Why being active is so important

Exercise Grows New Brain Cells

Jeanna BrynerLiveScience Staff WriterLiveScience.comThu Jun 28, 12:35 PM ET
Exercise stimulates the growth of new brain cells, a new study on rats finds. The new cells could be the key to why working out relieves depression.
Previous research showed physical exercise can have antidepressant effects, but until now scientists didn’t fully understand how it worked.
Astrid Bjornebekk of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and her colleagues studied rats that had been genetically tweaked to show depressive behaviors, plus a second group of control rats. For 30 days, some of the rats had free access to running wheels and others did not.
Then, to figure out if running turned the down-and-out rats into happy campers, the scientists used a standard “swim test.” They measured the amount of time the rats spent immobile in the water and the time they spent swimming around in active mode. When depressed, rats spend most of the time not moving.
“In the depressed rats, running had an antidepressant-like effect after running for 30 days,” Bjornebekk told LiveScience. The once-slothful rodents spent much more time in active swimming compared with the non-running depressed rats.
The researchers also examined the hippocampus region of the brain, involved in learning and memory. Neurons there increased dramatically in the depressed rats after wheel-running.
Past studies have found that the human brain’s hippocampus shrinks in depressed individuals, a phenomenon thought to cause some of the mental problems often linked with depression.
“The hippocampus formation is one of the regions they have actually seen structural changes in depressed patients,” Bjornebekk said.
Running had a similar effect as common antidepressants called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) on lifting depression.
The research is published in the International Journal of Neuropsychopharmacology.

This is an actual book

No offense to any Democrats, but what in the WORLD is this? Reminds me of Soviet propoganda for communism.

Why Dogs Need to Ride IN the Car

"Before beginning the (12 hour) drive, Mitt Romney put Seamus, the family's hulking Irish setter, in a dog carrier and attached it to the station wagon's roof rack. He'd built a windshield for the carrier, to make the ride more comfortable for the dog.

Then Romney put his boys on notice: He would be making predetermined stops for gas, and that was it.

The ride was largely what you'd expect with five brothers, ages 13 and under, packed into a wagon they called the ''white whale.''

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ''Dad!'' he yelled. ''Gross!'' A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who'd been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.

As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management."

Seems Mickey's become a terrorist

A program using a Mickey Mouse-like character to urge Palestinian children to fight Israel and the West and work for world Islamic domination has been pulled off Hamas' television station for review, the Palestinian information minister said Wednesday.

Mustafa Barghouti said the use of the cartoon character in such a role represented a mistaken approach to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation.
Barghouti said that following a request from his ministry, the program was pulled from the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa TV and placed under review.
"I demanded that Hamas suspend the program and they have withdrawn it, because it was wrong to use a program directed at children to convey political messages," he said.
In the statement, Barghouti said his ministry would continue to ensure freedom of expression and freedom of the press, but addded that, "Any media outlet that breaks Palestinian broadcasting law will be penalized by the Information Ministry."
Barghouti complained that the story continued to receive attention by some American television stations after it was resolved, and that media did not broadcast video of Israeli human rights violations supplied by his ministry in recent weeks.
Israel has long complained that the Palestinian airwaves are filled with incitement.
"You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists," the cartoon character named Farfour squeaked on a recent episode of the show, entitled "Tomorrow's Pioneers."
"We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers."
Children call in to the show, many singing Hamas anthems about fighting Israel. Disney declined comment on "Tomorrow's Pioneers," but a daughter of the U.S. entertainment firm's founder cried foul. "The world loves children and this [show] is just going against the grain of humanity," Diane Disney Miller told the New York Daily News.
"What we're dealing with here is pure evil and you can't ignore that."

He Just Wanted to Play..

A NATURE lover north of Sydney has saved a catfish stuck at the surface of a lake after swallowing a basketball.

The man saw a basketball bobbing on the surface of Lake Macquarie and went to investigate.
Much to his surprise, he discovered a flathead catfish that had bitten off more than it could chew by trying to swallow a basketball.
The fish was completly exhausted from trying to dive with its flotsome fare, which popped it back to the surface each time it tried to dive.
The concerned rescuer tried unsuccessfully to free the hapless fish from its unfortunate predicament.
Finally, he and his wife improvised a solution by slashing, and thereby deflating, the basketball.

How About a New Civil War?

Seems America is divided. Blue is democrat voting, red is republican. Look how gigantic LA, Chicago, and New York's voter number bars are.

He's stealthy as a B2 bomber..

Apparantly, this inmate escaped from prison after somehow shooting his guard. He was identified and arrested two days later. It's a wonder people knew what he looked like.

Finally, someone realizes the answer is NOT to give her more attention. I've told my friends this in the past, but she epitomizes everything I am not looking for in a woman.

By JOHN ROGERS, Associated Press Writer Tue Jun 26, 9:59 PM ET

LOS ANGELES - Paris Hilton gets out of jail on Tuesday and she won't be on the cover of US Weekly on Friday? How, short of the Apocalypse, is this possible?
"When it came down to it, the staff and I felt what I believe a lot of people in America are feeling. Which is just enormous Paris fatigue," US Weekly Editor Janice Min told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
As a result, Hilton not only won't be on the cover, there won't even be a mention of her in the magazine.
"I don't think," Min joked, "we even mention the city of Paris."
That was no easy task, she said, adding US Weekly editors had to comb carefully through every beauty story and every fashion item to make sure there wasn't an offhand mention of the hotel heiress somewhere.
The Associated Press put in place a similar Hilton moratorium for a week earlier this year, just to see what would happen.

45 million, no wait, 8 million

"We hear a lot these days about 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance.

...According to the US Census Bureau, 17 million of those without health insurance live in households having over $50,000 in annual income. That's 38% of the uninsured in America.(2)

In fact, 9 million - 20% of the uninsured - reside in households pulling down more than $75K a year. (3)

...And then there are the young invincibles. Over 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34. (4) They spend more than four times as much on alcohol, tobacco, entertainment and dining out as they do for out-of-pocket spending on health care.(5) They represent 40% of the uninsured in America.

...14 million people without health insurance are eligible for government health care programs like Medicaid and S-CHIP but choose not to enroll. (7) They represent %31 - nearly one third - of the uninsured in America.

...The U.S. has 12 million illegal immigrants who don't buy health insurance but still get health care.

...So, how many are truly uninsured? Around eight million. Just 18% of the 45 million that we hear about so often."

I vote for Sticky Rice!

Hmm...

Jun 26, 8:45 AM (ET)

BOSTON (AP) - Mitt Romney's been called many things as he runs for president, but chances are "Sticky Rice" isn't one of them.

That's how his name might be read on some ballots, according to state Secretary William Galvin.

Galvin says the federal Justice Department is pressuring Boston election officials to translate candidates' names into Chinese characters in precincts with prominent Chinese-speaking populations.

But there's more than a little lost in translation, according to Galvin.

Since there's no Chinese character for "Romney," translators have resorted to finding characters that most closely match the sound of each syllable in the name.

The problem is that there are many different characters that could be used to match the sound of each syllable, and many different meanings for each character.

So Mitt Romney could be read as "Sticky Rice" or "Uncooked Rice." Fred Thompson might be read as "Virtue Soup." And Barack Obama could be read as "Oh Bus Horse."

Galvin's own name could be read at least two different ways, as "High Prominent Noble Educated" or "Stick Mosquito."

But perhaps the most perplexing translation would be for Boston Mayor Thomas Menino's name, which could be read as "Sun Moon Rainbow Farmer" or "Imbecile," or "Barbarian Mud No Mind of His Own."

"To try to make rhymes or approximations in Chinese, you can have unintended negative meanings," Galvin said. "It leads to confusion. You can render it with a good meaning or a bad meaning."

To add to the confusion, Galvin said, the ballots have to be offered in two major Chinese dialects, Mandarin and Cantonese, leading to even more potential variations of candidates's names.

But advocates for minority voting rights say Galvin's objections are misdirected. If the translations are awkward, they say, the candidates should be free to offer variations, or look to the way Asian language newspapers already transliterate their names.

"We are looking to make sure Asian Americans are able to vote for their candidates of choice," Glenn Magpantay, staff attorney of the New York-based Asian American Defense Fund, told the Boston Globe. "This is difficult to do when voters with limited English proficiency cannot find those candidates."

Cynthia Magnuson, spokeswoman to the Justice Department's civil rights division, said a system is needed to let voters with limited English vote without the aid of election monitors.

"This will allow them to vote independently," she said.

Galvin said he supports translating the bulk of the ballots into Chinese as required by a 2005 agreement with the justice department, as long as the names of the candidates' names remain in Roman letters.

Longer but totally worth the read

Scoring The War

INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY

Posted 6/25/2007

War And The Media: Day after day, Americans are treated to a never-ending, mind-numbing parade of statistics about the number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. But what about the terrorists?

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Related Topics: Media & Culture | Iraq

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One way the media distort Americans' view of the ongoing war against terrorists is by focusing on just one side in the conflict: ours. Whether it's the daily body count or alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, the public could be forgiven for thinking the U.S. is not only losing the war, but behaving badly in doing so.
But neither is true. This year, for instance, the U.S. has killed roughly 650 terrorists a month, according to published reports and Defense Department estimates. That compares with about 37 U.S. combat deaths per month, through May.
The ratio, thus, is about 18 terrorists killed in combat for every allied soldier killed. And that doesn't include the current offensive in Diayala Province, Operation Arrowhead Ripper, which dispatched 159 enemy combatants in just the first five days.
Since the war began, we've lost about 70 troops a month. This compares with 526 a month in Vietnam, more than 900 a month in Korea and 6,639 a month during World War II.
In other words, by any meaningful metric employed, the U.S. is winning this war. But it will never be reported that way.
This is nothing new. Go back to Vietnam. Remember the "five o'clock follies," when the press routinely ridiculed Pentagon casualty reports? The Vietnam syndrome continues to this day.
Only now it's the media misreporting the numbers. Just weeks into the war in 2003, we started hearing the now-oft-repeated canard that Iraq was worse off with the U.S. than with Saddam. This is so plainly wrong that it must be called what it is: a lie.
And yet, it's repeated to this day. Here again, the numbers tell the tale. In his 24 years as Iraq's Stalinist supreme leader, Saddam Hussein killed at least 2 million people. That averages out to about 6,944 a month for the better part of three decades.
Most responsible estimates show that, at most, 60,000 or so civilians have been killed since the war started, about 1,200 a month.
Moreover, no one doubts that Saddam was responsible for all 2 million of his deaths. In the case of the U.S., most of the civilian deaths come from al-Qaida and other terrorists, not U.S. troops.
We got to thinking about this as a result of Operation Arrowhead Ripper, which began a week ago. It involves some 10,000 U.S. troops trying to rid Diyala Province of al-Qaida terrorists. It's one of the biggest, if not the biggest, operations since the war began.
And yet, when we looked for news of how this huge effort in the war on terror was going, the focus was all on American fatalities.
Since Vietnam, the media have approached each military conflict with the same template: "U.S. Wrong, Foe Right." And they've reported accordingly. That's why wanton murderers of women and children are generously called "fighters" by our own media, while errors by our own troops are tarred as war crimes.
So, in a sense, we are losing a war — the war for Americans' hearts and minds, fought daily on America's TV screens and front pages. But in the real war, our troops are fighting bravely and well — and it's about time someone started keeping score.

If the USA was the world...

This is a pretty neat map. It shows how much each state makes economically in comparison to other countries. Click on it to make it bigger, and go Malaysia!

Where I am for the Summer

I don't live in that barn of course, but see those Pintler mountains back there? Yeah I live on a ranch right at the foot of those.

Maybe Rats CAN cook!

Go see Ratatouille on Friday....just do it, it looks amazing.

Global Worming

Watch out for them worms!

06/25/2007 09:20 AM ID: 63227
Scientist Implicates Worms in Global Warming
	Jim Frederickson, the research director at the Composting Association has called for data on worms and composting to be re-examined after a German study found that worms produce greenhouse gases 290 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Worms are being used commercially to compost organic material and is in preference to putting it into the landfill. The German government wants 45% of all waste to be composted by 2015. "Everybody... thinks they can do no harm but they contribute to global warming. People are looking into alternative waste treatments but we have to make sure that we are not jumping from the frying pan into the fire," said Frederickson.

Military mess up...

Thought these were hilarious. It's from Nancy Pelosi and the Official Democrat Party's websites. Seems that black rank on the "American Soldier" actually says Canada in bright gold letters. And, that African American soldier standing there, seems he is Canadian. Even worse, it's a stock photo from 5 years ago. Wow and whoops.

Welcome one and all!

Hey, just got this thing kicked off. I've been assigned critically examining blogs for so long as a volunteer, I thought I ought to make my own just for the fun of it. Feel free to post about whatever.