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In a benchmark study released today, researchers found an average of 200 industrial compounds, pollutants, and other chemicals in the umbilical cord blood of newborns, including 7 dangerous pesticides-some banned in the United States more than 30 years ago.....pretty sick stuff or what!?!?
In addition to the pesticides found, chemicals from 2 widely used household products-Teflon and Scotchgard-were found in every baby tested....
Wow, that sounds like some scary, twisted stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by JWright
By the way, you may want to cite your sources, in case of copyright. ;)
A Canadian teenager caught driving at almost twice the speed limit told police he had overdosed on a protein drink and was looking for a toilet. Hayder Mobarak, 19, was caught driving at 195km/h (121mph) on a highway near the Canadian capital, Ottawa.
"I was taking a protein shake and if you overdose it's really painful... I wasn't thinking, I was in pain," he told the Ottawa Citizen newspaper.
A local judge fined him $760 and banned him from driving for 30 days.
An official from Ontario's provincial police told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) that having to go to the toilet was probably the second most common excuse for speeding given to police.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4688133.stm
Woman Gives Birth to Two Sets of Twins
TRENTON, N.J. - LeAnn and Stephen Beloyan struggled for more than a decade to start a family. Then just weeks into LeAnn's pregnancy, they discovered they were having not one, but two sets of identical twins.
"We were elated and overwhelmed, and concerned about how we were going to handle all this," Stephen Beloyan, 39, said Saturday, when two of the babies were expected to go home.
Lauren, Sarah, Benjamin and Samuel each were born a minute apart on June 7 by Caesarean section at Capital Health System's Mercer Campus.
Eight weeks early but otherwise healthy, the newborns weighed from slightly more than 2 pounds to 3 pounds.
"It's been an exciting process and a long process. We're grateful for the attention. We want our kids to know how special and how rare they are," said LeAnn Beloyan, 37, who was put on bed rest 21 weeks into her pregnancy and was admitted to the hospital a few weeks before she gave birth.
Lauren and Benjamin — slightly bigger than their siblings — were expected to go home Saturday. Sarah and Samuel had some minor complications from the premature birth. But doctors say they are growing and are expected to likewise go home soon.
"The prognosis for all the babies is good," said Dr. Naheed Abedin, one of the family's neonatologists.
The Beloyans struggled for 12 years to have children. They turned to in vitro fertilization in May 2004, which increases the odds of multiple births since more than one embryo is often implanted to improve the chances of conceiving.
According doctors at Capital Health System, the odds of having two sets of identical twins from the same pregnancy are anywhere from 1 in 8 million to 1 in 25 million.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/twins_tim...BhBHNlYwM5NjQ-)
By Rhys Blakely, Times Online
Pope Benedict XVI has condemned the Harry Potter books as "subtle seductions," capable of corrupting young Christians, in two letters which have now been published online.
However, despite criticism from the pontiff, it would appear the boy wizard Harry has built a fanbase close to the headquarters of Catholicism. Amazon.co.uk, the online bookseller, today revealed it had received advance orders for Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, published on Saturday, from over 90 countries - including the Vatican.
The Pope's comments were included in two letters to Gabriele Kuby, the German religious author, who had sent him a copy of her book, Harry Potter - gut oder böse? (Harry Potter: Good or Evil?)
In one response, dated March 2003, he wrote in German: "It is good that you enlighten us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable, and precisely because of that have a deep effect and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it could properly grow."
He also thanked the author for her "instructive" book, in which Frau Kuby says the hugely popular Potter novels risk corrupting young people, preventing them from developing a proper sense of good and evil. She argued this could harm a child's developing relationship with God.
In a second letter sent to Kuby on May 27, 2003, Cardinal Ratzinger "gladly" gave his permission for Frau Kuby to make public "my judgement about Harry Potter."
He also encouraged her to send her book to the Vatican prelate.
The letters, parts of which had already been made public, have been published on the LifeSiteNews site just days before the publication of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince.
"We do note that these letters were written some time ago and certainly way before he became Pope," said Neil Blair, a spokesman for Christopher Little, JK Rowling’s literary agent.
It is not the first time Harry Potter and Pope Benedict have gone head-to-head. Earlier this year the Pope's new book Salz der Erde (Salt of the Earth) overtook advance sales of The Half-Blood Prince in the German bestseller list with a five-figure print run being ordered to meet demand
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...692541,00.html
A Manet uncovered in Swiss flea market?
GENEVA (AFP) - A Swiss antiques dealer believes he has found an unsigned work of master impressionist Edouard Manet, but has run into a brick wall in the labyrinthine corridors of the art world in his bid to get the painting recognised.
Jules Petroz and his wife Aicha made the discovery at Geneva's Plainpalais flea market in 1997. "I'd seen this ordinary pastel-on-paper sitting on the ground for some time. No one wanted it," he said.
"But this time I noticed a small tear in one corner and glimpsed what appeared to be an oil painting underneath. I hid my excitement and bought it for 15 Swiss francs (10 Euros)."
Back home, he ripped off the pastel and he and Aicha gasped at the quality of a painting that revealed a red-headed beauty with bare breasts.
Petroz, who freely admits he is not an expert on impressionists, immediately took the painting to the Geneva offices of Christie's and Sotheby's.
Both houses pronounced it a likely masterpiece and said it resembled the work of Edouard Manet. But they stressed the only way it could be sold or auctioned was to get a certificate of authenticity from the Wildenstein Foundation in Paris, which has exclusive rights to attribute the works of the 19th-century master.
Petroz immediately wrote a letter to what he would discover was one of the world's most powerful and secretive art houses. He enclosed an enlarged photograph of the painting and offered to pay all expenses if Daniel Wildenstein would come to Geneva to inspect it.
Wildenstein's response to Petroz reads in part: "Unfortunately in my opinion the painting you have sent me is not a work of Manet. It resembles the work of a later painter, about 1900, for it certainly does not lack in quality."
Four years later, Daniel Wildenstein died at the age of 84, leaving his vast collection of impressionist paintings estimated at around eight billion dollars to his sons Guy and Alec.
But a few months later, Petroz received a visit from leading Paris art dealer Charles Bailly.
"He came to my apartment to see the painting but gave no reaction and made me no offer at that time."
Bailly called again a few months later. "He said he would be at the Geneva airport that afternoon. 'Bring the painting!' ... But it was too late to get it out of the bank vault.
"I went anyway and he told me 'I know who painted it. Give it to me for six weeks. It should be worth around 3,000,000 francs (about 450,000 euros). I will give you half. Take it or leave it.' I asked him who the painter was but he said he couldn't tell me, so I told him I would leave it."
Bailly, who could not be reached for comment, has in the past denied making Petroz any offers for the painting.
"Of course I'd like some money because I've never had much and if the Wildensteins wait long enough I may get hungry enough to sell it for less than it is worth. They can afford to play the waiting game. I don't know if I can," said Petroz.
He noted that the last Manet sold at Christie's in May for 2.9 million dollars.
In the intervening years, Petroz has done a lot of research on the painting which he believes is of Mery Laurent, a courtesan who was the subject of many other Manets.
He learned that Mery Laurent came by her unusual name because that was the way Dr. Thomas Evans, her British lover and dentist to French royalty, pronounced Marie.
"Around 1874 Evans set Mery up in a building on the rue de Moscou not far from Manet's studio and around the corner from a canvas shop whose stamp is on the back of 'my' portrait. Coincidence? I think not."
Petroz thinks Manet and Mery Laurent became lovers, something neither wanted their 'official lovers' to know about. He speculates this is the reason the painting was hidden or covered up and unsigned.
The painting has also intrigued many art and antique dealers in Geneva and Paris, but when asked about the Wildenstein Foundation and its monopoly on authentication, they all refused to be quoted.
One French dealer in the Louvre des Antiquaires in Paris, insisting on anonymity, explained only a work depicted in the Wildenstein Foundation's "catalogue raisonne" (complete works monograph) is considered authentic and without this seal of approval, no auction house or antique dealer will touch it.
For the moment, it's not at all clear who will certify certain impressionist paintings following the death of Daniel Wildenstein. Sophie Pietri, a curator at the Foundation says there is a committee but when pressed, she referred to the Foundation's extensive files compiled in 1930.
"Monsieur Petroz can always give us the opportunity to give his painting a closer examination including any new information he may have found," she said.
But Petroz says he is afraid to take his painting across the border to France because of outstanding lawsuits against the Wildenstein family and allegations of selling stolen art to Nazi collaborators.
The Wildensteins have called the allegations a misunderstanding, but recently lost a court case against American author Hector Feliciano, who first published the charges in his book "The Lost Museum: the Nazi conspiracy to steal the world's greatest works of art".
Petroz has been advised by people in the art world either to hang the painting on the wall and enjoy it or to sell it for a few thousand euros.
But he has decided instead to present it to art experts and the general public at Geneva's Grand Chapiteau antiques fair October 6-9 on the site where it all started, the grounds of Plainpalais.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/afplifes...BhBHNlYwM5NjQ-)
Ever been baffled by the bard? Vexed by his verse? Or perplexed by his puns? London's Globe theatre thinks it has the answer: perform Shakespeare's plays in Shakespeare's dialect.
In August the theatre will stage an "original production" of Troilus and Cressida - with the actors performing the lines as close to the 16th century pronunciations as possible.
By opening night, they will have rehearsed using phonetic scripts for two months and, hopefully, will render the play just as its author intended. They say their accents are somewhere between Australian, Cornish, Irish and Scottish, with a dash of Yorkshire - yet bizarrely, completely intelligible if you happen to come from North Carolina.
For example, the word "voice" is pronounced the same as "vice", "reason" as "raisin", "room" as "Rome", "one" as "own" - breathing new life into Shakespeare's rhyming and punning.
'Visceral' text
Giles Block, the play's director, believes the idea could catch on. He first tried the technique for three performances of Romeo and Juliet last year.
"I think it helps the audiences enter more into the visceral nature of the text. It brings out the qualities of the text, the richness of sound which is closer to our emotions than the way we speak today," he says.
The actors have been coached by David Crystal, one of the world's most prominent language experts. He prepared the phonetic script by meticulously researching the rhymes, meter and spellings within Shakespeare's plays - as well as contemporary accounts of how the language was pronounced.
"We can deduce the value of a vowel from the way words rhyme. We can deduce whether a consonant was sounded from the way puns work," he said in an earlier interview.
For example, in Romeo and Juliet the word "mine" is used to rhyme with "Rosaline" - showing clearly that "Rosaline" rhymed with "fine" rather than "fin", he said.
Toilet humour
Philip Bird, who plays the Trojan king Hector (pronounced 'Ecter), admits the he felt "apprehensive" at first, but he says within a matter of minutes the material becomes "totally understandable". He says the "earthy, gutsy, grounded" accent forces the actors to find different ways of portraying power and seniority.
"When you're asked to play someone who is powerful or of high status, you act class, you act posh - but with this production it is not available because everyone spoke the same way 400 years ago."
But the accent also resurrects some classic Shakespearean puns. Ajax, who is the butt of many jokes in the play, is pronounced "a-jakes" - which, conveniently, is an Elizabethan word meaning toilet.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4694993.stm
Get ready to e-mail this one to your friends...
LONDON (Reuters) - The word "fail" should be banned from use in British classrooms and replaced with the phrase "deferred success" to avoid demoralizing pupils, a group of teachers has proposed.
Members of the Professional Association of Teachers (PAT) argue that telling pupils they have failed can put them off learning for life.
A spokesman for the group said it wanted to avoid labeling children. "We recognize that children do not necessarily achieve success first time," he said.
"But I recognize that we can't just strike a word from the dictionary," he said.
The PAT said it would debate the proposal at a conference next week.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050720/...RpBHNlYwM3NTc-)
The American bankers will be kicking themselves because they didn't think of this first! :D
Injecting excitement into the faintly dreary business of using a cash machine may seem a tall order, but one Japanese bank is trying its best. Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank is introducing fruitmachine-style games of chance which run while the ATM processes its more mundane transactions.
Get three sevens, and your withdrawal fee is waived; three golds promise a jackpot of 1,000 yen (£5; $9).
The purpose of the gimmick, says the bank's Yoshi Enami, is simply "fun".
Trying harder
There is a more serious intent, however.
Since Japan's economy turned sour a decade ago, its once-complacent banks have had to work harder to attract custom.
And cash machines have been relatively slow to catch on, not least because most banks still insist on charging for withdrawals.
In order to persuade clients to use their machines, Japanese banks have introduced a range of inventive selling-points.
Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, for example, has pioneered biometric security technology, and is working on ATMs that scan the veins in a customer's hand.
Rival Resona, meanwhile, has profited by locating machines at unusual sites, such as race courses and noodle bars.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4700053.stm
Medication Triggered Madness Of King George
LONDON (Reuters) - Far from making him better, the medication used to treat the madness of England's King George III may actually have made him worse, according to research published Friday.
One of the longest serving British monarchs who ruled for nearly 60 years, George had five very public bouts of madness culminating in his death -- blind, deaf and insane in January 1820.
The generally accepted theory has been that his fits of insanity -- the best documented lasting from October 1788 to February 1789 and triggering a constitutional crisis -- were due to a genetic disorder that caused variegate porphyria.
But there was no explanation of why the disease that causes symptoms such as lameness, hoarseness, acute abdominal pain, insomnia and temporary mental disturbances hit so late in his life or why the bouts were so deep and lasted so long.
Now a team of scientists from Britain and Australia have found high concentrations of arsenic in samples of the king's hair and suggested it came from the antimony-based medicine administered -- sometimes by force -- to cure him.
"If George III did indeed inherit the inborn error of metabolism that causes porphyria, he would be sensitised to the effects of arsenic and other heavy metals," they wrote in Friday's issue of the Lancet medical journal.
"Indeed, amounts of toxic metal insufficient to induce frank poisoning would, in all probability exacerbate porphyric attacks in a susceptible individual," they added. "The toxic metal most abundant in our findings was arsenic."
And it was not that the king's physicians were trying to kill him. Even into the 20th century arsenic was widely used as a medicine.
The researchers found that the principal tonic administered to the king during his bouts of insanity was emetic tartar which contained antimony which in turn was commonly contaminated by up to five percent arsenic.
According to medical records of the time, George was sometimes forced to take medicine that would have contained up to nine milligrammes of arsenic a day -- well below a lethal dose but easily enough to cause chronic poisoning.
"The presence of arsenic in a sample of the king's hair provides a plausible explanation for the length and severity of his attacks of illness; and contamination of his antimonial medications is the probable source of the arsenic," the scientists wrote.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050722/...RpBHNlYwM3NTc-)
This article contains a rather startling revelation concerning Papa Hemingway, but you'd never know it from the headline. Whether his claim is true or not remains to be seen.
A rap artist has translated some of the best known works of poet Geoffrey Chaucer into hip-hop to make them appeal to schoolchildren. Canadian Baba Brinkman wants modern teenagers to warm to the 14th-century Canterbury Tales.
He is to tour English schools with his versions of the Pardoner's Tale, Miller's Tale and Wife of Bath's Tale.
Some of Chaucer's original bawdier language had to be "toned down" for his young audience.
Miller light
Baba told the BBC News website: "All the themes of rap music are there in the tales: jealousy, anger, greed, lust.
"The Miller's Tale in particular contains a lot of references to genitalia and body humour. Some of it had to be censored to make it suitable for children."
Baba had the idea of converting Chaucer into rap when he was doing a masters' degree on the poet in the late 1990s.
He said: "I tried to keep the rap versions as close as possible to the original, so I went through the tales line-by-line.
"It was a painstaking process to convert Chaucer into a rhyme scheme that young people would like."
The tales have been condensed for performance, but with the aim of maintaining their original sense.
For instance, the phrase "goone towards that village" translates to "hit the streets".
Getting it down
Baba said: "My work is really part of a tradition because Chaucer took his tales from classical literature and put them into the English used in his day. It was an original thing to do.
"The Knight's Tale came from a 10,000-line story from Boccaccio, which Chaucer brought down to 2,000. The rap version takes it to 400 lines.
"I don't want to replace Chaucer's version, which is wonderful, but it should help young people to see how vibrant his stories are and make them more interested."
His visits to classes of 15 and 16-year-olds are part of a Cambridge University project to encourage children to love literature.
Research associate Sarah James said: "Sometimes children find Chaucer's language hard to understand as it's 600 years old.
"Rap is a wonderful way to get through that and hooking them into the stories. Hopefully it will inspire some of them to go further and read the original texts."
Baba's motives might not be very far removed from Chaucer's.
Ms James said: "We know, from several illustrated medieval manuscripts, that Chaucer's works were read aloud for entertainment.
"Most people in those days could not read and even those who could would have found books very expensive.
"Baba is fantastic at conveying the sense of poetry and storytelling."
Chaucer, who lived from around 1340 to 1400, was also a courtier and diplomat.
Six of his tales were adapted into modern-day TV versions for the BBC's Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in 2003.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4721073.stm
Lennon lyric sheet could break record
LONDON (Reuters) - A handwritten song lyric used by John Lennon and found on the floor of a television studio in 1967 is set to fetch 500,000-600,000 pounds ($870,000-$1.04 million) at an auction Thursday, organizers said.
The manuscript is part of a pop memorabilia sale featuring clothes, paintings and musical instruments from Lennon, Jimi Hendrix and others.
The "All You Need Is Love" manuscript was used by Lennon during a television performance by the Beatles and could be seen on film footage dropping to the floor after the song was performed, said Ted Owen, director of auctioneers Cooper Owen.
A girl working for the BBC at the time retrieved the lyric from beneath Lennon's music stand. She has provided a letter of authenticity for Thursday's sale.
"If this lyric reaches 500,000 pounds, and it could well go for a lot more, it would have doubled the world record price (for a pop manuscript)," said Owen.
Other highlights include a military-style tunic worn by Lennon that inspired the Beatles' famous "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" record sleeve.
Owen expects the sale to fetch 1.5-2.0 million pounds and the Lennon memorabilia alone to raise 1.2 million pounds.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050728/...RpBHNlYwM3NTc-)
Australia's foreign minister asked for a date, the US deputy secretary of state played a cowboy, and the Japanese team ran wild with a rugby ball.
But the stars of a skit at a dinner after the Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Laos were the Russians, participants agreed.
Dressed as a Jedi knight, Darth Vader, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stole the show.
Cloak-clad and with a lighted sword, Mr Lavrov brought the house down.
Helped by his assistant, Mr Lavrov entertained delegations from the 10-member Asean group by launching a tirade to the tune of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar hit.
Asean, Superstar... Do you think you're what they say you are? Asean, Asean! Why we accept whatever you have done? he chanted.
"We'd have managed better if we'd had it planned. Why'd we chose such a remote Aseanis land?" the Russian minister quipped.
His assistant replied: "You didn't do your homework, it's Asean way. You are too suspicious, their motives are good."
Rugby gag
Other performances included Australian FM Alexander Downer crooning "It's now or never", and US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick belting the Wild West hit "Oh my darling Clementine".
The Japanese - aiming to host the rugby World Cup in 2011 - appeared on stage with a rugby ball.
They chanted that the Asean team can "stand tall and catch the high ball".
However, most of the participants agreed that the Russians were the star performers.
"The Russians were out of this world," Indian diplomat Sanjay Panda was quoted as saying by the Associated Press news agency.
The skits are a regular feature of the gala dinners at the end of the annual Asean foreign ministers summit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asi...ic/4728347.stm