 | | Send your RSS Feed Back to SchoolBenefit to content providers:
By having your RSS Feeds graded and certified content providers can improve the probability that readers will subscribe to their RSS Feed. Like Search Engine Optimization (SEO), RSS grading helps you to identify what qualities readers are looking for and helps to supply RSS Feeds that meet that criteria. Readers are very finicky. Too many words and you might lose them, too few and they might not understand. By having your Feeds graded and optimizing them to the highest grade you are optimizing your chances of having your RSS Feed and the content behind it read and subscribed to. By having your Feed certified you are giving the readers of your Feeds a standardized, easy-to-understand system to show how your Feed is of the highest quality.
Benefit to content readers:
Graded and certified Feeds are higher quality Feeds, meeting the many factors that are critical to you, the reader. Factors like how recent was the Feed published, how many words and items are in the Feed. Using a standardized grading system allows users to identify and subscribe to Feeds from across the Internet. Grading helps the reader to see through the mounds of RSS Feeds that either have too much content or too little. Quickly skip out-of-date and 'junk' RSS Feeds and find quality content!
The life expectancy of a grade:
RSS Feeds are dynamic, changing frequently as the world around us changes. How can you grade a Feed that will change in the near future? This does make it more difficult to grade, but not impossible. Given that most RSS Feeds are created through the use of dynamic tools, the general constraints of the Feed remains the same. If a blog outputs the entire body of an article as the description, it will likely do this every time the Feed is generated. If you create your RSS Feed with a simple title like "My Blog" then very likely every time the RSS Feed is generated the title will not be very useful. On the other hand, if you generate an RSS Feed that has enough detail to catch the reader but not so much to overwhelm them, the tool that is creating the RSS Feed is of high quality and will produce high quality Feeds. |
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| The Hundred-Year Lie: How to Protect Yourself from the Chemicals That Are Destroying Your Health
by Randall Fitzgerald |  | In the tradition of Silent Spring and Fast Food Nation, investigative journalist Randall Fitzgerald warns how thousands of man-made chemicals in our food, water, medicine, and environment are making humans the most polluted species on the planet. A century ago in 1906, when Congress enacted the Pure Food and Drug Act, Americans were promised "better living through chemistry." Fitzgerald provides overwhelming evidence to shatter this myth, and many others perpetrated by the chemical, pharmaceutical, and processed foods industries.
Plume (June 26, 2007)
Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
Paperback: 304 pages | Consider This:- The average American carries a "body burden" of 700 synthetic chemicals
- Chemicals in tap water can cause reproductive abnormalities and hermaphroditic birth
- A 2005 study of lactating women in eighteen U.S. states found perchlorate (a toxic component of rocket fuel) in practically every mother's breast milk
- Lab tests have found that four common food additives-aspartame, MSG, and two coloring chemicals-interact synergistically to produce nerve damage. These additives are commonly found in junk food marketed to children.
- In the past few decades male sperm counts fell by 50 percent, women's tubal pregnancies increased by 400 percent, and girls eight years old and younger began experiencing puberty. Chemicals are redefining what is "normal"
| Editorial Review:
In 1906, Congress passed the US Food and Drug Act and, according to the author, this has led to the "Hundred-Year Lie" that our food and drugs have been investigated and are safe and that the additives and chemicals put in them may actually make them better than the organic, natural variety. As an investigative reporter, Fitzgerald is expert at using scientific documents, articles in science and environmental journals and expert interviews to support his case. He concludes that we cannot rely on the government, science or manufacturers to either protect us or predict the effects of the products we ingest. As a test, Fitzgerald had his own blood analyzed for toxins and, in spite of living in an area of California known for its pure water and air and careful eating habits, he was shocked to find many toxic chemicals in his blood. While many readers will not agree with his conclusion that "Merely by choosing a diet of pure foods and a lifestyle free of synthetics, we can detoxify ourselves and initiate the healing of many degenerative illnesses and diseases," this book will cause any reader to think about the effect of our own voluntary actions on the health of our bodies. His suggestions for practical steps one can take may prove useful as well, although in the paperback afterword, he fears that denial will prevent most people or governments from taking any significant action.
Reviewer: Nola Theiss (Vol. 42, No. 1) |
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