Crumbling...

Far-left New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is getting less than 1 percent support in polls, wants to create a “robot tax” and a massive new government bureaucracy to slow the progress and innovation that have made America the world’s economic powerhouse.

Under de Blasio’s proposed “robot tax,” companies that replace jobs with automation would have to pay the equivalent of five years of payroll taxes for each employee whose job is lost, making cost-saving innovations far less attractive.

According to a news release from the de Blasio campaign, money collected from this massive tax increase and from “closed tax loopholes” for businesses would be used to create “new, high-paying union jobs in crucial fields such as green energy, health care, and early childhood education. Workers displaced by automation would go to the front of the line for these new positions at comparable salaries to their previous jobs.”

De Blasio doesn't know who to tax next.

Cloud...

Fires burning across the Amazon rainforest have renewed the debate about solutions to climate change.

 Bill Gates is backing the first high-altitude experiment of one radical approach called solar geoengineering. It’s meant to mimic the effects of a giant volcanic eruption. Thousands of planes would fly at high altitudes, spraying millions of tons of particles around the planet to create a massive chemical cloud that would cool the surface.

 It could reduce the intensity of heat waves, and reduce the rate of sea level rise. It could reduce the intensity of tropical storms.

The technology is not far from being ready and it’s affordable, but it could cause massive changes in regional weather patterns and eradicate blue sky.

“These consequences might be horrific. They might involve things like mass famine, mass flooding, drought of kinds that will affect very large populations,” said Stephen Gardiner, author of “A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change.”

It is a problem any way you slices.

Not Being...

Assterisk...

Third...

Hair...

Mouthwash...

Twenty-three healthy adults were asked to run on a treadmill for a total of 30 minutes on two separate occasions, after which they were monitored for two hours.

On each occasion at one, 30, 60 and 90 minutes after exercise they were asked to rinse their mouths with a liquid either antibacterial mouthwash or a placebo of mint-flavoured water. Neither the researchers nor the participants knew which liquid they were rinsing with.

Their blood pressure was measured and saliva and blood samples were taken before exercise and at 120 minutes after exercise.

The study found that when participants rinsed with the placebo, the average reduction in systolic blood pressure was -5.2 mmHg at one hour after exercise. However when participants rinsed with the antibacterial mouthwash, the average systolic blood pressure was -2.0 mmHg at the same time point.

What to do, what to do?

Touch...

The hands and fingers are very powerful transmitters of our emotional state.   Touch matters, and how we touch is crucial to relationships.

 We learn the power of touch from the moment we are born. Mothers will gently touch their child using the full palm of their hand, which is warm and relaxed, rich with blood-flow due to vaso-dilation. This is called “palmar touching” and it contributes to the bonding process and the comfort of the child. The child will touch back in kind.

For both mother and child, this mutual caressing releases a cascade of chemicals, including oxytocin, which serves to solidify the connection between them. Oxytocin, usually released during touch or caress, as well as sex, also helps to solidify the relationship between adults.

The act of touching is a highly effective pacifier, which is why we do it to others (children crying) and to ourselves as combing or stroking hair, rubbing hands, touching our noses, massaging our foreheads and neck. It is also a highly effective way to say I care and I love. Touch is so powerful that it is essential for good physical health and mental well being.

            In relationships, touching becomes very important as a medium of expression, especially for communicating comfort and discomfort, which in essence is a report on our emotions and feelings at any moment.

 When  we touch someone we care about, subconsciously we do so with our full palms. The hands are relaxed, fingers are spread; the touch communicates positive emotions. The frequency of touch, the duration of touch, and the intensity of touch, also communicate how we feel. These behaviors are governed by our limbic brain, which regulates emotions, sexuality, and whether or not we are comfortable or uncomfortable around others. Just a touchy thought.

Crimes...

 The United States, Britain and France may be complicit in war crimes in Yemen by arming and providing intelligence and logistics support to a Saudi-led coalition that starves civilians as a war tactic, the United Nations said on Tuesday.   (The Guardian)

The report accused the anti-Houthi coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of killing civilians in air strikes and deliberately denying them food in a country facing famine. The Houthis for their part have shelled cities, deployed child soldiers and used "siege-like warfare", it said.

The Houthis drove Yemen's government out of the capital Sanaa in 2014. The Saudi-led coalition of Sunni Muslim states intervened the following year, a conflict that has since killed tens of thousands of people.

The prospect of famine has created what the United Nations describes as the world's biggest humanitarian crisis.

Self Talk...

 Some common forms of negative self-talk include:

• Filtering. You magnify the negative aspects of a situation and filter out all of the positive ones. For example, you had a great day at work. You completed your tasks ahead of time and were complimented for doing a speedy and thorough job. That evening, you focus only on your plan to do even more tasks and forget about the compliments you received.

• Personalizing. When something bad occurs, you automatically blame yourself. For example, you hear that an evening out with friends is canceled, and you assume that the change in plans is because no one wanted to be around you.

• Catastrophizing. You automatically anticipate the worst. The drive-through coffee shop gets your order wrong and you automatically think that the rest of your day will be a disaster.

• Polarizing. You see things only as either good or bad. There is no middle ground. You feel that you have to be perfect or you're a total failure.