AGW "Scandal"

AGW is the acronym for Anthropogenic Global Warming, which means man-made global warming. Human induced climate change.

This is yet another scientifically observable phenomenon that is being disputed by people with no scientific background, but a lot of faith. In this case, it's faith in politics and the capitalistic system, but usually, it's religious faith that causes people to discount and disregard science.

This religious opposition to science has been going on for a long time. Galileo, after showing humanity the heavens with his spyglass, was rewarded with an investigation by the inquisition from the Catholic Church and spent the rest of his life under house arrest. This was because he proved that the Earth goes around the sun. The church may not have liked it, because they felt it contradicted the bible and would erode faith in religion, but their not liking it doesn't change the fact that the Earth goes around the sun.

The age of the Earth, Evolution, and the use of stem cells are other forms of science which have been under attack, (stem cells not so much because they didn't believe in them, but because they didn't like where they were getting them from).

There are many other examples of people disbelieving the science, such as when they first starting understanding germ theory and simply asked people to wash their hands before surgery and not use the streets as sewers. People believed that this could not possibly be true, and yet it was. In the case of sanitation, you wonder why people didn't just practice it for aesthetic reasons, and then find out by accident that it prevented disease. People were being willfully filthy as well as willfully ignorant.

Humans are influencing the climate. Of that, there is no doubt. Sometimes it's subtle, and some times it's profound, but our fingerprints are there to see. This time, it's political. In the name of protecting big business, while thinking they are protecting their "way of life" people are dragging their feet on making changes that we should be making for other reasons anyway.

Part of this movement to keep things the way they are is to try to discredit the scientists that are studying climate change. And in that vein, someone has hacked into the emails of the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit. Out of the billions of bytes of information pilfered from the accounts, they are holding up perhaps 3 or 4 emails and pointing to them and saying "See! They hold professional grudges and jealousies! They cannot be trusted! Every word they say is a lie and their entire professional body of work is in question!"

It just doesn't follow. First of all, what the hell is the University of East Anglia? I've never heard of them before, and if I was ever to walk around defending global warming, I wouldn't be quoting from the book of East Anglia. When chunks of ice the size of states are breaking off of Antarctica for the first time in recorded history, when the ice on Greenland is melting so fast that they project it will be gone in a few years, when the Glaciers in Glacier National Park disappear, I don't need some guy in England to tell me something's not right.

Go ahead and have a debate about the science, if you must. The Earth's climate is a huge system with many parts. How are we effecting it? What will be the magnitude of the impact? Is Methane more important than CO2? Go ahead and have that debate, but you better have a hard core science degree in your resume before I pay any attention to your arguments. We need oil is not the counter to increased CO2 emissions are warming the globe. Being a nationally syndicated radio host or television show host is not equal to even a 4 year degree in geology. The vast majority of scientists agree that we having an adverse effect on climate. That's somewhere around 99%, not 60% or 70%. The numbers are so overwhelming that it's no stretch to say "THERE IS NO DOUBT".

What's confusing is where this is going and what we are going to do about it. But if we can't get over listening to some ignorant crackpot defending capitalism and unable to see that his emperor has no clothes, we are truly in trouble.

Mensational

Now that some time has passed, it's not clear to me how I got into this mess.

My wife remembers it differently than I do. I thought she brought it up, she thinks I did. In any case, I was curious about what the test getting into Mensa entailed. I looked into it and got an email from the local chapter.

There are two parts to the test, the Wonderlic Personality test, which is used by recruiters and others screening job seekers. The NFL uses it extensively, apparently. They give you 12 minutes to answer 50 questions. Do the math (which I can't help but do) and you see that you have just over 14 seconds per question. It's a speed test, basically. The other half of the test is something that Mensa cooked up itself that is similar to the Standford Binet test that most people have heard about.

The top 2% are eligible for Mensa.

I put off doing anything for a long time. I thought that nothing good could come of this. If you fail, you feel like a failure, if you succeed, what if you get a big head and become arrogant? It seems like it would be better not to know. But I got very curious and the thought of taking the test would not go away.

I signed up and showed up for testing, paid my $40 and sat in the room at the local Junior College. There were two other people taking the test. It had occurred to me that if only 2% of the people taking the test are eligible, then my chances were 1 in 50 - not too good.

The people running the test were friendly and not as intimidating as I expected. They asked if we had any questions, and I asked mine about the 2%. They said that it's not 2% of the people taking the test, it's 2% of the general public. They said that 2 out of 3 people that take the test pass it. The comment was that you don't go take the test unless you already have a pretty good idea that you are qualified.

I took the test. The Wonderlic part was grueling. I only got about 35 or 40 questions done, and at one point, aware of the time on the clock, I kind of started to despair. It was a brief feeling, and passed quickly, but when they called time and I saw how much I did not finish, I figured that was it.

The rest of the test was interesting. He started by reading a story with no explanation as to why or what, then went into the test that was not related to the story. It ended up that the questions about the story came after the rest of the test. I had just heard something about this on a podcast, the test being how well you hold something in your mind after there is a stream of interrupting information that comes afterwards. Fortunately, I had just been reading about the subject of the story, so it was already fresh in my mind. Every time they threw a name into the story, I would flash a visual picture of it, sort of as a memory marker. I knew what was coming, so I almost feel like I was cheating. I knew all the questions an hour later when that part of the test came around.

The rest of the test consisted of a lot of comparison contrasts where you have a series of pictures and you have to pick the one that's best or doesn't fit with the others. The pictures were like illustrations taken from 1950's advertisements. Sometimes, you'd look at them and go "what the hell?" Other times it wasn't that hard.

After the test, they talked about what it was like to be in Mensa and go to the meetings. I wondered how political the people would be. Would they tend to think similarly, because they were too smart to be fooled by the spin? Politics comes and goes: are smart people just as divisive as the rest? I wasn't sure I wanted to know. They said they preferred to discuss books and movies and restaurants. That seems pretty smart to me.

It was a fun experience, taking the test, and I'm glad I did.

Did I pass? I told myself before I ever went that if I failed I would be too embarrassed to admit it, and if I passed I didn't want to brag. So I can't tell you. Sorry.

Live & Let Die

I've been thinking a lot lately about how death is a natural process.

It's one of those things that seems perfectly clear when you look dispassionately at people that you are not connected to, people that you do not know personally. We get very callous about death when it happens somewhere else to someone else.

But it's everybody's lot in life.

I've often thought that death is one of the things that makes life worth living. Knowing that your life is temporary makes it more precious and sweet. The only problem is that you appreciate this fact the most only when you are getting close to the time for yourself. If you're lucky, that will be because you're getting old. I've listened to older people complain about getting older and how bad it is, and I understand what they are saying, I just think there's something to be said for the alternative - it's much worse. Actually, I can't help but think that if you took care of your health, exercised your body and mind, and took the time to find pleasures in life and have some accomplishments you are proud of, then age isn't so much a time of defeat. Who isn't going to long for their bodies when they were at their peak of beauty and resilience in their youth?

I have ofter realized that while death is always mourned, it's also necessary to clear the population, make way for people born into the current age. Give the youth their chance. We humans have searched for the fountain of youth since the earliest records, back to the days of early pyramid builders. Perpetual youth is a bit of an oxymoron. What people want is a youthful body and a fresh perspective. With science, we might be able to give them the youthful bodies, but how do you restore innocence? After all, isn't innocence just another word for ignorance? Would you trade in all your experience for youth? I'm sure some people would. In a way, we do become more innocent as we age, for it seems certain that we don't store all our memories, some are destroyed or overwritten as more things happen to us. If you live long enough, you can read the books you read years ago, and it's almost as if you never read them before. Old acquaintances are that way too. Try going to your 20 year high school reunion and see how many people you don't remember at all.

Immortality would bring it's own problems. Would wealth concentrate into the oldest people's hands? Would they tend to get into positions of authority and never give them up? Would the population truly explode if people weren't dying? This would tend to make life cheap. If no one ever died naturally, you'd have to either stop having babies (a biological drive so strong, that I can't see how you could eradicate it) or let people murder without penalty.

I sometimes think that people feel that their life gets stale after a while. We don't seem as sharp, our senses are dulled and we become emotionally jaded. That might be natures way of making us want to die. In biology, there is a phenomenon called apotosis. Cellular suicide. It's used as a way to take a cell that is misbehaving, badly damaged, or developing incorrectly out of the game. The body or the cell itself sends a signal that makes the cell kill itself. You see parallels in human life. Some people commit suicide. It makes you wonder if some of them somehow know that they aren't met for life. If you knew that the people that commit suicide were destined for a horrible life of pain, you could understand why death might seem like a better alternative. Or, if you look at society as a body and people as individual cells in the body, it seems quite clear that society benefits from the removal of some individuals.

On an individual level, when it's someone you care about, it's a tragedy for a person to die. I wonder what it would have been like to live in an era where death was very common, like during the Civil War or the Bubonic Plague. Do you just get numb to all the death? If we lived in a world where people rarely died, would the occasional death seem that much worse?

Conflict Irresolution

Watching the news of the day and reading about history, you learn a few things about war and conflict.

Man seems to be an irredeemably warlike creature. If you look at it from a Darwinian standpoint, the group that is willing to be stronger and more aggressive will naturally win out over groups that want to be peaceful or be left alone. Evolutionary biologists would probably disagree with me, but natural selection and survival of the fittest seems to dictate that the most warlike people will probably prevail and pass on their genes. This is the thought that leads me to not be surprised that man can't seem to evolve past war.

History's examples of invasions and wars often follow a pattern. The winner tends to completely dominate or expel and sometimes wipe out the loser. The winner often moves in and occupies the territory of the loser. While history has many examples of the loser regrouping and rebuilding and challenging the winner again, there are also many examples of the loser being utterly destroyed. My favorite example is what the Romans did to the Carthaginians after the third Punic war. Although it is probably just a myth, it was said that the Romans sowed the ground with salt after defeating Carthage so that they could never even farm and support themselves in the future - they could never rise again. Another great example is what happened to the biblical era Assyrians. They had a brutal empire that wiped out anyone that opposed them. They made examples of their rivals in order to terrorize any other groups that might be thinking of rebellion. In the end, when they were finally defeated, the rebels wiped out all the Assyrians to a degree that 200 years later, the locals did not even know who used to live there. The Greek warrior Xenophon moved through and asked who used to live in the huge empty cities that were abandoned when the Assyrians were destroyed. The locals thought that it was the Meads, the memory of the Assyrians was so well destroyed. See Dan Carlin's Hardcore History about the fall of Ninevah.

The average defeated minor group could resent their losses all they wanted, but they were powerless to do anything about it. If they weren't killed, they were usually stripped of all their possessions, and often forced out of their homeland.

If you look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, you see that this pattern was disrupted. The Palestinians were not allowed to lose completely. The peace plans after the various wars and armed conflicts usually ended in a "civilized" system that let the civilian population keep their lives and stay in their land. The problem with this is that the Palestinians are still around and still want to keep the conflict open. They will never be happy until the Jews are gone. The hatred has only grown through their defeat, giving a face to the cause and a people to be championed by other enemies of Israel.

Ironically, if the Israelis had been less civilized and more brutal, and wiped out or displaced the Palestinians completely, they would not have the population of people that sit in their midst, sowing discontent.

If you look at other examples, actually, I'm thinking of Germany and Japan after WWII. In that case, the central government was defeated completely and replaced with a foreign government to rule over them. So in a sense, what we Americans fought during the war, ceased to exist when the war was over. What was left was the people, and they were governed in a manner that let them understand and believe that their welfare was important to them. I wonder if that could have ever worked in the Arab-Israeli conflict?

Crystalline Memories

I was talking to a friend about memories. I find it interesting to think about how memory works, because it varies so much from person to person, and from memory to memory within one person.

I find that I access memory different that most people. Sometimes, when my brother asks me if I remember something, he describes it a certain way and it makes no sense to me. I find that he was focused on some aspect of what we were doing, and I was focused on something else. Often, if I can get a handle on how I would have looked at it, maybe where we were, when it was, or what happened before or after it, I can get a handle on the memory and draw it out.

Often, at that point, it still does not match my brother's memories, but I find that to be a separate issue. I believe that people often alter their memories, either from repeated retelling and embellishing, or from wishful thinking. We're all guilty of it.

I find that memories behave a little like an imperfection in a crystal. If you've ever held a natural crystal up to the light, you've noticed the internal fractures and imperfections in the crystal that are invisible from some directions and very clear from others. I think memories are like that, sometimes. They become clear if you approach them from one direction only, just like seeing those imperfections in a crystal.

I heard when I was little that all of your memories of everything you've ever done were still in your head. This begged the question of why you can't remember anything from the first 3 to 4 years of your life. Recently, I've heard that new memories overwrite the older memories, but I wonder if this is completely true. The science report I heard that said this also said that the brain is making new neurons throughout your life, which is something else that they did not used to believe, up until recently. I've also heard theories that memories are stored in a distributed fashion in the brain, like a holograph, which is an interesting notion. This means that individual neurons could be responsible for helping to build the image of many memories - a redundancy. It also means that a portion of the brain could be injured, but not knock out whole chunks of the memory, but just weaken the memories.

Regardless of how it physically works, I believe that sometimes capturing memories can only be done from a specific direction. I used to dabble in self-hypnosis when I was younger. I remember reading that you could use hypnosis to retrieve memories and to do age regression. Besides that, the books said that hypnosis could relax you and relieve stress. I think maybe there is a connection here. If you think of the memory as being most visible from one direction, the hypnosis acts as a way of shaking up your viewpoint. If you are not rigidly fixed in your viewpoint, if you relax and float around, you can let the memory matrix rotate until it lines up and lets you in. I think of it as freeing you up to see in all directions.

Another think I find to be interesting is the scope of memories. Sometimes we remember what we were doing or where we were over a long period of time. Then you get to zoom in to a particular event within that context, then looking closer, you may remember a particular instance. This is a nesting of memories. You have big groups of memories that are each loaded with many little memories. Going back to the crystal analogy, are you looking for a tiny fleck embedded in the crystal or a fracture that spans the entire crystal. Does it help to frame the memory in the bigger part it is embedded in, then zoom in and focus on a narrower and sharper portion of that megaevent?

I think this is a useful construct in thinking about how your memories are stored in order to help you recall things. I remember when I realized that memory could be as good or as bad as you wanted it to be. You can attempt to remember something and if it doesn't come immediately, you can say "I can't remember". This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. When you say you can't remember, you stop looking and it's true - you can't remember. If you say instead, "I can't think of it right now, wait a minute, it will come to me," that often works. I find that the memory is often there, I can feel its presence. Sometimes, it's a little like taming a skittish animal, when you relax or back away, it comes out and comes to you.

Devil in the White City

This book was recommended to me by my brother & wife. I must admit that their description was not what compelled me to read the book. It sounds like it would be boring.

The book is about how the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago was built and run with a concurrent thread about a serial killer that lived nearby.

There were not a whole lot of grisley details about how Dr. H. H. Holmes lured and killed young women into his strange hotel. There were enough to make it pretty clear what happened, but no gratuituous violence. It was not clear to me why he was doing the killings, but that's something I could say for most serial killers or sadists. The author speculates that the doctor simply enjoyed wielding power over his victims.

The more compelling story was the World's Fair itself. The strange mix of geniuses and hard driven individuals that worked on the design and oversaw the building of the fair was a compelling picture. On one hand, they struggled against a desire by government and the public to have an amazing fair, rivaling the recent one in Paris where the Eiffel tower was built. On the other hand, they could not get approvals and decisions from most of the major players until it was almost too late. An ambitious scope of building, coupled with a shortened time scale to get it done meant the project was a pressure cooker of stress for those responsible to get it built.

My favorite part of the story was the construction of the first Ferris Wheel, which was a real monster. It was so tall, it must have been horrifying to ride. Instead of chairs, the passengers were in cars the size of railroad freight cars.

The thought I'm left with, when I finished the book is that the Fair was kind of sad. Many of the people involved were ruined by it, and the country slipped into a depression by the time it launched. The entire site was burned down shortly afterward, and even the Ferris Wheel was cut up for scrap after a few years.

Most people don't even remember much about the 1893 World's Fair, but the book is peppered with all kinds of little details about firsts that the Fair brought on. This is the place that AC power finally beat out DC power, directly shaping the world we live in today. Smaller details, like the introduction of Juicy Fruit, Cracker Jacks, Quaker Oats, Cream of Wheat, and the hamburger are sprinkled through the book.

Mostly, there is the ghostlike picture in your mind of an entire artificial city painted white, with the knowledge that it was not going to last very long that makes the fairgrounds seem like a dream.

Camouflage by Joe Haldeman

Joe Haldeman wrote one of my most favorite books, The Forever War. This was one of the books that I borrowed from my Dad's stack of paperbacks when I was in Junior High or High School. He was a big science fiction fan, subscribing to Analog magazine in addition to reading lots of paperbacks. The Forever War was one of those books that really sticks in your mind.

When I saw the book Camouflage in the library, I picked it up without considering anything beyond the author's name. I started to read it and kept thinking that it was familiar. After the second chapter, I knew I had read it before, but it was vaguely different. I stopped worrying about the deja vu feeling and just enjoyed the reading.

The book is about two aliens that have been on earth for thousands of years. They were both shapeshifters. They could change their shape and appearance. The main character was followed from his background. Haldeman painted an image of a portion of a small cluster galaxy where the stars were close and orbits of planets were continuously disrupted. His speculation was that anything that survived and evolved in this environment would have to be supremely adaptable. They would have to be almost impervious to damage, able to survive on almost any kind of food, able to regenerate their bodies, and as such, immortal. In addition to all that, they would have to be able to go dormant for long periods of time. The main character had travelled through space for millenia and crashed into the earth a couple of million years ago. His ship was embedded under a volcanic flow on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, and he had assumed the shape of a Great White Shark for most of that time. He emerged onto land right before WWII and took the shape of a man that he killed on the beach. While learning to be human, he acted very un-human. Eventually, he learned how to mimic human behavior and had some adventures, including being beheaded on the Baatan Death March.

While all this is going on, there is another shapeshifter who has been playing at being human much longer. He perpetually picks a bloodthirsty and powerful character to become, like a death camp guard in WWII. He suspects that there must be another being like him somewhere and sets out to find him so he can kill the competition.

The story comes to a strange climax, and I won't spoil it more than I already have. I liked the whole concept of how to sneak through society with the increasing use of fingerprints and retinal scans. It was also interesting how the main character had to follow to a certain extent the principle of conservation of mass. To be something bigger than he was, he had to absorb mass. To be something smaller, he had to shed mass.

Where did his consciousness reside? How do you retain memories over such a long period of time? These were questions that were not answered by the novel, but the fact that I am questioning the novel as if it was an actual account tells you something about the completeness of the worlds Joe Haldeman creates.

Flu Conspiracy Theory

Anti-Government paranoia and conspiracy theories are very common right now.

I got an email from a business acquaintence as follows:

Subj: Fw: Swine Flu Vaccine

[added message]
I have no intention of taking this crap. I don't like the idea of the gov't using me as a guinea pig to test out a totally unproven and untested vaccine.

[added message]
Hello Everyone,

This came to me from a co-worker of mine ...

The note below is from a nurse friend of mine -

[added message]
Hi Everyone,
I also know Dr. Llorente, and I respect her opinion and research. If you have any doubts about whether to get a Swine Flu shot or not, please take this to your own doctor and ask them about it. Be sure to read the preventative measures that you can take on your own to prevent or protect yourself from getting the flu.

Dear Friends,

The World Health Administration is planning to administer a new swine flu vaccination on. The vaccine is to be given by a series of three injections. The first injection will be for the purpose of turning off the recipient’s immune system. The second injection will be for the purpose of loading the subject’s bodies up with the re-conditioned deadly virus organisms. And the third injection will be to turn the immune system back on for the purpose of creating a cytokine storm, which unfortunately could lead to a likely lethal blow to some of the person’s bodies.

In 1915 the pertussis vaccine became available and was widely distributed. This bacterial poison from whopping cough, called pertussis coxon, so depresses the immune system that it is used in laboratories today to turn off nutrafils and reduce white blood cell counts. Then, in 1918, US soldiers who had received the pertussis vaccine were deployed to Europe, where they were given another publically unknown vaccine. And were then exposed to a Lucite gas, which is an arsenic compound, and phosgenegas, a chlorine compound. As a result, their immune systems kicked in with an expected cytokine storm, which unexpectedly killed many of the otherwise healthy young men. This is the 1,2,3 punch that may likely come again with the “swine flu” vaccinations.

We have been conditioned on a global level to think, during a time of influenza, external microbes are our enemy. But on the overall, we are not informed that our own immune systems are potentially more lethal than the flu itself. When the body detects foreign microorganisms indicating the presence of an infection, it can respond by overprotecting the site of that infection. In its hurry to get antibodies to the infection site, the body may release and manufacture too many cytokines, creating a cytokine storm that can be fatal. For example: during a lung infection, a cytokine storm can potentially block airways and result in suffocation. This is what is often referred to as a complications in a flu. Unfortunately this is rarely made clear to the unsuspecting public. In other words, it is not the flu that may be the killer, but complications that come about through the activation of a healthy immune system.

Virus infections make antibody and antigen complexes that the body uses to protect itself. Unfortunately these complexes can clog blood vessels or overload tissue, turning the body’s immune system against itself. In the past, during a W.H.O. Study, animals with immune system’s that had been turned off were infected with lethal viruses until every single cell in their bodies were in pregnated with the virus. These animals functioned like there was nothing wrong with them because their immune system’s were so depressed that they made no effort to fight the disease. In other words, there was no immune response. The W.H.O experimenters then took their lab animals and stimulated a cell-mediated immune response, and the animals died immediately from their bodies attacking themselves in the kind of cytokine storm associated with the 1918 Spanish flu. It should be noted, that the last time the flu vaccine was distributed for the swine flu, more people died of the vaccine response that from the actual flu.

Even if this described scenario isn’t fully copied in the current “swine flu”, the new vaccine is nevertheless made with an adjuvant that may contain a material poison, salmonella, or typhoid fever toxin, along with squalene. Squalene produces auto-immunity and eventually death or severe illness in a large number of people who take 20 it.

Squalene contributed to the cascade reactions known as Gulf War Syndrome that left many soldiers with severe arthritis, fibromyalgia, lymphadenopathy, photosensitive rashes, chronic fatigue, chronic headaches, ulcers, dizziness, weakness, memory loss, seizures, severe mood changes, psychiatric problems, multiple sclerosis, and lupus.

One has to ask the obvious question: Why would our world health organization (W.H.O) be willing to risk these potential conditions on the peoples of this world? This August over 12,000 children and pregnant women will become the first to receive this untested vaccine. It should be noted, that this is not even a test for safety, but a test for dose sizes. Directly thereafter the rest of the world will receive their intended doses. Unfortunately starting with the health care givers and the most vulnerable in our societies: the children in school. Already in the US, the governments have gone so far as to mandate a fund that will allow each state to go from home to home to distribute the vaccine if needed. This depending upon the degree of the outbreak.

It is vital that you are made aware, that it has been well documented that it is often that the virus is relatively benign in our populations until the flu vaccines come out. There seems to be growing evidence that the vaccines somehow contribute to the onset of our world pandemics. Could this be because not all of the virus is quelled in the vaccines. And that once it takes up residence in some bodies, it is to some extent contagious to others. In other world, the vaccine may actually responsible for creating a widespread exposure that would other wise have been minimal. This certainly conjures up suspicions of integrity, perhaps even indicating a premeditation of intent to expose the public. Perhaps the real issue we are all facing is; will we continue to allow the big Pharma industries and the health profiteers to inspire these kinds of illnesses, for what is obviously one of the largest financial boons of any known industry in the world today.

Perhaps the best thing for all of us to do is to simply stay steady with taking Vitamin C; at least 1000 mgs with every meal. Make sure this is a buffered form of C so not to disturb the digestive system. More than than !000 mgs of the more common forms of Vitamin C could cause digestive upsets. In addition, you should consider taking at least 5000iu of Vitamin D3 every day; D3 may be your best overall defense against the flu season. If you catch the flu you can even I crease your D3 inta ke to 12,0000 ius. Also, be sure to increase your omega 3, (1200 twice a day), through a high quality fish oil or krill oil. It is possible to take a flax omega oil, but it will effect your hormones, whaihc may not be as desireable in the overall influence of your bodies health maintanence as the other forms of omega 3. Avoid all other forms of oil as much as possible. It’s not possible to illiminat all other oils, just be careful to reduce them as much as needed for your boy to stay in balance. Selenium is also very helpful in fighting back viruses, and is oftn a primary deficiency in most people’s diets. Avoid refined carbohydrates and sugar as much as possible. Trans - Resveratrol (2000 Mgs) makes it very nearly impossible for flu cells to divide and replicate themselves in your bodies, so find a good source, from outside of Germany ay be best for those of y ou in Europe: take it daily. Green tea extracts are very helpful.

Wash your hands before eating, avoid contact with sick people and wash your foods. Keep your children at home during a flu outbreak and get plenty of rest. Avoid crowds during a flu outbreak as well. And stay away from other people if you have the flu.

So.. Once again...The main reason people die from the swine flu is not from the flu itself. It is from a cytokine storm that the body creates in defense its against the flu. Cytokines inflammations, known as storms or rushes, kill by filling the lungs with excessive fluids. Cytokines are the inflammatory defense messengers that may overwhelm healthy lung tissue. If it weren’t for this immune system response to the wine flu, it would be no more dangerous than any other ordinary flu.

If you feel you a re already exposed to the flu, then you should take curcumin, (2000 mgs) right away to avoid the cytokine storm, along with Quercetin, Resveratrol and Cat’s Claw (Uncaria tomentosa) All of which are both helpful in combating the flu, and decreasing the production of the cytokine

Avoid!!! - Elederberry, Kimchi, Kambucha, and Echenacia. Sweet cold lozenges may actually contribute in worsening the flu, because of the sweets or other ingredients. These my be helpful for ordinary low level flu’s but not for the swine flu, because they increase the chance of a cytokine storm.

Please be aware an pass this information on to others,
Love and light Aaravindha

Some of this information above can be also be researched for yourself in the internet. The above information is a co mbination of research from other articles written by aware health officials, as well as some of my own insights confirmed by my Saumedika practices. I have omitted actual sources because I have edited much of the information.

Elisa Zielinski
Regional Human Resources Manager
West Coast and Pacific Northwest Region
Mohawk Industries

Notice how the entry gets really wacky at the end, with the herbal remedy rift and the "Love & Light" reference. Here's my reply:

Here are the facts on the Swine Flu

This whole email about the troop vaccine from 1918 is bogus. Over 15 million people worldwide died of the flu, and only a small percentage were troops. Troops helped spread it through their travel, as WWI was ending and everyone was being shipped home.

They are only going to have enough vaccine for about 12% of the population. It won't be a matter of being forced to take the shot, most people won't have access to it. It will go to school aged kids mostly.

This strain is one of the most easily transmissible influenza strains there are. It takes very little to get it, mostly from hand contact. Mostly school children are getting it.

It's pretty mild, only kills about 1 in 10,000 (compared to 1 in 100 of the 1918 flu). They say it should kill about as many people as the annual flu kills. It seems to be displacing the annual flu for some reason. That is, people are getting this flu rather than the seasonal flu.

It doesn't mutate much, so far. The problem is that it's a completely new strain, so people have no immunity to it. They say it should be around for the next 10 years, and the scientists speculate that it should start mutating in the 2nd or 3rd year. Hopefully, by then, if it is nasty, a significant portion of the population will be immune. If they have already had it, that should render them at least partially immune. Some will already be vaccinated. By then production of the vaccines should be such that anyone that wants a shot can get one. Non-school aged children will probably never be forced to get it, but I could see them making it mandatory for school children, like the other inoculations. They say that if only half the school children get inoculated it really makes the flu harder to spread.

There are 2 shots. A second booster shot after a couple of weeks to give full immunity. There are no extra shots to shut down the immune system.

I figure if people believe immunizations are some kind of government conspiracy, they just don't take the shots. I wouldn't be against schools requiring parents to immunize their children, as the failure to do so puts everyone else's children at risk. My advice to people that are against childhood vaccines is to home school their children in their bunker.

Gulf War Syndrome was thought to be exposure to some stored nerve agent that was blown up in bomber raids that the troops were downwind from.

I rattled all this off the top of my head simply from listening to recent Nature and Science podcasts on the Flu. It’s not hard to stay informed, but it’s also easy to listen to nonsense and not double-check the facts.

When you get down to the point where the person is telling you to take herbal supplements, that should be a big red flag about the veracity of the rest of the information. Just remember that we never did really land on the moon, the mob assassinated JFK, the holocaust never happened, global warming is a government hoax, and there are aliens in area 54. Then crawl back into your bunker or leave incoherent comments on blogs and news postings. You are a proud patriotic American!

Taliban Office

Here's my idea for a new movie or TV show.

What would it look like if the terrorists were plagued with as much incompetence as an American Corporation.

Every time they tried to set up a hit, they'd end up in the wrong place without any bombs or explosives. There would be a leader that everyone secretly despised and a boot-licking jackass that everyone could barely put up with.

When their plots failed, they would put graffiti on a wall or something minimally destructive and equally lame and call it a major victory.

Feel free to use the idea, I just want to see it in video.

War of Gifts

I sometimes bookmark ideas that I'd like to write about on my blog, saving the post but not publishing it, waiting for the time to spend to write the piece.

I'm sitting down to write this in December, but I bookmarked it at the end of August.

This is a book review of A War of Gifts, which is another book backfilling the Ender's Game series.

In this book, the story details a sideline of the time that Ender was in Battle School. It focuses on a child that was the son of a religious zeolot. He was in brought to the school, but wasn't part of the group. He refused to fight or make friends.

The boys start giving each other gifts in conjunction with Christmas. The gifts are forbidden, and the children get in trouble when the new son of a zealot rats them out.

I don't remember what I was thinking at the time I finished reading this story, but now it strikes me as unremarkable story. What would happen if religious views were surpressed? I'm not sure I remember how they reacted themselves.

It was in the Ender's Game series, so if you read them and liked them, it's more of the story, backfilling in the time of Battle School.

Paul of Dune

I read Dune by Frank Herbert sometime around the 7th grade. This classic science fiction is about a galactic empire in the far future, when man has long since stopped using computers, but has the ability to jump from planetary system to planetary system in the blink of an eye with huge Guild ships. The empire is brought to its knees by a young man that is the product of a 30 generation long breeding program that culminates in his ability to see the future. He comes to power from a desert planet named Dune, where the people are oppressed and the planet provides The Spice, a unique substance that extends life, helps Reverend Mother's connect with their past lives and sense the truth, and allows Guild Navigators to see through spacetime and move their massive ships into safe destinations in the blink of an eye. It also transforms the main character, Paul Atreides, into his full potential of being able to see the future.

Frank Herbert wrote the original series, which followed the life of Paul, and then his son and his favorite swordmaster Duncan Idaho (actually, a series of clones of Duncan, with memories of his past life) up to an confusing and incomplete fate.

After Frank Herbert died, his son Brian in a collaboration with Kevin Anderson, started writing more to the series. He completed prequels and a conclusion to the original series, as well as fill-in novels of the various main characters.

This book fills in a time gap between the original book Dune and the second book Dune Messiah. It answers questions about what he was thinking, how much of the future he saw, and how did he consolidate his power and direct his empire. Each backfilling novel answers more of the mysteries the original series was almost proud to leave behind.

As a young boy, I found Paul a compelling main character, because he was about my age, yet superior to most of the people around him in intellect and ability. As an older man, I still find the character compelling, as a conflicted man struggling to do what is right in a world that compromises his morals as well as his hopes and desires.

Oral History and The Lost City of Z

I just finished reading a book called Lost City of Z. This is a fascinating tale about an explorer named Percy Fawcett that disappeared into the Amazon in the late 1920s looking for a lost city that he believed was in the unexplored regions of the upper Amazon River.

The author attempts to find the trail and determine what happened to Fawcett. In the course of tracking his last known locations, he talked to an Indian that remembered a story about the explorer travelling through their village. His story was from three generations before and he remembered it because his parents and grandparents had come up with a story that sounded like a poem or a song.

In another part of the book, there is an account of another explorer's story of his travels. This story changed with each retelling. It makes you wonder how accurate stories are. We are conditioned to believe that true human history started when man started writing things down. Before that time, there was only oral history, which was subject to change and erosion as the generations passed.

However, it occurs to me that oral history must be good for some learning and provide a measure of continuity. Otherwise we'd all be stupid, inexperienced primitives trying to figure out basic survival skills with each new generation.

If you think about how older people tell their stories over and over, you realize that eventually you remember them yourselves. How many times have you heard the same story from your parents or grandparents until you think you could tell it yourself? This must be an ingrained way that humans pass on their history.

Religious history is the same way. It starts as an oral tradition, changing over time with each generation retelling the story. Still, something of the original story remains, only the exact details and origin of the story fade into history until the story becomes purely mythical, with it's factual origins lost in obscurity. The trick is to see if you can figure out what kernel of truth remains in the story after so many retellings, and what you can really learn from it.

The book had an interesting ending. Our poor lost explorer remained a mystery, but what he was looking for was found by a modern explorer that the author found in the jungle. The cities may not have been the huge sprawling metropolises that Fawcett imagined, and they were not from the 1600s or 1700s, as he hoped, but the true solved mystery is even more important and fascinating than what he imagined.

Historical Outlook

I recently completed listening to Dan Carlin's Hardcore History episodes called Ghosts of the Ostfront. This was a series of stories about the little known battles on the German Eastern Front against the Russians during WWII. I highly recommend the episodes, which depict brutal atrocities, describe unimaginable devastation, and fill in a whole previously unheard of chapter of an already colossal war.

While I was thinking about this and wondering what it would have been like to live through it. While talking about what it would have been like to be there with a friend, I made the comment that when you study history, you have the advantage of knowing how it is going to turn out. We often critize people in historical situations for not knowing better. You forget that they were living in their time and had no idea what their future was going to bring.

That is true for this time. We divide up our society along idealogical lines, convinced that we know what the future holds. We make decisions about climate change, the economy, politics, all controlled by people in the current time that think they can figure the future out.

I recently was surprised to learn that the saying "Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it" was made by Santayana. OK, wait, I was surprised to learn that it was the Mexican General Santa Anna who captured the Alamo. When I found out that it was actually George Santayana, who I've never heard of, I was no longer surprised, just prized.

Fallen Founder

I just finished a book about Aaron Burr called Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr by Nancy Isenberg

I remembered that Aaron Burr had been Thomas Jefferson's Vice President, had run for President, and that he was discredited for trying to break off the Western U.S. to start a new nation. This was before I read the book, just the remnants of school and who knows where else we learn the little details that are in our head.

What really happened? Isenberg's book is written around the premise that there were different stories going around about Burr. The book is a staunch defense of Aaron Burr as a misunderstood figure from history who was smeared in the press by his opponents. Isenberg contends that this misrepresentation of the facts spread by Burr's enemy's has persisted until today.

Isenberg paints many of the politicians of the founders era as self interested, self promoting, and brutal at infighting. She describes the Federalist/Republican politicians attacking each other through the press and with backroom deals. She spends a great deal of time going over research she turned up that paints a completely different story.

For one thing, the common story about Alexander Hamilton is that he fought in a duel against Aaron Burr, who shot and killed him, thus ruining Burr's reputation. Isenberg's version is that Hamilton had some kind of obsession about Burr and would not leave him alone. She makes it sound as if Burr tried to avoid the confrontation as long as he could, but finally couldn't put it off. The other commonly held belief is that Hamilton honorably shot in the air, while Burr deliberately took aim. She claims that Hamilton couldn't see well and had the wrong eye glasses, which is why he missed. Another aspect she brings out is that both parties had written letters prior to the duel that would have been released had they lost. Burr's was supposedly noble and gracious and expressed regret about the disagreement with Hamilton and respect for Hamilton. Hamilton's supposedly continued to cast dispersions about Burr, basically continuing his taunts from beyond the grave.

Isenberg says that they continued to try to prosecute Burr, even though the duel took place in New Jersey, and there was no law against dueling in New Jersey, just in New York. They supposedly took row boats across the Hudson just to have the duel in a location where it was legal.

The next chapter in the history that is turned around and debunked in this book is the events leading up to and surrounding his treason trial. In this version of history, Burr is duped by a double agent named General James Wilkinson and painted as the force behind a movement to secede the western Louisiana territory away from the U.S. and set himself up as King. I'm still confused after reading the book exactly what happened. It sounds to me that Burr was interested in trying to get parts of Mexico to break off and form an independent territory (which later happened with Texas, and also is reminiscent of how the U.S. got into the Mexican-American War). It seems that Wilkinson was trying to frame Burr on the Louisiana conspiracy and was not able to make this charge stick.

However, while not convicted of treason, Burr was thoroughly discredited in the public eye. Thomas Jefferson apparently wanted to find some way of prosecuting Burr, to the point that he eventually left the country.

Sadly, Burr never did regain his reputation, and lost his family as well. It's a tragic story that paints a sympathetic picture of the man. The subtitle of the book could have been, "Why could they not just leave this man alone!?"

There were some other details in the book that I found interesting. Burr apparently was an advocate for women's rights and equality about a hundred years early. He also fought in the American Revolution, but was not on the Washington side of the Army and therefore, did not prevail politically when Washington later came to power. He supposedly assured that Jefferson won the 1800 election by stepping down and giving the election to Jefferson, even though he had as many electoral votes (supposedly, by the rules of that time, the Federalists would have been able to appoint their own man as President in the event of a tie). The last detail that I found to be very interesting is that Burr owned an estate called Richmond Hill in Manhattan that he was forced to sell to John Jacob Aster for $32,000. This was divided up into lots and became Greenwich Village in New York City, making Aster incredibly rich in the process.

I suppose that Isenberg did not convince me that everything said about Burr was false, but she did make me wonder how much of what we've been taught is history being written by the victors.

Magic Repair

I was walking down the road the other day, having just heard about people with heavy metal contamination, and thinking about how it would be great if you could figure out a way to remove the metals embedded deep in the flesh. I was thinking about how there were Star Trek next generation scenes where they used a medical tricorder to cure broken bones or heal scars.

If you're a Star Trek fanatic, you know how the original series showed people using transporters, and then the Next Generation series explained how transporter technology would be used in other ways. The transporter is supposed to break down matter and reassemble it in an identical pattern in another place. Replicator technology takes a lump of matter (I envision this would be the crew members waste products - you never hear them talking about going to the bathroom, but you figure they must) and reassembling it, but not in the same shape or configuration, but in a new configuration - say a cheeseburger. The holodeck supposedly creates scenes and characters using transporter technology. They had a group of small robots that used this trick to make whatever tool or gripping device they needed to perform maintenance tasks. What I am talking about mainly is the little devices that the doctor used to heal things. This is like a little wand, and you point it toward something on the body that's wrong and you rearrange the matter so that it's right.

I want on of these.

I was thinking about the scene in Star Man where Jeff Bridges plays an alien that brings a dead deer back to life on the hood of the hunter's car. That would be a huge job, because you'd have to reverse the decay that had set in as well as repair all the damage, restore the blood volume, and restart the heart and respiration. I was thinking about the limping deer and turkeys we have around our yard. With the special medical matter rearranging device, it would not be that hard to reach in and repair the bones and sinews to make them whole again. I saw a turtle that was hit by a car, and I thought that would be a nice project, too, putting the shell back together, closing all the ruptured blood vessels and reconnecting them and repairing all the muscles. I was also thinking about pollution contamination, how easy it would be to extract them or convert them. I also thought it would be good to remove mites, viruses, and bacteria that are infecting an animal (like a honeybee, for example).

While I was looking at the turtle with the crushed shell, I saw some eggs inside it. They were bright yellow. I remembered that you see yellow eggs in fish and grasshoppers, too. Why are eggs yellow? Maybe the yellow substance can be made into just about anything the organism needs, like the lump of matter they use in the Star Trek replicator as a base stock for whatever they need. Really, when you think about it, nature already does this transporter magic repair, it just does it really slowly. That's man for you, trying to hurry up a good thing.