How getting specific can change your life

Rick is mid-level manager in a tech firm. For a long time he felt the pressure of having to complete his own work while balancing the needs of his staff with demands from upper management. Anyone who has been caught between this rock and hard place understands how difficult…

What edible minerals are found in a limestone rock?

Question by Love S: What edible minerals are found in a limestone rock? My son has to do a project for school where he has to Investigate the minerals found in Limestone, determine the edible parts, and create an edible limestone rock. What edible minerals are in limestone? Best answer: Answer by Tashkent TPlease understand [...]

US Energy Department panel endorses shale fracking, suggests pumping ground with millions of gallons of chemical water will help save environment

(NaturalNews) Hydraulic fracturing, also known as “fracking,” for the purpose of extracting natural gas from the earth involves flooding it with millions of gallons of chemical-laden water, a practice that by all estimates is damaging the environment to some extent. But a US Energy Department (ED) advisory panel, which happens to be padded with members connected to the natural gas industry, insists that fracking is safe, and even contends that it will help to lower the carbon dioxide emissions allegedly responsible for so-called climate change. A recent report in The Washington Post (WP) explains the ED panel’s notion that, despite continual outcry over fracking operations polluting rivers and groundwater supplies, natural gas fracking can safely continue as long as fracking companies agree to be more open about their actions, and comply with monitoring requirements that track environmental impact and make this information publicly available. But in an industry that is already knowingly hiding the truth about its polluting activities — and secretly dumping its toxic waste directly into the environment, for instance — it is naive for ED committee members to purport that simply telling drilling companies to be more forthcoming is going to have a substantially beneficial impact. Fracking, no matter how closely monitored, pollutes the environment in devastating ways. In order to release oil and gas from shale rock deep underground, giant machines must force large amounts of water, sand, chemicals, and radioactive elements deep into the earth’s upper crust in order to crack the rock that potentially holds this valuable fuel. But in the process, the resultant radioactive chemical cocktail seeps into water tables, wells, rivers, and lakes, as well as the various drinking water supplies to which these sources are fed. Even if the fracking industry suddenly decides to be more open and honest about the fact that drilling fluids are severely contaminating soil and water, the only thing that will change is that now everyone will be aware of it. Thanks to an energy bill passed by Congress back in 2005 that exempts the natural gas drilling industry from having to comply with the US Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), fracking operations are free to pollute as much as they please — they just might have to disclose this fact at some point in the future. The Shale Gas Subcommittee of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SGS) which put out the recent report endorsing fracking does not even address this SDWA exemption. As a result, its recommendations are meaningless in all practical terms, as they will do absolutely nothing to stop the tide of environmental pollution being spewed by the fracking industry. Current water purification techniques are unable to capture methane and radon, for instance, both of which come from fracking. Consequently, drinking water supplies throughout Pennsylvania, which is a fracking hot spot due to its location in the Marcellus Shale Formation region, are becoming increasingly toxic with no end in sight. So as the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues its ongoing investigation into the environmental impacts of fracking, the SGS committee comes along and makes a few useless recommendations that it says will address the problems with fracking, but that in reality will do absolutely nothing to solve them. At least six SGS committee members have ties to the natural gas industry The mindless recommendations made by SGS in support of the fracking industry make a lot more sense, however, in light of the industries to which many of its members are connected. According to a recent report issued by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), at least six SGS committee members are known to have connections to the oil and gas industries. Signed by 28 scientists from 22 universities and institutions in 13 states, all of whom object to the SGS panel’s recommendations, the EWG report explains that Chairman John Deutch, Stephen Holditch, Kathleen McGinty, Susan Tierney, Daniel Yergin, and Mark Zoback all have financial ties to the oil and gas industries, a blatant conflict of interest for a committee that is supposed to offer unbiased counsel to the ED. SGS Chairman John Deutch, for instance, currently serves on the board of the natural gas firm Cheniere Energy. According to the WP, Deutch was paid more than $1.4 million by both Cheniere and Schlumberger, another oil and gas firm, between 2006 and 2009. And Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who was appointed directly by President Obama, chose Deutch for the SGS Chairman position knowing full well his connections to the oil and gas industries. So just like the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is filled with officials connected to the pharmaceutical industry, and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which is filled with officials connected to the biotechnology industry, the Energy Department, is filled with officials connected to the oil and gas industries. And so it goes in the “land of the free,” where special interests run the government and its powerful regulatory agencies. Driven by greed and an insatiable lust for power, corporate snakes have quietly infiltrated the very agencies that were designed to protect the interests of the people, and have restructured them to serve corporate interests instead. Sources for this story include: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/energy-department-panel-to-endorse-shale-gas-exploration/2011/08/10/gIQAXqbh7I_story.html

Heal yourself in 15 days with the "Attitude of Gratitude" (part twelve)

(NaturalNews) So far in this 15-day self healing series, we’ve talked about healing yourself through many innovative methods that help protect you from threats to your health while activating the inner healing potential you already possess. Today, in part twelve of this series, we’re going to explore the power of gratitude in accelerating your healing even further. This isn’t some etheric, touchy-feely self-help exercise, by the way: there is a very real healing effect that is initiated in your body when you express gratitude towards people or things outside of yourself. Some of this effect can be measured biochemically, while other aspects of it are currently beyond scientific measurement. But the bottom line is irrefutable: Expressing gratitude initiates a powerful healing effect in your own mind and body. What do you have to be happy about? Getting to this gratitude, however, isn’t always so easy. Being able to genuinely express gratitude requires you to shift your focus away from the things that are negative and toward those things that you feel thankful for. And as you already know, it’s very easy to forget to be thankful for all the amazing things we experience on a daily basis. Many of us living in western society tend to focus on what we don’t have. We think we don’t have enough money, we don’t have enough time, we don’t have the partner we’re looking for and so on. And in that exercise — which can frankly dominate our day-to-day thinking if we’re not careful — we tend to ignore those amazing things we do have. So the more we can step back and examine what we already experience that’s valuable to us, the more we can focus on gratitude and the more we can accelerate our own inner healing as a result. Here’s a list of some of the things for which you may find plenty of gratitude: • Your health. Even if it isn’t perfect, you may be thankful for the health you have. • Your family. • Your freedoms (freedom of speech, etc.) • Your intelligence, consciousness and awareness. • Your memories! (Life without memories would be bizarre…) • Sunshine and nature — the great outdoors. • Food and seeds, some of the many remarkable gifts from Mother Nature. • Your job, business or career which provides the income you need. • Your inquisitiveness and desire to learn new things. • A spiritual awakening, or realization or philosophy that you follow. • Your pets / animal companions. In fact, if you think about, there are probably a great many things for which you can feel great gratitude — the small plants in your window sill, the knowledge about health that you’ve accumulated through reading, and even the fact that the sun will indeed come up tomorrow. Take a few moments and think about what you are thankful for. You may even wish to take a few minutes to jot down some notes for yourself. Set aside just 60 seconds a day With your list of those things you are thankful for, I’d like to invite you to set aside just one minute per day (or more, if you wish) to review that list, to verbalize your gratitude and to really take in your thankfulness for those things that you do have. Literally say it out loud: “I am thankful for the garden in my back yard and the opportunity to grow a small portion of my own food” for example. In just 60 seconds per day, if practiced daily, you will create an attitude of gratitude which will brighten your mood and uplift your day-to-day experience of life because it allows you to refocus your attention on those things you appreciate rather than those things you might despise. And this, as I hinted at earlier, will result in a very real physiological and biochemical healing effect within your own body. How gratitude becomes self-healing Every type of energy that you express to someone else is reflected in your own inner experience. So if you express hatred toward some other person or subject matter, there is an element of that energy that is also expressed internally in that moment. To hate someone else is to subject yourself to some reflection of that own hate, in other words. At the same time, to love something else — or to express thankfulness towards it — causes a reflection of that positive energy to be felt inside yourself, too. So the mere act of expressing gratitude is a form of self-healing. As a person who has written both positive and negative stories for many years, I am acutely aware of this dynamic. When I write negative stories for NaturalNews (critical stories), the energy that is reflected back is often negative in its tone, especially from the parties being criticized. But when I write positive stories, the energy that’s reflected back to me is very positive. You might wonder why, then, I still write some negative stories. The answer is that from time to time there are some injustices that are so extreme that I feel a need to expose them publicly even though I pay a personal price in terms of reflected negative energy. Even then, you’ve probably noticed a shift over the last several months where more stories here on NaturalNews are oriented toward the positive, because that’s what I much prefer to write about. In fact, when there’s an opportunity to write a positive story or do a positive product review, I actually feel a great sense of gratitude simply from the opportunity to do that. And that makes me feel good, too. So I’m practicing the same gratitude dynamics that I’m describing here in this article. What’s interesting about all this is something the Buddhists will tell you: In terms of self healing, it doesn’t really matter what you express gratitude towards — the positive feedback and effects on your own healing are still present. You could find a rock on a dirt path and express gratitude toward the rock and you’d still receive a measurable benefit from it. You can, in fact, express gratitude towards any thing or any person in the world — even if such gratitude is not necessarily justified — and still experience the benefits of that gratitude in your own mental and physical healing. This even works if you express gratitude towards larger concepts like “life” or “God” or “the universe.” Anger cannot coexist with gratitude Anger is a very destructive emotion because it causes stress, adrenal depletion and tension throughout the body. But you can learn to replace anger (or other negative emotions) with gratitude, and anger cannot coexist with gratitude . In this way, gratitude can begin to nudge out the other negative emotions you might be experiencing. This doesn’t mean you have to run around blindly thankful for everything without discerning times when criticism or anger might be called for, but the more you can find the gratitude in everyday things , the more you’ll activate and support your body’s inner healing processes. So start today and rediscover those things you feel gratitude towards. Express that gratitude either silently or verbally and enjoy the experience of that positive energy being reflected back at you. Previous articles in this 15-day “Heal Yourself” series Part One – Remove barriers to healing http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html Part Two – Unleash your inner healing potential http://www.naturalnews.com/028060_self_healing_immune_system.html Part Three – You are what you absorb http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_self_healing_digestion.html Part Four – Transform your health by making new blood http://www.naturalnews.com/028075_blood_health_transformation.html Part Five – Experience the healing potential of living plant juices http://www.naturalnews.com/028100_self_healing_fresh_juice.html Part Six – Accelerate your healing with a 24-hour fast http://www.naturalnews.com/028117_self_healing_fasting.html Part Seven – Heal yourself by rejecting the mainstream crowd http://www.naturalnews.com/028136_self_healing_crowd_psychology.html Part Eight – Stop making disease http://www.naturalnews.com/028153_self_healing_disease.html Part Nine – Correct your nature deficiency http://www.naturalnews.com/028203_nature_deficiency_self_healing.html Part Ten – Protect your skin exposures http://www.naturalnews.com/028249_skin_health_consumer_products.html Part Eleven – Eat MORE, not less http://www.naturalnews.com/028298_superfoods_self_healing.html