photo © 2007 takomabibelot | more info (via: Wylio)

People continue to hit send on these missives with long e-mail header trains, as if, somehow, the tales within must be true for it to have mushroom clouded across the the internet.

Researchers from Ohio State University contacted 600 people after the 2008 election to discuss their exposure to rumors about the candidates on the websites, blogs and by email. The publishing findings indicate that fibbing on the internet itself is  to some degree checked because the facts are out there with a quick google search.  Email was more pernicious:

The more political e-mails that participants received from friends and family during the 2008 election, the more rumors they were likely to believe. And the more rumors they believed, the more political e-mails they sent.

In addition, receiving e-mails only promoted belief in rumors about the candidate whom the person opposed, the study found. And people were more likely to share e-mails as belief in rumors about the opposed candidate increased.

The filter effect at work, again.  You’re more likely to believe, seek out and forward media content that parrots your own opinions; facts be damned.

“We will lose on legislation. But we will win the message war every day, and every week, until November 2010,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., an outspoken conservative who has participated on the GOP message teams. “Our goal is to bring down approval numbers for [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi and for House Democrats. That will take repetition. This is a marathon, not a sprint.”

The Republicans are engaged in a pseud0-scorched earth policy because they’re  sore losers, making it a lose-lose scenario for us.  When Republicans are in charge, their policies aren’t particularly helpful to MOST Americans, and when they’re not in charge, they’re trying to eliminate the possibility that Democratic policy could make up lost ground.

Hilary Clinton at least had the maturity to suck it up and take on a constructive, proactive role under the Obama Presidency.

photo by 9583071@N02

Penises are shrinking.

Over the weekend  ChemTrust, an organization that works to publicize how manufactured chemicals and hormones “undermine humans and wildlife by effecting their health, behaviour, intelligence and ability to reproduce,” released a report reviewing over 250 studies looking at the sexual health ramifications of a variety of species after prolonged exposure to chemicals and synthesized hormones in the wild and lab environments. The conclusion: male gonads and offspring are under fire, threatening the survival of  a large portion of the animal kingdom over time.

In study after study, from birds to amphibians to wild cats to polar bears,  reproduction is threatened by the chemicals humans spray over the terrain.  Animals living in highly polluted and very agrarian regions are especially prone to reproductive effects.  Males increasingly have a wide range of symptoms, including hermaphroditic tissues, shorter penises, smaller testicles, and deformities that effect the ability to impregnate females.

Fertility is on the decline, with lower sperm counts and slowed development in the womb, leading to sickly offspring that nurse on contaminated milk.  As chemicals build up in the body, mating rituals are changing, and in some species, less fit males are more effective at landing a mate that ones less effected by pollution.

Why should you care? You are what you eat.

Famed food writer Michael Pollan has been making rounds discussing the problem of corn.  The American diet is full of corn. It’s in foods you don’t give a second thought to.

Take a typical fast food meal. Corn is the sweetener in the soda. It’s in the corn-fed beef Big Mac patty, and in the high-fructose syrup in the bun, and in the secret sauce. Slim Jims are full of corn syrup, dextrose, cornstarch, and a great many additives. The “four different fuels” in a Lunchables meal, are all essentially corn-based. The chicken nugget—including feed for the chicken, fillers, binders, coating, and dipping sauce—is all corn. The french fries are made from potatoes, but odds are they’re fried in corn oil, the source of 50 percent of their calories. Even the salads at McDonald’s are full of high-fructose corn syrup and thickeners made from corn.

Of the 37 ingredients in chicken nuggets, something like 30 are made, directly or indirectly, from corn.

In a parallel argument, we’re eating animals in the food chain that are beginning the suffer from the damage done by pollution.  Forget that we’re stuffing animals with corn feed.  We’re eating ones whose tissues are riddled the hormones and chemicals that are rendering animals sterile and fertility challenged.  Not only are we exposed to the same toxins every day via the air and our toiletries, hair dyes, pesticides and cleaning solvents, we’re also consuming them via our food supply.

While smaller creatures are reacting noticeably first, it won’t be long before the high concentrations humans consume and absorb take effect.  Already, mothers pass a chemical cocktail onto their babies via breast milk that may grow to pass those same chemicals off to their offspring.   Nor does it help that “trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, including narcotics, birth control, antidepressants and other controlled substances, are in the drinking water and in U.S. rivers, lakes and streams,” in 80% of the water samples recently tested by the EPA.

When you begin to realize how impossible it is to avoid the chemicals and hormones corporations have spray our planet with, combined with the general apathy of much of the developed world,  the notion of a not-too- distant future of a sterile human race a la Children of Men seems less far fetched.

You can find my thoughts on why Hillary lost and what Michelle Obama represents to professional women over at Twenty Set.

When a fetus’s rights are protected before that of the mother, all women are threatened.  Women have been forced to submit to unwanted medical procedures and surgery all in the name of protecting life.

Thomas Jefferson said:

“In every free and deliberating society, there must, from the nature of man, be opposite parties, and violent dissensions and discords; and one of these, for the most part, must prevail over the other for a longer or shorter time.”

“It is the steady abuse of power in other governments which renders that of opposition always the popular party.”

At this point it’s all over but the finger pointing on the GOP side.

A friend sent me an unattributed comic that just about sums it up for us. (If you know the creator, please leave me a link.) From the comics at XKCD

What’s really next?  I guess we can now look to Obama building his team over the next few months as he prepares to dig into the Bush-push quagmire come January 20th.  He got us to HOPE, and we gave him a mandate to ACT.

Now we all have to help him get the CHANGE done. I don’t doubt an Obama administration is going to give the blogosphere lots to dissect and debate.

The road ahead will be long.  Our climb will be steep.  We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America – I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there.  I promise you – we as a people will get there.

There will be setbacks and false starts.  There are many who won’t agree with every decision or policy I make as President, and we know that government can’t solve every problem.  But I will always be honest with you about the challenges we face.  I will listen to you, especially when we disagree.  And above all, I will ask you join in the work of remaking this nation the only way it’s been done in America for two-hundred and twenty-one years – block by block, brick by brick, calloused hand by calloused hand.

What began twenty-one months ago in the depths of winter must not end on this autumn night. This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change.  And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.  It cannot happen without you.

So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism; of service and responsibility where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves, but each other.  Let us remember that if this financial crisis taught us anything, it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers – in this country, we rise or fall as one nation; as one people.

– President-Elect Barack Obama, November 4th, 2008