Healthy foods article

Source: Yahoo Health

8 Ultimate Flat-Belly Summer Foods
By David Zinczenko, with Matt Goulding
Posted Fri, May 23, 2008, 12:11 pm PDT

...To combat the nutritional chaos and the extra poundage that comes with the rising mercury, we’ve chosen the eight best foods to eat every day. Beyond being packed full of disease-fighting, life-extending nutrients, these foods will also help keep your belly full, because they’re loaded with fiber and protein, the sultans of satiety.

Your bacteria and you

Source: NY Times

Science
Bacteria Thrive in Inner Elbow; No Harm Done
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: May 23, 2008
Even after you have washed the skin clean, there are still one million bacteria in every square centimeter of skin in the crook of your elbow. But they are not bad bacteria.

Awesome article. Who knew? Bacteria tribes in all of us? Our own cells are out-numbered 10 to 1 by friendlies living inside of us and out?

Here's a quote:

...These are not bad bacteria. They are what biologists call commensals, creatures that eat at the same table with people to everyone’s mutual benefit. Though they were not invited to enjoy board and lodging in the skin of your inner elbow, they are giving something of value in return. They are helping to moisturize the skin by processing the raw fats it produces, says Julia A. Segre of the National Human Genome Research Institute....

And one more because I think it's rather important:

...Much the same set of bacteria recolonize the gut after a course of antibiotics, he said, suggesting that the makeup of the colony is important and that the body has ways of reconstituting it as before.

The article says that biologists think we should be best described as "superorganisms" to properly include all the bacteria. So hey, in a way, we're all super beings with bacterial colonies adapting to our lifestyles along with us. Sort of your extra crew, one might say.

What they do, not what they say

Source: NY Times

Editorial
What the F.B.I. Agents Saw
Published: May 22, 2008
In light of a report by the Justice Department, the Democrats in charge of Congress should press for full disclosure of President Bush’s inhuman policy on prisoners.

Republicans touted "rule of law" until they decided that the laws didn't matter, when it suited them.

Here's a quote from the article:

...These were not random acts. It is clear from the inspector general’s report that this was organized behavior by both civilian and military interrogators following the specific orders of top officials. The report shows what happens when an American president, his secretary of defense, his Justice Department and other top officials corrupt American law to rationalize and authorize the abuse, humiliation and torture of prisoners:...

But Democrats haven't managed to enforce this country's laws either, now have they?

The American system is increasingly under trial because our political leaders are humiliating us along with those prisoners, and saying to the world that what we believe is just talk and not substance.

It is as if our political leaders threw out the United States Constitution a long time ago, but just kept saying otherwise.

We have a leadership of liars, who will say they are "conservative" or "liberal" or "democratic" or whatever it takes to maintain power--and then do whatever the hell they want, and this nation be damned.