Conservation basics

Web Talk - Newfoundland and Labrador: "Notably, the McCartneys have never come up with an answer with what should be done when the seal population grows too large for its food source. (Even now, with the hunt still going on, the seal population has tripled since the '70s, growing faster than the fish the seals eat.) Will the McCartneys be so eager to have their photo taken with starving seals when their food source becomes overwhelmed by an unchecked seal population? "

Good point, Scott.

As a Newfoundlander tells it

Ottawa Fails to Support Atlantic Canada: "We've all heard the misinformation some of these activist groups spread. An example of this is the recently published list of restaurants that are supposedly boycotting Canadian seafood. According to one activist group, the boycott is going great and gaining momentum. A consumer group recently contacted over a third of the restaurants named and found that many were still serving Canadian seafood. Those particular restaurants did not even know they were on the list. Others contacted were vegetarian outlets that never did serve seafood and many others never served Canadian seafood in the first place. According to the report, only about 13% of those listed were actually supporting the anti-seal movement in their boycott. "

You tell 'em, Myles.

He's probably a very nice man

CBC News: Bardot protests seal hunt, disappointed by PM: "Paul Watson, one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, helped organize the first campaign to protect East Coast seals in 1976. Thirty years later he's sending a petition with 25,000 signatures to the Canadian government asking it to stop the commercial seal hunt.
'The only reason it exists is because of a stubbornness of the people who are running the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. And we've got to have a fisheries minister who is not from Newfoundland, who can take an objective look at this,' said Watson."

Yes, preferably one that didn't grow up with actual seals or sealers. Better yet, find one whose only source of information is the slanted pap you suckle him with, right?

What is it with linguists and activism?

Another good use for seals

Research Report 2005 North Atlantic Biopharma Inc: "North Atlantic Biopharma Inc. (NABPI) was founded in 2001 and is currently owned by four professors of Memorial University of Newfoundland, Drs. Hu Liu, Lili Wang and Taki Kara from the School of Pharmacy, and Dr. Philip Davis from the Department of Biochemistry. The company develops pharmaceuticals derived from marine biological materials from the North Atlantic Ocean. The marquee pharmaceutical product being developed is a unique seal oil-based lipid emulsion used in feeding patients who have difficulty digesting essential nutrients orally such as traumatic and post-surgery patients."

Senate subcommittee passes breast-feeding bill

Senate subcommittee passes breast-feeding bill: "(Columbia-AP) March 22, 2006 - A Senate subcommittee approved a bill Wednesday to allow mothers to breast-feed their children without fear of humiliation.

The House has already approved the measure.

Advocates hope the bill will encourage mothers to breast-feed, rather than bottle-feed, their children. They testified about the health benefits of breast-feeding to both the mother and child.

Mary Beth Mullaney says women often go to a hot car in 90-degree weather or sit in a dirty public restroom to breast-feed because they fear being asked to leave.

The bill was written after a clerk at a Victoria's Secret store in Mount Pleasant last year suggested that a woman go to a bathroom to nurse her child."

How crazy is that? Been in a Victoria's Secret store lately?

Canadian Seal Hunt Continues - OhmyNews International

This is a pretty well-written article on the seal hunt. There have been reader comments that amend or expand some of the information, including a comment of my own.

Celebrity manipulation

CBC Newfoundland and Labrador - McCartney used by groups, Williams says: "Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams took on ex-Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife during a heated debate Friday night over the Canadian seal hunt, accusing the high-profile couple of being misinformed and used by some animal rights groups.
'My concern here is that the McCartneys are not completely informed,' Williams said during the debate aired on CNN's Larry King Live."

This article is worth a read. Also worth reading is material published by the Canadian government on the seal hunt.

Right ... Newfoundlanders, internationally known for their brutality (check out our crime stats ... 0.4 homicides per 100,000 people in 2004) - NOT! - must support the seal hunt because we're just generally violent and know nothing about it. And our country, Canada, also internationally known for brutality - NOT! - supports the hunt for the same reason. Argh.

Please, come to our country. Tell us how to manage our national resources. You're famous and, where YOU come from, that matters.

Prosecutor: Taunts led to stabbing

Prosecutor: Taunts led to stabbing: "An argument that ended with a knife blade embedded in an 11-year-old boy's heart had begun hours earlier as a childish taunt about a pair of shoes, a prosecutor said in a Cook County courtroom Friday."

Now, what would you assume if this was as far as you got in the article? I assumed that the person who got stabbed was the person who had done the taunting. Not so ... read on ...

"At some point, Terry argued with Clay and made fun of the younger boy's shoes, saying they were "hand-me-downs," Garcia-Camilo said. Clay then left the apartment. A bit later, Terry went to the building's backyard, where he allegedly sold drugs, Garcia-Camilo said.

Two people later told police they saw Terry standing near the open back door of Clay's apartment, Garcia-Camilo said. About 2:30 the next morning, screams came from Clay's apartment, Garcia-Camilo said. He had been stabbed through the heart, investigators say."

Pays to read the whole thing, eh?

This is essentially an overblown bit of conspiracy theory fun but I did a cross-ref google on Miranda and Paxil and found these pictures:


Sarah Paulson, whose character said tearfully, "It's the Pax ..."


Miranda Hitti (click on her name for her bio and an even better picture, that won't display here), a writer for WebMD, who has written such articles as:

• Paxil: Stronger Birth Defects Warning
• Depression May Return During Pregnancy
• Depression Drugs Linked to Withdrawal in Babies
• Paxil May Ease Hot Flashes In Men
• Antidepressants May Be Tied to Bleeding in Gut
• Do Some Foods Battle Depression?

This is contrived, of course, but hubby laughed when I showed him the pictures side-by-side.

Mysterious Expenditures

So, I'm reading this tax return for Heifer International, trying to figure out where their money goes, when it goes. There's a list of expenditures at the end of this return, which I am trying to decipher. Here's one of the expenditures that I can't figure out what it is, from page 16:

21-0300-00 Field Ofc - Fund:Kenya Co Rep 458,052.00

Now, it looks at first blush like someone in Kenya, a Heifer International Representative, made $458,052. But I can't be sure. There are a bunch of entries like this one, beyond the obviously goat, sheep and cow projects, all for different countries. That seems like a hefty overhead for a field office, seems to me.

Point is, I don't know what I'm seeing.

Tax returns for charitable organizations can be accessed for free at www.guidestar.org.

The Empire (Wyeth) Strikes Back

Wyeth wants to keep the market cornered on "helping" women with hormone imbalances, as keep be seen in this FDA docket. Like, they manufacture hormones from horse's urine, which women afflicted with menopausal symptoms take so they can enjoy those symptoms later in life, when they're not quite so busy. And now they want the FDA to crack down on compounding pharmacies that make individualized hormone blends for these women, derived from plants, custom blended on the basis of hormone-levels testing.

A foot note in the complaint said that the only reliable way of testing a woman's hormone levels is by blood sample. I think they've gone from horse p*** to horse s***, if you'll pardon my starry French. See, I've had my hormone levels tested - by saliva. A single blood sample is about as useful as asking a woman once a month whether she's hungry. If you check my estrogen levels on day 20 of my cycle, they'll look pre-menopausal. Trick is, you have to do a sample every 2 or 3 days, graph the results to see how your hormones levels are fluctuating ... which they do, naturally.

Ask a woman on Premarin or any of those other classic HRTs if they had their estrogen levels tested, blood or otherwise, prior to being prescribed these conventional treatments for their menopausal symptoms. Ask them if they had it retested before (or even after) their dosage was increased. Ask them ... then let me know the answer, in a comment.

Let's call this a survey.

Suicidality, violence and mania caused by selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors

"Evidence from many sources confirms that selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) commonly cause or exacerbate a wide range of abnormal mental and behavioral conditions. These adverse drug reactions include the following overlapping clinical phenomena: a stimulant profile that ranges from mild agitation to manic psychoses, agitated depression, obsessive preoccupations that are alien or uncharacteristic of the individual, and akathisia. Each of these reactions can worsen the individual’s mental condition and can result in suicidality, violence, and other forms of extreme abnormal behavior. Evidence for these reactions is found in clinical reports, controlled clinical trials, and epidemiological studies in children and adults. Recognition of these adverse drug reactions and withdrawal from the offending drugs can prevent misdiagnosis and the worsening of potentially severe iatrogenic disorders. These findings also have forensic application in criminal, malpractice, and
product liability cases."

A must read for anyone who knows someone taking an SSRI or who is contemplating doing so themselves.