Below is the cover letter to the President of the United States from the 2008–2009 Annual Report of the President’s Cancer Panel - REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER RISK... What We Can Do Now - April 2010. This report is submitted to the President of the United States in fulfillment of the obligations of the President’s Cancer Panel.

The President
The White House
Washington, DC  20500

Dear Mr. President:

Though overall cancer incidence and mortality have continued to decline in recent years, the disease continues to devastate the lives of far too many Americans.  In 2009 alone, approximately 1.5 million American men, women, and children were diagnosed with cancer, and 562,000 died from the disease.  With the growing body of evidence linking environmental exposures to cancer, the public is becoming increasingly aware of the unacceptable burden of cancer resulting from environmental and occupational exposures that could have been prevented through appropriate national action.  The Administration’s commitment to the cancer community and recent focus on critically needed reform of the Toxic Substances Control Act is praiseworthy.  However, our Nation still has much work ahead to identify the many existing but unrecognized environmental carcinogens and eliminate those that are known from our workplaces, schools, and homes.

I got chills today, scanning ongoing coverage of Cleveland City Hall's plans to lock citizens and their children here into a 10 year sole-source LED lighting contract with Sunpu Opto, of China - Cleveland council committee embraces LED lighting deal - when I made the interpretation my instincts about Sunpu Opto are the same as Councilman Polensek's... which means my instincts may be wrong, as how could he be right?

Polensek's take on the Sunpu Opto deal:

"When my gut tells me something is wrong, I've been around long enough to know it's not right," Polensek said during the hearing.

He accused the administration of conducting a faulty process in choosing Sunpu-Opto.

"We're going to pay for every one of those jobs five times, six times over," Polensek said.

If you want to feel your heart sink in your chest, consider the forecast above shows the Deepwater oil flow is expected to round Cuba and the tip of Florida and head north into the Atlantic, within a week or so, and think of the Keys to the Future. The current progress of the flow of oil from the Deepwater drilling disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is following the forecast worst case expectations - and the amount of oil being spilled seems to be at the worst case level - and the efforts to stop the leak are nearly at worst case conditions... changing daily. This means Florida is in deep trouble, and oil will be flowing up the Eastern Atlantic coast next week.

Free Download — whitehouse — May 01, 2010 — President Obama speaks at the 2010 University of Michigan commencement ceremony in Ann Arbor, MI.

Below is the text President Obama's speech at the University of Michigan Commencement, as prepared for delivery.

It is great to be here in the Big House, and may I say "Go Blue!" I thought I'd go for the cheap applause line to start things off.

Good afternoon President Coleman, the Board of Trustees, faculty, parents, family, friends, and the class of 2010. Congratulations on your graduation, and thank you for allowing me the honor to be a part of it. And let me acknowledge your wonderful governor, Jennifer Granholm, your mayor, John Hieftje, and all the Members of Congress who are here with us today.

Remarks of President Barack Obama--As Prepared for Delivery
Hampton University Commencement
May 9, 2010
Hampton, Virginia

Good morning, Happy Mother's Day to all the moms here today, and thank you for inviting me to share this special occasion with the Hampton community. Before we get started, I just want to say, I'm excited the Battle of the Real H.U. will be taking place in Washington this year. You all know I'm not going to pick sides. But it's been, what, 13 years since the Pirates lost. As one Hampton alum on my staff put it, the last time Howard beat Hampton, The Fugees were still together.

 

Source: Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index

Ceridian reported today the Ceridian-UCLA Pulse of Commerce Index™ (PCI) fell 0.3 percent in April, suggesting the economic recovery may have stalled. "The latest PCI numbers are disappointing and cast considerable doubt on the strength of the recovery and the strength of GDP numbers for 2010," said Ed Leamer, the PCI's chief economist. Five of the nine US census regions were weak in April. With a decline of 1.7 percent, the PCI in Ohio's East North Central region fell the most.

The ICEarth Welcome Wagon stopped by Sansai Environmental Technologies this weekend to tour the world's largest indoor vermitechnology facility and meet Cleveland's greenest, meanest, fighting machine - the 60 million worm team bringing the world "Magic Dust". See Sansai for more information on their amazing processes and products... here are some pictures of their crib, right in the heart of South Collinwood - Cleveland - Ohio.

Dear realNEO Members and so Real Coop owners,

realNEO was founded October 7, 2004, making this our 6th year providing a free, open source content management system and social computing platform to the citizens of Northeast Ohio and the world... for the past few years as a cooperative. In this 6th year, we have reached a stage of ad hoc organizational maturity whereby we have a large, real, engaged community of members who have been active with realNEO for years, who share foundational commitments to openness, truth and freedom, and who are working in concert for the sustainability of our communities... both our virtual realNEO/coop community and our real NEO neighborhoods, around the world.

With maturation comes the opportunity to evolve, with the knowledge we have gained in our lives, now including over 5 years of realNEO.

IT Update - Change To Blog Submission Form - Promote Your Own Pages To Home, If Authorized

In response to problems with some real coop members posting content on realNEO that is harmful or objectionable to other members, and some members abusing the coop trust structure, it has been found advisable to change how content is promoted to the home page of realNEO. In the past, all content has automatically been promoted to the home page for all members, regardless of content. Now, when you post your content, you must select to post it to the home page yourself, if authorized - you will see that option available to you in the last section of the blog (and other content type) submission form - "Publishing Options"... check "Promoted to front page". If you have been asked not to promote your content to the home page, please respect that request and leave this option unchecked. Otherwise, check this option to send your content to the home page as usual.

We are still at an early stage in awareness of issues surrounding the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, including the amount of oil flowing from the spill daily and the effectiveness of efforts to stop the flow of oil and clean-up the mess - below are some of the latest estimates and updates as reported by various sources. Most interesting now is the forecasting of how all this oil - best or worst case - will travel through the gulf and ocean currents and impact nature and so all else on Earth. The best modeling of this I have seen is by the The College of Marine Science - USF, Ocean Circulation Group, which maintains a coordinated program of coastal ocean observing and modeling for the West Florida Continental Shelf (WFS) - you may see their models animated with projections through May 8 in the links below. For an excellent article on the anticipated impacts on Florida of this oil spill, I have also included part of an article from the LA Times, with link to that - these seem to be the latest accurate reflections on this horrible situation, as of May 4.

Question of the Day: What is Coming Out of this House at Farmington and Forest Hills in East Cleveland? I won't try to explain, as I can't.

Friends of Charlie Mosbrook (seems nearly everyone in Cleveland) have been concerned for his sudden health issues this year, and gladdened to see him back up, around, and performing stronger than ever. Featured above is a video from Charlie's website - inspiring, as is all his work - and he has many events upcoming - two in Lakewood may interested realNEO readers (we have lots of traffic in Lakewood)...

Music video by The Clash performing Rock The Casbah.
(C) 1982 SONY BMG MUSIC ENTERTAINMENT (UK) Limited

One report I read today estimates that an Exxon Valdez worth of oil may be spilling into the Gulf of Mexico every two days, 50 miles off the shores of Louisiana, in what is in my mind the worst environmental catastrophe (besides war) in human history - and that may continue for months (no end in sight, at all). All happening 2 miles under some of the most treacherous seas in the world - I've known deep rig divers to confirm that - and they don't even know what caused this blowout. Bottom line, a huge area of the Gulf of Mexico and its shorelines are now probably dead for our lifetimes and generations to come, if not forever. Where the oil will invade beyond is to be determined by Mother Nature, in response. Man shook the Etch-a-sketch of the environment for eternity in an area spanning many states and international boundaries... ending the global sustainability movement forever.

It's 1969 all over again... America's rivers are burning... time for the punks to take charge!

A Moment in Time (or, F.A.Q. on U.T.C.)

FROM THE NY TIMES - AN INTERESTING INITIATIVE - NO REASON NOT TO PARTICIPATE... YOU KEEP ALL OWNERSHIP OF YOUR IMAGE... IT COULD BECOME VALUABLE!

Attention: everyone with a camera, amateur or pro. Please join us on Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 (U.T.C./G.M.T.), as thousands of photographers simultaneously record “A Moment in Time.” The idea is to create an international mosaic, an astonishingly varied gallery of images that are cemented together by the common element of time.

ICEarth Bigbang computers, our Linux distro, and our optimal open source data and application configurations are designed to handle the most processor (CPU and GPU), memory and transaction intensive challenges in the world, to save Earth. Doing that requires an integration of our regional and global geographic information systems with layers of valuable insight not yet integrated, like environmental, atmospheric and topographic data, to drive analyses of life impacting factors in our neighborhoods like environmental fallout from all sources of pollution, to the home and child, for free to them. A good explanation of the type of data and analyses included in such capabilities is described below, helping you make sense of what just doesn't make sense, by doing things like growing GRASS...

I received an email with breaking news and these photographs from a realNEO field reporter - I'll let her file her story later...

Norm. I shot a few pics in the last 30 mins of marchers as they marched from clark down Fulton. Their chant: "If you are not Native American, you are an immigrant. Boycott AZ. Because I am Latino does not make me illegal. Because I am an alien, I am not unworthy"!

Can you post it for me if you think that it looks ok?

I am not the best photographer.

I am also attaching a shot called "urban yard"

I was watching the Pere Ubu "We Have The Technology" video over and over today and I was thinking why doesn't everyone in NEO appreciate David Thomas like they appreciate LeBron James. Not in tennis shoe sponsorships, but with pride and celebration. Do area residents realize the king of ubu projex is from Cleveland and still makes this his home court? Very few places in the world may make such an important claim to modern cultural significance, and David Thomas is in his prime.

Today, before midnight, we have the chance to give students at a great Ohio school the chance of a lifetime. Back in February, the White House and the Department of Education invited high schools throughout the country to apply to have President Obama speak at their graduation commencement ceremony.

Ohio’s Clark Montessori High School in Cincinnati made the cut and is one of just six finalists! Help us support these great students.

Whether you care about childhood lead poisoning or not, I think you'll be interested by important insight on Lead, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Renal Function that everyone in the world should understand. Think of the cost of this on society - the suffering, reduced quality of life, and lost years for so many people, caused by lead harming kidney function. Here's the intro and abstract - you'll need to set up an account on WebMD to read the rest (apparently free - this is not an endorsement of WebMD... I am not a member... I will join to read the rest of this  and let you know my thoughts)...

While I have never considered Issue 1 - the Third Frontier - offered me direct opportunity, as an Information Technology entrepreneur I do recognize this relatively low-burden, low-exposure state funding offers great opportunities for many other important technology initiatives across Ohio. The results are well documented by the well organized supporters of Issue 1 - see their message posted below - and I certainly expect this will pass by a large majority (if not, I will be shocked). Assuming this passes, I'd like to see changes in the processes for how Third Frontier money is used in the future, as I believe all our processes in the state and region must become brighter and greener. But we can't try to accomplish that without this funding being available for the technology sector. I'll vote for Issue 1, and then become active making sure the money has as great an impact as possible - results so far provide a good foundation. I recommend you do the same... see the official story below:

I've been asked what our traffic looks like over time, so I pulled a few quick charts of the number of visitors to realneo since we started using Google Analytics, and what they have visited, to measure performance of this site - and we've grown by pretty much all counts I've considered important by 30-100% since then - in some cases by 1,000s% - in less than a year-and-a-half.

I just received great news from our friend Max Eternity - very inspiring developments for him in Atlanta, including saving a Breuer (why we all met Max in the first place)... CONGRATUALTIONS AND THANK YOU MAX!!!!!!!!!!!!

Family, Friends and Colleagues:

 

When I was asked the other day to be interviewed by Architects + Artisans, it caught me by such surprise that all I could do was laugh.  You see, in the last several years I've spent so much of my time thinking, talking and writing about others--advocating for various causes--that it had become unfamiliar to actually have someone want to write about who I was, my art, and what I was doing personally.

 

For a piece entitled "To Write, Paint and Save a Monument", the Editor of A +A, Mike Welton, who has written for The New York Times, Interior Design Magazine and Dwell Magazine, writes in part:

 

Now that he’s saved Marcel Breuer’s last building from the wrecking ball, Max Eternity has returned his attention to the things that really matter, like painting and publishing.