the wei

Governor Corzine wants to delete the state’s Department of Agriculture. The role of the Department of Environmental Protection - which would be the new liaison for farmers under Corzine’s plan - doesn’t include caring for the needs of farms and farmers. But NJ is The Garden State! We need our farms, and what’s more, without them NJ will quickly turn into a cultural desert of mini-McMansions and strip malls. What a waste!

Robert Von Thun Jr., who grows vegetables, fruit and flowers on his South Brunswick farm, said farmers understand the need to streamline state government, but contends the Agriculture Department already runs efficiently.

The Agriculture Department oversees soil and water conservation, storm water and erosion, school nutrition programs, animal health, food safety, export markets, farmland preservation and commodity promotion.

New Jersey farms generate about $924 million per year and employ about 562,000 people, or nearly 12 percent of the state’s jobs.

. . . Mary Jo Herbert, of the Hopewell Heritage Farm, said the cut would make only a small dent in the state’s $33 billion budget but “would send the worst kind of signal.”

“I am a third-generation farmer and I, perhaps naively, believed that our state government was committed to preserving our farming heritage,” Herbert said.

Jump to North Jersey article.

Since last October, Singulair allergy and asthma medication labels have warned that the drug is linked to, “suicidal thinking and behaviour.” The Wall Street Journal reports:

Singulair, made by Merck & Co., is approved to treat asthma and allergy symptoms such as sneezing and stuffy noses, as well as to prevent exercise-induced asthma. The FDA said in a so-called early communication that it is reviewing postmarketing reports of behavior and mood changes, suicidal thoughts and actions, and actual suicides by patients who took Singulair. The regulator also asked Merck to look at its own database for signs of trouble.

Early communications are a recently developed tool the FDA uses to tell consumers and health-care professionals that the agency is looking into a particular safety concern but that it hasn’t reached any conclusions.

Jump to full WSJ article.

Your tax dollars are still subsidizing Wal-Mart’s health care crisis. Your good jobs are still being shipped overseas so Wal-Mart can import over 70% of its goods from communist China. Your neighbors are still earning poverty-level Wal-Mart wages so America’s richest family can line their pockets with Wal-Mart’s $12 billion in profits.

Are you living better yet?

If you’re not, visit Wake Up Walmart and have a look at their suggestions for what you can do about it.

An ornate and beautiful underground temple was discovered in secret in the hills of northern Italy in November of last year.

. . . the ‘Temples of Damanhur’ are not the great legacy of some long-lost civilisation, they are the work of a 57-year-old former insurance broker from northern Italy who, inspired by a childhood vision, began digging into the rock.

It all began in the early Sixties when Oberto Airaudi was aged ten. From an early age, he claims to have experienced visions of what he believed to be a past life, in which there were amazing temples.

Around these he dreamed there lived a highly evolved community who enjoyed an idyllic existence in which all the people worked for the common good.

More bizarrely still, Oberto appeared to have had a supernatural ability: the gift of “remote viewing” - the ability to travel in his mind’s eye to describe in detail the contents of any building.

“My goal was to recreate the temples from my visions,” he says.

Jump to full Daily Mail article

Referring to the cover of New York magazine’s 25 February issue:

At play . . . is a commercialism that is . . . creepier and more compelling: a picture of a nude Lindsay Lohan, less than a year out of her third go at rehab.

The image is causing a ruckus in the blogosphere, and not because her nipples can be ogled through the thin triangle of pink chiffon she clasps with her mouth like a schnauzer. The photo and eight more inside the magazine mimic, frame for frame, a handful of the fabled and ubiquitous pictures known as “The Last Sitting” that the photographer Bert Stern took of Marilyn Monroe in 1962, six weeks before she died of an overdose.

To make the echo that much more macabre, Stern has taken these pictures as well. As an editor’s note explains, he volunteered for the duty.

Jump to full International Herald Tribune article.

Hello Great American Public. I would like to introduce you to my wife of 25 years, on whom I’ve cheated for at least 17 of those years. Or is that 18? Well, no matter. The point is, that she never knew. And I didn’t cheat on her with anyone worth while. I didn’t have sex with one woman that I could have loved. All of them were nameless prostitutes.
 
Amazing figures with fantastic faces, a sense of style that’s out of this world, legs that never end and all of them had bazongas out to . . . look . . . here [puts hands about a foot in front of his chest]. But no names. And no love. Honestly, I didn’t even sleep with them. We “took care of business,” and then just shook hands and said goodbye.  

So maybe cheating isn’t exactly the right term. You have to love the other person for extramarital sex to be technically considered cheating, you know.
 
Well, anyway. As I was saying, here’s my lovely wife. I’m sorry for almost cheating on you, sweetheart. You forgive me, don’t you. Now, there, shake your head up and down. Show the Great American Public we’re not afraid of their scrutiny, because we haven’t really done anything wrong.  

Sure, Susan could have worn sexier clothes in public - and private. She could have left the children in the care of their nanny more often and helped me take my mind off of work in that special way that only real women can. Like women who get paid do. Sure, Susan could have used her mouth a little more creatively (you know what I mean).

But, what can I tell you, she’s my wife. I love her, and I’m sorry I didn’t act according to my standards. Say hello to the camera, honey, all of America is watching this apology.  

Smile! There you are. Good girl!  

Moko the dolphin came to the rescue on Wednesday of a whale and her calf in New Zealand who were in danger of death. The pygmy sperm whales beached themselves several times while rescue personnel tried to find a way to guide them safely back out to sea.

“They kept getting disorientated and stranding again,” said Smith, who was among the rescuers. “They obviously couldn’t find their way back past (the sandbar) to the sea.”
Then along came Moko, who approached the whales and appeared to lead them as they swam 200 yards along the beach and through a channel out to the open sea.

“Moko just came flying through the water and pushed in between us and the whales,” Juanita Symes, another rescuer, told The Associated Press. “She got them to head toward the hill, where the channel is. It was an amazing experience.”

Anton van Helden, a marine mammals expert at New Zealand’s national museum, Te Papa Tongarewa, said the reports of Moko’s rescue were “fantastic” but believable because the dolphins have “a great capacity for altruistic activities.”

Jump to full AP article.

On Amazon.com reviewers have a lot to say about the Playmobil Security Checkpoint toy.

Loosenut writes

I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said “that’s the worst security ever!”.

D. Forest adds

I remember missing a plane at age 8 while foreign airport security inspected my wallet for pennies. I cried and cried.

Now kids can reenact that excitement at home with their very own security checkpoint!

Ya makes some very strong statements, beginning with this one

Finally a toy that gets our kids used to living in a police state. Benjamin Franklin said that those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. But then again, he lived in France for awhile, so what did he know about anything.

In the related discussion, Jason Black puts a serious spin on why this toy isn’t appropriate for child’s play

Why is it disturbing? Several reasons. It’s disturbing because the toy teaches children that fear and paranoia are normal. That it’s right and correct for society to distrust its citizens the minute they buy an airline ticket. In a truly free society, citizens both have and exercise a responsibility to watch out for each other’s freedom. Everyone has the most freedom when everyone is actually acting to promote other people’s freedom as much as their own. This creates trust between citizens, too, and contributes to a healthy society. This toy undermines that idea, by suggesting that we should, in fact, distrust everyone around us to the extent that we should all have to have our shoes x-rayed before we may be deemed harmless.

Bob Crosby is putting years of experience in mechanical engineering and appropriate technologies to good use. He’s going to build a wood-burning stove that helps fight global warming …

Crosby said his stove will produce heat while providing fuel for cars, fertilizer for gardens and electricity for its own bellows.

A key fact scientific fact makes this possible.

Wood itself doesn’t burn. When exposed to extreme heat, wood gives off biogas, which subsequently burns. While these two occurrences typically happen in conjunction, this doesn’t need to be the case.

“You can design a stove that will extract the gas for use and use it instead of natural gas. And you’re left with charcoal which you can plant in your soil and enhance the productivity of the soil,” Crosby said.

Jump to full article.

In a comment on this article fenria14 wrote:

Gas stations sell a gallon of gasoline based on standard weight at a temp of 60 degrees F. As the temp rises, gasoline starts to evaporate into it’s vapor form, so if you’re buying a gallon of gas when it’s 80 degrees F outside, you’re paying for a full gallon but are instead getting less than a gallon of gas and gas vapor.

. . . if you live anywhere it regularly gets over 60 degrees F, (most of the US), you’ll get more for your money buying your gas at night or in the early morning when it’s close to 60 degrees F.