Doozler

If the shoe fits...

2011-09-16T20:57:00.001-07:00

Chinese condoms too small for South Africans: report

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A South African court has blocked the government from buying 11 million Chinese condoms, saying they are too small, a newspaper reported Friday.

The finance ministry had awarded a contract to a firm called Siqamba Medical, which planned to buy the Phoenurse condoms from China, the Beeld newspaper said.

A rival firm, Sekunjalo Investments Corporation, turned to the High Court in Pretoria after losing the bid, arguing that their condoms were 20 percent larger than the Chinese ones.

Judge Sulet Potterill blocked the deal with Siqamba, ruling that the condoms were too small, made from the wrong material, and were not approved by the World Health Organisation, the paper said.

South Africa has more HIV infections than any country in the world, with 5.38 million of its 50 million people carrying the virus.

Comment from Doozler:

We thought a condom-minimum was a building.

If you were building a parking lot for a flying saucer, what shape would it be?

2011-09-16T20:08:00.000-07:00

Visible Only From Above, Mystifying 'Nazca Lines' Discovered in Mideast

By Owen Jarus | LiveScience.com – Thu, Sep 15, 2011

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They stretch from Syria to Saudi Arabia, can be seen from the air but not the ground, and are virtually unknown to the public.

They are the Middle East's own version of the Nazca Lines — ancient "geolyphs," or drawings, that span deserts in southern Peru — and now, thanks to new satellite-mapping technologies, and an aerial photography program in Jordan, researchers are discovering more of them than ever before. They number well into the thousands.

Referred to by archaeologists as "wheels," these stone structures have a wide variety of designs, with a common one being a circle with spokes radiating inside. Researchers believe that they date back to antiquity, at least 2,000 years ago. They are often found on lava fields and range from 82 feet to 230 feet (25 meters to 70 meters) across. [See gallery of wheel structures]

"In Jordan alone we've got stone-built structures that are far more numerous than (the) Nazca Lines, far more extensive in the area that they cover, and far older," said David Kennedy, a professor of classics and ancient history at the University of Western Australia.

Kennedy's new research, which will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Archaeological Science, reveals that these wheels form part of a variety of stone landscapes. These include kites (stone structures used for funnelling and killing animals); pendants (lines of stone cairns that run from burials); and walls, mysterious structures that meander across the landscape for up to several hundred feet and have no apparent practical use.

His team's studies are part of a long-term aerial reconnaissance project that is looking at archaeological sites across Jordan. As of now, Kennedy and his colleagues are puzzled as to what the structures may have been used for or what meaning they held. [History's Most Overlooked Mysteries]

Fascinating structures

Kennedy's main area of expertise is in Roman archaeology, but he became fascinated by these structures when, as a student, he read accounts of Royal Air Force pilots flying over them in the 1920s on airmail routes across Jordan. "You can't not be fascinated by these things," Kennedy said.

Indeed, in 1927 RAF Flight Lt. Percy Maitland published an account of the ruins in the journal Antiquity. He reported encountering them over "lava country" and said that they, along with the other stone structures, are known to the Bedouin as the "works of the old men."

Kennedy and his team have been studying the structures using aerial photography and Google Earth, as the wheels are hard to pick up from the ground, Kennedy said.

"Sometimes when you're actually there on the site you can make out something of a pattern but not very easily," he said. "Whereas if you go up just a hundred feet or so it, for me, comes sharply into focus what the shape is."

The designs must have been clearer when they were originally built. "People have probably walked over them, walked past them, for centuries, millennia, without having any clear idea what the shape was."

(The team has created an archive of images of the wheels from various sites in the Middle East.)

What were they used for?

So far, none of the wheels appears to have been excavated, something that makes dating them, and finding out their purpose, more difficult. Archaeologists studying them in the pre-Google Earth era speculated that they could be the remains of houses or cemeteries. Kennedy said that neither of these explanations seems to work out well.

"There seems to be some overarching cultural continuum in this area in which people felt there was a need to build structures that were circular."

Some of the wheels are found in isolation while others are clustered together. At one location, near the Azraq Oasis, hundreds of them can be found clustered into a dozen groups. "Some of these collections around Azraq are really quite remarkable," Kennedy said.

In Saudi Arabia, Kennedy's team has found wheel styles that are quite different: Some are rectangular and are not wheels at all; others are circular but contain two spokes forming a bar often aligned in the same direction that the sun rises and sets in the Middle East.

The ones in Jordan and Syria, on the other hand, have numerous spokes and do not seem to be aligned with any astronomical phenomena. "On looking at large numbers of these, over a number of years, I wasn't struck by any pattern in the way in which the spokes were laid out," Kennedy said.

Cairns are often found associated with the wheels. Sometimes they circle the perimeter of the wheel, other times they are in among the spokes. In Saudi Arabia some of the cairns look, from the air, like they are associated with ancient burials.

Dating the wheels is difficult, since they appear to be prehistoric, but could date to as recently as 2,000 years ago. The researchers have noted that the wheels are often found on top of kites, which date as far back as 9,000 years, but never vice versa. "That suggests that wheels are more recent than the kites," Kennedy said.

Amelia Sparavigna, a physics professor at Politecnico di Torino in Italy, told Live Science in an email that she agrees these structures can be referred to as geoglyphs in the same way as the Nazca Lines are. "If we define a 'geoglyph' as a wide sign on the ground of artificial origin, the stone circles are geoglyphs," Sparavignawrote in her email.

The function of the wheels may also have been similar to the enigmatic drawings in the Nazca desert. [Science as Art: A Gallery]

"If we consider, more generally, the stone circles as worship places of ancestors, or places for rituals connected with astronomical events or with seasons, they could have the same function of [the] geoglyphs of South America, the Nazca Lines for instance. The design is different, but the function could be the same," she wrote in her email.

Kennedy said that for now the meaning of the wheels remains a mystery. "The question is what was the purpose?"

Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on Twitter @livescience and on Facebook.

Comments from Doozer:

Love this kind of article. So much better than Lindsay Lohan's most recent DUI adventure or news from the same war the U. S. has been in since we were kids.

These huge circles are intriguing. Interestingly enough, the pattern they make resembles the layout of many modern airports when seen from above. Come to think of it, circles make sense if the vehicle trying to land is also a circle. Can you say flying saucer? Dare we even mention it?

Several decades ago, Chariots of the Gods was a best seller that raised questions that are still very relevant. Wonder why the space agencies are not trying to answer these questions?

Honest. Man bites off eyebrow in fight. Lawyer to blame Joan Crawford.

2011-09-14T19:51:00.000-07:00

Man accused of biting off man's eyebrow in fight

AP – 2 hrs 1 min ago

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BUENA PARK, Calif. (AP) — Authorities in Southern California say a man bit off another man's eyebrow during a fight at a house party, chewed it up and spat it out.

The Los Angeles Times reports (http://lat.ms/n6cuEv) that 29-year-old Luis Miguel Aguilar was arrested Monday after he got into a fight with a 41-year-old man at a party Friday night.

Buena Park Police Cpl. Andy Luong says the man lost "a pretty good chunk" of skin and hair on his face, an area about the size of an egg. The man will require reconstructive surgery. His identity has not been released.

Aguilar was expected to be arraigned Thursday on one count of felony mayhem.

___

Information from: Los Angeles Times, http://www.latimes.com

Comment from Doozler:

Go to a phonebook. You remember phone books don't you? There's probably one at the libgrary. You remember libraries don't you? Anyway, look up lawyers and you will see hundreds of pages of lawyers. In fact America is the Latin word for litigation. Just kidding.

When there's lots of competition, lawyers have to get creative. Case in point, the case above. The defendant will interview a bunch of lawyers and choose the one with the best strategy.

Here's one that has a chance: The defendant is not legally responsible for biting off the man's eyebrows because as a child he was forced to watch old Joan Crawford movies. It was the victim's unusually thick eyebrows that were the problem. We will give evidence that many neighborhood children thought he had dark caterpillars taped above his eyes. The Crawford hairdo didn't help either.

This could only happen in France

2011-09-14T10:04:00.000-07:00

French Woman Sues Husband for Lack of Sex

By Molly Fergus | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 18 hrs ago

Husbands and wives, take note: The phrase, "Not tonight, honey," could end up costing quite a bit more than a bruised ego and grumbled acceptance.

A French wife sued her husband and won about $14,000 because he didn't have sex with her enough, according to Time.

The wife sued her husband about two years ago for the waning bedroom activity over 21 years of marriage, and now the Nice, France, judge has ruled that a lack of copulation is indeed a violation of the marital contract.

"A sexual relationship between husband and wife is the expression of affection they have for each other, and in this case it was absent," the judge ruled, according to the Telegraph. "By getting married, couples agree to sharing their life and this clearly implies they will have sex with each other."

Of course, some men also take extreme measures in dissolving relationships.

In 2009, a North Dakota man requested half the value of his wife's breast job when the two split.

Erik Isaacson appealed his judge's decision to exclude the value of the procedure from the divorce case. The judge worried that if breast implants were considered as marital assets, the precedent would extend to other, more necessary medical procedures like root canals or even hip replacements, according to the Bismarck Tribune.

No argument from Isaacson there: He also wanted his wife's Lasik vision surgery counted as an asset.

One Egyptian woman, however, might have the most valid of the three divorce requests.

According to Urban Titan, the woman had to bring her husband to court because he refused to bathe for their entire first month of marriage.
The man claimed an allergy to water prevented him from maintaining proper hygiene -- and a doctor backed up his excuse.

Though the doctor's validation of the water allergy made ending the marriage more difficult, the woman did eventually get to split from her husband. One can only imagine that she would not be complaining about lack of bedroom activity.

Comment from Doozler:

This just in. Two more pieces of bad news for the husband. First, the family dog, Fifi, is talking to a lawyer about not being walked enough. Second, the wife is going to use part of the 14 grand to install a trapeze in the bedroom.

It's time the CIA came out of the dark

2011-09-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

CIA reviewing ties with New York police department

By Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball | Reuters – 3 hrs ago

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA inspector general is reviewing the spy agency's ties with the New York Police Department after critics questioned whether the relationship amounted to "domestic spying" that infringed civil liberties.

A U.S. Muslim civil liberties organization last month called for a federal investigation into a report the Central Intelligence Agency was helping New York City police gather information from mosques and minority neighborhoods.

A CIA analyst is embedded with the New York Police Department but no one from the agency was "out on the street collecting" intelligence, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told a congressional hearing on Tuesday.

"It's my personal view that that's not a good optic to have CIA involved in any city-level police department," Clapper said, adding the inspector general's investigation would "look into specifically the propriety of that."

One mission of the CIA adviser attached to New York's police department is to ensure sharing of information, new CIA Director David Petraeus told the same joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

"We are very sensitive to the law and to civil liberties and privacy," Petraeus said.

"We welcome it," Paul Browne, deputy commissioner of the New York Police Department, said of the CIA investigation.

Information-sharing among intelligence and law enforcement agencies became a priority for the U.S. government after the September 11 attacks in 2001. New York bore the brunt of the attacks by al Qaeda militants.

"It should not be a surprise to anyone that, after 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency stepped up its cooperation with law enforcement on counterterrorism issues or that some of that increased cooperation was in New York," CIA spokeswoman Marie Harf said.

"The agency's operational focus, however, is overseas and none of the support we have provided to NYPD can be rightly characterized as 'domestic spying' by the CIA. Any suggestion along those lines is simply wrong."

(Reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Mark Hosenball; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

Comments from Doozler:

While we're at it, let's explore links between American people and the CIA. The CIA operates completely free of government oversight except for one person: the President. It allows Congressmen and Senators, the people we elect and send to Washington, 100 per cent deniability of CIA activities. No one is suggesting that the CIA should have open hearings. But what's the problem with closed door sessions with ranking members of the House and Senate? If they aren't going to be our watchdogs and held in some way accountable for a US government agency with enormous powers, then why are they collecting paychecks we sign?

Nearly 50 million Americans living in poverty

2011-09-13T18:56:00.000-07:00

Number of poor hit record 46 million in 2010

By David Morgan | Reuters – 25 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A record 46 million Americans were living in poverty in 2010, pushing the U.S. poverty rate to its highest level since 1993, according to a government report on Tuesday on the grim effects of stubbornly high unemployment.

Underscoring the economic challenges that face President Barack Obama and Congress, the U.S. Census Bureau said the poverty rate rose for a third consecutive year to hit 15.1 percent in 2010. The number in poverty was the largest since the government first began publishing estimates in 1959.

The report surfaces at a time when the economic straits of ordinary Americans are at the forefront of the 2012 election campaign.

Obama is suffering from low job approval ratings on the economy and evidence of rising poverty could give popular momentum to the $450 billion job-creation program he unveiled last week.

The Census data also could come into play in the deliberations of a bipartisan super committee in Congress, which has been charged with finding at least $1.2 trillion in budget savings over 10 years by November 23.

The United States has the highest poverty rate among developed countries, according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The poverty line for an American family of four with two children is an income $22,113 a year.

The data showed that children under 18 suffered the highest poverty rate, 22 percent, compared with adults and the elderly.

In a sign of decline for middle-income Americans, the figures showed continued decline in the number of Americans with employer-provided health insurance, while the ranks of the uninsured hovered just below the 50 million mark.

Underlying the Census data was a rate of economic growth too meager to compensate for the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs from 2009 to 2010, as the recession officially ended but the jobless rate shot up from 9.3 percent to 9.6 percent.

"All of this deterioration in the labor market caused incomes to drop, poverty to rise and people to lose their health insurance," said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute think tank. "One of the immediately obvious issues this brings up is that there is no relief in sight."

SOUTH FARES WORST

The numbers would have been worse, analysts said, but for government assistance programs including extended unemployment compensation, stimulus spending and Obama's health reforms, which appeared to reduce the number of uninsured young adults.

In Obama's hometown of Chicago, Salvation Army Major David Harvey knows well the effects of grinding poverty on the city's South Side, where he attended a food giveaway on Tuesday.

"There are more families falling into poverty," he said. "That's multiplied on the South Side of Chicago where there are pockets with 20 percent, or more, unemployment."

You've got people crying for jobs. They move out of state to get jobs because employers are leaving because of the tax increases here," Harvey said.

The poverty rate increased for non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Hispanics but did not differ significantly for Asians. Blacks and Hispanics together accounted for 54 percent of the poor with whites at 9.9 percent and Asians at 12.1 percent.

The South fared worst among U.S. regions, recording the highest poverty rate, a significant drop in median income and the largest number of residents without health insurance.

The administration was quick to seize on data showing a 2.1 percent drop in uninsured young adults, aged 18 to 24, as evidence that families were benefiting from an Obama healthcare reform that allows parents to extend their coverage to children as old as 25.

The Affordable Care Act is the centerpiece of Obama's domestic policy agenda but has come under fierce attack from Republicans including presidential candidates who hope to challenge the president in the 2012 general election.

"We expect even more will gain coverage in 2011 when the policy is fully phased in," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said in a blog posting.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Stern in Chicago; Editing by Ross Colvin, Doina Chiacu and Bill Trott)

Comments from Doozler:

If Americans living in poverty were a country. It would be larger than Switzerland, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Ireland and the Czech Republic combined. Come to think of it, it should be allowed to be a country. Then it could apply for loans from the IMF as a third world country.

Sponge Bob gets kicked in the pants by pediatricians

2011-09-13T05:26:00.000-07:00

Pediatricians' group finds fault with "SpongeBob"

By Daniel Frankel | Reuters – Sun, Sep 11, 2011

By Daniel Frankel

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - First it was the far right, which singled out the animated kids' series "SpongeBob SquarePants" for promoting pro-gay and global-warming-awareness agendas.

And Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics will take aim at the 12-year-old Nickelodeon show, reporting a study that concludes the fast-paced show, and others like it, aren't good for children.

According to an individual with knowledge of the AAP's press strategy, the organization's Monday announcement will be picked up by news organizations including ABC and NBC.

Nickelodeon didn't have a comment on the matter, but did release this statement, questioning the seaworthiness of the study: "Having 60 non-diverse kids, who are not part of the show's targeted demo, watch nine minutes of programing is questionable methodology and could not possibly provide the basis for any valid findings that parents could trust."

A key issue for Nickelodeon officials: "SpongeBob" is targeted to kids 6-11, but the study focused on 4-year-olds.

An individual close to the network said the program's broad awareness among parents has been leveraged before to gain noteriety and spur funding.

In 2005, James Dobson, head of the Christian right group Focus on the Family, said the cartoon's tolerance themes were really code for gay-agenda promotion.

And just last month, Fox News personalities Steve Doocy and Gretchen Carlson criticized the series, as well as the U.S. Department of Education, for allegedly promoting global-warming science.

As for its study, officials for the American Academy of Pediatrics were unavailable for comment on Sunday.

"People do studies all the time about the effects of media. This one will stress out parents unnecessarily," said an individual close to Nickelodeon.

Comments from Doozler

Doctors' groups don't always get it right. What group opposed national seatbelt laws back in the 60s? Yes, the American Medical Association. It claimed seatbelts would do unwarranted harm to the body's internal organs.

And the position of this group of pediatricians is also a little dubious. If doctors' groups issued a thousand press releases about the negative influence of violent video games on young children, then we would take their concern about spongebob squarepants a little more seriously. But since we don't see the former. We can't get too interested when pediatricians say the cartoon series may encourage harmful environmental attitudes.

On someone's demented scale of social responsibility somehow global warming trumps murder or even genocide. What's wrong with this picture?

As for Fox News, their position is entirely consistent with their political posture. If Spongebob were a GI Joe type with a military haircut and an automatic weapon we don't think Fox would have too many problems with him.

The complete corporatization of the food supply is hard to swallow

2011-09-13T04:26:00.000-07:00

Nation's food anti-terror plans costly, unwieldy

By GARANCE BURKE - Associated Press | AP – 3 hrs ago

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — One of the deepest fears sweeping a shattered nation following the Sept. 11 attacks was that terrorists might poison the country's food.

Hoping to ease people's anxieties about what they were eating, President George W. Bush vowed to draw a protective shield around the food supply and defend it from farm to fork.
An Associated Press analysis of the programs found that the government has spent at least $3.4 billion on food counter-terrorism in the last decade, but key programs have been bogged down in a huge, multi-headed bureaucracy. And with no single agency in charge, officials acknowledge it's impossible to measure whether orchards or feedlots are actually any safer.
On Tuesday, a Senate subcommittee will hold a hearing to examine a congressional watchdog's new report revealing federal setbacks in protecting cattle and crops since Sept. 11. Just days after the 10th anniversary of the attacks, lawmakers are demanding answers about potential food-related threats and reports that the government could have wasted money on languishing agriculture anti-terror programs.
"The truth is, nobody's in charge," said John Hoffman, a former senior adviser for bio-surveillance and food defense at the Department of Homeland Security, who will testify at the hearing. "Our surveillance doesn't work yet, our intelligence doesn't work yet and we're not doing so well at targeting what comes across the border."
Top U.S. food defense authorities insist that the initiatives have made the food supply safer and say extensive investments have prepared the country to respond to emergencies. No terrorist group has threatened the food supply in the past decade, and the largest food poisonings have not arisen from foreign attacks, but from salmonella-tainted eggs produced on Iowa farms that sickened almost 2,000 people.
Seeking to chart the government's advances, the AP interviewed dozens of current and former state and federal officials and analyzed spending and program records for major food defense initiatives, and found:
— The fragmented system leaves no single agency accountable, at times slowing progress and blurring the lines of responsibility. Federal auditors found one Agriculture Department surveillance program to test for chemical, biological, and radiological agents was not working properly five years after its inception in part because agencies couldn't agree on who was in control.
— Efforts to move an aging animal disease lab from an island near New York City have stalled after leading scientists found an accidental release of foot-and-mouth was likely to happen at the new facility in America's beef belt.

— Congress is questioning whether $31 million the Department of Homeland Security spent to create a state-of-the-art database to monitor the food supply has accomplished anything because agencies are not using it to share information.

— Despite the billions spent on food defense, many of the changes the government put into place are recommendations that the private sector isn't required to carry out. As a result, it's difficult to track successes and failures, and the system's accomplishments are largely hidden from public view.
"Everything that has been done to date on food defense in the private sector has all been voluntary," said LeeAnne Jackson, the Food and Drug Administration's health science policy advisor. "We can't go out and ask them what they have done, because they're not obliged to tell us, so we don't have a good metric to measure what's been done."
The food defense effort shifted into high gear in 2004 when Bush directed the government to create new systems to guard against terrorist attacks. Agencies got money to assess risks, contain foreign disease outbreaks and help farms and food processing plants develop protection programs.
The newly established Department of Homeland Security, which was charged with sharing information about federal food defense plans, also distributed grants among agencies, contractors and universities. During the past nine years, it spent $467 million on food-related research alone.
A $6 million counter-terrorism network headquartered in Iowa that helps veterinarians stop viruses from spreading between herds is considered one of the successes. Another is a program that gave California dairymen hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy high-tech locks for their milking barns.
The department also spent $550 million to run its Office of Health Affairs, which coordinates bio-surveillance across federal agencies. In fiscal year 2008, that office set out to build a new database where food, agriculture, disease and environmental agencies could view each other's surveillance information in real time.
But Jeff Runge, DHS's former chief medical officer, said the other agencies did not want to hand over their data, and turf battles delayed the government's progress in pinpointing a culprit as hundreds of people fell ill during a nationwide salmonella outbreak tied to peppers that summer.
"FDA was going on its own track, DHS was on its track, and no one was talking to each other," said David Acheson, who was then FDA's assistant commissioner and is now a food industry consultant.
In June, Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell of New Jersey introduced a bill that would eliminate the database. The Republican-led House Appropriations Committee also has questioned what Homeland Security has accomplished after spending $31 million running the program.
"It just didn't work," said Runge, who oversaw the database. "Now Al Qaeda is headed by a physician who has expressed interest in biological attacks, and I don't think we are putting enough brain cycles on this issue."
The department is working to integrate data across federal agencies, and is trying to enhance the database's effectiveness by reviewing the "challenges and opportunities of integrated bio-surveillance," a DHS official said.
FDA and USDA have handled much of the on-the-ground work with farmers, ranchers and manufacturing plants.
FDA has spent $1.3 billion on food defense programs since 2005, the most recent year available, said spokeswoman Patricia El-Hinnawy. The USDA said it has spent $1.64 billion on food defense since 2003.
One top priority was setting up an animal identification system to track infected livestock. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently proposed a new system that would work whether animals were infected by accident or by terrorists.
A separate project to integrate the nation's food testing laboratories has foundered, however, auditors found in February.
Five years after its creation, the Food Emergency Response Network has not set up a targeted surveillance program to test for chemical, biological, and radiological agents, and USDA and FDA still can't agree on who runs it, USDA's Office of Inspector General found.
Protecting the food supply remains a top priority, and USDA continues working to advance its efforts, said Sheryl Maddux, deputy director of its Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Coordination.
Some small farmers claim some of USDA's rules have become so unwieldy in the last decade they threaten business.
Under agency guidance issued since Sept. 11, USDA inspectors have strongly encouraged slaughterhouses and other facilities they regulate to write Food Defense Plans, and now nearly three-quarters have them.
Uli Bennewitz, who owns a small farm-brewery-butchery near the Outer Banks in Jarvisburg, N.C., and wins national foodie awards for his artisan sausages, says he had to hire one of his three employees just to deal with the on-site meat inspector. He says the federal involvement lacks common sense.
"When it comes to treating a Tyson chicken plant the same as a one-man brewery butchery, that's when these laws get completely out of control," Bennewitz said. "What is a small farm doing writing a Food Defense Plan? That is not going to save the nation from some terrible disease."
That's where upgrading the nation's primary animal disease laboratory comes in, federal officials say. The facility, which does crucial research on foot-and-mouth disease, is currently housed on a tiny island 100 miles east of New York City.
DHS spent $233 million running the lab in the past few years and plans to move the operations to Manhattan, Kan., by 2018.
But a National Research Council report issued last year cited safety concerns with the Kansas location, including a 70 percent chance that dangerous pathogens could be released close to urban populations and cattle yards over the project's 50-year life.
Many ranchers oppose the move because of the proximity to the beef belt, but DHS officials have said the lab will be safe, and say the report failed to consider safety measures that will be added during construction.
One food defense program has had particularly tangible results in the nation's No. 1 dairy state. California agriculture officials distributed about $400,000 in DHS grants to keep the milk supply safe, including new locks for milk houses.

"We're so remote out here, security isn't much of an issue, but we were happy to do an upgrade on the farm," said John Taylor, who got about $800 for a lock at his organic dairy in Marin County. "At this point there is no way to get in there unless you know the key sequence. Now I have that peace of mind."

Comments from Doozler

Speaking of food safety, maybe Washington can explain why the U.S. has the most lax regulations regarding genetically modified foods in the industrialized world. Restrictions in the U. K, Europe and Japan are much tougher. And then the President should explain how a former Monsanto VP and lobbyist became his food czar at the Food and Drug Administration.

The defence industry sets military policy in the U. S; health insurers set health policy and Wall Street sets financial policy. Why would we expect anything less than corporate control of the food sector?

___

Bite your teeth into the ass of life

2011-09-12T23:10:00.000-07:00

About Doozler

Go on in! Meet the people at Doozler!

From our head office in Smithereens, New Mexico. There’s a good chance you know someone who has been blown there. The staff just love it there. The office motto is: “Eat, drink and be merry. For tomorrow you could be in Utah.”

Meet our receptionist, La-ia. That’s pronounced, La-dash-ia.

The guy with the bow-tie is our chief political writer, Fox Foxerson former political aide to the former senior Senator from New Mexico, Sexton Hardcastle.

The girl with the beehive hair-do is the entertainment correspondent Wishona Star. You may have heard of Wishona. She invented the boyfriend arm pillow for girls who don’t have boyfriends.

Standing next to Wishona, the girls wearing the same outfits are fashion writers Julia and Suzanne Sugarbaker. The Sugarbaker twins are former sweat consultants on the TV show American Gladiators.

A lot of people ask us about the origin of Doozler’s motto, “Bite your teeth into the the ass of life.”

It comes actually from our founder and publisher Dexter B. Haven. Haven says the phrase came to him while observing an altercation between Doozler the dog, our office mascot and Butts McCracken the security guard. Doozler has the quaint habit of following Butts into the men’s room where he just sits down in front of Butts and stares at him. We think Doozler is inspired to do this by Butts’ looks. It is said that Butts’ daddy was the source of the expression “His face could make a freight train take a dirt road.” Sorry, Butts.

Butts puts on a good show. He wears a tough guy t shirt with: “I eat lightning and crap thunder” on it. But Doozler scares the shit out of him.

Well, on this day Doozler escalated things to a new level. He chased Butts around the office and finally caught him in a rear assault. Later, we were disturbed to find that Doozler was studying anatomy on the internet. In particular, the location of the femoral artery.

In any event, the site of the two scuffling in the middle of the newsroom coined the motto: “Bite your teeth into the ass of life.” Doozler owns the right to it. So watch out.

Rounding out the staff is our fashion editor the once lovely Anastasia Beaverhausen who bears an amazing resemblance to the accountant of the late Ingrid Bergman. Her favorite grievance is fat women who wear tight clothing. Spandex is a privilege, she says, not a right. “You don’t have to hoochify yourself to be beautiful,” is the fashion rule she lives by.

Our sports editor and golf expert is Shiver McTimbers who is just now finishing his book “Making money by poking things with a stick.”

It is rumored that our religion editor is Brobi Wan Kanobi. We say rumored because the man hasn’t spoken to anyone in three months. “I only speak when I have to,” he says. The last time he said something it was, “The lion knows about 40 stories, but all of them are about fruit.” We sort of leave Brobi to sort out the universe on his own.

Thanks for taking the office tour of Doozler. If you’re ever in New Mexico come and see us in Smithereens. Many visitors say they are blown away.

Doozler

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