Budget Cuts Devastate Meals On Wheels

Posted on May 3, 2013 by hanshowe

Budget Cuts Devastate Meals On Wheels: Enrollment Slashed, Services Cancelled

By Bryce Covert ThinkProgress

Congress recently passed a bill to undo furloughs at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) caused by sequestration, but it left cuts to many other programs intact, including Meals on Wheels. The program brings hot meals to homebound seniors and adults with disabilities, thus providing them with nutrition and helping many of them live independently.

Directors of Meals on Wheels programs across the country spoke with ThinkProgress about how they are coping with decreased funding. Some, like Meals on Wheels of Western Broome in New York, are private nonprofits that don’t rely on government funding and will therefore be shielded. But by and large, the heads of these programs described facing deep cuts after having already slimmed down in response to lean times over the past few years. Continue reading →

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Co2 at 399.29ppm May 2nd, 2013

Posted on May 3, 2013 by hanshowe

http://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/

Latest reading: 399.29 ppm

CO2 concentration on May 2, 2013

Concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in the global atmosphere are approaching 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history

Last 6 Months

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White Castle Recipe

Posted on May 3, 2013 by hanshowe

White Castle recipe: (from 8rs.blogspot.com)

This is the best way to make them at home, the most signature part of the flavor of

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White Castles is actually their onion flavor and this reproduces it almost exactly.

1.5 pounds 80/20 ground beef

1 package onion soup mix

1 small onion, very finely chopped

1 dill pickle, sliced as thin as possible
mustard/ketchup (if you want to feel authentic mix them together and then spread them on the bun)

12 soft dinner rolls (I like the Sara Lee ones)

Good quality American Cheese sliced

Mix the ground beef and onion soup mix in a bowl. Spread the ground beef on a 12-15″ cookie sheet.


Use a rolling pin (or cover with parchment paper and flatten by hand) on the ground beef to flatten it out to about 1/4-1/2 inch thick.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Take out and pour off grease. Spread diced onions along the edge of the sheet so they touch the sheet where the ground meat has shrunk away from.

Bake for 15 more minutes then spread the onions evenly on top of the ground beef and layer with cheese slices. Bake another 6 minutes to melt cheese. While waiting slice your dinner rolls and wrap them all in a damp paper towel. Microwave them in the paper towel for 60 seconds to steam them. (You can also load them in a tortilla warmer instead of a paper towel if you have one.) Spread out the top buns and add mustard and ketchup on them just before you are ready to remove the ground beef from the oven.
Take it out of the oven. Spread as many pickles as you like on top of the cheese. Arrange the top buns on the ground beef to make hamburgers. Slice the ground beef between the buns with a pizza cutter and pick up the top bun and burger with a spatula and set it on the bottom bun.

Enjoy!

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Why Do Canadians Deserve David Suzuki and We Don’t ??

Posted on May 3, 2013 by hanshowe

Wish his stuff was broadcast in USA…

http://www.davidsuzuki.org/blogs/science-matters/

Canada is ready for a transformative energy experience

May 2, 2013 | Leave a comment

Photo: Canada is ready for a transformative energy experience

Finding smarter ways to power our societies is something we can and must do. (Credit: Lance Cheung via Flickr)

By David Suzuki with contributions from David Suzuki Foundation Communications Manager Ian Hanington

Some people think a widespread shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources is not practical or even possible. You’ve probably heard the arguments: wind doesn’t always blow, sun doesn’t always shine, the technology’s not advanced enough, installations take up too much space, we need sources of baseload power that can only come from fossil fuels or nuclear power. And so we carry on, rushing to squeeze every last drop of oil and gas from the ground using increasingly difficult and destructive methods like fracking, deep-sea drilling and oil sands extraction, with seemingly little concern for what we’ll do after we’ve burned it all.

Continue reading »

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90% Of Ground Turkey Contaminated With Horrible Shit

Posted on May 3, 2013 by hanshowe

New Study Finds 90 Percent Of Ground Turkey Contaminated With One Or More Dangerous Bacteria

Published 1, May 2, 2013 Link 2 Jonathan Turley Posting

Consumer Reports has come out with a rather alarming study that shows that 60 percent of ground turkey tested contained fecal bacteria and sixty-nine percent of ground-turkey samples contained enterococcus.

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Evil Bugz

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Noble Burd

Even more scary was that 80 percent of the enterococcus bacteria were resistant to three or more groups of closely related antibiotics (or classes), as were more than half of the E. coli.

In all, 90 percent of the samples tested positive for one or more of the five bacteria targeted by the study such as salmonella and staphylococcus aureus. Three samples were contaminated with the potentially lethal methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA).

The percentage of such bacteria as E Coli did not change with organic or antibiotic-free turkeys.

The use of antibiotics (long criticized by health experts) has helped create a huge petri dish for generating resistant germs to antibiotics. Despite such studies, we continue to cut a demonstrably small force of food inspectors — relying on large part on the industry’s self-regulation.

The study is likely to have a huge impact on consumers who often view turkey as a healthier substitute for ground beef. It remains lower in fat but the contamination levels are astonishing.

The astonishing level of contamination in ground turkey would suggest that a large number of people are likely sickened every year without necessarily knowing that it was the turkey that was the culprit rather than the usual suspects of unclean restaurant conditions or other foods like lettuce etc. The problem is that people who are sickened by such food often do not trace their illness to a particular product. The result that tort actions remain rare due to factual causation problems — reducing the deterrence afforded by litigation.

Source: Consumer Reports

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Stealing Honey From Bees Leaves Bees Vulnerable To Colony Collapse

Posted on May 3, 2013 by hanshowe

Stealing Honey From Bees, Substituting Corn Syrup Leaves Bees Vulnerable To Colony Collapse

Honey Revs Up Their Immune And Detox Systems, Corn Syrup Just Empty Calories

by Diana Gitig – May 3 2013, 10:30am CDT via ARS Technia via PNAS
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/04/26/1303884110

Bee_pollen_280x157

When incorporated into honey, the pollen covering this bee may help protect the bee from environmental insults.

Apis mellifera, the western honeybee, is big business; the pollination services the bees provide to US agriculture are valued at roughly $14 million. Unfortunately, bees the world over are suffering from colony collapse disorder (CCD), in which worker bees go out foraging and then disappear instead of returning to the hive and tending to the queen like they are supposed to. The causes of CCD are not clear, but pathogens, parasites, and pesticides have all been implicated. Neonicotinoids, a class of pesticides that have been shown to alter bees’ navigation, foraging, communication, and reproduction, have just been banned in Europe in an attempt to help the bees.

New research suggests yet another potential contributor to CCD. The problem? We’ve been stealing the bees’ honey and instead feeding them high fructose corn syrup. The problem isn’t so much the fructose as the absence of chemicals in the honey.

Bees are exposed to a huge variety of plants because they gather nectar from the spring through the fall. The honey they make from these diverse nectar sources varies according to locality (leading to the unsubstantiated belief that eating local honey can alleviate seasonal hay fever). And bees’ “immune systems”—detoxification enzymes used to rid the body of foreign chemicals, like pesticides—are known to be induced by different stimuli than those of other insects. So scientists decided to check whether any components of honey can induce bees’ detoxification enzymes. Continue reading →

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