claustrophobia

Mumbai is the most densely populated city in the world with 29,650
people per square kilometer.
{That's about 34 square meters per
person!}

America is a sick society

The following is a quote from a popular blog about the recent homicide-suicide of a popular, world champion wrestler:
Chris Benoit has broken my heart.
We expect wrestlers to die young of the same kinds of ailments that football players and boxers die from.
America is a gladiator society and so we glorify the acts of our gladiators, relish in their victories, and suffer in their tragedies.
Benoit was a legit tough-man in a "fake" sport. Wrestling fans have been drawn to Benoit for years because of his unrivaled physical gifts.

what to do on a cruise ship...

Freedom of the Seas

The ship features three swimming areas; an interactive water park, a
dedicated adult pool and the main pool. There are 2 whirlpools
cantilevered out from the ship's sides. The Royal Promenade sports a
coffee shop, Sorrento's Pizzeria, a Ben and Jerry's ice-cream shop,
Vintage's winery, the Bull and Bear Irish pub, and many Duty-free
shops. The 13th deck features a sports area with amenities such as a
rock climbing wall, the FlowRider (an onboard wave generator for
surfing), a miniature golf course and a full size basketball court.
Other items include an ice skating rink, a casino, a Johnny Rockets (see below),
Wi-Fi capabilities throughout the ship, flat panel televisions in all
staterooms, and cell phone connectivity.

Johnny Rockets is an American burger restaurant franchise whose motif
is meant to recreate the American malt shops of the 1940s and 1950s.
Its restaurants' decor include jukeboxes, chrome accents and red
leather seats, and customers are waited on by waiters and waitresses
dressed in attire of the period. The staff are also known to sing and
dance every half-hour, twirl straws and make smiley faces of ketchup.
All orders are made-to-order.

Cruise Ships for Hurricane Survivors?

Hurricane Katrina Charters
Three of the Carnival cruise ships were chartered by the United States
government for six months to serve as temporary housing in the
aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Holiday was docked in Mobile,
Alabama, and the Ecstasy and Sensation were docked at New Orleans,
Louisiana. The six-month contract cost $236 million!!!
The contract was widely criticized because the vessels were never
fully utilized, and Carnival received more money than it would have
earned by using the ships in their normal rotation. Carnival did not
have the same fuel, entertainment, staffing, and other expenses they
would have incurred had the ships been on their normal routes!
(Albeit, the line did not receive revenues from on-board gambling,
alcoholic beverages, and other product and service sales that would
have been generated had the vessels been engaged in cruising.)

playing in the mud...

Mud volcano swallows Java
May 26 '07

One year later, mining companies wrangle and thousands await
compensation in Sidoarjo, Indonesia.
THEY come in pairs - the prophets, witches and psychics - to cast
spells, prayers and offerings on a vast mud lake that has subsumed
nearly 700 hectares around the town of Sidoarjo, forcing more than
43,000 Indonesians from their homes.
Dwarfed by an enormous dyke surrounding the centre of a mud volcano in
East Java, they kneel before the bubbling ooze, with reverential
followers held back at security checkpoints.
Donning a black headscarf and a Javanese blend of Islam and mysticism,
Sri Sunarti scatters water gathered from the grave of a 17th-century
Muslim missionary. An ancient spirit, Semar, had told her she could
halt the mud with prayer, she says.
Excavators continually strengthen and heighten the main dam as plumes
of toxic gas mushroom overhead, with hot mud shooting up to 30 metres
into the air!
Authorities have barred more than two citizens from entering the site
at a time, and they may only walk a few metres along an outer wall, a
kilometre from the central dam.
The sacrificial throwing of live cows, goats and chickens into the
mud has been banned.
One year ago this Tuesday, a gas-exploration well part-owned by the
Australian mining giant Santos exploded, sending a geyser of mud and
toxic gas into the air. Nearby villages and factories were flooded,
the highway and railway were covered, and later East Java's main gas
pipeline ruptured.
Despite all attempts to plug the flow - drilling relief wells and even
dropping concrete balls into its centre - more and more mud spurts
from the volcano -- around 1 million barrels daily.
The rising mudtide covered thousands more homes in March.
The displaced await compensation, mitigation efforts are farcical and
arguments continue over who will bear the multibillion-dollar cost.
There is no end in sight.
Optimists hope the mudflow could dissipate in 30 years, but experts
suggest it may continue for centuries. Twenty-three kilometres of
earth dams have been built in an unsuccessful attempt to contain the
mud, 20 metres deep in parts, and channel it into the nearby Porong
River, then into the sea.
When the Herald visited the site last week, just a trickle of ooze
dribbled from one of eight large pipes above the river. The director
of operations of the mud disaster team, admits they are pumping only a
fraction of what emerges from the volcano because the wrong pumps were
installed.
"They are only fit for water, not for mud!"

Owing to the "complexity of the incident and the dynamic nature of the
ongoing work, there is significant uncertainty surrounding these
issues", Santos has warned in a report to shareholders.

Direct mitigation of the mudflow and buying the land and houses it
covers would be Lapindo's responsibility - an estimated $540 million.
Parliamentarians have threatened to overturn the decree, complaining
that all costs should be met by the miners.
Walhi describes it as a political conspiracy to avoid corporate responsibility.
Santos had limited influence urging a greater focus on long-term "mud
mitigation to prevent further social, economic and infrastructure
degradation".
Mr Bakrie has denied that the volcano was caused by the gas bore -
blaming an earthquake two days earlier near Yogyakarta, more than 200
kilometres away
The third partner in the well, Medco, said Lapindo's drillers had
been negligent in not inserting a casing around the gas bore which
would have enabled the flow to be plugged after the drill hit a huge
mud bubble, pressurised by gas underneath.
A Bakrie company bought out Medco's share of the well, and its
liabilities, for a token fee last month.
Last year Indonesia's Finance Minister blocked the Bakrie group's
attempt to sell Lapindo to a shelf company offshore as an attempt to
evade responsibility for the incident.

Lapindo has launched a public relations offensive, funding studies
and a geological seminar. Only geologists who said the volcano was a
natural phenomenon were invited to contribute.
A police investigation has determined that negligence was to blame and
recommended 13 Lapindo officials face criminal charges.
Local prosecutors are reluctant to proceed, sending the brief of evidence

back twice for revision.
The head of the Disaster Research Centre at the Surabaya Institute of
Technology has no doubts it was the failure to install a casing along
the drill shaft that caused the disaster. "Because they didn't use a
casing, the mud went wild," he says.
Sidoarjo's catastrophe is "just beginning", he says, and with no known
way to halt the flow it could last hundreds of years.
Meanwhile, most of the more than 43,000 victims await compensation,
many in ramshackle, open-air refugee camps. Lapindo says it has paid
more than $180 million towards the clean-up, evacuation, and rent and
food relief. But only 185 people so far have been compensated for the
loss of their homes.
The problem, according to Lapindo, is that locals must produce
evidence of land ownership and most lack official certificates.

The village of Balongnongo was the first hit by the mud. Zaenul, a
mechanic, did have a land title and has received an initial payment, but
he says no compensation can replace the daily village life of
community celebrations, traditional music and Koran readings.
His family is scattered in rented homes across the district and his
two children must travel 20 kilometres to primary school.
"It was my pride to have built a house from my own sweat, but now it
is gone," he says, adding: "What we need is a place to rest, a house
of our own."

The world today

Mount Everest is lighter...

The icy peak of Mount Everest is lighter by about 1,000 pounds of trash.
More than a dozen mountaineers pitched in for the latest effort to
tidy up the world's highest mountain. Accumulated oxygen canisters and
other debris have earned Mount Everest the reputation as the world's
highest garbage dump.
It's the fifth such effort by Japanese mountaineer Ken Noguchi. He
said he's collected nearly 20,000 pounds of garbage since he began his
campaign in 2000.
This year, Noguchi said he's starting to see a cleaner mountain.
Under new Nepalese law, climbers and their guides are required to
carry out all gear and trash or forfeit a $4,000 deposit.

An Alabama boy
An Alabama boy has used his revolver on an enormous wild boar, killing
the animal and sending the youngster on his way to (15 minutes of) fame.
Jamison Stone, 11, used a .50 caliber revolver to kill the pig at a
commercial hunting preserve in east Alabama about three weeks ago.
Stone, his father and two guides tracked the pig, but bagging the
swine took about three hours of chasing through hilly woods before a
final shot at point blank range brought it down for good.
Stone's father, Mike Stone, said the animal weighed more than 1,000
lbs. and was more than nine feet long. The tusks measured five inches.
It took heavy equipment to transport the animal out of the woods. The
head went to a taxidermist. The rest is headed for the sausage
factory. The Stones could net 500 to 700 lbs. of sausage meat.
If the claims are accurate, the trophy boar eclipses Hogzilla, the
famed wild hog that grew to seemingly mythical proportions before it
was killed in south Georgia in 2004.

A phony veterinarian...
A phony veterinarian has been sentenced to probation and mandatory
psychiatric treatment after pleading guilty in New York to performing
unauthorized medical procedures on at least 14 animals.
Steven Vassall was exposed in an undercover sting involving a kitten
named Fred. An investigator posing as Fred's owner called Vassall to
an apartment rigged with a hidden camera.
The fake vet told the investigator he could neuter Fred for $135.
Vassall was arrested as he left the apartment with the kitten and the
cash.
For his part in the sting, Fred -- a rescued stray -- was given a tiny
badge for his collar and a Law Enforcement Appreciation Award.
Officials had planned to use him in a school program about animal
care, but the 15-month old tabby died in August after wandering into
traffic.

A child destroyed?

A child destroyed a one-of-a-kind piece of artwork at Kansas City's
Union Station, and it was caught on tape.
Tibetan monks had been creating the sand art, which looks like a
colorful tapestry on the floor, for two days.
A surveillance camera recorded a young boy, possibly a toddler, who
walked into the sand and started dancing, while his mother mailed a
package at the post office. After a few minutes, the video showed a
woman pull the child away.
"Never happened before, never happened before like that," monk Jampa
Tenzin said.
The monks said they were not angry at the child or his mother.
Instead, they've been hard at work to finish the piece.
Tibetan monks are creating sand art on the floor of Union Station.
The monks are on a yearlong tour of the United States and Canada to
raise money for their monastery. The original monastery in Tibet was
destroyed. They were about halfway finished when they left for the day
Tuesday, roping off the artwork before they left.
The lead monk said it was "no problem," adding, "we will have to work
harder" to get it finished before Saturday. It will then be swept up
and offered to onlookers for their gardens. The rest will be placed in
the Missouri River.

iatrogenicity

1/4 MILLION deaths YEARLY in USA caused by doctors........
The author, Dr. Barbara Starfield of the Johns Hopkins School of
Hygiene and Public Health, describes how the US health care system may
contribute to poor health.

DEATHS PER YEAR:

* 12,000 — unnecessary surgery
* 7,000 — medication errors in hospitals
* 20,000 — other errors in hospitals
* 80,000 — infections in hospitals
* 106,000 — negative effects of drugs
* total 250,000 deaths per year from iatrogenic causes!!