App Lets You Peek Inside 80,000 Foods At Your Grocery Store

LOOKING BEYOND A NUTRITION LABEL, FOOD SCORES RATES YOUR GRUB BASED UPON ITS PESTICIDES, ANTIBIOTICS, AND PROCESSING.

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. The package contains just a few ingredients. Milled corn. Sugar. Malt flavor. Salt. And BHT “for freshness.”

Seems innocuous enough. But is it? Entering the product into Food Scores, a new iPhone and web app by the nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG), only rates Kellogg’s Corn Flakes as a 5 on a scale of 10 (10 being the worst). I see this in a dashboard of meters that break down food into three parts: nutrition (the standard calories, fat, and protein stuff); ingredients (including undisclosed pesticides, contaminants, or antibiotics); and processing (how far has that product come from its source whole foods).

Food Scores has some concerns about those Corn Flakes.

http://www.fastcodesign.com/3037854/infographic-of-the-day/app-lets-you-peek-inside-80000-foods-at-your-grocery-store

Schieffer: Politics the Only Product That Gets Worse as it Gets More Expensive

Face the Nation host Bob Scieffer bemoaned the rising price tag of American elections Sunday morning, especially the 2014 midterms, which at $4 billion will be the most expensive midterms in history while producing what will likely be historically low turnout and potentially little shift in actual power.

“Can you name a commodity or a product that gets worse and worse, that produces less and less of what it is supposed to produce, yet gets more expensive?” Schieffer asked. “Maybe you can name one but the only thing i can think of is American politics.”

Because centrism, Schieffer added that he’s “not blaming it on Republicans or Democrats,” he’s “blaming it on Republicans and Democrats who have turned what used to be an amateur sport in to a professional business, where the jobs that volunteers used to do for free have been outsourced to professionals.”

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/schieffer-politics-the-only-product-that-gets-worse-as-it-gets-more-expensive/

What a terrible truth ...the higher the cost and the worse it gets.

Cable News Ignores Dire New Report On Climate Change, Features Rant From Unhinged Climate Denier

On Sunday, the Weather Channel’s co-founder took his confounding message on the falsity of climate change to CNN, where he said he left Brian Stelter, the host of Reliable Sources, “wondering what had hit him.”

John Coleman, who co-founded the Weather Channel in the 1980s before being forced out a year after it went to air, has splashed across headlines this past week for his climate denying antics. It started when Coleman — who does not have a meteorology degree, let alone a climatology degree — wrote an open letter to UCLA’s Hammer Museum expressing his disapproval on a climate change presentation hosted there. In the letter he states, “there is no significant man-made global warming at this time, there has been none in the past and there is no reason to fear any in the future.”

Coleman does not back up these claims, but in the ensuing week he has added significantly to them. In an email posted online, Coleman gave a synopsis of his appearance on Reliable Sources, which was filmed on Friday:

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/11/02/3587561/climate-denying-weather-channel-co-founder-goes-on-cnn-is-clearly-wrong-on-all-points/

We cannot afford to ignore this problem ...

Planet headed toward ‘irreversible’ climate damage, UN warns

The globe is heading toward “severe, pervasive, and irreversible” climate change impacts if left “unchecked,” according to a new United Nations report.

In its most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken, the U.N.’s synthesis report released Sunday, finds that the evidence behind human influence on climate change is overwhelming and undeniable, as greenhouse gas emissions are the “highest in history.”

The report, which over 800 scientists from 80 countries wrote, additionally drawing from 3,000 contributing authors and experts, argues that emissions must fall to a net zero by the end of the century, and that the window of opportunity to address the threat is shrinking.

“The report expresses with greater certainty than in previous assessments the fact that emissions of greenhouse gases and other anthropogenic drivers have been the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century,” according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which adopted the report on Saturday evening before releasing it on Sunday.

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/222565-planet-headed-toward-irreversible-climate-damage-un-warns

http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/222571-kerry-un-climate-report-another-canary-in-the-coal-mine

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/02/rapid-carbon-emission-cuts-severe-impact-climate-change-ipcc-report

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/pessimistic-un-climate-change-report-also-offers-an-out/382262/

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/11/02/360932486/u-n-end-greenhouse-emissions-by-2100-or-risk-irreversible-damage?utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=science&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews

http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=2849

http://i100.independent.co.uk/article/the-world-just-got-its-final-warning-on-climate-change--ekIujj-zPx

Bill McKibben -- http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/nov/02/ipcc-climate-change-carbon-emissions-underestimates-situation-fossil-fuels

Forty-Two Plutocrats Have Funded More Than a Third of All Super PAC Spending

With just four days to go until the 2014 midterms, here’s our final weekly roundup of news about this year’s money race.

Do you know where your polling place is, and what documents you’ll need to cast a ballot? If you have any questions, the nonpartisan League of Women Voters has answers at vote411.org. And if you encounter any problems at the polls, call the Election Protection hotline at 1-866-OUR-VOTE (1-866-687-8683) or visit their website.

Big Money: According to the Wesleyan Media Project, ad spending on congressional races has passed the $1 billion mark. Around 40 percent of it is dark money, with undisclosed donors. If you include spending on ads for ballot initiatives, judges and races for state offices, almost three million spots have aired during this election cycle at a cost of $1.67 billion.

The Times, They Are a Changin’: At Vox, Mark Schmitt, director of New America Foundation’s program on political reform, looks at three ways the 2014 midterms could permanently “transform money in politics.”

Republicans Still Dominate the Dark Money Game: Democratic-leaning donors like Tom Steyer have invested heavily in the 2014 race, but the Sunlight Foundation’s Peter Olsen-Phillips reports that when it comes to dark money, Republican-aligned groups have outspent their Democratic counterparts by around three-and-a-half to one.

http://billmoyers.com/2014/10/31/dark-money/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/10/28/top-super-pac-donors-of-the-midterms-steyer-bloomber-singer-mercer/18060219/

http://www.propublica.org/article/secret-donors-behind-some-super-pacs-funneling-millions-into-midterms?utm_campaign=sprout&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=1414785193

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2014/09/02/how-mccutcheon-has-already-changed-campaign-finance-in-1-chart/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbert_Super_PAC

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code

The basic truth about internet access that cable & phone companies don't want you to know

A new report about the state of broadband connectivity around the world reveals some good news and bad news about policy in the United States. The good news is that in a handful of cities, Americans are enjoying world-class speeds:


And the prices are pretty darn affordable:


This achievement is really impressive when you consider that Chattanooga, Kansas City, and Lafayette aren't even remotely as dense as Seoul or Hong Kong or Tokyo, which get similar speeds. When we put our minds to it in this country, we can do great things. And what works for Chattanooga could work even better in bigger cities like Chicago or Miami.

But there's a catch. The American cities that are delivering best-in-the-world speeds at bargain prices are precisely the cities that aren't relying on Verizon, AT&T, Comcast, Time-Warner, etc. to run their infrastructure. In Kansas City, Google built a state-of-the-art fiber optic network largely just to prove a point. In Chattanooga and Lafayette, the government did it. At the moment, the US federal government could issue 5-year bonds at a 1.58 percent interest rate and make grants to cities interested in following Chattanooga and Lafayette down that path. But it doesn't happen, because while broadband incumbents don't want to spend the money it would take to build state-of-the-art fiber networks, they are happy to spend money on lobbying.

http://www.vox.com/2014/10/31/7137457/broadband-speed-chattanooga-kansas-city-lafayette

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/upshot/why-the-us-has-fallen-behind-in-internet-speed-and-affordability.html?_r=0&abt=0002&abg=1

https://medium.com/backchannel/jammed-e474fc4925e4

http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/10/fcc-reportedly-close-to-reclassifying-isps-as-common-carriers/

If only certain corrupt officials would get out of the way ...

This is our screwed up national politics

We Have to Embrace Apocalypse If We're Going to Get Serious About Sticking Around on This Planet

Here’s my experience in speaking apocalyptically about the serious challenges humans face: No matter how carefully I craft a statement of concern about the future of humans, no matter how often I deny a claim to special gifts of prognostication, no matter how clearly I reject supernatural explanations or solutions, I can be certain that a significant component of any audience will refuse to take me seriously. Some of those people will make a joke about “Mr. Doom and Gloom.” Others will suggest that such talk is no different than conspiracy theorists’ ramblings about how international bankers, secret cells of communists, or crypto-fascists are using the United Nations to create a one-world government. Even the most measured and careful talk of the coming dramatic change in the place of humans on Earth leads to accusations that one is unnecessarily alarmist, probably paranoid, certainly irrelevant to serious discussion about social and ecological issues. In the United States, talk of the future is expected to be upbeat, predicting expansion and progress, or at least maintenance of our “way of life.”

Apocalyptic thinking allows us to let go of those fanciful visions of the future. As singer/songwriter John Gorka puts it: “The old future’s gone/We can’t get to there from here.” The comfortable futures that we are comfortable imagining are no longer available to us because of the reckless way we’ve been rolling the dice; there is nothing to save us from ourselves. Our task is to deal with our future without delusions of deliverance, either divine or technological. This planet is not a way station in a journey to some better place; it is our home, the only home we will know. We will make our peace with ourselves, each other, and the larger living world here.

http://www.alternet.org/books/we-have-embrace-apocalypse-if-were-going-get-serious-about-sticking-around-planet

WTF ...36

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Some income inequality is inherent to a capitalist economy, but this is far beyond anything our country has ever seen. This level of imbalance is not sustainable, and if nothing changes, everyone will pay the price.

When the sun smiles, the birds smile back ...

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