Leaving Regret Behind in 2013

How to Live Without Regret in 2013

It’s been said that “regret is insight that comes a day too late.”

For many of us, this insight comes decades too late. We reach a point in our life and look back wishing we had taken a different path, lived a more meaningful life, acted more authentically.

This is what nurse Bronnie Ware learned during her years working in palliative care. As her patients approached the end of their lives, she often asked them what they would have done differently.

The number one thing they mentioned was this:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Wow! Ware’s patients were honest. Facing the specter of finality demands honesty, and they expressed what many of us secretly yearn for — to live a life of our choosing, one that is not controlled by fear or guilt or about what other people think.

Psychologists call this need autonomy — which is simply our natural desire to do things because we want to, not because we are forced to. Personal autonomy is among a handful of psychological nutriments that, like their physiological counterparts, are essential ingredients to a healthy, high-performance life.

It’s only by doing what you love, of your own choosing that you become what you are meant to be.

But autonomy does not mean independence. We are also hardwired to interact and care for others — to feel connected and know that we belong to something greater than ourselves. Think about your most meaningful experiences. We bet you shared them with others.

And herein lies the challenge. How to balance the me with the we. We yearn for self-expression and self-direction, yet are drawn to other people. We want to pursue our own, personal goals and care for those around us.

It takes courage to balance these two competing needs — to be true to ourselves and others. However, it is only here that we can live without regret.

Here’s how to do it.

First, identify what it is that you long for most in your life — your vision of the “good life.” One of the best exercises for identifying this vision is to picture your deathbed experience and then work backward to today. While metaphorically laying on your deathbed, ask yourself these two questions: “What is my legacy?” and “Who is there with me?”

These two questions challenge you to recognize your core values. The first question pushes you to choose your own destiny — autonomy in action. The second challenges you to recognize who matters most in your life — love in action.

Now begin working backward to today. What are major milestones (specific goals achieved) that you would need to accomplish along the way? These should be professional and personal — what you want to achieve in work and life. Begin mapping in your mind your accomplishments, from future to present.

Second, draw a line horizontally across a sheet of paper. On the top write “professional” and on the bottom write “personal.” Moving from left (today) to right (future), write down your above determined milestones. This gives you a map of accomplishments for your journey.

Initially, the various stages of your journey may appear vague, a little undefined. As you continue to reflect upon specific goals and experience small successes, the means to achievement becomes more evident. Start walking your path; it is in movement that your vision continues to unfold and unexpected opportunities present themselves.

Third, make a proclamation. Say out loud the vision that you have discovered for yourself. This is a type of name-it-and-claim-it experience. Write it down and share it with others. Make your expectations known. Now you own it.

Fourth, work toward your vision without regret. You’ll discover here what many have experienced before you — that the journey toward the goal, moving toward the vision, with all the ups and downs, is actually the best part of the process. As you pursue your dreams, be ever mindful of writer Lloyd Alexander’s affirmation that “the journey is the treasure.”

As far as we know, no one has arrived at their deathbed without missed opportunities, failed goals, and relationship blunders. Everyone misses it. However, successful people will tell you that their ability to persevere, embracing the “we and me” experiences along the way, happens because they are in the driver’s seat of their destiny.

Resolve today to live without regret. Don’t wait for tomorrow, next week, or the new year. It is in our daily experiences that we discover who we are and what we can become. Own your own destiny and become who you were designed to be.

J.R.R. Tolkien perhaps sums it up best,

“The greatest adventure is what lies ahead.
Today and tomorrow are yet to be said.
The chances, the changes are all yours to make.
The mold of your life is in your hands to break.”

Dr. Frank Niles and Dr. Nick T. Ogle are co-founders and managing partners of Scholar Executive Group, LLC, a boutique consulting firm that provides coaching, counseling, and leadership development training for Fortune 500 companies and influential people.

from:    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-niles-phd/happiness_b_2365223.html?utm_hp_ref=gps-for-the-soul&ir=GPS%20for%20the%20Soul

The Unreported Cooperative Economy

Why Won’t the Wall Street Journal Cover the Cooperative Economy?

Cooperative businesses are proliferating quickly, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the Wall Street Journal.
Evergreen Solar workers.jpg

Workers at Evergreen Energy Solutions, a worker-owned cooperative in Cleveland, Ohio.

Social pain, anger at ecological degradation and the inability of traditional politics to address deep economic failings has fueled an extraordinary amount of practical on-the-ground institutional experimentation and innovation by activists, economists and socially minded business leaders in communities around the country.

A vast democratized “new economy” is slowly emerging throughout the United States. The general public, however, knows almost nothing about it because the American press simply does not cover the developing institutions and strategies.

For instance, a sample assessment of coverage between January and November of 2012 by the most widely circulated newspaper in the United States, the Wall Street Journal, found ten times more references to caviar than to employee-owned firms, a growing sector of the economy that involves more than $800 billion in assets and 10 million employee-owners—around three million more individuals than are members of unions in the private sector.

WSJ-Employee-Ownership-555.jpg

Graph by the Democracy Collaborative.

Worker ownership—the most common form of which involves ESOPs, or Employee Stock Ownership Plans—was mentioned in a mere five articles. By contrast, over 60 articles referred to equestrian activities like horse racing, and golf clubs appeared in 132 pieces over the same period.

Although 2012 was designated by the United Nations as the International Year of the Cooperative—an institution that now has more than one billion members worldwide—the Journal’s coverage was similarly thin. More than 120 million Americans are members of co-operatives and cooperative credit unions, 30 million more people than are owners of mutual funds. The Journal, however, devoted some 700 articles to mutual funds between January and October and only 183 to cooperatives. Of these the majority were concerned with high-end New York real estate, with headlines like “Pricey Co-ops Find Buyers”

The vast number of cooperative businesses on Main Streets across the country were discussed in just 70 articles and a mere 14 gave co-op businesses more than passing mention. Together, the articles only narrowly outnumbered the 13 Journal pieces that mentioned the Dom Perignon brand of champagne over the same time frame, and were eclipsed by the 40 Journal entries that refer to the French delicacy foie gras.

WSJ-foie-gras-555.jpg

Graph by the Democracy Collaborative.

Another democratized economic institution is the not-for-profit Community Development Corporation (CDC), roughly 4,500 of which operate in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Such neighborhood corporations create tens of thousands of units of affordable housing and millions of square feet of commercial and industrial space a year. The Journal ran no articles mentioning CDCs in 2012 and only 43 over the past 28 years—less than two a year. Meanwhile, the word château appeared in 30 times as many articles, and luxury apartments received 300 times as much coverage over the same period.

WSJ-chateaux-555.jpg

Graph by the Democracy Collaborative.

Not surprisingly, the growing “new economy movement” championing democratization of the economy has itself received even less coverage, despite growing citizen involvement on many levels. Over the past year, major national, state and other conferences focusing on worker-owned companies, cooperatives, public banking, nonprofit and public land trusts, and neighborhood corporations were oversubscribed, reflecting the growing interest in these forms. The Journal, however, gave scant coverage to the movement.

Thousands of other creative projects—from green businesses to new forms of combined community-worker efforts—are also underway across the country but receive little coverage. A number are self-consciously understood as attempts to develop working prototypes in state and local “laboratories of democracy” that may be applied at regional and national scale when the right political moment occurs. In Cleveland, Ohio, for instance, a complex of sophisticated worker-owned firms has been developing in desperately poor, predominantly black neighborhoods. The model is partially structured along lines of the Mondragón Corporation, a vibrant network of worker-owned cooperatives in northern Spain with more than 80,000 members and billions of dollars in annual revenue.

Since 2010 legislation to set up public banks along the lines of the long-established Bank of North Dakota has been proposed in twenty states. Several cities—including Los Angeles and Kansas City—have passed “responsible banking” ordinances that require banks to reveal their impact on the community and/or require city officials to do business only with banks that are responsive to community needs. But municipally led responsible banking initiatives appear to have received no attention in the Journal, whereas the newspaper published seven articles this year discussing President Obama’s birth certificate.

The limited nature of the coverage can also be seen in particular cases. Recreational Equipment, Inc. (REI) is a highly successful consumer co-op with $1.8 billion in sales for 2011, allowing it to share $165 million of its profits with its 4.7 million active members and 11,000 employees. Organic Valley , a Wisconsin-based cooperative dairy, generated more than $700 million in revenue for nearly 1,700 farmer-owners. From January through October 2012, the Journal referred (briefly) to REI in just three articles; Organic Valley rated just one mention. In combination, REI and Organic Valley appear in the Journal only as often as the Cavalier King Charles spaniel, a breed of dog that turned up in four entries in the Journal’s pages this year.

WSJ-King-Charles-555.jpg

Graph by the Democracy Collaborative.

Further perspective on the coverage is offered in the way in which “hot topics” are presented, and others of greater economic significance played down. Co-ops in the U.S. generate over $500 billion in annual revenues. The global market for smartphones is estimated by Bloomberg Industries at $219 billion—less than half as large. Furthermore, there are 20 million more co-op members than smartphone users in the United States. The Journal, however, published over 1,000 print articles that included the terms “smartphone” or “smartphones” from January through October this year—more than five articles for each piece mentioning co-ops (many of which, as noted, were about upscale Manhattan apartments.)

The print coverage of the Journal was analyzed by the Democracy Collaborative of the University of Maryland through the online database ProQuest. Although the assessment focused on the Journal, the nation’s preeminent source of news for economic and business affairs, a preliminary review suggests that other national media outlets devote a similarly minuscule proportion of space to the exploding “new economy” sector. This highlights the need for greater media exposure regarding important developments toward a more democratic, sustainable and community-based economy.


Gar Alperovitz, author of America Beyond Capitalism, is a Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative. Connect with him on Twitter or Facebook. Keane Bhatt is a research associate of the Democracy Collaborative.

This article was originally published on Alternet.org.

from:    http://www.yesmagazine.org/new-economy/why-wont-the-wall-street-journal-cover-cooperative-economy

Letters to Strangers

Writing Love Letters to Hundreds of Strangers “Absolutely Healed Me”

To cope with intense loneliness after moving to New York City, Hannah Brencher offered to write an old-fashioned love letter to any stranger who needed one. She never guessed how many people she would ultimately reach,
Hannah Brencher

Hannah Brencher. Photo from The World Needs More Love Letters.

In college, Hannah Brencher corresponded with her family via handwritten letters—not texting, Facebook, email, or phones. She found comfort in writing on paper.

Later, as a college graduate in New York City, she continued writing letters—this time to strangers—to curb the loneliness she felt in the city. She left them in cafes and libraries, and even at the UN.

When she posted a promise on the Internet to write a handwritten letter to anyone who needed one, her inbox flooded with stories from so many lonely and struggling people that she decided to start an organization, The World Needs More Love Letters, to help strangers connect and support one another in an increasingly fragmented, electronic world.

“I began writing letters on the train to individuals who seemed like they, too, could use a boost,” Brencher writes. “In the span of nine months, I wrote and mailed over 400 love letters to people in need around the globe. And the process healed me. It absolutely healed me.”

 

from:    http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/hannah-brencher-love-letters-to-strangers

Earthquake off Baja California

December 14, 2012 – Strong earthquake off the coast of Southern California / Baja California

6.3 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Baja California
 Two strong earthquakes just hit far off the California – Baja  California coast, the first one being a 6.3 at a depth of 10km and 262km from land, the second one with a magnitude of 6.1 at a depth of 11 km and closer but still not dangerous distance of 142km. Both earthquakes are preliminary magnitudes. Theorical calculations from the USGS are showing that 1,735,000 people would have felt a IV shaking on the mercalli scale (light shaking) for the second earthquake, this shaking includes the cities of Rancho Palos Verdes and Long Beach, California; and a II-III (Weak shaking) for at least 9 millon people including the cities of Los Angeles, Anaheim, Santa Ana and Riverside.
This earthquakes are harmless and should create no damage, a tsunami can’t be generated.

Update: Following the earthquakes, we saw some reports coming from the USGS including a 3.5 Magnitude in Utah and a 4.2 in Southern California, those are FALSE POSITIVES this means that the earthquakes didn’t actually happen and were only a computer generated report.

142km (88mi) SW of Avalon, California
173km (107mi) SSW of Rancho Palos Verdes, California
177km (110mi) SW of San Pedro, California
179km (111mi) SSW of Palos Verdes Estates, California

Update 11:45 UTC : Max. shaking (mainly because of the depth) IV MMI at the coastal cities.

Important Update 12:05 UTC: USGS has removed the 6.1 earthquake from the charts! The 6.3M earthquake still remains but luckily this is safer as the epicenter was 262km off the coast.

Update 12:22 UTC : We will transfer the content of this article towards a special in-depth article for this earthquake. Let’s hope that the other seismic zones in the area (including the San Andreas fault) have not been influenced by the shaking waves and all remains calm the rest of the night and day.
We want to thank our many California users to send us their Experiences almost immediately after the earthquake occurred.

Update 12:26 UTC : USGS has further updated their data  to M6.3 instead of the initial M6.4

Update 12:27 UTC : We do see our Californian readers gradually returning to their beds for hopefully a shake-free night

Update 12:41 UTC : The first aftershocks are rattling the epicenter area, but due to distance from the coast people are not feeling it.

Update 13:49 UTC : After analysing the data of our EAAS (Early Earthquake Alerting System) which currently runs in the background, an alert was triggered only 3 minutes after the start of the earthquake. The system runs in testing mode at the moment and will be implemented in the site in no later than 30 to 60 days. It will work on a worldwide scale.

Update 13:54 UTC : People who have subscribed to our Regional California Only Twitter feed @Quake_TrackerCA , will not have received the M6.4 earthquake notification (the afterwards deleted M6.1 was indeed reported). After analysing the location of the epicenter, we found out that it was to the south of the region we had included. We have updated our system to also include this area as it was felt well in Southern California. We encourage our California Twitter users to tell us these things themselves via a reply to @Quake_trackerCA or by commenting in our website.

Image courtesy USGS


from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/12/13/major-earthquakes-list-december-14-2012/

Here’s Some Real Stuff to Worry About

5 Things Really Worth Worrying About

—By

| Sun Dec. 9, 2012

From a million-foot level, what are the biggest problems we have to worry about over the next four or five decades? For no real reason, I thought I’d toss out my short list. Here it is:

  1. Climate change. Needs no explanation, I assume.
  2. Robots. Explanation here. Even Paul Krugman is tentatively on board now.
  3. Immortality. Laugh if you want, but it’s hardly impossible that sometime in the medium-term future we’ll see biomedical breakthroughs that make humans extremely long-lived. What happens then? Who gets the magic treatments? How do we support a population that grows forever? How does an economy of immortals work, anyway?
  4. Bioweapons. We don’t talk about this a whole lot these days, but it’s still possible—maybe even likely—that extraordinarily lethal viruses will be fairly easily manufacturable within a couple of decades. If this happens before we figure out how to make extraordinarily effective vaccines and antidotes, this could spell trouble in ways obvious enough to need no explanation.
  5. Energy. All the robots in the world won’t do any good if we don’t have enough energy to keep them running. And fossil fuels will run out eventually, fracking or not. However, I put this one fifth out of five because we already have pretty good technology for renewable energy, and it’s mainly an engineering problem to build it out on a mass scale. Plus you never know. Fusion might become a reality someday.

These are the kinds of things that make the solvency of the Social Security trust fund look pretty puny. They also make it clear why it’s not worth worrying too much about whether it’s solvent 75 years from now. We might all be rich beyond our most fervid imaginations; we might be in the middle of massive die-offs thanks to spiraling global temperatures; or we might all be dead. Kinda hard to say.

Image: April Cat/Shutterstock; Arcady/Shutterstock; Neyro/Shutterstock; Vladislav Gurfinkel/Shutterstock

from:    http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/12/five-big-things-look-forward-or-worry-excessively-about

Time, Alan Alda, & The Sixth Grade

What Is Time? Alan Alda Contest Seeks Answer For Sixth-Graders

December 11, 2012
Image Credit: Photos.com

Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online

Alan Alda, 76, an actor who is best known for his portrayal of Capt. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce on the television show MASH, has also long been involved in science, playing a key role in the founding of the Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University, where he is a visiting professor. Alda last year kicked of a whirlwind contest by asking a simple question: “What is a flame?

That question heralded the responses of more than 800 people, trying to explain a complex phenomenon in terms that would be easily comprehensible for an 11-year-old student. The query did not come about by chance, but had been kicking around inside Alda’s head since he was that 11-year-old boy wondering what a flame was and how it worked. The inspiration for the question, and the contest, derived from a disappointing encounter he had with a teacher all those years ago.

“I was 11 and I was curious. I had been thinking for days about the flame at the end of a candle. Finally, I took the problem to my teacher. ‘What’s a flame?’ I asked her. ‘What’s going on in there?’ There was a slight pause and she said, ‘It’s oxidation.’ She didn’t seem to think there was much else to say,” he wrote in a guest editorial in the journal Science in March.

Alda said the encounter was discouraging, and after decades of letting it sit in his mind, he decided it was time to get to the bottom of the flame conundrum.

After the huge success of that contest, which employed the minds of 6,000 11-year-old judges, Alda is up to it again. This time, he is asking “What is time?”

However, this year’s query had not come from a previous personal experience from Alda’s collective. Instead, the question was picked from more than 300 submissions by 11-year-olds across the country. The “What is time?” question comes from Sydney Allison, a sixth-grader at Gromm Elementary School in Reno, Nevada.

Entries for this year’s conundrum can be submitted until March 1, 2013. The winner will receive a trophy, a trip to the 2013 World Science Festival in NY and the satisfaction of educating not only sixth-graders, but the general public.

“This contest probably gives people the impression that it’s a teaching tool for kids,” Alda told Frank Eltman of the Associated Press. “That’s a happy by-product, but it really is a tool for scientists to take a complex question and explain it in a way the rest of us can understand.”

Alda, who has also been the longtime host of Scientific American Frontiers on PBS, said it is vital for society to have a better understanding of science, and said it’s up to scientists to better explain their work in layman’s terms.

“There’s hardly an issue we deal with today that isn’t affected by science,” Alda said. “I’ve even heard from a number of people in Congress that they often don’t understand what scientists are talking about when they go to Washington to testify, and these are the people who make the decisions about funding and policy.”

He said he has been confronted by many scientists who acknowledge they need to do a better job communicating.

“We see misinformation about scientific facts on a daily basis,” added Alda. “Sometimes you know so much about something you assume everybody else is as familiar as you are and you tend to speak in shorthand. Even other scientists may not understand what you are talking about if they are not an expert in your field.”

from:   http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112746111/alan-alda-what-is-time-121112/

December 13/14 —- Geminid Meteors

December 13/14, 2012, late night December 13 until dawn December 14 Geminids
The final major meteor shower of every year (unless one surprises us!) is always the December Geminid shower, often producing 50 or more meteors per hour. It is a beloved shower, because, as a general rule, it’s either the August Perseids or the December Geminids that give us the most prolific display of the year. Best of all, the new moon guarantees a dark sky on the peak night of the Geminid shower (mid-evening December 13 until dawn December 14). But the nights on either side of the peak date should be good as well. Unlike many meteor showers, you can start watching the Geminids by 9 or 10 p.m. local time. The peak might be around 2 a.m. local time on these nights, because that’s when the shower’s radiant point is highest in the sky as seen around the world. With no moon to ruin the show, 2012 presents a most favorable year for watching the grand finale of the meteor showers. Best viewing of the Geminids will probably be from about 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. on December 14.

 

fr/http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/earthskys-meteor-shower-guide

CHROMOSCOPE

Monday, December 10:    Turquoise

There are things that are exotic and things that are ordinary and today these things will be coming together in new and different ways.  There is a definite creative streak in the air today along with the drive and the will to create.  Take advantage of this energy to bring forth from within those things that have been germinating for quite some time now.  Inspiration will be all around you.  It is not difficult to get.  It is a matter of tuning in to the world, the Universe, the wonder that surrounds you every day.  Today, your eyes are open and the energy is dancing and lively in front of you.  Join the dance, have some fun, and allow your spirit to express itself.

Dangers of Whooping Cough Vaccine

Deadly New Pertussis Strain Linked with Whooping Cough Vaccine

Pertussis Vaccine7th December 2012

By Carolanne Wright

Guest Writer for Wake Up World

Whooping cough (pertussis) has reached epidemic levels in the U.S. — the highest in five decades. Considering a majority of those who contract the disease are vaccinated, the absurdity of the call for increased pertussis vaccinations by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is yet another example of our broken medical system.

Even more disturbing, scientists now suspect that vaccines are actually causing this upsurge in whooping cough — contributing to mutations of the original bacterium into more virulent forms.

The nature of pertussis

Whooping cough is an extremely contagious disease of the lung that can be contracted at any age, but is especially dangerous for children. It begins with congestion similar to a cold, lasting up to 10 days. A severe cough then sets in with a ‘whooping’ sound accompanying the intake of breathRecovery can take several months, depending on the constitution of the individual. Babies and small children have the highest death rate due to complications that arise from the disease.

Bacterium mutation linked with whooping cough vaccine

The CDC would like to keep the American population ignorant about this startling fact: Our current pertussis epidemic is caused by a deadly new strain of Bordetella pertussis bacterium (ptxP3) and its emergence is directly connected to the whooping cough vaccine.

According to the article, Whooping Cough Epidemic Caused by Virulent New Pertussis Strain — And it’s the Result of Vaccine, research by Frits R. Mooi offers a theory about the recent increase of pertussis:

The Mooi report focuses on the virulence of the new whooping cough strain and makes a direct association with the vaccine. It points out that the strain was first isolated in the United States in 1984, and that the virulent ptxP3 strains have been replacing the vaccines’ ptxP1 strains. They also note that the greater prevalence of whooping cough in older age groups (that is, adolescents and adults) is directly related to the new ptxP3 strains.

This may explain why whooping cough rates are sky high in those who have been vaccinated — bacteria are adapting to the vaccine and mutating, much like antibiotic resistant superbugs, becoming more pronounced and lethal. The dangers of this new mutation include a 10-fold increase of illness and death.

The research paper Bordetella pertussis Strains with Increased Toxin Production Associated with Pertussis Resurgence, found on the CDC website, states the following:

“In this period [1989 -2004], ptxP1 [original pertussis bacterium] was gradually replaced by ptxP3, which increased in frequency from 0% in 1989 to 100% in 2004.”

“The persistence of pertussis in the face of intense vaccination is unexpected because B. pertussis is extremely homogeneous, implying a limited ability to adapt. However, the Ptx promoter showed a relatively high degree of polymorphism…”

“…ptxP3 strains were not found in the pre-vaccination era.”

“Vaccination against two avian viruses, the Marek disease virus, and the infectious bursal disease virus, were associated with the emergence of more virulent strains.”

“Based on mathematical modeling, vaccines designed to reduce pathogen growth rate and/or toxicity may result in the evolution of pathogens with higher levels of virulence.”

CDC solution – Increase vaccinations

Even though the CDC is aware of the link between vaccination and a new super-strain pertussis bacterium, their ‘solution’ for the epidemic is to increase vaccine use. True to form, the mainstream medical establishment actually perpetuates whooping cough through their harmful, propaganda-riddled recommendations. In the end, the pertussis vaccine could land unsuspecting individuals with the very disease they are attempting to avoid.

Article Sources 

“Whooping Cough Epidemic Caused by Virulent New Pertussis Strain – And It’s the Result of Vaccine” Gaia Health. gaia-health.com

“Bordetella pertussis Strains with Increased Toxin Production Associated with Pertussis Resurgence” Frits R. Mooi , Inge H.M. van Loo, Marjolein van Gent, Qiushui He, Marieke J. Bart, Kees J. Heuvelman, Sabine C. de Greeff, Dimitri Diavatopoulos, Peter Teunis, Nico Nagelkerke, and Jussi Mertsola, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. cdc.gov/eid/article/15/8/08-1511_article

“Has the DTaP vaccine caused the increase in whooping cough?” Smartvax. smartvax.com

“Whooping Cough: Worst Year For Pertussis in 5 Decades, CDC Says” Mike Stobbe, July 19, 2012. huffingtonpost.com

Pertussis: Summary of Vaccine Recommendations. Department of Health and Human Services. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd-vac/pertussis/recs-summary

“Whooping Cough Outbreaks in Vaccinated Children Become More and More Frequent” Heidi Stevenson, Gaia Health, June 27, 2011. Retrieved on November 19, 2012 from: http://www.gaia-health.com

from:    http://wakeup-world.com/2012/12/07/deadly-new-pertussis-strain-linked-with-whooping-cough-vaccine/

Iran Earthquake Update

Strong extremely shallow earthquake in Iran kills at least 8 people, 23 injured and a lot of damage

Last update: December 6, 2012 at 12:47 pm by By

Earthquake overview : A seemingly moderate earthquake became a deadly one because of the specific earthquake mechanisms in Iran and because of the poor building quality.

Update Dec. 6, 12:34 UTC :

A full damage assessment has come out from Iran with the following details:-

20 villages have been damaged 60%.  (The method for Iran damage)

4 bodies have been delivered to the coroner, however, they are still waiting on 5 members of a 6 member family who presumably died when their house collapsed.

73 relief staff including 10 SAR personnel have been carrying out operations.

  • Outpatient treatment of victims: 8 people
  • The number of victims transported to the hospital: 12 people
  • Destruction of the 20 villages: 40 to 100 percent
  • The number of people resettled/evacuated to shelter: 1000 people

The following relief has been

  • Tent: 1000
  • Blankets: 600
  • Carpets: 900
  • Electric Lights: 600
  • Food and mineral water: 10000 cans.

2000 animals (livestock) are in the cold currently and there is a fear of them dying.

Update Dec. 6, 04:24 UTC : 8 people have been killed, and 1 person is missing as a result of this earthquake. 23 people have been injured with many others treated for superficial wounds.

زهان (Zohan) has seen the most damage and destruction with many houses destroyed. 5 people were killed and 1 is missing in this location. 707 people live in Zohan as of the year 2006, so this will be a great shock for the small town with 1% death rate.

15 villages in addition have been damaged/destroyed. Hosseinabad is one of those affected.

16 aftershocks between M3 and M4 have been keeping people out of their houses. It is extremely cold in South Khorasan at the moment. Around 5 degrees C overnight to 14 during the day, will mean that shelter is required.

South Khorasan is a reasonably poor region, and by the number of articles in the Iranian press about aid, this usually means that there is major damage in the villages affected.

Update Dec. 6, 21:49 UTC : For further news we will have to wait until the early morning hours in Iran. We will keep you updated.


Update 21:49 UTC : 15 emergency teams, 10 ambulances and a lot of heavy excavating equipment has been send to the epicenter area.  The weather is quit fair at the moment but temperatures go down to 3°C, thats freezing cold if you have to spend the night in open air.

Iranian SAR and relieve teams are very well organised as the country has a lot of dangerous even deadly earthquakes like this one.

Update 21:44 UTC : The epicenter of the quake was 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the town of Zohan, at a depth of nine kilometers, the Iranian Seismological Center said on its website. The quake caused damage to rural buildings and cut power lines and telephone communication. Iran has mostly adobe and brick stone houses who have a little or no resistance against earthquakes.

Update 21:03 UTC : The number of killed people remains at 5 but the number of injured has risen to at least 20.

Update 20:03 UTC : The Iranian Red Crescent is very active in trying to help the population as well as the SAR teams from the Iranian authorities.  It is currently dark in the Iran which makes relieve efforts and SAR searches extremely difficult. We will keep you updated when more news comes in.

Important update 19:45 UTC : Mehrnews Iran is reporting 4 villages very heavily damaged and  at least 5 people killed and 12 injured. A terrible result once more.

Update 17:45 UTC : Based on our experience we estimate that it will take many hours before we will get reports from the earthquake epicenter area.  The s it is dark in Iran . We are however convinced that at least minor damage may occur in an area approx. 10 to 20 km around the epicenter.

Update 17:40 UTC :  Our @Quake_tracker4 was far ahead of most other earthquake twitter accounts. Follow us and be informed as first about important earthquakes

Update 17:29 UTC : We only see a limited number of Iranian people online at the moment. The Magnitude has been lowered in the meantime to M5.6 but at an extremely shallow (and dangerous) depth of only 5.6 km.

Preliminary data are telling us a Magnitude of M6.0, but the final value can be far weaker or even higher.
Even at a Magnitude of 5.5, Iran may generate damage.

Preliminary epicenter

Most important Earthquake Data:
Magnitude : 5.6
UTC Time : 2012-12-05 17:08:12 UTC
Local time at epicenter :  2012-12-05 20:38:12 UTC+03:30 at epicenter
Depth (Hypocenter) : 5.6 km
Geo-location(s) :
43km (27mi) SE of Qayen, Iran
75km (47mi) NNE of Birjand, Iran
125km (78mi) SE of Gonabad, Iran
178km (111mi) SW of Taybad, Iran

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/12/06/strong-extremely-shallow-earthquake-in-iran-kills-at-least-6-people-20-injured-and-a-lot-of-damage/