Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.

As is now custom, I’ll try to include the more interesting and pertinent articles that will help the community awareness of their health and bodies. This essay will not be posted anywhere else due to constraints on my time. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement and ask questions, I’ll answer as best I can.  

Obama picks oil exec to probe oil disaster

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Living in Emergency

For the first time ever, MSF gave a documentary crew uncensored access to its field operations. Set in war-torn Congo and post-conflict Liberia, “Living in Emergency” interweaves the stories of four doctors as they struggle to provide emergency medical care under extreme conditions. Two volunteers are new recruits: a 26-year-old Australian doctor stranded in a remote bush clinic and an American surgeon from Tennessee trying to cope under the load of emergency cases in a shattered capital city.

Two others are experienced field hands: a dynamic head of mission, valiantly trying to keep morale high and tensions under control, and an exhausted veteran, who has seen too much horror and wants out. Amid the chaos, each doctor must find their own way to face the challenges of the work, the tough choices, and the limits of their idealism.

This documentary opens in cities around the US this weekend. I urge you to see it, it will gives you a far better picture of what we do than I can ever put into words. Bring a strong stomach and a few tissues.

Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.

Green Beans Bring Flavor to Pastas and Pilafs Alike

Green Bean and Mushroom Salad With Creamy Vinaigrette

Greek Stewed Green Beans and Yellow Squash With Tomatoes

Green Beans With Potatoes and Garlic

Warm Green Bean Salad With Frisée and Walnuts

Garlic Green Beans

As is now custom, I’ll try to include the more interesting and pertinent articles that will help the community awareness of their health and bodies. This essay will not be posted anywhere else due to constraints on my time. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement and ask questions, I’ll answer as best I can.  

This being Memorial Day Weekend, while we are all celebrating, we need a reminder of what this “holiday” is really about.

Grim statistic: 1000th American Military Death in Afghanistan. Blessed Be.

   The toll of American soldiers killed in Afghanistan reached 1,000 on Friday, a grim milestone that came as Americans back home prepared to commemorate their war dead.

   News that the body count had ticked into four figures came with the death in a roadside bombing of an American serviceman, yet to be named, who was the 32nd US soldier to die in the past month. He is the 430th to be killed in Afghanistan since President Obama took office in January 2009.

Reflections of war

The Vietnam War’s length can be measured in many ways. The formal beginning of U.S. involvement often is dated to Aug. 7, 1964, when Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, giving the president a virtual carte blanche to wage war. By the time the last U.S. ground combat troops were withdrawn in March 1973, the war had lasted 103 months.

U.S. forces attacked Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001. On June 7, the war will complete its 104th month. President Obama on Thursday reaffirmed his commitment to the war, saying “it is absolutely critical that we dismantle that network of extremists that are willing to attack us.”

This longest war is far from America’s bloodiest. It has drifted in and out of focus and, for much of its life, been obscured by another war, in Iraq.

When will we ever learn?

h/t Jim White at FDL

Welcome to this week’s Health and Fitness. This is an Open Thread.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Cancer survivors might want to try yoga to sleep better and have more energy, according to a new study that will be presented at a meeting in early June.

“Physicians and oncologists are often uncomfortable advising patients who want to use therapies that are complementary to standard cancer therapy,” Dr. Douglas Blayney, president of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, said in an interview.

“Here we have a studied intervention, one that has been subjected to clinical trials and, lo and behold, it seems to be beneficial,” added Blayney, who was not involved in the new research.

As is now custom, I’ll try to include the more interesting and pertinent articles that will help the community awareness of their health and bodies. This essay will not be posted anywhere else due to constraints on my time. Please feel free to make suggestions for improvement and ask questions, I’ll answer as best I can. NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Severe depression within the first year of a traumatic brain injury is common but treatment is not, Washington state researchers report.

My sister-in-law, who knows that I am “Going Green”, sent me this article about the nutritional and practical uses for the consummate salad component, the cucumber. While I can attest ot some of the accuracy of the nutritional information, I have yet to try out cleaning the sink or eating cucumber slices to ward off a hangover. So for something amusing

1. Cucumbers contain most of the vitamins you need every day, just one cucumber contains Vitamin B1, Vitamin B2, Vitamin B3, Vitamin B5, Vitamin B6, Folic Acid, Vitamin C, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, Phosphorus, Potassium and Zinc.

2. Feeling tired in the afternoon, put down the caffeinated soda and pick up a cucumber. Cucumbers are a good source of B Vitamins and Carbohydrates that can provide that quick pick-me-up that can last for hours.

3. Tired of your bathroom mirror fogging up after a shower? Try rubbing a cucumber slice along the mirror, it will eliminate the fog and provide a soothing, spa-like fragrance.

4. Are grubs and slugs ruining your planting beds? Place a few slices in a small pie tin and your garden will be free of pests all season long. The chemicals in the cucumber react with the aluminum to give off a scent undetectable to humans but drive garden pests crazy and make them flee the area.

Your Afternoon Edition is brought to you by your substitute host, TMC. ek is off this afternoon. This is an Open Thread. Enjoy

BP accused of cover-up

(Reuters) – BP Plc said on Thursday it was siphoning off more of the oil gushing from its ruptured Gulf of Mexico well, but the energy giant faced “cover-up” allegations over its struggling response to the catastrophic month-old spill.

“The oil plume escaping from the riser pipe has visibly declined today,” BP spokesman Mark Proegler said after the company announced that a mile-long tube tapping into the larger of two leaks from the well was now capturing 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) per day of oil.

However, a live video feed of the leak, provided by BP, showed a black plume of crude oil still billowing out into the deep waters.

“It’s just not working,” U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, told CNN as she watched the BP video. The California Democrat denounced a “cover-up” of the real size of the oil spill.

On this day in 1946,  pop singer, song writer, Academy Award winning actress, producer and record producer, Cher was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in El Centro, CA. Her father was Armenian and her mother was of Cherokee, French and English descent. After her mother remarried and ran into financial difficulties, Cher was placed in temporary foster care. She eventually dropped out of high school due to severe undiagnosed dyslexia.

She met Sonny Bono, 11 years her senior, marrying him and singing together, eventually emerging as the duo, Sonny & Cher. There first hit was “I’ve Got You Babe” which reached the top of the charts in 1965. They had one child, Chastity, born in 1969.

After a brief career slump, talent scouts saw their act in Las Vegas and signed them for a variety special which led to the popular TV variety show, The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour . The show ran from 1971 to 1974 collecting 15 Emmy’s. The show was canceled due to the couple’s divorce. Later that year, Cher married her second husband, rock star Gregg Allman. Their son, Elijah Blue, was born on July 10, 1976. They separated in 1977 and divorced two years later.

She went on to not just a successful career as a solo artist but stretched into acting making her movie debut in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (1982) which earned her a Golden Globe nomination. In her next role in Silkwood (1983), she played Meryl Streep’s lesbian friend for which she received the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress – Motion Picture and her first academy Award nomination. Her role as a mother of a severely disfigured boy in the critically acclaimed The Mask (1985), Cher won the Best Actress prize at the Cannes Film Festival and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Drama. In 1987 Cher starred in three films, The Witches of Eastwick, Suspect and Moonstruck for which she received the academy Award for Best Actress in 1988.

She returned to singing and concerts. Her Fairwell Tour lasted three years (2002 – 2005). After a three year hiatus, Cher returned to the stage in Las Vegas where she still performs at Caesar’s Palace. The dance hit Believe (1999), selling over 10 million copies world wide ans she is the only female performer to have Top 100 Billboard hits for the last four consecutive decades. During her 40 years career she has sold over 100 million records world wide.

Happy Birthday, Cher