By Kenneth Barbalace

At the Frankfurt Motor Show, Toyota unveiled a plug-in hybrid version of its popular Toyota Prius. This concept car is based on the third generation Prius and uses first generation lithium-ion batteries. Read more at http://behindthewheelnews.toyota.com/?id=252

By Kenneth Barbalace

Politically motivated fear mongering has become a routine part of the partisan discourse with some media outlets. This is an unfortunate part of the current political reality. There are occasions, however, when this fear mongering goes far beyond being just political hatchet jobs and become a true public menace. Tonight FOX News' Glen Beck crossed that line and became a true public health menace.

I don't have cable or satellite TV specifically because I don't want to in any shape form or fashion help enable or support the cable news channels and what they try to pass off as news. As such I didn't see Glen Beck's program tonight, however, I did get the following email from one of his viewers this evening:

I am a concerned citizen trying to find information on some chemical compounds to make a more informed decisions.

I hope you can point me in the right direction or give me some information as I am not a scientist, but want some scientific facts, and possibly to see written results of tests. I want my family to be safe, but I am also concerned about toxins .

I was watching Glenn Beck tonight, and was told that thimerosal was in the H1N1 shots, which said contains Ethyl Mercury in high amounts, and the past reports I have researched said that the safe doses for this chemical was 0.1kg and that current shots contained 237MG. How much difference is this?

Does this constitute poison, or toxicity build up, and if its stored in the brain, does your body ever rid the chemicals of ethyl mercury or thimerosal?

Also can you tell me where to find MSDS on Ethyl Mercury, and facts about over dosages, has it ever been tested on people, in the same dose compared to weight in animals for testing?

I found this link http://www.nfid.org/pdf/factsheets/thimerosal.pdf is this document
correct?

Can you tell me what the effects of Ethyl Mercury vs Methyl Mercury are, if a person was overdosed with this is there any cure for it?

Glenn's doctors also said that it is stored in the brain.

Is Ethyl Mercury toxic like regular mercury, and how can a person know if the shot
contains Ethyl or Methyl Mercury?

What other effect if any, do you know if Ethyl Mercury stops bacteria? Does bacterias affect peoples brains from flu's?

Anyway I am a little confused, but I want third opinions as I don't like to make decisions on a whim when concerning everyone who lives here.

Thank you for your time.

On average, according to the Center for Disease Control, 36,171 people die each year in the U.S. from seasonal flu. This year with the H1N1 Swine flu we could be heading into one of the worst flu outbreaks since the 1918 flu pandemic. To stem the spread of the H1N1 flu, and reduce the number of people who die from it, it is critical to get as many people vaccinated as is possible, especially if they are in the high risk categories. Yet what does Glen Beck do? He tries to use the vaccine as yet another opportunity to stir up fear in his TV audience to convince them that President Obama and his administration are out to get them.

The email I received, is proof that Glen Beck's irresponsible behavior has indeed sowed fear, uncertainty and doubt into the minds of his viewers who were probably already concerned about the flu itself. Thanks to his spreading of paranoid delusions, there will undoubtedly be many individuals who will, out of fear, not get the vaccine. As a result, they will get sick and either die themselves or help spread the virus to others who in turn get sick and die. Glen Beck's actions and fear mongering are not just opportunistic, but they are incredibly irresponsible and should not be tolerated. His fear mongering has undoubtedly set in motion a chain of events, which will result in needless deaths.

In regards to the email I received above, here is the reply I sent them:

There have been several high profile cases of individuals trying to blame vaccines and ethyle mercury for all kinds of things including autism without one shred of scientific evidence to back up their claims. Studies have been conducted into these fears in the past and no causation could be shown. One must separate real science from pseudoscience and one must look at Glen Beck's history of outrageous statements that can not stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. His motivation is purely political and it is to spread fear and doubt.

You must ask yourself, who would you trust more about the safety of vaccines? Health care professionals who are working very hard to keep us from getting sick or a TV personality who makes a living being as outrageous as possible? I personally have no concerns about the safety of the vaccine and my entire family plans to get the vaccine when it becomes available.

The threat of H1N1 is very real. The supposed dangers of the vaccine are a figment of Glen Beck's imagination.

If you have the slightest doubt about this issue, I would suggest you consult your family physician. They are in the best position to explain the details to you. Just don't base your health care decisions on the paranoid delusions of some famous TV personality.

To answer your question about weights:
1kg = 1,000g = 1,000,000mg

Thus 237mg = 0.000237kg

Based on your note for maximum safe dosage and Ethyl Mercury concentration, you would have to get 421 injections of the H1N1 vaccine to reach the maximum safe dosage. You probably get more mercury in your diet from eating fish on a regular basis (especially if you sport fish).

Sincerely,
Ken Barbalace

Glen Beck has gone way beyond being a partisan hack with paranoid delusions. He has become a true menace to society and FOX News needs to remove him from their programming.

UPDATE
Leave it to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart to put the fear mongering around the N1H1 flu vaccine into perspective.

By Kenneth Barbalace

For many Digg.com users, the removal of Digg's shout feature also meant they lost the ability to share articles and communicate privately with their Digg friends. While not an ideal solution, one work around to the loss of the Digg shout feature is to use Twitter.

Create a Twitter profile

To effectively use Twitter, however, you first need to create a Twitter account that uses the same user name as your Digg account and uses the same icon on both Digg and Twitter. This will help friends/followers keep track of who is who on both sites. You should also reference your Digg account on their Twitter profile and link to your Twitter account on their Digg profile. This will help friends/followers know that both accounts really are really the same person. Linking to your Twitter account from Digg will also help new Digg friends quickly find your Twitter profile. If you already have a Twitter account that has a different username from your Digg account, at least use the same icon for both accounts and cross reference them.

Tweeting effectively in 140 characters

One challenge with Twitter is that it only allows for 140 characters per "tweet"; as such, long web addresses can pose a challenge. The most common work around to this problem is to use a website that will create very short web address aliases. The site I tend to use is http://bit.ly/ because its aliased web addresses tend to be less than 20 characters in length. When tweeting an article try to use a short concise description followed by a shortened link to the original article then the comment "on #Digg" and a shortened link to the Digg thread so that Digg friends can easily Digg and comment on the article. For Example:

Effectively sharing articles with Digg friends via Twitter http://bit.ly/21aA6 on #Digg http://bit.ly/Sp06i

Don't use the Digg bar!

I know that Digg has their own link shortening feature that frames articles in a "Digg bar" but don't use it. Framing sites the way the Digg bar does is considered bad netiquette (bad Internet etiquette). The idea of framing other people's sites with one's own stuff was first introduced in the 1990s, and was fought against back then as bad netiquette when it was first introduced. Much of the revolt against framing stemmed from the fact that search engines, etc. that were framing other sites were also trying to slip ads into their frames and the frames were confusing users into thinking there was an association between the two sites. Others problem with frames is that they can trap the user in the frame and users can not see the actual web address of the website being visited. This means that when they go to share the article they are reading, they actually end up linking to the site doing the framing and not the site that contains the actual article. Also keep in mind that Digg does provide an option for users to turn off the Digg bar via one's profile settings so if you send tweets with Digg bar links your friends with the Digg bar disabled will be unable to Digg your articles. To combat framing, many sites actually implemented measures to break out of such frames (like our main site does).

Yes having to create two links in Tweets is inconvenient compared to the Digg bar, but if you want your followers to actually Digg your articles, you need to make your tweets as user friendly to ALL of your followers as possible. This is also nicer for your Twitter followers who might not be Digg users.

Digg should be absolutely ashamed of itself for framing sites with their Digg bar, it is very poor netiquette. I'd strongly encourage folks to turn off the Digg bar via their Digg profile.

Why the # marks?

Oftentimes tweets will contain words with # marks in front of them (e.g. #eco, #Digg, etc.). These are for yet another social networking site called Twibes, which allows folks to subscribe to specific interest groups that aggregate tweets based on subject matter. For instance, #eco is for the Twibe group "Green" (http://www.twibes.com/group/GREEN).

Summary

Digg shouts are dead to this dismay of many, but it is possible to still effectively share articles with your Digg friends if you can get them to also join Twitter and you are effective with the way you tweet. Just remember to use clear concise descriptions; provide links to both the original article as well as the Digg thread; and don't rely on the Digg bar.

By Kenneth Barbalace

In the past couple of years there have been a lot of product scares about lead in various products imported from China. But one product that normally contains lead that no one ever thinks about is garden hoses. Yes, for the most part the majority of garden hoses contain lead. The reason is that lead is used during the manufacturing process as a stabilizer for the PVC used to make the hose. This means, that over time, the lead will leech out of the hose and into the water passing through it. This lead laced water then goes into your lawn, garden, kids wading pool and/or is drunk by you, your kids and pets.

The loophole in consumer product laws that allow lead in garden hoses is that they are for outdoor use and are not for potable water. They also contain warning labels on the packaging that say not to drink water from the hose. The thing is who reads those warning labels, which are in tiny print on the back of the packaging and the warnings do no good after the packaging has been thrown away. Furthermore, every kid drinks water from a garden hose on a hot summer day, its just what kids do and lead is especially harmful to children.

Supposedly, plants don't take up lead so supposedly lead in garden hoses is not a concern in a garden from the standpoint of contaminating vegetables with lead, I don't know if this is true or not. Personally speaking, however, I don't like the idea of adding lead to my garden even if plants don't take it up. There is already enough lead in most soil because of the decades that lead was added to gasoline and then spewed into the atmosphere as auto exhaust.

Until consumer safety laws are changed, the only way to make sure your garden hoses do not contain lead is for their packaging to be labeled as drinking water safe and that the hose complies with RoHS standards restricting lead. If you have children around the home, you should throw away all of your existing hoses and buy new hoses that are lead free. My local Home Depot and Lowes do sell short 25' boat and camper hoses that are lead free, but I had to go to Amazon.com for the 75' long "family safe" hose I purchased for $39.95 with free shipping.

In both cases the hoses were manufactured by a company called Apex. If you go to your local home improvement store, the boat and camper hose is white with a blue stripe and labeled as "Boat & Camper NeverKink Self-Straightening Hose". The 75' hose I bought from Amazon.com yellow green and is labeled as " Eco-Smart & Family Safe Aqua-Pure NeverKink". The hoses are a little lighter and slightly smaller in diameter than standard garden hoses. The boat and camper hose seems to be lighter weight and smaller in diameter than the garden hose, but this makes sense as presumably one would want to store it in a small space. One nice thing about the 75' garden hose is that it has a permanent blue collar around female end of the hose that says "eco-smart family safe" so that years from now you will easily be able to figure out which of your hoses is the lead free hose if you have several different ones.

One really frustrating thing has been that I have been unable to find a lead-free RoHS compliant soaker hose for my garden. Granted all of the soaker hoses I have found are made out of 50%-60% recycled rubber, but again I don't like the idea of adding lead to my garden. If you know where I can find a lead free soaker hose, please let me know.

By Kenneth Barbalace

It is the season to start vegetable garden in the northern hemisphere and organic gardening is all the rage. As I've been planning and working on our garden I've been pondering the merits and limits of organic gardening. Something I've been thinking about is whether organic gardening is necessarily eco friendly gardening. To be an "orthodox" organic garden, one must use: certified organic everything (seeds, compost, etc.) and one must forego chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. I'm totally into the foregoing chemicals bit, but I'm not sold that buying organically certified everything is necessarily eco friendlier.

For instance, I bought my seeds from a local nursery, who buys them wholesale from a company that produces them locally here in Maine. For all tense and purposes, the seeds are heirloom seeds because the company has been cultivating their own varieties of seeds for around 100 years, however, they are not certified organic. From the seed producer to my local nursery, to my garden these seeds probably traveled no more than 50 miles. On the other hand, I don't know where the certified organic seeds came from. They could have come from hundreds of miles away and may not even be fully adapted for our local climate. Are seeds that have to be trucked hundreds of miles to me and aren't optimized for my local climate truly more eco friendly than locally produced heirloom seeds?

Compost is another example; I had my local nursery deliver three cubic yards of compost for my garden, which they get from local producers (lots of dairy farms and horse stables in the area). Again it isn't certified organic, but the nose can certainly tell what some of the key ingredients are. Is certified organic compost that would have come from a long distance away really more eco friendly than using locally produced compost?

When we look at growing our gardens, I just can't help but think that obsessing about buying everything certified organic isn't missing the forest through the trees. If we are trying to be better for the environment, don't we also want to cut down the transportation footprint of the stuff we buy for our gardens? Shouldn't we also be buying seeds that are optimized for our own local climates so that they can do well with minimal care?