About that Presidential Pardon. . .
1 hour ago
NEW YORK, Mar 15 (Reuters Health) -- Divorced or separated men are more than twice as likely to commit suicide as men who remain married, a US researcher reports.
But divorce and separation do not appear to affect suicide risk in women, according to Dr. Augustine J. Kposowa, of the University of California at Riverside.
Kposowa examined the link between suicide and marital status using data on nearly 472,000 men and women included in the National Longitudinal Mortality study. Between 1979 and 1989, 545 of these individuals committed suicide.
``Men were nearly 4.8 times as likely to commit suicide as women,'' the researcher writes in the March 15th issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. Whites were at greater risk of suicide than African Americans, and individuals with household incomes between $5,000 and $9,999 were more likely to commit suicide than others. Suicide rates were also higher in older age groups, especially those aged 65 and older, and in residents of Western states.
In addition, divorce or marital separation more than doubled the risk of suicide in men, whereas in women, marital status was unrelated to suicide.
Kposowa suspects that this difference is related to the social networks men and women form outside their marriages, which may be stronger or more meaningful in women than in men.
``Women have better ways of communicating,'' Kposowa told Reuters Health in an interview. ``They may have more social support networks, friends and relatives that they talk to, whereas men don't have social support networks.''
NAFTA opened up Mexico's borders to U.S. businesses. What used to be an $18 per hour manufacturing job in America became a $3 per hour job in Mexico. No manufacturer wishing to remain competitive in America could possibly pay $18-20 per hour here when the same product can be produced right across the border in Mexico for just $3 per hour and then shipped back to the U.S. free of charge.
That's right at the top of my agenda. We've shipped millions of jobs overseas and we have a strange situation because we have a process in Washington where after you've served for a while you cash in and become a foreign lobbyist, make $30,000 a month; then take a leave, work on Presidential campaigns, make sure you got good contacts, and then go back out. Now if you just want to get down to brass tacks, the first thing you ought to do is get all these folks who've got these one-way trade agreements that we've negotiated over the years and say, "Fellows, we'll take the same deal we gave you." And they'll gridlock right at that point because, for example, we've got international competitors who simply could not unload their cars off the ships if they had to comply -- you see, if it was a two-way street -- just couldn't do it. We have got to stop sending jobs overseas.
To those of you in the audience who are business people, pretty simple: If you're paying $12, $13, $14 an hour for factory workers and you can move your factory South of the border, pay a dollar an hour for labor, hire young -- let's assume you've been in business for a long time and you've got a mature work force -- pay a dollar an hour for your labor, have no health care -- that's the most expensive single element in making a car -- have no environmental controls, no pollution controls and no retirement, and you don't care about anything but making money, there will be a giant sucking sound going south.
I've been on the spirits for five days. I smoked Marl. lights for over ten years. In my years since college, I have began smoking less (much less actually, less than half a pack a day in the past few years) despite cutting back, I still had horrible "smokers cough".
So far, my opinion is that Spirits are smoother, taste better, and I have not noticed coughing at all (and it's 25 degrees outside right now, usually a really bad time to cough anyway). And I have been smoking even fewer a day.
Now, all the non-smokers reading this, I'm not saying that smoking American Spirits has cured my cough. But, it has disappeared, I'm talking about the nasty throat clearing cough, not from a common cold, this was something I used to do year round with the Marlboro's.
The benefits of smoking tobacco have been common knowledge for centuries. From sharpening mental acuity to maintaining optimal weight, the relatively small risks of smoking have always been outweighed by the substantial improvement to mental and physical health. Hysterical attacks on tobacco notwithstanding, smokers always weigh the good against the bad and puff away or quit according to their personal preferences. Now the same anti-tobacco enterprise that has spent billions demonizing the pleasure of smoking is providing additional reasons to smoke. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Tourette's Syndrome, even schizophrenia and cocaine addiction are disorders that are alleviated by tobacco. Add in the still inconclusive indication that tobacco helps to prevent colon and prostate cancer and the endorsement for smoking tobacco by the medical establishment is good news for smokers and non-smokers alike. Of course the revelation that tobacco is good for you is ruined by the pharmaceutical industry's plan to substitute the natural and relatively inexpensive tobacco plant with their overpriced and ineffective nicotine substitutions. Still, when all is said and done, the positive revelations regarding tobacco are very good reasons indeed to keep lighting those cigarettes.
It brought home to me Gary Taubes' comment about nicotine releasing free fatty acids from adipocytes to allow humans access to the energy stored in their fat cells. Nicotine is an archetypal slimming drug.Everyone knows about the common lament of the weight gains long-time cigarette smokers experience once they quit...the Blog author of the previously linked post elaborated in his comment section:
Taubes suggest the weight gain normally occurs in the first month after quitting and is utterly independent of caloric intake. People snack more because they no longer have easy access to their adipose tissue. Gotta get energy from somewhere, even if it's just for basal metabolism.Very interesting.
There is a difference between abuse of tobacco and its responsible use. Responsible use of tobacco dates back thousands of years. The Pre-Columbus use of tobacco was widespread throughout the North and South American continents. Having thousands of years of experience with tobacco, Native Americans were able to develop a manner of tobacco use that was not abusive. Those who enjoy fine cigars often share something in common with ancient Native Americans: a manner of smoking tobacco that is non-abusive.
Tobacco was used in North and South American continents, long before Caesar's Roman Empire, and used not in an addictive manner, but with great ceremony. In the Court of Montezuma there were two classes of smokers: those who used pipes, and those who rolled the first cigars -- but smoking had a defined place. When tobacco use is regulated by ceremony, and not by an "urge" or a "desire" you have the means for an internal regulation of the activity.
The scourge of cigarettes may very well have been the true Montezuma's revenge. It is ironic that while Europeans joked that Indians could not handle whiskey, the Indians joked that Europeans could not handle tobacco. Europeans, in a typical response, attempted to ban tobacco, or regulate it, or shame people out of using it -- and that was 400 years ago -- things have not changed. They also attempted to tax it, for which there were great rebellions, or to monopolize it, and even execute those who used it. Some anti-smoker types would probably be interested to note the penalties of Czar Alexis: the first use of tobacco resulted in whipping, a slit nose, and exile to Siberia, and the second offense resulted in execution!
I believe that cigarettes provide a form of consuming tobacco that is inconsistent with the moderate, non-abusive examples set by Native Americans, an example which is more easily reproduced in cigar and pipe smoking. Cigarettes are provided in a "dose pack" of 20. They burn quickly, are inhaled, and provide rapid release of nicotine into the blood stream. Cigarettes rapidly become addictive, and are smoked in an addictive manner: frequently throughout the day and night and because of a physical need to smoke. Cigarette smoking easily becomes a habit, an addiction, and is considered a disease to be treated by physicians. The cigarette smoker is always looking for the place to have their next cigarette; their life being ruled by their addiction.
In contrast, most cigar and pipe smokers have established simple rituals of tobacco, utilizing it and enjoying it without abuse. They limit the use of tobacco to specific times and places, in part because cigars take a long time to smoke. Since most cigars cannot be readily smoked throughout the day, but require ample time and a location that is conducive, cigar smoking is most often limited to periodic consumption and is therefore commonly a self-regulated and moderated activity.Tobacco cannot be regulated without seriously jeopardizing the basic civil and constitutional rights of the people.