can "(organic) include nanotech? ........... ENM's are the new GMO

7.20: co.pol/nanotech/fda needs to regulate ENM's:
Center for Food Safety office@centerforfoodsafety.org
date:     Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 10:18 AM
subject:
    Urge FDA to Regulate Nanotechnology
    to Protect Consumer Health

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has a public comment period open through July 24th on the oversight of nanotechnology in food. Amazingly, the FDA currently does not regulate the use of nanotechnology in food, despite its widespread use, and serious public health concerns.
 Already a wide variety of nanoscale applications in food packaging and processing are being developed. Yet, we know very little about the health effects of exposure to engineered nanomaterials, and what we do know, is cause for alarm.
Make your voice heard and urge FDA to regulate nanotechnology to protect consumer health.
To: Office of Food Additive Safety, U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Re: Guidance for Industry on assessment of the effects of the incorporation of Engineered Nano-scale Materials (ENMs) in food ingredients (food substances and food contact surfaces) (Docket number: FDA-2011-D-0490)
It is shocking that FDA does not yet regulate the use of ENMs in food ingredients, given that nanomaterials are reportedly widely present in food ingredients and food contact substances. A 2012 National Research Council report found that “there is little progress” on research into the effect of oral consumption of engineered nanomaterials on human health. The FDA should commission, finance and publish such research as an urgent public health priority, and a basis for regulation.
The FDA’s draft guidance to industry should be a first step towards regulation to protect public health and the environment.
Neither FDA nor industry should assume a food ingredient at its macro-scale to be safe at the nano-scale, since we know that nanomaterials can behave completely differently than their bulk counterparts. These unique behaviors are what make nanotechnology so attractive to industry, but they also raise unique risks that must be addressed through unique regulation and oversight. The FDA should require those companies to submit data showing that their products are safe. Further, these safety assessments should be publicly available and the consultation process transparent.
All engineered nanomaterials used as food ingredients, food contact substances, and food colorants should be subject to a rigorous pre-market safety assessment. FDA should withdraw from the market all products shown to contain engineered nanomaterials as food ingredients that have not undergone the pre-market safety assessment and been shown to be safe for daily human consumption.

Brazil's HIV funding pulled

7.20: news.pol/brazil's hiv funding pulled:
7.21: summary:
. after hearing that brazil had low HIV
and knowing they are highly hiafric*,
I got interested in comparing them to
usa's HIV program which is not doing well;
but they are not comparing the same things:
they have free anti-virals,
and if that prevents a case of AIDS,
then they are not counted in the AIDS roles;
they don't keep track of HIV status
-- but usa does count that (it's very high here,
because while the hiafrics* are
no more promiscuous than others,
the hieuropeans* are serial polygamists,
whereas the hiafrics are concurrent polygamists .
*: "(hiX)
means "(of X ancestry, from hispanic
from hierarchy, tree, family tree) --9.27 .

. brazil's adult AIDS* was kept under 1%
(compare to africa's 18%),
by funding free condoms and drug treatments;
but it was done with international money;
the usa later pulled out when
brazil wouldn't denounce prostitution;
and, later other money was diverted to
Africa's much worse condition .

*: (this article says HIV was kept at 1%,
but the msmgf.org source indicates
only AIDS not HIV is measured in brazil ).

web: compared to blacks in usa:

. an estimated 1 in 16 black men
[6% of black males in usa]
and 1 in 32 black women
[3% of black females in usa]
will be diagnosed with HIV infection.

. this can't be compared to brazil's 1% rate

because it applies to AIDS not HIV
as HIV is not a reportable event in brazil .
. the HIV rates can be much higher, because
Infection precedes by 8-10 years
the appearance of symptomatic disease .
. it used to be mostly a disease of
the educated bi- or homo-sexual;
but now it is mainly among uneducated hetero's .
. the rate of 1% of brazillians
likely applies fairly to hiafrics too
because brazil is 45% hiafric -- nearly half .
[. npr's portrayal is contradicted by this part]:
    "( Commercial sex work is not legal in Brazil.
    A nationwide evaluation of
    HIV prevention programs
    for female commercial sex workers (CSW)
    found high levels of HIV awareness,
    but significant barriers to
    implementing safe-sex practices,
    including fear of violence,
    increased payments for unsafe sex,
    and competition for clients.
    . In addition, non street-based CSW
    reported more safe-sex practices
    than did street-based CSW.
    Informants also felt that
    stigmatization of their profession
    contributed to violence
    from both clients and the police .)
[. this report also points out that
Brazil has a lot of catholics,
though some strains of it
are mixed with african traditions .]

global warming bugs killing trees for fuel #overpopulation vs #ark-investing

7.18: news,co.pol/fires/global warming bugs killing trees for fuel:
climate central org

. the massive fire seasons recently
were the culmination of a trend:
between 1986 and 2003, western forests saw
a nearly fourfold increase in the number of wildfires,
and those fires burned six times the amount of land
and lasted five times as long
when compared with the previous 16 years.
In response, states and the federal government
adopted policies and legislation,
such as the Bush administration’s
Healthy Forest Restoration Act,
which were designed to head off
increasingly catastrophic wildfires
by thinning forests and reintroducing fire
to areas that were overgrown with fuel
from a century of fire suppression.
Some wildfires would be allowed to burn
in hopes of improving overall forest health.
The fires, however, have continued to grow
in size, frequency, and intensity,
while the policies meant to tame them
have sputtered and stalled.
Air quality issues
increasingly limit the number of days when
prescribed burns can be lit,
and the public is often resistant to them,
particularly after incidents in which
forest managers lose control .
Residents of fire-prone landscapes
are often unwilling to cut down the trees they love,
even when removing a few trees increases their safety.
And building with fire-resistant materials
is often more expensive
and doesn’t fit with mountain traditions.
. between 2000 and 2010,
more than 100,000 people moved into
Colorado’s most flammable forests .
. global warming means that
bugs are killing more trees,
so we have a lot more to burn through;
and, there's less water in the area
to naturally suppress that burning .
Wildfires nationwide cost the federal government
up to $3 billion annually
— twice what they cost a decade ago.
Today wildfires take up nearly half
of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget,
up from 13 % in 1991.

. even with climate change,
the real problem is that people who should be
investing in fire prevention systems
like irrigating the property around them,
are instead relentlessly spending on
expanding the population .
. use solar energy to pump oceans into deserts
and this will make solar do more desalination too .
. the problem is not too much affluence,
it is too much poverty:
high-tech could survive global warming;
but this 3rd-world mentality cannot .

message is save anyone not everyone

7.29: relig/christian/the message is save anyone not everyone:
. christian notices that the free market is immoral
because commercialism is diluting our culture .
. however, that is actually christian's fault;
because they are the ones who believe
that they are G*D-ordained to
convert and embrace the entire world;
so, their own idea for the
free-marketing of religion
means that everyone else's culture must be diluted
-- but the rub works both ways:
their culture gets diluted as well .
. what's really notable about that though
is that it doesn't have to be that way
according to their own leader, Christ .
. when Jews seek to maintain moral quality,
their ultimatum to you is social rejection .
. when JC set out to save the world
he was indeed looking beyond
his own Jewish community
but the idea was to recruit anyone -- not everyone .
. he had an important culture to foster,
and, whoever would embrace it,
that was who his new family would be .
[ his new religion was this:

you are unfairly calling people sinners:
. when your disabled make it look as if
your community is being cursed by G*D
you claim that god has really
caused the disability as a punishment
and that the reason for this is that
self or family has displeased G*D .
. faced with the demon-possessed (mentally ill),
you are forcing them to feign physical disabilities
in order to get sympathy while begging;
you shun people in required jobs like tax collectors,
and you shun the jobs you force on them
with your poverty and under-the-table demands:
eg, why is the prostitute allowed but shunned?
why are kids shunned for being born out wedlock
-- for what their parents did?
I'm not saying you have to embrace
or convert the whole world
but we need to take responsibility
for the mess we make as a society,
rather than leave the disabled
to beg or prostitute .]

. we CHRISTIANs need to live by example
and encourage people to join us that way;
we need control of our cities;
we can't have creeping democracy
forcing our city to flip cultures;
instead, new cultures should find new cities .
this is where privacy is really important
-- on the cultural level --
yet this is where we have none!
. a community 's privacy right
means the right to not be invaded by
competing cultures .
[7.29:
. this notion of community privacy rights
is directly at odds with the
separation of church and state clause;
but that clause make sense only at
the state and federal levels;
it doesn't makes sense at the community level
where people want to share values
to achieve trust and reduce contact stress .]
[9.26:
. but wouldn't this perpetuate intolerance?
the primary concern about intolerance
was what to do with freed slaves;
but if we offered them the American Dream
-- a piece of fertile land,
or the ownership of a thriving business --
I'm sure they would have been
quite happy with "(intolerance) .]

. the place where cultural competition can happen
is in the economic realm, like so:
if your culture can't afford a business
then you sell it,
and the new owners replace your culture with theirs .
. if a gated community has too many vacancies,
they may decide to convert the culture,
ie, sell it for use by some other culture
so that they can use the money to
expand where they can thrive .
. the way it is now though
gives each culture too much ability to
erode the values of another culture
even when the market has given it no in-roads .

. there can still be minimum fed standards
that ensure communities are not
holding people against their will
or getting into child abuse or neglect;
and that's where issues happen:
is being a drug addict considered to be
child endangerment?
. drugs could still be allowed in adult communities .

7.29: 9.26:
. but what about the free market?
you have to tolerate all these behaviours
because we have a right to
set up shop in your community,
and when we do, we have a right to expect
that you will not limit our clients .

7.29: 9.26:
. what about the free parent's dump:
your culture is so uninviting
that you keep losing people
and you are really adding to the federal blight;
because, you send them out with no resources .
. yet you are finding ways to
still own all the cities,
thereby creating all these homeless people .

.chm to .html conversion

7.14: news.cyb/xp/.chm to .html conversion:
you need a CHM decompiler

(You can use HTML Help Workshop)
[but it seems that is just a dev's api
not a command line tool ...]
counter-suggestion:
. decompile CHM using the built-in command line tool:
hh.exe . eg,
C:\>HH.EXE -decompile D:/output-folder D:/converted.chm
where "decompile-folder" could be simply "."
Decompiling the file produces a slew of
HTML and image files,
together with the table of contents (.hhc) file,
index (.hhk) file, and a few other supporting files.
The only decompiler with any additional features
is KeyTools,
as this can try to rebuild the project (.hhp) file.
You will need this file if you want to recompile the help project.
One thing to note is that the decompile/recompile
isn't a "round-trip" process.
Certain features that the help author added
to the original help file
can't be recovered when you decompile it,
so these may no longer work properly
after you've recompiled.
This is especially true in the area of
context-sensitive help,
which may be broken in the new version of the file.

7.14: cyb/fs/.chm to .html conversion:
web:
. the .chm file type is microsoft's compiled html
and I found there are decompilers for it
on both xp (built-in) and on ubuntu (openware).
proj: done on xp:
. I did it with hh! [@] see snapshot
. to use the terminal without the help of the
[open a terminal here] file menu item
-- where did that go?!
(I need to be in the admin acct) --
use the run box, and type in cmd.exe;
then try the command
(change directory to virtual drive E)
ie (cd E:)
which is really just link to a long pathname;
then in the hh command,
I'll need to mention the drive in the file paths,
and I'll rename the files
to make my command typing easier;
eg, rename "(programming python.chm) to pp.chm,
create a folder named pp,
and then run this command:
hh -decompile e:\pp e:\pp.chm .
. instantly it's filled with html files
-- data liberation !

mis:
. (cd E:) doesn't work?
likely because I don't own that space?

7.14: mis.cyb/xp/
virtual device has strange permissions:
. I have some ms programs that need their installer cd
to be in the cd drive at all times;
so, running these programs over-uses the cd drive,
and also the drive is slowing down these programs .
. the fix is to copy the cd to a folder,
and then use a command to
associate that folder with some spare drive letter .
. now I want to use that drive as a temp drive;
because when doing commands that use pathnames
it's easier to type in E:\
than C:\documents and settings\myacct\ .
. but I'm having trouble with the permissions,
and they are not found under properties?
I'll have to check a dos cookbook .
. I thought it was the admin's,
so the user would only allow reading not deleting;
but, xp is not letting the admin delete files either?
. so,
now nobody can delete anything from E:,
but anyone can add to it,
and move things within it;
eg, I created a trash folder,
and put all my done work into that folder .
todo:
. the next thing to try is removing the startup script
that creates the virtual device links .
. maybe it will have more permissions then .

mis.cyb/xp/
command line locks the current folder:
. it would not let me move one done folder to trash folder
because it's in use?
the command line's current folder was set to that,
so I moved it out of there (cd ..)
and then I could move it .

mis.cyb/xp/
command line output confused by virtual cd drive:
. I asked if I could (cd doneDir; rm *.*)
and it said it didn't recognized that command;
but it was supposed to remove files, and it did!
no it thought it did,
the finder shows it's still there .
. I can say (cd e:; del trash)
then I can reply sure to the "(are you sure?),
and it comes back having done nothing .

internet with both privacy and security

7.26: co.apt/cyb/sec/cloud computing is not easy:
. I thought cloud computing would be a breeze;
it was just like SOA, right?
only SOA is on a private network,
while cloud computing is using a public network .
. can that even be done securely?
[ it seems like shifting code tech should do it .
. being able to initialize the session
might be complicated .]

7.8: sci.cyb/sec/how to get secure internet?:
. can there be secure communications networks
that are also self healing ?
how can we support openware and anonymity too?
to be anonymous you simply get another service to
send the message for you
but for openware that depends on
whether we need OS cooperation for the security .
[9.26:
. openware-based internet depends on
whether we need OS cooperation for the security?
I don't think the problem is software,
so, having openware wouldn't make the net more secure .
. there are 2 problems:
# denial of service:
. it's too easy for too many machines to be
owned by malware .
# id theft:
. it's too easy to spoof being someone else .
the solution?:
. there should be special hardware available
in order to authenticate your id;
if you don't have that box,
then you can't do banking, credit-card shopping,
and if there's a denial of service attack,
then you can't get through;
because, nodes stop forwarding your messages .]

7.10: news.cyb/sec/
DOD says we can have both privacy and security:Cybersecurity and American power 7.9:

At an American Enterprise Institute (AEI) event
U.S. Army Gen. Keith B. Alexander
urged us to support cybersecurity legislation
being pushed through Congress .
. it asks internet service providers to
help federal anti-virus software,
by searching all emails for viral signatures,
and reporting malware event parameters
(malware signature, source address, destination address).
. when asked about china's role in the motivation
he reminded us that there is a high cost from malware
due to intellectual property loss via cyber espionage.
"Symantec placed the cost of IP theft
at $250 billion a year .

The director of the National Security Agency (NSA)
and chief at the Central Security Service (CSS)
reemphasized an immense problem the U.S. is facing:
cybercrime has been "the greatest
transfer of wealth in history,"
Alexander said in a statement.
global cybercrime is $114 billion annually
($388 billion when you factor in downtime),
and McAfee estimates that
$1 trillion was spent globally under remediation.

[ you might think the reason we are such targets
is that our foreign policy is so offensive
to so many bright communists and liberals
but, we'd be in the same danger anyway,
because there's so much money to be gained
from cracking our banks and intellectual property .
9.26:
. when they talk about remediation costs
they are referring to having their hands tied
by an internet that is inherently insecure;
I wonder what the cost would have been
if we had just rebuilt the internet from scratch
with security in mind .
. can the surveillance proposed by this legislation
make up for the lack of a dual system,
one that promotes anonymity,
and the other that promotes reliability? ]

unhosted.org

7.10: news.cyb/net.unhosted.org:
@GoogleAppsDev

Tell us what it would take for you to
use "nothing but the web"
- google apps developer../2011/09/

. one reply was:

Unhosted.org-- to separate web apps from user data,
I must be in control of my data.
Once I put my data in the hands of a
third party web service or application,
I am no longer in control.

Unhosted.org ?

Unhosted.org is developing technology that will
put control of user data
back where it belongs: With the user.
Freedom from the web's monopolies
The web is not as open as it used to be:
monopoly platforms formed new proprietary layers on top of it.
But we create a better architecture for the web.
We break the package deal
»you get our app, we get your data«
with remoteStorage,
a cross-origin storage protocol
separating application servers from people's documents.
This enables everyone to use various web services
but keep their data in one place they choose and trust
– their remote storage,
their »home folder« for the web.
The applications will not run on servers you can't control,
but be pure Javascript which runs client-side, in your browser.
And app developers don't need to bother about
providing storage or managing user accounts.
Technically speaking, we define a protocol stack called remoteStorage.
A combination of WebFinger for discovery,
OAuth for authorization,
CORS (Cross-Origin Resource Sharing)
for cross-domain AJAX calls and GET, PUT, DELETE for synchronization.
We also work on its adoption through developing apps like
Libre Docs and Opentabs
as well as making existing apps and storage providers compatible.
If you speak French, there is also some info on Framablog en Français.
Unhosted is a movement by the people, for the people.
Everyone can participate, including you!

Libre Docs – liberate your ideas
libredocs.org
github.com/unhosted/libredocs
Remotestorage providers
github.com/unhosted/website/wiki/remoteStorage-providers
freemium providers:
    OwnCube recommended for end users!
    5apps recommended for javascript developers
domains that provide remoteStorage to their users:
    all Dutch universities
ways to run your own remoteStorage server:
    install pagekite on your computer
github.com/pagekite/plugins-pyUnhosted
    install ownCloud on a server
owncloud.org/
    coming soon: how to use your CouchDB instance as remoteStorage
pagekite
github.com/pagekite/plugins-pyUnhosted

. Unhosted.py is an HTTP server
implementing the bare minimum required for
the simple remoteStorage API from unhosted.org.
Hopefully this program will be useful for folks who want to
study how the remoteStorage protocol works
or as a development tool for people working on Unhosted apps.
As Unhosted matures,
Unhosted.py will hopefully also mature into a usable personal data-store
for people who want to store their Unhosted data on their own devices.
Getting started
Quick-start:
    Install pagekite.py
    In another console:
pagekite.py 6789 rs-YOURNAME.pagekite.me
You should now be able to use
whatever@rs-YOURNAME.pagekite.me
as a remoteStorage account.
If you prefer, you can also
use Unhosted.py without PageKite,
but you will need an SSL enabled
reverse HTTP proxy (such as Pound)
in order to comply with the protocol.
As far as I can tell,
hosting on http://localhost/ won't work.
Play!
5apps.com have written a nice Unhosted tutorial and test app
which works just fine with Unhosted.py.
Hacking
The file Unhosted.combined.py is combination of Unhosted.py
and the HttpdLite.py module it depends on.
For hacking, you'll want to check both out from github:
    Unhosted.py
    HttpdLite.py
The combined "binary" is generated using Breeder.
Where is my data?
Unhosted.py stores data in ~/.Unhosted.py/,
in a relatively intuitive directory structure:
~/.Unhosted.py/USER/CATEGORY/...
Each data folder will contain some regular files,
as well as a file named _RS_METADATA.js.
This meta-data file stores "real" names
for all keys, mime-types
and may store other meta-data in the future.
The meta-data file may also store key values as well,
if they are small and do not really "look like a file".
This is an optimization to reduce clutter and disk seeks
when working with small keys:
if the data is large or looks like an independent file,
it will be written as such to the filesystem,
although the name will probably be sanitized somewhat.
Note that changes to individual files of name:
_RS_METADATA.js
may be overwritten by Unhosted.py if it is running,
as it caches their contents in RAM.
Bugs
    Directory listings do not work yet.
    User names and passwords are ephemeral.
    _RS_METADATA.js could be overwritten by evil apps.
    Saving metadata fails sometimes due to a race condition.