Pioneering Molecular Geneticist Says Yes on Prop 37

     Belinda Martineau is a long-time Davis resident, highly-respected by all who know her.  We have children the same age who grew up together in Davis.  Belinda worked on the first commercially available genetically modified food product, the Flavr-Savr tomato, back in the 1990s.  She is also active here in Yolo County and in the greater Sacramento area in promoting California's Proposition 37, the Right to Know initiative, that would require labeling of genetically modified food products.  If you want clear thinking about this issue from someone who has been involved in the genetic modification of food from the beginning, please read here.

Marriage = Biology not Bigotry

     You may have already seen this video, but I'll post it here just in case.  Nicely done, reasonable, fair, etc. It's not going to change anybody's mind all by itself, of course.  Nevertheless, it's worth watching ...or watching again, if you have seen it!
Click here for the video: Marriage = Biology not Bigotry

Life in Christ: A Catholic Catechism for Adults

     This book is wonderfully written.  Used as one of the basic texts in my adult initiation class Thursday nights at Holy Rosary Catholic Church in Woodland, CA.  I'm enjoying reading it and recommend it to all.

A Simple Fix for Farming

     Thanks to GM crops, industrial farmers now use 5, 000, 000, 000 pounds of pesticides per year in the U.S. (that's right--5 billion pounds in a year!!!).  No wonder the chemical companies don't want you to know about this study: "A Simple Fix for Farming".

   "It's becoming clear that we can grow all the food we need, and profitably, with far fewer chemicals. And I’m not talking about imposing some utopian vision of small organic farms on the world. Conventional agriculture can shed much of its chemical use — if it wants to."

     But first you have to know about it.  And guess who doesn't want that to happen?

Genetically Modified Food Rejected Again by the Indian People

      Thankfully, the fate of genetically modified (GM) food crops in India has been virtually sealed.  After the earlier damning report of the parliamentary committee on agriculture, a panel of technical experts appointed by the Supreme Court has recommended a 10-year moratorium on field trials of all GM food and termination of all ongoing trials of transgenic crops!  You probably won't find this news in the corporately-owned mainstream media in the U.S.  Even if you refuse to accept all the evidence indicating their detrimental effects on human health and the environment, GM crops demonstrably have not fulfilled one single promise made by their corporate owners. (If you are not familiar with this issue, I recommend that you start here with the facts compiled by the Union of Concerned Scientists USA.)  The people of India know full well that the problem with the food system is a problem of politics--greed and control-- and not with traditional agriculture.  Read the article here, please.

Call Planned Parenthood Today to Schedule an Imaginary Mammogram!

     You've undoubtedly heard the oft repeated claim that Planned Parenthood is America's “Number One Women’s Health Care Provider.”  That particular claim can only be true if you limit your definition of “women’s health care” to a certain surgical procedure.  The mainstream media often mention mammograms as one valuable service PP provides; President Obama made similar claims in the Presidential Debate this week.
     Well, after reading this article, you'll also definitely want to play the video clip as mombloggers from Live Action News call PP offices around the nation to ask for a mammogram!
The fun starts here.

St. Hildegard of Bingen

     She graced the Church as a philosopher, theologian, botanist, medical scientist, and musician...and now as a Doctor of the Church.  You can read an excellent article from CERC about St. Hildegard here..  You'll also be glad you took the time to listen to a musical clip that you can access here or in the article.  I would love to know more about her botanical and medical work and its integration with her faith.

Organic for Elites, GMOs for the rest of us!

Don't believe it?  Look here and here and here.

The Curriculum Reformation

     E.D. Hirsch, your ship has finally arrived.  City Journal's article by Sol Stern brings some of the best news this educator has heard in years--namely, that education reformers are finally recognizing that content-based education is exactly what today's students need, especially disadvantaged minority students.  As Stern points out, "Hirsch’s ideas were anathema in the education schools, where the nation’s future teachers, instead of learning about the evidence supporting content knowledge in the classroom, are force-fed a toxic diet of radical political tracts by “education theorists” like Paulo Freire, William Ayers, and Jonathan Kozol. (Progressive-education doctrine holds that inculcating disadvantaged children in social-justice activism is just as important as teaching them the three Rs.)"    Read more here.

Ann Romney Credits Organic Foods and Holistic Medicine for Her Recovery

    

     Why has the White House served virtually nothing but organic foods to the First Families since the second Clinton administration, while every President since 1996 has promoted unlabeled GM food for the rest of us?  (That's the year GM foods were first produced, right down the road from me at UC Davis, with Monsanto funding.)  At present, the race is neck-to-neck between Romney and Obama both in the polls and in terms of not doing anything to protect or promote safer, more healthful organic foods for average Americans. Instead, both of them, while on organic diets themselves, promote untested GE foods for the masses.  Mitt Romney has his own galley on Romney Air.  Sources close to the campaign say the shelves are stocked with a wide variety of healthy fare. Kashi cereals, hummus, pita, as well as organic applesauce.  Everything's organic, including the ingredients to Romney's favorite snack, peanut butter and honey sandwiches.
     Even more interesting, Ann Romney has credited organic food with defeating her multiple sclerosis!  After realizing steroids were doing more harm than good, Mrs. Romney was introduced to several practitioners of holistic medicine, who persuaded her to adopt alternative therapies. She now eats organic foods and very little meat. She practices reflexology and undergoes acupuncture treatments. She credits this lifestyle with turning her health around.
     So, the obvious question is: why do "We the People" have no food advocates in Washington, D.C.?  After promising to label GM food, Obama appointed Monsanto VP Michael Taylor as head of the FDA where he wields near absolute power over our national agricultural issues!
     If you support free market economy and food security, please read more here and here!!!

A Rare Scientific Discovery: It Solves an Ethical Problem Instead of Creating One!

     "Once again, experience shows that ethical science is good science."  So says Michael Cook in a wonderful article on MercatorNet about this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine.  Shinya Yamanaka discovered that adult skin cells can revert to stem cells, thus ending the need for human embryonic stem cells for medical research.  He describes the breathtaking incident that inspired his work:
     In an interview with the New York Times in 2007, Yamanaka remembered one day years before when he paid a social visit to a friend's IVF clinic. There, he peered through a microscope. "When I saw the embryo, I suddenly realised there was such a small difference between it and my daughters," said the father of two. "I thought, we can’t keep destroying embryos for our research. There must be another way."
     It's a fascinating and inspiring article.  Read it here.

The End of Men...and Women

     If masculinity is doomed then so is femininity, as Carolyn Moynihan of MercatorNet points out in her article reviewing the book, The End of Men and the Rise of Women by Hanna Rosin.  The irony is that Rosin believes that the end of gender roles is a good thing--for women.  Both the book and her presentation in a video linked in the article smugly welcome the "evolutionary" arrival of not just the Nietchean Superman, but what seems to Rosin to be the ultimate Superperson, albeit in a biologically female body.  Rosin points out that women in the new economy no longer need men. In fact, men had better become more like females to remain competitive, or more precisely, to be relevant at all.  As Moynihan brilliantly sums up, Rosin welcomes a (Brave?) new world where we see "the reduction of both sexes to a state of plasticity that makes them perfect ciphers for 'the economy' (the political and financial establishment). That way lies the end of the human race itself."  Read it here.