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Question submitted by Truedelphi

I just had my comment "Bite me" deleted by a jury decision.

This decision left me a little bit perplexed as having raised a teenager and thus watched a ton of Family Ratings Approved TV shows, many of which had young people addressing their own parents or siblings with that admonishment, I wondered what was going on.

So I did utilize the google to find out that there are two separate definitions for "Bite me"

In one case, it indicates annoyance at another person. (WHICH is where I was coming from. After all, this person I was annoyed with had baited me and had utilized tactics I would consider to be tactics not far removed from those of the Big Lie, also avoided using logic, etc.)

In another it indicates a more vulgar notion.

The URL is here: http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/27753/meaning-and-usage-of-bite-me

But in common American useage, (I mean, for Pete's sake - TV shows on before 8Pm that have family ratings!) it is used without any intention of vulgarity - so I don't know why on DU it is considered to be a totally heinous expression. (I do admit I am not always up on things: I was in my late 30's, before I understood what "cut the cheese" meant.)

Do we need to have a glossary of things we can and cannot say?

Close to one half million living healthy trees to be cut down around San Francisco!!

Close to one half million trees are to be cut down in areas in and around San Francisco.

A healthy living forest has a most natural management system that allows for the dampness of winter rains and then the fog and other moisture available all year long to be held inside the rotting vegetation. Left undisturbed, such a forest system is the reason why a well managed forest usually does not burn down.

Trimming away dead wood and culling the forest so that sick trees are removed
is a good way to manage a forest. This is truly the way to help Mother Nature.

But this latest totally crazy plan will call for cutting tens of thousands of trees, and then - Get THIS! - leave them to dry out and become dangerous fire fodder right where they have been cut.

Full article is here:
http://treespiritproject.com/sfbayclearcut/
From the above URL:

IN BRIEF The plan to cut down over 450,000 healthy trees is an environmental disaster and creates multiple safety hazards. It will not achieve its stated objective of fire danger mitigation because:

1) the hillsides will be made MORE likely to catch fire when living trees are cut down into dead, drying wood LEFT ON THE GROUND as logs and wood chips, and not removed from the hills.

2) fast-growing, flammable plants like thistle, broom and poison oak will flourish post-clearcuts, dry out in summer/autumn, becoming their own fire hazard;

3) thousands of gallons of toxic herbicides Monsanto Roundup™ and Dow Garlon™ herbicide will be applied twice/year in perpetuity, leaching into soil, groundwater, mammals, birds, plants, and humans;

4) hundreds of acres of 2-foot-deep piles of wood chips (20% of the 2,000+ acres of “treatment” area) will be left on the ground. Forests will be turned into ground fuels, capable even of spontaneous combustion.

5) no replanting of any kind is planned, “native” or otherwise. (Not that saplings could replace large, mature trees anyway.) This is large-scale deforestation, not habitat restoration.

What is the best webinar hosting company ?

My spouse is using onstreamedia.com

He tested the ability to hold a webinar a week ago - having just one or two friends listen in.

Everything worked well, so he felt confidant that tomorrow, Sunday, he could produce and play his webinar at One PM our time.

Well yesterday he played around and discovered that he was getting error messages, including this one:

The audio connection could not be established. Please contact support.

If you just want to listen to the conference without speaking, you don't have to dial in from your telephone. Simply make sure that your computer speakers are on and that the volume is turned up.

If you want to actively participate in the conference, please dial the number below and follow the instructions you hear on the telephone. You will also need to click here to mute the built-in audio.


By the time he tried to figure out that he could not figure things out, as far as the above issue, it was 3Pm here in Calif, and the support team for onstreamedia.com had gone home for the weekend.

So now he has to tell paying subscribers that he has no ability to offer them the program they had paid for.

We use Windows XP with Mozilla as the browser. But get this: He also tried his brand new HP laptop with Windows Seven, and that didn't work either.

He feels like the settings on the webinar company's end of things have been changed, but the earliest he will have that confirmed would be Monday.

Any thoughts or suggestions? (At least it is a free trial, so he is not paying for the crappy product.) He would really like to switch to a different company!

####

Nationally known environmentalist alarms Monsanto - Is this story being suppressed?

Anyone who knows mushrooms knows Paul Stamets.

But what many people do not yet know is that Mr Stamets has filed for patent protection for a significant and revolutionary idea.

However doing so has come with a steep price. He is now being slimed by most pesticide manufacturers, and the entire idea he proposes has been blacklisted by TV and newspaper journalists.

Mushroom researcher and activist challenges Monsanto

In 2006, a patent was granted to a man named Paul Stamets. Though Paul is the world’s leading mycologist, his patent has received very little attention and exposure. Why is that? Stated by executives in the pesticide industry, this patent represents “the most disruptive technology we have ever witnessed.” And when the executives say disruptive, they are referring to it being disruptive to the chemical pesticides industry.

What has Paul discovered? The mycologist has figured out how to use mother nature’s own creations to keep insects from destroying crops. It’s what is being called SMART pesticides. These pesticides provide safe & nearly permanent solution for controlling over 200,000 species of insects – and all thanks to the ‘magic’ of mushrooms.

Paul does this by taking entomopathogenic Fungi (fungi that destroys insects) and morphs it so it does not produce spores. In turn, this actually attracts the insects who then eat and turn into fungi from the inside out!

This patent has potential to revolutionize the way humans grow crops – if it can be allowed to reach mass exposure.

Full article is at below link:

http://prn.fm/he-holds-the-patent-that-could-destroy-monsanto-and-change-the-world/

Big huge Food Repression ALERT for all 37 million Californians!

As some here may be aware of, last summer a most repressive piece of legislation became law, courtesy of the California legislature.

JULY 1, 2015
Farmers and Consumers Unite!

http://www.californiagrange.org/seeds/

In support of small farmers and consumers, the California Grange will sponsor Seed Freedom Day on July 1, 2015.

AB2470 was passed by the California State legislature last summer.

This legislation is super restrictive, and a bad law. It seriously impairs the right of farmers to share and sell their seeds, gives the Secretary of Agriculture authority to decide what foods we can and cannot grow in California's counties and cities, and supports the notion that corporations have the same rights as people.

The legislation makes it illegal for a farmer to distribute their seeds beyond three miles from their farm, unless they adhere to a strict and onerous packaging process. Under this law, a farmer is not allowed to share seeds at a swap meet that takes place more than three miles away, or make a gift of seeds to a friend who lives more than three miles down the road without jumping through the same hoops that a big commercial seed retailer does – like Monsanto.
Under AB2470, any ordinance adopted by a county or municipality after January 1, 2015 that would restrict the production of GMO crops is subject to approval by the Secretary of Agriculture.
“AB2470 was intended to be a weed abatement bill,” warns California Grange President Bob McFarland, “but in black & white the bill goes far beyond that purpose and becomes another set of onerous regulations that undermine the work of small farmers. Under this bill, agricultural freedoms that have been practiced by humankind for 10,000 years are aborted.”
On July 1, the California Grange will sponsor Seed Freedom Day. Farmers and consumers across the state will celebrate our agricultural heritage. In an act of civil disobedience, farmers will draw a white line exactly three miles from their farm and stand inside that line holding seeds they’ve produced. At exactly twelve noon, the farmers and supporters will simultaneously step across the three mile line with seeds in hand, in defiance of the unfair provisions of AB2470.
For more information and to participate in Seed Freedom Day, please go to www.californiagrange.org/seeds or phone the office of the California Grange at (916) 454-5805.

EPO therapy puts blood and oxygen to the brain - It gets

utilized by athletes in sports (although it is usually illegal to gain advantage in sporting competitions by using it.)

Is it being used in the USA to help elderly people? Is it being used for people with severe anemia, including cancer victims whose treatment leaves them anemic?

EPO stands for Erythropoietin. I know there have been tests on its use done in Europe, and I know this was one of the therapies Lance Armstrong utilized to win his Tour De France cycling adventures.

But is it getting to patients who need it? If not, why not?

Perhaps the most important, overheard political conversation ever:

Most here are probably unaware of one of our nation's first highly regarded women journalists, a lady named Dorothy Thompson.

Given that we are heading into contentious territory regarding the upcoming Democratic primary, I think her story bears repeating:



George Seldes, who was a Chicago Tribune correspondent during the late Nineteen teens and up until 1929 relates the following conversation that he had with Dorothy Thompson -another news reporter and the wife of Sinclair Lewis:

Thompson told Seldes in 1935 that while en route by ocean liner from France to NYC how a Mr. F. Sinclair, a Big Money Guy, took her away from the table where they were eating to talk privately with her.

"See those folks at the table who were eating with us?" F Sinclair asks Thompson?

"Yes," answers Dorothy.

"Well, all of us are the ones who decide who gets nominated to run for the Presidency and who gets to win that office."

Among those he indicated was an important associate of the Giannini family, who established Bank of America. (Giannini family headed up Bank of America.)

""We give money on both sides of the aisle, so that no matter what, one of our people is always in a place to do our bidding."

"What about FDR?" asked Dorothy.

"Our support for him was a major misjudgement on our part. We saw to it that he had money and of course, we fully expected for him to say the sort of things that he always said. We just didn't expect him to act on those statements."

Sinclair went on to state for the purpose of Thompson's enlightenment that the Inner Circle of Power Brokers was attempting to raise some five to twenty million to defeat FDR in 1936.
####
But the voting machinery during FDR's era was still non-hackable back in that era. And FDR had millions upon millions of everyday people to vote him back in.

How we progressives could ever get one of our own into office remains to be seen.

Here are the stats for how Americans died in 2014:

No Elected Official can be for both ending the impact of humans on Global Climate Change & also for

The Trans Pacific Plan.

The President came out last week for the TPP. (No surprise there - he has been one of the major architects of getting it passed, and of getting it passed quickly.)

But then this week he is all about ending the human equation side of Global Climate Change?

What a bit of forked tongue tomfoolery!

Has no one explained to him that when American jobs in manufacturing go over to third world nations, those third world workers do not have any environmental regulations in place? (This is one of the cost saving reasons that America's One Percent so highly favor basing our needed manufacturing in those third world nations.)

Anyway, I suspect the Great Speechifier knows all of this full well, but he wants that Quid Pro Quo.