Mereja

Author: Serkadis

  • Tung Hai Chlorella ( 200 mg, 1000 Tabs )

    Tung Hai Chlorella ( 200 mg, 1000 Tabs ) Tung Hai Chlorella is a single-celled fresh water algae, rich in a variety of nutrients and extremely high in protein. It contains 19 amino acids, is one of the richest sources of RNA and DNA, and has over 10 times as much chlorophyll as alfalfa. Because it is a whole food, Tung Hai Chlorella contributes to the health and growth of our cells like no single vitamin or mineral possibly can. It works at the cellular level to nourish, rejuvenate and revitalize the body’s systems.In order for us to be healthy, we must be healthy at the most basic level: the cell. Our cells are being replaced constantly. The primary agents which accomplish this are called nucleic acids, most notably RNA and DNA. A diet rich in RNA/DNA is essential for the body to efficiently repair itself, and is therefore considered a key to long life and the Beneficial Effectsion of problem. Tung Hai Chlorella is one of the richest known sources of dietary nucleic acids.

  • Bitter Melon (Glycemic Control) ( 60 Caps )

    Bitter Melon (Glycemic Control) ( 60 Caps ) Bitter Melon is natural fruit that has favorable effects on glucose metabolism.

  • Tanolin CLA ( 1000 mg, 90 SoftGels )

    Tanolin CLA ( 1000 mg, 90 SoftGels ) Bluebonnet’s Tonalin CLA 1000 mg Softgels provide pure safflower oil, which contains 78-84% conjugated linoleic acid and other monounsaturated fatty acids, which aid in weight management with proper diet and exercise by reducing the amount of fat that is broken down, deposited and stored in the body. Available in easy-to-swallow softgels for maximum assimilation and absorption.

  • Kids Sunscreen SPF30 ( 4 Oz )

    Kids Sunscreen SPF30 ( 4 Oz ) A broad-spectrum UVA & UVB shield against damaging sun exposure. Kids will love this fast absorbing, non-greasy lotion with a fresh fruit scent.

  • Quinoa Grain Organic ( 1 Lb )

    Quinoa Grain Organic ( 1 Lb ) Quinoa is a member of the Chenopodium family and is similar to amaranth. It was one of the staple grains for the ancient Incas, who called it |QUOTE|The Mother Grain|QUOTE|. It has been consumed for thousands of years and is one of the highest grain sources of protein.

  • Vitamin E-400 ( 400 IU, 250 Softgel )

    Vitamin E-400 ( 400 IU, 250 Softgel ) Vitamin E is a major antioxidant and the primary defense against lipid peroxidation. It is particularly important in protecting the body’s cells from free radical/oxidative damage. These protective benefits are achievable with supplemental intakes higher than what is normally consumed in the average diet. This new vegetarian softgel is made from gluten-free starch and carrageenan (from seaweed). It is 100% free of animal derivatives and is well suited for vegetarians.

  • Vitamin A ( 10000 IU, 100 Softgel )

    Vitamin A ( 10000 IU, 100 Softgel ) Vitamin A is essential for the maintenance of healthy epithelial tissue which is found in the skin, eyes, respiratory system, GI and urinary tracts.

  • Amino 1500 ( 300 Tabs )

    Amino 1500 ( 300 Tabs ) NOW Amino 1500 contains a balanced blend of the following 20 essential and non-essential amino acids: L-Alanine, L-Arginine, L-Aspartic Acid, L-Carnitine, L-Cysteine, L-Glutamic Acid, L-Glycine, L-Histidine, L-Isoleucine, L-Leucine, L-Lysine, L-Methionine, L-Ornithine, L-Phenylalanine, L-Proline, L-Serine, L-Threonine, L-Tryptophan, L-Tyrosine and L-Valine.

  • Cobra ( 60 Caps )

    Cobra ( 60 Caps ) Cobra blends exotic herbs from around the world including Horny Goat Weed, Ginseng, Yohimbe Bark, Muira Pauma (known as “potency wood”) and Saw Palmetto to promote virility, increases blood flow, energized performance, stamina and enhanced pleasure. Great for men of all ages.

  • Tampico Skin Brush ( NULL, 1 Unit )

    Tampico Skin Brush ( NULL, 1 Unit ) The Yerba Prima Tampico Skin Brush is a wonderful, revitalizing health and beauty aid. Removing the top layer of dead skin and stimulating the circulation of blood feeding the skin are essential for maintaining youthful, glowing and supple skin. Skin Brushing has been used throughout the world for centuries, and is making its way back into popularity. Dry skin brushing is one of the best ways to cleanse the skin without removing the protective mantle of acid and oils. It gently and effectively removes the top layer of dead skin cells with its build-up of dirt and acid, and deeply cleanses the pores. Skin brushing is one of the most powerful ways to cleanse the lymphatic system. Waste material is carried away from the cells by the blood and the lymph. Skin brushing stimulates the release of this material from the cells near the surface of the body. Eventually, most of the toxins along with their carrier cells, primarily lymphocytes, find their way to the colon for elimination. Skin brushing is also used by beauty salons as part of a program for removing cellulite.

  • FiberZyme (Fiber Zyme) ( 100 Caps )

    FiberZyme (Fiber Zyme) ( 100 Caps ) Throughout the world, researchers studying societies that have maintained traditional diets consisting primarily of high fiber grains, tubers and vegetables have observed that in those societies, constipation and other digestive ills are practically unheard of. Scientifically, we understand that proper amounts of fiber and moisture are key ingredients for regularity.

    Dramatic changes in lifestyles that include eating fast foods on the run, time zone travel and an amazing array of low fiber processed foods, have left both our digestive tracts and the rest of our bodies ‘out of sorts’.

    FiberZyme is a unique blend of natural fiber sources and delivers the proper amounts of the right type of fiber each day. Contains IsoSproutPlex, a blend of enzyme rich sprouts, Alfalfa and small amount of Psyllium Seed to achieve a balance of 20% soluble and 80% insoluble fiber in a nutritious whole food form. FiberZyme is a totally unique fiber blend and a gift from nature in a world full of “unnatural” solutions to the problem of regularity.

  • Choline ( 100 Tabs )

    Choline ( 100 Tabs ) Choline is an essential precursor to acetylcholine, a stimulatory neurotransmitter. It Enhances the body produce HDL (good) cholesterol and lipotropic agents which convert fat into useful products.This product is 100% natural Choline bound to tartaric acid for enhanced absorption.

  • N-Tense Capsules ( 700 mg, 120 Caps )

    N-Tense Capsules ( 700 mg, 120 Caps ) N-TENSE combines the rainforest’s most potent and powerful plants into one synergistic formula. This proprietary and unique formula contains 50% graviola combined with 7 other plants that have similar properties and actions as graviola. This unique blend of rainforest plants have synergistic actions and provide better results than graviola alone. Each rainforest botanical in this proprietary formula has been sustainably harvested in the Amazon Rainforest. This product contains no binders, fillers, or exipients and is finely milled natural plants.

  • Potassium ( 99 mg, 250 Tabs )

    Potassium ( 99 mg, 250 Tabs ) Potassium is essential for nerve function, muscle strength, glycogen formation, and the regulation of heart action and blood pressure. The typical American high-sodium diet tends to deplete potassium. This potassium is specially bonded (chelated) with amino acids to enhance assimilation.

  • Stop Meat Eating?




    The argument that meat eating is ecologically wasteful is at best complete nonsense.  Unfortunately it makes great propaganda and I certainly expect folks to buy into it heavily.  It all hangs on the silly idea that all agricultural and natural plant materials are suitable for human consumption. 
    Quite bluntly we cannot eat grass nor can we eat bark and most tree based vegetation.  We do well to have sorted out a range of plant materials that we can eat mostly in cooked form.
    I have posted at length on the need to keep integrating all forms of animal life into a successful sustainable agricultural  I am no fan of industrial farms operating at the expense of good husbandry.
    We have recently come to understand that the boreal forests represent a good agricultural opportunity for mankind.  Yet its basis is cattails and wetland pasturage consumed mostly by moose.  The moose is the necessary intermediary.  In modern agriculture cattle are the intermediary between grassland, poor grade grain and human consumption.  In classic agriculture, pigs consumed what cattle and humans could not.
    In the lifetimes of most living, we will see the demise of the historic fishery as operated forever.  It will be replaced by aquaculture.  The wild fishery will then completely recover  Aquaculture will again be an intermediary between trash fish and plant foods and our stomachs..
    Save the planet: Stop eating meat
    The UN says so, and so do a growing list of school boards. Meet the new eco enemy.
    by Katie Engelhart and Nicholas Köhler on Tuesday, March 30, 2010 9:00am – 
    http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/03/30/save-the-planet-stop-eating-meat/
    One drizzly Thursday last May, the townsfolk of Ghent, a Flemish burg of some 250,000 souls famous for itsstoverij—a stew of beef braised in beer—gathered outside a centuries-old slaughterhouse in the town’s historic core to sample soy fritters, pick up a map of local vegetarian eateries, and to watch as a boy in a banana costume did valiant battle against another dressed as a beefsteak. This was Ghent’s inaugural Donderdag Veggiedag—Thursday Veggieday, literally—a weekly holiday from the evils of beef, fish, pork and poultry introduced last year by city council, which declared that the moratorium on animal protein would be “good for the climate, your health and your taste buds.” Said a representative of the Ethical Vegetarian Alternative, Belgium’s largest vegetarian organization and a partner in the city initiative: “If everyone in Flanders does not eat meat one day a week, we will save as much CO2 in a year as taking half a million cars off the road.”
    Though meatlessness in Ghent each Thursday is encouraged rather than required, the policy has made vegetarianism pervasive: 95 per cent of the city’s children at 35 local schools, as well as the city’s elected councillors and civil servants, now submit to the Veggiedag menu each week. One poster promoting the policy depicts a polar bear adrift on a shrunken hunk of ice declaring with relief
    Donderdag Veggiedag was a global first, putting medieval Ghent on the cutting edge of efforts to combat climate change by changing the way people eat. But elsewhere, too, the moderate meat movement is gaining ground. A Meatless Mondays organization founded in the U.S. has now opened branches in Holland, Finland, Canada, Taiwan and Australia. Following Ghent’s lead, cities like São Paulo and Tel Aviv have created city-wide schemes. Last year, Baltimore became the first city in North America to mandate Meatless Mondays in its school cafeterias, for environmental as well as health reasons. A similar proposal has just been made for New York City schools.
    Meanwhile, meatless manifestos are topping bestseller lists, from food phenom Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food, with its subtle suggestion, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” to American novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’s painfully graphic anti-meat treatise, Eating Animals. Dwelling on all the nasty details of the livestock industry, Safran Foer reminds us that even meat from humanely raised cattle “came from an animal who, at best—and it’s precious few who get away with this—was burned, mutilated and killed for the sake of a few minutes of human pleasure.”
    Star power, too, is focusing more attention on the cause. In December, former Beatle and long-time animal rights crusader Sir Paul McCartney appeared before the European Parliament in Brussels to back his Meat Free Monday campaign, which seeks to cut CO2 emissions by encouraging people to go meatless once a week. An impressive score of celebrity endorsements followed, from such luminaries as singer Chris Martin, actor Alec Baldwin, ’60s-era model Twiggy, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and, most recently, American Idol judge Simon Cowell. Gwyneth Paltrow issued a meatless edition of GOOP, her Internet newsletter, featuring a column by McCartney.
    For centuries, people have debated the ethics of killing for food (one clearly carnivorous Stoic philosopher, Chrysippus, wrote in the third century BCE that the purpose of an animal’s soul was simply to keep the meat fresh). New is the focus on the environmental consequences of meat—one rooted in science. Meatless proponents often refer to a 2009 study by researchers at the University of Chicago that suggests the vegan diet is a more effective way of curbing climate change than driving a hybrid car. Or, for that matter, a 2008 Carnegie Mellon report that suggests that eschewing meat beats eating local. And they’re quick to draw comparisons with more conventional ways of cutting greenhouse gas emissions—things like public transit or switching off the lights. One oft repeated number is Carnegie Mellon researcher Christopher Weber’s calculation that forgoing red meat for veggies just a day a week would save 1,860 km of driving a year (assuming the car did 10.6 km per litre of gas).
    The numbers are compelling. According to one exhaustive report, “Livestock’s long shadow,” released in 2006 by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, livestock accounts for 18 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gases, more than those emitted by all forms of transportation combined, and is a leading cause of deforestation and water pollution. Other estimates put the percentage of greenhouse gases leaked into the atmosphere during the raising of animals for food even higher. Last October, Robert Goodland, formerly the World Bank’s lead environmental adviser, and Jeff Anhang, a World Bank researcher, attributed a staggering 51 per cent of world emissions to livestock production.
    It’s not just CO2 that’s at issue. Thanks to our appetite for bacon, vast lakes of manure dot the North American heartland, steaming nitrous oxide into the air, while the antibiotics fed to our sick, grain-fed cattle ooze into our waterways. Such vistas have led to plaintive requests like that of Rajendra Pachauri, the now-embattled head of the UN’s panel on climate change: “Please eat less meat.” Pachauri’s Nobel Prize-winning group has come under fire for a series of errors in its widely read 2007 report—including the faulty claim that the Himalayan glaciers would melt by 2035—but its meatless message continues to strike a chord.
    Indeed, the environmental concerns surrounding meat have helped make it the new nexus for a host of increasingly popular social concerns—food, culture, politics and the environment. The idea of channelling meat’s deepening carbon footprint into potent political rhetoric came to Tobias Leenaert, a long-time animal rights activist in Ghent, a few years ago. As a member of the Ethical Vegetarian Alternative, he had helped launch a pro-vegetarian campaign in 2000 that met with limited success. Then, in 2007, his group started looking for a campaign message with “a bigger scope, an idea that was more approachable”—in other words, a collective face more agreeable than that of the dogmatic vegan preaching against the suffering of animals or the perils of saturated fat.
    The group hit upon the flourishing environmental movement and growing fears about climate change as a nifty marketing gambit. The new message made it “easier to get a lot of partners involved,” says Leenaert. “We wouldn’t have been able to get the city’s support if we just had a go-vegetarian message.” Now he hopes to convince even more of his neighbours by making the eating of animal flesh as embarrassing as owning a Hummer. “Just as driving an SUV to the bakery around the corner is sort of shameful,” he says. “We need the same thing with meat.”
    When McCartney launched his Meat Free Monday campaign last June, it was “Livestock’s long shadow,” the UN report, that he referred to, saying: “We thought cars were the villain of the piece, but it appears livestock produces more.” Trust a pop-song virtuoso to boil an issue down to its snappy essence—“Less meat equals less heat” is as easy on the ears as beep beep’m beep beep yeah, yet it has broad backing from climate change scientists, who argue that meat, apart from presenting such risks as heart disease, obesity and E. coli, is a wasteful luxury. “It’s just a matter of feed conversion efficiencies—we’re going to feed 10 times as much grain to cattle to get a kilogram of meat compared to if we just ate that grain ourselves,” says Nathan Pelletier, an ecological economist at Dalhousie University and a leading expert in the environmental impacts of food. “It’s the basic math of animal physiology.”
    Then there are the emissions stemming from the methane burps of cattle and other ruminants, and the fertilizer laid out over fields of feed, not to mention the clear-cutting wrought by the demand for pasture. Estimates of the greenhouse gases associated with different meat products vary, but beef is undoubtedly king—between 13 and 30 kg of CO2 equivalent per kg of beef, says Pelletier. That’s followed by pork, with estimates ranging from 2.3 to 6.5 kg of CO2, then chicken, which ranges from 1.5 to three kilograms, roughly the same as the emissions associated with some food crops. The environmental impacts of fish are more complex and vary enormously according to species; one University of Chicago study even suggests that fish and red meat are almost equally energy inefficient.
    Though some argue that entirely grass-fed organic cattle—animals not fattened up with grain or corn on massive feedlots—generate less greenhouse gases because no energy is expended in producing synthetic fertilizer and growing feed, there’s no clear consensus. On the one hand, cattle tend to be raised on grasslands ill-suited to food crops and, in their foraging, actually help pasture lands sequester carbon. On the other, they have a tough time extracting all the goodness available to them from hard-to-digest grass—hence their four stomachs—and on that diet generate even more methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than CO2.
    Questions around the sustainability of meat are particularly pressing given the global rise in meat consumption in recent years. Consumption around the world has quintupled in the past 50 years and is set to double by 2050, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Sixty years ago, producers generated around 18 kg of meat per person; by 1994, production had jumped to a staggering 35.4 kg per person. In 2008, the most recent Statistics Canada numbers available, Canadians ate just over 100 kg of red meat, fish and chicken per person, more than a quarter of a kilo a day.
    Trends in developing nations like India and China, where ballooning middle classes are boosting appetites for animal protein, suggest things will only get worse. Demand in China doubled between 1990 and 2005 and continues to rise with galloping intensity. As that demand grows, so do the ominous forecasts. “If you look at the impact on the planet of today’s levels of meat consumption, it becomes absolutely clear—there’s no way that we can continue to eat meat at the rate we do or that developing nations are going to be able to satisfy their growing demand,” says David Boyd, author, along with David Suzuki, of David Suzuki’s Green Guide.
    These realities are creeping into policy discussions around the world. A tax on meat that would reflect its carbon output has been discussed in the Swedish parliament, and by the influential British economist Lord Stern. Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer, writing in New York’s Daily News in October, proposed a 50 per cent tax on meat and compared it to tobacco, going so far as to argue that “the reasons for a tax on beef and other meats are stronger than those for discouraging consumption of cigarettes, trans fats or sugary drinks” because of meat’s triple whammy impacts on health, the environment and animal welfare. Last year in the U.K., farmers feared Environment Secretary Hilary Benn—a vegetarian known derisively in the British press as Veggie Benn—would produce a policy document encouraging British families to drop red meat from their diets. (Instead, Benn said only that British consumers should choose less environmentally impactful foods, and encouraged food brands to participate in a voluntary “green” labelling program.)
    Not surprisingly, the war on meat has roused the attentions of a red-blooded conservative establishment, particularly in the U.S. Fox News pundit Glenn Beck has dismissed Meatless Mondays as “indoctrination.” Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, warns it is “a real political storm in the making.” Just as many, both in the U.S. and at home, are skeptical of the new anti-meat rationale. “There’s no question that with individuals like Paul McCartney, that is a primary driver for them—an animal rights agenda, not necessarily an environmental agenda,” says Ron Glaser of the Beef Information Centre, a Calgary-based industry group.
    The North American meat lobby, too, has been fighting back. Things came to a head last April in the United States, when the Environmental Protection Agency moved to declare that the climate change properties of greenhouse gases endanger public health. The effort prompted the U.S. National Cattlemen’s Beef Association to file a court challenge arguing that future climate regulations would hurt beef farmers. For environmentalists, the cattlemen’s gambit was a clear pre-emptive strike against what the EPA finding would mean for them. “They know full well that that’s just setting the stage for carbon taxes,” says Pelletier. “Everyone sees it coming—the smart companies are those that are acting early to get a handle on emissions in their supply chains.” Even Wal-Mart has committed to slapping sustainability index labels on everything is sells, meat included.
    The livestock industry is certainly large and powerful enough to counter that message. On its recently launched website, MeatFuelsAmerica.com, the American Meat Institute claims the industry contributes US$832 billion to the U.S. economy, almost six per cent of that country’s GDP. It also estimates that the meat and poultry products industry employs some 1.8 million workers, plus another 2.6 million on the supplier side.
    As it is, the industry has been battling its share of problems. The Canadian beef industry, worth $20.3 billion, according to the Canadian Meat Council, has been battered by bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and last year’s listeriosis outbreak. Producers so far haven’t taken steps to counter anti-meat crusaders’ claims, largely because the movement is not as well developed here as it is in Europe. But as the campaigns grow, the industry is left to wonder—how far can all this go? “We have nowhere near the resources of a Paul McCartney,” says Canadian Cattlemen’s Association environment chair Lynn Grant. “We don’t have the following that his entertainment business has generated, we aren’t able to fight on the same kind of battlefield.”
    Meanwhile, the anti-meat crusade continues to grow. Meatless Monday, which started out as a rather ho-hum public-health initiative rolled out in association with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 2003, went viral after shifting focus to “the health of the planet.” Soon it spawned a weekly column in the Huffington Post, a weekly segment on Air America radio and reams of press. When Baltimore last year mandated the program in its schools and brought in items like homemade eggplant dip and whole-grain pizza, the move made Antony Geraci, head of the Food and Nutrition Services Department for Baltimore City Public Schools, an international culinary icon, with profiles in foodie bibles like the now-defunct Gourmet magazine.
    Political activists have succeeded in giving the issue a sheen of cool, and young people, a demographic prone to such fashions, are therefore in the vanguard of meatlessness. A study by Aramark Limited, a massive food supplier that services schools, businesses and hospitals, found that a quarter of university students now demand vegetarian and vegan options. “There’s definitely a revolution happening in food services,” says Tina Horsley, Aramark Canada’s director of wellness and sustainability, a position the company created just a few years ago. McMaster University (the most vegetarian-friendly university in Canada, according to PETA), has a separate dining facility where meat is strictly prohibited and where students down 200 litres of vegetarian chili each week.
    Likewise, when students at Branksome Hall, a Toronto private school for girls, championed the Meatless Monday campaign, the new menu put it on PETA’s “Top five most vegetarian-friendly high schools in Canada.” The veggie fare served there is a far cry from soggy french fries: baked mushroom caps with bruschetta and cheese, edamame and homemade hummus are a few favourites.
    If those dishes sound a tad highfalutin, that’s in keeping with the anti-meat movement’s affinity with the chattering classes—it’s the well-to-do who are most likely to turn against the most expensive food out there: animal flesh. Indeed, moderate meat-eating has escaped the fringes of granola activism to become a place where even gourmands can feel at home. “Food politics used to be sharply differentiated from an interest in ‘fine food,’ ” notes University of Toronto sociologist Josée Johnston, who studies food and “foodie” culture. “A lot of social movements are now realizing that by tying themselves to consumer politics they can get more traction.”
    In Paris, the food elite was shocked when Alain Passard, whose restaurant l’Arpège boasts three Michelin stars, scrapped meat from the menu to create a vegetarian oasis. In between waxing poetic about “the freedom of inventing a new universe” of vegetable delights, Passard has argued for the need to “replant the earth.” “The people who are into foodie culture now use the environmental credentials of their food as a source of status,” says Johnston. “That puts low-income shoppers, or even middle-income shoppers, in a difficult position, because they don’t have the economic or cultural capital necessary to participate in high-status eating.”
    Such a display of conspicuous conservation apparently needs its own nomenclature. Hence the adoption of labels like “flexitarian,” voted the year’s most useful word in 2003 by the American Dialect Society, which defined it as “a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat.” Dawn Jackson Blatner, a Chicago dietician, first heard the term then. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m finally something. I’m not just a lazy vegetarian. And I don’t have to feel like I’m secretly eating pork chops in a closet.’ ” Since then, Blatner’s 2009 book, The Flexitarian Diet, has earned her celebrity status. She has toured the offices of the “People magazines of the world” as an ambassador of “this minimizing meat movement.”
    Cookbook authors Tara Mataraza Desmond and Joy Manning, a reformed vegan—she realized she missed eggs and bacon too much—grabbed attention with Almost Meatless, which offers such not-quite-vegetarian recipes as cod cakes cut with corn. Mark Bitt man, a New York Times food writer, is another foodie who has scaled back on meat but hasn’t given it up. Bittman found fame with his cookbook, How to Cook Everything. He has since changed his mind, publishing How to Cook Everything Vegetarian; Bittman himself is vegan until every night at 6 p.m., when he permits his appetite anything it wants.
    As with any sort of privation, cutting down on consumption has elevated meat’s status. A more discerning attitude may be transforming the way we consume meat, with the emphasis on quality and connoisseurship rather than quantity and endless choice. Such a reappraisal of animal protein as a complement to the meal rather than its focus has for some turned its role into something more akin to that of wine at dinner. Important, sure, but better savoured than swilled.
    That brand of “mindful” meat-eating has made butchers into culinary stars and charcuterie into the new sushi. “What’s emerged alongside flexitarianism is an interest in butchery and nose-to-tail eating,” says Johnston. At his London restaurant, the St. John Bar & Restaurant, Fergus Henderson serves dishes that include generous heapings of offal. Gordon Ramsay, the celebrity chef famous from TV’s Hell’s Kitchen, has raised his own livestock on his most recent show, The F-Word, slaughtering pigs and turkey for service on the series finales. In Toronto, the model has been taken up by the Black Hoof. “If you’re going to kill the animal, you might as well have enough respect for it to use every part,” says co-owner Jen Agg. Specializing in homemade charcuterie, a rarity in the city, the Hoof keeps its own hogs. “I’m looking forward to the challenge of raising our own pigs and looking them in the eye and understanding that the walk from farm to table is an ugly walk for the pig,” Agg says. That kind of visceral awareness, too, will tend to promote meat moderation—if not exactly the kind Sir Paul is after, then something not far off.

  • In the footsteps of the Bronze Men

    Al Ahram Weekly (Nevine El-Aref)

    The first mention in history of Caria and its inhabitants was in the cuneiform texts of the Old Assyrian and Hittite Empires, who called the area Karkissa. History forgot about it for almost four centuries until the second citation by the legendary Greek poet Homer in his catalogue of ships.

    The Carian language belonged to the Hittite- Luwian subfamily of Indo-European languages, and was related to Lycian and Lydian. Those who lived in the west of the country spoke a language closer to Greek.

    According to Herodotus the inhabitants of Miletus spoke Greek with a Carian accent, which implies that during the dark ages, between about 1200 and 800 BC, the Greeks settled on the coast of Caria. Herodotus himself was a good example of the close ties between the Carians and Greeks: his father is called Lyxes, which is the Greek rendition of a good Carian name, Lukhsu.

    Because of the hard and poor nature of Caria’s land, Carians, like many other mountain people at the time, hired themselves out as mercenaries and military specialists. According to Herodotus, the Greeks were indebted to the Carians for three military inventions: making shields with handles; putting devices on shields; and fitting crests on helmets. Because of this last invention, the Persians called the Carians “cocks”.

    What, however, was the relationship between the Carians and the Egyptians? And how did they help Egypt?

    Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

  • The New American Farmer





    This article is somewhat promotional but it does make a very important and unwelcome point.  Urbanization has ended the internal self sufficiency of the rural population.  This began with my generation and the emergence of industrialized farming.  It has culminated today with the retirement of this same generation.
    Driving it has been the economic ease of urban living as opposed to rural lifestyles.
    This article tries to argue that smaller urban based agrosystems will solve this difficulty.  It can help but as a solution it is completely inadequate.  The first flaw is simple lack of experienced manpower.  That experience is gained as a youth assisting the operations of a working farm.
    I have posted on an alternate protocol that can solve this problem.  That is to transition the urban life way onto the farm in the form of farm anchored condominium blocks whose foot print is small enough to have a near zero agricultural impact, yet creating a natural village of a couple of hundred.  The point is to integrate every individuals life into the fabric of the land itself in the same way as our ancestors. 
    The Chinese are doing this though not by plan but accident of history.  The one child policy means that a son is likely to inherit the land of two families in the same village or its equivalent and have the expectation of retiring there.  Needless to say, that son has a strong motive to invest in the land.
    My postings have shown that a bit of planning can optimize this approach and produce a cadre of experienced agriculturalists to support these farms.
    The New American Farmer
    Who will feed the world in the future? Urbanites, according to AeroFarms’ Ed Hardwood.
    ED HARWOOD 04 06 10
    http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/the-new-american-farmer
    America‘s farmers are aging. Averaging just under 60 years old, half of all current farmers are expected to retire over the next decade. And, despite scattered efforts to raise a new crop of agriculturalists, it is not at all clear who will fill the void these retiring farmers will leave behind.
    Here’s the thing: younger people are simply not interested in stepping into farmer John’s work boots.  The traditional farming lifestyle — which is perceived as rural and isolated — holds little attraction for them. Today’s educated young people are searching for dynamic, exciting careers and the stimuli of contemporary urban life.
    On another level, agriculture’s idyllic, back-to-nature image has taken a hit in recent years. With controversial issues from GMOs to biofuels grabbing the headlines, farmers are no longer seen as the ultimate environmentalists. And with enormous agribusiness conglomerates dominating the industry, family farmers have increasingly been pushed aside.
    Largely due to Big Agriculture, food safety and environmental issues have refused to go away. Meanwhile, soils are being depleted at an alarming rate, leading to heavy reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides. And with food often traveling thousands of miles just to reach our plates, agriculture is also a heavy contributor to global warming.
    Then, of course, there is the economics. The younger generation is not exactly eager to eke out a laborious existence on the land, without being guaranteed at least a decent living.
    All of this raises the question: who will feed America as its aging farmers begin to retire?
    I believe that the yawning gap between the generations presents us with an excellent opportunity to revitalize American agriculture, while vastly upgrading the image of the American farmer. We can do this by growing our food in the places where the vast majority of us live — in cities.
    New technologies and techniques are revolutionizing the way we grow our food, creating a new form of agriculture that is not only attractive and sustainable, but also profitable. This new agriculture provides income year round, demands little water and zero pesticides and can be practiced anywhere in the world.
    Technologies that meet these requirements already exist. Rooftop gardens are an example of an old idea that has been rediscovered by modern green architecture. Taken a step further, vertical gardens, grown in hi-rise structures, have been suggested as a means to reduce the footprint of an industry that currently occupies an area the size of South America (and is continuously expanding).
    Aquaponics is a technique for producing fresh, organic fish and vegetables year-round, anywhere in the world. A combination of aquaculture and hydroponics, aquaponics allows farmers to grow fish and plant crops together in a single integrated, soil-less system. In these systems, fish waste fertilizes plants, while plants naturally filter water for fish.
    Aeroponic farming, which uses mist to grow plants without soil, is another new technique. Grown indoors with LED lighting and without pesticides, aeroponic produce requires less than 10% of the water consumed by conventional agriculture. And because aeroponic farms are located in urban areas, transportation costs and carbon emissions are vastly reduced, as well.
    Seen in this light, agriculture can become the solution to persistent urban problems. In every city in America, holes in the urban fabric contribute to the disintegration of communities. And while the world increasingly urbanizes, many mid-sized American cities are actually shrinking, with blight and crime filling in the gaps.
    In cities like Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland, urban agriculture has the potential to provide enterprising young people with a solid income, while strengthening communities and producing nutritious, affordable food. In larger cities, where space is at a premium, rooftops and spaces in hi-rise buildings could provide the “farmland.”
    Around the country, many people have already begun to realize the potential of urban farming. In New York, edible landscapes are appearing on green roofs, while in San Francisco, mulch is replacing highway exit ramps.
    Will Allen, an urban farmer who produces a quarter of a million dollars worth of food on two acres in Milwaukee, won a “genius award” from the MacArthur Foundation in 2008 for his efforts.
    Even the First Couple have become advocates of urban agriculture, with Michelle Obama building an organic garden on the White House lawn and the President touting urban agriculture as a means to revitalize cities.
    Let’s face it — in an age of heightened environmental awareness, our society can no longer afford the environmental side effects of conventional farming, symbolized by the infamous 3,000-mile Caesar salad.
    Gone are the days when farming must consume vast amounts of land, transporting goods over long distances, drying up rivers, and making meager profits. Instead of the old flannel-clad curmudgeon, tomorrow’s farmers will be young, enterprising entrepreneurs. Instead of living in the middle of nowhere, they will live in the center of town, growing produce that is healthy, tasty and sustainable.
    Farmer John would be proud.
    Dr. Ed Harwood is founder and CEO of AeroFarms, which builds aeroponic systems for urban agriculture.

  • Obama’s Israel Policy



    I have one thing in common with the State of Israel.  We were born in the same year.  More correctly though, Israel was born in the death camps of Europe half a decade earlier.  Otherwise few European Jews would have torn up their deep roots and migrated in support of an incredibly daunting effort to make real the promise of the return to Israel.
    Over the past sixty years, Israel has had the benefit of a steady in migration from groups of Jews everywhere but particularly from the remnants of the old soviet bloc and it now boasts a healthy population of 7.5 million and the next twenty years will see it rise to over 10 million.
    That means that its war making capacity approaches one million under arms with full modern industrial capability supporting it.  It faces no creditable state enemy and for that exact reason, its neighbors have chosen to settle and get on with their internal affairs.  The only apparent hold out has been Syria, but that has been about having a settlement opportunity.
    The conflict today is strictly between Israel and a viciously factionalized Palestinian polity.
    This article asks the question of just what does Obama think he is doing by sticking his hand into this party.  We have had a series of actions that amount to beating up on their ally in the press.  This could have been done if done at all behind closed doors.  In fact it is almost as if a group of sophomores have been led into a large room full of arrays of breaker switches and been told that these turn things on or of and to go ahead and play.
    It is easy to push the Israeli leadership and perhaps generate some plausible response.  So they went ahead and pushed.  Hillary has been doing this in other arenas besides.  It will swiftly become unconvincing and irritating.
    What is egregious about the process is that we obviously have no leverage whatsoever with the bulk of the Palestinian polity.  The two state solution was possible when we had a pretend coalition prepared to usher in the Palestinian state.  Today we have the Hamas state of Palestine, the Hezbollah state of Palestine and lest we forget the Fatah State of Palestine.  We are barely talking to the latter.
    The most trivial review of the Palestinian history reveals a deeply internalized genocidal impulse nurtured by ideology and education not unlike that of the Nazis.  Until this disease is stripped out of the society, it appears that no accommodation is possible.
    It is impossible to have a two state solution when one side will immediately reconfigure overnight into a fascist war machine.
    We also go on pretending Hamas and Hezbollah claims of military success have any credence whatsoever.  When Rome marched into a city and largely burned it to the ground and then marched out sparing the locals their lives and an opportunity to spend vast sums on reconstruction, they did not call it a defeat.  These last two events were punitive raids whose aim was to locate centers of resistance to destroy and to cause as much material damage as possible.
    The hurry up solution is to massively intervene and operate de-islamification programs and to suppress all militarism.  We are not there yet.  We can accept the status quo and make sure that all Palestine gets a broad exposure through television and the internet to alternative Islamic visions.  Over time this may undermine the hatreds.
    In the meantime, a two state solution is now too little too late.
    Obama’s Two-State Delusion
    Posted by Moshe Dann on Apr 2nd, 2010 and filed under FrontPage.
    http://frontpagemag.com/2010/04/02/obama’s-two-state-delusion/
    Let there be no mistake: President Obama’s attack on Israel’s right to govern in eastern Jerusalem has nothing to do with American national interests, and nothing to do with a “peace process.” Other American leaders may have disagreed with Israeli policy, but none of them made it a casus belli.
    No other prominent politician sought to impose the “two-state solution,” based on 60-year-old cease-fire lines with Jordan, instead of a negotiated agreement. Obama’s move leaps beyond all previous “accords,” plans and “road maps.” Never before has the United States sought to dictate the terms of Israeli surrender, thereby undermining its only reliable ally in the region.
    Obama’s obsession with the establishment of a second Arab Palestinian state might be understandable if it were based on a realistic appraisal of conditions as they are, instead of what they might be. The warning signals are there.      
    Two dramatic shifts have made the “two-state solution” irrelevant: the stand-off victory of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the hegemony of Hamas in Gaza and many areas of the West Bank, nominally under the Palestinian Authority, controlled by Fatah. One has to be ignorant, and/or blind not to appreciate what these situations mean – especially given the threats from Iran.
    The developments have led to the widespread recognition, especially among Israelis, that the so-called “Oslo process” (“land for peace”) has failed, that Israel has no “peace partner,” and, therefore, that a second Arab Palestinian state is no longer relevant.
    Today, unilateral withdrawal from Yehuda and Shomron (“the West Bank”) and the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state is a “clear and present danger,” not only to Israel, but to the entire region.
    Refusing to consider any alternatives to the “two-state” model, however, the United States and EU countries focus on an “end to the conflict,” without necessary pre-requisites.
    During the last 40 years, Israeli leaders conveyed the message that “the Palestinian problem” is ours and we can fix it. This was the motivation behind various proposals: Labor’s offers to exchange “land for peace,” Likud’s autonomy plan, confederation with Jordan, the First Lebanese War against the PLO, Rabin’s recognition of the PLO and the establishment of a Palestinian state, Barak’s offers at Camp David, Sharon’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and Northern Shomron, and the current government’s failures in Lebanon and Gaza.
    All of these policies failed because they were not reality-based, but clung to a desperate Israeli desire for an end to the conflict. Each time Israel paid the price and made concessions, however, the price rose, and the conflict continued.
    The “two-state” proposal based on Israel’s 1949 borders is also doomed to fail for several reasons:
    (1) Palestinians’ opposition to any solution; their refusal to recognize authentic Jewish rights and claims and their refusal to accept Israel’s existence.
    (2) A negotiating process confounded by terrorism. Israel demands an end to terrorism before making broader concessions; the Palestinians demand concessions first and reducing terrorism later – perhaps, if that is at all possible or their plan (which all evidence suggests it isn’t).
    (3) Political/demographic reality is that Israel cannot return to the 1949 Armistice lines.
    (4) UNRWA continues to support the “Palestinian right-of-return;” it is part of the problem, not a solution.
    (5) Even if all of the above could be resolved, a stable Palestinian state is unlikely.
    Rather than abandon vital national interests, the only practical and rational policy for America, the region, and Israel, is one based on security and reality: Islamic terrorism, Jihad, is and will be a persistent threat. That should be Pres. Obama’s main concern.
    In comparison, issues such as definitions of Israel’s borders and demographic predictions are irrelevant. “Political horizons” can only have meaning when there is a stable government that is accountable and responsible. Otherwise, such proposals are recipes for disaster.
    At the least, the Obama administration must present not only a realistic, coherent policy, but an explanation of how and why it will work. Slamming Israel is not a substitute for reason.

  • Trivia – The Last Pharaoh

    The Huffington Post (Aladdin Elaasar)

    I suppose it depends on how you define “pharaoh” but whichever way you cut it Taharqa doesn’t seem to come out as the last of the pharaohs!

    Will Smith is a natural for the role of Taharqa the Nubian king. Little has been explored about Africa’s Nubia and its kings who played a role thousands of years ago in ruling Egypt. They’re almost forgotten now, especially after Nasser’s government in Egypt relocated them from their villages after building the Aswan Dam. Their unique language and culture is feared to be extinct.

    Will Smith’s upcoming movie sheds light on that long forgotten history. Usually Hollywood tackles other pages of Egyptian history already known to people, such as The Ten Commandments, and Cleopatra by Liz Taylor. Cleopatra, the Greek queen, was reduced by Hollywood to a mere vixen who seduced Roman leaders Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.

    Hollywood movies sometimes present untrue fictitious characters of archetypal villains with sinister heavy accents drabbed in ancient Egyptian costumes. The Last Pharaoh is an exception. Will Smith deserves a great deal of credit for tackling that long forgotten history.

    Egyptology News Blog, Andie Byrnes

  • Con: Earth is never in equilibrium by Richard S. Lindzen, Gazettextra.com

    Article Tags: Headline Story, Richard Lindzen

    CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — EDITOR’S NOTE: The writer is addressing the question, Is climate change real?

    To a significant extent, the issue of climate change revolves around the elevation of the commonplace to the ancient level of ominous omen. In a world where climate change has always been the norm, climate change is now taken as punishment for sinful levels of consumption. In a world where we experience temperature changes of tens of degrees in a single day, we treat changes of a few tenths of a degree in some statistical residue, known as the global mean temperature anomaly (GATA), as portents of disaster.

    Earth has had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a 100,000-year cycle for the last 700,000 years, and there have been previous interglacials that appear to have been warmer than the present despite lower carbon-dioxide levels. More recently, we have had the medieval warm period and the little ice age. During the latter, alpine glaciers advanced to the chagrin of overrun villages. Since the beginning of the 19th century, these glaciers have been retreating. Frankly, we don’t fully understand either the advance or the retreat, and, indeed, some alpine glaciers are advancing again.

    For small changes in GATA, there is no need for any external cause. Earth is never exactly in equilibrium. The motions of the massive oceans where heat is moved between deep layers and the surface provides variability on time scales from years to centuries. Examples include El Nino, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation, etc. Recent work suggests that this variability is enough to account for all change in the globally averaged temperature anomaly since the 19th century. To be sure, man’s emissions of carbon dioxide must have some impact. The question of importance, however, is how much.

    Source: gazettextra.com

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