News Briefs 17-01-2012

Re: The new science classroom battleground: climate change

Let me begin by saying that our planet is horribly polluted and our society abused by those who peddle energy in most of its many forms. But that now out of the way, I am not surprised that our children will be force fed Global Warming because... well, Mom & Dad weren't buying into it.

Kids are easily led, can be molded by state-paid educators to believe whatever is poured into their heads. In this case, and it is only a personal opinion, our schools have become official programmers of the younger generation rather than just teachers.

Maybe there is something behind Global Warming beyond the politics. I won't rule that out. But as of this moment, I see nothing BUT those politics that holds any weight.

We need to clean our act up as a species... but we need to do it because we understand what a poor house we keep and not because we are spoon fed some politically charged fairytale.

those strange noises are weird, and yet i live near a military base that has those noises every thursday when they do some kind of weird testing (the military base is located about an hour north of me). it sounds like a giant toad croaking...

Interesting article. I have Hashimoto's Disease, and experts have no inkling what causes it. The thyroid gland is highly susceptible to radiation, which makes me wonder about the environment I grew up in. I was surrounded by open cut coal mines, which give off more radiation than a nuclear power station. It's still a minute amount, and I doubt it's a cause, but who knows. My mother has hypothyroid, so there's a genetic trigger (and my younger sister has Graves Disease, which is hyperthyroid... go figure).

I'm also seriously allergic to perfumes & chemicals, so who knows how my immune system has been screwed up by a lifetime of that. However, I'm not convinced by conspiracies about vaccines and flu shots one iota. Chemicals in drinking water maybe (flouride is known to deplete your body of iodine, which is essential to a functioning thyroid), but that's as far as I'll go with that.

Thankfully, my thyroid cancer is benign (last time I had it checked, knock on wood), although the lymph cells continue to hammer the hell out of my thyroid gland (and eventually the liver as well). No one knows what causes it, but I think more people are being diagnosed with thyroid issues due to a better understanding from GPs and more screening. In fact, my GP was proud as punch to have me diagnosed with Hashimoto's Disease -- his first patient in his entire life as a practicing doctor! I'll try and develop other rare diseases to make his day.

For things that make you go "hrmm", researchers found a smiley face in a cancer cell.