails and phone calls, no one from the company responded to our attempts to talk. It's not the first time that a verified account hasn't actually been the purported user. In January of 2012, the company verified Rupert Murdoch's wife— although she wasn't the one tweeting from the account.

Twitter should not still be struggling at negotiating political issues. In 2009, for example, the company came under fire for including Gavin Newsom, then mayor of San Francisco, in its suggested users list. Newsom saw a huge surge in followers — at the same time during which he was planning to run for governor. That's a clear benefit to a candidate and, while Twitter wasn't sanctioned in any way, it shortly revamped its system.
It might be argued that the off-chance of Obama again tweeting from the account using "-bo" is enough to warrant verification. He could tweet similarly from any account, of course — one tweet does not an account make.

There are simple steps that OFA could take to clarify its role on social media. An obvious one would be to change the name of the account, something akin to what the Vatican did in-between Popes. It could respond to confused users. It could change the image associated with the account. But there's not much incentive for OFA to do so.
The president's press office loudly proclaims its commitment to "creating an unprecedented level of openness" in government. "We will work together," it writes, "to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration." As an entity independent of the president, Organizing For Action appears not to be beholden to that mantra.
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US now naming force-fed Guantanamo prisoners

April 9, 2013, 5:01 am
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The U.S. government has begun notifying lawyers of Guantanamo Bay prisoners if the men they represent are being force-fed to prevent them from starving to death in a hunger strike that has dragged on for more than two months, though its extent remains in dispute.
Cori Crider, a lawyer for Yemeni prisoner Samir Mukbel, said she received notification from the Department of Justice late last week that her client was being force-fed and was permitted to speak with him by phone Monday to confirm the report.

Crider, who works for the British legal rights group Reprieve, said Mukbel told her he joined the hunger strike in February, has lost about 30 pounds and at one point fainted and had to be hospitalized at the prison on the U.S. base in Cuba. He described the feeding process as painful.
"Some people have gone through this a lot but he said he had never felt anything like it in his life," she said shortly after the call.

The U.S. military generally does not discuss specific prisoners in part because doing so might violate provisions of the Geneva Conventions that prohibit making a public spectacle of prisoners, said Navy Capt. Robert Durand, a spokesman for the detention center. As part of that policy, officials have not confirmed the identities of individual hunger strikers, though there has at times been indirect confirmation in court papers as part of the process through which the men challenge their confinement in federal court.

Durand said he was aware the government was notifying lawyers whose clients were being force fed, though he did not know the reason for the change.
Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have gone on hunger strikes since shortly after the prison opened in January 2002. Lawyers for prisoners said the current one began around Feb. 6 to protest the virtual halt in releases under President Barack Obama as well as what they say is a tightening of restrictions and intrusive searches of their Qurans. The lawyers allege that most of the 166 prisoners are participating in the hunger strike.

U.S. officials have said there has been no tightening of restrictions at the base and that the Qurans have been searched in a respectful way by Muslim translators looking for contraband such as medications or potential weapons. There were 42 prisoners listed as hunger strikers Monday under the military guidelines, which include missing nine consecutive meals. Of that group, 11 were being force fed, Durand said.
The feeding procedure used at Guantanamo Bay is similar to one used in civilian federal prisons and involves giving them a liquid nutrient mix through a flexible rubber tube inserted into the prisoner's nostril. Base officials have said it is not painful, though they have also offered the men a topical anesthetic.

Crider said Mukbel told her that he had refused to be force-fed on one occasion in March and was taken by guards to the detainee hospital and handcuffed to a bed for 24 hours to undergo the procedure. The account could not be independently verified.
Mukbel is not facing any charges, according to his lawyer, and is one of about two dozen Yemenis at Guantanamo who have been cleared for transfer but cannot be sent back to their own country because the Obama administration believes the country's security and political situation is too dicey to prevent former militants from attacking the U.S. or its allies.

He previously had been held in a section of Guantanamo for well-behaved prisoners but had grown bitterly frustrated, Crider said.
"Samir's theory was always that if I don't cause any trouble they will clearly see that I'm not threat to anyone and turn me loose," she said. "But so far his calculation on that hasn't been quite right."
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In pictures: the Russian city of Samara being 'eaten alive' by sinkholes (16pics)

April 9, 2013, 8:35 am
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 Residents of Samara, in south Russia, have seen cars and buses vanish beneath their streets as an epidemic of sinkholes spreads through the city. Words by Paul Wright


 In scenes reminiscent of a disaster film, residential streets and major thoroughfares have emerged from the city’s harsh winter unable to withstand the pressure from daily traffic.

 Giant holes in the ground have opened up swallowing cars, trucks and public transportation.



 The cause of the holes is thought to be a combination of poor road construction and the severe weather experienced over the past winter.
 It has been reported that at least one person has lost their life as a result of the erosion.
 Combined with poor drainage, soil beneath the roads has been allowed to be washed away.
 As temperatures dove to more than -20 Celsius, the ice and resulting melt water causes erosion both below and at ground level.
 This is not the first time the city has suffered from crumbling tarmac. Every year the city suffers from severe potholes and three years ago the problem took another life after a driver’s car disappeared under a pavement as the road surface gave way.
 Frightened more deaths will follow, some of the 1.1m residents of Samara have reportedly signed a petition to force the local authorities to take action.


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35 Hateful And Stupid Rush Limbaugh Quotes That Should Anger Everyone

April 9, 2013, 8:59 am
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Rush Limbaugh has been a poison on America for a couple decades now. Since his horrible attacks on women last week, Limbaugh has suffered the loss of over 40 sponsors and has received criticism from both Republicans and Democrats, although the Republicans haven’t condemned him nearly as much. Many advertisers and radio stations still support this man. So just in case they haven’t been listening to the crap Limbaugh says on his pathetic show, here are 35 sexist, racist, hateful, and stupid quotes uttered by the merchant of hate and de facto leader of the GOP himself, Rush Limbaugh.

1. “Women should not be allowed on juries where the accused is a stud.”
~Rush Limbaugh, 1994 List of 35 Undeniable Truths

2. “If you feed them, if you feed the children, three square meals a day during the school year, how can you expect them to feed themselves in the summer? Wanton little waifs and serfs dependent on the State. Pure and simple.”
~Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show, December 2011

3. “Feminism was established so as to allow unattractive women access to the mainstream of society.”
~Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show, August 12, 2005

4. “Let’s say we discover the gene that says the kid’s gonna be gay. How many parents, if they knew before the kid was gonna be born, [that he] was gonna be gay, they would take the pregnancy to term? Well, you don’t know but let’s say half of them said, “Oh, no, I don’t wanna do that to a kid.” [Then the] gay community finds out about this. The gay community would do the fastest 180 and become pro-life faster than anybody you’ve ever seen. … They’d be so against abortion if it was discovered that you could abort what you knew were gonna be gay babies.”
~Rush Limbaugh, offending homosexuals, women, parents, etc…, January 2003

5. “The ocean will take care of this on its own if it was left alone and left out there. It’s natural. It’s as natural as the ocean water is.” –Rush Limbaugh, on the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and refuting science, May 3, 2010

6. “Socks is the White House cat. But did you know there is also a White House dog?”
~Rush Limbaugh, while holding up a photograph of 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton on his 1993 television show

7. “They’re out there protesting what they actually wish would happen to them sometimes.”
~Rush Limbaugh, on women who protest against sexual harassment, The Rush Limbaugh Show, April 26, 2004

8. “Exercise freaks … are the ones putting stress on the health care system.” ~Rush Limbaugh, accusing people who exercise of being the reason why health care costs are so high, June 12, 2009

9. “What does it say about the college co-ed Susan Fluke [sic] who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex — what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex.”
~Rush Limbaugh, referring to Sandra Fluke, a student at Georgetown Law School who was denied the right to speak at a congressional hearing on contraception hearing, in which she planned to discuss a friend of hers who needed contraception to prevent the growth of cysts, February 29, 2012

10. “A Georgetown coed told Nancy Pelosi’s hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex they’re going broke, so you and I should have to pay for their birth control. So what would you call that? I called it what it is. So, I’m offering a compromise today: I will buy all of the women at Georgetown University as much aspirin to put between their knees as they want. … So Miss Fluke and the rest of you feminazis, here’s the deal. If we are going to pay for your contraceptives and thus pay for you to have sex, we want something. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch.”
~Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show, March 1, 2012

11. “Let the unskilled jobs that take absolutely no knowledge whatsoever to do — let stupid and unskilled Mexicans do that work.”
~Rush Limbaugh, radio show, Fall 1993

12. “It doesn’t look like Michelle Obama follows her own nutritionary dietary advice. And then we hear that she’s out eating ribs at 1500 calories a serving with 141 grams of fat … No, I’m trying to say that our first lady does not project the image of women that you might see on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue or of a woman Alex Rodriguez might date every six months or what have you.”
~Rush Limbaugh, Feb. 21, 2011

13. “These were highly civil comments for crying out loud. I mean, people are going nuts. USA Today, the Politico. And some people were suggesting that my comments were below the belt. Well, take a look at some pictures. Given where she wears her belts. I mean, she wears them high up there around the bust line. Isn’t just about everything about her below the belt when you look at the fashion sense she has?”
~Rush Limbaugh, after being criticized for making derogatory comments about First Lady Michelle Obama’s weight, Feb. 22, 2011

14. “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”
~Rush Limbaugh, basically saying that all wanted criminals are black people on his radio show in the early 1990s.

15. “I’m a huge supporter of women. What I’m not is a supporter of liberalism. Feminism is what I oppose. Feminism has led women astray. I love the women’s movement — especially when walking behind it.”
~Rush Limbaugh, responding to criticism that he is sexist and defending his selection as one of the judges at the 2010 Miss America Pageant, “Fox News’ Fox & Friends,” February 3, 2010

16. “We’re not sexists, we’re chauvinists — we’re male chauvinist pigs, and we’re happy to be because we think that’s what men were destined to be. We think that’s what women want.”
~Rush Limbaugh, claiming that women want men to be assholes, April 15, 2004

17. “Given the National Organization for Women’s membership and proclivities, it’s no wonder that people now view the NOW gang as being obsessed with only two issues: abortion rights and lesbian rights.
I prefer to call the most obnoxious feminists what they really are: feminazis. The term describes any female who is intolerant of any point of view that challenges militant feminism. I often use it to describe women who are obsessed with perpetuating a modern-day holocaust: abortion.
A feminazi is a woman to whom the most important thing in life is seeing to it that as many abortions as possible are performed. Their unspoken reasoning is quite simple. Abortion is the single greatest avenue for militant women to exercise their quest for power and advance their belief that men aren’t necessary. Nothing matter but me, says the feminazi; the is an unviable tissue mass. Feminazis have adopted abortion as a kind of sacrament for their religion/politics of alienation and bitterness.”
~Rush Limbaugh, The Way Things Ought To Be, p.192-93 , 1992

18. “There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived or at any other time in history. Does this sound like a record of genocide?”
~Rush Limbaugh, See, I Told You So, p.68, November 1993

19. “From this day forward, somebody propose it, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns. It’s just that simple. Liberals should have their speech controlled and not be allowed to buy guns. I mean if we want to get serious about this, if we want to face this head on, we’re gonna have to openly admit, liberals should not be allowed to buy guns, nor should they be allowed to use computer keyboards or typewriters, word processors or e-mails, and they should have their speech controlled. If we did those three or four things, I can’t tell you what a sane, calm, civil, fun-loving society we would have. Take guns out of the possession, out of the hands of liberals, take their typewriters and their keyboards away from ‘em, don’t let ‘em anywhere near a gun, and control their speech. You would wipe out 90% of the crime, 85 to 95% of the hate, and a hundred percent of the lies from society.”
~Rush Limbaugh, The Rush Limbaugh Show, January 2011

20. “Cholesterol has nothing to do with heart disease. Nothing wrong with saturated fats.”
~Rush Limbaugh, disputing science despite his own hospitalization back in 2009 for chest pains, March 8, 2011

21. “Obama is a clown. You don’t have to be a scientist to know that the President doesn’t know what he’s talking about when he says fossil fuels are the energy of the past. We have more oil than we need. We’ll never run out of it. It’s all we’ve got.”
~Rush Limbaugh, saying the world has unlimited oil despite what geologists and other scientists say, March 8, 2011

22. “You know, one of the benefits of school being out, in addition to your kids losing weight because they’re starving to death out there because there’s no school meal being provided, one of the benefits of school being out, college campi being vacant this time of year, is that our audience levels go up. I think, you know what we’re going to do here, we’re going to start a feature on this program: “Where to find food.” For young demographics, where to find food. Now that school is out, where to find food. We can have a daily feature on this. And this will take us all the way through the summer. Where to find food. And, of course, the first will be: “Try your house.” It’s a thing called the refrigerator. You probably already know about it. Try looking there.”
~Rush Limbaugh, denigrating poor children, June 16, 2010

23. “[S]ome people are self-starters, and some people are born lazy. Some people are born victims. Some people are just born to be slaves. Some people are born to put up with somebody else making every decision for them.”
~Rush Limbaugh, talking about economic inequality, October 8, 2010

24. “Public and private polling indicates that Ohioans, by a substantial margin, want to overturn the new law. Which means, if this is true, that people in Ohio want to rape themselves”
~Rush Limbaugh, comparing the repeal of anti-union laws to rape, November 7, 2011

25. “What is it with all of these young, single white women? Overeducated- doesn’t mean intelligent.”
~Rush Limbaugh, insulting educated women, March 6, 2012

26. “Look it, let me put it to you this way. The NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
~Rush Limbaugh, making a racist comment, January 19, 2007

27. “You just gotta be who you are, and I think it’s time to get rid of this whole National Basketball Association. Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association, and stop calling them teams. Call ‘em gangs.”
~Rush Limbaugh, another racist comment, December 8, 2004

28. “Holocaust? Ninety million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos — what’s to complain about?”
~Rush Limbaugh, making yet another racist statement, September 25, 2009. There once was 15 million Native Americans in North America. After the centuries of genocidal policies, Native Americans were nearly wiped out, with only 250,000 left by the end of the 19 Century. There are in fact, about 2 million today, but casinos hardly make up for the near extinction.

29. [T]he nags … the national association of gals, that’s our pet name for the NOW gang … the nags are a bunch of whores to liberalism.
~Rush Limbaugh, another attack on women, October 14, 2010

30. “To some people, bankers — code word for Jewish — and guess who Obama’s assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.”
~Rush Limbaugh, stereotyping Jewish people, January 20, 2010

31. “Do you know we have more acreage of forest land in the United States today than we did at the time the Constitution was written.”
~Rush Limbaugh, ignorant of the fact that when the Constitution was written, the United States consisted of 13 colonies along the East Coast, February 18, 1994

32. “The only way to reduce the number of nuclear weapons is to use them.”
~Rush Limbaugh, advocating for blowing up the world.

33. “Citizen service is a repudiation of the principles upon which our country was based. We are all here for ourselves.”
~Rush Limbaugh, selfishly saying that we should never serve our fellow citizens unless we get something for it.
34. “I think this reason why girls don’t do well on multiple choice tests goes all the way back to the Bible, all the way back to Genesis, Adam and Eve. God said, ‘All right, Eve, multiple choice or multiple orgasms, what’s it going to be?’ We all know what was chosen.”
~Rush Limbaugh, making another degrading comment about women, February 23, 1994

35. “When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it’s an invitation.”
~Rush Limbaugh, making a “joke” about homosexual men, Summer 1994
Rush Limbaugh embodies conservative values. He hates women, the environment, immigrants, minorities, the poor, homosexuals, and anyone who dares to stand up to him. Republicans have been listening to Rush Limbaugh for far too long. So long, in fact, that they have been swindled by a draft dodging, pill popping, college drop out who has been married four times, into doing everything he tells them to do. If a Republican even so much as dares to cross him, Limbaugh takes them to the woodshed until they backtrack. He takes to the airwaves every day and spreads vicious lies, hate, and misinformation to create new followers. His propaganda has damaged America’s soul and is tearing it apart day after day. If Rush has his way, there won’t be an America left for anyone, and that’s why he must be yanked off the air. So that hateful, sexist, racist, and stupid remarks such as these disappear from the American landscape. Limbaugh tries to hide the seriousness of his remarks by calling it comedy, but Rush isn’t a comedian. He’s a punchline.
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5 Strange Cultural Facts About North Korea

April 10, 2013, 6:17 am
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`Tensions are rising between North Korea and the rest of the world, as the notoriously secretive nation reportedly prepares medium-range missiles for launch.
South Korean news agency Yonhap reported last week that North Korea has loaded the two missiles onto mobile launchers; in response, South Korea sent destroyers to its northern neighbor's coast. The North Korean government also says it plans to restart a major nuclear reactor it shut down as part of an international deal five years ago. And leader Kim Jong-un ordered rockets readied to strike U.S. military bases in the Pacific, not to mention the U.S. mainland. (It's not clear that North Korea's missiles have that kind of range.)

Amid this brinksmanship, North Korea remains remarkably shut off from the rest of the world. Read on for what's known about the hermit country.

1. Isolation nation
The Korean peninsula has long been a battlefield for the world powers nearby. Japan controlled Korea (then one nation), until the end of World War II; after Japan's surrender, the United States and Soviet Union sliced the country along the 38th parallel, with the United States administering the south and the Soviet Union controlling the north.
This division became permanent after the United Nations failed to negotiate a reunification in 1948. The first president of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, declared a policy of "self-reliance," essentially shutting the nation off diplomatically and economically from the rest of the world.
It's a philosophy called iuche, or self-mastery. The idea is that the North Korean people must rely on themselves only. This philosophy, according to Kim Il Sung, required North Korea to maintain political and economic independence (even in the face of famine in the 1990s) and to create a strong national defense system.

2. Mythical leaders
North Korea's ruling dynasty has always cast itself as somewhat supernatural. Founder Kim Il Sung was known as Korea's "sun," and claimed control of the weather. Along with his son Kim Jong Il's birthday, Kim Il Sung's birthday is a national holiday. After his death, Sung was embalmed and still lies in state in Pyongyang.
Kim Jong Il's mythology is no less extensive. His birth was hailed as "heaven sent" by propagandists, and state media has often touted impossible feats: He scored a perfect 300 the first time he tried bowling, and shot five holes-in-one the first time he played golf. Upon his death in 2011, the skies about the sacred mountain Paektu in North Korea allegedly glowed red.

Kim Jong Un, Kim Jong Il's son and successor has yet to have quite so many tall tales told about him, but the news media have described the new leader as "born of heaven" upon his ascension to head of state. In December 2012, North Korean state media declared the discovery of a lair supposedly belonging to a unicorn ridden by Tongmyong, the ancient mythical founder of Korea. The story wasn't an indication that North Koreans believe in literal unicorns, experts said, but a way to shore up Kim Jong Un's rule and North Korea's cred as the "real" Korea.

3. National prison
All the fanciful and funny myths about North Korea's dictators cover up a disturbing truth, however: Some 154,000 North Koreans live in prison camps, according to South Korean government estimates. (Other international bodies put the number at closer to 200,000). There are six camps, surrounded by electrified barbed wire. Two camps allow for some "rehabilitation" and release of prisoners, according to "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" (Viking, 2012). The rest are prisons for life.
"Escape from Camp 14" tells the story of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person known to have escaped from one of these camps and to have made it to the outside world. Shin was born in the camp; his father was imprisoned because his brother had abandoned North Korea for South Korea decades earlier.
Torture, malnutrition, slave labor and public execution are ways of life in the camps, which are known from satellite imagery. An Amnesty International report in 2011 estimated that 40 percent of camp prisoners die of malnutrition.

4. Daily life in North Korea
Given North Korea's secrecy, it's hard to imagine what daily life in the country is really like. In the book "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea" (Spiegel & Grau, 2009), journalist Barbara Demick interviewed North Koreans who escaped to South Korea. They describe a society tied by family (during the famine of the 1990s, parents and grandparents starved first, trying to save food for their children) and inundated with propaganda.
"In the futuristic dystopia imagined in 1984, George Orwell wrote of a world where the only color to be found was in the propaganda posters. Such is the case in North Korea," Demick writes.
It's not clear how many North Koreans buy into this propaganda. Interviews with North Koreans in China by the New York Times suggested that smuggled DVDs from South Korea have enabled average North Koreans to get a glimpse of the world outside their borders.
Very recently, foreign journalists on supervised trips in Pyongyang have been allowed 3G connections on mobile phones, enabling real-time pictures of daily city life.

5. Difficult adjustments
With such limited access to the outside world, North Koreans who do make it out often struggle to adjust. Many are paranoid, a skill that served them well at home where anyone could turn anyone else in to the police for saying the wrong thing. Some are cognitively impaired by early malnutrition. And few know anything about world history outside of North Korean propaganda.
"Education in North Korea is useless for life in South Korea," Gwak Jong-moon, principal of a boarding school for North Korean refugees, told Blaine Harden, the author of "Escape from Camp 14." "When you are too hungry, you don't go to learn and teachers don't go to teach. Many of our students have been hiding in China for years with no access to schools. As young children in North Korea, they grew up eating bark off trees and thinking it was normal."
According to Harden, the suicide rate for North Korean refugees in South Korea is two-and-a-half times that of the rate for South Koreans. 
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Aid groups: US should send cash, not food, abroad

April 10, 2013, 6:40 am
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 Food aid groups are urging the Obama administration to overhaul the way the United States helps starving people abroad.

The White House will not say whether Obama's budget proposal, scheduled to come out next week, will seek to change the way foreign food aid is distributed. But food aid groups, farm groups and their allies in Congress are preparing for the possibility.
At issue is whether the government should ship U.S.-grown food overseas to aid developing countries and starving people or simply help those countries with cash to buy food. The United States now donates much of its food aid by shipping food abroad, a process many food aid groups say is inefficient.
Former President Bill Clinton said after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti that U.S. policies to flood developing countries with agricultural imports — a boon to rice farmers in his native Arkansas — had been a mistake after many of Haiti's own rice farmers were put out of business.
Three years later, aid groups are pushing Obama to make the kind of change Clinton argued for and send cash in lieu of crops.

Sending crops abroad has long been a profitable enterprise for American farmers and shippers, and those groups are strongly opposing any changes to the program.
But several food aid groups say times have changed and argue that shipping bulk food abroad is too expensive when government budgets are tight and developing countries need every dollar. Particularly controversial is the process of what is called "monetization," or selling the food once it arrives overseas to finance development projects. A 2011 report by the Government Accountability Office found monetization cost the U.S. an extra $219 million over a three years, money that could have been used for other development projects.

Aid groups are split on the point, since some finance their activities through monetization. But major aid groups like Oxfam and CARE say the process can destroy local agriculture by dumping cheap crops on the market at a price too low for local farmers to compete.
The food aid groups are pushing Obama to shift all or part of the average $1.8 billion spent on the program annually to other cash development accounts. But if the administration does propose a change, it could be in for a tough political battle.

Worried that an overhaul of the Food for Peace program could come in Obama's budget, a bipartisan group of 21 senators wrote a letter to the president in February asking him not to make changes.
"American agriculture is one of the few U.S. business sectors to produce a trade surplus, exporting $108 billion in farm goods in 2010," the senators wrote. "During this time of economic distress, we should maintain support for the areas of our economy that are growing."

The letter was signed by Michigan Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow, the chairwoman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Arkansas Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee that controls agriculture spending. The top Republicans on both of those panels signed the letter as well, as did Senate Appropriations Chairwoman Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.
Farm groups say the program is also a public relations tool for the United States.
"Bags of U.S.-grown food bearing the U.S. flag and stamped as "From the American People" serve as ambassadors of our nation's goodwill, which can help to address the root causes of instability," several farm and shipping groups wrote in a February letter to Obama.

"These are the kinds of things you don't want to make dramatic quick changes to," said Roger Johnson, president of the National Farmers Union, one of the groups that signed the letter.
But aid groups say change is a long time coming. Gawain Kripke of Oxfam said his group estimates that by spending the same amount of money, the United States could provide assistance for 17 million more poor people by changing the way the aid is distributed.

Blake Selzer of CARE said he is encouraged that food aid is being discussed.
"A lot of people don't understand our food aid program," he said. "The more daylight this is given, the more people will say to themselves, is this the best way to use our tax dollars?"
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NASA-backed fusion engine could cut Mars trip down to 30 days

April 10, 2013, 9:11 am
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NASA, and plenty of private individuals, want to put mankind on Mars. Now a team at the University of Washington being funded by the space agency is about to start building a fusion engine that could get humans there in just 30 days and make other forms of space travel obsolete.

"Using existing rocket fuels, it's nearly impossible for humans to explore much beyond Earth," said lead researcher John Slough, a UW research associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics in as tatement. "We are hoping to give us a much more powerful source of energy in space that could eventually lead to making interplanetary travel commonplace."
The proposed Fusion Driven Rocket (FDR) is a 150-ton system that uses magnetism to compress lithium or aluminum metal bands around a deuterium-tritium fuel pellet to initiate fusion. The resultant microsecond reaction forces the propellant mass out at 30 kilometers per second, and would be able to pulse every minute or so and not cause g-force damage to the spacecraft's occupants.

The spent fuel pellet is ejected behind the motor to provide propulsion, and because the whole process is magnetically controlled there's relatively little wear and tear on the engines. A pellet the size of a grain of sand would provide the same propellant as a gallon of conventional rocket fuel.
All this requires electrical power to control and contain the reaction, but Anthony Pancokti, an advanced propulsion engineer with the team, told The Register that the advantages of magnetic inertial confinement fusion (over that requiring massive lasers, for example) mean that the spacecraft could power itself on solar energy alone.

"It's very scalable; we can achieve fusion at a much smaller scale," he said. "We could run the designed engine off 200KW of solar panels, which is about the same power as generated by the panels around the International Space Station"

Using the FDR system, flight times to the Red Planet could take between 30 and 90 days, compared to over eight months that it took to send the Curiosity rover to Mars. The 30-day trip would require three days of engine operation to get the spacecraft up to speed and another three to slow it down into orbit around Mars.

Such a motor would also be considerably cheaper to launch than a chemical rocket system, since there is much less fuel to hoist out of the gravity well before it starts a trip. The proposed design for a 150-ton spacecraft would allow around a third of that mass to be used for cargo – human or otherwise – and the reduced flight time would reduce the exposure of astronauts to the effects of solar radiation.

Many space missions use aerobraking – using the friction of a planet's atmosphere to slow down – as a way of saving the propellant. This drive, however, is so efficient that aerobraking makes little sense, since the weight of the shielding needed for the maneuver is greater than the propellant FDR needs to slow down.
FDR fusion drive prototype
The FDR fusion drive prototype in a Washington lab
The team has tested all the parts of the FDR in the lab, and is now going to start building a fully working engine that brings these elements together, thanks to funding from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program, which aims to fund long-term space technology.
The FDR is one of only ten projects to get Stage Two funding from the program. This $600,000 award will provide the proof-of-concept FDR system over the next 18 months, and a working spacecraft would be ready as soon as 2020, Pancokti predicted – but if NASA wanted to throw money at the project, this timescale could be cut.

Given the tight financial strictures of the US government this is unlikely, but the FDR engine has the potential to make chemical or ion drives for spacecraft as obsolete as the steam engine for earth-bound transportation. 
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Iraqi Birth Defects Worse than Hiroshima

April 10, 2013, 9:15 am
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(warning: graphic images)
The United States may be finished dropping bombs on Iraq, but Iraqi bodies will be dealing with the consequences for generations to come in the form of birth defects, mysterious illnesses and skyrocketing cancer rates.

Al Jazeera’s Dahr Jamail reports that contamination from U.S. weapons, particularly Depleted Uranium (DU) munitions, has led to an Iraqi health crisis of epic proportions. “[C]hildren being born with two heads, children born with only one eye, multiple tumours, disfiguring facial and body deformities, and complex nervous system problems,” are just some of the congenital birth defects being linked to military-related pollution.
In certain Iraqi cities, the health consequences are significantly worse than those seen in the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan at the end of WWII.
The highest rates are in the city of Fallujah, which underwent two massive US bombing campaigns in 2004. Though the U.S. initially denied it, officials later admitted using white phosphorous. In addition, U.S. and British forces unleashed an estimated 2,000 tons of depleted uranium ammunitions in populated Iraqi cities in 2003.
DU, a chemically toxic heavy metal produced in nuclear waste, is used in weapons due to its ability to pierce through armor. That’s why the US and UK were among a handful of nations (France and Israel) who in December refused to sign an international agreement to limit its use, insisting DU is not harmful, science be damned. Meanwhile, the Pentagon’s refusal to release details about where DU munitions were fired has made it difficult to clean up.
Today, 14.7 percent of Fallujah’s babies are born with a birth defect, 14 times the documented rate in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Fallujah’s babies have also experienced heart defects 13 times the European rate and nervous system defects 33 times that of Europe. That comes on top of a 12-fold rise in childhood cancer rates since 2004. Furthermore, the male-to-female birth ratio is now 86 boys for every 100 girls, indicating genetic damage that affects males more than females.
(On a side note, these pictures are rather sanitized compared to other even more difficult to look at images. See here if you can bear it.)
If Fallujah is the Iraqi Hiroshima, then Basra is its Nagasaki.
According to a study published in the Bulletin of Environmental Contamination and Toxicology, a professional journal based in the southwestern German city of Heidelberg, there was a sevenfold increase in the number of birth defects in Basra between 1994 and 2003.
According to the Heidelberg study, the concentration of lead in the milk teeth of sick children from Basra was almost three times as high as comparable values in areas where there was no fighting.
In addition, never before has such a high rate of neural tube defects (“open back”) been recorded in babies as in Basra, and the rate continues to rise. According to the study, the number of hydrocephalus (“water on the brain”) cases among new-borns is six times as high in Basra as it is in the United States.
This isn’t isolated to Fallujah and Basra. The overall Iraqi cancer rate has also skyrocketed:
Official Iraqi government statistics show that, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War in 1991, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and, by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.
As Grist’s Susie Cagle points out, “That’s potentially a more than 4,000 percent increase in the cancer rate, making it more than 500 percent higher than the cancer rate in the U.S.“
Dr. Mozghan Savabieasfahani, an environmental toxicologist based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, told Jamail that “These observations collectively suggest an extraordinary public health emergency in Iraq. Such a crisis requires urgent multifaceted international action to prevent further damage to public health.”
Instead, the international community, including the nation most responsible for the health crisis (hint: it starts with a “U” and ends with an “S”), is mostly ignoring the problem.
To make matters worse, Iraq’s healthcare system, which was once the envy of the region, is virtually nonexistent due to the mass exodus of Iraq’s medical doctors since 2003. According to recent estimates, there are currently fewer than 100 psychiatrists and 20,0000 physicians serving a population of 31 million Iraqis.
Dahr Jamail was on Democracy Now this morning discussing the horrific effects of military-related pollution in Iraq:
Yanar Mohammad, President of the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq was also on Democracy Now and addressed the toxic legacy of birth defects in Iraq.  
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Mysterious Stone Structure Discovered Beneath Sea of Galilee

April 10, 2013, 6:21 pm
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A giant "monumental" stone structure discovered beneath the waters of the Sea of Galilee in Israel has archaeologists puzzled as to its purpose and even how long ago it was built.
The mysterious structure is cone shaped, made of "unhewn basalt cobbles and boulders," and weighs an estimated 60,000 tons the researchers said. That makes it heavier than most modern-day warships.
Rising nearly 32 feet (10 meters) high, it has a diameter of about 230 feet (70 meters). To put that in perspective, the outer stone circle of Stonehenge has a diameter just half that with its tallest stones not reaching that height.
It appears to be a giant cairn, rocks piled on top of each other. Structures like this are known from elsewhere in the world and are sometimes used to mark burials. Researchers do not know if the newly discovered structure was used for this purpose.
The structure was first detected in the summer of 2003 during a sonar survey of the southwest portion of the sea. Divers have since been down to investigate, they write in the latest issue of theInternational Journal of Nautical Archaeology. 
"Close inspection by scuba diving revealed that the structure is made of basalt boulders up to 1 m (3.2 feet) long with no apparent construction pattern," the researchers write in their journal article. "The boulders have natural faces with no signs of cutting or chiselling. Similarly, we did not find any sign of arrangement or walls that delineate this structure." 
They say it is definitely human-made and probably was built on land, only later to be covered by the Sea of Galilee as the water level rose. "The shape and composition of the submerged structure does not resemble any natural feature. We therefore conclude that it is man-made and might be termed a cairn," the researchers write.
More than 4,000 years old?
Underwater archaeological excavation is needed so scientists can find associated artifacts and determine the structure's date and purpose, the researchers said.
Researcher Yitzhak Paz, of the Israel Antiquities Authority and Ben-Gurion University, believes it could date back more than 4,000 years. "The more logical possibility is that it belongs to the third millennium B.C., because there are other megalithic phenomena [from that time] that are found close by," Paz told LiveScience in an interview, noting that those sites are associated with fortified settlements. 
The researchers list several examples of megalithic structures found close to the Sea of Galilee that are more than 4,000 years-old. One example is the monumental site of Khirbet Beteiha, located some 19 miles (30 kilometers) north-east of the submerged stone structure, the researchers write. It "comprises three concentric stone circles, the largest of which is 56 m [184 feet] in diameter." 
An ancient city
If the third-millennium B.C. date idea proves correct it would put the structure about a mile to the north of a city that researchers call "Bet Yerah" or "Khirbet Kerak."
During the third millennium B.C. the city was one of the biggest sites in the region, Paz said. "It's the most powerful and fortified town in this region and, as a matter of fact, in the whole of Israel."
Archaeologist Raphael Greenberg describes it in a chapter of the book "Daily Life, Materiality, and Complexity in Early Urban Communities of the Southern Levant" (Eisenbrauns, 2011) as being a heavily fortified 74-acre (30 hectares) site with up to 5,000 inhabitants.
With paved streets and towering defenses its people were clearly well organized. "They also indicate the existence of some kind of municipal authority able to maintain public structures ..." Greenberg writes.
The research team says that, like the leaders of Bet Yerah, whoever built the newly discovered Sea of Galilee structure needed sophisticated organization and planning skills to construct it. The "effort invested in such an enterprise is indicative of a complex, well-organized society, with planning skills and economic ability," they write in their journal paper.
Paz added that "in order to build such a structure a lot of working hours were required" in an organized community effort.
Future exploration
Paz said that he hopes soon that an underwater archaeological expedition will set out to excavate the structure. They can search for artifacts and try to determine its date with certainty.
He said that the Israel Antiquities Authority has a research branch capable of excavating it. "We will try to do it in the near future, I hope, but it depends on a lot of factors."
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The secret item found in every North Korean home

April 10, 2013, 6:25 pm
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Many North Korean families keep a secret item at home, whose discovery may lead to harsh punishment. Away from prying eyes and in the privacy of their homes, North Koreans enjoy using items forbidden by the state, according to North Koreans recently escaped from the country.
“In every North Korean home, there is at least one secret item” says Jung Young-chul* (age 34), who escaped from North Korea in 2012. He had a short-wave radio in the house and the family would secretly listen to South Korean broadcasts. To avoid being caught, they kept the radio hidden under a container for keeping rice.
They were not the only ones with a hidden radio. Jung continues, “Once, a friend described a story that I had heard the night before while listening to a South Korean broadcast. I brought it up with him one night in drink, and he confided that his family too had a radio. We laughed about it together.”
Kim Hee-young is from Chongjin and also escaped from North Korea in 2012. She tells us, “We secretly traded South Korean TV shows in the markets and they always went very quickly. We ran out of stock on most days.” She added how outside the home, North Koreans would dutifully obey the cultural restrictions enforced by the state. Yet at home, Hee-young describes how everything is different: “Where I lived, I would guess that almost every family owned a South Korean TV show. You can’t borrow what you want to watch if you don’t have something to trade it for, so everyone liked to keep at least one show at home.”
The secret items are not restricted to radios and DVDs. In areas where South Korean television programming can be picked up, families usually keep two television sets. One set has pre-set state channels that show only propaganda, for when authorities come to make an inspection. The other set is an illegal one that can receive South Korean programming, and is the one that is actually used by families. Hee-young added another reason for keeping two television sets: “Some people make copies of South Korean shows and share them with friends, while others sell them in the black markets.”
Other North Korean families regularly listen to South Korean music and wear South Korean clothes at home, which is also forbidden by the state. Although a visitor to North Korea may see only North Koreans complying with the regime, North Koreans enjoy breaking the rules in the safety of their homes. They behave like ‘North Koreans’ outside the home but become ‘South Koreans’ at home.
The North Korean state wants its people to know only loyalty to the Kim family. But under this coercive system, North Koreans are finding ways to change the country from within. One North Korean in exile tells us, “Kim Jong-un is going to start a war? Who will pick up his gun to fight when Kim Tae-hee (a South Korean actress) is so beautiful?”
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Rice Bran Oil Uses and Health Benefits

April 11, 2013, 2:00 am
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Frying
Pure rice bran oil, exhibits excellent frying performance and contributes a pleasant flavor to the fried food. It possesses good storage stability and fry life without hydrogenation. These properties make it a premium choice for frying upscale products with delicate flavors. Most Japanese restaurants in the USA have now switched to Rice Bran Oil for their Tempura Frying Oil because of its superior performance in this special application. General frying applications, ranging from French fries to chicken, rice bran oil exhibits excellent taste and texture. Since hydrogenation isn't required for stability, it is a natural high-quality liquid frying oil that is also free of trans-fatty acids.

Stir-Frying
Rice Bran Oil is also a great choice for use in stir-frying. While its delicate, nut-like character complements the natural flavor of stir-fried meats, seafoods and vegetables, it never overpowers them. A further advantage is its natural resistance to smoking at high frying temperatures. Not surprisingly, rice bran oil has quickly become the oil of choice by many high-end Asian-American restaurants.

Salad Dressing
Rice Bran Oil has a light, barely perceptible flavor, making it wonderful to use with gourmet vinegars and spices. The oil emulsifies easily, so dressings don't separate.

Baking
Because of rice oil's light flavor, it has found favor in baking applications. Brownies and other baked goods made with rice oil turn out light and delicious. Baking sheets and cake pans coated with rice oil allow the baked goods to come out of the pan or off the cookie sheet with no trouble at all.

Soap Manufacturing
Rice Bran Oil has a long and successful history in Japan as a base for soaps and skin creams. The oil is purported to reverse the effect of aging by slowing the formation of facial wrinkles thanks to rice bran oil's rich concentration of Vitamin E and gamma-oryzanol. In Japan, women who use rice bran oil on their skin are known as 'rice bran beauties'. In the US, rice oil has gained a strong and loyal following with soap manufacturers and artisans.

Supplement for Horses, Dogs and other animals
Rice oil has found favor with performance horses or older horses that have a difficult time keeping weight on. The rice oil is purported to give horse and dog coats a rich, shiny look. Some zoos are even feeding rice oil as a supplement to their tigers and lions!

HEALTH BENEFITS OF TOPHE GRILLING OIL

Gamma Oryzanol
Rice bran oil is rich in gamma-oryzanol, a group of ferulate esters of triterpene alcohols and phytosterols. The high antioxidant property of gamma-oryzanol has been widely recognized. Studies have shown several physiological effects related to gamma-oryzanol and related rice bran oil components. These include its ability to reduce plasma cholesterol, reduce cholesterol absorption and decrease early atherosclerosis, inhibit platelet aggregation, and increase fecal bile acid excretion. Oryzanol has also been used to treat nerve imbalance and disorders of menopause.

Tocotrienols
Rice bran oil is the only readily available oil, other than palm, that contains significant levels (approximately 500 ppm) of tocotrienols. These occur in at least four known forms and are similar to the tocopherols in chemical structure. They belong to the vitamin E family and are powerful natural antioxidants. The protective benefits of dietary antioxidants in the prevention of cardiovascular disease and some forms of cancer have been widely publicized.--

Rice Bran Oil is a healthy oil with uses in cooking, frying, as a salad dressing, baking, soap making, as even a supplement to horses, dogs and other animals.

Why Rice Bran Oil in cooking? For grilling, you need an oil that can take the heat. Specifically, you want an oil with a high smoke point, the point at which oil starts to smoke. When cooking, you don't want your oil to smoke, because it imparts a negative flavor to the foods.

Rice bran oil's smoke point is 490 degrees F, higher than even grapeseed oil (480 degrees) or peanut oil (320 - 450 degrees). This means that even in the hottest of situations, rice bran oil won't smoke or breakdown. Your foods will taste better, and they will be less likely to stick to the grill or griddle.

Pure rice bran oil is a rich source of Vitamin E, an anti-oxidant. Rice bran oil is also a rich in the neutraceutical gamma-oryzanol (see below for health benefits).
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5 Energy-Draining Foods to Avoid

April 11, 2013, 2:03 am
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We all know that some foods are higher in caloric content than others. Oftentimes, we seek out these higher calorie food items in order to get a burst of energy. But did you know that some foods – despite having a high calorie count – can actually be total drains on your energy? It’s true!
What’s worse is that you could be consuming some of these energy-draining foods thinking that you’re getting an energy boost, when in reality you’re getting quite the opposite. Let’s start with one of the biggest, most deceiving culprits: energy drinks.

Energy Drinks

Energy drinks may give you a temporary boost of energy, but as soon as the energy/caffeine buzz wears off, you’ll be feeling more exhausted than ever! This BBC article reveals the results of a very interesting study. Sleep-deprived adults were given sugary energy drinks and asked to perform some monotonous tests. Another group was given an identical-tasting drink with just the caffeine. After a half hour, results were the same. But after 50 minutes, the sugary energy drink crowd was falling way behind.

Sugary Breakfast Foods: Doughnuts, Sweet Rolls, etc.

Sugar and white flour are awful energy drains. It’s unfortunate that so many Americans start out their days with a sugary breakfast – if they choose to eat breakfast at all. Essentially, when you consume a lot of sugar, the carbohydrates get used up quickly, blood sugar rises, and then your brain stops producing orexin, which is what makes you feel alert. 

Greasy & Fried Foods

Meals that are high in fat, like those containing fried foods, don’t do your brain function any good. Studies have shown that high-fat content foods can cause fatigue in the short run and decreased cognitive performance in the long run. This is apparently especially true for meals that are high in fat and low in carbohydrates, as well as a diet that is high in both saturated fat and refined carbohydrates.

Red Wine & Alcohol

There’s a reason why a glass of wine before bed has often been recommended to adults who have trouble sleeping – alcohol is a strong depressant that can often result in sleepiness. However, alcohol’s effects on fatigue go beyond its depressant action. The Huffington Post summarized a brand-new study about alcohol and sleep, which found that alcohol can make your sleeping patterns go haywire and cause ongoing tiredness. A few drinks can cause you to spend more time in stages of “slow-wave” or “deep” sleep, and less time in the REM stages that are necessary for improving your memory and alertness the next day.

Low-Iron Foods

Anemia, or low levels of iron in the blood, is a main culprit of fatigue, especially for women. While there are a number of causes of anemia, ranging from menstruation to bone marrow diseases, low-iron foods in the diet is an extremely common reason for fatigue. So instead or reaching for low-iron veggies like carrots, celery, and cauliflower, try dark leafy greens like kale and spinach, or artichokes, which are all high in iron. Instead of a rice side dish, try lentils or chickpeas. Finally, consider occasionally switching low-iron proteins like chicken and fish for red meat.
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Is Stevia A Safer Sweetener?

April 11, 2013, 2:05 am
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Often touted as a “natural” alternative to sugar--without the calories and carbs--the plant-based sweetener stevia has become so popular that it’s poised to become a $1 billion-dollar seller by 2014, according to food market analysts.

Derived from a plant of the same name, stevia is rapidly replacing artificial sweeteners in consumer products. Stevia has been hailed as the “holy grail” of sweeteners, because it’s both natural and virtually calorie free, offering dieters and diabetics a more appealing option than often-controversial chemicals like saccharin and aspartame.
Since stevia--sold under such brand names as Truvia, SweetLeaf, and PureVia--is made from a plant, it certainly sounds healthy. But skeptics, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest, have questioned the trendy sweetener’s safety.


What Is Stevia?
The leaves of the Stevia rebaudiana plant, a small shrub native to certain regions of South America, have been used as both a sweetener and a medicine since ancient times. Stevia is botanically related to artichokes and sunflowers, as well as medicinal herbs such as echinacea and yarrow.
In the 1970s, amid fears that artificial sweeteners might be carcinogenic, Japanese scientists developed a process to extract the sweetest compounds from the leaves. Often referred to as “the sweet herb of Paraguay,” stevia extract (also called Rebaudioside A) is 250 times sweeter than sugar, and research shows that it’s just as satiating.

Stevia extract is sold as a liquid or crystals. Because the extract is so highly concentrated, it should be used very sparingly, cautions Amen. “Otherwise, it can have a bitter, licorice-like aftertaste.”
Some companies market flavored stevia extract, such as lemon, cinnamon, vanilla, chocolate or root beer versions, which can be mixed with sparkling water to make a refreshing, calorie-free alternative to diet soda. Stevia is also used to sweeten Sprite Green, some flavors of Vitamin Water and some flavors of Odwalla juices, among other products.

Is Stevia Natural?
Technically, says Amen, “stevia extract is not totally ‘natural’ since it’s derived from dried leaves using a water-extraction process, then is refined using ethanol, methanol, and crystallization.”
However, unlike the process used with the artificial sweetener aspartame, adds Amen, “stevia extract undergoes ultrafiltration to remove those alcohols. The result is a safer, less processed sweetener.”

What Are the Safety Concerns?
Stevia extract is generally recognized as safe by the Food and Drug Administration, but whole-leave stevia or crude Stevia extracts have not yet been approved for use as a food additive. The FDA has concern over potential effects on reproductive, cardiovascular and renal systems, based on animal studies conducted decades ago.
The FDA previously banned stevia as anything other than a dietary supplement, stating that the available information didn’t establish its safety. In 2009, the FDA approved stevia extract it for use as a sweetener, after a rigorous review of scientific evidence. Stevia was approved by the European Union in 2011.

“So far, stevia appears to be the safest sweetener,” says Amen. “There are no negative recent studies, and some evidence that stevia can be helpful in stabilizing blood sugar.”
The American Diabetes Association reports that stevia doesn’t have any significant effect on blood sugar and can be “a good option for [diabetics] who are trying to cut calories and still enjoy a sweet taste.” Stevia is also much safer for your teeth than sugar, which feeds oral bacteria and contributes to cavities.

Does Stevia Help You Lose Weight?
While stevia can be helpful for cutting calories, it should be used in moderation, cautions Amen. “You need to be conscious of how much you’re using, to avoid keeping sugar addiction alive.”
To slim down, Amen advises a diet consisting of 70 percent plant foods--such as fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and healthy oils (like olive oil)--and 30 percent lean protein, such as fish and chicken.
A Mediterranean diet that’s rich in these foods--and even includes red wine--dramatically reduces risk for heart attacks, strokes, and death from heart disease, compared to a low-fat diet, according to a major new study published in New England Journal of Medicine.
And with sugary beverages being linked to 25,000 deaths a year in the U.S. alone, from diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer, according to a new Harvard study, stevia sure looks like a tasty alternative.
However, there is no evidence that it’s a magic bullet for weight loss, compared to other no-calorie sweeteners, the Mayo Clinic reports. In addition, some people may develop mild side effects, such as nausea or feeling overly full.

Can Stevia Improve Health?
The natural herbal sweetener’s compounds may provide health benefits, though further research needs to be done. However, low levels of the sweetener appeared to increase levels of HDL, or ‘good’ cholesterol, in male rats.
Another animal study showed that “stevioside treatment was associated with improved insulin signaling and antioxidant defense…leading to inhibition of atherosclerotic plaque development and inducing plaque stabilization.”  In other words, it seemed to help prevent heart disease, at least in mice.
Stevia may be helpful for high blood pressure as well. A two-year study of 147 adults with mild hypertension showed that stevioside not only improved their blood pressure compared to the placebo group, but had no significant side effects.
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Hibiscus Tea: The Best Beverage?

April 11, 2013, 2:08 am
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Used as a home remedy in many Asian, African and Caribbean countries for years, hibiscus tea promotes general good health through antioxidants, which fight cellular damage and support the immune system. The natural chemicals in the drink also are thought to battle heart issues, including hypertension. They also might promote digestive and bowel regularity, water control, and weight loss and management. Although the evidence toward these benefits is promising, more research is needed to fully determine how safe it is and what dose to take. Medical professionals already know that hibiscus can react with certain drugs and that it isn’t good for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.

Antioxidant Benefits

In the body, oxidation causes two electrons to break apart, leaving two oxygen radicals free to roam about. Sometimes, these damage healthy cells, which then can become cancerous. Hibiscus petals, which are the part of the plant people use to make tea, have a dark red color caused by compounds called flavonoids. More specifically, they contain anthocyanins, plant pigments that give a red, blue or purple shade. These are antioxidants, meaning they fight the negative effects of the oxidation process.



Being able to fight free radicals affects virtually every body function, because it helps cells stay healthy enough to perform and reproduce well. With less damage, cancers often do not form as easily. Many people notice a visual difference in the condition of their skin, which appears soft and flexible with fewer fine lines and wrinkles.



Immune System Performance

Similar to many other plants and fruits, hibiscus contains vitamin C, which medical experts believe influences the development and activity of white blood cells. Their role is to fight off infection and reduce inflammation, so drinking this type of tea might keep a person from getting sick as often. It also might help with diseases such as arthritis and the swelling, redness and irritation that happens after an injury.

Heart Health

Studies of hibiscus tea show that it does have the ability to reduce systolic blood pressure by up to 7%. Experts think this might be due to the flavonoids, which can help dilate blood vessels. These results show that the beverage potentially could treat problems like hypertension, high blood pressure and connected forms of heart disease. They also are significant because they are very similar to what many people experience while on prescription blood pressure medications, suggesting that this drink might be a viable alternative for people who cannot or do not want to take those drugs. More research is needed before experts can say for sure whether these benefits are sustainable, however.

Digestion and Bowel Function

The chemicals in this tea have antibacterial properties and serve as a very gentle laxative, which temporarily can relieve constipation and related problems such as painful gas and bloating. Keeping the bowels moving is essential because it influences the amount of water and nutrients that get absorbed. A sluggish or blocked bowel also can prevent the stomach from emptying as it should, which in turn can lead to problems like stomach upset and heartburn. The polyphenols in the drink also are thought to stimulate the digestive system while deterring the growth of stomach cancers.

Water Control

People need water in order to live, as it makes up the majority of each cell and is necessary for the body to carry out different physical processes. Sometimes, an individual will retain extra water, however. This often shows up as bloating or edema, which can be painful and cause a temporary, slight weight gain. Hibiscus tea is a natural diuretic, so a person might be able to turn to it to restore proper water levels in the body.

Weight Loss and Management

Hibiscus tea contains an enzyme inhibitor that lowers the production of amylase, an enzyme that breaks down sugar and starches. With less amylase, a person typically isn’t as able to absorb as many carbohydrates. That means a person’s body can’t use or store all the carbohydrates he eats, possibly making it easier to hit a weight loss goal or avoid gaining too many pounds.

Warnings

Despite the multiple health benefits of this drink, it is not safe for those who are pregnant. Healthcare professionals believe it can stimulate menstruation and lead to a miscarriage in some women. Not enough research has been done to determine whether it is okay to use while breastfeeding, so a woman should avoid using it during that time.

Another problem is that hibiscus interacts with acetaminophen, a common over-the-counter pain reliever. It causes the drug to leave the body faster, so pain relief might not last as long. Simply taking more acetaminophen isn’t a good solution because it goes against standard dosing recommendations.
Although experts are starting to understand how hibiscus tea works and have uncovered some potential risks, research into its side effects is ongoing. They do not know all the problems that could occur and, therefore, aren’t always able to foresee how an individual might react or whether an interaction could happen. Dosing recommendations still are not standardized, as well. For these reasons, it is best for people to use the drink with some caution and alert a healthcare professional when taking it.
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Teacher Resignation Letter From Gerald Conti Says His Profession 'No Longer Exists'

April 11, 2013, 5:28 am
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When Gerald "Jerry" Conti decided to retire from his teaching career after 27 years at Westhill High School in New York, he went out with a bang.
On March 29, Conti, 62, posted the text of his resignation letter on Facebook, along with a photo of Porky Pig saying "That's All Folks!"
The letter lays out why, after several decades, Conti believed he had to call it quits. Conti points the blame at legislators who "failed us by selling children out to private industries such as Pearson Education," a testing company. He argued the New York State United Teachers union failed its members by not mounting an effective campaign against standardized testing, and said there's now a "pervasive atmosphere of distrust" preventing teachers from developing their own tests and quizzes.
"After writing all of this I realize that I am not leaving my profession, in truth, it has left me. It no longer exists," Conti wrote in the letter.
 So far, the post has received 86 "Likes," 745 "Shares" and more than 30 comments of praise for Conti's teaching ability, as well as expressions of sadness about his departure from the classroom, though Conti said he may substitute teach. Soon after the letter made the rounds on Facebook, the Syracuse Post-Standard picked it up.Conti told the Post-Standard his frustration isn't directed at his local school district, but rather at the "larger forces" of education reform.
"This whole thing is being driven by people who know nothing about education,” Conti told the Post-Standard. "It's sad."Conti has some company when it comes to his dislike of standardized testing. Earlier this year, teachers in Seattle refused to administer the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, test "on ethical and professional grounds." In February, roughly 10,000 parents, teachers and students rallied in Texas for more funding and fewer exams, the Texas Observer reported.
In his interview with the Post-Standard, Conti also elaborated on his impression that testing is eating his profession, and that educating is being taken out of teachers' hands.
"Education to me is completely qualitative, it's not quantitative," Conti said. "It's about personal relationships, and it's about getting kids to be curious. And that's what I've been trying to do all my career."

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