Higher Perspective

This weekend, a celestial event is set to stun. The Geminid meteor shower will peak on the evening of December 13th and the very early morning hours of December 14th, before dawn. The quarter moon will rise around midnight, but Geminid meteors are incredibly bright, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Geminid meteor showers favor the northern hemisphere but are likely to be visible in the southern hemisphere too.

The NDAA is just the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t it? Prior to vote, the House and Senate Arms Services Committee attached a provision to the NDAA that would transfer the Apache people’s ancestral lands in the Tonto National Forest to a corporation called Resolution copper, which is a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, which as an Australian-English mining company. Senator John McCain, the senior Republican Senator from Arizona headed the push for this provision to be included.

As can be expected, Apache leaders were appalled by this move. They learned of the provision, ironically, while attending the White House Tribal Nations conference. Republicans have been trying to give ancestral lands to corporations for years now, but have always been blocked by significant opposition by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and their Democratic allies in Congress. But now, the NDAA will go to the Senate for a vote...

Katie was given a cabbage and the rest is history.

Katie, a third grader, was granted a cabbage plant through a school program to grow, and grow it did! Not only did her plant grow, but her passion for local farming and feeding the hungry did as well. Katie displays a kind of pragmatism and strength that is hard to find even in adults.

“Some people approach an issue and say, ‘well this issue is too big, I can’t do anything about it.'” she says in the intro of the video, “I know that by myself I can’t end hunger, but it doesn’t matter how small your actions are, even if you don’t realize it at the time, you’re making a difference.”

Apparently Snoop Dogg isn’t the only person to have smoked marijuana in the White House. According to John F. Kennedy: A Biography, President Kennedy relieved the symptoms of severe back pain and Addison’s disease, which is a rare endocrine disorder, by using medicinal marijuana. From the book:

On the evening of July 16, 1962, according to [Washington Post executive] Jim Truitt, Kennedy and Mary Meyer smoked marijuana together…The president smoked three of the six joints Mary brought to him. At first he felt no effects. Then he closed his eyes and refused a fourth joint. ‘Suppose the Russians did something now,’ he said.

Addison’s disease causes the adrenal glands to produce insufficient steroid hormones and its symptoms include low blood pressure, weakness, coma and severe abdominal pain.

You know what’s great about advanced energies like energy efficiency, solar, and wind? They create a lot of jobs. And not bullshit part time minimum wage jobs that have dominated the economic recovery since the great recession of 2008, but honest middle class jobs.

According to the California Advanced Energy Employment Survey, advanced energies provide 431,000 jobs in California, which is a 5% growth since 2013. Even more good news: the Golden State’s clean energy industries are slated to grow by 17% in 2015, adding another 70,000 jobs. California’s unemployment rate is 7.4%, higher than the national average, so those jobs are likely welcome.

“Now we also know that California is on the way to half a million people employed in the advanced energy industry by next year,” says Graham Richard...

The United States House Of Representatives has passed a bill designed to prevent qualified, independent scientists froma dvising the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA. Instead, these scientists will be replaced by industry affiliated choices who may or may not have any actual expertise in the field on which they’re advising, and whose paychecks may come from organizations and companies that oppose EPA actions.

Senator Mark Udall, the outgoing Democratic Senator from Colorado defeated by Representative Cory Gardner, (R-Yuma), thinks that the American people will be disgusted by the declassified CIA torture report, and that it absolutely will be declassified one way or another. The Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, is expected to release its summer of the CIA Torture Report, which is the committee’s four-year-long investigation into Bush-era torture practices that the CIA engaged in.

For months now, negotiations between the Senate Intelligence Committee and the White House have stalled the release of this report. Senator Mark Udall spoke with Esquire about the report and what his role may potentially be in it.

1. Exercise Makes You Feel Better.

When you exercise, your body releases endorphins, which makes you feel happy and positive about yourself and about life. How can you lose?

2. Exercise boosts your mood.

When you exercise regularly, it releases tension. This can lead to resolving stress and depression in your life.

3. Exercise Boosts Your Confidence.

When you accomplish something great, like being able to run your first 5k, it feels pretty awesome, right? This is how exercise boosts your confidence.

4. Exercise Increases Your Pain Tolerance.

Exercising makes you sore, and that exposure to soreness gradually increases your tolerance to pain.

Drinking water is incredibly good for you. Which makes sense since our bodies are mostly water. Depriving yourself of adequate amounts of water can be incredibly detrimental to your health, and overtime can cause some serious and painful diseases. There are three diseases that can be easily avoided with the consumption of water.

Kidney Stones

Guys, women say that passing a kidney stone is similar pain to childbirth. Imagine the pain of birthing a child out of your penis, and you’ll be grabbing that glass of water in no time. Drinking two liters of water a day reduces the risk of kidney stones by 50%, and that’s pretty cool.

Urinary Tract Infections

While UTIs aren’t quite as big of a bummer as kidney stones, they still suck. If you consume a sufficient amount of water and make sure to urinate when you need to...