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How To Do Yoga 24 Hours A Day: The Masterful Servant - Huffingtonpost.com


Stephen Buhner talks about foods that heal, food as medicine, info on kitchen medicine, herbal antibiotics, and sacred plant medicine. Stephen Buhber is the author of “The Secret Teachings of Plants, Herbs for Hepatitis C and the Liver, Healing Lyme, The Lost Language of Plants, Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers: The Secrets of Ancient Fermentation.

Growing Medicinal Herbs with Tammi Hartung, author or Growing 101 Herbs that Heal
Tammi Hartung talks about growing medicinal herbs, about her book Growing 101 Herbs that Heal, some gardening techniques, recipes and remedies. This podcast gives rich information on medicinal herb gardening.


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Ayurveda directory serving to connect ayurvedic practitioners and the public through directory listings, articles, events, and classifieds., Joomla! features: Completely database read more about nature

Find out about the ancient Indian science of Ayurveda, books, links and products. A nineteenth-century watercolor of a physician taking a pulse. (Photo: read more about nature


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“Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the one who serves nor the served, but all pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.” — Mahatma Gandhi Your life is perfect as it is

Health calendar - News-Leader.com
CPR for Family and Friends, an American Heart Association course to teach adult, child and infant CPR and choking relief, 6-9 p.m. Monday, orientation classroom, Cox South, 3801 S. National Ave. Not a certification course. Free. Registration is

August 18th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Therapeutic Touch - channels alternative, natural healing Source:


Therapeutic Touch - channels alternative, natural healing
Source: www.a1-natural-health-and-beauty.com

Feb 3, Organic Foods-Why Organic Foods?
Organic Foods -Is organic food better?
Source: www.a1-natural-health-and-beauty.com

Harvesting herbs with United Plant Savers Betzy Bancroft
United Plant Savers Betzy Bancroft discusses harvesting herbs sustainably. Herb harvesting, gathering herbs, wildcrafting and other important United Plant Saver and herb harvesting topics.
Source: herbmentor.podbean.com


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August 16th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Caustic rocks Mr. McGill s at CD release party - Observer-Dispatch


bunker conversion to studio photo Often our readers complain that some of the architecture I like looks like a bunker; (see church here) sometimes they are right, such as in this case in Frankfurt. It is, in fact, a World War II bunker in Frankfurt that had been previously disguised as a house because it was too expensive to demolish. In a crappy part of town, “a no man s land between heaps of gravel and dumps, piled-up recycling-products and containers that await their shipping”, the architects decided to rise above it all and build artists’ studios and the Institute of New Media on top, a box sitting on a table. T…

Study Finds Sea Buckthorn Leaves to Protect Against Liver Disease
Indian scientists have found that leaves of sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides) berries can help protect against liver disease. Sea buckthorn is well



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Utica band Structural Integrity Compromised, along with Shelflyfe and Ayurveda will also perform. Doors open at 8 p.m.; performances will start at 9 p.m. Friday, Aug. 15, at Mr. McGill s, Route 5. The first 100 people there will receive $5 off the visit this natural blog

Tonight at 7:30 p.m., Milpitas Community Library will host its second annual summer mystery panel featuring some of the Bay Area’s local mystery writers. Moderated by Penny Warner, this year’s panel discussion will feature Cara Black, Mark Coggins visit this natural blog

August 15th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Buy top quality deep discounted vitamins, including Vitamin


Buy top quality deep discounted vitamins, including Vitamin C, Ginseng Vitamins, Anti-Aging products, Life Extension products, Supreme antioxidant products, Weight loss products, Health and Facial bea…
Source: www.webring.com

Coal-to-liquified

By Joseph Romm

Sure coal-to-liquid is a dead end — but dead ends never stopped the Pentagon before. Heck we now spend nearly $10 billion a year pursuing Star Wars weapons!

But here comes the (potentially) amazing news from the Aug. 5 Defense Environment Alert ($ub. req’d):

The departure of key Air Force officials is casting doubt on the future of the service’s controversial synthetic fuels program and raising questions about industry’s ability to use the military as a springboard for the development of a fully-fledged coal-to-liquids (CTL) program in the country.

Already, a source close to DOD indicates, the Air Force’s new leadership may be dropping its request to Congress for long-term contracting authority for fuel purchases beyond the five years currently allowed. Air Force officials could not confirm this, but if true it would be a blow to the CTL sector’s hopes of guaranteeing a revenue stream — and hence investment — through the military.

Semi-kudos to the Air Force if they abandon their pursuit of a climate-destroying fuel source for its planes. Here is the rest of the story:

The resignation July 28 of the Air Force’s top energy official, William Anderson, means the service has now lost its two most prominent advocates of coal-based synthetic fuels, following the firing earlier this year of Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne. Anderson’s departure, set for mid-August, will mark the beginning of a new period of uncertainty for developers of CTL fuels, who have pinned their hopes on large military contracts to jump-start commercial CTL fuels production.

In his letter of resignation to President Bush, Anderson wrote that the recent changes in Air Force leadership have created “constraints on my ability to serve you,” adding “I can no longer draw on a critical mass of leadership within the Pentagon who share your vision for the support necessary to lean forward to aggressively” support the service. A vocal proponent of alternative fuels, from both coal and biomass sources, Anderson was seen as a key driver behind the service’s goal of sourcing half of its domestic fuel requirements from domestic non-petroleum sources by 2016.

That target is now in question, as the new acting Secretary of the Air Force, Michael Donley, has told lawmakers that the time is not yet right to move beyond the exploratory phase of the fuels program, involving feasibility studies, to full implementation of the plan. Although he has pledged to continue the Air Force effort to certify its aircraft fleet to fly on synthetic fuels, Donley harbors doubts about the ability of the market to supply the service’s needs at a competitive price. The Pentagon in July released its fiscal year 2008 omnibus budget reprogramming that includes a $7 million increase for the synthetic fuel certification effort. This brings the program’s total funding to $27 million.

At his July 22 confirmation hearing Donley told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that the synthetic fuel program’s long-term survival depends on the service’s ability to find a market-based alternative fuel that costs the same or is cheaper than standard jet fuel. Donley has yet to be confirmed in his post by Congress. “As we approach this problem going forward, synthetic and blended fuels, even at the higher costs of — [standard jet fuel] per barrel that we’re experiencing today, as I understand it, will be higher yet per gallon for us to operate with these synthetic fuels,” said Donley during his July 22 confirmation hearing.

“So we need a market-based solution across the government and across the commercial aviation sector that will help drive that change and push down the cost.” Donley said the Air Force would have to consult further with other federal agencies and industry on the viability of the fuels program before implementing the full-blown fuel requirement. He said the same also applies to plans being studied by the service to site small nuclear reactors on Air Force bases, following a request that this be considered by Sens. Larry Craig (R-ID) and Pete Domenici (R-NM). This throws into question whether the Air Force will issue a letter of intent this year to talk to industry over the specific of the reactor plan, as promised by Anderson before his departure.

The source close to DOD says he believes that Donley’s approach effectively punts the debate over military support for CTL to the next administration, and possibly a new Air Force leadership, next year. Under questioning from GOP senators during a July 22 hearing, Donley indicated a lack of familiarity with a key policy issues for the sector. He told Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) that he was not familiar with section 526 of the 2007 energy law, which prohibits the federal government from purchasing alternative fuels that emit high “lifecycle” greenhouse gas (GHG) levels than conventional petroleum. The measure was introduced by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, specifically to block military sponsorship of coal-based fuels, which emit more GHGs than petroleum if the gases are not trapped and stored during production. Republican lawmakers have made attempts to repeal the measure, without success, although Waxman has been forced into a clarification of the intent of section 526, claiming its was never supposed to block purchases of fuel from certain sources, such as oil shale, that could be construed as “non-conventional.”

A spokesman for the CTL industry says “we are sorry to see Bill Anderson go,” but the departure of Anderson and Wynne does not mean the end of military backing for CTL technology, and neither does the change of administration next year. “We would expect that regardless of who wins in November, the Air Force is still going to have a significant issue” with high energy prices, the spokesman says, adding that coal-based fuels still offer the best domestic solution.

The spokesman points to a new bill — S.3345 — recently introduced in the Senate by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) that seeks to support the CTL industry. The bill contains a raft of measures designed to foster the industry, including tax incentives, a standby loan program to support producers if oil prices fall below a threshold level to be set by the legislation, a publicly funded Future Fuels Corporation to conduct research into CTL fuels, and a measure allowing CTL companies to sequester methane from their mining operations instead of carbon dioxide. Methane is a more potent GHG than CO2. Rockefeller includes provisions to spur the development of carbon sequestration in such geological features as saline aquifers.

The CTL spokesman admits that with time running out on this administration, and many democrats opposed to CTL technology, Rockefeller’s bill stands little chance of passing in this Congress. “Trying to move anything through this year is very difficult,” he says, but insists that interest in CTL is still alive. He offers as proof the plan, announced in July by CTL developers CONSOL and SES, to open West Virginia’s first ever CTL plant in Benwood, WV. Under the plan, which has Sen. Rockeller’s blessing, the Benwood plant would use methanol to produce CTL fuel, rather than the Fischer-Tropsch process more commonly touted as the way to derive liquid fuels from coal.

It is unclear how other aspects of the Air Force’s broader energy program will be affected by the switch in leadership. The service is investing in renewable energy technologies such as solar power, wind energy and biomass to reduce its dependence on traditional fossil fuel sources. Meanwhile, efforts continue at DARPA, DOD’s long-rang technology research arm, to create viable jet fuel from a variety of biomass feedstocks. Jet fuel forms the bulk of the Air Force’s fuel requirement, accounting for a huge chunk of the service’s total budget.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.


Source: feeds.feedburner.com

Dominoes

credit
Last year I described thirteen economic, political and environmental crises that are long overdue, and which will almost certainly occur at some point in this century. These crises will be the result of our generation’s short-term thinking, greed, and mismanagement of the the economy, of power and of the Earth’s resources. Our actions, throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first century and to some extent even before, have been irresponsible, shortsighted, selfish and unsustainable. What’s worse, rather than accept responsibility for this behaviour, we have mortgaged the future to try to sustain our unsustainable lifestyle and actions just a little longer, in the misguided belief that technology or innovation will find some way to solve them, and allow rampant population growth and consumption growth to continue indefinitely.

The generations that will inherit the mess we have created over the next three generations should rightly be furious at us for doing so, but unlike the boomer generation, who rioted in the streets in the 1960s and swore to “never trust anyone over 30″, our successors have been sanguine, pragmatic, even timid about the challenges we have foisted upon them.

Recently, I was asked which of the thirteen interrelated looming crises I thought would be the first to occur, the first domino to fall, and when.

In answering this, I would offer a few caveats:

  • Prognosticators have a long track record of overestimating the rate of change in the near future and underestimating the change over the longer term. Unlike many of the experts in economics, ecology, technology and social trends, I think the next twenty years or so will be merely tumultuous — the real crises, the ones we are unlikely to be able to cope with, probably won’t occur until the 2030s. 
  • This doesn’t mean that we’re not going to have some earlier previews of the crises to come, and some short-term improvements in some areas that might give us false hope that the longer-term problems had been solved. For example, we’re going to have a series of serious recessions before 2030, I think, but the next Great Depression will not likely occur until after then, after we have had some temporary respite from the smaller downturns. And while Peak Oil is inevitably going to make the price of oil unaffordable for almost all endeavours we now take for granted, we will see spikes and retrenchments of oil prices in the interim, in response to short-term events, that may blind us to the inevitable long-term energy crisis that awaits us.
  • The longer-term crises that will prove to be our undoing are likely to be masked by short-term crises that will distract us from paying attention to them. The media will worsen this situation. Only in retrospect will we realize which of the burning issues of the day were the ones that were really important.

Because they’re interrelated, some of these crises will precipitate others, and our ability for forestall some of them will delay the occurrence of others. And the timing of some of them, like pandemics, is largely unpredictable — if they occur soon, they might cause some of these other crises to occur sooner than I’d expect, and if they occur later, they might delay the onset of others.

Having said that, here is my wild guess about when these crises will occur. I’d welcome your “second guesses”:

First Wave: Approximately 2010 to 2030

  • Consumer Credit Collapse: After a brief upturn in the housing market in the US particularly, housing prices will plunge again as the orgy of consumer spending that has occurred since 1990 (see charts above) comes to a sudden halt, after a whole series of bank collapses cause a severe tightening of credit. Since 1970, in real dollars, per-capita total assets have doubled, financed entirely by debt, so that net worth of 95% of the population has actually declined. The apparent wealth of bigger houses, second cars and expensive furnishings is all an illusion, and the tightening of credit will throw all these overpriced assets into the market at fire-sale prices, and bankruptcies will soar. Between 2002 and 2007, $1.2 trillion of credit card debt was shifted into mortgages. With home prices falling further, that debt will be called, and added onto the expected $3.0 trillion in other credit card debt, carrying double-digit average interest charges, will crush millions of consumers.
  • $US Collapse, US Debt Crisis and Trade Imbalance Crisis: Even the most optimistic economists have acknowledged that the US debt and trade deficit, each around $10 trillion and growing at an astronomical rate, cannot be sustained. The recent “small collapse” of the $US reflects this, but it is not enough to solve the problem. It simply cannot be repaid, even if interest rates are suppressed and the US economy keeps churning out more and more money to paper it over. Ultimately creditors (in Asia, and in the Mideast), realizing their receivables from and investments in the US are essentially worthless, will balk, and the dollar’s collapse will be sudden and total, just like all the overextended and mismanaged currencies that have preceded it.
  • Inflation and Interest Rate Spikes: The real rate of inflation in affluent nations has long been in excess of 10%, but government authorities have fudged the numbers to report low rates to justify low indexing of pensions and wages, artificially low interest rates on debt, and to enable them to blame consumers for their inability to make ends meet. Rates on loans and mortgages are already jumping even as governments keep pushing down the interest rates they pay to bondholders and charge to banks and corporate lenders. As commodity prices leap and credit tightens, and as the $US goes into freefall, we will start to see the hyperinflation that plagued mismanaged economies throughout previous centuries. These spikes will exacerbate the housing and credit collapse and bankruptcy rates, and slow international trade to a crawl.

Second Wave: Approximately 2030 to 2050: Continuation/recurrence of the above crises plus:

  • Economic Collapse in China and India: These economies, overheated, dependent on sales to affluent nations that will no longer be able to afford their products, dependent on cheap energy, and facing unending environmental catastrophes because of exhaustion of the soil and pollution of the air and water, will crumble. Factories will be abandoned, riots will break out, civil order will break down, and famines and civil war will rage.
  • Severe Water Shortages: Water will become a scarce resource and economic activities dependent on it will become unaffordable and, with rationing, impossible to sustain. Irrigation in agriculture, tar sands development, and most mining operations will cease. Hydroelectric power plants will shut down. Human settlements in dry areas on all continents will be abandoned. The US may invade Canada to access fresh water.
  • Oil Shortages and Permanent Price Spikes: As new oil projects prove incapable of producing significantly more energy than they consume, realization of the end of the oil economy will finally dawn on us all. Oil prices of 5-10 times current levels will require a permanent and painful adjustment to economies and ways of life. Areas that are inhospitable without fossil fuel heat or cooling will be abandoned. So will suburbs and areas far from employment, as outlined in The Long Emergency. Large-scale re-localization of economies will occur, as long-distance transportation of goods and people becomes uneconomic. Industries dependent on oil, such as agriculture, plastics, textiles, paints, chemicals and pharmaceuticals will face massive restructuring. Economies dependent on foreign trade will be shredded.
  • Stock Market Crash and Global Depression: The combination of most or all of the above will bring about a crisis in capital markets, a huge shrinkage in consumer spending, and an unprecedented dislocation of people and industry, precipitating the second Great Depression. The last one ended with a massive government investment in war and social service spending. This time, governments will have no money to rescue the economy, so the depression could continue for decades, just as the boom of the last century endured for an unprecedented period.
  • Pandemics: The concentration of monoculture agriculture, the horrific overcrowding of farmed animals with almost no genetic diversity, and human overcrowding, combined with global warming and the destruction of tropical ecosystems will, together, inevitably unleash pandemics that will affect all species of life on Earth: humans, plant crops, forests, farmed and wild animals, birds and fish. The economic losses and economic disruption caused by these pandemics will be far more devastating than the simple loss of human life. Such pandemics will become more frequent as ecosystems become more crowded, less varied and more fragile. They could happen anytime.
  • Bioterrorism: As these crises start to occur with greater regularity and greater severity, a sense of desperation and hopelessness, already seen in some of the more overpopulated and desolated nations of the planet, will become more widespread. Bioterror is easy for desperate groups to perpetrate, and need no national sponsorship, and the spread of knowledge and new technologies will make it even easier. With so much of our population, food supply and infrastructure centralized, it will be impossible to prevent, and its success will encourage more of it.

Third Wave: Approximately 2050 to 2070: Continuation/recurrence and worsening of the above crises plus:

  • Conventional Civil & Regional Wars Escalating to Global Wars: In socially and environmentally stressed and overpopulated areas such as Pakistan/India (two nuclear powers), the Mideast, South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, already endemic local warfare and genocides will escalate and spread into regional wars, which, as resources become scarce and nuclear and biological weapons become more affordable, will engulf the whole planet. 
  • Climate Change Crises: Large-scale desertification, droughts, heatwaves, the death of the oceans, widespread, violent weather events and rising sea-levels caused by glacial and ice-cap melt and ocean current disruption will all wreak havoc on an already crisis-weary planet. Some projections suggest that, by the latter part of the century, as many as one billion people in low-lying coastal areas will be permanently displaced.
  • Food Crises, Famines and the Collapse of Industrial Agriculture: A combination of oil scarcity, water scarcity, diversion of cropland to fuel production, and desertification and other climate change disruption is likely to make the industrial agriculture model completely unsustainable. The switch to local, subsistent permaculture will be difficult and painful.
  • Large-Scale, Endemic Unemployment: Most of the planet has lost the capacity and knowledge of how to make a living for themselves. As larger corporations prove to be unsustainable and close their doors, the immediate effect will be large-scale chronic unemployment (already evident in many struggling nations). It will take generations for citizens to re-learn the long-lost skills of feeding, clothing and looking after themselves.
  • Infrastructure Collapse: For many years the global infrastructure of utilities, distribution, transportation networks and production has been neglected and underfunded. This neglect will worsed as the economy weakens, and large parts of the infrastructure previously maintained by either tax dollars or private consortia will crumble and fall into disuse, and will just be abandoned.
  • Endemic Chronic Disease: It was interesting to see that the gnomes of Davos identified the soaring rates of chronic diseases in affluent nations as one of the top ten global business risks this year. We will soon, I predict, discover that this is caused mostly by the toxins in our food, air, water and soil, and by the nutritional and micronutritional poverty of the modern industrial agriculture diet. Unfortunately, the damage has already been done, and the soaring rates of these debilitating chronic diseases will bankrupt health systems, cripple the workforce, and create an unbearable burden on the healthy.

Not a particularly bright picture, I admit, and more than any species can possibly hope to overcome. All civilizations end, and so will ours. It won’t be pleasant, or sudden, but this is how I see if unfolding, based on a combination of a lot of study of history, anthropology, economics and current events, and a bit of intuition. If you think I’m missing something from this list, or if you think my timing is off, or that something else will be the first domino to fall, please jump in. If you think that technology, or ingenuity, or leadership, or spirituality, or some great collective consciousness and global collaboration, is going to rescue us, there are lots of other sites with readers anxious for your reassurance, but I’ve heard it all, and I’m past such wishful thinking.

In the meantime, this world is still a wonderful place, and it needs our attention to the issues at hand, and to the creation of models of a better way to live for the survivors of the sorry mess we’ve (with the best of intentions) created. Let’s have fun, fill the world with love, conversation and community, do what we can to make things better, or at least no worse, and let the future unfold as it will. Fare forward, o brave fellow passengers on this lovely fragile little spaceship.

Source: blogs.salon.com


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August 14th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Acupuncture can effectively ease hot flushes among women


Acupuncture can effectively ease hot flushes among women taking anti-oestrogen tamoxifen after breast cancer surgery, says a new study. Mrs Jill Hervik,



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August 13th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


A Lession in Painting - Indolink


Pain is an inevitable part of life. In living with a chronic illness or chronic pain, pain is no stranger to us and we are likely to endure more than the average person may endure. Much of the pain that we experience can’t be eliminated or treated, so we have no choice but to learn to live with it. In my struggle to learn how to do this and to still find meaning and purpose in life I have learned many things and developed a new relationship with my pain.

Source: www.health-naturale.com


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It was a Friday morning when Mrs. Priya Bhagat called Mr. Ranjan Kumar. She asked him to send a model. She wanted to do a painting of a man in fear. She read about a painting on the subject in the latest issue of the magazine Painting today
Source: www.indolink.com

August 12th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Tips for sensible diet weight loss Source: www.a1-natural-health-and-beauty.comDon’t


Tips for sensible diet weight loss
Source: www.a1-natural-health-and-beauty.com

Don’t like the sound of that …

By Sarah van Schagen

Music festivals across the country are going green … but losing green in the process.

By the numbers, green festivals can be both encouraging and discouraging. Jeremy Stein, one of the producers of Rothbury, which took place over the July 4 weekend, said that by composting waste, using recyclable materials for concessions and taking other basic measures, the festival was able to prevent 94 percent of the garbage from its central concert area from entering a landfill. (Fifty-five percent of the waste from the camping grounds was diverted, he said.)

But doing so is not cheap. Rothbury lost money in its first year, and Mr. Stein said that the investment required to make a festival environmentally friendly could be a big strain on its budget. “These are huge gambles,” he said. “Porta-potties alone could be from $150,000 to $300,000, and that’s just one line item.”

Hm, that stinks …

Source: gristmill.grist.org

Conventional wisdom?

By Kate Sheppard

Can you find the green in this picture?
Photo: Vidiot

Both the Democratic and Republican national conventions have pledged to go greener this year. And they’ve drawn mockery for their efforts — particularly the Democrats, who say they’ll be putting on “the most sustainable political convention in modern American history.”

A Wall Street Journal article in June reported that convention organizers were having difficulty finding union-made, organic-cotton fanny packs for volunteers.

The article also poked fun at the Dems’ efforts to make convention food both green and good for you. They’re aiming for 70 percent local and organic ingredients, and at least 50 percent fruits and vegetables. Fried foods are verboten. Meals must have “at least three of the following five colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple and white” — and garnishes don’t count. All of this has caterers up in arms.

The New York Times reported that costs for the Democratic convention are ballooning out of control, in part because of efforts to be greener. Face the State, a conservative Colorado blog, recently pointed out that one of the wind turbines that’s supposed to be offsetting the convention’s carbon footprint doesn’t work. (The turbine is now being repaired [PDF].)

The latest news is a security regulation barring bicycles from the area around Denver’s Pepsi Center, where the event is being held. The Secret Service and the Denver Police Department don’t want bikes parked within the convention perimeter. Cycling advocacy group Bikes Belong is bringing 1,000 bikes to the convention through a partnership with Humana. Mat Barlow, special projects coordinator for Bikes Belong, tells Grist the group expected there to be security regulations, so this is no big deal. Conference attendees can still use the bikes free of charge — they’ll just have to park them outside the perimeter.

The Democratic convention’s first-ever director of sustainability and greening, Andrea Robinson, has also been the subject of ridicule. She’s a sometime actress who’s appeared on Baywatch Nights and Joey, but she also has a degree in environmental studies from the University of California at Santa Barbara and has worked to green other big events. (And maybe she picked up some political savvy while shooting one episode of The West Wing.)

Dems do Denver

But hiccups aside, the Democratic National Convention Committee has some ambitious green endeavors underway.

It is calculating the overall carbon footprint of the event — which will be held in Denver from Aug. 25 to 28 — and buying offsets for emissions that can’t be avoided. It has issued a “Green Delegate Challenge” that asks each delegation to buy offsets for its travel; 28 state delegations have committed fully, and the rest will participate at least partially. Delegates can offset through a partnership with NativeEnergy, or choose their own provider. The 140-member Massachusetts delegation has teamed up with LiveCooler, which will be providing low-income families with 2,400 compact fluorescent bulbs, offsetting 393 tons of carbon in the process.

The Pepsi Center has pledged to go “100 percent green.” It’s installing energy-efficient lightbulbs and water-saving faucets, and the convention stage is being constructed with salvaged or recycled material and eco-friendly paints. During the convention, the venue will be powered completely by wind and solar from Xcel Energy.

The DNCC has set a goal of keeping at least 85 percent of waste out of landfills by composting, recycling, and reusing — and they’ll have monitors standing by waste bins to make sure that no one’s refuse goes in the wrong container. Balloons will be biodegradable; utensils will be compostable; signs will be made of post-consumer recycled or biodegradable material; and banners will be made of canvas or corn-based bioplastics (and then recycled into handbags!).

On the vehicular front, there will be a hybrid-only parking area and a “no idling zone” outside the arena to cut back on emissions. The buses shuttling attendees from their hotels to the convention are all hybrid, alternative-fuel, or biodiesel-powered, and they’ll be factored into the convention’s carbon footprint.

GOP goes green

The Republican National Convention’s goals are considerably less ambitious. Matt Burns, director of communications for the convention, calls them more “reasonable.”

“We have very common-sense measures that anybody can do, and kind of understand that it will make a difference,” says Burns. “They’re just minor changes in habits.”

During the planning stages, the convention organizers are shutting off the lights when they leave the room, shutting off the air-conditioning during non-business hours, and shutting off electronic devices when they’re not in use, according to Burns. They’re also recycling more and printing less. Their office building is Energy Star-rated, and they’re trying to use mostly recycled office furniture and supplies.

At the convention itself, Xcel is again getting into the game by providing solar and wind power for the proceedings, which are being held at the aptly named Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul from Sept. 1 to 4. All official convention vehicles will be hybrid or flex-fuel, and Bikes Belong and Humana will be providing bicycles here just as they will be in Denver.

Recycling bins will be “strategically placed” throughout the convention hall, and waste “will be recycled to the maximum extent,” according to a fact sheet distributed by the convention committee. Organizers also point out that they’ll be using recycled carpeting and carpet padding made from recycled foam material, and using recycled aluminum for modular structures being constructed inside the center — though Burns says this is typical protocol for the contractor they’ve used for the past several conventions.

The organizing committee has set up a “paperless” electronic system for media and volunteer registration and coordination, and for making housing assignments for delegates. It is also printing maps of the convention hall on recycled paper, and distributing delegate welcome kits online instead via the mail.

The committee is not putting any restrictions on food, Burns says, and it’s not planning to offset delegate travel or the event’s overall footprint.

“I think we need to focus on how we can be good stewards and do the little things that add up and change people’s habits, but we’re not going to shamelessly pander,” says Burns. “I think some of the stuff that we’ve seen come out of Denver is shameless pandering.”

At the end of day, how green can such a massive event be, when 35,000 delegates, volunteers, and members of the media pile into jumbo jets and fly across the country to sleep in hotels and sit around in over-air-conditioned convention halls? Grist will be on the scene at both events, so we’ll be sure to let you know. (And yes, we’ll be offsetting the emissions from our travel.)

Source: gristmill.grist.org


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Personal website of Dr.Jayaprakash.MD ( Ayurveda ). Dr.Jayaprakash hails from Dharma Ayurveda family - traditional ayurveda healers renowned for their unique and miraculous
Source: drjayaprakash.com

About the Ayurvedic Institute
Leading Ayurveda college outside India since 1984: 1040 hour ayurvedic training by ayurvedic physician Dr Vasant Lad with 33 yrs of ayur-vedic medicine experience. Only U.S. school
Source: www.ayurveda.com

Ayurveda & Yoga Retreat India: Ayurveda India, Ayurveda massage, yoga
All Inclusive Ayurveda massage, Yoga, Reiki and Meditation Programs for weightloss, Stress, Rejuvenation, anti-aging through ayurveda and yoga. Authentic Award Winning Ayurvedic
Source: www.ayurveda.org


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August 11th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Developments don’t have monopoly on activities - Chicago Tribune


Definition of organic food implies living food

Your source for Vitamin and Herbal Solutions.
At Advanced Vitametric we want to meet consumers’ expectations for safe, effective and quality natural health products.

No Rift Rife
Natural healing.


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Active-adult projects scattered throughout the area offer the promise of lots of activities and new friendships. But for longtime homeowners or renters who don’t want to move, or for those who can’t afford a home at one of these developments, there

Yoga in City Hall? Only in Manitou - Colorado Springs Gazette
Yoga at City Hall? Only in Manitou Springs. Shannon Solomon, a Manitou city councilman/construction worker/yoga instructor, has been teaching free yoga classes for the past year, starting in Kinfolks, the local bar/outdoor shop, then moving to

August 10th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


in Congress in 1998. But he was back

in Congress in 1998. But he was back on the Hill yesterday to join the House GOP sit-in, and now he’s threatening that the Republicans will shut down government if they don’t get a separate vote on offshore drilling. Perhaps he hasn’t gotten the message yet that he is no longer an elected official.

“Are [Democrats] really prepared to close the government in order to stop drilling?” Gingrich asked. “Because I think the country will find that to be a suicidal strategy.”

Gingrich, who has in the past described himself as a “green conservative" and served as a We campaign spokesperson, is also the leader of the 527 group “American Solutions for Winning the Future” trumpeting the “Drill here, drill now, pay less” mantra.

Republicans would be able to essentially “shut down the government” by refusing to pass key spending bills that will expire when the fiscal year ends on September 30. There are a number of key appropriation bills that need to be passed when Congress is back in session next month — including the appropriation for the Department of the Interior, which includes the moratorium on offshore drilling. If they don’t pass the bill, it will expire at the end of September along with the ban on drilling. If Republicans don’t get their offshore drilling vote by fiat, they’re hoping to get it by default.

Gingrich knows a thing or two about government shutdowns, having orchestrated one as Speaker of the House in 1995 and 1996. But his attempts largely backfired, and widespread dissatisfaction with his leadership eventually prompted his resignation from the post.

The government shutdown was wildly unpopular with the public, and the then-Speaker registered disapproval ratings as high as 65 percent. The majority of Americans at the time saw him and his tactics as divisive. Even his partymates in the House were unhappy, threatening to vote against reinstating him as Speaker in the 107th Congress and penalizing him severely for ethics violations.

But Gingrich, and the current House leaders, believe they could have a political winner if they shut down the government over the offshore drilling issue next month. They’ve also pledged to continue their sit-in for at least the next two weeks.

“If Democrats want to block what a majority of the House and Senate want, they can proceed with a strategy that would in effect shut down the government,” Kevin Smith, a spokesperson for Minority Leader John Boehner, told CNN yesterday.

Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s spokesperson Nadeam Elshami issued a response: “Democrats will not shut down the government, but it is not surprising Newt Gingrich would raise that threat since he and the Republican Party shut down the government in the 1990s.” (Anybody remember just a few months ago when Pelosi and Gingrich were sitting on a couch together talking about how “we” can solve climate change?)

Meanwhile, Minority Leader Boehner isn’t even on the Hill for the party protest he called for. He’s home in Ohio, golfing and raising money for his political action committee, the Freedom Project. His spokesfolk say he might be back on the Hill at the end of the week, but in the meantime, he issued this statement:

Congress doesn’t deserve a break — not while families and small businesses are struggling under the weight of sky-high fuel costs. It’s time for Barack Obama to put away the tire gauge and tell his Democratic leaders to return to Washington — today — to hold a vote on the American Energy Act.


Source: feeds.feedburner.com

EPA: Corn ethanol is awesome!

By Tom Philpott

The environmental value of corn ethanol got a ringing endorsement Thursday from EPA chief Stephen Johnson.

Johnson declined a request to cut the Renewable Fuel Standard embedded in the 2007 Energy Act. The RFS mandates 9 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol be blended into the fuel supply this year, rising steadily to 15 billion gallons by 2015, and then holding steady at 15 billion gallons until 2022.

To produce 9 billion gallons this year, ethanol makers will churn through about a third of the U.S. corn crop. If corn production holds steady through 2015 — not an unreasonable assumption, considering that it’s already pretty much maxed out — we’ll be turning 55 percent of the U.S. corn crop into car fuel within seven years.

Consider that the U.S produces about 40 percent of the world’s corn — more than any other nation by a wide margin. The U.S. mandate has been pretty definitively linked to a rise in global food prices that could push 100 million additional people into poverty conditions.

Consider also that corn is an extremely heavy user of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which emits a greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide. The EPA itself terms nitrous oxide a greenhouse gas "about 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide."

Finally, consider that every gallon of ethanol that gets mixed into the fuel supply costs taxpayers $0.51. Given the mounting challenges of climate change and energy scarcity, do we really have $4.5 billion-$7.5 billion to drop on a program that most serious people consider environmentally worthless, at best?

Yet the EPA’s Johnson can see nothing wrong with this wild-eyed rush to turn half of the corn crop into car fuel.  Here’s what he declared in a press release upholding the RFS:

The RFS remains an important tool in our ongoing efforts to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions and lessen our dependence on foreign oil, in aggressive yet practical ways.

Riiiiight. Of course, getting a ringing endorsement from Johnson on environmental grounds is like having Al Capone sign off on the legality of your gun-running operation. Guy’s got a bit of a credibility problem.

Of course, no one really challenged the RFS on environmental grounds. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) requested the RFS waiver on economic grounds — specifically, on grounds that higher corn prices are crimping the profits of industrial meat producers.

"Governor Hairdo," as he’s known in certain Austin circles, learned crony capitalism at the knee of his predecessor, Goerge W. Bush. And Perry evidently learned well. From the Houston Chronicle:

Poultry producer Lonnie "Bo" Pilgrim spent more than $9,000 on airfare in June so Gov. Rick Perry could attend a news conference promoting a waiver from federal ethanol mandates that Pilgrim wants.

Perry requested the waiver from the federal Environmental Protection Agency in April after meeting with Pilgrim in March. The Houston Chronicle reported this month that six days after that March meeting, Pilgrim donated $100,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which Perry heads as chairman.

This is one of those pox-on-all-your-houses deals. Yes, we need to gut the RFS. Turning half the U.S. corn crop into car fuel is insane. But we also need to rein in the vast environmental abuses of industrial-meat giants like Pilgrim’s Pride.


Source: feeds.feedburner.com


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January 14, 2008 - In Booth W1571 at the International Builders’ Show in Orlando from Feb. 13-16, DuPont will be showcasing its family of residential and commercial construction
Source: www.nahb.org

PIRAEUS BANK-Nature protection
Recognising the major value of Greece’s natural environment and the need to conserve its biodiversity, Piraeus Bank has planned a strategy for the support of environment protection
Source: www.piraeusbank.gr

Access : : Nature
Nature is the international weekly journal of science: a magazine style journal that publishes full-length research papers in all disciplines of science, as well as News and Views
Source: www.nature.com


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August 8th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


Larry Flynt is a natural-porn Hustler in free speech debate - New York Daily News


Use natural health beauty skin care to keep skin and body moisturized


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Related Links on Going Natural
Larry Flynt isn’t the first person to observe that everyone believes in free speech when we agree with what we’re hearing. It isn’t until we hear something we detest that we’re forced to decide whether offensive speech has an equal right to exist. To Go and sniff

Brandon Slay has his Olympic gold medal in a little suede bag in a top drawer of a large apartment he shares with five other guys in Dallas. He estimates it’s been four or five months since he got it out. That gold medal won in the 76-kilogram Go and sniff

Hannover, 7 August 2008: Hannover Re expressed considerable satisfaction with the development of its underwriting business - in both non-life and life/health reinsurance - as at 30 June 2008. “However, the protracted difficult climate on Go and sniff

August 7th, 2008UncategorizedRead More >No Comments


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