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Sunday, June 11, 2006 |
Observer: "Britain's gardeners are being asked to open up their borders, lawns and shrubs to help tackle the world's greatest environmental threat: climate change.
Wildlife gardening - making gardens more welcoming to wild creatures - is increasingly popular with conservation-ists as a way of providing new habitats between breeding areas. Among the tips suggested by English Nature is planting pollen-rich and bell-shaped plants for bees, colourful flowers to attract butterflies, leaving log and leaf piles for hedgehogs, and spurning slug pellets.
One problem the conservationists must overcome, though, is a perception that wildlife gardening is messy, although experts point out that attracting species which eat pests is a way of naturally protecting flowers, shrubs and trees."
So will all those complaining about their neighbour's trees, please shut up and stop putting plastic flowers in their own square meter of green.
People should grow as much plants as possible, some shade over the ground is good for retaining moisture. A garden with tulips neatly planted in open brown soil all exactly ten centimeters apart is STUPID.
Wildlife gardening is in. It's a must.
12:28:32 PM 
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CommonDreams: "US politicians have rejected attempts to enshrine the principle of net neutrality in legislation.
Some fear the decision will mean net providers start deciding on behalf of customers which websites and services they can visit and use.
The vote is a defeat for Google, eBay and Amazon which wanted the net neutrality principle protected by law.
During the debate House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, said that without the amendment 'telecommunications and cable companies will be able to create toll lanes on the information superhighway'.
The debate over the issue now moves to the US Senate where the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will vote on its version of the act in late June. The debate in that chamber is also likely to centre on issues of net neutrality."
Tell your Senators to support S. 2917, the Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2006.
12:14:14 PM
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Three detainees being held at the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, committed suicide early on Saturday. Another sign that the US don't have control over anything any longer, not even their prisons.
Deepblade: "Rear Adm. Harry Harris: 'They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for human life, neither ours nor their own... I believe this was not an act of desperation, but rather an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.'"
There are quite a lot of very asymmetrically pathologically disturbed people in the US army.
12:07:35 PM
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ArizonaStar: "A New Jersey company found a profitable niche harvesting human parts from the dead - until authorities said it was guilty of macabre malfeasance."
This is what you get in a society in which profit is the creed. The prices of drugs and everything in healthcare are hiked by greed.
SeattleTimes: "Rising health-care costs, already threatening many basic industries, now consume 16 percent of the nation's economic output - the highest proportion ever, the government said Monday in its latest calculation.
The nation's health-care bill continued to grow substantially faster than inflation and wages, increasing by almost 8 percent in 2004."
BringItOn!: "Health care costs have been growing at a rate that far outpaces inflation for several years now. Yet in communities across the nation, hospitals are closing or reducing services. A shortage of qualified nurses and doctors increases the time it takes to see a medical professional. Premiums for coverage, doctor visits, medicines, and diagnostics are going up. These factors affect health care consumers on a daily basis. That's you and me. Mom and Grandpa. The neighbor lady and the kid who cuts the lawn. Everyone.
And yet on the other side of the coin, pharmaceutical companies are getting richer and richer while plying their designer drugs on a public all too conditioned to expect a little pill for a quick fix to what ails them. Pharmacists are refusing to fill legally prescribed medicines because of 'moral issues'. Accountants are deciding what a patient 'really needs' instead of letting doctors do their jobs. And politicians are trying to play God by sticking their noses in issues they have no sense being involved in, like the right to die or the course of medical research."
The problem is endemic to all deregulated and privatized countries. When health care is take care of by private firms the cost will rise simply because they have to make a profit. If health care were taken care of by government institutions there would be no need to ask the taxpayer to pay for third party profits as well. And the government could then also actively reduce unemployment by employing more people in health care.
11:58:01 AM
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