Mother's Day Procolamation, Julia Ward Howe

Mothers' Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Mother's Day was originally started after the Civil War, as a protest to the carnage of that war, by women who had lost their sons. Here is the original Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870, followed by a bit of history (or should I say "herstory"):

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Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says "Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Julia Ward Howe
Boston
1870

Thank You Jesus Christ for Creating The Way of Your Word!

eAlert: Pandemic… Be ProActive and Take Some Steps to Feel Less Helpless

eAlert: Pandemic… Be ProActive and Take Some Steps to Feel Less Helpless: "But there is also little doubt that there is no reason to have declared a “Health Emergency” in the US for a disease which has impacted fewer than 20 people and killed none of them. What pandemic? Who pandemic? Could it be that this pandemic is a totally orchestrated event to make sure that there is an excuse for closing down those few liberties and constitutional rights which still exist after the last devastating 8 years? The “left neocons” continuing the process the “right neocons” started?"

SCAM SCAM SCAM - CREATE FEAR FEAR FEAR...

"Bear in mind that once a global pandemic is declared, just as the US assumes supreme dictatorial powers through Patriot I, II, III, BARDA and other legislation, Executive Orders and Homeland Security Directives, and as the States assume similar powers through the Emergency Medical Powers Acts, passed at the urging of the Homeland Security cabal, so the UN will, according to already prearranged agreement, become the supreme political governing force on the planet."

Publications — Compete.org

Publications — Compete.org: "Publications"

The Council on Competitiveness was founded in 1986 during a time when the United States was facing its most dire economic challenges since the end of World War II. The country had slid from being the world's largest creditor to its largest debtor, its position as a global leader in technology and innovation was declining and American industries were losing market share to international competitors. To meet these mounting challenges, two-dozen industrial, university and labor leaders joined together to found the Council, a forum for elevating national competitiveness to the forefront of national consciousness.

The 21st century poses new challenges to American competitiveness–globalization, high-speed communications, enterprise resilience and energy sustainability issues are forcing organizations at all levels to rethink and redefine how U.S. companies will remain competitive. After two decades, the Council on Competitiveness continues to set an action agenda to drive U.S. productivity and leadership in world markets and to raise the standard of living for all Americans.

THE HAPPINESS STUDY

Use Your Mood to Improve the World

Good health can be both the cause and consequence of being happy. That's why two pioneering scientists wanted to see if they could actually measure how happiness works in groups. What they discovered took everyone by happy surprise -- the happiness of others, even those you don't know, has a direct influence on your happiness.

The coauthor of this novel study on happiness, James Fowler, PhD, told me how the research was done. First his team combed through the records of 5,000 participants in the Framingham Heart Study, many of whom had identified one another as spouses, friends or neighbors. His team established a happiness baseline for these participants by checking their periodic answers to questions regarding their happiness over the past 20 years (1983 to 2003). Then they used a sophisticated statistical analysis tool to create a map of social connections among the initial 5,000 and other participants within the Framingham study. It showed how one person's happiness rippled like a network, creating a cascade of happiness that increased the likelihood of others being happy too.

They discovered that there were various degrees of influence depending on the degree of social connection and that it was quite predictable. For example, within your social network, the happiness of someone with whom you have frequent and regular personal contact, called an immediate social contact (for instance, your spouse or closest nearby friend), increases the likelihood of your happiness by an average of 15%. The happiness of a second-degree contact (for instance, your closest friend's spouse) increases your chances for happiness by 10%, while the happiness of a third-degree contact (your closest friend's friend's friend) increases it by 6%. In other words, your happiness is directly influenced by strangers.

MORE SPECIFIC LEARNINGS FROM THE HAPPINESS STUDY

• Proximity is key. The closer your happy friends and family live to you, the greater the probability that their happiness will affect you. For example, the happiness of your next door neighbor is more influential than the happiness of a neighbor who lives down the street.

• More social connections adds to your happiness. The bigger your social network of nearby happy friends and family, the greater the likelihood of your happiness.

• Unhappy people cluster together in unhappy networks. As the saying goes, misery loves company.
  

• Whether or not you were happy in the past and whether your social contacts are happy are more important predictors of happiness than your income, gender or education.

• Happiness is more powerful than unhappiness. The happiness of a friend increases the probability of your happiness by 9%... while his unhappiness decreases the chances of your happiness by only 7%.

• It's not fleeting. The impact of another's happiness on your happiness lasts about a year, on average, before fading.

HAPPINESS 2.0: ONLINE SOCIAL NETWORKS

Dr. Fowler and his coauthor Nicholas Christakis, MD, PhD, MPH, are now looking at the question of whether happiness spreads the same way via the Internet, specifically using the Facebook network. They assumed that those who posted smiling pictures of themselves with smiling friends were happy. Since Facebook automatically tags or uploads your photos to those registered as your "friends," they were able to trace the paths of these happy pictures. They found that smiling friends had photos of other smiling friends and so on and so on. (People who didn't smile in their photos, didn't have photos with friends who smiled, who in turn also didn't have photos of smiling friends.) Again -- happiness begets happiness and the same goes for unhappiness. Next they'll study how contagious online happiness turns out to be.

REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE

Dr. Fowler himself has been moved by his findings. "I think our study shows that the best thing we can do for ourselves is to connect to friends and family," says Dr. Fowler. "I have been personally affected by the study -- I have now seen the evidence that my happiness potentially ripples out and touches the lives of dozens or even hundreds of other people. In this very challenging time, creating a ripple of happiness can result in a tidal wave of change."

Source(s):

James H. Fowler, PhD, professor of political science, University of California-San Diego.

PolitiFact | Sorting out the truth in politics

“I want you to hold our government accountable. I want you to hold me accountable.” — Barack Obama

“Okay, we will.” — PolitiFact

Tracking Obama’s promises

Promise Kept = 20

Compromise = 6
Promise Broken = 3

Stalled = 4

In the Works = 45

No Action = 432

PolitiFact will be tracking Barack Obama’s promises during his presidency and will be rating the progress of each one. >>more

Caffeine: Health Benefits, Health Risks: Health Newsletter

Caffeine: Health Benefits, Health Risks

Date: 3/30/2009
Posted By: Jon Barron

Caffeine -- it's the world's most popular drug. People drink it with alcohol to ramp up the effect. They drink it after alcohol to sober up. They take it to get rid of headaches, cure cancer, and prevent Parkinson's. Then again, the state of California is looking to put warning labels on any product that contains added caffeine. So what gives; is caffeine saint or sinner, miracle drug or prenatal nightmare?

In truth, it's all of the above. The devil, as usual when it comes to natural substances, lies in the details. And that's what we're going to explore in this newsletter, the truth behind caffeine.

The world's most popular drug

Pure caffeine is a bitter-tasting white powder that looks a lot like cornstarch. It is moderately soluble in water at body temperature and readily soluble in boiling water. It was first isolated from coffee in 1820, after which it was quickly recognized that the mood-and-behavior-altering properties of both coffee and tea depended upon caffeine. Whether it's in the form of coffee, tea, chocolate, kola nut chewables, guarana, or yerba matte, hundreds of millions of people around the world (including 90% of Americans) start their days with a jolt of caffeine or use a jolt during the day to keep them "going." And yet, almost no one who consumes it knows much about it. As a point of clarification, not all forms of caffeine are the same. Depending on what other alkaloids and antioxidants come with it or how it's bound with fiber, the "caffeine experience" can be quite different from beverage to beverage. Each caffeine complex actually has a different name depending on its source such as guaranine as found in guarana, mateine as found in mate, and theine as found in tea. Another point of distinction is that not all caffeine is actually caffeine. Chocolate, for example, contains theobromine, a very close relative of caffeine -- but only 1/10 as stimulating.

Although caffeine is not addictive in the same sense that many hard drugs can be considered addictive, it definitely affects the brain and body and stimulates them in a manner similar to the amphetamines such as cocaine. They all work by blocking adenosine's ability to slow nerve cell activity in preparation for sleep, and instead increase the speed of nerve cell activity and of the neuron firing in the brain. (The caffeine molecule is structurally similar to adenosine, and binds to adenosine receptors on the surface of cells without activating them -- an "antagonist" mechanism of action.) And if this were not enough by itself to keep you awake, the increased neuron firing in the brain causes the pituitary glands to release hormones that tell the adrenal glands to produce adrenaline, which gives your body a boost, so it can remain active and alert.

Another effect of blocking adenosine is that it causes blood vessels in the brain to constrict, which also serves to prevent the brain and body from sleeping. (As a side note, it's probably worth mentioning that the ability of caffeine to close blood vessels in the brain is why many pain relievers contain caffeine. If you have a vascular headache, the caffeine in Anacin, for example, will shut down the blood vessels, thus easing the pain.) And finally, both caffeine and cocaine increase dopamine production in the brain, so you experience a temporary "high." Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that activates "pleasure centers" in the brain and, quite simply, makes you feel "good." Naturally, the pleasurable effect produced by dopamine manipulation plays a major role in caffeine addiction.

And speaking of addiction, as I mentioned in the last paragraph, caffeine is not an addictive drug in the same sense as cocaine and/or heroin. Nevertheless, because of caffeine's role as an adenosine antagonist, anyone who consumes as little as 300 mg of caffeine a day (the equivalent of just 3 cups of drip coffee) will suffer withdrawal symptoms if they abruptly cut off their caffeine supply. The problem is that the bodies of individuals who regularly consume caffeine adapt to the continual presence of the drug by substantially increasing the number of adenosine receptors in the central nervous system in an attempt to compensate. This is known as the "tolerance effect." This makes the body much more sensitive to adenosine -- and consequently less sensitive to caffeine. In effect, this forces you to consume more and more caffeine over time to get the same stimulatory effect. On the other hand, any reduction in caffeine intake will effectively increase the normal physiological effects of adenosine because there are now so many more receptor sites created by the caffeine in the first place. The problem is that as caffeine clears those sites, they will be free to take in adenosine, but at an accelerated rate because there are so many more of them. The net result is unwelcome withdrawal symptoms including fatigue, depression, irritability, tremors, jumpiness, not to mention deprivation of deep sleep, and, of course, headaches, as the blood vessels in the brain begin to once again dilate.

Caffeine facts

Thanks to the popularity of energy drinks, caffeine is now omnipresent, but its level of concentration can vary widely. A piece of chocolate may contain as little as 5mg, whereas some energy drinks may contain as much as 160 mg. And for that matter, some medications and diet pills can run as high as 200 mg of caffeine. Buzz city!!!

One of the major problems with caffeine is that it can severely impact sleep patterns. Yes, if you have a morning cup of coffee, 75% of it will clear your body by the time you go to bed. But if you have a couple of cups of drip coffee in the morning, that means you will still be going to sleep with some 50 mg still percolating in your veins -- more than enough to disrupt the depth and quality of your sleep. And if you drink coffee throughout the day, or as an afternoon pick-me-up, the level in your blood at bedtime will climb dramatically. So while, yes, you may yet fall asleep, it is likely the quality of that sleep will not be up to par.

Another problem is that caffeine is a diuretic and can dehydrate you. Some experts claim that the fluid you consume in drinking coffee or energy drinks more than compensates for the fluid you lose through extra urination, but the facts don't bear that out. Claims to the contrary are based on erroneous studies on dehydration and misleading sound bites.

Caffeine and alcohol don't mix -- either while drinking, or for sobering up after drinking. The problem is that caffeine is a stimulant, whereas alcohol is a depressant -- complete opposites. That means that caffeine doesn't negate the effects of alcohol; it only makes you "think" it does. Consuming caffeine creates the impression that you're getting sharper and more sober. But the truth is your reaction time and judgment are still impaired. Mixing alcohol and caffeine make you more likely to have accidents -- either in your car or while operating heavy machinery.

There is also the problem that there are at least 32 epidemiological studies of caffeine that have found an increased risk of adverse developmental or reproductive outcomes. To put that in layman's terms, studies have linked caffeine to both lowered birth weight and a significant increase in birth defects.
And caffeine is a growing problem for kids. The consumption of soft drinks by children has literally doubled in the past 35 years, with soda replacing milk. A 2003 study of Columbus, Ohio middle schoolers found some taking in an astounding 800 milligrams of caffeine a day -- more than twice the recommended maximum for adults of 300 milligrams. And that was in 2003, before the energy drink craze hit full bore. With the advent of energy drinks in the last five years, those numbers have only grown.

So how much caffeine is too much?

According to the Mayo Clinic, for most adults, moderate doses of caffeine -- 200 to 300 milligrams (mg), or about two to four cups of brewed coffee a day -- aren't harmful. But heavy use -- more than 500 to 600 mg a day, or about four to seven cups of coffee -- can cause a whole host of problems, including:

• Insomnia
• Nervousness
• Restlessness
• Irritability
• Nausea or other gastrointestinal problems
• Fast or irregular heartbeat
• Muscle tremors
• Headaches
• Anxiety

Caffeine and the law

There's a popular song from the last 40 years that goes, "I fought the law, and the law won." When it comes to caffeine and caffeine enhanced drinks, that may turn out to be remarkably prescient. A couple of years ago, the State of California announced that state environmental health officials were considering whether or not the caffeine found in soda and energy drinks was harmful to your health, especially for pregnant women. In addition, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment is considering placing warning labels on caffeine enhanced drinks if California Health Officials actually conclude that caffeine is a harmful substance.

And if that were not enough, the State of Utah announced earlier this month that they are considering taxing caffeine as a new stream of revenue for the state.

Make no mistake -- whether either of these initiatives ever goes live or not is irrelevant. The bottom line is that caffeine is now in legislative crosshairs around the world. Europe already requires a warning label on high caffeine energy drinks, and France has actually banned Red Bull.

Caffeine -- the miracle drug?

So much for the negatives. Caffeine/coffee also has a bright side. At least six studies have shown that people who drink coffee on a regular basis are up to 80% less likely to develop Parkinson's, with three studies showing the more they drink, the lower the risk. Other research has shown that drinking coffee can reduce the risk of colon and liver cancer by some 25%, slash the risk of skin cancer by some 40%, drop the risk of liver cirrhosis by 22%, and lower the risk of gallstones by nearly half.

Coffee might even offset some of the damage caused by other vices. Some research indicates that people who smoke and are heavy drinkers have less heart disease and liver damage when they regularly consume large amounts of coffee compared to those who don't.

There's also some evidence that the caffeine in coffee may help manage asthma and even control attacks when medication is unavailable, stop a headache, boost mood, and even prevent cavities.

And of course, caffeine is widely used for its stimulating and alertness properties, as well as its ability to enhance athletic performance.

Note: not all of the benefits associated with drinking coffee or tea can necessarily be attributed to caffeine. In many cases, they might be specific to the antioxidants found in those beverages (see below).

So, caffeine yes -- caffeine no?

As I mentioned at the top of the newsletter, when it comes to caffeine, the devil is in the details. With that in mind, let me offer my recommendations.

• Natural caffeine is preferable to "added" caffeine. Natural caffeine comes packaged with a number of powerful antioxidants such as:
• Chocolate: flavonoids, procyanidins, epicatechin, cocoa phenols.
• Tea: epigallocatechin, epicatechin gallate, and epicatechin. Not to mention theanine, which is not an antioxidant, but rather, a profoundly beneficial amino acid.
• Coffee: chlorogenic acid, caffeic acid, and melanoidins.
• The Mayo Clinic says under 300 mg a day is fine. I set the figure much lower -- at about 100 mg a day. That still allows for 3 cups of green tea a day. The exception to this guideline is that if you take your caffeine bound to fiber, as in guarana (not guarana extract), the caffeine releases over time rather than in powerful bursts, which allows you to consume more without the negative side effects.
• Don't use caffeine as part of a daily ritual such as "every morning" to start the day. Use it selectively, if possible, to get a boost only when needed. And take at least two days off each week -- totally caffeine free -- to allow all caffeine to clear from your body on a weekly basis.
• And as much as possible avoid consuming caffeine while pregnant.

Incidentally, one of the reasons for this newsletter is that this past month has been Caffeine Awareness Month. And speaking of caffeine awareness, check out the caffeine calculator at CaffeineAwareness.org, which will calculate how much caffeine you personally are consuming each day.

Search Results - THOMAS (Library of Congress)

13. H.R.1148 : To establish the Food Safety Administration to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.

Sponsor: Rep DeLauro, Rosa L. [CT-3] (introduced 2/16/2007) Cosponsors (22)
Committees: House Energy and Commerce; House Agriculture
Latest Major Action: 2/27/2007 Referred to House subcommittee. Status: Referred to the Subcommittee on Health.