Fed Funds to Pay for Teen Mail-Order Condoms - California program lets kids as young as 12 get condoms for free -

Fed Funds to Pay for Teen Mail-Order Condoms - California program lets kids as young as 12 get condoms for free - 




Teenagers in several counties can get condoms in the mail for free under a program launched this week and supported by state public health officials.
  The Condom Access Project allows youth between the ages of 12 and 19 to order a package of 10 condoms, lube and health brochures online at TeenSource.org, a website run by the nonprofit California Family Health Council. The package will be mailed to them in a nondescript yellow envelope.
  Supporters say the program -- aimed at reducing pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases among teens -- will benefit young people who cannot afford to buy condoms or are too embarrassed to go to clinics where they are distributed for free.
  "We can't keep our heads in the sand and pretend there isn't a problem...," Vice President of Public Affairs for the Family Health Council Amy Moy told the Bakersfield Californian. "We want to make sure (teens are) as safe as possible."
  Teens and young adults have the highest rates of gonorrhea and chlamydia of all age groups in California, according to health officials. In Kern County, one of the counties where the new program is available, teenage birth rates are among the highest in the state.
  But critics say the program could be perceived as tacit approval of teenage sex and may not go over well with parents.
  "I would think the overwhelming majority of parents in Kern County wouldn't think this is a good idea," said Linda Davis, executive director of the Bakersfield Pregnancy Center, which emphasizes abstinence. "And I don't think their kids would have the nerve to request them."




Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2012/02/19/california-counties-get-federally-funded-mail-order-condom-program/

Chinese Shrimp injected with gelatin-like chemicals to make them heavier and plumper poses a threat to public health -

Chinese Shrimp injected with gelatin-like chemicals to make them heavier and plumper poses a threat to public health - 




Experts say that some shrimp originating in Tianjin have been injected with gelatin-like chemicals to make them heavier and plumper, posing a threat to public health.


The transparent chemical can usually be found in the heads of the shrimp. A local wholesaler, who declined to reveal his name, told Xinhua that the altered shrimp were frozen, and the gelatin-like chemical was injected to increase the weight.


"The frozen shrimp tend to shrivel after being taken out of the freezer, so lots of shrimp are injected with gelatin-like chemicals in the head and torso," he said.


Wang Shuo, vice president of the Tianjin University of Science and Technology, told the Global Times that if it is confirmed the chemical is a gelatin, it may be harmful to people's health.


"There are two kinds of gelatin. One is edible, and used as a food additive. The other is used in industrial products, which contains a certain amount of heavy metal, and thus poses a health threat," Wang said.


"Since the identity of the chemical has not been confirmed I'm not sure if it is hazardous, but adding such chemicals is definitely against the law," he added.


Read more -
http://english.people.com.cn/90882/7731941.html

White Grandfather Detained While Walking With Black Granddaughter - By Texas Police -

White Grandfather Detained While Walking With Black Granddaughter - By Texas Police - 




A crime and politics blogger living in Austin, Texas, claims he was cuffed and detained by police for simply walking home with his five-year-old granddaughter.


The reason this happened, he says, is because he is white and she is black.


Scott Henson, a political consultant who blogs about the criminal justice system at Grits For Breakfast said he was walking home from a roller skating rink with his 5-year-old granddaughter Ty last Friday night when he was stopped by a female deputy.


The officer told him that there were reports of a white man kidnapping a black girl and he was ordered to step away from Ty as the officer questioned the girl, the New York Daily News reported.


"He's my Grandpa!" was Ty's response, according to Henson's blog.


After a few minutes of questioning, Henson and Ty were allowed to walk home. They were just two blocks away when they were stopped by five flashing police cars and a crowd of police.


"The officers got out with tasers drawn demanding I raise my hands and step away from the child," Henson said.




Henson complied, but he said the cops handled him roughly, jerking his arms as they cuffed him. The scene caused Ty to edge up the hill away from the officers, crying.


"One of them called out in a comforting tone that they weren't there to hurt her, but another officer blew up any good will that might have garnered by brusquely snatching her up and scuttling her off to the back seat of one of the police cars," Henson said.


The officers kept questioning Ty over and over again, but Henson said they took their sweet time calling the phone numbers he gave them to verify that she was his granddaughter and he had permission to walk her home.


Henson said the police never apologized, even after they released them, though they did explain that they take kidnapping calls very seriously.


Read more -
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/white-grandfather-detained_n_1275383.html

Goats can form accents - pick up accents as they get older and join social groups -

Goats can form accents - pick up accents as they get older and join social groups - 




Humans, elephants and dolphins do it, and apparently goats do, too.


The horned ruminants pick up accents as they get older and join social groups, according to researchers at Queen Mary University, London, The Daily Telegraph reported Thursday.


Experts previously thought only a select group of mammals has the ability to modify vocal sounds according to their surroundings, and that other species' "voices" were determined solely by genetics. Whales and bats pick up accents as well.


The researchers recorded the bleats of four groups of pygmy goats at one week old, when kids, as young goats are known, from the same litter remain with one another, and again at five weeks old, when they form social groups with other goats of the same age.


Not surprisingly, the study found genetically related kids produced similar calls. But it found the vocal calls of goats raised in the same social groups also became more similar as the kids grew older.




Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/goats-form-accents-study-finds-article-1.1024196?localLinksEnabled=false

Record 19 reporters, media execs join Team Obama -

Record 19 reporters, media execs join Team Obama - 


For some Washington reporters and media execs, cheering their team from the sidelines just isn’t good enough: Tugging on a red, white and blue Team Obama jersey is the answer.


That’s the case for a whopping 19 journalists and media executives, including five from the Washington Post and three each from ABC and CNN, who’ve gone into the administration or center-left groups supporting the president.


Those inside the administration hit 14 this month when the Post’s Stephen Barr joined the Labor Department. That’s a record, say some revolving door watchers, and could even be much higher: The Post reports that “dozens” of former journalists have joined the administration, although Washington Secrets couldn’t verify that tally.


Many are in communications and speech writing offices, most prominently Jay Carney, the president’s spokesman who ran Time’s Washington bureau, and husband to ABC’s Claire Shipman. Some joined as the news business collapsed, many to finally voice their politics, and others, notably former Transportation spokeswoman Jill Zuckman, because she liked her future boss, Secretary Ray LaHood, a rare Republican in the administration. That relationship rocked: LaHood broke through the lower-tier Cabinet P.R. ceiling to become one of the most well-known Transportation secretaries ever. She had worked for the Chicago Tribune.


The revolving door isn’t a surprise to critics of the media and Obama. “The number of reporters going into the Obama administration merely confirms what I knew and what most conservatives long believed,” said Noam Neusner, himself one of the few reporters hired as a Bush speech writer. “There is a vast supply of liberals in newsrooms, they are very happy to support Obama administration policies if they can get hired and they barely hide their ideology in the way they cover the news.” Neusner, who I worked with at U.S. News, said that he too might have been guilty of a pro-Bush bias, but said correctly: “My editors and colleagues were surprised to hear that I was a Republican.”


A former GOP Capitol Hill and cabinet spokesman added, “It’s frustrating to see so many reporters that had relationships with trusted sources give up their ‘impartiality’ and start playing for the other side. It does show that the game is stacked in favor of the other side when most reporters still working in their profession remain silent.”

Read more - 

http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/beltway-confidential/record-19-reporters-media-execs-join-team-obama/380971

20 Signs You Might Be A Typical American Worker -

The following are 20 signs you might be a typical American worker….






#1 If you are working three jobs and you still don’t have enough money at the end of the month, you might be a typical American worker.


#2 If your job involves asking the question “Would you like fries with that?”, you might be a typical American worker.


#3 If you shop at the dollar store because Wal-Mart is too expensive, you might be a typical American worker.


#4 If your job requires you to wear a smock, a brightly colored polo shirt orlots of “flair”, you might be a typical American worker.


#5 If people are constantly asking you where the restroom is while you are at work, you might be a typical American worker.


#6 If your employer hires extra part-time workers in order to avoid giving anyone full-time hours, you might be a typical American worker.


#7 If you are required to watch a mindless “training video” after being hired, you might be a typical American worker.


#8 If the company you work for is owned by someone on the other side of the world, you might be a typical American worker.


#9 If a trained seal could do your job and you feel like your expensive education is going to waste, you might be at typical American worker.


#10 If you don’t have any health insurance at all, you might be a typical American worker.  Only about 25 percent of all part-time workers in the United States receive employee benefits such as health insurance or paid sick leave.


#11 If your car is older than your kids are, you might be a typical American worker.


#12 If you can’t afford to buy the things that you are selling to the public, you might be a typical American worker.


#13 If the balances on your credit cards are larger than your bank accounts are, you might be a typical American worker.


#14 If going to Burger King is your idea of “fine dining”, then you might be a typical American worker.


#15 If it costs more to fill up your car with gas than you will make at your job today, you might be a typical American worker.  The price of gasoline has increased by 83 percent since Barack Obama first took office, and the average cost of a gallon of gas in the United States is now up to $3.52.


#16 If you eat your cereal with a fork so that you can save milk, you might be a typical American worker.


#17 If your electricity bill keeps going up but your paycheck never does, you might be a typical American worker.


#18 If it feels like you are losing an organ every time you pay for health insurance each month, you might be a typical American worker.


#19 If you feel like your employer is constantly tempted to replace you with someone younger and cheaper, then you might be a typical American worker.


#20 If you are so poor that you cannot even afford to pay attention, you might be a typical American worker.


Unfortunately, a lot more Americans are going to be forced into working these kinds of jobs if current trends continue.


Read more - 
http://www.blacklistednews.com/20_Signs_You_Might_Be_A_Typical_American_Worker_/18004/0/0/0/Y/M.html

Authorities in Switzerland have confiscated $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. bonds -

Authorities in Switzerland have confiscated $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. bonds - 


Authorities in Switzerland have confiscated $6 trillion in counterfeit U.S. bonds at the request of Italian prosecutors, authorities said Friday.


In Italy, eight people were arrested across the country and placed under investigation for fraud and other crimes.


The bonds, carrying the false date of issue of 1934, had been transported in 2007 from Hong Kong to Zurich, where they were transferred to a Swiss trust, according to prosecutors in the southern Italian city of Potenza.


Authorities said that U.S. officials had confirmed the bonds were counterfeit.


Prosecutors said the fraud had not been completed, but that it appeared that the suspects intended to try to sell the fake bonds to a developing nation, directly or through an intermediary bank.


Recently, Carabinieri carrying out a routine search at a highway rest stop found a briefcase containing $20 billion in fake bonds.






Read more: http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/World/20120217/government-bonds-fake-120217/

Three Smart Things About Boogers -

Three Smart Things About Boogers - 


1 Boogers are good for you: One researcher argues that picking your nose and snacking on the haul is actually beneficial for the immune system. This is great news for the 91 percent of adults who admit to picking. An extensive study on nose-fingering revealed that members of all socioeconomic groups have very similar rhino-exploration habits.


2 Mining for nose-gold can turn into a pathological disorder. Rhinotillexomania (loosely, furious nose-picking) is the term used to describe obsessive-compulsive digging, and it can lead to medical issues like repeated nosebleeds, a decrease in good nasal bacteria, and in rare cases septum perforation.


3 King Tut had his own personal nose-picker. The young Egyptian pharaoh hired this royal assistant for the low, low price of three head of cattle and, naturally, food and lodging. It’s best to keep an imperial snout excavator well fed and rested.


Read more - 
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2012/01/st_3st_boogers/

The US Federal Reserve has added more than $2 trillion to the base money supply since 2008 -

The US Federal Reserve has added more than $2 trillion to the base money supply since 2008 - 






Capital Shrugged


Capitalism’s greatest strength has been its resiliency – its ability to survive the throes and challenges of crises and business cycles to fuel innovation and economic growth. Today, however, more than four years into a credit crisis, a conspicuous enigma calls this legacy into question.


Despite recent hopes of recovery in the US, including an inventory catch-up in the fourth quarter of 2011, real US GDP growth has remained persistently below trend. Moreover, although seasonally adjusted January employment data have brought the unemployment rate down to 8.3% (while total jobs were actually lost in January), the more realistic rate of “underemployment” remains over 15% and the labor-force participation rate is at a record 30-year low. And the US is clearly not alone in its malaise, with the eurozone fighting a far more urgent sovereign-debt crisis.


So, why is this time different? The answer lies in Ayn Rand’s rhetorical invocation of despair in her 1957 epic Atlas Shrugged: “Who is John Galt?” Simply put, when the state seizes the incentives and drivers of capital investment, owners of capital go on strike.


Rand portrays innovative industrialists as akin to Atlas in Greek mythology, carrying on his back a dystopian world of growing and overbearing collectivist government. The hero, John Galt, calls for them all to shrug, to “stop the motor of the world” by withdrawing from their productive pursuits, rather than promoting a world in which, under the guise of egalitarianism, incentives have been usurped in order to protect the politically connected from economic failure.


Today, Rand’s fictional world has seemingly become a reality – endless bailouts and economic stimulus for the unproductive at the expense of the most productive, and calls for additional taxation on capital investment. The shrug of Rand’s heroic entrepreneurs is to be found today within the tangled ciphers of corporate and government balance sheets.


The US Federal Reserve has added more than $2 trillion to the base money supply since 2008 – an incredible and unprecedented number that is basically a gift to banks intended to cover their deep losses and spur lending and investment. Instead, as banks continue their enormous deleveraging, almost all of their new money remains at the Fed in the form of excess reserves.


Corporations, moreover, are holding the largest amounts of cash, relative to assets and net worth, ever recorded. And yet, despite what pundits claim about strong balance sheets, firms’ debt levels, relative to assets and net worth, also remain near record-high levels.


Hoarded cash is king. The velocity of money (the frequency at which money is spent, or GDP relative to base money) continues to plunge to historic lows. No wonder monetary policy has had so little impact. Capital, the engine of economic growth, sits idle – shrugging everywhere.


Rand, perhaps better than any economic observer, underscored the central role of incentives in driving entrepreneurial innovation and risk-taking. Whittle away at incentives – and at the market’s ability to communicate them through price signals – and you starve the growth engine of its fuel. Alas, central bankers, with their manipulation of interest rates and use of quantitative easing, patently neglect this fact.


Interest rates are more than a mere economic input that determines levels of saving and investment. Rather, as the Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises emphasized, they are a reflection of people’s aggregate time preference – or desire for present versus future satisfaction – not a determinant of it.


Interest rates thus incentivize and convey to entrepreneurs how to allocate capital through time. For example, lower interest rates and cost of capital raise the relative attractiveness of cash flows further in the future, and capital investment increases – the system’s natural homeostatic response to higher savings and lower consumption.


State manipulation of interest rates, however, does not influence time preference, even though it signals such a change. The resulting inconsistency creates distortions: as with any price control, capital receives an incentive to flow to investment that is inconsistent with actual supply and demand.


The Fed is purposefully and insidiously distorting the incentive system – specifically, signals provided by the price of money – resulting in mal-investment (and, when public debt is monetized, inflation). This can continue for a time, rewarding unproductive investments and aspiring oligarch-speculators who presume that the Fed has eliminated risk. But, as Rand reminds us, at some point the jig is up.


Today, after the largest credit expansion in history, that point has clearly been reached. Impassive capital now ignores deceptive market signals, and the liquidation of untenable mal-investment percolates through the system as immutable time preferences prevail.


Read more -
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/spitznagel2/English

Financial Sex Aid: Website Helps Florida Coeds Find 'Sugar Daddy'... -

Financial Sex Aid: Website Helps Florida Coeds Find 'Sugar Daddy'... - 






People who are looking for the perfect match… both men and women… go  online seeking a certain kind of arrangement. A “sugar baby” is typically younger and eager for adventure. A “sugar daddy” is usually an older, financially established provider. A website called www.seekingarrangement.com helps the two meet.


CBS4′s Jorge Estevez found a 22-year old who is looking for her first sugar daddy.  She is a Miami student looking for someone to help her pay for her higher education and all the related expenses.


A self-proclaimed, cute, blonde who is looking for fun in Fort Lauderdale admits to being a college student looking for some help.



And another pretty, young Miami college girl, who does not want to be identified, is more direct… asking specifically for 10 to 20-thousand dollars monthly. The 22-year old claims to be looking for someone who will never say ”NO” to her needs.


“The lesson here… ask and you shall receive,” she told Estevez.


“What have they given you?” asked Estevez.


“They have given me cars, trips, jewelry. These guys will take you out and they will court you,” she responded.


Jorge asked “What do these guys do for you?”


“They support you financially… financially,” she replied.


Support is proving to be crucial for a 20-year old sugar baby, who is in college at Florida International University.


“Have they paid your tuition?” asked Estevez.


“Yes Jorge.”


“Books?” he asked.


“Books. Everything,” she responded. “When I say everything… I mean everything.”


In fact, her profile asks for someone to help a young’in out.  And she is not alone. Numbers compiled by the “seeking arrangement” website showed that in the past six months, FIU ranked 20th in a list of the top universities with “sugar baby” sign ups.


Florida ranked third in the U.S. behind New York and California with 67,815 total users, of all ages. There are just over 1,000,000 and growing .


Our FIU student argued that it’s a way to survive the times.


“I don’t get support from my parents. As soon as I turned 18, they told me I am on my own. I have to figure everything out on my own Jorge.


“And you discovered this? And you thought…?” asked Estevez.


“My dreams came true Jorge.”




“Your dreams came true,” he repeated.


Then his interview added, “But with every give…  there is a take.”


“They give you trips. They pay for school. They give you presents. What do you give them?” asked Estevez.


“Sex,” said the FIU “sugar baby.”


“Just like that,” asked Jorge.


“Just like that,” she said.





Read more - 
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/02/14/financial-sex-aid-florida-co-eds-seek-sugar-daddy-for-college-degree/