As recently as the 1990s, I subscribed to multiple newspapers and cable television for news reporting, costing perhaps $100 per month... filling my hallway with stacks of dead trees and pumping undesirable broadcast spam into my home by coax.  Over the past decade, new technologies have replaced for me all the functionality offered by copper cables, newsprint and mainstream media in the past, expanding the value of information, and what mainstream media I do access is on-line, real-time, and converged to free multimedia accessible by multiple wired and wireless platforms via open source technologies.

I was flabbergasted to read an article in the Cleveland Plain Deal titled "Organic food benefits debated in wake of president's report on cancer, environment", about the 2008–2009 Annual Report of the President’s Cancer Panel - REDUCING ENVIRONMENTAL CANCER RISK... What We Can Do Now, that has nothing to do with ORGANIC FOOD, is misleading, and seems intended to further dumb-down local citizens to the health hazards caused by excessive polluting and medical interventions here, preventing citizens from following one of the core Recommendations:

SELF-ADVOCACY

7. Each person can become an active voice in his or her community.  To a greater extent than many realize, individuals have the power to affect public policy by letting policymakers know that they strongly support environmental cancer research and measures that will reduce or remove from the environment toxics that are known or suspected carcinogens or endocrine-disrupting chemicals.  Individuals also can influence industry by selecting non-toxic products and, where these do not exist, communicating with manufacturers and trade organizations about their desire for safer products.

Below is What Individuals Can Do: Recommendations: 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.

Much remains to be learned about the effects of environmental exposures on cancer risk.  Based on what is known, however, there is much that government and industry can do now to address environmental cancer risk.  The Panel’s recommendations in this regard are detailed above.  At the same time, individuals can take important steps in their own lives to reduce their exposure to environmental elements that increase risk for cancer and other diseases.  And collectively, individual small actions can drastically reduce the number and levels of environmental contaminants.

CHILDREN

1. It is vitally important to recognize that children are far more susceptible to damage from environmental carcinogens and endocrine-disrupting compounds than adults.  To the extent possible, parents and child care providers should choose foods, house and garden products, play spaces, toys, medicines, and medical tests that will minimize children’s exposure to toxics.  Ideally, both mothers and fathers should avoid exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals and known or suspected carcinogens prior to a child’s conception and throughout pregnancy and early life, when risk of damage is greatest.

Below is the Policy, Research, and Program Recommendations 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.

Based on its conclusions, the Panel recommends:

1. A precautionary, prevention-oriented approach should replace current reactionary approaches to environmental contaminants in which human harm must be proven before action is taken to reduce or eliminate exposure. 

Below is the Executive Summary 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.

Executive Summary

Despite overall decreases in incidence and mortality, cancer continues to shatter and steal the lives of Americans.  Approximately 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and about 21 percent will die from cancer.  The incidence of some cancers, including some most common among children, is increasing for unexplained reasons.

Public and governmental awareness of environmental influences on cancer risk and other health issues has increased substantially in recent years as scientific and health care communities, policymakers, and individuals strive to understand and ameliorate the causes and toll of human disease.  A growing body of research documents myriad established and suspected environmental factors linked to genetic, immune, and endocrine dysfunction that can lead to cancer and other diseases.

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.

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.

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)...

On April 29, 2010, EPA proposed a set of regulatory proposals under the Clean Air Act that address emissions from boilers, process heaters, and certain solid waste incinerators. These rules would significantly cut emissions of pollutants that are of particular concern for children. Mercury and lead can cause adverse affects on children's developing brains -- including effects on IQ, learning, and memory. The rules would also reduce emissions of other pollutants including cadmium, dioxin, furans, formaldehyde and hydrochloric acid. These pollutants can cause cancer or other adverse health effects in adults and children. Together, these rules would cut mercury and other air toxics emissions from nearly 200,000 units across the U.S.

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 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.

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:

Why does the Cleveland Plain Dealer try to destroy a beautify, young, smart leader like Jennifer Brunner with their dirty corporate political dealings - to get one of those corporate Republicans in office - by making it seem like she is a lost cause to their 100,000s of readers. Luckily, on realNEO we may share all the candidate's words, in full, directly with all our 1,000,000s of readers worldwide forever... like this message I just received from candidate Brunner, on the road for change for Ohio... read her insight on polls that the Plain Dealer spins as harmful for Brunner - the poll results are in fact totally up in the air and in ways say Brunner should win. The PD should let the people decide without Republican propaganda in a supposedly impartial newspaper...

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.

There is a new Facemob that is degrading society worldwide, as is the Facebook purpose.  This trashy Facemob is called DEAR LORD, THIS YEAR YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTOR, PATRICK SWAYZIE. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE ACTRESS, FARAH FAWCETT. YOU TOOK MY FAVORITE SINGER, MICHAEL JACKSON. I JUST WANTED TO LET YOU KNOW, MY FAVORITE PRESIDENT IS BARACK OBAMA. AMEN. To think "Social Computing" consultants in Cleveland are paid (probably with our tax dollars) to force citizens to use Facebook, just to interact with Cleveland City Council - I believe that foolishness must NOW STOP! Those responsible must be terminated.

On May 11th you may benefit three important peace organizations while being smart and local about your foods... simply by grocery shopping. The Food Coop will generously donate a portion of your total bill, on the second Tuesday of every month, to benefit Cleveland Peace Action, InterReligious Task Force on Central America (IRTF), and Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice

Location