Check it out.

Take the Homeland Security Quiz!

] Mencal is a simple variation of the well-known unix
] command cal. The main difference is that you can have
] some periodically repeating days highlighted in color.
] This can be used to track menstruation (or other) cycles
] conveniently.

OK, this is just too off the wall not to recommend!

Masturbation calendar

- Increasing productivity while decreasing morale
Have a laugh.

Motivation

How mushrooms will save the world
Cleaning up toxic spills, stopping poison-gas attacks, and curing deadly diseases: Fungus king Paul Stamets says there's no limit to what his spores can do...

"Diesel oil had contaminated the site, which the mycoremediation team inoculated with strains of oyster mycelia that Stamets had collected from old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest. Two other bioremediation teams, one using bacteria, the other using engineered bacteria, were also given sections of the contaminated soil to test.
Lo and behold. After four weeks, oyster mushrooms up to 12 inches in diameter had formed on the mycoremediated soil. After eight weeks, 95 percent of the hydrocarbons had broken down, and the soil was deemed nontoxic and suitable for use in WSDOT highway landscaping.
By contrast, neither of the bioremediated sites showed significant changes. "It's only hearsay," says Bill Hyde, Stamets' patent attorney, "but the bacterial remediation folks were crying because the [mycoremediation] worked so fast." "

Salon.com Technology | How mushrooms will save the world

Today's mounting social and ecological crises demand responses that are broad, deep, and strategic. Given the widespread destruction wrought by globalisation, it seems clear that the most powerful solutions will involve a fundamental change in direction - towards localizing rather than globalising economic activity. In fact, 'going local' may be the single most effective thing we can do.
Localisation is essentially a process of de-centralisation - shifting economic activity into the hands of millions of small- and medium-sized businesses instead of concentrating it in fewer and fewer mega-corporations. Localisation doesn't mean that every community would be entirely self-reliant; it simply means striking a balance between trade and local production by diversifying economic activity and shortening the distance between producers and consumers wherever possible.

Where should the first steps towards localisation take place? Since food is something everyone, everywhere, needs every day, a shift from global food to local food would have the greatest impact of all.

Bringing the Food Economy Home

December 3, 2002
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: mailto:press@dow-chemical.com

DOW ADDRESSES BHOPAL OUTRAGE, EXPLAINS POSITION
Company responds to activist concerns with concrete action points

In response to growing public outrage over its handling of the Bhopal
disaster's legacy, Dow Chemical (http://www.dow-chemical.com) has
issued a statement explaining why it is unable to more actively
address the problem.

"We are being portrayed as a heartless giant which doesn't care about
the 20,000 lives lost due to Bhopal over the years," said Dow
President and CEO Michael D. Parker. "But this just isn't true. Many
individuals within Dow feel tremendous sorrow about the Bhopal
disaster, and many individuals within Dow would like the corporation
to admit its responsibility, so that the public can then decide on the
best course of action, as is appropriate in any democracy.

"Unfortunately, we have responsibilities to our shareholders and our
industry colleagues that make action on Bhopal impossible. And being
clear about this has been a very big step."

On December 3, 1984, Union Carbide--now part of Dow--accidentally
killed 5,000 residents of Bhopal, India, when its pesticide plant
sprung a leak. It abandoned the plant without cleaning it up, and
since then, an estimated 15,000 more people have died from
complications, most resulting from chemicals released into the
groundwater.

Although legal investigations have consistently pinpointed Union
Carbide as culprit, both Union Carbide and Dow have had to publicly
deny these findings. After the accident, Union Carbide compensated
victims' families between US$300 and US$500 per victim.

"We understand the anger and hurt," said Dow Spokesperson Bob Questra.
"But Dow does not and cannot acknowledge responsibility. If we did,
not only would we be required to expend many billions of dollars on
cleanup and compensation--much worse, the public could then point to
Dow as a precedent in other big cases. 'They took responsibility; why
can't you?' Amoco, BP, Shell, and Exxon all have ongoing problems that
would just get much worse. We are unable to set this precedent for
ourselves and the industry, much as we would like to see the issue
resolved in a humane and satisfying way."

Shareholders reacted to the Dow statement with enthusiasm. "I'm happy
that Dow is being clear about its aims," said Panaline Boneril, who
owns 10,000 shares, "because Bhopal is a recurrent problem that's
clogging our value chain and ultimately keeping the share price from
expressing its full potential. Although a real solution is not
immediately possible because of Dow's commitments to the larger
industry issues, there is new hope in management's exceptional new
clarity on the maprime responsibilities are to the people who own Dow
shares, and to the industry as a whole. We simply cannot do anything
at this moment for the people of Bhopal."

Dow Chemical is a chemical products and services company devoted to
bringing its customers a wide range of chemicals. It furnishes
solutions for the agriculture, electronics, manufacturing, and oil and
gas industries, including well-known products like Styrofoam, DDT, and
Agent Orange, as well as lesser-known brands like Inspire, Retain,
Eliminator, Quash, and Woodstalk. For more on the Bhopal catastrophe,
please visit Dow at http://www.dow-chemical.com/.

# 30 #

To no longer receive mail from Dow, please write
mailto:offlist@dow-chemical.com?subject=thomasleavitt@myrealbox.com.

tter."

"It's a slow process," said Questra. "We must learn bit by bit to meet
this challenge head-on. For now, this means acknowledging that much as
it pains us, our

Baby Eating Party - at least they're up front!

"I say that victory is persuading the American people and the rest of the world that this is not a quick matter that's going to be over in a month or a year or even five years. It is something that we need to do so that we can continue to live in a world with powerful weapons and with people who are willing to use those powerful weapons."
U.S. Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld in Jane's Defence Weekly
-- September 21, 2001

"Guns & Butter" investigates the relationships among capitalism, militarism and politics. Maintaining a progressive perspective in the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, "Guns & Butter: The Economics of Politics" reports on who wins and who loses when the economic resources of civil society are diverted toward global corporatization, war, and the furtherance of a national security state.

Guns and Butter

As a fatter of mact, all drugs are tested in humans anyway, in "Phase II Clinical Trials". This is where the actual effects of a drug begin to become apparent. Though less profitable for Purina and the Primate Research Institute, the methods described produce more medically accurate results:
IN VITRO RESEARCH • EPIDEMIOLOGY
COMPUTER & MATHEMATICAL MODELING • GENETICS
CLINICAL RESEARCH • AUTOPSIES •
POST-MARKETING SURVEILLANCE • TECHNOLOGY

If Not Animal Experimentation, Then What?

This is not about animal rights, thought the bunnies getting their eyelids cut off would be sympathetic to the argument. It is about good science vs. bad science. Fallacious data regarding medications, garnered through animal experimentation, leads to injury and death in humans. The simple fact is, animals are not little humans, and there is no one-to-one mapping of drug or procedural effects in animals to their effects in humans. We're a whole different animal.
Not only does animal experimentation divert limited resources away from valid science, but by delaying innovation, therapies and cures, it prolongs human suffering and increases mortality. Animal experimentation has misled researchers for centuries, confounding our understanding of the human body and the diseases that plague it.

Animal experimentation consumes half of all research spending, for those of you who like to 'follow the money'.

50 DEADLY CONSEQUENCES OF LAB ANIMAL EXPERIMENTS

Yeah.
] "Casting doubt on a basic principle of U.S. anti-drug
] policies, an independent study concluded on Monday that
] marijuana use does not lead teenagers to experiment with
] hard drugs like heroin or cocaine.
]
] The study by the private, nonprofit RAND Drug Policy
] Research Center countered the theory that marijuana acts
] as a so-called gateway drug to more harmful narcotics, a
] key argument against legalizing pot in the United States.
]
] "

Study: Marijuana May Not Lead to Hard Drugs