The Controversy Over Horses And The Drug Premerin

Modern medicine can be a great thing. The treatments that the Pharmaceutical industry comes up with no doubt help millions of people to feel better and cope with their ailments. If they can afford to buy the drugs at least anyway. The way some drugs are made can be called peculiar to say the least and is in fact cruel to animal life. Take a drug called Premerin for example. Premerin is a hormone therapy drug that is used to treat post menopausal women to reduce the severity of hot flashes. It is estimated that there are about 55 million women in the U.S. who suffer with this condition. It is also prescribed to prevent or lessen the effects of osteoporosis which is the weakening or thinning of a woman's bones as she ages. The drug is made out of horse urine. That is in fact where the name of the drug comes from. Premerin is short for Pregnant Mares Urine. There are even Premerin farms in which the horses that are located there are used specifically for the purpose of making this drug. The company that manufactures the drug is called Wyeth and it rakes in billions a year marketing it. The problems with the drug are that Premerin can increase the likelihood of heart attacks, stroke, blood clots, and breast cancer. That's what it can do to humans. What it does to horses is after the period of collecting the urine ends (it usually lasts until 6 months after a mare gives birth) the horses are sent to the slaughter house because they cannot be easily or quickly re-impregnated. The foals that they give birth to are quickly fattened up and then sent to slaughter. There are some now who question the need for the continuing existence of Premerin farms and the use of horses in any way to make the drug in light of the fact that there exist many F.D.A. approved synthetic alternatives to Premerin that do not involve the use of any animals in order to manufacture such as Estradiol and Cenestin.

First Solar Powered Plane Takes Off

There might be some hope yet for this planet if we can figure out a way to fly around without burning tons of jet fuel and there is a man in Switzerland working on the problem. Bertrand Piccard and his solar powered plane called the "Solar Impulse" took off for its first flight on December 3rd, 2009. Almost 106 years to the day of The Wright Brothers initial flight at Kitty Hawk Piccard Started up the four battery powered engines on his plane and sped down the runway and actually managed to achieve flight. It lasted for less than 30 seconds and did not rise higher off the ground than one meter but before you start laughing and dismiss it just remember that the Wright Brothers first flight lasted about half as long as that and didn't even travel the wingspan of a modern 747 jet plane. There are plans for more ambitious flights in the future. Piccard is setting his sights on making a 36 hour day night flight for next summer.

How Phone Companies Rake In Profits With Texting

Be careful how much talking you do in this free country because you might talk yourself out of house and home if you prefer to do most of your talking on a cell instead of face to face. If you have a cell phone and can use it to send text messages and you are on a per-text plan with your phone company you may already have some idea of this, especially if you have got teens in the house. The profits that the phone companies make are huge. On some plans they can charge about 20 cents per text to either send or receive a message. The actual cost to them to send a text is less than half a penny. The reason its so cheap to the phone company is because the amount of information that is being transmitted is very small. To give you an example to compare it to a 1 minute phone call on a cell phone uses up the same amount of a network as 600 text messages. All the major carriers all do the same thing at the same time it seems including raising prices. When one company raises its prices the rest usually follow suit within weeks or months of each other. This has been referred to as lock step price increasing. Phone companies now charge about 4 times what they did less than 4 years ago. Unlimited plans are without a doubt the best way to go but you are going to take a beating on those as well considering how little it costs the phone company to provide you with the service.

Training The Afghan Army Will Be All Up Hill For U.S.

If you are one of those people who believes President Obama when he says that the U.S. is going to get out of Afghanistan in a year and a half you must have to do some serious wishful thinking in order to get yourself there. Consider the fact that the whole plan for an early withdrawal depends on how quickly the U.S. can raise and train the new Afghan Army. The latest plan is to increase the number from the current level of about 95,000 to about 400,000 in little more than a year. Consider some of the problems however. The U.S. is attempting to attract new recruits by raising the pay of the average Afghan soldier to about $250 a month. Even with the increase that is about $50 less a month than the average Taliban fighter gets. Out of the current Afghan force only 1 out of every 9 members is capable of reading or writing. They are basically a force of illiterate soldiers and the new recruits that are being attracted are no better. A little less than 20% test positive for drugs. The training that these new recruits are getting now is being cut from 10 weeks to 8 weeks in order to accommodate the time line for leaving in 18 months by trying to train as many soldiers as possible as quickly as possible. There are also problems with retention. Usually these newly trained soldiers return to their villages after one year and never return back to the force. The drop out rate is about 20%. There is also a big problem with corruption in Afghanistan. Many Afghan soldiers and police are often accused of demanding bribes from villagers. It is also estimated that of the current 95,000 that make up the Afghan force that about 25% of those don't really exist. Local Afghan commanders often make up names of soldiers and place them on paper to be counted in order to meet recruitment goals for which they collect additional fees and salaries. President Hamid Karzai has said himself that it is going to cost about 10 Billion dollars a year to keep and maintain this Afghan force at this size for about 20 years. Due to the fact that the Afghan government has no money the bill is going to have to be footed by the United States. With all this it seems pretty hopeful to believe that the U.S. can extricate itself from Afghanistan in a mere 18 months.

Why The Yankees Won't Repeat As World Champions in 2010

If you are a Yankee fan like I am you should savor the victory of a championship season as long as possible because it will likely not happen again next year. If you know anything about baseball you know that championships are won in the General managers office. The moves that a teams GM makes in the off season are the moves that count above all in determining who the champion will be the following season. I offer as the latest example of this the three great acquisitions that the Yankees made last off season when they spent the better part of a half billion dollars to acquire First baseman Mark Texiera, and pitchers C.C. Sabathia and A.J. Burnett who all proved to be pivotal to their championship season. This off season the Yankees are getting out maneuvered in every direction. The first big blow that I heard about to the Yankees chances of a repeat was when the Boston Red Sox acquired pitcher John Lacky from the L.A. Angels. If there is one thing that is true about Lacky it is that he owns the Yankees. He has almost never had any kind of trouble shutting them down when he pitches against them. If you team him up with another Yankees killer named Josh Beckett, who is currently the ace of the Red Sox staff, what you got in my opinion is a One -Two pitching punch that the Yankees are not going to know how to deal with either in the regular season or the post season next year.
That isn't even the worst of it either. The Philadelphia Phillies have acquired probably the biggest Yankee killer out there right now in Pitcher Roy "Doc" Halladay. Not only does Halladay own the Yankees now but he has owned them his entire career. If by some miracle the Yankees could get past the pitching combo of Beckett and Lacky from the red Sox and move into a World Series where they end up having to face the Phillies I can't really see what they would be able to do in a situation where they would have to face Halladay probably three times in a seven game series. All I can say is as a Yankee fan that I am going to enjoy the moment as long as I can because I really can't see how they repeat next year if they have to deal with either of these teams in their new configurations. All the Yankees have to counter with is Sabathia, who is a quality ace, A.J. Burnett, who is good but shaky especially in big situations, Pettitte who is still good but at the end of his career, and then Joba Chamberlain who has proved nothing as a starting pitcher. Both The Red Sox And the Phillies effectively dealt with and corrected the weaknesses that they had in dealing with the Yankees last year. Now both teams look like they are ready to knock the Yanks out of the box.

Predator Drones Hacked By Insurgents In Iraq and Afghanistan

If you have ever wondered why The U.S. despite the fact that it has spent hundreds of billions of dollars to prosecute both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan still has not really got that much to show for it in terms of progress in either "theater" this next story might help shed some light on it. The insurgents in both countries have figured out a way to hack into the Predator Drones computer systems in order to evade their attacks and also monitor some U.S. military operations. The Predator is basically an unmanned slow flying attack plane. It is computer driven and it searches for and bombs selected locations using G.P.S. satellite systems to fix in on its targets. They usually cost about 4.5 million a copy and the newest generation will cost over 10 million each. The insurgents in both Iraq and Afghanistan have figured out that they can tap into the predators on board computer systems by using an inexpensive software program called Skygrabber which anyone can buy off the shelf for about $25. It takes advantage of an unprotected communications link that sends out video feeds that were not encrypted. It can keep the insurgents one step ahead of the "surprise attacks" and help them evade them or minimize their effects. The predator is considered the future of Air warfare but it has had problems and this latest one is not even the least of it. The biggest problem it has as a system is that it keeps crashing. It has been reported that over 1/3 of the predator drones that have been deployed have been lost due to system malfunctions which have led to crashes.

The Real Unemployment Rate

So exactly how many people are unemployed these days in the United states? Well if you go by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (B.L.S.) they are currently putting the number officially at 10.2%. There is a little catch about this though. The catch has to do with the way they count people as "officially unemployed." For example if you are not currently looking for a job because you are totally discouraged by the current state of the job market then you are not counted as "officially unemployed" because you are technically not looking. The B.L.S. calls this not being "officially in the labor market." Another kind of accounting trick that it uses is to count under employed individuals as employed. For example, if you lost your full time job due to an industry down sizing and the only thing you could find in the meantime is part time work say working in a Home Depot a few hours a week the B.L.S. counts you as "Officially Employed" even though you would not be making enough money to live on. They only count people that they consider are "actively looking." If you do not currently have a job and you looked in a classified section this week for a job then you are considered "officially unemployed" because you have looked for a job but have not found one. If you take away all the accounting tricks so to speak and count all the people in the country who are really unemployed then the unemployment rate would not look like the 10.2% that the B.L.S. puts it at currently but more like 17.5% which is almost 1 in 5 people in the whole country. Oh by the way, 1 in 5 people was about the same rate of unemployment during the Great Depression. It was roughly about 75-80% employed and 20-25% unemployed at that time give or take.

Holiday Suicide Rate Increases Are Largely A Myth

It has been believed by a large portion of the population for a long time. That the onset of the holiday season also brings with it an increase in the number of suicides that occur in the general population. That people's feelings of loneliness and despair are exacerbated by the holiday cheer and this leads to greater levels of depression. This was actually studied as a phenomenon decades ago and it was found to be largely untrue. That if anything the holiday season actually served to dampen down the number of suicides and serves to lower the numbers from their more normal levels. The study was undertaken by The National Center for Health in the 1970's and what it discovered was that on a typical day there were 34 suicides reported for every 1 million people in the U.S. population. For the holiday of Thanksgiving that number dropped to 26 suicides per 1 million. For Christmas it was at 30 per 1 million. It did however record an increase for New Year's Day. For that holiday the number would rise to 41 per 1 million. Researchers attributed this to the fact that New Year's day signified the end of the holiday season and that would bring on depressed feelings among some in the general population and lead to that kind of a spike. New Year's day aside however the rest of the holiday season actually does serve to bring on feelings of hope and optimism and good cheer and does help a good many people to perk up and chase away the blues at least for as long as the holiday season goes on.

First Decade Of The Century The Warmest Ever Recorded

Is it getting warmer in here or is it just me? Well according to the United Nation's weather Agency the first decade of this century is going to go down as the warmest ever since records began being kept starting in 1850. They also state that by the end of the century we are likely at this pace to increase the temperature on this planet by 2 degrees. There have been temperature spikes all over the world. This year Alaska experienced it's 2nd warmest July on record, New York City just experienced it's 5th warmest Month of November on record and Australia it's 3rd warmest year ever. Scientists also warn that the carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are reaching new highs as well. In 2010 they expect to record a new CO2 high of 390 Parts per million. Fifty years ago the level was recorded at 315 ppm. This year on it's own is the 5th warmest year ever recorded so far. According to NASA the 5 warmest years ever recorded are in order: 2005, 1998, 2007, 2006, 2009.

"Lucy In The Sky" Girl Died This Year

If you are a Beatles fan or even if you are not you may be familiar with it. "Lucy in The Sky With Diamonds" is a song that appears on the Beatles most renowned album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts club band." It came out in 1967 at the height of the Psychedelic rock craze of the late 1960's. The inspiration for the song came from a 3 year old girl named Lucy Vodden who was a friend of John's young son Julian at school. If you don't know the story it goes like this: Julian came home from school one day with a painting he had done and was eager to show it to his father. John looked at it and said "It's beautiful Julian, what do you call it?" Then Julian said "It's a picture of my friend Lucy from school flying through the sky with diamonds on." John immediately got sparked with an idea and went off and wrote the song. The inspiration for the song has been quite happy over the decades to remain out of the spotlight about it and has kept a low profile and never really sought any attention. Her name was Lucy O'Donnell until 1996 when she married her childhood sweetheart and became Lucy Vodden. She only admitted to being the inspiration for the song in a BBC interview in 2007 for the first time. She also expressed a little bit of an embarrassment about the song and the drug references that are always attached to it. The song was banned on British radio when it came out because the BBC claimed it was about LSD. The Beatles denied this at first but Paul McCartney in 2004 basically admitted that the drug reference was "...Pretty obvious." Lucy Vodden for the last several years of her life had been living with the disease known as Lupus. It is a tissue disease that attacks the body's cells and causes inflammation and can often be debilitating and painful during particularly severe flare ups. In late September while on vacation with her husband she developed a complicating infection and was rushed to the hospital. She died on September 22, 2009 at the age of 46. Julian Lennon has announced that he will release a song in December with all the proceeds going to support the work of the Lupus Foundation.

Poker And The Presidents

There are some who have noticed a similarity between the game of poker and the presidency. That both of these "games" involve high stakes in some cases, a little bit of luck, the ability to successfully bluff your opponent, having the confidence to double down when you feel you have the advantage, knowing when to hold em and knowing when to fold em, and finally when you have done all that you can to just let the chips fall where they may. Some of our nations Commander's in Chief have been known to be better at the game than others. President Obama is known to engage in a hand of poker from time to time and did so often it is reported when he was in the Senate with many of his fellow Senators. He has sometimes used it as a way of breaking the ice with new colleagues and people he meets. Those who have engaged in the game with him state that he loves to play but just for fun. He is averse to playing for high stakes or making very large wagers and just likes to use the game as a way to relax with some friends and extend his political contacts and play for small pots so that there is no real pressure. Some other former presidents who fall into this category are Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, F.D.R., and Harry Truman. There are some former presidents who have had more of an interest in the high stakes nature of the game and were willing to take some chances to make some real money. President Eisenhower got interested in the game early in life and was already a high stakes poker player by the time he got to West Point as a young cadet. He was successful enough at it that he won himself enough money to buy his girlfriend Mamie Dowd an engagement ring when they were courting and paid for all of his uniforms at the academy. The best presidential poker player by far however was Richard Nixon. While in the Navy during World War 2 Nixon actually won a total of over $8000. It was enough money for him to finance his first run for Congress after he left the service, which he won.