Arkansas Blog

What's that smell?
You can't watch TV today without catching commercials peddling fragranced products. In theory that's not such a bad thing. After all, cultures throughout history perfumed their homes and persons, if only out of necessity given the state of their hygiene and sanitation systems. Think of the potpourris, sachets, and nosegays so much in favor not all that long ago. Perhaps we all have an innate desire to smell like a breath of spring, and what harm could there be in that? ...

Well, none until you industrialize the process. Before the early 20th century, the fragrances in high demand were derived directly from plants or animals, but after World War II, companies turned to petrochemicals as the source of manufactured scents and expanded the uses of fragrances exponentially. Natural fragrance preparations* still exist, of course, but synthetic scents have taken over the marketplace, with sales topping $18 billion annually ...

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reports that "95 percent of the ingredients used to create fragrances today are synthetic compounds derived from petroleum, including benzene derivatives, aldehydes, and many other known toxins and sensitizers. Many of these substances have been linked to cancer, birth defects, central nervous system disorders, and allergic reactions." NAS targets fragrances as one of six categories of chemicals that should be tested for neurotoxicity. This puts synthetic fragrances in the company of insecticides, heavy metals, solvents, food additives, and air pollutants. ...

But despite this level of concern, the trade secret laws have ensured that fragrance chemicals remain completely unregulated. Manufacturers may point to the "self-regulatory" system in place, but they're not required to check their chemicals for safety, so testing is limited, and compliance with recommendations is voluntary and not enforced. The result? The same chemicals that must be disclosed and tested when used in gasoline and cigarettes go unregulated when put into a bottle of shampoo.

whole thing on bluename
.

eLwood, could unregulated products that control our minds be next? Wouldn't put it past the bastards!!

unregulated products that control our minds be next? <<

Yes, they do control some of us. I just watched my weekly quota of FOX News.

At bluename, more proof that you can find anything on eBay.

Elwood, So why when the death toll from tobacco, whose ingredient list is as well secret, and morbidity surpasses the top 5 leading causes of preventable death combined, (anomalous scents do not even register w the CDC) does that not spur you to challenge the tobacco industry?

Time to usher in a new era by choosing the skinny guy

By Garrison Keillor
October 30, 2008

I was messing around in Tulsa, Okla., last week and got talking with a big burly man with a McCain-Palin pin on his blue blazer who told me he was descended from yellow-dog Democrats who thought the sun rose and set over FDR and Republicans were people who wore spats and top hats and sailed off Newport. So I told him that my Republican ancestors believed that only lazy people were unemployed in the '30s. He said, "So each of us is heading back to where the other one is coming from." He found that rather amusing. I said, "If that's so, I hope you're ready to be good and poor and endure some hard Minnesota winters."

"Poor, yes. Good, I'm not so sure about. Winter, no. No way."

He's proud of Tulsa, which survived the exodus of Big Oil and got into telecommunications and aeronautics, proud of its Art Deco buildings from the '20s, its art museums and ballet. "Outsiders hear Tulsa and they think Dust Bowl and Oral Roberts," he says, "but that's not who we are. This town is all about change."

I did not bother to tell him that change is exactly what the country is bursting to achieve in less than a week. Of course he knows all about it. Oklahoma seems safely red, but these days who knows? Sen. Barack Obama looks more and more steadfast as the moment nears. The country longs for a president who can talk and think at the same time. We've been locked up with the Current Occupant for way too long, and the thought of replacing him with the Angry Old Man of the Desert and Whoopee the Ice Queen is miserable in the extreme.

Most of my Republican friends are people who are not ashamed of having worked hard and done well in school, and their party's frantic appeal to anti-intellectualism is nothing they care to sign up for. Time to nip that sucker in the bud. The party needs to reform itself around some coherent philosophy of governance and vision of the future, and for that, it must take a trip to the wilderness. They are quietly supporting the skinny guy this time around. They might tell a pollster otherwise, but that's what they will do.

Even Mr. Burly of Tulsa expressed sorrow over Sen. John McCain's campaign, the jerkiness and desperation of it, and admiration for Senator Obama's steadiness, his cool, his straightforward articulation and the old-fashioned story of his rise in the world. I thought about that the next day, flying to Philly and walking over to Independence Hall and riding the train to Lancaster through the little towns of old brick rowhouses, the red and golden trees, the trim farmyards and the fields of tan stubble, a state Senator McCain has scrapped hard for even as he sank in the polls. I suppose he looks at that classic Rockwell landscape and those hardy German Lutheran faces and thinks those are his people and how can they possibly go for a Harvard Law School graduate from the South Side of Chicago whose last name is Obama, for crying out loud?

They can and they will. Colin L. Powell was right when he called the guy a transformational candidate. We walk through the door and we close it behind us and the simplicity of it is dazzling. That's how it happens. You walk aboard a plane and glance into the cockpit and there's a woman in the left-hand seat, and who these days would even think this worthy of comment? You see Latino men and women moving up whose grandparents picked row crops for a living. In Tulsa, in 1921, there was a big race riot following the arrest of a young black man who was alleged to have touched a white woman on the arm. Fighting in the streets, neighborhoods torched, the National Guard called in - and this story seems medieval to us, a dark age almost beyond our ken. That culture is gone, gone, gone, and on Tuesday, we bury it by the simple democratic process of voting for the best man even though his father was African.

In America, a man is not held responsible for choosing his parents, only for his own life and conduct. This man promises to take us into a new era where we aren't defined by our differences, short vs. tall, pale vs. freckled, and can take a deep breath and do what's best for the country.

Garrison Keillor's column appears regularly in The Baltimore Sun. His e-mail is oldscout@

prairiehome.us.

Dang it, eLwood...before it's over (enlightenment) I'm gonna have to throw out everything that smells/taste good. By the time I figure out what's good/bad...I'll have forgotten it all. Oh well...any good smell suggestions?

Oh zelda, when you talk of your lovely flowers in your backyard... i can practically smell them from here.

Sounds like you grow all the lovely scents one could ever need.

Conan O'Brien

● Yesterday in Washington, the Secret Service arrested a man who climbed over the White House fence. The Secret Service told the man, "Get back here, Mr. President, you have two more months."

jazzy, I always appreciate it when you put up some Garrison Keillor. Thanks.

Hey neighbors...if you live on Pine Valley and you had an Obama sign in your yard for weeks and weeks, but it was gone this morning, send me an email. I saw such a sign peeking out of the storm sewer this morning and I fished it out. The wire frame is "ruint", but the sign is still good. Click my typekey square for the email.

I voted at the County building this afternoon. I got in the queue at 2:55 and finished voting 47 minutes later.

Max, you and I made a bet a few weeks ago and I can't remember what it was. I don't want to welch on a bet, especially when it's a chili dog at The Hop!

ARK. BLOG: I've forgotten, too. You'll have to hold me to it. Or I'll pay regardless.

Bless you Hugh, I've had three signs stolen. I'm putting out my last two this weekend and sitting on the porch. I get three or four hundred trick or treaters and their parents tomorrow.
Hubby said the McCain people are so crazy they might burn our house down. Told him we have insurance.

CHALLENGE: All the trolls, R wingnuts, Religionists and Kool-Aid addicts check out the O'Bama interview by Rachel Maddow that aired tonight. Just take the time, keep breathing and LISTEN. Then weigh in back here.

I double-DOG dare you to use your eyes, ears and brains (wide open), then let us all know how "unknown," "scary," etc. you perceive him.

That's it.
|

What candidates have blessed you guys with robo calls?

I was reading a little Charles Bukowski tonight and came across this poem of his. It made me think of where this country is and where it might be in just a few short days from now.

Putrefaction by Charles Bukowski

Of late
I've had this thought
that this country
has gone backwards
4 of 5 decades
and that all the
social advancement
the good feeling of
person toward
person
has been washed
away
and replaced
by the same
old
bigotries.

We have
more than ever
the selfish wants of power
the disregard for the
weak
the old
the impoverished
the
helpless.

We are replacing want with war
salvation with
slavery.

We have wasted the
gains
we have become
rapidly
less.

We have our Bomb
it is our fear
our damnation
and our
shame.

Now
something so sad
has hold of us
that
the breath
leaves
and we can't even
cry.

SIGN THEFT ALERT - OBAMA SIGNS STOLEN IN CAMMACK VILLAGE TONIGHT

9:45PM, loud muffler-ridden dark Dodge Pick Up truck roamed the streets of Cammack, riping up Obama signs. We almost caught them and notified our trusted police officer.

I suppose, it seems petty to mention this will with all of the seriousness abounding..yet..my wife ran out of the house screaming like a scene from cops (only thing missing was a warm 32 oz brewski and a white sleevless T-shirt.

I understand this is happening everywhere, so I guess it was our turn to have the cranky right wingers take what belonged to us. Good news for us, bad news perhaps for the unibrow thieves is the fact that it not only fired us up to get out the vote!

So I guess I owe thanks to muffler choking white trash guy for taking my signs and ask forgiveness from our neighbors as we probably scaring the bejeezers out of them as we ran out of the house after Moe the muffler.

>Elwood, So why when the death toll from tobacco, whose ingredient list is as well secret, and morbidity surpasses the top 5 leading causes of preventable death combined, (anomalous scents do not even register w the CDC) does that not spur you to challenge the tobacco industry?
Posted by: Zarathustra

If someone should need reminding of the hazardous and dangerous nature of cigarette/tobacco smoke....what could be said that hasn't been said a thousand times in the newspapers and on TV? With what's actually known today tobacco smoking is a form of suicide. It still exists and enjoys government subsidy due to political considerations/connections. But it's worth mentioning that tobacco use went on for at least 400 years before anyone considered the health risks. After the health risks were researched and revealed it required another 30 years for anything meaningful to stop its use to emerge.
Health interests had to fight political-commercial interests for decades to curb and reduce tobacco smoking. Its advertising has been limited to magazines and billboards which two mediums too many.

Regarding the research and testing of chemicals which are protected by "trade secrets" I must assume you are pulling my leg. If at this late stage of the game you are not aware that the chemical industry has a much higher profile and level of influence than health then I will not waste time debating with you.

Recent discoveries in evolutionary biology show that damages to the DNA of a parent to be will show up in their offspring and perhaps one generation past their immediate offspring or in grandchildren. Suddenly a disorder, deformity or illness occurs without any apparent current cause. Don't expect your competent, local physician to be knowledgeable about this. It must be tested, proved , and codified into their reference books. After overcoming mountains of political-industrial obstacles damaging chemicals can be used for decades before anything "OFFICIAL" is presented and their use is restricted. Chemists knew about the harmful effects of lead poisoning for decades before anything was done to curtail it.

ZAR, IN AMERICA POISONS TRUMP HEALTH.
Hold that thought daily and you will live longer and so will your children, and grandchildren with fewer deformities and cancers.

Phthalates are now commonly found in several health care products...in America. They have been banned in Europe.

click on Blue name for a hint.

Then click on this link ( http://www.phthalates.org/whatare/index.asp ) to learn who is attempting to protect their interests in the stuff.
.

Cato, early morning clicky for you, late night clicky for DBI.

cheers.

THE ONLY THING SCAREY ABOUT THE RACHEL MADDOW INTERVIEW, IS RACHEL MADDOW.. WHATTA COW. MSNBC HAS THE UGLIEST PEOPLE ON THEIR CHANNEL. WITH CNN A CLOSE SECOND. BRAINS PLUS LOOKS = FOX NEWS.

eLWOODIEE YOU ARE A RACIST OF THE WORST TYPE.

KIZZY LAME BRAIN IDEAS .. GET OFF YOUR BUZZ AND EXERCISE, IT WILL ENHANCE THE BLOOD FLOW TO YOUR BRAIN. THEN TELL eLWOODIEE AND DUBI HOW GREAT IT FEELS.

DONT EAT, DONT MAKE, DONT WORK COOKIES.

GARRISON KEILLOR IS A MISPLACED CARPETBAGGER.. HE IS PITIFUL AND YOU ARE UP ON THE WALL, NO BOAT OUT OF THE GARAGE FOR YOU...SAVING ON WEAR AND TEAR ON THE TRAILER, AND MOTOR AND NO GAS. HOW AWESOME.. YOU ARE SOOOOO GREEN.

DANGEROUSLY CHILDISH PROPAGANDA PLUS AIRHEAD BIMBOS = FOX NEWS

DBI,, THEY WOULDNT GIVE YOU A SECOND LOOK.. THATS YOUR HANGUP.. ISNT IT. IF YOU DONT LINE THE NEWS THEY GIVE, THEN THEYRE BIMBOZ. HOW ASTUTE, HOW WONDERFULLY BRILLANT OF YOU. YOU CANT HOLD A CANDLE TO THEM AND YOU KNOW IT.

AHHH ... YOUR JEALOUSIE IS SHOWING LIL BOI... MIZZ DUBII BEEN PICKIN ON YOUR POR LIL TAIL AND YOU NOT HAPPY BOUT IT. SHOWS BIG TIME.
HEARD FORT SMITH IS GOING FOR MCCAIN PALIN. BOUT TIME THEY WIZED UP. WHEN WILL YOU.
LIL BOO

Read an account of another 2am break-in about 1/2 mile from Anne Pressly's house. Fortunately, he young single woman escaped.

If the LRPD has any useful information about the suspect in the Pressly crime it would be nice for them to inform the citizens of LR whether there is a monster in their midst stalking random women.

Yapperjohn:

I just read your post and had to jump up and run outside in my robe and slippers to check my Obama sign. It is still there! I did hear that truck last night because it was really loud.

Mudturtle; Where did you read that? I haven't opened up the paper yet to look for it in there. Scary news, but glad the young woman is OK.

4B Dem Gaz

I haven't figured out how to get moonflowers and their incredible scent into my house, eureka. I do have one old-fashioned pink rose that smells divine and that graces my bedside. But I've had NO luck with lavender and many of the other traditional scented flowers (trying a big pot of lavender this year...will let you know how that goes). Rosemary/thyme work for the kitchen; but I love my Trapp orange/vanilla candles and my lavender scented plugins. The plug-ins are history, though, given elwood's info and the current stuff in the media. I'm not sure about the candles. Obviously, when it comes to good smells, quality/safety comes from work/hands on rather than convenience/expediency...just like food. Back to vanilla/cinnamon/etc. for awhile.

What to you use from your garden/yard, eureka?

My two homemade Obama signs have remained untouched for a week. I took them in at night for a few days, but then decided to see what happens. Either Conway's more enlightened than I thought or...never mind.

It's just cruel that the Maddow's would name their son Rachel?

My wife actually bought two Obama/Biden signs, had me separate the front signs from the back and staple them to our privacy fence. That way if they rip up the fence to get the signs, they buy me a new fence too.

No news organization this side of the old Russian TASS has put out more pure garbage news than Fox News. Not a day goes by that at least one of their top news stories is shown to be total made up crap. If Fox is where you get your news no wonder you don't know jack.

PS Fort Baptist has been voting for the Republican side since 1854 and will go for McCain just like they went for Herbert Hoover....no surprise there.

We switched to cleaning supplies bought from the health food store in our area because of the fragrance chemicals a while back. For liquid hand soap, you can't beat Dr. Bronner. A little dab will do ya.

We went for Nature's Gate shampoo and creme rinse.

Click blue name for a website, Cosmeticsdatabase.com, that will tell you how safe different products are. It is very informative, and changed how I buy things, that's for sure!

Loves that Dr Bonner rablib. Good reading material on the bottles. Metaphysical he is.
I began using Bonner label back in the 70s.