Whether you care about childhood lead poisoning or not, I think you'll be interested by important insight on Lead, Diabetes, Hypertension, and Renal Function that everyone in the world should understand. Think of the cost of this on society - the suffering, reduced quality of life, and lost years for so many people, caused by lead harming kidney function. Here's the intro and abstract - you'll need to set up an account on WebMD to read the rest (apparently free - this is not an endorsement of WebMD... I am not a member... I will join to read the rest of this  and let you know my thoughts)...

I've been asked what our traffic looks like over time, so I pulled a few quick charts of the number of visitors to realneo since we started using Google Analytics, and what they have visited, to measure performance of this site - and we've grown by pretty much all counts I've considered important by 30-100% since then - in some cases by 1,000s% - in less than a year-and-a-half.

2008 Lead Poisonings of children in Cuyahoga County, Ohio - do not move here

The Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council has released data on children in the neighborhoods of Cleveland and surrounding suburbs who were tested and documented as lead poisoned in Cuyahoga County in 2008 - about 3,200 of our Cleveland children were KNOWN to be lost to lead poisoning - about 4,000 children poisoned in Cuyahoga County overall. As only a small percentage of our children are actually tested for lead poisoning, the numbers of children in the County lost to lead poisoning is much higher... 1,000s of victims higher.

Cleveland's worst known mass-murderer, Anthony Sowell, is only known to have killed 11 people.... yet that has captured 1000s of inches of pointless newsprint... hours of pointless news coverage... to help nobody.

Home Depot uses Ohio U.S. Senator George Victor Voinovich in a failed attempt
to delay EPA rules protecting children and pregnant women from lead poisoning?!?!

Despite the foolish, incompetent, worst efforts of our disgraceful Republican U.S. Senator from Ohio, Genocidal-George Voinovich, who attempted to derail life-protecting lead poisoning prevention measures for America's children and pregnant women - supposedly as a favor to Home Depot, which we should all now boycott for life - I'm pleased to announce:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that renovations and repairs of pre-1978 housing must now be conducted using safe practices to protect children and pregnant women from exposure to lead-based paint. Almost a million children have elevated blood lead levels as a result of exposure to lead hazards, which can lead to lower intelligence, learning disabilities, and behavior issues. Adults exposed to lead hazards can suffer from high blood pressure and headaches. Children under six years old are most at risk.

“Our lead-safe program will protect children and families from lead-based paint hazards associated with renovation and repair activities in houses built before 1978,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “This rule requires contractors to follow some simple and effective lead-safe work practices to prevent children’s exposure to dangerous levels of lead. Lead poisoning is completely preventable.”

A quick note about the census -- By now, we've all seen the cute advertising to encourage censis compliance...it's about accuracy, it's about getting our fair share of federal money, it's about maintaining appropriate representation in Congress.   Here's an online tool to see how we're doing.  With nation-wide and state-wide compliance in the 34-35% rate, Cleveland response rates average in the 10-20% category.  Well, to be fair, Cleveland, like many other areas, has a lot of factors that suggest low compliance r

Would any Realneo members like to participate in a seed and plant swap? I would be happy to host. Please post your thoughts on possible dates and times. We could also include garden tools and other gardeing related items if people are interested.

Please save the date for the 2010 Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory 5th Annual Symposium. 

What: 2010 Greater Cleveland Lead Advisory Council 5th Annual Symposium

            Healthy Kids, Homes, & Places – Ensuring a better future for our community

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Art of the American Indians: The Thaw Collection

MARCH 7–MAY 30, 2010
Admission free

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The Cleveland Food Coop, Cleveland Food Not Bombs & Women Speak Out for Peace and Justice are sponsoring theses events in celebration of International Women's Day, events are free but seating is limited.

Sevi Bayraktar is from Istanbul, Turkey performing Gypsy and Flamenco dances.

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Women Speak Out For Peace and Justice Featuring Women ad Militarism Panel, Music & Dance, Ione Biggs Award.

Just one of the Cleveland Area Celebrations of International Women's Day

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Have you heard of International Women's Day? I first learned about this holiday/event that celebrates the many achievements and contributions of women about three years ago. Please check out the website International Women's Day to learn about the history of International Women's Day and ways it is celebrated around the world. Next year will be the centenary of International Women's Day. 

I'll be brief.

I co-founded realNEO in 2004 because Northeast Ohio needs realNEO - the world needs realNEO. It is entirely different from any other "social network" or content management system on Earth, building upon the ICEarth co-op conceptual framework.

I developed the ICEarth (Internet/Information Community Earth) conceptual framework in global collaboration, in the late 1990's, and founded ICEarth LLC, in 2002, to build the co-op data warehousing and serving platform for the ICEarth conceptual framework.

We have built specialised hardware for ICEarth, running specialised open source software, all developed to unique specifications. Initial testing of the hardware and software configurations exceeds expectations.

I attended an excellent Software Freedom Day event in Toronto in 2006, which I introduced on REALNEO here, and covered on REALNEO here - I actually needed a copy of Ubuntu that day, so it came in very handy.

I'd like to see Northeast Ohio celebrate Software Freedom Day 2010 in a BIG WAY - Saturday, September 18 - and follow the model I saw in use in Toronto, which included active, friendly engagement on a busy street, with workshops and light training/Q&A offered inside a receptive place. Of course, the Linux Penguin was out-front to draw attention to the event... we definitely need a penguin.

West End Urbanteers Block Club

Lorain Branch Cleveland Public Library

W. 65th Street in 1922

RAG - Resident Advocacy Group
http://rag14.weebly.com/index.html
 

Traffic on the Detroit - Superior Bridge in 1952

Resident Advocacy Group - Tremont

RAG - Resident Advocacy Group
http://rag14.weebly.com/index.html
http://twitter.com/RAG14Tremont

In both areas of Cleveland's West Side where I've lived, I knew there were chickens and roosters nearby (some I saw, and some I heard), but I haven't come across any fowl life on the East Side of Cleveland, or in East Cleveland. I wonder if there are any other chickens in my part of town? There certainly were chckens on every property back when this was farmland, 100+ years ago.

Over the past 20 years, I've spent most of my "professional" time as an entrepreneur, with world-class expertise conducting multi-dimensional, multi-client relational comparative data and best practice analyses of any aspects of the world's largest and best global enterprises, environments and systems, and developing and consulting on innovations and total quality improvement. This work has generated a wealth of knowledge on large general systems, with a unique expertise in information systems and telecommunications. REALNEO is a product of this highest level expertise, drawn from the best practices of the best organizations on Earth. What REALNEO has developed for Cuyahoga County - what has been generated out of the REALNEO-generated Real Cooperative - takes general systems innovation to a whole new level of making us the brightest greenest place on Earth. So, we really do have a purpose to Cuyahoga County owning the Breuer, and the vision is beautifully expressed in this great rendering above, to be REAL COOP citizen headquarters of the open source capital of this brightest greenest state of Earth.

Cleveland Bicycle Week is coming, May 11-17! Join us for Northeast Ohio's biggest gathering of diverse cycling interests and activities, with events all around town! 

It is obvious, by any definition, the process of redistricting the City Council wards of Cleveland is gerrymandering. The question is what to do about it. As stated in the title of this posting, "In gerrymandered election districts, the voters don't choose their politicians - the politicians choose their voters!" If that doesn't sufficiently define for you what Cleveland City Council President Sweeney has done, then how about the following...

Are you concerned that your children's health is affected by pollution?
Do you want some answers about your industrial neighbors?
Do you want to build your environmental campaign skills?

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