Sunday, August 31, 2008

To You

thankful that you're here at last...

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Simplicity

Any truthful answer is always pointing to this method: Develop and practice compassion for others and oneself. This is the basis of the universe.


Friday, August 29, 2008

Give Up?

No we won't! Not even for a second so try your best, it won't make a dent in our resolve. This is the age of Pluto.

Canadian's beat Bill C-51 — but watch the back door!

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Truth Telling is risky

Yep at the risk of getting tossed off this site I have to show this information that is quickly disappearing from the net.

Trace Arsenic in Water May Be Linked With Diabetes

By Carla K. Johnson
The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 20, 2008; 1:23 AM

CHICAGO -- A new analysis of government data is the first to link low-level arsenic exposure, possibly from drinking water, with Type 2 diabetes, researchers say. The study's limitations make more research necessary. And public water systems were on their way to meeting tougher U.S. arsenic standards as the data were collected.

Still, the analysis of 788 adults' medical tests found a nearly fourfold increase in the risk of diabetes in people with low arsenic concentrations in their urine compared to people with even lower levels.

Previous research outside the United States has linked high levels of arsenic in drinking water with diabetes. It's the link at low levels that's new. The findings appear in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.
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"The good news is, this is preventable," said lead author Dr. Ana Navas-Acien of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore.

New safe drinking water standards may be needed if the findings are duplicated in future studies, Navas-Acien said. She said they've begun a new study of 4,000 people.

Arsenic can get into drinking water naturally when minerals dissolve. It is also an industrial pollutant from coal burning and copper smelting. Utilities use filtration systems to get it out of drinking water.

Seafood also contains nontoxic organic arsenic. The researchers adjusted their analysis for signs of seafood intake and found that people with Type 2 diabetes had 26 percent higher inorganic arsenic levels than people without Type 2 diabetes.

How arsenic could contribute to diabetes is unknown, but prior studies have found impaired insulin secretion in pancreas cells treated with an arsenic compound.

The policy implications of the new findings are unclear, said Molly Kile, an environmental health research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health. Kile wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.

"Urinary arsenic reflects exposures from all routes _ air, water and food _ which makes it difficult to track the actual source of arsenic exposure let alone use the results from this study to establish drinking water standards," Kile said.

Also, the findings raise a chicken-and-egg problem, she said, since it's unknown whether diabetes changes the way people metabolize arsenic. It's possible that people with diabetes excrete more arsenic.

The United States lowered arsenic standards for public water systems to 10 parts per billion in 2001 because of known cancer risks. Compliance was required by 2006, years after the study data were collected in 2003 and 2004.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Saturday, August 09, 2008

Like this Like That

I painted a poem, written in the sand with driftwood curled, written by hand.
I left a message for the birds to see, the only passengers of that distant country.
A red petal fallen gently, a blue jewel in the rain, a green leaf on a branch of elm, a yellow umber crystal falling through the air never touching ground, magenta and violet stones tumbling in the ocean's waves onto the sand where my poem painted and written by hand lay, waiting, for you the reader of the signs to see it.
In a dream a long and elegant hand gives me a white white rose, it opens up to reveal a crystal liquid, I drink long and deep from the cup, the nectar fills me up and I am no more. Thus do I travel...between the veils of worlds to reach you.



Thursday, August 07, 2008

Map Quest

Meet me at 2º 16' W and 51º 27' N under the constellation of Lyra...on the Harvest Moon night...


Wednesday, August 06, 2008

With You

With all my heart, a dedication to the angel in my life, may we never part. May love of the highest kind shine on for you and keep you close and warm and safe.