Your kitchen is a veritable treasure trove of health and beauty staples. Have some plain yogurt with a “sell date” that was two weeks ago? Don’t throw it out! It’s the perfect treatment for a common skin condition. Is there an extra sprig or two of parsley leftover from your stew recipe? Chew on a few leaves to handle a social faux pas. These items are probably in your home already
Have you ever caught a healthy habit from a friend? Ever been inspired to go to the gym or to eat healthy because one of your friends is doing it? Friends can really make a difference in our lives.
It turns out that we can catch unhealthy habits from our friends too.
We can see this by looking at a Harvard-led study that examined a social network of more than 12,000 people. They found that if one of your friends gained enough weight so that their body mass index (BMI) placed them in the obese category, it increased the chances of you also becoming obese by 57 percent.
Eating regularly with a friend who starts to eat junk food might cause you to indulge more often yourself, or you might start skipping gym sessions because a friend doesn’t feel in the mood any more.
The researchers suggested that seeing a friend become overweight can also alter our social perceptions.
A person might previously have a negative opinion about obesity, but once a friend becomes obese they realize that it’s still the same person, still their friend, just a little
Afghan President Hamid Karzai has forcefully condemned the killing of 14 civilians in the south-west of the country in a suspected Nato air strike.
Mr Karzai said his government had repeatedly asked the US to stop raids which end up killing Afghan civilians and this was his "last warning".
A Nato spokesman said a team had been sent to Helmand province to investigate the attack carried out on Saturday.
Afghan officials say all those killed were women and children.
The strike took place in Nawzad district after a US Marines base came under attack.
The air strike, targeted at insurgents, struck two civilian homes, killing two women and 12 children, reports
With 900 soldiers and civilian workers aboard, the U.S.A.T. Dorchester was sunk by German torpedoes off the coast of Greenland on Feb. 3, 1943. Among those on board were four military chaplains — two Protestants, a Catholic and a
Like the substance itself, the inky, impenetrable origins of our relationship with liquid petroleum are not exactly clear. There are records of the Sumerians and Babylonians using its crude form for their own inventive purposes more than 5,000 years ago; and the Egyptians put it to medical use, as wound dressing and as a laxative; but there was no historical eureka, no epiphany to definitively structure our understanding of what the subterranean resource could, and presently does, mean to our species. What is clear is that it has been present at every stage of what we would consider human civilization. Edward Burtynsky’s latest photographic exhibition at the Royal Ontario Museum explores what that substance’s cultivation and utilization means in our ravenous present, at a time where oil has been tapped to the point of scarcity nearly everywhere we have found it around the
To the many pregnant women I’ve counselled over the years, please accept my apologies for presuming that my advice could help you control your cravings.
As a nutritionist, I believed there were certain principles that applied to pregnant women to prevent cravings. Frequently I hear from colleagues (and have said myself) that a healthy, balanced body will not crave any unhealthy foods, even during pregnancy.
As is the case at any stage of life, cravings are an indication of imbalance or deficiency, right? So being the know-it-all that I am and having what I thought was a healthy, balanced body, upon discovering that I was pregnant, I purchased a fabulous new juicer and planned out my menus for the first
“Blowouts are very rare for the entire industry as well as for Imperial… the probability of a blowout is low — one in 285,000.” — Imperial SSRW submission, March 2010.
Prior to April 20, 2010, the oil industry treated blowouts like rare events with a predictable level of risk.
Then the improbable — a wellhead blowout on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig — killed 11 men and spilled 4.9 trillion barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The oil gushed for three months, wrecking havoc on the environment, wildlife and the economy.
A year after the largest marine oil spill in history, we must remember that the improbable remains not only possible, but beyond our ability to predict and control. Offshore oil spills are Black Swan Events — extremely hard-to-predict events that carry the risk of major
Living in Cambodia for the past year, I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’ve become a bit desensitized to a lot of what you might consider absurd or socially abnormal at the very least.
Front-page crimes are back-page news, human rights violations are the norm and corruption complacency.
Yet some things still manage to shock even the most hardened Third World veterans.
Case in point — last month, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced a new law, which was put forth as an effort to shake the country’s notorious pedophiliac reputation.
No foreigners over the age of 50 can marry any Cambodian women, even if they were both consenting
“Most eternal God, as Americans, We want to thank you for this great country. We are not proud, but humbled, that in your divine sovereignty we were born or naturalized in such a nation as this.
Thank you for those serving and who have served in the military that protect this country of ours. Thank you for those men and women in our military services who were willing to give their lives and who gave their lives to fight to keep this country free
Three of Canada’s small coterie of independent culture magazines recently hit milestones.
Geist, the great eccentric Vancouver-based magazine of ideas, fiction and memoirs anchored by editor Stephen Osborne’s passionately observed columns, published a 20th anniversary issue.
Featuring highlights from their two decades of publishing, plus Annabel Lyon on Edith Iglauer and George Ferthling on used bookstore proprietor Don Stewart, this is a must read.
This Magazine, the scrappy left-infused mag that has incubated talents from Naomi Klein to Clive Thompson to Gordon Laird, celebrated 45 years in print with an anniversary issue with 45 mini-profiles of “rebels, visionaries, trouble-makers and world-changers.”
As a This Magazine culture columnist way back when, I was delighted to contribute a piece ruminating on the work of Hatian-Quebec writer Dany
Today, I am going to throw out a bold statement on the state of overweight and obesity in Western societies: The time for primary prevention is over!
With two-thirds of the population now overweight or obese, we must accept that primary prevention has failed, the obesity horses are out of the the barn, there is no longer any point in locking the doors.
Rather, it’s now time to move on to secondary prevention; so let’s round up a posse and chase after the horses to catch them before they gallop off a cliff.
In highly developed countries around the world (including Canada and the US), we are beginning to see rates of overweight and obesity leveling off. This is not because these countries have now implemented strict measures to prevent obesity or to be taken as evidence that any such measures are working. I believe that the leveling off in the rates of overweight and obesity simply means that everyone in the Western world, who can be overweight or obese is now overweight or obese. The remaining third, that still has a normal weight, is overweight resistant and will never become obese, so let’s stop worrying about them.
Epidemiologists know, that in every epidemic comes a time when everyone who can be affected is
What you are about to read is an excerpt from a little picture book for adults I wrote. It is the story of someone trying to come up with the perfect graduation speech.
I love graduation speeches. I have always loved them, I will always love
Visualization is the courtesy of TheVisualMD.comBrought to you by Deepak Chopra, MD, Alexander Tsiaras, and TheVisualMD.com
“Oh my aching back!” is a complaint eight out of 10 adults will voice at some point in their lives (1). But for women who are pregnant, these words have special resonance. More than two thirds of women who are expecting experience lower back and pelvic pain during their pregnancy, usually in the second and third trimesters (2). For many, the pain is bad enough to interfere with sleep, work and other
Musicians and friends have been paying tribute to the poet and hip-hop pioneer Gil Scott-Heron, who has died at the age of 62.
Eminem, Talib Kweli and Snoop Dogg were among the rappers who acknowledged his influence after hearing the news.
Public Enemy member Chuck D said on Twitter: "We do what we do and how we do because of you."
Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah wrote: "Salute Gil Scott-Heron for his wisdom and poetry! May he rest in paradise."
Scott-Heron, often called the Godfather of Rap, died in a New York hospital.
Gil Scott-Heron released his final album, I'm New Here, in 2010
His material spanned soul, jazz, blues and the spoken word. His 1970s work heavily influenced the US hip-hop and rap scenes.
His work had a strong political element, and one of his most famous pieces was The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Eminem wrote on Twitter: "RIP Gil
We recently went into escrow on our house, but don’t yet have a new house to move into. As excited as we are about our move (just across the San Francisco Bay from Concord to Marin County), it feels pretty scary to not yet know exactly where we’ll be living next month.
With this big change and a few others coming soon, I’ve been noticing how I deal with and relate to change. I have somewhat of a love/hate relationship to change. I love the excitement, growth opportunity and newness of
A growing understanding of our universe reveals two remarkable dynamics at work that together intensify and expand our feeling for the spiritual nature of existence. The first dynamic is the universe story: A grand narrative that portrays humanity as descendants of a vast, creative lineage of life that stretches over nearly 14 billion years. The second dynamic is the universe emerging as a fresh creation at every moment.
While the universe story provides a stunning narrative of the “horizontal” unfolding across time, the insight of an emerging universe adds the “vertical” dimension of the universe continuously arising in
Before there were murals for Art Production Fund’s “After Hours: Murals on the Bowery”, there were… the shop owners. The project is presented in conjunction with the New Museum as part of their Festival of Ideas for the New City, sponsored by Sotheby’s with additional support from The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, but in order to get the murals installed we still needed to convince the shop owners. Mostly long time business people on the Bowery, these shop owners and managers possessed the one thing we wanted: the right to paint on their metal roll down
US defence firm Lockheed Martin says it has come under a significant cyber-attack, which took place last week.
Few details were available, but Lockheed said its security team had detected the threat quickly and ensured that none of its programmes had been compromised.
The Pentagon said it is working to establish the extent of the breach.
Lockheed makes fighter jets, warships and multi-billion dollar weapons systems sold
This week Bibi Netanyahu addressed Congress; President Obama extended the Patriot Act for another four years; prosecutors moved another step closer to indicting John Edwards for misusing campaign funds to cover up his affair with Rielle Hunter; and Newt Gingrich scrambled to reconcile his claims of being “very frugal” with his $500,000 revolving line of credit at Tiffany. Meanwhile, in a political version of The Hangover sequel, the GOP’s leadership, drunk on Tea (Party), did something wild and crazy — creating a plan to gut and privatize Medicare, and pressuring elected Republicans to vote for it — only to wake up in New York’s 26th District with a pounding morning-after headache.
read full news from www.huffingtonpost.com
US President Barack Obama is set to visit the tornado-hit city of Joplin in Missouri, where 142 people are now known to have been killed.
Mr Obama will meet survivors and see the damage for himself.
He will also take part in a memorial service and observe a minute of silence at 1741 local time (2141 GMT) – exactly a week after the tornado struck.
On Saturday, a list of 156 people missing dropped to 105 after more were accounted for, city officials said.
The tornado, with winds of 200mph (322km/h), was one of the most destructive in US history. It injured more than 900 people and carved a swathe of destruction through the city.
Honouring victims
Missouri Governor Jay Nixon has declared Sunday an official State Day of Prayer and Remembrance.
"I invite all Missourians to pause and remember their neighbours and draw upon the resources of their faith in support of their fellow Missourians," the governor said in a
In the end there is once dance you’ll do alone
-Jackson Browne
In 1991, the IBM plant in Lexington, Ky. became Lexmark. IBM offered employee severance packages. People could take the package or take a chance that Lexmark would keep them on.
Several IBM employees came to me for
Polls are typically associated with political issues, candidates, and public behaviors, but there’s also “politics” associated with reporting poll results. If there’s one thing the public should denounce it’s bad poll reporting because it leads to false information, a potentially false consensus, and lower trust in the source of the information.
Without question, ESPN’s job is to entertain, not produce good scientific polling; but, their recent poll on the NBA and LeBron James is just plain bulls!@#t. The article and the lack of details about the poll present a classic example of biased reporting, polling on the cheap, and making what scientists call a Type I error (a.k.a., false-positive, or saying “I found something” when it’s not really there).
According to the report, ESPN conducts a monthly telephone survey gauging topics like favorite NBA player, favorite overall athlete, and interest in the
I argued in a previous article why, despite America’s current obsession with government budget issues, the real key to bringing back our economy lies in a) fixing our trade deficit and b) restoring our capacity for innovation.
Although the former problem has now grabbed significant public attention, most Americans seem to think that our national capacity for innovation is healthy and without problems.
After all, we’re the home of Silicon Valley. So things must be going great, right?
Unfortunately, no, and for the same reason that, as I explained elsewhere, our manufacturing sector isn’t healthy. While it’s true that there’s an enormous amount of innovation (and manufacturing) going on in this country, “enormous” is not, in and of itself, an adequate quantity.
To figure out how much innovation (or manufacturing) is enough for America, the quantity must be measured against how much we need to maintain our living
Followers of Baha’u'llah — known as Baha’is — will commemorate the anniversary of his passing on Sunday, May 29.
The Ascension of Baha’u'llah — as it is called by Baha’is — is a Holy Day for six million people in 192 countries and territories. It was the day when the Founder of the Baha’i Faith concluded nearly 40 years of a ministry and imprisonment that led him as an exile through present-day Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Egypt, and finally to Akka, Israel, where he died under house arrest on May 29, 1892. The essence of his message was one of unity — that the world’s great religions all come from the same Source, and that the world’s peoples are part of the same human
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