Monday, October 31, 2011

Win a Pencil Brush!

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...please click the poster for more details.


I. What’s the competition about?
- It’s an art contest! In a single page, draw a character related to the theme (No colors). Make it unique, exciting, creative and fun! And one of the main goals is to create and expand awareness of pinoys when it comes to art and comics.

The competition will officially start on November 8 and will end on December 27, 2011

II. Theme?
- The contest will have a “Superhero” theme, so this means you can’t submit a drawing of a horse, or a man doing owling or whatevs! You can draw existing characters like Batman, Superman, Spidey, or other characters from video games but it would definitely be great if it was your own character or your own rendition of a character.

UPDATE: All drawing should be in pencils, NO INKING and NO COLORS

III. Categories?
- There will only be 3 Categories: Best Male, Best Female and Best Creature design (eg. Aliens, Monsters, Folklore/Mythological). So please bear in mind these categories when you start on your entry.

IV. Who can join?
- Everyone! No age limit! Pros and Non-pros! I MEAN EVERYONE! and its NATIONWIDE!

V. Submission Process?
- You will have to scan your work, and just email us directly the scanned image — 1 entry per person, per category only.

UPDATE: You can submit upto 3 different entries per category, so this means you can submit an entry per category. 1 for best male, 1 for best female and 1 for best creature


- Be sure to put in these details when submitting your entries:

SUBJECT: Pencilbrush – FlipGeeks Contest
SEND TO:
For Best Male and Best Female categories, please send to info@pencilbrush.com
For Best Creature (non-human) category, please send to submissions@flipgeeks.net
In the details, include the following:
Complete name of participant
Title of artwork/entry

- You can submit your entries anytime and day w/in the contest duration. (Please see Section I)

- During the contest, there will be a “Publishing Day” which will occur every Tuesday (11/8, 11/15, 11/22, ….12/27). On this day, all new entries submitted before the Publishing Day will be posted/published in both FlipGeeks and Pencilbrush Facebook pages.

Voting Process and how to win?

- There will be a voting process, and it will involve Facebook LIKES (FlipGeeks and Pencilbrush).

1. All qualifying entries will be showcased in the Voting page for online voting from 8th November - 27th December 2011.
2. Winners will be selected by highest number of votes.
3. All voters in the winning entries will be rolled over to a lucky draw component, where 1 lucky voter from each category will be awarded.
4. All winners will be notified via email and through the Pencilbrush online community on 10 January 2012.
5. Judges decisions are final.


Prizes?

1 x Best Male Superhero: 1 Pencilbrush, 1 book + add-ons (worth about $100)
1 x Best Female Superhero: 1 Pencilbrush, 1 book + add-ons (worth about $100)
1 x Best Creature: 1 Pencilbrush, 1 book + add-ons (worth about $100)
1 x Flipgeeks Editors Choice: 1 Pencilbrush, 1 book + add-ons (worth about $100)
1 x Student: 1 Pencilbrush, 1 book + add-ons (worth about $100)

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Friday, October 28, 2011

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Bad chocolate, bad!

No more child labor chocolate: Halloween candy boycott targets Hershey's
Friday, October 21, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer

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(NaturalNews) Fed up with Hershey's continued import of cocoa harvested by children, a group of more than 45,000 consumers, has banded together to call on the company to stop the practice, and to urge consumers to boycott its chocolate this Halloween. Dubbed Hershey: Raise the Bar!, the initiative is calling on Hershey's to live up to its promise to end child labor, forced labor, and trafficking in its cocoa supply chains, which it has failed to do so far.

According to the petition, which can be found at Change.org, several major chocolate companies, including Hershey's, committed roughly a decade ago to stop using cocoa grown and harvested with child labor. Since that time, many of the other chocolate companies have made at least some progress in ridding their supply chains of child labor chocolate, but Hershey's has not.

You can watch the promotional video for the campaign here:




Raise the Bar! alleges that Hershey's continues to buy cocoa from suppliers that use child labor, and has taken no significant steps to identify the offenders and root them out. As a result, hundreds of thousands of children in West African countries like the Ivory Coast and Ghana still harvest cocoa that ends up in Hershey's chocolate bars.

"Unlike other companies, Hershey has not committed to sourcing cocoa for its main product line that has been independently certified to comply with international labor rights standards," says the petition. It adds that now is the time to "[t]ell Hershey to raise the bar and be a leader in sustainable chocolate and shift toward Fairtrade Certified cocoa."

In an effort to help move things along, the group is also calling for a massive boycott of Hershey's products this Halloween. Since the company's candies represent more than 42 percent of the overall US chocolate market, a widespread boycott could have a significant impact on Hershey's where it really matters -- on the bottom line.

Beyond just the child labor issues, Hershey's products also contain genetically-modified (GM) ingredients like sugar derived from GM sugar beets, and soy lecithin derived from Monsanto's Roundup Ready soybeans. Hershey's committed to removing these toxins from chocolate produced for the European market, but it continues to use them in chocolate made for the North American market

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/033940_child_labor_Hersheys.html#ixzz1bWEItYxW

Thursday, October 20, 2011

GTMACCON na!

Uy, ang unang GTMACCON: Gaming, Toys, Manga/Anim, Cosplays, Comic Convention!

Punta na!

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Paki-click na lang po ang poster para sa iba pang detalye (FACEBOOK Page)!


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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The Secret Life of Dogs

Man's Best Friend

Uploaded by Dogethology
December 17, 2010

Some scientists interviewed believe that the domestication of the dog from tame wolves was pivotal in helping humankind's transition from a hunter-gatherer to a farmer.

Archeological evidence suggests that dogs began being domesticated 100,000 years ago. Whereas science generally believes dog barks to be random, a Hungarian study discovered 6 main barks of which dog owners could easily identify their meaning.

An amazing dog featured here has learned over 300 words. In general, it is found that dogs are far better at reading and communicating with humans than are chimpanzees.

Another surprising theory is put forward: Genetically, dogs are wolves but they differ from wolves in an important way in their behavior: Dogs are child-like in the way they relate to human beings. That is the reason we love them so much and the reason they love us back. Dogs behave like immature wolves!

This documentary is a lot of fun, especially if you're a dog lover.




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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

MISSION POSSIBLE!

Bagong libro mula sa IDOLO kong si NICKY PERLAS!

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Paki-click na lang po ang picture para sa iba pang detalye.

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Sunday, October 16, 2011

Does fructose really cause cancer?

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This week it’s impossible to miss the headlines that fructose causes breast and pancreatic cancer. But does this really mean we have to pour our OJ down the drain and compost our dried dates and raisins, vowing never to approach the fruit aisle at the supermarket again?

What all the reporting is leaving out is the reason why fructose is associated with cancer. The simple reason is that sugar isn’t just burned by cells. Sugar also becomes the backbone of DNA.

DNA is composed in part of incredibly long chains of ribose sugar. It’s easier for those cells to make ribose from fructose than it is for them to make it from any other source. However, the process is not automatic.

The conversion of fructose to pentose only occurs when there are also fluctuations in an enzyme called transketolase. This enzyme responds to excess sugar, not necessarily by fructose sugar. It’s not just the presence of fructose that triggers the production of large amounts of ribose. It’s also consuming too many carbs in general. There is a sudden enthusiasm for the more natural cane sugar, or sucrose, but it’s essential to remember that sucrose is a chemical combination of glucose and fructose. You don’t avoid fructose by eating cane sugar.

But what does all this have to do with cancer, anyway?

you consume tiny amounts of fructose, you don’t trigger the massive production of ribose in cancer cells.

There is a difference, of course, between high-fructose corn syrup and fructose from fruit. “High” fructose isn’t 100% fructose. It’s also glucose, just in a different ratio than table sugar. The idea for using high-fructose corn syrup is that it doesn’t dry out the same way that cane sugar does, and it’s a nifty excuse for planting lots of corn, selling lots of seed and fertilizer and tractors, creating a new commodity for hedge funds, and so on. Eating no more than about 15 grams (3 spoons) up to twice a day won’t trigger the nasty reactions that accelerate cancer proliferation, and eating a single piece of fruit earlier in the day and another piece of fruit later in the day won’t, either.

Dunking a dozen doughnuts, on the other hand, is practically a prescription for cancer growth. It’s just important to remember that with fructose as with everything else, stay within a healthy limit. And it’s probably best to avoid high-fructose corn syrup altogether, if only to send the hedge fund managers, GMO creators, and pesticide purveyors a lesson.


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Friday, October 14, 2011

Sasquatch!

Oh, totoo pala si SASQUATCH!

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Ooops, wrong Sasquatch!



Hmmmn, waiting for the rest of Alpha Flight now...

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Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Nobel Prize Winner Luc Montagnier Supports Science of Homeopathy

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(NaturalNews) Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French virologist who won the Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the AIDS virus, has surprised the scientific community with his strong support for homeopathic medicine.

In a remarkable interview published in Science magazine of December 24, 2010, (1) Professor Luc Montagnier, has expressed support for the often maligned and misunderstood medical specialty of homeopathic medicine. Although homeopathy has persisted for 200+ years throughout the world and has been the leading alternative treatment method used by physicians in Europe, (2) most conventional physicians and scientists have expressed skepticism about its efficacy due to the extremely small doses of medicines used.

Most clinical research conducted on homeopathic medicines that has been published in peer-review journals have shown positive clinical results,(3, 4) especially in the treatment of respiratory allergies (5, 6), influenza, (7) fibromyalgia, (8, 9) rheumatoid arthritis, (10) childhood diarrhea, (11) post-surgical abdominal surgery recovery, (12) attention deficit disorder, (13) and reduction in the side effects of conventional cancer treatments. (14) In addition to clinical trials, several hundred basic science studies have confirmed the biological activity of homeopathic medicines. One type of basic science trials, called in vitro studies, found 67 experiments (1/3 of them replications) and nearly 3/4 of all replications were positive. (15, 16)

In addition to the wide variety of basic science evidence and clinical research, further evidence for homeopathy resides in the fact that they gained widespread popularity in the U.S. and Europe during the 19th century due to the impressive results people experienced in the treatment of epidemics that raged during that time, including cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, scarlet fever, and influenza.

Montagnier, who is also founder and president of the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention, asserted, "I can't say that homeopathy is right in everything. What I can say now is that the high dilutions (used in homeopathy) are right. High dilutions of something are not nothing. They are water structures which mimic the original molecules."

Here, Montagnier is making reference to his experimental research that confirms one of the controversial features of homeopathic medicine that uses doses of substances that undergo sequential dilution with vigorous shaking in-between each dilution. Although it is common for modern-day scientists to assume that none of the original molecules remain in solution, Montagnier's research (and other of many of his colleagues) has verified that electromagnetic signals of the original medicine remains in the water and has dramatic biological effects.

Montagnier has just taken a new position at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, China (this university is often referred to as "China's MIT"), where he will work in a new institute bearing his name. This work focuses on a new scientific movement at the crossroads of physics, biology, and medicine: the phenomenon of electromagnetic waves produced by DNA in water. He and his team will study both the theoretical basis and the possible applications in medicine.

Montagnier's new research is investigating the electromagnetic waves that he says emanate from the highly diluted DNA of various pathogens. Montagnier asserts, "What we have found is that DNA produces structural changes in water, which persist at very high dilutions, and which lead to resonant electromagnetic signals that we can measure. Not all DNA produces signals that we can detect with our device. The high-intensity signals come from bacterial and viral DNA."

Montagnier affirms that these new observations will lead to novel treatments for many common chronic diseases, including but not limited to autism, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and multiple sclerosis.

Montagnier first wrote about his findings in 2009, (17) and then, in mid-2010, he spoke at a prestigious meeting of fellow Nobelists where he expressed interest in homeopathy and the implications of this system of medicine. (18)

French retirement laws do not allow Montagnier, who is 78 years of age, to work at a public institute, thereby limiting access to research funding. Montagnier acknowledges that getting research funds from Big Pharma and certain other conventional research funding agencies is unlikely due to the atmosphere of antagonism to homeopathy and natural treatment options.


Support from Another Nobel Prize winner

Montagnier's new research evokes memories one of the most sensational stories in French science, often referred to as the 'Benveniste affair.' A highly respected immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste., who died in 2004, conducted a study which was replicated in three other university laboratories and that was published in Nature (19). Benveniste and other researchers used extremely diluted doses of substances that created an effect on a type of white blood cell called basophils.

Although Benveniste's work was supposedly debunked, (20) Montagnier considers Benveniste a "modern Galileo" who was far ahead of his day and time and who was attacked for investigating a medical and scientific subject that orthodoxy had mistakenly overlooked and even demonized.

In addition to Benveniste and Montagnier is the weighty opinion of Brian Josephson, Ph.D., who, like Montagnier, is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist.

Responding to an article on homeopathy in New Scientist, Josephson wrote:

Regarding your comments on claims made for homeopathy: criticisms centered around the vanishingly small number of solute molecules present in a solution after it has been repeatedly diluted are beside the point, since advocates of homeopathic remedies attribute their effects not to molecules present in the water, but to modifications of the water's structure.

Simple-minded analysis may suggest that water, being a fluid, cannot have a structure of the kind that such a picture would demand. But cases such as that of liquid crystals, which while flowing like an ordinary fluid can maintain an ordered structure over macroscopic distances, show the limitations of such ways of thinking. There have not, to the best of my knowledge, been any refutations of homeopathy that remain valid after this particular point is taken into account.

A related topic is the phenomenon, claimed by Jacques Benveniste's colleague Yolene Thomas and by others to be well established experimentally, known as "memory of water." If valid, this would be of greater significance than homeopathy itself, and it attests to the limited vision of the modern scientific community that, far from hastening to test such claims, the only response has been to dismiss them out of hand. (21)

Following his comments Josephson, who is an emeritus professor of Cambridge University in England, was asked by New Scientist editors how he became an advocate of unconventional ideas. He responded:

I went to a conference where the French immunologist Jacques Benveniste was talking for the first time about his discovery that water has a 'memory' of compounds that were once dissolved in it -- which might explain how homeopathy works. His findings provoked irrationally strong reactions from scientists, and I was struck by how badly he was treated. (22)

Josephson went on to describe how many scientists today suffer from "pathological disbelief;" that is, they maintain an unscientific attitude that is embodied by the statement "even if it were true I wouldn't believe it."

Even more recently, Josephson wryly responded to the chronic ignorance of homeopathy by its skeptics saying, "The idea that water can have a memory can be readily refuted by any one of a number of easily understood, invalid arguments."

In the new interview in Science, Montagnier also expressed real concern about the unscientific atmosphere that presently exists on certain unconventional subjects such as homeopathy, "I am told that some people have reproduced Benveniste's results, but they are afraid to publish it because of the intellectual terror from people who don't understand it."

Montagnier concluded the interview when asked if he is concerned that he is drifting into pseudoscience, he replied adamantly: "No, because it's not pseudoscience. It's not quackery. These are real phenomena which deserve further study."


The Misinformation That Skeptics Spread

It is remarkable enough that many skeptics of homeopathy actually say that there is "no research" that has shows that homeopathic medicines work. Such statements are clearly false, and yet, such assertions are common on the Internet and even in some peer-review articles. Just a little bit of searching can uncover many high quality studies that have been published in highly respected medical and scientific journals, including the Lancet, BMJ, Pediatrics, Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Chest and many others. Although some of these same journals have also published research with negative results to homeopathy, there is simply much more research that shows a positive rather than negative effect.

Misstatements and misinformation on homeopathy are predictable because this system of medicine provides a viable and significant threat to economic interests in medicine, let alone to the very philosophy and worldview of biomedicine. It is therefore not surprising that the British Medical Association had the sheer audacity to refer to homeopathy as "witchcraft." It is quite predictable that when one goes on a witch hunt, one inevitable finds "witches," especially when there are certain benefits to demonizing a potential competitor (homeopathy plays a much larger and more competitive role in Europe than it does in the USA).

Skeptics of homeopathy also have long asserted that homeopathic medicines have "nothing" in them because they are diluted too much. However, new research conducted at the respected Indian Institutes of Technology has confirmed the presence of "nanoparticles" of the starting materials even at extremely high dilutions. Researchers have demonstrated by Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), electron diffraction and chemical analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES), the presence of physical entities in these extreme dilutions. (24) In the light of this research, it can now be asserted that anyone who says or suggests that there is "nothing" in homeopathic medicines is either simply uninformed or is not being honest.

Because the researchers received confirmation of the existence of nanoparticles at two different homeopathic high potencies (30C and 200C) and because they tested four different medicines (Zincum met./zinc; Aurum met. /gold; Stannum met./tin; and Cuprum met./copper), the researchers concluded that this study provides "concrete evidence."

Although skeptics of homeopathy may assume that homeopathic doses are still too small to have any biological action, such assumptions have also been proven wrong. The multi-disciplinary field of small dose effects is called "hormesis," and approximately 1,000 studies from a wide variety of scientific specialties have confirmed significant and sometimes substantial biological effects from extremely small doses of certain substances on certain biological systems.

A special issue of the peer-review journal, Human and Experimental Toxicology (July 2010), devoted itself to the interface between hormesis and homeopathy. (25) The articles in this issue verify the power of homeopathic doses of various substances.

In closing, it should be noted that skepticism of any subject is important to the evolution of science and medicine. However, as noted above by Nobelist Brian Josephson, many scientists have a "pathological disbelief" in certain subjects that ultimately create an unhealthy and unscientific attitude blocks real truth and real science. Skepticism is at its best when its advocates do not try to cut off research or close down conversation of a subject but instead explore possible new (or old) ways to understand and verify strange but compelling phenomena. We all have this challenge as we explore and evaluate the biological and clinical effects of homeopathic medicines.


REFERENCES:

(1) Enserink M, Newsmaker Interview: Luc Montagnier, French Nobelist Escapes "Intellectual Terror" to Pursue Radical Ideas in China. Science 24 December 2010: Vol. 330 no. 6012 p. 1732. DOI: 10.1126/science.330.6012.1732

(2) Ullman D. Homeopathic Medicine: Europe's #1 Alternative for Doctors. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dana-...

(3) Linde L, Clausius N, Ramirez G, et al., "Are the Clinical Effects of Homoeopathy Placebo Effects? A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Trials," Lancet, September 20, 1997, 350:834-843.

(4) Ludtke R, Rutten ALB. The conclusions on the effectiveness of homeopathy highly depend on the set of analyzed trials. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. October 2008. doi: 10.1016/j.jclinepi.2008.06/015.

(5) Taylor, MA, Reilly, D, Llewellyn-Jones, RH, et al., Randomised controlled trial of homoeopathy versus placebo in perennial allergic rhinitis with overview of four trial Series, BMJ, August 19, 2000, 321:471-476.

(6) Ullman, D, Frass, M. A Review of Homeopathic Research in the Treatment of Respiratory Allergies. Alternative Medicine Review. 2010:15,1:48-58. http://www.thorne.com/altmedrev/.fu...

(7) Vickers AJ. Homoeopathic Oscillococcinum for preventing and treating influenza and influenza-like syndromes. Cochrane Reviews. 2009.

(8) Bell IR, Lewis II DA, Brooks AJ, et al. Improved clinical status in fibromyalgia patients treated with individualized homeopathic remedies versus placebo, Rheumatology. 2004:1111-5.

(9) Fisher P, Greenwood A, Huskisson EC, et al., "Effect of Homoeopathic Treatment on Fibrositis (Primary Fibromyalgia)," BMJ, 299(August 5, 1989):365-6.

(10) Jonas, WB, Linde, Klaus, and Ramirez, Gilbert, "Homeopathy and Rheumatic Disease," Rheumatic Disease Clinics of North America, February 2000,1:117-123.

(11) Jacobs J, Jonas WB, Jimenez-Perez M, Crothers D, Homeopathy for Childhood Diarrhea: Combined Results and Metaanalysis from Three Randomized, Controlled Clinical Trials, Pediatr Infect Dis J, 2003;22:229-34.

(12) Barnes, J, Resch, KL, Ernst, E, "Homeopathy for Post-Operative Ileus: A Meta-Analysis," Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, 1997, 25: 628-633.

(13) M, Thurneysen A. Homeopathic treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled crossover trial. Eur J Pediatr. 2005 Dec;164(12):758-67. Epub 2005 Jul 27.

(14) Kassab S, Cummings M, Berkovitz S, van Haselen R, Fisher P. Homeopathic medicines for adverse effects of cancer treatments. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2009, Issue 2.

(15) Witt CM, Bluth M, Albrecht H, Weisshuhn TE, Baumgartner S, Willich SN. The in vitro evidence for an effect of high homeopathic potencies--a systematic review of the literature. Complement Ther Med. 2007 Jun;15(2):128-38. Epub 2007 Mar 28.

(16) Endler PC, Thieves K, Reich C, Matthiessen P, Bonamin L, Scherr C, Baumgartner S. Repetitions of fundamental research models for homeopathically prepared dilutions beyond 10-23: a bibliometric study. Homeopathy, 2010; 99: 25-36.

(17) Luc Montagnier, Jamal Aissa, Stephane Ferris, Jean-Luc Montagnier, Claude Lavallee, Electromagnetic Signals Are Produced by Aqueous Nanostructures Derived from Bacterial DNA Sequences. Interdiscip Sci Comput Life Sci (2009) 1: 81-90.
http://www.springerlink.com/content...

(18) Nobel laureate gives homeopathy a boost. The Australian. July 5, 2010. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/new...

(19) Davenas E, Beauvais F, Amara J, et al. (June 1988). "Human basophil degranulation triggered by very dilute antiserum against IgE". Nature 333 (6176): 816-8.

(20) Maddox J (June 1988). "Can a Greek tragedy be avoided?". Nature 333 (6176): 795-7.

(21) Josephson, B. D., Letter, New Scientist, November 1, 1997.

(22) George A. Lone Voices special: Take nobody's word for it. New Scientist. December 9, 2006.

(23) Personal communication. Brian Josephson to Dana Ullman. January 5, 2011.

(24) Chikramane PS, Suresh AK, Bellare JR, and Govind S. Extreme homeopathic dilutions retain starting materials: A nanoparticulate perspective. Homeopathy. Volume 99, Issue 4, October 2010, 231-242.

(25) Human and Experimental Toxicology, July 2010: http://het.sagepub.com/content/vol2...
To access free copies of these articles, click this.


Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/031210_Luc_Montagnier_Homeopathy.html#ixzz1d8m8e7Mo

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Monday, October 10, 2011

Kay tagal...para bang ako'y nababaliw....

Whoah, ang tagal na pala na 'di ako nakapg-post dito...sorry po..babawi na ulit...^_^



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