Vitamin Supplement Industry has Minimal Oversight, No Standards

[From article]
And unlike prescription drugs, which pass through a strict premarket approval process, the Food and Drug Administration does not evaluate a supplement’s contents or effectiveness before it hits the shelves. Even then, the agency has only a modest capacity to test the pills.
The result is a more than $30 billion industry that is largely regulated by the honor system.
Given this framework, there is little to guarantee that any vitamin, mineral, probiotic, sports supplement, herbal treatment, or other dietary supplement is safe, effective, or even contains what’s on its label.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/five-questions-to-ask-when-considering-health-supplements/

Five Questions To Ask When Considering Health Supplements
JANUARY 19, 2016
by KATIE WORTH Tow Journalism Fellow,

FRONTLINE

Columbia Journalism School Fellowships

FRONTLINE, The New York Times and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation examine the hidden dangers of vitamins and supplements, a multibillion-dollar industry with limited FDA oversight.
produced by NEIL DOCHERTY

[link to complete 54 minute video]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/supplements-and-safety/

How Long Before Man Is Obsolete?

[From article]
First, history is repeating itself. Robots are causing a new Industrial Revolution. Similar to what happened to farming, 70 percent (or more) of current jobs will be replaced by machines. Replacement by robots in most jobs is just a matter of time. As Kevin Kelly said:
This upheaval is being led by a second wave of automation, one that is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts. This deep automation will touch all jobs, from manual labor to knowledge work.
[. . .]



"... robots will continue their migration into white-collar work." All jobs dealing with paperwork will be done by robots. "It doesn't matter if you are a doctor, lawyer, architect, reporter, or even programmer: The robot takeover will be epic."
[. . .]
When the robot revolution finally starts to happen, it's going to happen fast, and it's going to turn our world upside down.
Second, liberals blame labor-saving technology for unemployment and economic slowdown.
[. . .]



Obama blamed progress, in the form of robots, for the failure of his dreadful economic policies. And liberals are blaming robots for job losses and wealth inequality.
[. . .]
The liberal solution is to halt, or at least slow, progress. And they call themselves "Progressives!"
Sir Winston Churchill said, "Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it." Okay, politicians of every stripe, technological advances changed America and the world 200 years ago. And it's happening today. So learn from the Industrial Revolution.
[Santayana wrote (in The Life of Reason, 1905) : “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

https://www.nationalchurchillmuseum.org/blog/churchill-quote-history/




no citation for Churchill]
[. . .]



Society must also learn from history. It's a "sink or swim" world. Swimmers will embrace robots and new technology, sinkers won't. With even high-skill "knowledge workers" being replaced by robots, what jobs will be left? Justin Reich of Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society said, "I'm not sure that jobs will disappear altogether, but the jobs that are left will be lower paying and less secure than those that exist now."
To address that issue, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Andrew McAfee says that "the education system has to change to prepare young people for a world in which most of today's jobs are automated." But a new education system alone can't prepare society for what's coming. Individuals themselves must take advantage of the enhancements. Most won't, today's history tells us, if wealth is redistributed to them. Why work if they don't have to?



Liberals are already lining up to redistribute wealth. Liberals say that by embracing robots, the already rich entrepreneurs and top level management will get richer while the middle class and poor will be left behind. They advocate policies that have swimmers "pay their fare share." They are, in liberals' view, "society's lottery winners."
Socialism (or wealth redistribution, or whatever else liberals come up with) was not, is not, and never will be the answer. As Margaret Thatcher said, "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money." So if politicians continue to pursue socialism by enabling the sinkers, the money is going to run out.
[. . .]



Another Industrial Revolution is coming (it may already be here!). History tells y'all what is going to happen. And experts tell y'all what to specifically expect. So the ultimate question is, "Will politicians (and society) learn from history?"

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/06/the_next_phase_of_the_industrial_revolution.html

June 10, 2015
The Next Phase of the Industrial Revolution
By Warren Beatty

California Marijuana Industry, Grows More Than Mexico, Depleting Water During Drought

[From article]
a San Francisco-based author with a PhD in Nutritional Ethnomedicine floated an interesting theory regarding those water shortages earlier this week. Speaking on the radio, he suggested that California’s huge crop of marijuana plants is “depleting the water table,” and is partially responsible for the massive shortfalls in water that the state is now facing.
It may sound outlandish, but it turns out that there may be something to the good doctor’s theory.
As anyone who has ever had the misfortune to visit, say, Santa Cruz can attest, there’s a lot of marijuana in California. (This despite the fact that it’s only legal for medicinal use in the state.) Indeed, by some estimates, California now produces more marijuana than Mexico.
[. . .]
Meanwhile, one outdoor marijuana plant requires approximately six gallons of water per day during its roughly 150-day growing season. That means that, over California’s four-year drought, outdoor marijuana plants -- based on the six-gallon a day estimate, and the 2006 figure -- have used roughly 63 billion gallons of California water. (Indoor growing is also rough on the environment; roughly 9 percent of household electricity use in the state is used for marijuana cultivation, reports Evan Mills of the Lawrence Berkeley National Library.)

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/marijuana-plants-soak-billions-gallons-water-california_913101.html

Marijuana Plants Soak Up Billions of Gallons of Water in California
High times are dry times.
7:01 AM, APR 9, 2015 • BY ETHAN EPSTEIN

High Profile Censorship Generates Business for Diversity Industry

[From article]
Judged by the outrage, those University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon (SAE) frat boys who sang a ditty that used the N-Word must certainly have done something particularly egregious. Why else did the university immediately, sans any hearing or due process, expel some of them, close down their SAE chapter while the fraternity’s headquarters launched its own Inquisition to determine if other chapters are likewise guilty of N-Word use? And keep in mind that this occurred on a bus and was perfectly legal since hate speech, absent other factors, is not a standalone offense.
[. . .]
Why would merely saying a word in private instigate death threats? That nobody was hurt, abused or personally insulted in the making of this sing-a-long only compounds the over-kill.
[. . .]
This “natural” inclination toward cursing was perfectly illustrated by the rant of Eric Striker, a football player recruited to play at Oklahoma but who changed his mind after the SAE incident. He sent a video explaining his reasons: “Same mother*******s that talk about racism doesn’t exist are the same mother******s shaking our hands, giving us hugs, telling us how you really love us,” Striker said. “F**k you phony-ass, fraud-ass bitches.”
[. . .]
Now, what makes uttering the N-word by whites so profoundly different than thousands of insults targeting other groups?
[. . .]
In any case, why is the N-Word harmless when said by fellow blacks but not whites, Asians or Hispanics? What if a black heard the N-Word but was unable to identify the speaker? Is it still toxic? Or what if a white person loudly played an N-Word infused rap song sung by a black? Would this qualify as “hateful”?
[. . .]
If thinking anti-black thoughts were the precursor to violence, and whites secretly harbored all these racist thoughts, American should be awash in white anti-black violence. But the very opposite is true -- interracial violence is overwhelmingly black on white (also see here).
[. . .]
Why the rush to ride roughshod over constitutional protections of free speech? Let me suggest that this is all part of the extractive process that drives the racial grievance industry. The underlying principle here is that black misfortunes are white instigated, and if whites could be cured of their pathologies, blacks would thrive.
[. . .]
In sum, exposing racist white fraternities and their “toxic” speech is the Full Employment Act for the diversity industry.

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2015/03/profiting_from_the_nword.html

March 17, 2015
Profiting from the N-Word
By Robert Weissberg

Laws are for the Little People

Laws are for the Little People

MA taxpayers gave $1 billion to the Biotech industry so that they would not abandon Massachusetts. Now some disgruntled citizens want to enforce noise ordinances? Is that silly or what? They might leave the state if laws are enforced. Why not an exemption from noise ordinances, and all other laws? Why not treat Idenix as if it were a City agency. Cambridge government violates laws whenever the laws are inconvenient. Why not extend the same privileges to Idenix? Oh and it might help if the citizens who complained were arrested and sent for a competency evaluation. That would stop their annoying complaints.

Roy Bercaw, Editor ENOUGH ROOM

http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x1348680924/Neighbors-make-some-noise-over-noise-Company-seeks-variance-to-keep-rooftop-machinery-going

Neighbors make some noise over noise: Company seeks variance to keep rooftop machinery going
By Jillian Fennimore/
Cambridge Chronicle staff
Tue Oct 21, 2008, 01:16 PM EDT