Author: Paul Handover

Are you really sure about your cell phone?

Society may be cooking up one hell of an issue.

Like most people if most western nations, for many years I had a cell phone, or a mobile phone as they are known in the UK.

I can recall a few years ago there being a scare in the UK about the microwave radiation hazard involved in using a cell phone but it certainly passed me by in terms of not really worrying about it.

Now a recent report in GQ Magazine seems to be gathering some momentum: once again, it’s about how your cell phone may be hazardous to your health.  It would be too easy just to dismiss this as just another poke at a very successful technology but something about this article caused me to write this Post – make of it what you will.

Here’s an extract:

Earlier this winter, I met an investment banker who was diagnosed with a brain tumor five years ago. He’s a managing director at a top Wall Street firm, and I was put in touch with him through a colleague who knew I was writing a story about the potential dangers of cell-phone radiation. He agreed to talk with me only if his name wasn’t used, so I’ll call him Jim. He explained that the tumor was located just behind his right ear and was not immediately fatal—the five-year survival rate is about 70 percent. He was 35 years old at the time of his diagnosis and immediately suspected it was the result of his intense cell-phone usage. “Not for nothing,” he said, “but in investment banking we’ve been using cell phones since 1992, back when they were the Gordon-Gekko-on-the-beach kind of phone.” When Jim asked his neurosurgeon, who was on the staff of a major medical center in Manhattan, about the possibility of a cell-phone-induced tumor, the doctor responded that in fact he was seeing more and more of such cases—young, relatively healthy businessmen who had long used their phones obsessively. He said he believed the industry had discredited studies showing there is a risk from cell phones. “I got a sense that he was pissed off,” Jim told me. A handful of Jim’s colleagues had already died from brain cancer; the more reports he encountered of young finance guys developing tumors, the more certain he felt that it wasn’t a coincidence. “I knew four or five people just at my firm who got tumors,” Jim says. “Each time, people ask the question. I hear it in the hallways.”

Continue reading “Are you really sure about your cell phone?” →

Organic milk in the USA

The unacceptable face of the big agricultural businesses

Another wonderful link from Naked Capitalism.  This one refers to the way that the definition of ‘organic’ as in organic milk is being twisted and distorted to favour the huge indoor milking herds, up to 10,000 cattle, that in any sensible mind could never be regarded as the organic production of milk.

This to me is a picture of organic production of milk:

An English meadow

This to me is NOT! Yet the milk from these cows is defined as organic!

Organic milk?

This last picture is courtesy of The Cornucopia Institute, another web site worth a visit whether or not you take an interest in farming – after all, one presumes that you do eat!

The article is on the Politics of the Plate website, worth your visit whether or not you are an American, and is, to me, so important that I am taking the liberty of publishing the article in full.
Here it is:
Read this very important article

Moscow’s dogs

Another example of the very tight bonds between man and dogs.

A couple of weeks ago Learning from Dogs published a series of videos originally broadcast by the BBC Horizon programme called The Secret Life of the Dog.  It revealed a hitherto unknown depth of understanding of dogs by man and man by dogs.  Part One of those six parts is linked to here.

Now it turns out that Russian Muscovites are fascinated by stray dogs and it is estimated that there are 35,000 stray dogs in the Russian capital city.

Interestingly, because we tend to associate the newspaper with financial matters, the British Financial Times had a fascinating article a couple of weeks ago, from which is quoted:

Where did these animals come from? It’s a question Andrei Poyarkov, 56, a biologist specialising in wolves, has dedicated himself to answering. His research focuses on how different environments affect dogs’ behaviour and social organisation. About 30 years ago, he began studying Moscow’s stray dogs. Poyarkov contends that their appearance and behaviour have changed over the decades as they have continuously adapted to the changing face of Russia’s capital. Virtually all the city’s strays were born that way: dumping a pet dog on the streets of Moscow amounts to a near-certain death sentence. Poyarkov reckons fewer than 3 per cent survive.

Do read the article as it is a revealing piece about our interest in dogs in all corners of the world.  Indeed it mentions a web site devoted to stray dogs on Moscow’s Metro railway.

Russian stray

By Paul Handover

Track – the puppy

Yet another lovely dog rescue story

Once again, we are indebted to Naked Capitalism for bringing this lovely story to our attention.  It was originally published in the Birmingham (Alabama) News.

Track inspector for CSX railroad Gary McLean found this puppy frozen to the tracks in last weekend's cold snap. The puppy, now named Track, has found a home with a dog lover in Bessemer.

One near victim of the cold is now happy and warm and residing in Bessemer.

Last Saturday, Gary McLean, a track inspector for CSX Railroad, found and rescued a tiny shivering puppy who’d become frozen to the train tracks.

It was 7:30 a.m. and the temperature was about 14 degrees. McClean, a resident of the Trussville-Argo area, was riding in a rail mounted truck near Caro lina Avenue looking for any obstacles in advance of a train that would be headed down that track about an hour later. He heard something go bump on the track, stopped and looked back, but saw nothing. He turned forward and, ahead of him, he saw a tiny ball of fur on the tracks.

McLean is accustomed to encountering dead dogs along the tracks, but as he got closer, he saw the little ball of fur moving.”It was big timeshivering,” he said. “I felt so sorry for him.”

Apparently, the 5-inch-tall mutt had gotten wet in a nearby ditch. When he tried to jump the 7-inch-tall rail, he got stuck and his icy fur froze to the track. McLean tried applying warm water and lifting him off. That didn’t work. So he took a knife and carefully cut him off the track.

If the train had come, the dog would never have been able to set himself free, McLean said. McLean took pictures of the puppy and sent them to his wife, Lois.
The McLean’s already have three dogs and couldn’t adopt another. So they turned to the Internet to find the dog a home.

She posted the picture on Facebook and the story found its way to the blog of ABC 33/40 meteorologist James Spann. The e-mails started pouring in.

Sorting through the of fers, the McLeans decided to give the dog to Terry Walls of Bessemer.

“He is doing great,” Walls said as the puppy she’s named Track chewed on her slipper.

“Track had a manly ring to it,” she said.

Walls estimated the puppy is 7 or 8 weeks old. It has a full set of sharp teeth and has German Shepherd and possibly some husky in his ancestry.

'Track' the lucky puppy

By Paul Handover

The secret life of the dog, Concluding Part

Concluding this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

Part Five is here.

By Paul Handover

Lucky sea dog!

Another wonderful story about a dog rescue

Having recently published a couple of posts about Los Angeles firemen rescuing a dog from a swollen river it was wonderful to catch a short story on the BBC about another dog rescue, this time a dog that had floated miles away from land on an ice floe!

Baltic the lucky dog

Anyway, the BBC have a nice video clip that will put a smile on your face.

By Paul Handover

The secret life of the dog, Part Five

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

Part Four is here.

By Paul Handover

Great way to make friends

Maybe it’s me but there must be better ways to manage foreign relationships!

Ahmet Oguz Celikkol

Most people in their private and business lives find that a genuine interest in, and respect for, those that one engages with leads to better outcomes.  Surely that is just common sense.

So a recent report from Stratfor telling of an ‘incident’ between Israel and Turkey leaves me, frankly, speechless.  Here’s how the report reads:

Last week a small crisis with potentially serious implications blew up between Israel and Turkey. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon summoned Turkish Ambassador to Israel Ahmet Oguz Celikkol to a meeting Jan. 11 to protest a Turkish soap opera that depicted Israeli agents kidnapping Palestinian children. When the ambassador arrived, he received a lower seat than Ayalon — and was photographed in that position, making it appear that Ayalon was speaking to an inferior. Ayalon wouldn’t shake hands with him during the televised parts of the meeting, and had an Israeli flag visible on the table. Topping it all off, Ayalon told an Israeli cameraman in Hebrew that the important thing was that people see Celikkol sitting down low “while we’re

Danny Ayalon

up high.”

Turks saw the images as a deliberate Israeli insult, though Ayalon argued that the episode was not meant as an insult but as a reminder that Israel does not take criticism lightly. While it is difficult to see the relative height of seats as an international incident, Ayalon clearly intended to send a significant statement to Turkey. The Turks took that statement to heart, so symbolism clearly matters. Israel’s intent is not so clear, however.

Continue reading “Great way to make friends” →

The secret life of the dog, Part Four

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

Part Three is here.

By Paul Handover

The secret life of the dog, Part Three

Continuing this fascinating insight into the extraordinary relationship between dogs and man.

If this is your first sight of this multi-part article about dogs then you will need to start at the beginning:

Part One is here.

Part Two is here.

By Paul Handover