Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Lame Superpowers
I like Bee Boy (Red Bee) - who releases one trained bee to sting the enemy.
Third-Hand smoke is also deadly
A California research lab has found in a recent that third-hand smoke, or the residue of cigarettes that is left on clothing, paper or walls, is extremely carcinogenic when combined with an indoor pollutant.
“The biggest message is the study reveals that the tobacco smoke residue that remains after smoking, sometimes days or weeks later, could pose a risk to people who occupy that space or use it,” said Lara Gundel, the co-principal investigator in a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
That risk increases when the residue combines with a common indoor pollutant, nitrous acid, Gundel said. Nitrous acid usually floats inside a building and is generated by unvented gas appliances or diesel engines.
Together the residue and pollutant become potentially even more carcinogenic, forming a tobacco-specific nitrosamine, which is extremely hazardous, the scientist explained. In fact Gundel said when nicotine and nitrous acid combine, Gundel said, they are much more dangerous than just nicotine.
...
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Underwater skyscraper
A window-washer job would be interesting on this (cleaning the algae off the windows).
Opposition MPs call for probe into how the Conservative government is not releasing documents
Opposition parties are calling on the information commissioner to investigate how the government censors records and whether there has been any political interference from the Prime Minister's Office.
"There's been a pattern of delay and obstruction with this government that should worry Canadians with regard to access to information," NDP Leader Jack Layton told reporters in Ottawa on Tuesday.
The request from both the Liberals and NDP follows news that a top political aide to the Public Works Department's minister overruled bureaucrats and had forbidden the release of a sensitive report to The Canadian Press.
...
Saturday, February 6, 2010
URGENT - Harper signing away our sovereignty while parliament is closed
excerpt:
In return for this “concession” from Washington, Ottawa has agreed to pay an unacceptably high price. Under the deal, Canadian provinces and municipalities will permanently give up the right to favour local companies in awarding contracts. Government procurement at the municipal and provincial levels is an extremely important economic development tool, crucial for job creation, the encouragement of Canadian firms and the development of home-grown technology. At a time when cities are rebuilding their transit systems and are refitting homes to make them more energy efficient, it is the height of folly to open all these contracts to American bidders. (Given the multiplicity of measures used to protect them from outside bidders, it is foolish to imagine that Canadian firms will have an equal opportunity to bid on U.S. state and municipal contracts.)
What makes the Harper government’s deal particularly maddening is that the Buy American provisions in the U.S. Recovery Act violate the spirit if not the terms of NAFTA that guarantee the right of Canadian firms to bid on U.S. federal government projects with the exception of defence contracts. Instead of publicly and loudly asserting that Washington is violating NAFTA, the Harper government is bribing the Obama administration to stop doing that by opening up tens of billions of dollars worth of public contracts in Canada to American corporations.
Wednesday, February 3, 2010
World's leading medical journal finally admits that Wakefield was wrong - vaccines don't cause autism
The anti-vaccine movement lost steam Tuesday after the world’s leading medical journal officially retracted a controversial autism study that has caused millions of parents around the world to fear childhood vaccines.
The study, published in 1998 in the British journal the The Lancet was the first to report a purported link between a vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella and the onset of autism. That reported association, which has since been discredited, formed the crux for the argument that MMR vaccines can cause autism and many in the anti-vaccine movement used the paper as proof of their claims.
Experts say the rare move by the Lancet to pull a published paper should help to correct the public record, though many added that more work is needed to remove the publication’s harmful legacy.
“This sends a very strong signal this research is not to be believed,” said Paul Hebert, editor-in-chief of the Canadian Medical Association Journal. “For something that is published, taking it out of the public record is effectively saying it never existed.”
...
Posts
