March is Women's History Month
The First Day of Spring! (some calendars said yesterday!)
Great American Meatout Day
International Day of Happiness
Won't You Be My Neighbor Day
World Day of Theater for Children and Young People
Since it’s The "Great American Meatout Day", I’ve chosen another accomplished female vegetarian for today.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus.
Mary Shelley, like many of her contemporaries, was most likely a vegetarian. One thing is certain: The principles of vegetarianism found a place in her work. Most significantly, the nameless 'monster' (a gentle giant until provoked) that Dr. Frankenstein created was also, like her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, a vegan.
At one point in the story he says: "My food is not that of man; I do not destroy the lamb and the kid to glut my appetite; acorns and berries afford me sufficient nourishment."
1) The Amazon River flows into the Atlantic Ocean.
2) Donald Trump doesn't drink alcohol. Not sure if I should be terrified or relieved.
3) Carly Simon's dad is the Simon of Simon & Schuster Books. He co-founded the company.
4) Crimini Mushrooms are actually just small Portobello Mushrooms, or so says The Barefoot Contessa.
5) By the year 2050, if we keep going at the current rate, there will be more plastic garbage in the ocean than fish.
6) Last week, Senator Lindsey Graham gave Ted Cruz a very lukewarm endorsement. Previously Graham had said that choosing between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz was the difference between "being shot or poisoned".
7) Mexican cartels time there assassinations to coincide with the 6 o'clock news. An American reporter asked a Mexican coroner in the very dangerous border city of Ciudad Juarez, if he had any "safety tips". The undertaker told him, "don't go out at around 5:45 PM, that's when the cartels times their assassinations."
Bernie Sanders on Donald Trump: "I never even went to one of his weddings."
In 1993, Bernie Sanders wrote a piece for the Vermont Times entitled, "Why I Oppose NAFTA".
Depending on whose account you believe, somewhere between 1,000-2,000 Bernie Sanders supporters marched in 40° rainy weather in Baltimore yesterday, carrying umbrellas and signs saying, "#FeelTheBern”, "Bernie 2016", "Not Me Us", "#MarchForBernie", "#StillSanders", "Of The People", "BMoreLikeBernie", "The Only Pac I Like" (picture of PacMan), "BERNIE: #lovetrumpshate, "That's right, Wall Street, I AM dangerous!" and "Not For Sale".
“After a century of prohibition, hemp is once again taking root in American soil. With the passing of the 2014 federal farm bill (section 7606), farmers in states with industrial hemp legislation are allowed to grow and harvest hemp in conjunction with their state departments of agriculture for research through pilot programs.
Kentucky, Colorado, and Vermont all planted small research crops in 2014. To date, 33 states and Puerto Rico have introduced pro-hemp legislation, and 24 states have defined industrial hemp as distinct from other strains of cannabis and removed barriers to its production.
In January of 2015, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act was introduced in the House, (H.R. 525) and in the Senate (S. 134) by Ron Widen. If passed, all current restrictions on the cultivation of industrial hemp would be removed, along with its classification as a Schedule 1 controlled substance.
Industrial hemp is legal to grow in more than 30 countries. The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that does not currently allow the cultivation of hemp. Millions of dollars worth of hemp is imported into the United States each year in order to fulfill the growing demand for hemp products. The annual retail sales for hemp products was estimated at $620 million in 2014. Much of it is being sourced from Canada, China, and other countries.
Some states have included market development in their hemp legislation, which allows farmers to profit from their crops and for products to be sourced from American-grown hemp. If the Hemp Farming Act passes, the hemp market would be allowed to flourish without intervention from the federal government. American farmers deserve the right to grow and profit from hemp once more, don't you think?”
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via Andrea Miller at newsmax
"Legalizing Weed: 4 Facts About the Industrial Hemp Farming Act
Though it’s often confused with the movement for legalizing weed, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015 is actually a separate movement specifically for cannabis sativa plants cultivated for development and production of hemp products. The bill seeks to amend the definition of marijuana in the Controlled Substances Act so that it will not include industrial hemp.
Here are four facts about the Industrial Hemp Farming Act of 2015.
1. The bill has a long history.
While it was reintroduced in 2015, the Industrial Hemp Farming Act has gone through several iterations. It was first introduced in 2005 by Ron Paul, Pete Stark, Jim McDermott, and Raul Grijalva, but stalled after it was referred to the Subcommittee on Health.
With some changes, the bill was introduced again in both 2007 and 2009, both times failing to get past this committee despite changes in the bill that seek to separate legalizing weed from legalizing industrial hemp. A 2013 version stalled with the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations.
2. The bill has bipartisan support.
Unlike legalizing weed, which has traditionally been a Democrat-supported movement, both Republicans and Democrats have shown support for the new version of the Industrial Hemp Farming Act. This is a nod to the economic impact that cultivation of industrial hemp could have on the nation’s agricultural landscape and on manufacturing. Sponsors of the bill include Reps. Jared Polis (D-Colorado), Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon), Kurt Schrader (D-Oregon), and Dana Rohrabacher (R-California)
3. The United States is currently the only industrialized nation where hemp production is illegal.
However, the U.S. is also the world’s largest consumer of hemp-related products. This means that a bill allowing cultivation of industrial hemp would bolster domestic trade and allow access to more affordable and fresher industrial hemp for manufacturing purposes.
4. Twenty states have already legalized industrial hemp production.
However, farmers who grow the crop in those states still risk targeting by federal authorities unless the Industrial Hemp Act is passed. In an earlier win for industrial hemp production, President Barack Obama signed a bill in early 2014 allowing colleges and universities to grow the crop for research purposes in these 20 states.
With legalizing weed a reality in 20 states and Washington, D.C., this new reintroduction of the Industrial Hemp Farming Act has a real chance at becoming law for the first time since its inception."
10) John Oliver’s “Make Donald Drumpf Again" Hats Are So Popular That They Sold Out
"When late night TV host John Oliver spent a 20-minute segment railing against GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump, he coined a new phrase: ‘Make Donald Drumpf Again.’ Apparently the mantra stuck, as Oliver’s show Last Week Tonight has sold out of its custom-made hats sporting the phrase.
“Drumpf” refers to the ancestral name for Trump’s family, but Oliver used it on his show to undercut the brand of success that Trump has cultivated around his own moniker. The hat has sold 35,000 copies, according to HBO, which airs Last Week Tonight."
The Trump segment has been Oliver’s most successful ever, attracting more than 20 million views on YouTube. A Google Chrome extension that changes all occurrences of “Trump” to “Drumpf” on web pages has been downloaded more than 433,000 times. ~ NYT
via time March 15, 2016
John Oliver appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Monday night to discuss a topic that until very recently he “did not give a damn about” — Republican front-runner Donald Trump.
On Last Week Tonight several weeks ago, Oliver delivered a blistering 20-minute screed on the candidate he denounced as “America’s back mole.” Oliver attributed Trump’s success to the phonetic force of his last name, and encouraged voters to re-evaluate the business mogul by his ancestral name: Drumpf.
On Monday night, Oliver told Colbert that the hats he made with the refashioned campaign slogan — “Make Donald Drumpf Again” — sold out rapidly, and that even Jay-Z’s management had called Oliver’s people to see if the artist could get a hat, for free.
“I did say to be careful, because if he puts that hat on in public, we’re going to need more hats,” Oliver said. “And if his wife [Beyoncé] puts that hat on in public, we are no longer a TV show. We’re a hat-manufacturing company.”
11) Today is the annual Great American Meatout Day!
Started in 1985, the first day of spring has become the largest annual education campaign for compassionate living.
The Great American Meatout is celebrated across the globe on March 20th every year. Animal-welfare organization Farm Animal Rights Movement coordinates the campaign, educating the general public on the health, environmental, and ethical benefits of living cruelty-free.
Organizers encourage people to give veganism a try, sharing that avoiding animal products for just two days will save 28 animals and 190,000 gallons of water per year.
According to meatout(dot)org, completely eliminating animal products from your diet saves 200 animals, 1.3 million gallons of water, and 53,000 square feet of rain forestry annually. For 2013, the campaign hopes to collect 25,000 pledges through outreach events, food samples, and word of mouth.
Famous Vegetarians from History:
via treehugger
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Mohandas Gandhi wrote extensively about vegetarianism and once said that "I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants."
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Gautama Buddha may not have been the first vegetarian but he was certainly one of the earliest prominent figures to talk about giving up meat. His reasoning for avoiding meat was eloquently summed up when he explained that "the eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion."
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Pythagoras is famous among mathematicians and high school students for his triangle-explaining theorem. Vegetarians know him, however, as an outspoken advocate of animal rights in ancient Greece. According to Ovid, Pythagoras believed that "animals share with us the privilege of having a soul" and also that "for as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love."
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Plato. Like many Greek philosophers of the day, Plato, too, was a vegetarian. He believed that as a society begins to eat more meat, it requires more doctors. This not totally unfounded opinion led him to make some famous statements about keeping a natural diet, notably that "the gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies...they are the trees and the plants and the seeds."
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Leonardo Da Vinci. Not much is known about the personal life of Leonardo Da Vinci. His love of animals, however, is well documented. From letters and writings, historians know that Da Vinci was a vegetarian who would buy caged birds then set them free. He explained this practice, saying "if man wants freedom why keep birds and animals in cages? Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use of meat."
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Voltaire was an advocate of civil rights and freedom. He also believed in the virtues of vegetarianism. He once wrote that "men fed upon carnage, and drinking strong drinks, have all an impoisoned and arid blood which drives them mad in a hundred different ways." This sounds like an early precursor of the phrase "you are what you eat."
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Johnny Appleseed was an early American nurseryman and entrepreneur. He was also a strong opponent of cruelty to animals. Not a man to do things halfway, it's said that he would often extinguish fires because the light attracted insects that might be burned in the flames.
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Leo Tolstoy. In addition to his writings on non-violence, Leo Tolstoy's advocacy of vegetarianism led to his friendship with Mohandas Gandhi. He wrote several essays about vegetarianism, but perhaps never more compellingly than when he said "flesh eating is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act, which is contrary to moral feeling: killing."
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Franz Kafka is widely considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. His literary significance was not fully understood, however, until after his death. During his life, Kafka was active in anti-vivisection activities and was an early proponent of raw-food diets. He also practiced vegetarianism and is reported to have once said, while looking at a fish in an aquarium: "Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more."
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George Bernard Shaw, one of Ireland's most famous playwrights, became a vegetarian at 25 and strongly opposed eating meat from that point on. Commenting on becoming a vegetarian, he once said that "I was a cannibal for twenty-five years. For the rest I have been a vegetarian."
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Albert Einstein. It is believed that Albert Einstein ate meat most of his life but became a vegetarian during the last years before his death. Even so, he was always a supporter of the vegetarian diet and once said that "I have always eaten animal flesh with a somewhat guilty conscience." More powerfully, Einstein believed that "nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
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12) TEN REASONS TO BECOME VEGETARIAN
written in 1995 by my daughter, Alyssa Thralls (at age 12)
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1) THE WATER
Okay let's really get down to business here. How much water could one cow drink, and how many times could it possibly need it's stall cleaned before it goes to the slaughter house? I plan to tell you, but first here are some figures so you'll know what ball park you're in. I'm going in pounds, and one pound of beef should reasonably feed three people for one meal. It takes 23 gallons of water to produce one pound of tomatoes, and it takes a whole 25 gallons of water to produce a pound of carrots. It takes a whopping 33 gallons to produce a pound of wheat, but it only takes a mere 5,200 gallons of water to produce one pound of beef!
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2) THE SOIL
The Soil? Now what could eating a hamburger have to do with the salad you're eating with it? A lot. How? Well, we all know about erosion, where the topsoil has been removed, or is no longer there, and the soil becomes dry and cracked, (making it impossible to grow anything), due to the lack of vegetation holding it together. The way that cows affect this is, first of all, they eat the vegetation off the land, (of course), but second of all they trample the dirt when they walk, destroying, and degrading the topsoil. And one more thing, for every pound of beef produced, 35 pounds of topsoil erode away, and it takes 200 to 1,000 years for nature to produce one inch of new topsoil!
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First of all, let's start with the cow's. For all of a cow's last few months, it's kept in a feed lot to be fattened up before slaughter. On the way to the feed lot, and to the slaughter house, the cows are crammed together, and driven in metal trucks. If one falls down ill or injured, on the way, it is called a "downer," and is either prodded, dragged with chains, or abandoned without food or water, and left to die. You might think that milk cows have it easy, but they don't. A milk cow, must give birth every year to keep producing milk. When it gives birth, the baby is taken away from it, so the calf won't drink the milk. When a cow is milked it is definitely not milked by hand, that went out of style ages ago. They are milked by big clunky machines. When cows are milked they are milked 10 times the amount the baby would drink, so the cows end up with diseased, swollen udders.
Now for the egg laying chickens. First, if they are lucky enough not to be french toast, and are hatched, the first thing that happens to them is; the owner finds out if they are a girl or a boy. If luck is with them, and they are a girl, they are thrown in with a bunch of others, and then once they are grown up they are put in a sagging sideways crate, with three other full grown chickens, and their food is brought to them, and their waste, and eggs taken away from them by conveyor belt. Then when their egg laying career is over . . . well let's just say "KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN!" If they have the ill luck to be born a male, they are thrown in a plastic bag and suffocated to their tragic death.
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4) SICKNESS
Would you believe it, a vegetarian diet might prevent cancer, heart disease, and even such average diseases as cold and flu! It's true, a study of 25,000 people showed that the people who ate meat every day had 3 times the risk of dying from a heart attack than people who ate no meat.
The reason that a vegetarian diet is good for your heart is because it contains much less saturated fat, and cholesterol, (both are main contributors to heart disease), because saturated fat is found mostly in animal products, and cholesterol is found only in animal products, in other words if you were to become vegan, (dairyless), your diet would be completley cholesterol-free! 2 out of every 3 cancers are related to our diet, and studies show that vegetarians have much less risk of cancer than carnivores. And vegetarians have, in general, a lesser chance of getting most diseases. So , holding off on that hamburger may just save your life!
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5) THE MONEY
When it really comes down to it, you would save an enormous amount of money if you didn't eat meat. I mean with a pound of tuna at $4.89, and a pound of steak at $6.00, and a pound of chicken breasts at $3.50, it's not a wonder that if you buy one of each of these a day, (for a five person family), it can easily add up. One pound of tofu sells for about $1.79, a pound of rice costs $1.29, and a pound of pinto beans sells for $1.19. So obviously the vegetarian diet is much cheaper.
6) THE RAINFORESTS
Although it, may not seem like it, the rainforests actually have alot to do with McDonald's. As a matter of fact, McDonald's is one of the main companies that are destroying still undiscovered plants, and animals to use the space as feed for animals before they kill them (grazing land for cows). Although rainforests cover only 5% of the world's land mass, they contain more than half of the world's plants and animals! In the last 30 years one third of the world's rainforests have been cut down. It is estimated that there are more than 1,400 tropical plants and trees in the rainforests that contain cancer blocking properties! And we also get many other resources from the rainforests. We harvest all of the following from them: cacao beans, cashews, vanilla, rubber, and we also get the ingredients for the medicines to cure heart disease, and malaria. So as you can see it is very important to SAVE OUR RAINFORESTS!
7) GROWTH HORMONES
Cows are given growth hormones for three reasons. #1: To produce fatter, heavier, cheaper meat. #2: To produce more meat. #3: To make the cows produce more milk. Two out of every three beef cows are implanted with growth hormones. It is not at all uncommon for new hormones to be put into the cows food supply even before it is yet known whether or not it is safe for human "consumption!" Then, when humans eat the cows that ate the growth hormones - treated meat or dairy products . . . well, you figure it out! There is a new disease out, called premature puberty - where 8 and 9 year old girls are beginning to menstruate - studies have now shown that this new illness might be directly related to their consumption of the growth hormones commonly found in today's meat.
8) SALMONELLA ETC.
Salmonella is a bacteria that gets into meat (mostly chicken), due to: bad conditions, feed infected with salmonella (chicken carcasses are sometimes used for chicken feed!), and dirty slaughtering tools, which spread the bacteria to many chickens. Salmonella isn't the only bacteria of it's kind. There are many others which get into meat for much of the same reasons. These diseases have been proven to be fatal, although cooking over 350° will sometimes kill the bacteria. If a child, senior, or already ill person eats live salmonella it may even kill them! Oh, and one more thing, 60% of all broiler chickens are infested with salmonella.
9) HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE A . . . ?
How would you like to be a chicken, crammed so tightly in with the other chickens that the keeper had to cut off your beak with a hot blade so you wouldn't peck the other chickens to death? And how would you like it if you were a baby cow, to be taken away from your mother, so you couldn't drink the milk that was meant for you? And how would you like to see your mother, or father taken away on a big truck, and slaughtered before your very eyes? And how would you like it if then you, yourself, were taken to that big killing machine, by your master, the person who you had willingly trusted all your life, because you knew no better? Or how would you like to be an egg-laying chicken, and have your babies taken away from you without your permission? How can we think it is okay to abort these babies without even the mothers consent, just for a moment's enjoyment on our tongue? Protein? Ha! You can get the same amount of protein from a handful of sunflower seeds as from an average sized steak! And by the way, if you are against abortions, you ought to be against eating eggs, too!
10) WORLD HUNGER
Most of the grain that is fed to animals is perfectly suitable for humans to eat! Almost 40% of the world's grain supply is fed to livestock, and in the U.S. 70% of our grain is consumed by livestock. It takes at least 3 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of chicken, it takes at least 5 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of beef, and it takes at least 7 pounds of grain to produce 1 pound of pork. So it's not a wonder that the world is going hungry. And one more thing: If everyone in the world became vegetarian there would be no world hunger!
So, if you're not vegetarian after reading this, I hope next time you bite into a hamburger, or a Chicken McNugget, you think of the poor animal that lost it's mommy, and maybe, just maybe, consider becoming vegetarian.
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The Methane Gas generated by livestock burps and farts accounts for 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent — more than all forms of transport combined. Methane is much worse than CO2.
What's sad is that part of the reason why cows burp and fart all the time is because they are meant to eat grass, not grains. They are not being fed their natural diet. I would imagine that it takes different digestive juices to digest grass than it does to digest grain.
So, not only are cows mistreated in their care, but they have a tummy ache for their entire lives, from eating the wrong feed. Poor things.]
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*NOTE* - Please understand that I do not claim to be a “journalist”. I am only passing on bits of information, which others have researched, that drift through my awareness, on any given day. I watch, read and listen to any number of different news and entertainment sources, and it’s more than anyone could possibly intake and retain in a day, so I created this little daily “cheat sheet” for myself, so that I could remember all these oddball facts. Then I decided to share these tidbits, and thus was born the Daily TILT. I do this for fun. I hope you enjoy it.
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[Snarky comments by me are usually in brackets like this].
All photos by me unless credited otherwise.
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**NOTE: I purposely do not include links or photos in the TILT. The idea is to not have one story be highlighted above all the others. And sometimes links can be stressful. I, myself, sometimes get conflicted when presented with too many choices, so I thought I'd save you the trouble of having to make any of those types of decisions for a few minutes, while you read the Link-Free TILT!
I encourage you to further research any story that interests you, though. They are easy to Google.
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***My Daily Sources are usually one of the following: Democracy Now, The Daily Kos, Thom Hartmann, care2, Mother Jones, David Pakman, Ring of Fire, Jim Hightower, Alternet, Bill Press, Wired UK, John Fugelsang, Lee Camp, Bill Maher, The Huffington Post, The Daily Show, TYT Network, todayifoundout, Truthout, DIGG, Think Progress, Politico, Salon, Star Kelley, Friends of the Earth, Talk Media News, NRDC, Pirate Television, The Upworthiest, The Chase, The View, Soul Pancake, The Petition Site, Bioneers, TechKnow, The Daily Beast, PPP, YouTube and occasionally, MSNBC.
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As Thom Hartmann always says, "Democracy is NOT a spectator sport. TAG, you're it!"