Someone call DCF!

Ok, this is one of the saddest and most fraked up things I’ve ever read:

Taking a deep drag on his cigarette while resting on the steering wheel of his truck, he looks like a parody of a middle-aged lorry driver.

But the image covers up a much more disturbing truth: At just the tender age of two, Ardi Rizal's health has been so ruined by his 40-a-day habit that he now struggles to move by himself.

The four-stone Indonesia toddler is certainly far too unfit to run around with other children - and his condition is  set to rapidly deteriorate.

But, despite local officials' offer to buy the Rizal family a new car if the boy quits, his parents feel unable to stop him because he throws massive tantrums if they don't indulge him. 

His mother, Diana, 26, wept: 'He's totally addicted. If he doesn't get cigarettes, he gets angry and screams and batters his head against the wall. He tells me he feels dizzy and sick.'

Ardi will smoke only one brand and his habit costs his parents £3.78 a day in Musi Banyuasin, in Indonesia's South Sumatra province.

But in spite of this, his fishmonger father Mohammed, 30, said: 'He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem.'

Ardi's youth is the extreme of a disturbing trend. Data from the Central Statistics Agency showed 25 per cent of Indonesian children aged three to 15 have tried cigarettes, with 3.2 per cent of those active smokers.

The percentage of five to nine year olds lighting up increased from 0.4 per cent in 2001 to 2.8 per cent in 2004, the agency reported.

Child advocates are speaking out about the health damage to children from second-hand smoke, and the growing pressure on them to smoke in a country where one-third of the population uses tobacco and single cigarettes can be bought for a few cents.

However, imposing a non-smoking message will be difficult in Indonesia, the world's third-largest tobacco consumer.

Health Minister Endang Sedyaningsih conceded turning young people off smoking will be difficult in a country where it is perceived as positive because cigarette companies sponsor everything from scholarships to sporting events.

Absolutely pathetic.

“'He looks pretty healthy to me. I don't see the problem.”  That father should be shot.

Wiped out

Looks like we caused another species to be lost forever:

The Alaotra grebe, also called the rusty grebe, had been highly vulnerable as it was found only in Lake Alaotra, eastern Madagascar, according to the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the Red List of endangered species.
The grebe was wiped out by habitat destruction, by the introduction of a carnivorous fish called the snakehead murrel and by nylon gill-nets which accidentally caught and drowned many birds.
"No hope now remains for this species. It is another example of how human actions can have unforeseen consequences," said Leon Bennun, director of science at BirdLife International.
The IUCN sounded the alarm for wetland birds, imperilled by the draining of marshlands and by alien species that are introduced for food.
"Invasive alien species have caused extinctions around the globe and remain one of the major threats to birds and other biodiversity," Mr Bennun said.

So sad.

Fun signs

My mother-in-law sent me these.  Some are hysterical:

Sign over a Gynecologist's Office:

"Dr. Jones, at your cervix."

**************************

In a Podiatrist's office:

"Time wounds all heels."

**************************

On a Septic Tank Truck:

Yesterday's Meals on Wheels

**************************

At a Proctologist's door:

"To expedite your visit, please back in. "

**************************

On a Plumber's truck:

"We repair what your husband fixed."

**************************

On another Plumber's truck:

"Don't sleep with a drip. Call your plumber."

**************************

On a Church's Bill board:

"7 days without God makes one weak."

**************************

At a Tire Shop in Milwaukee :

"Invite us to your next blowout."

**************************

At a Towing company:

"We don't charge an arm and a leg. We want tows.."

**************************

On an Electrician's truck:

"Let us remove your shorts."

******** ******************

In a Nonsmoking Area:

"If we see smoke, we will assume you are on fire and take appropriate action."

**************************

On a Maternity Room door:

"Push. Push. Push."

**************************

At an Optometrist's Office:

"If you don't see what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."

**************************

On a Taxidermist's window:

"We really know our stuff."

**************************

On a Fence:

"Salesmen welcome! Dog food is expensive!"

**************************

At a Car Dealership:

"The best way to get back on your feet - miss a car payment."

**************************

Outside a Muffler Shop:

"No appointment necessary. We hear you coming.."

**************************

In a Veterinarian's waiting room:

"Be back in 5 minutes. Sit! Stay!"

**************************

At the Electric Company

"We would be delighted if you send in your payment.

However, if you don't, you will be."

**************************

In a Restaurant window:

"Don't stand there and be hungry; come on in and get fed up."

**************************

In the front yard of a Funeral Home:

"Drive carefully. We'll wait."

**************************

At a Propane Filling Station:

"Thank heaven for little grills."

**************************

And don't forget the sign at a

CHICAGO RADIATOR SHOP:

"Best place in town to take a leak."

**********************

Sign on the back of another Septic Tank Truck:

"Caution - This Truck is full of Political Promises"

Facebook’s trickiness

A wonderful cartoon by Patrick Corrigan that exemplifies the perils of over-sharing on social networking sites:

Weatherman

I’d sure watch the weather forecast more often if it were delivered like this:

A world without fish?

That’s what we’ll be living in in a few decades unless we change our ways now:

The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans by 2050 without fundamental restructuring of the fishing industry, UN experts said Monday.
"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told journalists in New York.
A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and fish are given protected zones -- ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.
Collapse of fish stocks is not only an environmental matter.
One billion people, mostly from poorer countries, rely on fish as their main animal protein source, according to the UN.
According to the UN, 30 percent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning they yield less than 10 percent of their former potential, while virtually all fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.
The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish -- with little attempt to allow the fish populations to recover.
Fishing fleet capacity is "50 to 60 percent" higher than it should be, Sukhdev said.

Lifeless oceans are a very real possibility.  After all, fish eat fish.  Once a species is wiped out, whatever ate it will starve if it can’t find an alternative food source.  And on and on.
Why are we not able to live in equilibrium with our world?

Destroying nature will cost us dearly

A new study points out how much the loss of nature and biodiversity is going to cost humankind when we’ll have to find ways to do what nature now does for us for free:

The Earth's ongoing nature losses may soon begin to hit national economies, a major UN report has warned.

The third Global Biodiversity Outlook (GBO-3) says that some ecosystems may soon reach "tipping points" where they rapidly become less useful to humanity.

Such tipping points could include rapid dieback of forest, algal takeover of watercourses and mass coral reef death.

"We continue to lose biodiversity at a rate never before seen in history - extinction rates may be up to 1,000 times higher than the historical background rate."

The global abundance of vertebrates - the group that includes mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians and fish - fell by about one-third between 1970 and 2006, the UN says.

While progress is being made in some regions, the global failure means an ever-growing number of species are on the Red List of Threatened Species.

"Twenty-one percent of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians, 12% of all known birds (and)... 27% of reef-building corals assessed... are threatened with extinction," said Bill Jackson, deputy director general of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains the Red List.

The relationship between nature loss and economic harm is much more than just figurative, the UN believes.

An ongoing project known as The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) is attempting to quantify the monetary value of various services that nature provides for us.

These services include purifying water and air, protecting coasts from storms and maintaining wildlife for ecotourism.

The rationale is that when such services disappear or are degraded, they have to be replaced out of society's coffers.

TEEB has already calculated the annual loss of forests at $2-5 trillion, dwarfing costs of the banking crisis.

"Many economies remain blind to the huge value of the diversity of animals, plants and other lifeforms and their role in healthy and functioning ecosystems," said Achim Steiner, executive director of the UN Environment Programme (Unep).

"Humanity has fabricated the illusion that somehow we can get by without biodiversity, or that it is somehow peripheral to our contemporary world.

"The truth is we need it more than ever on a planet of six billion heading to over nine billion people by 2050."

The more that ecosystems become degraded, the UN says, the greater the risk that they will be pushed "over the edge" into a new stable state of much less utility to humankind.

For example, freshwater systems polluted with excess agricultural fertiliser will suffocate with algae, killing off fish and making water unfit for human consumption.

Will we listen?  Will our politicians make the hard choices?

Our tainted foods

We’re told time and again to eat vegetables and fruit in order to be healthy, but with all the pesticides used in agriculture nowadays we’re eating a lot of stuff that’s not good for us at all:

Of the 1.2 billion pounds of pesticides used annually in the US, less than .01% actually reach their intended targets--the bugs! Obviously they are completely contaminating our food, and the consequences are disastrous, with numerous national and international government agencies acknowledging the connection to various health problems--nervous system toxicity, cancer, hormone system effects, and irritation of skin, eyes, and lungs among them.

Unfortunately, due to cost and availability, organic food which is grown without any pesticides, is not a plausible option for every family. Thankfully, the Environmental Working Group has put together a ranked list of the 49 most purchased produce items, based on laboratory tests conducted by the US Department Of Agriculture Pesticide Testing Program. So if you can't get organic, at least you know which foods are the safest, and which should be avoided.

View the EWG's full list of 49 produce items here and a handy pocket shopping guide with the "Dirty Dozen" worst and "Clean 15" best of the list here.

Curious about what’s the worst vegetable you could possibly eat?

Celery.

Thankfully, I don’t like celery, but it’s followed by peaches and strawberries, two of my favorite fruits.  Onions top the ‘best’ list, and I love onions, but how am I supposed to replace a nice serving of strawberries with an onion?

Will Kemp’s ridleys go extinct?

Kemp’s ridley is the smallest species of sea turtle and has been around for millions of years.  It was around at the time of the dinosaurs!!
Unfortunately, since it exists only in the Gulf of Mexico, it might vanish forever thanks to BP’s carelessness and humankind’s greed in general.
From NYTimes.com:

Federal officials said Tuesday that since April 30, 10 days after the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, they have recorded 156 sea turtle deaths; most of the turtles were Kemp’s ridleys. And though they cannot say for sure that the oil was responsible, the number is far higher than usual for this time of year, the officials said.
The Deepwater Horizon spill menaces a wide variety of marine life, from dolphins to blue crabs. On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expanded a fishing ban in the gulf because of the spreading oil. But of the endangered marine species that frequent gulf waters, only the Kemp’s ridley relies on the region as its sole breeding ground.
Since the Ixtoc 1 spill, the turtles, whose numbers fell to several hundred in the 1980s, have made a fragile comeback, and there are now at least 8,000 adults, scientists say. But the oil gushing from the well could change that.
The turtles may be more vulnerable than any other large marine animals to the oil spreading through the gulf. An ancient creature driven by instinct, it forages for food along the coast from Louisiana to Florida, in the path of the slick.
“It lives its entire life cycle in the gulf, which is why we are so critically concerned,” said Dr. Pat Burchfield, a scientist at the Gladys Porter Zoo in Brownsville, Tex., who has studied the turtle for 38 years.
The Kemp’s ridley is millions of years old; its ancestors once swam with dinosaurs. Sandy olive in color, Kemp’s ridleys are the smallest of the sea turtles, only about two feet across. Although the turtles have been spotted along the Atlantic Seaboard, they return to the warm waters of the gulf to breed.
As recently as the 1940s, they were abundant in the Mexican gulf waters. Tens of thousands at a time would come ashore on the same day at Rancho Nuevo, a remote Mexican beach in Tamaulipas State, to lay their eggs in the synchronized pattern unique to their breed. But pollution, the collection of eggs for food and aphrodisiacs and the nets of shrimp trawlers depleted their numbers.
Then came the blowout on the Ixtoc 1. The deepwater well dumped three million barrels of crude into the gulf, covering the beach at Rancho Nuevo. Nine thousand hatchlings had to be airlifted to nearby beaches. Although the role of the oil in killing the turtles was never confirmed, by 1985, there were fewer than 1,000 Kemp’s ridleys left.

I just happen to love turtles, of any kind, so the possibility of losing a whole species breaks my heart.

Missing Lost

A nice ode to the great TV show that just ended: