Aspartame is not Safe?

Some doctors in England are questioning the conclusion of the European Food Safety Authority that the popular chemical sweetener, Aspartame, is safe. They found that the commission disregarded all 73 of the studies that found that it was not safe. They believe that the panel of officials may have been influenced by the big money that is backing Aspartame.

Too much sugar is bad for your health — but the world’s most popular alternative might not be any better.

For decades, experts have questioned the safety of artificial sweetener aspartame — also known as NutraSweet — with some studies concluding that the sugar substitute can cause a host of health problems, from brain damage to cancer.

To put the issue to rest, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) conducted a closed-door review of available aspartame studies in 2013 and found it to be safe — but according to new research, that’s only because they threw out all the studies claiming otherwise.

For the new study, published in the journal Archives of Public Health, researchers from the University of Sussex looked at how the EFSA treated the 154 studies it reviewed in 2013.

They discovered that the panel determined that all 73 studies that found that aspartame could be harmful were “unreliable.” Of the 81 studies that concluded it was safe, they labeled just 19 unreliable.

Read More

July is Set to Become the Hottest Month Ever

Some climate scientists are saying that July 2019 will go on record as having the highest global average temperature ever recorded for a calendar month. Of course this ignores all of the months of human history in which the global average climate was not recorded, which is almost all of them. It also ignores the reality that our ability and methods to measure the global average temperature have gotten significantly better over the last hundred years or so. But it is true that over the past several years the global surface temperature of the earth has increased. The reasons are the subject of much argument.

July is on track to become the hottest month in recorded history, climate scientists say, after heat waves blanketed North America and the Arctic saw warmer than usual temperatures. It’s the latest sign that the planet’s overall climate is warming, and that human activities are causing extreme events such as heat waves to become more likely and more intense, the scientists say.

Even with more than a week left until the end of the month, dozens of experts are already anticipating that the current record from July 2017 will fall.

“It's looking like there's a strong likelihood that we will end up with the warmest month ever,” said Brian Brettschneider, a climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. (In this case, "ever" means since modern record-keeping began in 1880.)

Read More

U. S. House Chaplain Prays to Exorcise the House Chamber

The Chaplain of the U. S. House of Representatives, a Jesuit Roman Catholic Priest named Pat Conroy, opened Thursday's legislature with a prayer to exorcise all "spirits of darkness" from the chamber. It had been a tough few days in the House with a floor fight over comments made by President Trump.

This from Fox News:

After several chaotic and historic days on Capitol Hill, the chaplain of the House of Representatives opened the legislative day Thursday with a prayer to cast out “all spirits of darkness from this chamber.”

“This has been a difficult and contentious week in which darker spirits seem to have been at play in the people’s House," the Reverend Pat Conroy began.

Then, in a dramatic moment, Conroy raised both hands and said, "In Your most holy name, I cast out all spirits of darkness from this chamber. Spirits not from You. I cast out the spirit of discouragement which deadens the hope of those who are of goodwill.

"I cast out the spirit of petty divisiveness which clouds the sense and the desire to be of fruitful productivity and addressing the issues more appropriately before this House," he continued. "I cast out any sadness brought on by the frustration of dealing with matters detrimental to the honorable work each member has been called to engage in.”

Read More