The Great American Smokeout Tomorrow!

Yes sir! The annual Great American Smokeout is tomorrow!

For any of the smokers out there, maybe today is the day to take this push and try to quit, if even for a day. There are so many benefits, too, as you may well already know. There are many benefits to your health but saving money factors in and more.

So good luck tomorrow and have fun with it! (If possible).

Reasons to go, buy and eat organic

11. You'll have less insecticides (read: poison) in your body

12. You'll be as least somewhat less likely to contract cancer since you'll have less insecticides in your body.

13. However more costly initially, organic is less expensive than cancer.

14. No one really likes hospitals all that much.

Go here, REALLY do something to help cancer victims and research

Instead of posting some inane note on Facebook or Twitter or some such, however heartfelt or well-intended, you can actually go to a British research organization's website and help do some research for them and for cancer victims across the world. I saw it in the Star today but, as usual, couldn't find it on their online website. (I swear, the Kansas City Star has the worst internal search engine quite possibly in the world):

Charity creates world's first citizen science project to speed up cancer research

Cancer Research UK Press Release

TeenagersCancer Research UK has launched the first ever interactive website - http://www.clicktocure.net - that will allow the public to delve into real-life cancer data from research archives and speed up lifesaving research, outside of the laboratory.

At the moment, cancer samples are given special stains that highlight certain molecules as part of research. These molecules could reveal how a patient will respond to treatment. But this process is slow and analysis is mostly done by trained pathologists, who are often also cancer researchers.

The new website – Cell SliderTM – is the first time real cancer data has been turned into a format that can be analysed by the public. By getting as many people as possible to take part, more samples will be analysed faster and more effectively, freeing up scientists to carry out other cancer research.



More from the article:

Cell SliderTM presents real images of tumour samples to the world for analysis in the form of a simple game of snap. Users will be guided through a tutorial that explains which cells to analyse and which ones to ignore.

Once cancer cells have been spotted by their irregular shape, users will be asked to record how many have been stained yellow and how bright that yellow is by simply clicking on another image that closely matches the sample they are viewing.

This information will be fed back to researchers who will look for trends between types of cells and a patient’s response to treatment.

So go to the website and help cancer research. Then, go again and again, as many times as you can, whenever you can to really help in the fight against cancer.

Link to full press release: http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/news/archive/pressrelease/2012-10-23-worlds-first-citizen-science?view=rss

Great question, really

Missouri: 2nd worst number of smokers per capita, nationwide

The latest study is out from Gallup, on the numbers of smokers nationwide, on a state-by-state basis and Missouri has the 2nd worst (meaning, most) number of smokers as a percentage of the state. Only Kentucky is worse--they're at 29% of the population, we're at 26%. Ugh. Surprisingly and happily, Kansas is on the "lowest percentage" list at only 19% of the population so good on you, Kansas. Links: http://www.gallup.com/poll/150779/Smoking-Rates-Remain-Highest-Kentucky-Lowest-Utah.aspx#1;

Ladies and Gentlemen: St. Louis, Missouri's own Monsanto Corporation

There is a terrific article on Yahoo! News right now I'm going to quote, below, for y'all, as a bit of an education.

This St. Louis, Missouri company is just God's gift to mankind, I'm telling you:

Eight ways Monsanto is destroying our health

Lots of talk these days about the bullying of young boys and girls in school by more aggressive students. This brings to my mind the biggest bully of all: the biotech company, Monsanto Corporation.

Taken in context, Monsanto’s list of corporate crimes should have been enough to pull their corporate charter years ago. And yet we allow them to continue to destroy our food supply, our health and the planet. Monsanto or Monsatan?

Take a look at the company’s track record and decide for yourself.

--Agent Orange: Monsanto was the major financial beneficiary of this herbicide used to defoliate the jungles of Vietnam and destroy the health of American troops and their offspring. It also allowed Monsanto and other chemical companies to appeal for and receive protection from veterans seeking damages for their exposure to Agent Orange and any future biotech creations.

--Aspartame: As far back as 1994, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released a report listing 94 health issues caused by aspartame. It has been shown to cause slow but serious damage to the human body and yet it is used extensively in many commercial products.

--Saccharin: Studies have shown that saccharin caused cancer in test rats and mice; and in six human studies, including one done by the National Cancer Institute, that consuming artificial sweeteners, such as saccharin and cyclamate, resulted in bladder cancer.

--Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH): A genetically modified hormone injected into dairy cows to produce more milk, despite the fact that more milk was needed. The cows suffer excruciating pain due to swollen udders and mastitis. The pus from the infection enters the milk supply requiring more antibiotics to be given to the cows. BST milk may also cause breast cancer, colon cancer, and prostate cancer in humans.

--RoundUp: The world's most commonly used herbicide and weed killer has been linked to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, in a study by eminent oncologists Dr. Lennart Hardell and Dr. Mikael Eriksson of Sweden. Used on genetically modified crops resistant to RoundUp's active ingredient glyphosate, environmentalists and health professionals are concerned that far from reducing herbicide use, glyphosate-resistant crops may result in increased residues in food to which consumers will be exposed.

--Genetically Modified Crops (GMO): Monsanto created Frankenfoods by gene-splicing corn, cotton, soy, and canola with DNA from a foreign source. Consequently these crops are resistant to massive doses of the herbicide, RoundUp, but in turn herbicide-resistant superweeds are taking over. After running into resistance in the west, Monsanto is pushing GMO crops in third-world countries.

According to physicist, ecologist, and activist Dr. Vandana Shiva, “Syugenta and Monsanto are rushing ahead with the mapping and patenting of the rice genome. If they could, they would own rice and its genes, even though the 200,000 rice varieties that give us diverse traits have been bred and evolved by rice farmers of Asia collectively over millennia. Their claim to inventing rice is a violence against the integrity of biodiversity and life forms; it is a violence against the knowledge of third-world farmers.”

This one, to me, is one of the worst and it's impacting us into the future:

--Terminator Seeds: A technology that produces sterile grains unable to germinate, forcing farmers to buy seeds from Monsanto rather than save and reuse the seeds from their harvest. Terminators can cross-pollinate and contaminate local non-sterile crops putting in danger the future seed supply and eventually giving control of the world’s food supply to Monsanto and the GM industry.

--Standard American Diet: According to the Organic Consumers Association, “There is a direct correlation between our genetically engineered food supply and the $2 trillion the U.S. spends annually on medical care, namely an epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases.

Instead of healthy fruits, vegetables, grains, and grass-fed animal products, U.S. factory farms and food processors produce a glut of genetically engineered junk foods that generate heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer. Low fruit and vegetable consumption is directly costing the United States $56 billion a year in diet-related chronic diseases.”

How do you NOT love those guys--Monsanto?  (Of course, it's too bad they exist at all but at least, thank God, they're over in St. Louis and not here on this side of the state).

For that matter, how do you not love Corporate America?  Sure, they have a stranglehold on our government and our lives, individually and collectively but aren't they just a super-dee-duper group of people?

It seems as though Yahoo! Green is turning into a kind of Mother Earth News, too.  All I can say is Yahoo!

Have a great, healthy, beautiful and natural weekend, y'all.

Links:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ygreen/20110331/sc_ygreen/eightwaysmonsantoisdestroyingourhealth;_ylt=Ajz3D_0l5lEbKrldlIyP9BFv24cA;_ylu=X3oDMTNzY2hiOGQ3BGFzc2V0A3lncmVlbi8yMDExMDMzMS9laWdodHdheXNtb25zYW50b2lzZGVzdHJveWluZ291cmhlYWx0aARjY29kZQNnbXByZG5iZQRjcG9zAzIEcG9zAzIEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yaWVzBHNsawNlaWdodHdheXNtb24-;  www.motherearthnews.com

Renewing the Bush tax cuts is like,,,

..driving your car off the cliff, paying a tow truck twice the price of the car to haul it back up,
then driving it back over because your brother-in-law's cousin's friend told you this time it will fly.

..celebrating your one day sobriety pin with a cognac and crack party.

...getting gonorrhea from unprotected sex, and after you get rid of it, going back to the bath house to see if you can get something incurable this time.

...a 400 pound person going on all McDonald's diet.

...after the drunk British football hooligans have rioted and burned down the stadium, you rebuild the stadium and, this time, to make it better, you offer free all-you-can-drink beer.

...a prostitute getting out of 'the life' by switching from cash to credit cards.

...losing all your money with Bernie Madoff, then convincing the rest of your family to break him out of jail so they can invest all their money with him too.

...after the earthquake rebuilding your house on the fault line, instead of just next to it.

...giving your local alchemist your life savings to turn lead into gold, and after the lead remains lead, robbing the bank to pay him to do it again.

...invading Afghanistan to get Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, then, after you fail, invading Iraq to get weapons of mass destruction that don't exist.

...putting poison in your food to teach the dog not to eat off the table, then forgetting what you did and eating it yourself.

..after you get lung cancer, smoking again because the worst has already happened.

...is like knowingly doing 2001-2009 all over again, a few people get rich, no new jobs are created, and the whole economy collapses.

This is a contest. It's open to everyone. The writer of the best comparison gets to live with the consequences of whatever our loony legislators and waffling president do. Go to the link below to add your contribution.

Link to original post:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-beinhart/renewing-the-bush-tax-cut_b_795362.html

Further proof of why we shouldn't have smoking in public areas

I still see and hear, once in a while, someone complain that they can't smoke in public. Last week, someone wrote in to The Kansas City Star, sarcastically ripping our smoking bans, saying life will be perfect one of these days, if we just keep passing laws similar to this one. And to this I say, you need to read the following scientific information on what smoking does to us, just released this morning: Scientists led by Dr. Ronald Crystal at Weill Cornell Medical College documented changes in genetic activity among nonsmokers triggered by exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke. Public-health bans on smoking have been fueled by strong population-based data that links exposure to secondhand cigarette smoke and a higher incidence of lung diseases such as emphysema and even lung cancer, but do not establish a biological cause for the correlation. Now, for the first time, researchers can point to one possible cause: the passive recipient's genes are actually being affected. The results suggest that the genetic changes among the low-exposure volunteers, some of whose exposure is exclusively secondhand, mimicked those of smokers and represent the first molecular steps toward later lung disease. ...the latest findings should reinforce public-health messages about the dangers of cigarette smoke, even if it is secondhand, says Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. "When you look at the biology, there is no safe level of exposure to tobacco smoke," he says. "This [study] adds an important piece of evidence that inhaling secondhand smoke is deleterious and does things to the airway that are not good." Okay? Got that? It's bad enough your cigarettes make us stink. We could live with that. And the scientific data told us years ago that secondhand smoke does cause cancer, even though you may not want to believe it. But here is further proof of just what you, smoking in public, in restaurants and so on, does to us--all of us. Could we get over this now? Link to original post: http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201210300;_ylt=AiwAHJetTqWiLcUjXzd7otHpCcB_;_ylu=X3oDMTM1dTVqMjI1BGFzc2V0A3RpbWUvMjAxMDA4MjAvMDg1OTkyMDEyMTAzMDAEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM4BHBvcwM4BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDc2Vjb25kaGFuZGNp