Plasma Cosmos (Archive)

by Merry

A ventifact (a stone sculpted by wind-driven sand) in
the "Martian" landscape of the McMurdo Dry Valleys.
Source.

On first inspection the habitat seems as sterile as the surface of autoclaved glassware... but the trained eye, aided by a microscope, sees otherwise.
            E.O. Wilson, The Future of Life

For the microbiologist, the next best thing to a trip to Mars might well be an expedition to the McMurdo Dry Valleys of Antarctica. Here, in the Earth's coldest and driest deserts, the conditions approach those on our neighboring planet and are thought to also approach the cold-arid limit for life. Not all of the Dry Valleys are equally dry. Some have perennially frozen, glacier-fed lakes and ephemeral streams, and thus have some soil moisture. Here one finds more of life, even three taxa of multicellular animals—tardigrades, rotifers, and, most numerous, bacterial-feeding nematodes. (Click here for our earlier post about the microbes found in a subglacial lake in this region.)

Lacking such a source of water, thus being one of the truly dry Dry Valleys, is McKelvey Valley. What little snow falls here or blows in sublimates in the cold, hyper-arid conditions. How cold? The average air temperature is around –20 °C. Winter brings prolonged periods of −55 °C cold; in summer, air temperature can rise to a balmy 0°C. Humidity is low (<10% RH in winter). And then there are the ceaseless katabatic winds (from the Greek word katabatikos meaning "going downhill"). Cold, dense air falls downhill off the East Antarctic Ice Sheet and races through the valley at speeds commonly exceeding 50 km/h, sometimes reaching 320 km/h (200 mph). These winds evaporate all moisture and carry sand grains that scour the barren landscape. All in all, these conditions bear some resemblance to those used to freeze-dry biological samples.

Endolithic community layer in fractured sandstone.
Source.

The valley floor is an unstable, gravelly, desiccated mineral soil with high salinity, little organic material, and the lowest nitrate concentrations known for any terrestrial soil. Surface temperatures fluctuate wildly under the intense summer sun, seesawing between –15° and +27.5°C in a few hours. UV is intense. And, of course, the winds scour the land and carry off any hint of moisture. Nevertheless, life carries on. Some intrepid researchers left the comforts of Hong Kong or New Zealand or even relatively balmy Minnesota to look for organisms living under such extreme conditions. As reported in their recent paper, there are some bacteria living in these dry surface soils, mostly Acidobacteria and Actinobacteria. As you might expect, at the top of the list are desiccation tolerant taxa such as Deinococcus and Rubrobacter. There are also numerous nitrogen fixers. With neither photoautotrophs or chemoautotrophs present, organic carbon is at a premium, and its lack is thought to preclude further community development.

Chasmoliths: a lichenized microbial community protrud-
ing from a granite rock fracture. Source.

Both qualitatively and quantitatively, most of the life in this valley is associated not with the soil, but with the rocks. Here and there the flat-lying sedimentary bedrock is exposed. The rock surfaces, and even the shallow cracks, are likely sterile due to temperature fluctuations and abrasion from windblown sand. But any life that burrows in even just a few millimeters finds more stable temperatures and shelter from the incessant wind, even in the intense cold. Given the estimate that -6 ºC or -8 ºC is the lower limit for metabolic processes, some activity would be possible in these rock niches for 1000 hours per year at the most. However, that is enough to sustain microbial communities, both the endoliths, organisms that live within the porous structure of the rock itself and the chasmoliths that live within the cracks and crevices.

Due to their structure and mineralogy, sedimentary rocks such as the local sandstone are particularly well-suited for housing endoliths a few millimeters beneath their surface. Enough light penetrates for photosynthesis (at least during the months when there is sun), while damaging UV is reduced. In contrast to the soil community, these rock dwellers are mostly photoautotrophs. Two distinct communities of bacteria and eukaryotes are detectable, both visibly and experimentally. The upper 2 mm, called the lichen zone, is dominated by a lichenized fungus, Texosporium sancti-jacobi, associated with the green alga Trebouxia jamesii. Below 2 mm, the photosynthetic cyanobacteria rule, mostly Chroococcidiopsis, a genus noted for having radioresistance comparable to that of Deinococcus radiodurans. Low light levels not withstanding, light may not be the factor limiting these endolithic communities, but rather lack of available CO₂. The chasmolith communities in the crevices are made up primarily of various lichens and cyanobacteria, combined with a distinctive sprinkling of other bacterial groups.

A typical quartz hypolith showing no external evidence
of the underlying microbial community. Source.

There is yet a fourth cryptic community here, the hypoliths that live underneath light-colored, translucent stones. These are almost exclusively cyanobacteria, making do in an environment that receives less than 0.1% of the incident light. There are no fungi here, and only a very few algae.

There is a tendency to think that the more extreme the environment, the less the biological diversity. The communities in the Dry Valleys don't conform to that pattern. The endoliths and chasmoliths combined comprise more than 50 bacterial species (based on 98% identity of their 16S rDNA sequences). Although eukaryotes represent only 5% of these communities, they include four genera of fungi (both Ascomycota and Basidiomycota) as well as three groups of algae. Add in the hypoliths, and these three lithic communities span 16 phyla in two domains.

What about the missing archaea, those masters of extreme environments? Not a one to be found so far, not even one lurking under a rock. Surely there are yet even more surprises to be found by the cryophilic researcher.

February 09, 2010 04:11 AM

(NaturalNews) The last juicer I recommended was the Breville juicer. I own two of them, and they are top-of-the-line juicing appliances that can transform fresh fruits and vegetables into healing, nutrient-rich juices right from your kitchen counter. But today, I have incredible news for you about a truly revolutionary new juicer that now takes first place at the top of my recommendations list. This juicer isn't a centrifugal juicer with a blade that shreds your vegetables; it's a whole new category of juicing technology. And it offers significant advantages that make this a must-have appliance for your kitchen.

Here's why...

The problem with centrifugal juicers
Centrifugal juicers actually "shred" your food to separate pulp from juice. The fast-spinning basket allows juice to escape the basket while pulp is flung into the pulp holding bin. This has been the status quo of consumer-class juicing for roughly a decade.

Centrifugal juicing is fine -- and I've been using it for years -- but it does have its problems. It tends to waste a lot of juice that's still left in the fruit and vegetable fibers. This means you have to push a lot of veggies through the machine to get a relatively small amount of juice.

The shredding action also cuts your food into thousands of tiny pieces and exposes them to oxidation. Many nutritionists believe this causes a rapid loss in the nutritional quality of the juice. The shredding action may also physically damage some phytonutrients, reducing the nutritional potency of the juice you get. (Personally, I've always wondered how much of the nutrition is lost during this process...)

The problem with masticating / twin-gear juicers
Twin-gear (masticating) juicers produce far better quality juice than centrifugal juicers. They slowly squeeze wheat grass, sprouts or other fruits and vegetables through a single-gear or twin-gear process that extracts more juice than centrifugal juicers.

That's why most "hard core" vegans and juicers have been using twin-gear juicers for several years. The problem with these machines, at least in my experience, is that they are very slow at making juice and they take a long time to disassemble, clean and reassemble. They're also extremely heavy and quite expensive compared to centrifugal juicers.

I owned a twin-gear juicer for years that just sat in my kitchen cupboard because I got tired of messing with all the assembly and cleaning tasks. Centrifugal juicers were so much faster and easier to clean!

Introducing "slow juice" from the Hurom Slow Juicer
Now a new, breakthrough juicing appliance overcomes all the shortcomings of both centrifugal juicers and masticating juicers. The Hurom slow juicer is a truly remarkable machine that takes a quantum leap forward in juicing technology. This machine is simply amazing -- and it has already become a permanent appliance in my own kitchen.

The machine produces juice FASTER than a centrifugal juicer, yet it doesn't have any fast-moving parts: No centrifugal basket, no shredding your fruits and veggies, and no loud noise. I love making juice with this appliance!

It's lighter and less expensive than twin-gear juicers, and yet it produces just as much juice as they do! Plus, it's super versatile because it can make almond milk, soy milk, sesame milk or even rice milk, too!

The secret is the "slow juice" technology developed by the Hurom company. This technology uses "triturating" technology that "rubs" the juice out of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds. It uses only a single spiral gear, not twin gears, and the simplicity and cleverness of the design make it an upright appliance on your countertop -- so it looks like a centrifugal juicer, but it functions in a whole new way.

You can order this revolutionary juicer right now from the NaturalNews Store: http://store.naturalnews.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=316_320_325

You won't find a lower price advertised anywhere, and we give you FREE shipping on this juicer! (Continental USA only. Shipping rates apply to other destinations.)

I absolutely LOVE this juicer!
My experience with the Hurom Slow Juicer has been extremely positive. It really is "revolutionary." The first time I made juice with it, I could see the difference immediately: It was truly an eye-opening experience.

I've been using the machine for a while now, and I've come to find that it has twelve key benefits I'd like to share with you from my own personal experience:

Benefit #1: MORE juice from the same veggies means lower juicing costs
Because the Hurom Slow Juicer is a far more efficient extraction technology than you'll find in centrifugal juicers, you get more juice out of the same quantity of fruits and vegetables.

This means total lower juicing costs because you'll use a smaller quantity of fresh produce to make the same quantity of juice! Given the high price of organic fruits and vegetables, this means the Hurom Slow Juicer can pay for itself in savings on fresh produce.

Really, you'll see the difference the very first time you juice with the Hurom Slow Juicer.

Benefit #2: LESS oxidation of your juice means MORE nutrition
The Hurom Slow Juicer doesn't "shred" your juice with fast-spinning blades. This prevents oxidation of your juice -- the chemical process that causes air to react with the juice and deplete its valuable nutrients.

The fresh juice extracted by the Hurom Slow Juicer is the most nutritionally potent juice you can make at home. The more you're aware of the amazing healing qualities of fresh vegetables, fruits, nuts and seeds, the more you'll appreciate Hurom's "trituration" technology that protects juice from oxidation.

Benefit #3: FASTER juice production makes juicing more convenient
The Hurom Slow Juicer isn't actually "slow" to produce juice. In terms of the ounces of juice you get per minute, it's just as fast (or faster) than using a centrifugal juicer!

This makes it a whole lot faster than typical twin-gear juicers, so you can produce juice for yourself or even the whole family in mere minutes. You'll love the time savings you'll experience with this juicer.

Benefit #4: SLOW juicing gears makes juicing safer for families and children
The Hurom Slow Juicer has no dangerous, fast-spinning parts like whirling blades or metal baskets. The motor turns slowly and steadily, producing a surprisingly large amount of juice from a very slow rotation -- hence the name "slow juicer."

You'll be amazed at how much juice this machine extracts even with such a seemingly "slow" motion! And because it's safe and quiet, you can get the children involved in the fun of making their own juice. They can actually watch the juice being separated from the pulp. It's fun to watch this juicer work!

Benefit #5: It makes NUT MILKS, too!
This is so cool... I've been using my Hurom Slow Juicer to make fresh raw almond milk. It's amazing! I just soak the almonds for 8 hours, rinse them, then chuck them into the Hurom juicer with some water.

The fresh almond milk pours out! And there's no mess: No nut milk bags, no cooking, no straining and no complications. Put almonds in and you get almond milk out -- almost instantly! This alone makes the machine worth every dollar (in my opinion, anyway, because I drink a lot of almond milk).

You can also use the Hurom Slow Juicer to make soy milk, sesame milk or even oat milk or rice milk! It's a milk-making machine at the same time it's a world-class juicer.

Benefit #6: LESS noise keeps your kitchen peaceful and quiet
Centrifugal juicers are loud. The grinding and shredding noises can be disturbing to a peaceful kitchen, and they can even wake up sleeping family members if you juice in the morning.

But the Hurom Slow Juicer is so quiet it might be called a "silent juicer." It makes no more noise than a bread mixer and far less noise than a blender or a typical juicer.

Benefit #7: LESS waste is more ecological, too
The fact that the Hurom Slow Juicer makes more juice from less fresh produce isn't just good for your pocketbook -- it's also good for the planet!

Why? Because producing fruits and vegetables requires energy and effort. Transporting those foods also requires fossil fuels. The more nutrients you can extract from the same fixed amount of fresh produce, the lower your use of limited natural resources.

Efficient juicing is eco-juicing -- it's good for you and good for the planet at the same time.

Benefit #8: The juice TASTES better!
I don't yet know why -- perhaps it has something to do with the lack of oxidation -- but the juice extracted by the Hurom Slow Juicer is super delicious!

Everybody tells me much the same thing: "Wow! This juice tastes better than the juice you usually make. What's the difference?" The only difference is that I'm now using the Hurom Slow Juicer instead of the centrifugal juicer I previously preferred. Try it yourself: I believe you'll really taste the difference!

Benefit #9: No FOAM
Are you tired of the "juice foam" produced by centrifugal juicers? That foam is a result of the high-speed mixing of the juice with air. It's a side effect of centrifugal juicing.

The Hurom juicer produces virtually no foam! What you get is pure, liquid juice. There's virtually no foam and no oxidation. It's simply the juice you expect to get from a high-end juicing machine.

Benefit #10: EASY to clean!
If you're like me, time is tight. We want to prepare our juice as efficiently as possible and get on with the day. But part of the task involves cleaning the juicer.

You'll be happy to learn that the Hurom Slow Juicer isn't slow when it comes to cleaning: It's blazing fast! It rinses easily and cleans up in the same time as a typical centrifugal juicer. Plus, you don't have the scrub the basket to remove the pulp...

Benefit #11: It's lighter and more PORTABLE than other juicers
This is the really cool part about the Hurom Slow Juicer: It's light enough that you can take it with you!

Bring it to a friend's house or a party... show your friends this amazing new juicing technology and let them taste the difference themselves!

The Hurom Slow Juicer weighs roughly the same as a regular centrifugal juicer, meaning it's a lot lighter than the typical twin-gear juicers. You can even put it in a suitcase and take it with you on a trip -- use it in a hotel! (It's the only real way to get truly healthy food while traveling anywhere...)

Benefit #12: It comes with a 10-year motor warranty!
The Hurom Slow Juicer is built to last, and that's backed by a two-year warranty on the entire unit, plus a ten year warranty on the motor. If anything goes wrong with the juicer within the first two years, replacement (or repair) is fully guaranteed (you'll need to cover shipping your unit to the replacement center in the continental USA, if repair work is needed).

You're also backed by our 90-day satisfaction guarantee. If for any reason you don't like the Hurom Slow Juicer, just return it to our store for a full refund (less shipping and handling) at any time during the first three months. Your satisfaction is guaranteed or your money back!

Available right now from the NaturalNews Store
This Hurom Slow Juicer is available right now from the NaturalNews Store at the best price you'll find anywhere. We have a limited supply that just arrived from the manufacturer. I know that almost everyone will want one of these, and we will ship them out starting tomorrow on a first-come, first-served basis.

Get yours right here: http://store.naturalnews.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=316_320_325

By the way, we also have a 220-volt version available for our friends outside the USA. See the above page for details (it's one of the juicers in the list).

Why I've switched to the Hurom Slow Juicer
I have completely converted my kitchen to the Hurom Slow Juicer. I previously used the Breville centrifugal juicer, and I still highly recommend that machine. Breville is a very high-quality manufacturer of outstanding machines. I still love my Breville!

But this Hurom Slow Juicer takes juice to a whole new level. It's as fast and easy as using the Breville, but it's quieter, it produces more juice, with less foam, and it's actually less expensive than the high-end Breville juicer that I've been recommending (the Juice Fountain Elite).

There are two disadvantages to the Hurom Slow Juicer vs. the Breville, however: The Hurom juicer has a smaller feed chute so you may need to slice fruits and vegetables into smaller pieces before feeding them in. The other disadvantage is that the Hurom juicer isn't made of stainless steel, whereas the Breville Juice Fountain Elite has mostly stainless steel parts (it's a really solid machine).

Despite these two disadvantages, I still prefer the Hurom because it makes BETTER juice, and it makes MORE juice! And that's the bottom line for me: I want to get the most juice out of the produce I'm juicing, and I want the nutritional quality of the juice to be at its maximum.

Join me in juicing with the new Hurom Slow Juicer. You can pick one up right now at the NaturalNews Store - click HERE.

Remember: We're offering this at the lowest price you'll see advertised anywhere, and it comes with FREE shipping in the continental 48 states. Our satisfaction guarantee makes your purchase completely risk-free, and every Hurom juicer is covered by a two-year warranty (plus a ten-year warranty on the motor).

Enjoy juicing with the Hurom!

February 09, 2010 03:53 AM

(NaturalNews) In late January, the New York Times published a startling and groundbreaking series of reports by investigative reporter Walt Bogdanich who has uncovered case after case of people who suffered devastating consequences -- including horrendously painful, torture-like deaths -- because of medical mistakes related to radiation treatment. In response to these articles, the American Association of Physicists in Medicine (AAPM) just issued a statement saying the group and its members "deeply regret that these events have occurred, and we continue to work hard to reduce the likelihood of similar events in the future."

Nowhere in the statement does the AAPM acknowledge specifically what events they are talking about -- and they do not even mention the almost incomprehensible human suffering connected to these unnamed "events". Instead, the AAPM is clearly most interested in pacifying the public so they won't be worried about the dangers associated with medical radiation.

As the statement puts it, the AAPM "seeks to reassure the public on the safety of radiation therapy, which is safely and effectively used to treat hundreds of thousands of people with cancer and other diseases every year in the United States. Medical physicists in hospitals and clinics across the United States are board-certified professionals who play a key role in assuring quality during these treatments."

That reassurance is likely to mean little to the friends and relatives of people killed by medical radiation. No doubt, these patients were assured before their treatment began that their radiation was state-of-the-art western medicine, delivered by highly trained medical professionals.

Horrifying deaths caused by "medical" radiation
For example, Bogdanich reported on the heartbreaking tale of Scott Jerome-Parks who was literally irradiated to death. While he was being treated for tongue cancer, staff in a New York City hospital didn't notice a computer error was directing a linear accelerator to zap Jerome-Parks' brain stem and neck with off-target beams of high-dose radiation on three consecutive days.

He was left deaf, almost blind, burned, and unable to swallow. His teeth fell out among the ulcers lacing his mouth and throat. He died, in excruciating pain, weeks after his radiation "treatment" at the age of 43.

The very day a warning was issued to other hospitals to be more careful with radiation, Bogdanich pointed out in his report, at the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn a 32-year-old woman with breast cancer was subjected to a huge radiation overdose -- three times the prescribed amount. And it didn't stop there. This intense irradiation of her body went on for 27 days until it burned a hideous, open hole into her chest. The young mother of two young children suffered horrendous pain and then died a month after Jerome-Parks.

Unfortunately, anyone who is assured by the AAPM's public relations statement about the intrinsic safety of medical radiation is simply not well informed. One worrisome concern is the fact Americans are being exposed to cancer-causing radiation in huge numbers -- the average lifetime dose of diagnostic radiation Americans receive has gone up 600 percent in the last three decades (http://www.naturalnews.com/025767_cancer_NaturalNews_X-rays.html). In addition, when safety rules are overlooked or the incredibly complex and high powered 21st century radiation devices have a glitch, the consequences clearly can be disastrous.

And while the AAPM may want patients to think mistakes involving medical radiation are so rare as to be nothing to worry about, the fact is more and more of these tragedies have been reported over the past few years. For example, NaturalNews has previously reported on the death of a teenager who received a massive overdose of radiation (http://www.naturalnews.com/020824_cancer_cancer_treatments_oncology.html) and how patients receiving CT brain scans at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles unknowingly received large overdoses of radiation over a course of 18 months (http://www.naturalnews.com/027541_radiation_medical_imaging.html). For more information: http://www.naturalnews.com/radiation_treatment.html http://www.aapm.org/publicgeneral/QualityRadiationTherapy.asp

February 09, 2010 03:53 AM

(NaturalNews) While doctors are prescribing expensive drugs that can have devastating side effects to slow the progress of Alzheimer`s, new research shows it might be possible to prevent the onset of this cruel disease by something as simple, inexpensive, and safe as a dose of marine oil every day during our younger years.

In the US, as many as 5.3 million people live with Alzheimer`s. That number is predicted to double every 20 years.1 The latest medical thinking is that the escalating rate of Alzheimer`s disease has its roots in chronic inflammation that`s a result of the modern diet deficient in omega 3 fatty acids.

The first symptoms of Alzheimer`s generally appear after age 60. Such symptoms include memory problems, loss of motor control, and problems with one`s sense of smell. But according to the National Institute on Aging, the damage that eventually turns into Alzheimer`s disease can begin to occur 20 years before the first symptoms appear. It makes sense, therefore, to do whatever one can to prevent the process from beginning. The good news is that a substance found in nature could offer the best new hope for prevention.

While some people have drawn a genetic short straw that predisposes them to develop Alzheimer`s disease, the latest medical research has identified chronic inflammation as the first stage in the process. For example, one team of researchers found that people whose blood carried the markers for inflammation, called cytokines, were more likely to go on to develop Alzheimer`s disease than test subjects without cytokines.2

Discovery of the link between inflammation and Alzheimer`s has led to research on the potential for anti-inflammatories to prevent the onset of the disease. In one study, a team of researchers tested a synthetic anti-inflammatory drug for the prevention of Alzheimer`s disease. They found that the anti-inflammatory drug "appeared to protect mild to moderately impaired Alzheimer`s disease patients from the degree of cognitive decline exhibited by a well-matched placebo-treated group."3

While synthetic prescription anti-inflammatories may be beneficial as an Alzheimer`s preventative, the side effects of their long-term use can be serious. Consequently, doctors have been looking for safer options for their Alzheimer`s patients. One way to address chronic inflammation is by adding therapeutic omega 3 fatty acids to the diet. Eating more omega 3 rich cold-water fish such as salmon and tuna is helpful, but a better way to boost omega 3 levels is by taking a dietary supplement.

The best sources of omega 3 are marine oils, usually sold as fish oil capsules derived from salmon. The most potent omega 3 marine oil found to date is derived from the green-lipped mussel of New Zealand. At the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Brisbane, Australia, Dr. Michael Whitehouse PhD compared stabilized mussel oil with other anti-inflammatory agents, which included several prescription medications. At a dose of 5mg per kilogram of body weight, the stabilized mussel oil was found to be 97 percent effective in reducing inflammation, and 350 times more potent than salmon oil as a source of omega 3. Dr. Whitehouse concluded that the mussel oil was clearly a superior medicinal compound, because it achieved the desired result without the side effects that accompanied synthetic anti-inflammatories.

Since inflammation has been shown to be a culprit behind a great many conditions--from heart disease and arthritis to asthma and Alzheimer`s--it makes sense to get more omega 3 into one`s diet. High-potency marine oil, such as that derived from the New Zealand green-lipped mussel, may be the answer.

* * * * * SOURCES: 1 2009 statistics from the Alzheimer`s Association. 2 Zaldy S. Tan MD, Journal of the American Academy of Neurology, May 29, 2007. 3 Roberts L.J. et al. Neurology, 1993; 43:1609.



About the author
Carl D. Thompson has spent most of his 34-year career as a journalist writing about health and medical matters. He has a particular interest in low-risk natural alternatives to synthetic drugs. His new book is "Inflammation: What Drug Companies Do not Want You to Know," which is available as a free e-book at www.urgenthealthnews.com.

February 09, 2010 03:53 AM

We are having an online garage sale. We will continue to add items as we go, so subscribe to the page if you would like to be notified when stuff changes. This page will likely remain a permanent fixture on our site, unless of course we no longer need to get rid of anything (ha ha!).

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February 08, 2010 11:39 PM

One of my favorite raw food stories comes from former truck driver Jeramaya. You can listen to it below. For more raw food diet testimonials, click here.

February 08, 2010 10:16 PM

Today we hear a long-lost lecture that the Sixties' philosopher, Alan Watts, gave in which he speaks in favor of the use of LSD. Among some of his comments are, "LSD is simply an exploratory instrument, like a microscope or a telescope, except this one's inside you instead of outside you. And according to your capacity and knowledge, you can use a microscope or a telescope to advantage. So in the same way, according to your capacity and your knowledge you can use an interior instrument to your advantage ... or just for kicks!" Also, I shamelessly promote the rock band The Soft Pack, which you can hear at www (dot) MySpace (dot) com (slash) thesoftpack

February 08, 2010 09:47 PM

First off -- tongue clicking to "see" while biking:



The amazing Daniel Kish.



Water maybe the single most malleable computer -- Professor emeritus Rustom Roy.

Holding water in silver vessels is the best antibacterial healing agent.



Love increases the energy levels of water while aggressive emotions decreases the energy levels of water -- as per the research by Russian scientists.

"Structurized" water increases the photo emission of plants and causes better, faster plant growth and less water is needed.

"Devitalized" water steals and sucks out energy from the humans near the water -- such devitalized water is from turning 90 degree square angles over long distances. The water is "almost dead" by the time it enters our bodies --



And as an added bonus:

February 08, 2010 09:30 PM

The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking presents Beth Noveck on “Transparent Government” Thursday March 4, 02010 at 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater in San Francisco Long Now Members can reserve 2 seats, join today! or you can purchase tickets for $10 each. About this Seminar: President Obama’s first executive action was the Open Government Memorandum calling for [...]

February 08, 2010 08:18 PM

Constructivist Study - Steve Mason &#038; Portrait - Chris Scarborough Microblogged: recent selected tweets from my Twitter stream. Note: Some tweets have additional descriptions, overriding their original 140 character limit. Lightning Fields - The dendritic aesthetics of electrical discharges on photographic dry plates - Hiroshi Sugimoto. Atlaseobscura reports on the Morning Glory Pool, a natural wonder [...]

February 08, 2010 05:11 PM

by Psi Wavefunction

The complex structure of flagellates. EM section through
a mature flagellate Tetramitus. K1 = kinetosome. Cm =
cytostomal canal. FV = food vacuole. Rz = rhizoplast.
Source.

By default, a membrane-bound entity like a cell should be a spherical, formless blob. However, most cells are not such formless blobs, but rather have adopted one or more forms from a vast repertory of stunningly complex morphologies. To wit, see (and admire) the radiolarians, metazoan neurons, giant parabasalians or the endlessly weird and sophisticated ciliates. Even prokaryotes have a highly complex cellular structure, and are not, as some biochemists are prone to think, mere bags of enzymes. The deeper you venture into the realm of cellular diversity, the more awe-inspiring becomes the cornucopia of cellular structural and morphological variety. Luckily, there is some order to it as there are two fundamental 'genres' of cellular morphology, at least in the protists: flagellates and amoebae. Of course, there are also cysts, but since those are mostly resting stages (being a round ball isn't particularly helpful while feeding or fleeing from predators...) they can be ignored for now.

Cell shape depends on the cytoskeleton. As you know, its two main component systems are actin and tubulin, ignoring the plethora of miscellaneous proteins that are used for various structural jobs. Tubulin makes microtubules, the spindle fibers of mitosis, but is also important for the flagellar apparatus (we've yet to find one composed of actin and probably for good reasons). You also know that actin is a key player in cell motility and morphology in animal systems. It is also heavily involved in endomembrane trafficking within a cell, as well as endo- and exocytosis. If interested, a recent issue of Science has a nice overview of actin in morphogenesis and cell movement.

The role of the cytoskeleton in morphogenesis is much less clearly defined. It depends largely on the species. Plants, for example, rely very heavily on tubulin for morphology, with actin being a minor player. Amoeboid cells are primarily actin-based. In fact, amoeboid cells resort to tubulin largely for spindle formation during mitosis. They hate tubulin about as much as plants hate actin. Actin-based cells don't have to be amorphous; they are still able to achieve complex morphologies. But there is a positive correlation between amoeboid-ness and actin-ness ('actinity'?).

In contrast, flagellates are primarily tubulin-based. Of course, they still use actin for some intracellular work, but the shape depends largely on the whims of their microtubules. Perhaps not relying much on flagella allows the amoeboids to dispense with the microtubule organization pathways, thereby switching to actin. Flagellates, relying heavily on intact tubulin systems, may be less prone to losing their structure. Also, if you're a flagellate, you need shape for a modicum of streamlining. Try swimming around as a formless or floppy blob of some sort! Keep in mind that life at that scale is very different. Viscosity calls the shots when considering unicellular motility. Perhaps being hydrodynamic isn't even as important as simply retaining shape. Otherwise you'd be like a blob of molasses trying to swim through a sea of maple syrup. Not gonna get very far.

Whatever the reason, amoeboid cells tend to have a predominantly actin-based cytoskeleton, flagellates have a penchant for tubulin. Of course, not all organisms are decisive enough to make this commitment, so we've got amoeboflagellates in the middle.

Plenty of other organisms fancy transitioning between being more amoeboid or more flagellate. But few cells actually dispense with flagella and basal bodies altogether, to form them anew when special conditions arise. It's time to introduce one that does.

Naegleria and Tetramitus: Heteroloboseans with 'split morphology disorder'

Meet Naegleria, a Heterolobosean, famous to medical biologists as a brain-eating opportunist, and to actual biologists as the master of de novo flagellar creation.

Naegleria gruberi. Source.

And before someone accuses me of focusing on biomedically relevant organisms, Tetramitus, another Heterolobosean, does it too, and has more flagella to oogle at.

Dramatic transformation of Tetramitus between amoeboid and flagellate forms. Source.

The nice picture of the Tetramitus flagellate form at the beginning of this post reveals its marvelous complexity. Keep in mind this thing was a 'formless' amoeba a few hours before. Quite a complex structure to be formed within a 4 hour period! Note that while the organelles seem to position themselves freely in amoeboid cells, they become substantially more fixed in the flagellate form. This one even has subpellicular microtubule bundles, a cytostome, and the oral groove characteristic of its 'kingdom,' the Excavata.

Of Naegleria's culinary indulgences

Because of Naegleria's pesky habit to occasionally get into human brains and eat them (oops!), it gets a lot more research attention (which, in the world of Heterolobosean biology, doesn't really mean very much). It should be noted that while there are some waves of Naegleraphobia out there, incidences of human infection are very very VERY rare (small handful of cases a year; some years without any cases whatsoever). Unfortunately, it is almost universally fatal, but so are more ubiquitous diseases. But that's enough excuse for the media to put up a scary article on Naegleria every once in a blue moon, often accompanied by an image of Amoeba proteus or Chaos spp. Hey, at least they're still eukaryotes!

Before we continue on with our hard core cell biology, let's clarify that Naegleria is not a parasite, but rather an opportunist that seems to not mind the 37 °C heat of the human body. It gets into the human brain through the nose, generally from swimming in warm water. Once inside, it devours the brain, inadvertently killing its ‘host, but it does not require transmission to another host to live on. So Naegleria's gastronomic inclinations may well just be an accident, albeit a rather costly one to the few humans it infects.

Amoeboid to flagellate transformation

Summary of Naegleria's life cycle based on C. Fulton in
Methods in Cell Physiology, Vol. 4

. 1970. (Don't pay any
attention to the portrayal of the flagellar root apparatus.)

Our exploration of Naegleria's life cycle begins with its dominant life stage, the eating and mitotically-able amoeboid form. Interestingly, mitosis happens without basal bodies (like it does in land plants and diatoms). The addition of water induces the flagellate form, which is capable of feeding via its elaborate oral groove and cytostome, but not dividing. While an amoeboid shape is optimised for a benthic environment (crawling on surfaces), excessively fluid environments favour the swimming flagellate. The third life stage is a resting cyst, which it forms and hibernates in when times are bad (e.g., drought). There seems to be no mention of a sexual life cycle, most likely due to this group being so understudied. (Each year brings us more and more evidence of sex in organisms previously thought to be asexual, with accumulating evidence suggesting sex is a shared eukaryotic feature.) Naegleria's life cycle conveniently involves all three fundamental cell types, which is why it's such a wonderful system for studying the transformations between them (and cellular differentiation.)

The transitions between the principal cell morphologies involve the regulation of actin and tubulin monomer levels: that is, the amount and concentration of the 'building blocks' for each cytoskeletal system. In fact, the reason many organisms encyst for mitosis (or at least reduce their flagellar length) is to redirect tubulin from the cytoskeleton and flagellum to form the mitotic spindle. Otherwise, you'd have to synthesise a bunch of new tubulin that would soon become useless. If you look at some images of Naegleria amoebae undergoing mitosis, you'll see that the cells are much rounder than normal.

There's probably also a regulation of the actin- and microtubule-associated proteins involved in cytoskeletal organization for each system (and the interactions between them), but that doesn't seem to have been studied at all in Naegleria. Simply synthesising tubulin is insufficient for any semblance of a well-organised cytoskeleton; auxiliary proteins are required to regulate the distinctly non-random morphology of a flagellate.

Changes in the actin and microtubule cytoskeleton as amoebae
differentiate into flagellates. Immunostaining of the cytoskeleton:
red = anti-actin; green = anti-α–tubulin; yellow = co-localisation
of anti-actin and anti-α-tubulin. Time: 0 to 120 minutes. Bar: 10 µm.
Note that these are different cells, as they had to be fixed (killed)
for immunostaining. I would love to see a live cell timelapse of this
process! Note how the flagellate morphology is 'molded' by the
longitudinal microtubule bundles. Source.

The Naegleria system could be fruitful for isolating microtubule-associated proteins and other microtubule regulators (e.g., via microarray chips). Considering the cytoskeleton is the most exciting cell structure (fact), cell biologists should stop neglecting Heteroloboseans. We do know that the commitment to flagellation involves a rapid increase of tubulin production, since the amoeboid form has barely any of it.

Naegleria takes ~120 min at 25 °C to transition from an amoeba to a flagellate. The earliest event in this process is the initiation of tubulin synthesis, followed by basal body assembly 30 min later. Cells round up as actin filaments depolymerise, and basal bodies begin to sprout flagella at about the one hour mark. In another 20 min, the tubulin cytoskeleton is molded into the proper flagellar body shape, with flagella reaching full length at ~110-120 min.

Doesn't look like Naegleria has had its genome sequenced yet, although ESTs and a draft for N. gruberi are underway. Of course, the other heteroloboseans are being thoroughly neglected. And yet we may be about to sequence ten thousand vertebrate genomes.

Hopefully I've convinced you at least that Naegleria would make an interesting model for studying cell differentiation and transitions in morphology, as well as cytoskeletal dynamics. While the field is still miniscule—at least its non-clinical component—some work is being done right now on the regulation of cytoskeletal development in Naegleria (such as this paper on the localisation of microtubule-related mRNAs), but not as much as you'd expect. I'm not aware of any other system that involves such a complete transition between three fundamental cell types. For studies of morphology, what more can you ask for?

Note: For a list of research papers drawn upon, click here.

Yana, aka Psi Wavefunction, is an undergraduate in the Department of Botany, University of British Columbia, and the host of the blog Skeptic Wonder: Protists, Memes and Random Musings. Her original post on Naegleria presented on her own blog was adapted, with her permission, for publication here.

February 08, 2010 04:30 PM

The following is excerpted from In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction (North Atlantic Books 2010)

read more

February 08, 2010 03:07 PM

This show is being released on Monday, February 08, 2010. My interview with George Clayton Johnson was recorded on January 08, 2010. What do Merlin the Magician, Twilight Zone, Star Trek, Kung Fu, Ocean's 11, Logan's Run and hemp have in common? Today's guest, and we'll be traveling with him to the realm between science and superstition that lies across the oceans, through the stars and into the Twilight Zone. I've known George Clayton Johnson for about 17 years. And George hardly looks like he's changed a bit in all of those years, probably because he's been out kicking the can. Next times you hear children playing kick the can outside, you can bet that one of them is George Clayton Johnson. In my early twenties George was the man that not only inspired me to become a writer, but literally taught me how to observe. George is the author of Ocean's 11, the first episode of Star Trek, eight episodes of the Twilight Zone, the TV series Kung Fu, and the movie Logan's Run. We met up for lunch at a cafe out in the Los Angeles area last month to sit down for an interview to discuss his life as one of the world's most famous science fiction writers.

February 08, 2010 09:19 AM

(NaturalNews) In a gathering of vitamin D researchers recently held in Toronto, Dr. Cedric Garland delivered a blockbuster announcement: Breast cancer can be virtually "eradicated" by raising vitamin D levels.

Vitamin D is "the cure" for breast cancer that the cancer industry ridiculously claims to be searching for. The cure already exists! But the breast cancer industry simply refuses to acknowledge any "cure" that doesn't involve mammography, chemotherapy or high-profit pharmaceuticals.

Vitamin D is finally gaining some of the recognition it deserves as a miraculous anti-cancer nutrient. It is the solution for cancer prevention. It could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year in the U.S. alone. Even Dr. Andrew Weil recently raised his recommendation of vitamin D to 2,000 IU per day.

This is the vitamin that could destroy the cancer industry and save millions of women from the degrading, harmful cancer "treatments" pushed by conventional medicine. No wonder they don't want to talk about it! The cancer industry would prefer to keep women ignorant about this vitamin that could save their breasts and their lives.

Below I'm reprinting the full statement from Dr. Cedric Garland following the Vitamin D conference recently held in Toronto.

Statement from Dr. Cedric Garland
Breast cancer is a disease so directly related to vitamin D deficiency that a woman's risk of contracting the disease can be 'virtually eradicated' by elevating her vitamin D status to what vitamin D scientists consider to be natural blood levels.

That's the message vitamin D pioneer Dr. Cedric Garland delivered in Toronto Tuesday as part of the University of Toronto School of Medicine's "Diagnosis and Treatment of Vitamin D Deficiency" conference - the largest gathering of vitamin D researchers in North America this year. More than 170 researchers, public health officials and health practitioners gathered at the UT Faculty club for the landmark event.

Garland's presentation headlined a conference that reviewed many aspects of the emerging vitamin D research field - a booming discipline that has seen more than 3,000 academic papers this calendar year alone, conference organizers said. That makes vitamin D by far the most prolific topic in medicine this year, with work connecting it with risk reduction in two dozen forms of cancer, heart disease, multiple scleroses and many other disorders.

Dr. Reinhold Vieth, Associate Professor in the Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathobiology at University of Toronto, and Director of the Bone and Mineral Laboratory at Mount Sinai Hospital, organized the event in conjunction with Grassroots Health - an international vitamin D advocacy group founded by breast cancer survivor Carole Baggerly.

Baggerly implored the research group to take action and encourage Canadians to learn more about vitamin D and to raise their vitamin D levels.

An estimated 22,700 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in 2009, according to the Canadian Cancer Society's latest figures.

As much as 97 percent of Canadians are vitamin D deficient at some point in the year, according to University of Calgary research - largely due to Canada's northerly latitudes and weak sun exposure. Sunshine is by far the most abundant source of vitamin D - called 'The Sunshine Vitamin' - with salmon and fortified milk being other sources. Vitamin D supplementation helps raise levels for many as well.

Grassroots Health's "D-action" panel - 30 of the world's leading researchers on vitamin D and many other vitamin D supporters - recommend 2,000 IU of vitamin D daily and vitamin D blood levels of 100-150 nanomoles-per-liter as measured by a vitamin D blood test.

Vieth pointed out that natural vitamin D levels of mammals who live outdoors in sunny climates is higher than that - up to 200 nanomoles-per liter. And Garland, whose presentation was entitled "Breast Cancer as a Vitamin D Deficiency Disease" presented data showing that raising one's vitamin D status near those levels decreased breast cancer risk more than 77 percent.

'The Sunshine Vitamin' was once thought of only for bone health, helping the body process calcium. But more recent work has shown that all cells in the body have "vitamin D receptors" which help control normal cell growth. Additionally, Garland presented new evidence that low vitamin D status compromises the integrity of calcium-based cellular bonding within tissues, which when eroded allow rogue cancer cells to spread more readily.

Grassroots Health is trying to raise vitamin D awareness among Canadians. Despite epidemic-level vitamin D deficiency in Canada, fewer than nine per cent of Canadians have ever had their vitamin D levels checked by a professional and most who have do not know their vitamin D blood level.

February 08, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Taking a high daily dose of vitamin D during pregnancy can significantly reduce a woman's risk of giving birth prematurely, according to a study conducted by researchers from the Medical University of Charleston, South Carolina, and funded by the National Institutes of Health.

"I'm telling every pregnant mother I see to take 4,000 IUs and every nursing mother to take 6,400 IUs of vitamin D a day," said researcher Bruce Hollis. "I think it is medical malpractice for obstetricians not to know what the vitamin D level of their patients is. This study will put them on notice."

Pregnant women in the United Kingdom and the United States are currently advised to take 400 IU of vitamin D per day.

In the first experimental (rather than observational) study into the effect of vitamin D supplementation on the risk of premature birth, researchers assigned 600 pregnant women living in the Charleston area to take either 400 IU or 4,000 IU per day of vitamin D. Levels of vitamin D and calcium in the women's blood and urine were tested once per month to ensure participant safety. The study included roughly equal numbers of white, black and Hispanic participants.

At both 32 and 37 weeks, the rate of premature birth in the 4,000 IU group was half that of the 400 IU group. Significantly fewer "small for date" babies were also delivered to the 4,000 IU group.

In addition, women receiving more vitamin D were less likely to suffer from respiratory, vaginal, gum or other infections. They were 30 percent less likely to suffer from "core morbidities" of pregnancy, such as diabetes, hypertension and pre-eclampsia. Babies born to women in the high vitamin D group had lower rates of colds and eczema than babies in the other group.

There were no adverse effects observed from either vitamin D dose.

Sources for this story include: www.timesonline.co.uk.

February 08, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Continuing our 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days, today we focus on not doing something. In particular, I'm talking about not eating for 24 hours.

It sounds simple in theory, of course: Refrain from eating anything (or drinking any beverages other than water) for 24 hours. Your body has plenty of calories stored to carry you through those 24 hours, and the pause from digestion will give your body a chance to focus its healing energies on other parts of your body.

Note: Be sure to check with your naturopathic physician about the safety of fasting. While fasting is safe for most people, it's not for everyone. People in a weak state of health or those suffering from diabetes should take special precautions to make sure fasting is safe for them.

Why fasting?
Fasting has been used from Biblical times through the modern world to help purify and heal the body. It can help detox your liver, kidneys and digestive tract. It also encourages you to rethink your eating habits. When you fast for just 24 hours, and you're really committed to it, you'll be shocked to discover how many times you habitually reach for food.

People habitually reach for food in all sorts of circumstances that have nothing to do with actual hunger:

• When they're bored... • When they feel emotionally stressed... • When they watch television or movies... • When they're traveling in their car... • When other people are eating around them... • At social events, parties or gatherings...

Try fasting for 24 hours and you'll see for yourself just how many times you habitually reach for food.

This will teach you many important things about your own eating habits, and that's the point of this exercise. Just pick a day -- preferably a weekend when nothing big is going on -- and fast for 24 hours, drinking nothing but water.

In accomplishing this, you will realize three very important things:

1) You didn't die from starvation in 24 hours. In fact, most people have enough spare calories to go 30 days or more without eating.

2) You found the self-discipline to achieve 24 hours without eating. This is a milestone accomplishment in self control.

3) You learned to observe yourself and recognize the numerous situations in which you habitually reach for food. This can be extremely educational in helping you reform your eating habits in the future.

On top of all that, of course, you gave your digestive system a break and encouraged more rapid healing throughout your body. You may notice some detox effects (like bad breath) or a difference in your energy levels. This is all a normal part of the fasting process, and it indicates your fasting is working!

My own fasting experience
I recently fasted for 90 hours, then I had food for 24 hours followed by another 48-hour fast. The experience was quite enlightening. I had virtually no negative side effects, most likely due to the fact that I consume a very cleansing, healthy diet on a day-to-day basis. Typically, the worse your diet, the more detox side effects you may experience when fasting.

If you want to make your fasting more tolerable and more cleansing, you also have the option of drinking an 8-oz. glass of fresh vegetable juice in the middle of your fast. I did this during my fast, and it not only gave me more energy to make it through the fast; it also greatly enhanced the cleansing effects of my fast. I further enhance my own fasts with products from Ed Group's company, Global Healing Center (www.GHChealth.com). I especially like the Oxy Powder and Paratrex products. I take them with every fast.

Naturally, the choice is yours on how to approach this. You also have complete freedom to decide WHEN you want to do this. It doesn't have to happen on Superbowl Weekend. Pick a nice, easy Saturday or Sunday when you don't have anything big going on, and make that day your 24-hour fast. You'll feel better for it, and you will have achieved an important new milestone in your journey toward improved health.

Once you fast for just 24 hours, you'll then know that you can choose to avoid food at any particular time you want. You will discover new flexibility in your food consumption. You'll realize that you can say no to food any time you choose, and you won't die from lack of calories. You'll eliminate that fear and gain a new level of maturity in your relationship to food.

What to do if your fast fails
If you can't make it 24 hours without feeling like you're going to pass out and die, you probably have some rather serious blood sugar imbalances. These can be caused by poor food choice on a day-to-day basis, or even by prescription drugs such as antipsychotics or SSRIs (which imbalance blood sugar metabolism).

So if your fast fails, don't fret. Simply take the next 30 days to improve your eating habits, making them healthier and supported with more fresh food rather than processed food. Work to get safely off all prescription drugs (with the help of your naturopathic physician, of course). Drink more superfoods and fresh juices. Then 30 days later, try the 24-hour fast again and see if you can make it through the entire thing.

If you ever feel extremely weak, ill or you think you might pass out, that's a sign to stop the fast and get some calories. This isn't some sort of "no pain no gain" situation. Fasting should be tolerable and not dangerous. Again, the healthier your diet to start with, the easier your fast will typically be.

I have a friend who fasts for 24 hours each week, every week. He's extremely healthy and looks fit and trim well into his 50's. Other people I know (like David Rainoshek) go on 90-day juice fasts / feasts where they drink nothing but fresh living vegetable juice for 90 days.

Personally, I feel really good on a 72-hour fast, and a 48-hour fast is relatively straightforward because I can do it over the weekend. A 24-hour fast is now a no-brainer.

A few years ago, I never could have even entertained the idea of not eating for 24 hours. The thought would have terrified me. If you're in that camp right now, stop to consider what this means: You are a slave to food, just as I was!

Fasting helps free your mind from the enslavement of thinking you have to eat every few hours. It gives you new options, new freedoms and new self discipline. It's about much more than simply not eating food for 24 hours; it's also about self observation and spiritual mindfulness. Why do you think nearly all the great spiritual figures throughout world history fasted as part of their spiritual practice? They did that because too much food messes with your head while fasting clears your head.

Fasting gives you the opportunity to clear the food-induced cobwebs and see things with improved clarity. Now, just as a disclaimer here, please know that you're not going to see God after just a 24-hour fast. When spiritual leaders fast, they often fast for weeks at a time. Some go as far as 40 days. Some "breatharians" claim not to eat food at all, ever! But those are more advanced topics for another day.

For today, just focus on picking a day where you fast for 24 hours and observe the changes in your own mind and body. You'll be a wiser, healthier and more enlightened person for doing so.

Previous articles in this 15-day "Heal Yourself" series
Part One - Remove barriers to healing http://www.naturalnews.com/028053_self_healing_quality_of_life.html

Part Two - Unleash your inner healing potential http://www.naturalnews.com/028060_self_healing_immune_system.html

Part Three - You are what you absorb http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_self_healing_digestion.html

Part Four - Transform your health by making new blood http://www.naturalnews.com/028075_blood_health_transformation.html

Part Five - Experience the healing potential of living plant juices http://www.naturalnews.com/028100_self_healing_fresh_juice.html

February 08, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Elderly dementia patients are being subjected to "scandalous abuse" by being drugged with dangerous antipsychotic drugs, according to a letter by ten influential health organizations, published in The Daily Telegraph.

"[One hundred thousand] people with dementia in care homes are being inappropriately prescribed a damaging chemical cosh of antipsychotic drugs and new research suggests that there is a significant problem in hospitals too," the letter reads. "Antipsychotics should only ever be a last resort. This over prescription is abuse and it must stop. ... We cannot stand by while this scandalous abuse of vulnerable citizens continues."

Although antipsychotic drugs are intended for people with medical conditions such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and are not approved for the treatment of dementia, studies show that nursing homes and hospitals regularly prescribe them to these patients as sedatives, in order to make them easier for doctors and nurses to handle.

Research has shown, however, that antipsychotic drugs can double a patient's risk of death if used for three years. Another study found that dementia patients are three times more likely to suffer a stroke if given antipsychotic drugs.

A 2008 report by British Minister of Parliament Paul Burstow concluded that 23,500 dementia patients are being killed every year by inappropriate prescription of antipsychotics in nursing homes. However, a recent survey by the Alzheimer's Society marks the first time that researchers have looked into the prevalence of the problem in hospitals.

The trust found that three-quarters of nurses surveyed said they had seen antipsychotics used to sedate dementia patients, while one-quarter said they had seen the drugs used inappropriately.

"The massive over prescription of antipsychotics to people with dementia is an abuse of human rights, causing serious side effects and increasing risk of death," said Neil Hunt of the Alzheimer's Society. "The government must take action to ensure that these drugs are only ever used as a last resort."

"While the Department of Health prevaricates, thousands of people are being put at risk through the misuse of antipsychotics," said Rebecca Wood of the Alzheimer's Research Trust.

Sources for this story include: www.telegraph.co.uk.

February 08, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) For several years, The Institute for Responsible Technology has predicted that the US would soon experience a tipping point of consumer rejection against genetically modified foods. Now, in a December article in "Supermarket News", that prediction is supported and the non-GMO consciousness uprising is gaining momentum.

Besides the Institute`s new non-GMO website and non-GMO shopping guide, which was disclosed in a previous article, another Non-GMO project is being launched. The project would offer the country`s first consensus-based guidelines to include third-party certification and a uniform seal for approved products. The organization would also require documented traceability and segregation to ensure the tested ingredients are what go into the final product.

The "Supermarket News" article alerts supermarket executives to the fact that the growth of organic, local, and green product categories reflects a generation of consumers that could be less tolerant of genetic modification.

In the past, health culprits like fats, refined carbs, salt and sugar were addressed, in that food companies offered options with, without, or with low levels of them. Now, the GMOs are coming to light. These executives are becoming aware that GMOs do not offer a single consumer benefit. They are finally learning that the five major GMOs, soy, corn, cottonseed, canola, and sugar beets, which are gene spliced to tolerate or produce poisonous insecticides, offer the consumer nothing. They are also learning that companies can eliminate GMOs without having to change recipes.

When the major food companies notice even tiny losses in market share, their GMO clean out will be widespread. The large food companies will recognize that the same consumer trend that forced them to remove all GM ingredients in Europe and Japan is taking place in the US.

Right now, about 28 million Americans regularly buy organic and about 87 million are opposed to GM foods and believe they are unsafe. And, 159 million say they would avoid GMOs if they were labeled. Imagine what people would say if they all learned that Monsanto paid off our elected officials to not require labeling of GMOs. You see, they knew full well that no one would buy their GMO garbage if it were labeled as such.

In the past, the decade could be defined with regard to the "culprits". In the 80`s, it was fat; in the 90`s, it was carbs. Hopefully, we won`t need this whole decade to send GMOs packing. And, God willing, by this time next year, Monsanto, the largest GMO producer in the world, will not be a "happy camper".

Read labels. If soy (including soy lecithin), corn, cotton, canola and sugar do not say organic, do not buy it.

Aloha!

About the author
Hesh Goldstein: Vegetarian since 1975, vegan since 1990. Moderator of a weekly radio show in Honolulu called, "Health Talk" since 1981. Obtained a Master's degree in Nutrition, in 2007, to silence the so-called "doctors" that called in on my weekly radio show asking for my "credentials". At 70, I am in perfect health, have no illnesses, take no meds, play 4 on 4 half court hoops 2 hours a week, body surf, race walk, do various cardio and weight exercises and teach women's self defense classes based upon 30 years of Wing Chun training . To obtain a state of good health, if it had a face or a mother or if man made it, don't eat it. For more information: www.healthtalkhawaii.com Hesh is also the distributor of Organic Sulfur Crystals, an incredible healing nutrient. For more information on this go to his website and click on Products.

February 08, 2010 07:00 AM

Crash/retrievals are explored by UFO investigator Kevin D. Randle, author of “Crash: When UFOs Fall From the Sky: A History of Famous Incidents, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups.”

February 08, 2010 04:05 AM

Watch the trailer of this incredible raw food documentary and see how six people cured their diabetes in 30 days.

February 07, 2010 10:50 PM

Welcome to the new world of partying. The Chocolate Club is for chocolate lovers. Motto: "it's hip to be healthy and cool to be conscious." Every first Saturday of the months. Info and pics below.

February 07, 2010 09:56 PM

I am sorry to report that the Inquisition has decided to persecute the Internets biggest Ethnobotanical vendor and a retail herb store they supplied. On Feb 4th the FDA and local police raided Bouncing Bears Botanicals and arrested its owner Jonathan Sloan. Their main reason appears to be a smoking blend named K2 that is NOT even illegal yet, although the state of Kansas had a law in the works. This product presumably contains a LEGAL synthetic chemical substance that acts as a cannabinoid agonist like the more commonly known Spice which was proven to contain JWH-018 which is also NOT illegal. My assumption is that law enforcement agencies wanted to seize a bulk of the supply prior to the law passing so it did not find its way in to the black market. These tactics also are used to make an example out of the victims they bust in an attempt to scare of others involved.

The other charges are equally unjust. The Cacti and seeds in question have the same alkaloids as those commonly found at every Nursery including those at Home Depot & Walmart. Every Human and many other forms of life all contain DMT as did the Toads and plant material seized in this raid. Could his being targeted be due to the manner in which he offered these plants, his customer base being mainly the psychedelic community, his providing information and documentaries on how these plants are illegally used? Or was it simply because he was the biggest or his local authorities are most oppressive in the United States? It is believed that the retail store was targeted for organizing opposition against the bill to ban the ingredients in K2. If this is true, it is terrorism against civil rights.

The media is reporting that Bond was set at $150,000. However Jon's father claims it is set at one million dollars.

The current charges against Jon are:

• Unlawful manufacturing of controlled substances: Dimethlyltryptamine (DMT)

• Unlawful manufacturing of controlled substances: Mescaline

• Unlawful manufacturing of controlled substances: Lysergic Acid Amide

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Mescaline

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Dimethlyltryptamine; Chacruna; Illinois Bundleflower; Epena; Cebil Seeds.

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Bufotenine, Epena, Chaliponga, Cebil Seeds, Colorado River Toads.

• Unlawful cultivation or distribution of controlled substances: Lysergic Acid Amide, Morning Glory Seeds, Rivea Corymbosa.

• Unlawful possession of certain drug precursors and drug paraphernalia: Plastic jugs and filters used or intended for unlawful use to manufacture, cultivate, plant propagate, harvest, test, analyze or distribute a controlled substance.

Authorities may be possibly adding additional charges including drug smuggling. They seized more than $300,000 worth of product and more than $700,000 in cash from both Jon's business and personal bank accounts leaving him NEGATIVE $55,000 in the bank so that he can not hire a lawyer or post bond.

Please share this information with the entheogen / ethnobotanical community and any news as it becomes available. If you reside in Kansas protest and letter writing is defiantly in order. This truly is an injustice and I pray that this turns out as best as it possibly can.

Links:
County Attorney's Office - Press Release 
Local TV News Story
Lawrence Journal-World
Photos of the aftermath

*Update Feb 7, 2009 a message from Jon

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick note letting everyone know I am out and thanking everyone for the support they've been sending my way. I really appreciate it. I can't talk much about anything. I imagine everyone knows what my view of these ridiculous charges is already, though.

I am not allowed back in the building yet as part of my release agreement. I just now saw those pictures of my office and the warehose for the first time. And... I'd just like to say to all the people who have asked many times "Could your office be any messier?" now you know. Yes, it could.

For the people asking about donations, we have a defense fund set up already that my family has contributed to. I'm not exactly sure how it works and don't really feel right asking for donations. I've always prided myself on my independence, so it's a bit weird suddenly needing help and not being in control of my own life. I, at the very least, want to make sure if all the money isn't needed or we are able to get damages from the government, that contributors would be refunded.

My main concern is for my family. It's pretty F'd up when the government can seize the money from my 6-year-old-son's savings account to pay a drug tax for something his father hasn't even been convicted of yet (and isn't even illegal). Innocent until proven guilty? Land of the Free? Man.... This is all so insane..... I just don't want anything else to happen to them... Stopping the rant now. Probably already talked too much. Just wanted to say thanks to everyone.

Oh. All the products that weren't seized in the raid will still be shipping as normal and all orders should be caught up on Monday.

www.GaianBotanicals.com

February 07, 2010 02:31 PM

Over at abovetopsecret I was asked some good questions on a new "immortality" thread:

Good questions. I took classes from Chunyi Lin, a qigong master who works with the Mayo Clinic. He has a website http://springforestqigong.com with video testimonials from people he has healed of late term cancer, M.S., etc. So he transmits the shakti or shen energy -- it's biophoton laser energy. Then the main practice is called the "small universe" or "microcosmic orbit" and it's the focus of the book "Taoist Yoga: Alchemy and Immortality" translated by Charles Luk. So Chunyi Lin has a "level 1 sitting meditation" c.d. for the small universe practice which is the best exercise tool but I also used the book. The book states to eat NO SALT so it's very strict and there's many esoteric terms. You have to read the book several times to cross-correlate the terms in order to figure out the meaning relative to each other.

I got to about chapter 10 or so of that book in practice and I entered the "bigu" state which was the focus of an academic conference by chemist Professor Rustom Roy back around 2000, based on the students of Dr. Yan Xin, the most famous qigong master of China. When you enter "bigu" your belly gets really hot and then fills with electromagnetic fields so you are not hungry. So if you keep practicing then the electromagnetic fields get stronger and stronger.

So then as the middle of my brain got hot and filled with electromagnetic fields the top of my head pulsated with electromagnetic energy as did the center of my palms and the center of my feet. At this point there was an electrolysis of the atmosphere so that water was produced in my brain from the atmosphere, through the electromagnetic fields, and then the water flowed down from my brain, into my body. So I didn't need water.

I did go to work after 8 days on just half glass of water. I needed less sleep as the week went on and I told a coworker how I had not had any food and just half a glass of water for the past week. I was obviously fine and had high energy so she was very surprised. More so I had telepathy -- the electromagnetic fields shot out of the center of my brain and into the people around me and then my pineal gland would "transduce" the thoughts of the people around me back into my brain.

So then I went for lunch break and I thought I could eat this vegan soup with tofu but it had sea salt in it and it tasted like poison! That's when I realized that the spiritual state is really not conducive with the material realm of reality. Also I accidentally pulled this old lady's spirit out of the top of her skull -- she asked me for a healing. I didn't touch her but I accidentally pulled out her energy blockage from the top of her head which Chunyi Lin says you are not supposed to do. I forgot he said that and I didn't realize my power level. The old lady immediately bawled, crying nonstop for at least 15 minutes, even though I did not touch her and she could not see what I was doing. I felt this heavy electromagnetic blob get pulled out of top of her head, as I was standing to her side and she was sitting facing forward.

Also I healed my mom of a serious disease -- smoker's legs -- so she no longer needed surgical stockings, nor to keep her legs elevated, etc. But she could not believe that I had normal energy levels even though I had no food for over a week. So she just screamed and screamed at me to eat food and yelled that I was hallucinating. I later realized this was actually a spirit exorcism of her by me -- but I just ate a ton of food to get her to be quiet and then asked her if she still wanted a healing. But after that I drove home and I stopped practicing. When I sat in full lotus the room was spinning around me and this was the spacetime travel of entering nirvikalpa samadhi. So I realized that who I was neither was my body nor my mind -- and was beyond good and evil even. I was so disconnected to material reality that I destroyed my old journal and even threw out my meditation tape from Yan Xin -- which I had been using for my meditation as well.

Then I started researching my experience and I immediately found Master Nan, Huai-chin who is a professor and yoga master and best selling author in China. But his English books are now out of print but he cowrites now with his student Bill Bodri's http://meditationexpert.com so their book "Measuring Meditation" is excellent.

Now I just sit in full lotus as much as possible but I still can not eat normal food and I still do lots of healing. But I have to do it secretly and if I eat a special diet then people harass me. So I eat normal food but it causes me lots of problems since my pineal gland automatically transduces my lower body energy into electromagnetic energy which is shot out of my head, into people around me as healing energy.

So for immortality you have to shoot your electromagnetic pineal gland energy back into your lower body, instead of into other people. But since most people do not know how to create electromagnetic energy then they want and need your energy -- so you end up healing them, even though they do not understand and are in denial about where the energy comes from. So I just focus on sitting in full lotus since no one can fake that and it is obviously not a hallucination.

Chunyi Lin did his 49 day full lotus cave meditation with no food, no water and no sleep with Master Zhang who has this website:

http://www.qigongmaster.com

February 07, 2010 01:14 PM

Jason takes the podcast into more intimate realms while also looking at the Big Picture. Juxtaposing his childhood experiences growing up with his brother, Sebastian (author of Dandy in the Underworld) with the revelations of Dave McGowan&rsquo;s Programmed to Kill, the podcast looks at serial killers as military-programmed psychopaths, Project Phoenix, the creation of surrogate realities, the romanticizing of murder, the pedocracy and the power elite, the morphogenetic field of satanic ritual abuse, millennia-long "family" agendas and the non-human element, how serial killers are created by turning children into receptacles for the abusers&rsquo; unconscious loads, passing on the homicidal urge, and the everyday mechanics of mind control. This is not the usual &ldquo;Aeolus Kephas&rdquo; podcast and should be approached with caution.

February 07, 2010 04:38 AM

Well it has now been almost 6 months since I first posted about my change in fitness routine. After a little prodding from one of my readers, I thought it was probably a good time to post an update on how things are going. The goals of making those changes were as follows:

• To remove a dependency on big expensive equipment for keeping fit.
• To free-up a room in our home as a guest bedroom so that we would be better equipped to live-out another family value: hospitality.
• To be free to workout anywhere, any time, without having to pay expensive gym drop-in fees.
• To breath a little well-needed life into my boring fitness patterns.

The routine

For the last six months, my physical activity has consisted of a mixed-bag of Intu-flow, Clubbells, trail running, hiking, tennis, and walking. Being the mixed-bag that it is I wouldn't exactly call it a routine, but I am typically doing anywhere from 1 to 2 hours of activity a day (not counting weekends where we will hike 6 to 7 hours). That may sound like a lot, but that includes the lower impact things like walking to/from work, etc. The newest part of all of this has been the Intu-flow and Clubbells which have replaced the traditional strength training I had been doing in years past.

Intu-flow

In the last 6 months I have managed to progress from the beginner to the intermediate program. That is probably considered a very slow progression. The main reason it has taken me so long is that I do not practice it every day as is the recommended frequency (I know... I know... I can see the CST coaches shaking their heads in disgust). I typically practice Intu-flow about 4 times a week, directly before one of my Clubbell sessions. It is a really great warm-up and since I often do exercise first thing in the morning (and I am not a coffee drinker), I find it a great way to wake-up and get a start on my day. I really enjoy the DVD routines and look forward to progressing to the more difficult levels. This anticipation of progression is good for keeping me motivated.

I have found Intu-flow to have a visible benefit to my daily life. I spend my working hours sitting in front of a computer. Whenever I feel tension creeping into a specific part of my body (my neck, or shoulder, or hands) while at work I will quickly go through a few Intu-flow motions to help loosen things up. It really does work and seeing the benefits also helps in providing the motivation to do it regularly.

Clubbells

Clubbell training (actually, most CST training) is very different than anything else I have done. It is about learning and perfecting movement, not brute force repetition with increasingly heavier weights. It requires a different mindset than I am accustomed to, which is not necessarily bad, but wasn't what I expected. Or maybe I did expect it to a certain degree, but I hadn't experienced it before.

What makes it different? It is the progression from the simple to the complex. Kind of like yoga, or dance, or martial arts (none of which I have done much of before). You start with basic, simple movements and as you master those, you progress to more difficult and complex ones. As you master the movements more of your body is recruited in the process and eventually you get a full workout. But that isn't the case in the beginning. In the early stages, I actually found it kind of frustrating. I felt like a complete beginner, unable to do some of the most basic things. At the end of a workout I would feel unfulfilled because my muscles wanted to work but my motor skills weren't up to the task yet. Or my grip would give out way before the rest of my body began to feel it. Slowly, as my motor skills, grip strength, and balance improved the rest of my body was able to join-in. Before I got to that point, everything just felt kind of awkward.

I have been taking these slow, gradually building up my repetitions. The swinging motions of the Clubbells is great for keeping me loosened up and in shape for tennis. I am happy to say that my Clubbells give me one heck of a workout, and that I don't miss my traditional weights one bit. I have no doubt in their ability to scale the workout up as I progress and there are endless combinations to keep things interesting. Best of all, the entire sum of my workout equipment takes up about 1 square foot of closet space in our new guest bedroom.

Trail Running

Trail running went really well until it started to get cold and dark. The only time I can really run is first thing in the morning (at around 6:00 am). At that hour it is colder and darker (not to mention snowy-er on the trails) than I am motivated for. As a result, my running has taken a backburner to other activities until the spring. I still do run at least once a week barefoot on the the indoor track at work, typically on days when I am without a tennis partner.

I am at peace with running less. One thing that I am getting out of this is more of an appreciation for the cycles of life. It is my goal to be more in tune with the seasons and adjust my physical activity as the seasons change. I think that ultimately I will have more motivation over the long-term if I always have a change in season, and hence a change in routine to look forward too.

Hiking

Our weekly family hikes have changed with the season too. Due to the cold, snow, and ice, our mileage is greatly reduced. What is good about this is that we are able to revisit old trails from a new perspective. Trails which in the summer are too short or easy for us, are now challenging again. We are starting to push our boundaries little-by-little as we become more comfortable and experienced in the cold. There is lots to learn and new challenges to overcome in this season, but it has been a lot of fun.

One big bonus is that when the snow conditions are good, we can hike to the top of a mountain and sled right back down.

We are very much looking forward to our winter backpacking trip to the Camden Hills ski lodge in a couple of weeks. Stay tuned for future trip reports.

Tennis

I work at Bates College which has a number of indoor tennis courts. I typically play 3 or four days a week at lunch time. It is as much of a social time with co-workers as it is a nice active way to break-up the day. I have been playing in my Vibram FiveFingers KSOs as a way to keep my feet in shape over the winter when I am more prone to wear heavier cold-weather (i.e. less minimalist) footwear.

Someting new...

In case you haven't heard, sitting for prolonged periods of time is bad for your health. Guess what I do for a living? I sit. For long periods of time... I am a computer programmer. Guess what I do when I get home? I sit some more... I like blogging, social networking, homeschooling, reading to my kids... it kind of sounds like I am a couch potato. The truth of the matter is that I am not, I try to be very intentional about everything I do. The problem is that more and more of what we do as a society revolves around computers, and hence sitting.

In an attempt to rebel against all of this sitting I purchased an Indo Board Balance Trainer. I purchased the set that includes both an inflatable cushion as well as a roller. I have now started working at my desk standing on the balance board using the cushion. I will sometimes take a short break during the day and play around on the roller as a nice diversion. The goal is to try to keep my body moving more during the day, and perhaps even build some physical skills such as strength, stamina, and balance as I go. Wouldn't it be nice to actually improve physical well-being during the day while at a desk rather than deteriorating in a chair? I am hoping it will work out that way.

Integration

My primary fitness goal has been, and continues to be integration. To make activity an integrated part of my life rather than something that gets tacked on and competes against everything else for time. In my mind, this is the only way that I know to make it a sustainable part of my family life.

If you haven't checked it out already, I highly recommend visting John Sifferman's site called Physical Living. John has been very helpful and inspirational to me on this journey, helping me work towards those integration goals.

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February 07, 2010 02:54 AM

Background: A qualitative ethnomedical survey was carried out among a local Orang Asli tribe to gather information on the use of medicinal plants in the region of Kampung Bawong, Perak of West Malaysia in order to evaluate the potential medicinal uses of local plants used in curing different diseases and illnesses. Methods: Sixteen informants ranging in age from 35 to 65 years were interviewed. A total of 62 species of plants used by Orang Asli are described in this study based on field surveys and direct face to face communication. These plants belonged to 36 families and are used to treat a wide range of discomforts and diseases. Results: The results of this study showed that majority of the Orang Asli, of Kampung Bawong are still dependent on local plants as their primary source of medication. As the first ethnomedical study in this area, publishing this work is expected to open up more studies to identify and assess the pharmacological and toxicological action of the plants from this region. Conclusions: Preservation and recording of ethnobotanical and ethnomedical uses of traditional medicinal plants is an indispensable obligation for sustaining the medicinal and cultural resource of mankind. Extensive research on such traditional plants is of prime importance to scientifically validate their ethnomedical claims.

February 07, 2010 12:00 AM

Stone Pages in collaboration with BAJR presents a weekly podcast with the latest archaeology news, mainly related to prehistory, megalithic monuments and discoveries. Contents: * Iron Age settlement unearthed in Kent * A thousand new sites discovered off the British coast * Skeleton of western man found in ancient Mongolian tomb * Prehistoric archaeological project in Dorset gets lottery grant * Last Neanderthals in Europe died out 37,000 years ago * Amputation is evidence of medical knowledge in the Neolithic * 5th Megalithomania Conference * Evening walks at Stonehenge Speaker: David Connolly (BAJR) Audio file mastering: Dave Horrocks (Infinite Wave Mastering)

February 06, 2010 08:41 AM

(NaturalNews) When it comes to vaccines, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey get it. They see how the pharma industry is engineering a campaign to silence Dr. Andrew Wakefield in order to suppress the publication of startling new evidence linking vaccines to severe neurological damage.

At great risk to their professional careers, Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey have found the courage to dare to tell the truth about vaccines and autism. Despite the vicious attacks by the pro-vaccine zealots who will stop at nothing to destroy anyone who challenges conventional vaccine mythology, McCarthy and Carrey have issued a powerful, inspired statement that reveals the truth behind the Big Pharma smear campaign that is intent on destroying the reputation of Dr. Andrew Wakefield before he can publish the final results of this important new study.

NaturalNews reprints that statement here, unedited:

A statement from Jenny McCarthy and Jim Carrey
Dr. Andrew Wakefield is being discredited to prevent an historic study from being published that for the first time looks at vaccinated versus unvaccinated primates and compares health outcomes, with potentially devastating consequences for vaccine makers and public health officials.

It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues.

The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England's General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury. Dr. Wakefield strenuously denies all the findings of the GMC and plans a vigorous appeal.

Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield's original paper (http://www.generationrescue.org/pdf/wakefield2.pdf) regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet's retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.

Dr. Wakefield is one of the world's most respected and well-published gastroenterologists. He has published dozens of papers (http://www.thoughtfulhouse.org/publications.php) since 1998 in well-regarded peer-reviewed journals all over the world. His work documenting the bowel disease of children with autism and his exploration of novel ways to treat bowel disease has helped relieve the pain and suffering of thousands of children with autism.

For the past decade, parents in our community have been clamoring for a relatively simple scientific study that could settle the debate over the possible role of vaccines in the autism epidemic once and for all: compare children who have been vaccinated with children who have never received any vaccines and see if the rate of autism is different or the same.

Few people are aware that this extremely important work has not only begun, but that a study using an animal model has already been completed exploring this topic in great detail.

Dr. Wakefield is the co-author, along with eight other distinguished scientists from institutions like the University of Pittsburgh, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Washington, of a set of studies that explore the topic of vaccinated versus unvaccinated neurological outcomes using monkeys.

The first phase of this monkey study was published three months ago in the prestigious medical journal Neurotoxicology, and focused on the first two weeks of life when the vaccinated monkeys received a single vaccine for Hepatitis B, mimicking the U.S. vaccine schedule. The results, which you can read for yourself here (http://fourteenstudies.org/pdf/primates_hep_b.pdf), were disturbing. Vaccinated monkeys, unlike their unvaccinated peers, suffered the loss of many reflexes that are critical for survival.

Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.

There is no question that the publication of the monkey study will lend substantial credibility to the theory that over-vaccination of young children is leading to neurological damage, including autism. The fallout from the study for vaccine makers and public health officials could be severe. Having denied the possibility of the vaccine-autism connection for so long while profiting immensely from a recent boom in vaccine sales around the world, it's no surprise that they would seek to repress this important work.

Behind the scenes, the pressure to keep the work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues from being published is immense, and growing every day. Medical journals take extreme risk of backlash in publishing any studies that question the safety of the vaccination program, no matter how well-designed and thorough the research might be. Neurotoxicology, a highly-respected medical journal, deserves great credit for courageously publishing the first phase of this vaccinated monkey study.

The press has been deeply misled in the way The Lancet retraction, and Dr. Wakefield's mock trial, have been characterized. Led by the pharmaceutical companies and their well-compensated spokespeople, Dr. Wakefield is being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign designed to prevent this important new work from seeing the light of day.

What medical journal would want to step in front of this freight train? Moreover, why now, after 12 years of inaction, did The Lancet and GMC suddenly act? Is it coincidence that the monkey study is currently being submitted to medical journals for review and publication?

We urge the media to take a close look at the first phase of the monkey study discussed above and to start asking a very simple question: What was the final outcome of the 14 primates that were vaccinated using the U.S. vaccine schedule and how did that compare to the unvaccinated controls?

The U.S. vaccine schedule has grown from 10 vaccines given to our children in the 1980s to 36 today, perfectly matching the dramatic rise in autism. The work of Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues deserves to be shared with the world to further, rather than censor, scientific progress.

Original source for this statement: http://www.generationrescue.org/wakefield_statement2.html

February 06, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) In response to an environmental lawsuit filed against the oil giant, Chevron has fortified its defenses with at least twelve different public relations firms whose purpose is to debunk the claims made against the company by indigenous people living in the Amazon forests of Ecuador. According to them, Chevron dumped billions of gallons of toxic waste in the Amazon between 1964 and 1990, causing damages assessed at more than $27 billion.

The company is being criticized by people and organizations from across the social and political spectrum for its unethical behavior in regards to the case. Originally filed in U.S. federal district court back in 1993, the lawsuit was eventually moved to courts in Ecuador at Chevron's behest. Having initially lauded Ecuador's legal system in an effort to have the case moved there, Chevron later changed its mind and began attacking the system when that system found the company liable for damages.

Shareholders are also upset with Chevron for its gross mismanagement of the case in which it has sidestepped the rule of law and employed guerilla-style tactics in a last ditch effort to fend off an unfavorable ruling. Part of this includes hiring Hill and Knowlton, the same firm that represented the tobacco industry during its indictment over tobacco causing cancer, to perform the same task concerning toxic oil contaminants.

Evidence presented at Chevron's trial included over 50,000 chemical samples taken by the company itself which proved that all of its former oil drilling sites are contaminated with toxic byproducts that cause cancer. Many of these wells have contaminated rivers, streams, and other water sources which natives use for drinking water. Despite all the undeniable evidence, Chevron is working hard to cover up the facts and dismiss its responsibility in the matter.

Speaking of responsibility, Chevron's other hired firms are trying to claim that the company worked out a deal with the government in Ecuador back in the mid-1990s that released it from cleanup responsibility. However the terms expressed in the current case regarding cleanup are exempt from the former agreement which, in and of itself, was determined to be fraudulent. Two former Chevron lawyers and a handful of former government officials were indicted because of that agreement which makes it ludicrous to try to use the incident as a defense in the current case.

A final ruling on the case is set to be made sometime this year. Most likely, Ecuadorian courts will find Chevron guilty as charged despite its lobbying efforts.

Sources for this story include: http://chevrontoxico.com/news-and-multimedia/2009/1120-chevron-using-six-public-relations-firms-to-discredit-indigenous-groups-in-environmental-case.html

February 06, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Researchers have found evidence that it may be possible to use a version of the Atkins diet to improve health, rather than harming it -- a vegetarian version dubbed the "Eco-Atkins" diet.

The Atkins diet is a form of high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet that was popular in 2003 and 2004. Many health professionals blasted the diet as dangerously high in fat, and research indicated that although it lowered levels of blood triglycerides and raised levels of HDL ("good") cholesterol, it also raised levels of the dangerous LDL ("bad") cholesterol.

In the current study, conducted by researchers from the University of Toronto and published in the Archives of Internal Medicine, researchers fed 22 overweight adults with elevated LDL cholesterol levels a low-carbohydrate diet high in proteins from gluten (wheat), soy, nuts, cereals, vegetable oils, fruits and vegetables. They were compared with 22 people who ate a diet low in fat and high in carbohydrates, with high levels of low-fat dairy and whole grains.

All participants were fed only enough good to meet 60 percent of their estimated daily calorie needs, and lost an average of 8.8 pounds. Participants in the "Eco-Atkins" group had lower levels of LDL and blood pressure than those in the control group, however.

In an accompanying commentary, Katherine Tuttle and Joan Milton of Washington School of Medicine said that the research might provide a safer way to consume a low-carbohydrate diet, but stopped short of recommending it without larger, long-term studies on the potential risks.

High-protein, low-carbohydrate diets can lead to excessive water loss and kidney damage.

Dr. Dean Ornish said that the diet used in the study was quite similar to the diet he advocates, although slightly higher in vegetable fat. He objected to calling it a version of the Atkins diet, however, for fear that it might encourage people to eat the more traditional, meat-based version.

"People so badly want to believe that Atkins is good for them that they stretch things beyond credibility," Ornish said. "What it's going to be is confusing to people, and that's why I have a problem with it."

Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com; www.abcnews.go.com.

February 06, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) I've always said that Big Pharma executives were guilty of crimes against humanity. Now one of their wealthiest and most successful executives has been caught trying to pull off a murder-suicide in an upscale NY hotel. Gigi Jordan, who ran pharmaceutical companies selling pills to treat cancer, murdered her 8-year-old son by force-feeding him ground-up pharmaceuticals which included Xanax and Ambien.

Let's just stop right there for a moment and consider what this says about the pharmaceutical industry: Even its own executives know their drugs are toxic enough to commit murder.

Jordan had been planning the murder-suicide for some time, it seems. She had left a suicide note in the hotel room, alongside thousands of pills scattered about the room. Jordan is reportedly worth $100 million -- money she accumulated largely by selling toxic pills that harmed other people. Now, it seems, she chose to turn those pills on herself and her own family.

Why is this not surprising?

Big Pharma and the culture of death
Certainly we can all feel compassion for the loss of life experienced by this little boy -- a victim of growing up in a Big Pharma family where they live and die with patented chemical medications. But let's look at the bigger issue here: Why is nobody really surprised that a wealthy executive who pushed dangerous pills for a living might end up killing her own son with some of those same chemicals?

The reason nobody is really surprised is because deep down, we already know that Big Pharma executives are mentally insane. They earn their financial wealth at the expense of other peoples' health. They push pills that harm people, that produce disturbing side effects and that even kill people. They oversee companies engaged in price fixing fraud, disease mongering, corruption and bribery.

Big Pharma executives are the mob crime bosses of the 21st century, and beyond being guilty of crimes against humanity, they are mentally disturbed themselves.

And why are they so mentally disturbed? Perhaps because they take their own medicine. They eat their own fraudulently-approved chemicals -- the same chemicals they worked so hard to get approved by burying the truth about their side effects. The more they swallow, the more they become mentally imbalanced. The side effects they tried to hide from the world can't hide from human physiology...

I wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that Gigi Jordan was on antidepressant drugs (SSRIs) or other antipsychotics. The side effects of these drugs include committing violent acts against others. Murder-suicide has happened before under the influence of SSRIs. Remember the Columbine school shootings? That was a pharmaceutical-inspired mass murder.

Remember comedian Phil Hartman? The reason he is no longer alive is because his wife was doped up on antidepressants (and other drugs) when she shot him twice in the head with a .38 caliber pistol, then fatally shot herself.

Virtually every school shooting that has happened in the last twenty years has been linked in one way or another to psychiatric medications sold by pharmaceutical companies led by mentally deranged executives. These people are corporate criminals who pose a serious danger to not only their own families, but the public at large. If they can feed a fatal dose of medication chemicals to their own children, then what else are they capable of doing in the name of corporate profits?

The truth is, these people just don't value human life. They are criminally insane. They need to be arrested and prosecuted for their crimes before they murder yet more children.

By the way, they don't stop at killing just their own children: They want to murder your children, too by putting six-month-old infants on antidepressant drugs, or doping up your teenagers on drugs for ADHD, a completely fictitious, bogus "disease" that was invented solely to sell more drugs.

Superfood executives don't murder their children
You don't see the founders of superfood companies going berserk and murdering their own children. That's because they have healthier brain function and they aren't whacked out on pharmaceuticals all day long. People who eat superfoods are healthier, happier and experience far lower rates of chronic disease than people who depend on pharmaceuticals.

The children of superfood families are happy, healthy, vibrant and highly intelligent. They are generally NOT vaccinated, and yet they get sick far less than other children who are routinely vaccinated. And you don't find children of superfood families murdered with chemicals in $1,000-a-night hotel rooms, either.

Superfoods create both mental and physical health. Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, destroy mental and physical health. They make you crazy. According to press reports, Gigi Jordan was found "...barely conscious, slumped on the floor, babbling incoherently..."

Gee, maybe she just needed a few more antipsychotic drugs, huh? You would think that a wealthy pharmaceutical executive worth $100 million could afford all the drugs she ever wanted right? And she did: The room was littered with various pills. But what Gigi Jordan found out is what NaturalNews readers already know: Pharmaceuticals are largely a fraud. They don't work. They don't make you healthier. They don't make you more sane. Even antidepressants have been clinically proven in multiple trials to work no better than placebo. Most of the positive effects from pharmaceuticals are due to the placebo effect!

The pharmaceutical industry is nothing more than high-profit quackery. And yet the cost in human suffering is immense. People are dying every day from pharmaceuticals. Millions of people are suffering brain damage, liver damage, kidney damage and heart damage from medications, vaccines and chemotherapy. This is all being done in the name of corporate profits, not out of any real desire to end human suffering or improve health.

I believe Gigi Jordan's actions accurately portray the philosophies and insanities of pharmaceutical industry: Obscene selfishness, complete disrespect for human life and the treacherous application of their deadly chemical products. Gigi Jordan only killed her own child, but Big Pharma at large is trying to kill your children, too.

Her murder-suicide speaks volumes about the mental state of Big Pharma executives across the industry, in my opinion. They are mentally unstable, greed-driven criminals who will murder children to serve their own selfish interests.

Sources for this story include: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/rich_ma_kills_kid_in_slay_suicide_KKWqh10YyaLKzKOuglvL8I

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2010/02/06/2010-02-06_jude_was_only_joy_in_life_full_of_torment_letter.html

February 06, 2010 07:00 AM

Sleep paralysis and alien abductions -- how they were stopped

More on alien abductions as mind control

wickedscholar doesn't provide the evidence it refers to about alien abduction and homosexuality

There is evidence that people who claim to have been anally probed have a fascination with anal intercourse. Men who claim to have been subjected to anal probing by aliens probably have very strong homosexual urges and an unfulfilled desire for homosexual sex. Recent research indicates that when men who have reported recurring alien abductions involving anal probing become involved in homosexual relationships, the abductions miraculously stopped.

Actually this pretty young lady sat next to me and then said her fiance claimed he was being abducted by aliens... I always wondered about that

There is a Dr. Lars Holmgren in Sweden but this must be a joke

Yeah before the internet got so litigious

February 05, 2010 05:36 PM

The Dresden Codex

"The height of Maya civilization in what are now parts of Central America and Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula lasted for most of the first millennium CE, and elements of Maya culture survived until the arrival of Europeans in the early sixteenth century.

Among the greatest accomplishments of the Maya was the development of highly sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems, both of which played an important role in their religious beliefs and practices." [source]

The Dresden Codex (named for the city where it is housed) is a fig bark paper manuscript in concertina style, produced around the beginning of the 13th century (a contentious point). The seventy-four pages are sewn together producing an eleven foot long document which was originally folded up between protective wooden covers bearing engraved jaguars. As the most complete of the few remaining Maya manuscripts, it is a comprehensive source for Maya calendar and astronomy systems and an aid to glyph interpretation in the wider iconography of the Maya culture.

"The Dresden Codex was written by eight different scribes using both sides. They all had their own particular writing style, glyphs and subject matter. [..] Its images were painted with extraordinary clarity using very fine brushes. The basic colors used from vegetable dyes for the codex were red, black and the so-called Mayan blue." [source]

Introduction - Invocation of the gods; preparation of prophecies
&
The Grand Deluge





Tables for the Planet Jupiter
(another version of that page on the right can be seen at wikimedia)






Tables for the Planet Mars






Serpent numbers; the columns of the universe; manifestations of the Rain God






Rituals at the beginning of the New Year





Food offerings to the Rain God






Food offerings to the Rain God






Food offerings to the Rain God






Eclipse tables






The Moon Goddess; illness and birth



The Dresden codex is believed to be a copy of an original text that was composed between about 700 to 900 AD, prompting some historians to assert that it's the earliest known book from the Americas. The surviving copy may have been one of a number of pre-Columbian works sent to Europe by Hernán Cortés in 1519. It first surfaces in recorded history in 1739 when it was purchased from a private collection in Vienna by the (then) Royal Library of Dresden (now: Sächsische Landesbibliothek).

The manuscript has been published in various facsimile and reproduction formats beginning with Alexander von Humboldt's inclusion of a few codex pages in one of his books in the early 1800s. During the bombing of Dresden in WW2 the manuscript suffered water damage but it has since been restored. Although a couple of versions of the Dresden Codex have been online for some time, they are - as far as I can tell - interpretive reproductions or doctored photographic facsimiles and the image quality varies. So it's good to see that the Dresden Library last month uploaded (fairly) high resolution unaltered images of all the pages from the codex.

• Codex Dresden [Mscr.Dresd.R.310] can be accessed from Sächsische Landesbibliothek in Dresden (click on the book icon)
• FAMSI have two other versions of the codex (click through the thumbnails to see the facsimile and reproduction images) (or as downloadable pdfs)
• Maya Codices at the New World Encylopedia.
• Background articles (in German) from Sächsische Landesbibliothek.
• The Dresden Codex Eclipse Table by MJ Finley.
• Mayan Mathematics (University of St Andrews, Scotland).
• The Dresden Codex Lunar Series and Sidereal Astronomy by James Q. Jacobs.
• Mesoweb has a lot of pdf articles available, although I haven't read any (search on 'Dresden', for instance)
• Codex Dresdensis is a 20 minute documentary available on Vimeo, partly in Spanish and partly in German (no subtitles I'm afraid).
• Previously on BibliOdyssey: MesoAmerica.
• [The image captions above are translations from the Dresden Library site]

The dual-page and detail images below are from the 1933 Gates reproduction (of variable accuracy, so it is said) of the Dresden Codex. They came from a large MesoAmerican manuscript BitTorrent file downloaded ages ago (thanks Tia!) but I'm fairly certain they are actually extracted/compiled from the FAMSI site, as noted above.

February 05, 2010 04:53 PM

The Hubble telescope has been tracking a UFO in the solar system's asteroid belt since early January.  The object - dubbed “P/2010 A2” after it was discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research program sky survey - has traits similar to a comet, but the x-shape appears disconnected from the tail.  NASA says that the strange object may be the product of the collision between two asteroids.

read more

February 05, 2010 02:57 PM

The Original Storytellers

Initially, myths were communicated by word of mouth. Perhaps the tradition of storytelling began when members of the tribe, returning from adventures inner or outer, having experienced new realms literal or figurative, wished to communicate their experiences to others. They would tell their stories by embodying them, allowing the rest of the tribe to share in them vicariously. Since the storyteller and the tale were one and the same, listeners would have had the option of matching the truth embodied by the storyteller within themselves, and of being altered by it through a direct transference of knowledge/experience. There would be no need for interpretation, because the story, being told from a place of Knowing, could be received likewise.

If we imagine a time in which humanity shared in a collective consciousness, a time before the formation of individual ego consciousness, such a hive-mind would have no need of language to communicate. As the gradual formation of separate ego existence began—or rather, as some of this subtler interconnectivity was lost—the possibility, or necessity, of communication between separate individuals (components of the “hive”) would have arisen. Perhaps musical expression was the earliest manifestation of this inter-communication, with song being the first expression of the human voice? Music and song may have been a means of communion within the tribe, to share the bliss (and pain) of a collective organism experiencing the dawning of separative consciousness? At some point, then (perhaps through collective trauma, resulting in a fragmentation of the group psyche), the sense of an individual self came into being. With it came self-reflection, the ability to experience oneself as a separate being. This would have both resulted from and further augmented the possibility of comparing oneself—one’s capacities as a hunter, singer, storyteller, or whatever—with others in the group. Self-awareness led inexorably to self-consciousness; and when comparison became possible, conflict and competition inevitably followed.

Storytelling as we know it today would have been one side effect of this process. When individuals were part of a group consciousness, anything experienced by one of them would have been directly available to the rest. Once this mind-link began to deteriorate, however, the need for language (initially song) as a means for sharing experiences increased. Early storytelling would have often taken place in the evening, around a fire. Such a radiant light source (whether flickering flames or TV set) is an effective means to put the rational side of the brain to sleep, thereby opening up the irrational, unconscious side to direct transmission. These fireside tribal storytelling sessions would have enabled the group to stay attuned at a collective level, even as they were becoming more and more isolate in their daily activities, as warriors, hunter-gatherers, and the like. It was at this point that something began to shift. As already stated, with self-awareness arose the possibility of differentiation. If certain individuals in the group became aware of a greater capacity for individual consciousness (or perhaps a greater facility to move between the two states of consciousness), they would have also understood that knowledge and experience was a source of power, to the individual as much as the group. This realization, and this increased power, had the potential for separating them from, and placing them over, the group.


The Shaman Elite

These individuals would naturally recognize one another; they would tend to form smaller, tighter groups among themselves, in secret. Instead of sharing their knowledge with the rest of the tribe, they could use it to increase their superiority and control over it. If such was their intent, it follows that they would begin to shape and direct the old tribal stories (and any new ones they were instrumental in telling) towards a different end than that of collective individuation. The myths would then be encoded in new ways, meant to reveal their alchemical truths only to those already attuned to the “higher” frequency of the “elite,” while the rest of the tribe would receive a diluted and distorted version: a simple story designed not to empower them but to enchant and entertain them. In other words, to cast a spell over them. Once divested of their deeper alchemical essence, the stories would eventually come to be seen as literal descriptions of heroic feats or hidden treasures, and suchlike; rather than allowing for inner transformation, such stories would inspire fascination with outer goals and accomplishments. They would foster a desire for specialness, which would then give rise to discontent and competitive drive, leading to conflict among the tribe. The members of the tribe would never suspect that the actual source of this conflict lay, not in any social arrangements, or even in themselves (though that would soon be the case), but in the stories themselves.

Behind these stories, inside the mythic narratives or memes which they implanted in the collective psyche, lay the manipulations of a small group of “initiates” (in the early days at least, these initiates would still ostensibly have been a part of the greater tribe, but hidden within it). In the dark as to the actual source of their discontent, the tribe would then turn their hostilities upon one another or upon neighboring tribes, and conflict would inevitably ensue. The mythic narratives once designed for alchemical transformation would then be enacted at a social level, as actual, tooth-and-claw warfare. The resulting fragmentation and chaos would further empower the hidden shaman elite to extend their system of social control, until such a time as it could become open control, complete with law enforcement, religious counsel, military defense, and suchlike.

February 05, 2010 12:08 PM

Blueprint of a Wound

• In the face of the Mother’s uncontained sexual passion and dementia/rage, the Father realizes his lack of uprightness (falls on his ass), and experiences a wound that will eventually cripple him.
  
  
• Though he resolves to remain, to be as upright as he can, despite the wound, this is itself an avoidance – a way not to go deeper into the wound (which is the solar quest for healing/transformation).

• The Father begins to fear intimacy with the Mother, due to her lack of tenderness, her cold fury, her power and dementia. Instead, he seeks comfort through the pseudo-intimacy of casual sex.
  
  (Note: Jason’s Father was a Taurus; astrologically he has Venus, which rules comfort as well as sexuality, in Taurus.)
  
  
• As a result of this growing estrangement between Father and Mother, the Mother turns to the Son (often the youngest Son, i.e., Jason) as a Husband Surrogate. This might also stem from a desire to protect the Son from an abusive Father or, in Jason’s case, to compensate for the aloofness of the Father.
  
  
• The Father reacts to this Mother/Son bondage (presumably due to jealousy) by becoming further estranged from the Mother, and experiencing/expressing hostility (or indifference) towards the Son.
  
  (Note: if there is more than one Son, the older Son receives the brunt of this hostility, since, the older the Son, the more of a threat he is perceived to be, and the more he can receive the Father’s projected anger and disowned masculinity.)
  
  
• In Jason’s case, at least (and this blueprint is particular as well as general), the hostility of the Father towards the Son (and the Son’s fear of the Mother) leads to an unbalanced relationship with (reliance upon) the power of the Intellect. The Intellect, instead of being a sword to discern, becomes a weapon to defend, a shield to protect, a buffer against the raging uncontained Feminine. Hence, the Father scorns the Son for his perceived lack of Intellect, or even for his femininity. Perhaps the Father is unconsciously challenging the Son to develop his Intellect—to be less feminine—in a misguided attempt to give the Son the means to survive?
  
  
• The result is that the Son receives neither comfort from the Mother, nor guidance from the Father. In the case of two Sons, the younger Son—being a threat to the older Son’s sovereignty—not only doesn’t receive comfort from his Brother, but becomes the object of his anger and hostility, specifically that which the older Brother himself received from the Father.
  
  
• Since what we cannot receive we often try to provide, the younger Son then seeks to comfort the older Son (as well as the Mother, though not the Father). This he does primarily by becoming less of a threat to him, i.e., by suppressing his own nature (uniqueness). In Jason’s case, he developed Intellect as a less threatening way to outshine his Brother, though this backfired because the Father had already made Sebastian feel inferior about his Intellect!
  
  
• For Jason to develop his Intellect is a way to impress the Father, then, but also a means to supplant him. By comforting the (older) Son and developing those same intellectual capacities which the Father values as a means for dealing with (being superior to) the Mother, the second Son is perhaps attempting to replace the Father.
  
  To add a new twist to the tale, in Jason’s case at least: a New Man arrives when the second Son is 2 (his Brother being 7), and things then move to a new stage in the wounding process.
  
  
• With the arrival of the second Man, the Mother’s affection and desire moves away from the second Son. The second Son, like the first, now experiences the loss of his own specialness, as he is “replaced” by another.
  
  
• The Father, on the other hand, receives his deepest wounding yet (in the context of the Marriage), that of betrayal. This then finalizes the Father’s loss of uprightness—as he is metaphorically slain by another Man (though actually by the Mother). He then seeks deeper refuge in two places: sex and work. In both cases, the movement is away from intimacy (vulnerability), which means, most of all, estrangement from his children.
  
  
• When the Father cannot contain the Mother—female sexuality—two things occur. He loses his confidence as a Man, and so becomes even less upright than he was before. And secondly, the uncontained female sexuality strikes at the Father and wounds him more deeply still—completing the emasculation process started by the Father’s own Mother. This second wounding is often fatal, and results in complete emasculation. (In the case of Jason’s father, he became a cripple.)
  
  
• Thus the relationship becomes sadomasochistic and vampiric: the Female feeds upon the Male’s wound, growing drunk upon it, until there is nothing left but an empty shell.
  
  
• Because the Man does not provide containment for the Woman, the Woman does not give comfort (nurture) to the Man. Instead, she offers only heartbreak.
  
  
• This is why Marriage so rarely works. Each partner seeks pleasure and comfort in the other, and loses sight, in fact never actually realizes, the true nature and purpose of Marriage, which is surrender of the personal to the archetypal, allowing for the alchemical transforming of lead into gold. Sensing the pending annihilation that a true Marriage forces to occur, the two Players, in terror for their identities, strike out at the other, attempting to destroy the other rather than surrender together, to mutual annihilation. Ironically, tragically, it is only in this surrender that any true, lasting comfort or pleasure exists. The other route leads only to anguish, despair, and divorce.
  
  
• Symbolically then, this process is designated in the Tarot by the Moon card (Pisces, for female) and the Tower card (Mars, for male), both of which relate to a form of annihilation, the Moon spiritual/emotional, the Tower psychological/ physical. Both also relate to powerlessness, and both represent the respective energies of male and female in their destructive or overwhelming forms: the Moon signifies madness, despair, dementia, while the Tower represents war, violence, and extreme crisis. Yet, as means and not ends, the Moon signifies initiation, and the Tower signifies regeneration.
  
  
• Bringing it back to the personal: As he enters into adolescence, the Son(s), following the Father’s example, seek comfort through sex. This may be done by imitating the Father (as in Sebastian’s case, whoring and alcoholism and work-fixation), or by going against it, as in Jason’s case (celibacy and vagrancy).
  
  
• Inheriting the Father’s wound, the Son also receives the Father’s disowned hostility and rage against the Mother. This is then added to the Son’s own, somewhat more conscious hostility towards the Mother, from the terror and instability of growing up with an uncontained Female. (He would also then develop Intellect—and the cold contempt which Intellect allows—to keep the Mother’s annihilating influence at bay.)

• Since no comfort is forthcoming from the Mother (in fact the reverse), the Son seeks comfort in sexuality that is empowering and violating (rape fantasies), which is the inverse of intimacy. This betrays the Son’s shame of his sexuality. On the other hand, using rape and murder imagery for sexual stimulation is a more extreme way of avoiding intimacy, since rape and murder are an inverted form of intimacy. Rather than mutually sharing the same feelings, rape/murder allows the Male to experience the opposite feelings to those of the Female, and to experience a supreme sense of power and control. At the same time, such activity still relates to shame, being an attempt to banish it through shamelessness, i.e., committing acts (even if only in fantasy) in cold defiance of any “moral” (empathic) considerations. The effect may be the inverse, however (as is often the case), because by indulging in dark practices, the shame that has been suppressed actually forces itself back into consciousness.
  
  
• This also relates to the development of the Intellect as a buffer against female sexuality, since the Intellect is cold and removed, potentially cruel, and is the inverse of female Mother energy, which (ideally) is warm and nurturing.
  
  
• Mercury/the Intellect also serves as an ideal (tho false) surrogate for the true masculine energy of Mars. Intellect allows the Son to feel manly (and the Father to feel upright) when actually he is not, wielding his Intellect when he cannot wield his sexuality (i.e., through casual sex, prostitutes, and through a dominant role in work place). Yet, because it is being wrongly applied, in a compensatory fashion, the Father’s (and Son’s) Intellect becomes distorted, ineffective save as a weapon, or shield. This is because Mercury is not an exclusively masculine energy, as Mars is, but is both masculine and feminine (in the Tarot, the Magician/Mercury is androgyne).
  
  
• There ends the first layer of the blueprint for the male wound.
  
  
• The next phase of mapping the blueprint/wound, then, is to look more closely at the Brothers. The Cain and Abel myth is the abstract core of this wound, as made abundantly clear by Jason’s relationship with Sebastian. If there is only one Son, however, then the Cain/Abel dynamic must play out inside a single Psyche.

For this, the interested observor is referred to the current series of Warty Theorems podcasts, starting tomorrow.

February 05, 2010 11:17 AM

Daniel Coffeen is back this week for the second part of our conversation about Rhetoric, the image, finding gaps, and how Capitalism may be a virus set to destroy its human host. Also featured this week is a collage tribute to JD Salinger and Howard Zinn. Chris Isto White sings "Open the Door," the Infernal Noise Brigade drums away, Santos and Johnny play their hit "Sleepwalk" and Miriam presents another factoid. Send email to douglain@dietsoap.org.

February 05, 2010 08:39 AM

(NaturalNews) Each year, it seems the U.S. Congress throws another trillion dollars at some failing industry, desperately trying to bail it out and prevent the crooks running it from facing the consequences of their own bad decisions. In 2008, the bailout went to Wall Street and the rich investment bankers who lost trillions of dollars in ill-fated investment schemes (which were deemed "too big to fail" so the government stepped in and bailed them out with your future tax dollars.) Now in 2010, a bailout of similar size is about to be handed to the sick-care industry. Except it's not a one-time bailout: It's an ongoing financial drain on the U.S. economy (and the U.S. citizens) mandated under the health care reform bill that passed in both houses of Congress and could soon become law.

The conventional sick-care industry (made of Big Pharma, hospitals, health insurance companies, cancer clinics, and so on) cannot survive in a free market. It offers no real health solutions to customers, but it charges them outrageously high prices for medications, surgeries and quack cancer therapies that simply don't work. Left to its own in a free-market environment, the sick-care industry would collapse within a few years and go down in history as a failure of huge proportions.

But many of the corporations dominating the sick-care industry are very, very powerful. So they've pulled out all the stops to prop it up and keep the money flowing where it shouldn't. The FDA's assault on dietary supplements and natural remedies is part of this sick care protectionism. The FTC has joined in, too, charging the owners of nutrition companies with federal crimes for daring to sell products that actually provide healing nutrition to people. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027303_the_FTC_America_vaccines.html)

The FDA-enforced monopoly pricing of prescription drugs provides an artificial profit pool for drug companies, too, making sure they reap the largest profits possible even while the People stay sick and diseased.

And now, the passage of the health care bill by the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate is the latest ploy to bail out the failing sick-care industry: It mandates that Americans buy conventional health insurance, thereby forcing financial support for an industry that is failing even more disastrously than Goldman Sachs or Bear Stearns was on Wall Street. Forcing Americans to buy conventional sick-care insurance will do nothing to improve the health of the People. It will only improve the profits of the drug companies, cancer clinics and other beneficiaries of sickness and disease.

The sick care industry is too broke to fix. The answer isn't found by forcing people to pay more money into a broken system; it's found in truly reforming the system so that it works to protect health rather than profits.

Taking care of your own health? Get fined!
Just in case you planned to exercise your freedom of choice and opt out of that failed system of drugs-and-surgery sick care insurance, lawmakers have blocked that exit, too: They've built in huge financial penalties for people who refuse to buy sick-care insurance. So now, people who actually take care of their health and need no health insurance can be treated as criminals and forced to pay fines to an industry they neither support nor need.

I am one of the many people who intentionally carry no health insurance. Why? Because I eat a diet of superfoods, I get vitamin D from the sun and I exercise frequently. My risk of ever being diagnosed with cancer, heart disease or diabetes is ridiculously low. I save thousands of dollars each year by not buying health insurance, then I turn around and spend that money on organic produce, nutritional supplements and health products to keep me both mentally and physically healthy. As a result of these choices, I remain in a state of very high health with no disease, no sickness, zero hospital bills and absolutely no money wasted on useless health insurance premiums.

My garden is my pharmacy, and my doctor is my own body (with its own innate healing wisdom). Sure, if I break an ankle or suffer some acute injury, I'll need a doctor for that, but I can easily pay that out of my own pocket and still save thousands of dollars a year by intentionally avoiding wasting money on health insurance I don't routinely need.

The Democrats who voted for this bill would prefer to have me arrested or fined for opting out of the sick-care system and refusing to buy health insurance. So instead of allowing me to be a healthy, productive member of society who pays taxes and places virtually zero burden on the health care system, members of Congress would rather have me treated as a criminal and punished for taking care of my own health while opting out of the broken sick care system.

This is how nations are destroyed from the inside out, by the way: Take all the healthy, productive people and treat them like criminals. Meanwhile, expand Big Government to exercise complete control over the lives of the diseased, disinformed masses who they easily command into doing what they want. That's part of the whole point of this sick care reform bill: To put government in charge of our lives, taking away freedom of choice and punishing good health with fines and imprisonment.

Keep in mind that I am theoretically in favor of a system of universal health care. I wrote the Health Revolution Petition (www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org) which advocates a universal system providing health care coverage to 100% of the population. But I'm strongly opposed to a mandated, gun-in-your-face sick-care system that forces people to pay money into a broken system of corrupt, criminally-operated medical scams like psychiatric medications or even mammograms (which have been proven to actually cause far more cancers than they prevent). (http://www.naturalnews.com/010886_cancer_brst_cancer_mammography.html)

If we had an honest health care system focused on nutrition, disease prevention and patient education, I'd be thrilled to pay into it. That would be an investment in real health. But instead, we have a system focused on medication, irradiation, vaccines and chemotherapy that not only destroy human health, but also harm the environment at the same time (where do you think all those meds go when they get flushed down the drain?). For me to financially support such a system would be a violation of my commitment to protecting human health and Mother Nature.

So it may be no surprise to hear me say that I refuse to participate in a forced sick-care health insurance scam. The only way corrupt Congressional lawmakers are going to get me to pay any money to a failed sick-care system is if they put a gun to my head and make me do it.

America is supposed to have a free market. Congress apparently forgot the "freedom" part of that equation and simply prefers to force people to pay thousands of dollars for something many don't want and won't even use. Forcing people to pay for a broken system of perpetual sickness and disease is no health care solution.

And you can't fix American's broken system by aggressively expanding that system so that it harms a far larger group of people. You can't slap a Band-Aid on this problem and call it resolved. You have to reform this from the inside out. But thanks to the influence of corporate money on lawmakers and politicians, there is simply no political will in Washington to pursue meaningful reform.

Disband Congress, give power back to the People
That's why I say it's time to disband Congress. That gang of false representatives only serves the interests of the corporations that keeps it in power. (Rep. Ron Paul being exempt from this generalization, of course.) The real needs of the People have long since been abandoned by both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The issue is not one party versus another party; the issue is the concentration of power into the hands of the few while the working masses rot in disease and bankruptcy.

You, the American People, have been sold out once again by the crooks running this country. In 2008, Wall Street had the Republican crooks to thank for their trillion-dollar bailout. This year, the sick-care industry has the Democrats to thank. In both cases, taxpayer dollars were used to protect a failed industry while suppressing free markets and artificially propping up broken industries that should have been allowed to just fail.

So what are the REAL solutions to health care in America? A universal voucher-based system like the one I've proposed at www.HealthRevolutionPetition.org

Such a system provides universal coverage to everyone (100% coverage, including the unemployed, veterans, the elderly, etc.). Yet, at the same time, it puts the emphasis on disease prevention while placing the power to make intelligent decisions back into the hands of individual Americans. It puts consumers back into the position of shopping around for the best health care results, creating accountability in health care spending at the local level. At the same time, it covers acupuncture, chiropractic care, massage therapy, gym memberships, nutritional supplements and even therapeutic superfoods. And it does it all without spending a dollar more than is currently being spent on sick care.

Of course, the Health Revolution Petition virtually wipes out the failed pharmaceutical industry. It causes massive unemployment in the powerful cancer industry, too, because it makes people well and prevents the vast majority of all cancers. It also costs the government a lot of money in social security payouts because it helps people live longer, causing them to collect more social security checks. (The government can't afford people to live for very long because they collect too much money...)

My Health Revolution plan would put hundreds of thousands of sick-care industry people out of work; but at the same time, it would save up to a million lives per year, and it would improve happiness, economic productivity and longevity. It would enhance our national education results (because well-nourished brains learn better) and help restore America to a position of world leadership through a healthy, productive and well-educated population.

But that's never been the goal of Congress, you see. Keeping America healthy is the last thing on these peoples' minds. Congress simply wants to keep their corporate buddies rolling in the cash, even if it means compromising our nation's future and destroying the last shred of financial solvency left in America. This health care bill will devastate America's economy and the health of its people. But in doing that, it will accomplish the saving of a select few: The rich, fat-cat executives running the drug companies, the cancer clinics, the hospitals and medical imaging equipment companies. It will produce a windfall of profits for the giants of the sick-care industry, even while delivering economic devastation and long-term disease to the People.

Our sick-care system is too broke to fix. It's time to stop flirting around the edges of a solution and get honest about what it would take to create health and end disease.

That will mean a major overhaul of our sick-care system, and it will anger a lot of powerful corporations whose profits depend entirely on the expansion of disease. The purpose of the sick-care system is to feed those corporations, not to make you well.

February 05, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) When I saw The Lancet's recent retraction of Dr. Wakefield's famous paper linking vaccines to autism, I couldn't help thinking back to 1989 when Fleischmann and Pons were widely attacked and discredit over their demonstration of cold fusion technology. These two brilliant physicists had accomplished the seemingly impossible: They had caused fusion to take place at low temperatures, producing both excess heat energy as well as the helium artifacts proving that low-energy nuclear reactions had taken place.

The conventional physics community went berserk. They attacked Fleischmann and Pons relentlessly, attempting to destroy their character and any scientific credibility they might have held. They paraded a gang of "hot fusion" scientists through the mainstream media, telling everyone it was "impossible" to create nuclear fusion at tabletop temperatures. Through a repetition of lies, they convinced the world that Fleischmann and Pons were frauds.

Hot fusion, you see, is big business. Big money. Billions of dollars have been thrown at hot fusion, and the careers and livelihoods of tens of thousands of people depend on it. By demonstrating that cold fusion really worked, Fleischmann and Pons were threatening an entire industry. That industry had no choice but to do everything possible to destroy the scientists. Truth be damned... this was all about politics and profits!

Fast forward 20 years and guess what? Cold fusion is being replicated in laboratories all around the world. Even the U.S. Navy is now deeply engaged in the research (http://www.naturalnews.com/025925_cold_fusion_NaturalNews_coal.html), and it is recreating cold fusion experiments on a routine basis.

Cold fusion, it turns out, is indeed quite real. Fleischmann and Pons were right. The conventional scientific community was wrong. And yet they got away with destroying the reputations of these scientists because the media bought their lies hook, line and sinker. To this day, supposed "intelligent" scientists and doctors still stupidly believe that cold fusion was a hoax.

Big Pharma destroys Dr. Wakefield
Today, the same tactics of disinformation and truth destruction are now being leveled against Dr. Wakefield, the courageous scientist who was the first to prove that vaccines were linked to autism. For the last twelve years, his research provided ammunition for opponents of mandatory vaccinations -- people who were concerned about the safety of injecting synthetic chemicals and methyl mercury into the bodies of infants.

The truth was getting out and vaccine skeptics were winning the information war. The H1N1 vaccination campaign was a complete failure -- 80% of Americans rejected the recent H1N1 vaccine, for example. Drug companies needed to shut down the opposition as quickly as possible and put a lid on any resistance to mass vaccinations. The whole future of profits for Big Pharma, after all, depends on the public accepting more and more vaccines for "preventive" medicine. This means you get vaccinated for all sorts of things that you don't have and may never get. The vaccines are sold to people as a kind of chemical-based health insurance program.

To ensure the profitability of that future, Big Pharma needed to destroy Dr. Wakefield's credibility. So they paraded a long list of pro-vaccine doctors and drug pushers in front of the media to accomplish essentially the same thing that was accomplished against Fleischmann and Pons in 1989 -- the obliteration of their credibility in order to suppress the truth.

The truth is dangerous to Big Pharma
The truth is a dangerous thing. Especially when profits are at stake. The truth about vaccines would destroy an entire industry. That's why the truth must not be allowed to appear in newspapers, magazines or medical journals. That's why the truth is meticulously redacted from these publications and replaced by pro-pharma lies as a matter of course.

It all comes back to George Orwell's 1984 novel, where the day job of the main character Winston Smith is to literally rewrite history by replacing offensive stories in news archives with a "rewritten history" that's more acceptable to the politicians currently in charge.

The Lancet is doing exactly what George Orwell described in 1984 -- rewriting history by obliterating scientific truth and removing it from their archives.

And this is just the beginning. Watch for more medical journals to retract scientific papers that oppose the Big Pharma agenda. Any "science" that doesn't agree with the vaccine / pharmaceutical agenda will simply be purged from the archives of human knowledge, leaving only whatever fraudulent science supports Big Pharma's dark agenda.

The very credibility of modern medical science is dissolving right before our eyes. When even the medical journals themselves are deeply engaged in the censorship of scientific knowledge and the promotion of a corporate agenda, you know there's not much credibility left in the industry.

Dr. Len Horowitz sent me this important announcement today (see below). It contains some rather disturbing information about the links between Reuters, The Lancet and Big Pharma. I'm reprinting it here in its entirety because I think it's information that simply must be distributed.

Forward this article to everyone you know -- especially if you know new moms or expectant mothers who may be facing the vaccine decision soon. They need to know what's really happening behind the veil of secrecy.

And let me state without hesitation that injecting babies with chemicals is BAD for their health. Vaccines are a potential danger to human health. What people need -- even in third world countries -- is nutrition, not chemicals. If they had better nutrition and sanitation, infectious disease would largely disappear even without vaccines! (But the drug industry doesn't believe in nutrition... vitamins are a threat to their vaccine profits.)

Here's the statement from Dr. Horowitz:

Statement from Dr. Len Horowitz
The editors of Medical Veritas journal (www.MedicalVeritas.org) have condemned The Lancet's retraction (http://edition.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/02/lancet.retraction.autism/index.html) of the controversial study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield, charging editor Richard Horton with pandering to special interests in a conspiracy to defraud the public about the risks of vaccinations.

In 1998, The Lancet published the contested study linking autism and intestinal problems to the risky MMR triple virus vaccine. Yesterday, following the British General Medical Council's decision that Dr. Wakefield had been "dishonest," The Lancet's editor retracted the article saying the Council's report made it "utterly clear, without any ambiguity at all, that the statements in the paper were utterly false."

In a letter to the Los Angeles Times (http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/02/andrew-wakefield-responds-to-article-about-journal-retraction.html), Dr. Gilbert Ross, medical director of the pro-vaccine industry American Council on Science and Health, wrote, "The retraction . . . comes far too late. Even now, Horton fails to accept responsibility for the human toll he engendered by publishing the Wakefield 'study.'. . ."

"On the contrary," wrote Dr. Leonard Horowitz, Editor-in-Chief of Medical Veritas. "Dr. Horton's delay is best explained by his aversion to self incrimination and conspiring to cover-up iatrogenocide -- the medical mass murder of innocent people for profit."

The Winter, 2010 issue of Medical Veritas evidenced gross conflicting interests undermining the The Lancet's integrity. Following the publication of Dr. Wakefield's controversial study, Reed-Elsevier-ChoicePoint mergers occurred. The mega-company formed has nearly monopolized the medical scientific publishing industry. Previous to this, The Lancet editors protested the "damaging" of medicine and health science by pharmaceutical companies.

"Now it is obvious Dr. Horton's company has been grossly contaminated by special interests as biased as Dr. Ross's 'PharmaCouncil'," Dr. Horowitz said.

Reed-Elsevier-ChoicePoint, it turns out, is directed by Chief Executive Officer, Sir Crispin Davis, according to a Reuter's News Service promotion for GlaxoSmithKline recently published (http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/officerProfile?symbol=GSK&officerId=593059). According to Forbes, Sir Davis was knighted by the Queen of England for his "service to the information industry." (http://people.forbes.com/profile/crispin-davis/37085) He has served as a Non-Executive Independent Director of GlaxoSmithKline, PLC since 2003. Sir Davis spent his early career with Procter and Gamble.

Reuter's News Service, key to the British "information industry," is directed by Editor-in-Chief, Thomas H. Glocer, who serves on the Board of Directors of Merck and Co., which admittedly paid Reed-Elsevier to publish pseudo-scientific articles and fraudulent medical journals, including the Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasian_Journal_of_Bone_and_Joint_Medicine)

According to court records, and the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/14vioxxside.html?_r=1), the Merck-sponsored publication for doctors in Australia came to light during litigation over Vioxx (http://naturalnews.com/vioxx.html) -- a pain medication that caused, conservatively, more than 27,785 deaths according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The Lancet editor blamed the FDA (http://www.ahrp.org/infomail/04/10/12.php) for faulty oversight for the VIOXX killings, but failed to cite his own parent company's complicity in the iatrogenocide. Dr. Horton wrote, "Without more vigilant drug regulation in the future, doctors will continue to be misled and patients' lives will continue to be endangered. "

So with zero confidence in The Lancet, Dr. Horton, those paying his salary, and those criticizing him for his actions, Medical Veritas editors are inviting Dr. Wakefield to re-publish his controversial paper in their next issue.

Outright slander against medical truth
"Many of our editors have experienced slander and demeaning remarks by mainstream healthcare authorities and the media, Dr. Gary S. Goldman, the Associate Editor of Medical Veritas, wrote to Dr. Wakefield. "Your numerous peer-reviewed journal articles testify to your valuable contribution to the medical and health fields, and your stand against the opponents to scientific reason and common sense is heroic." Medical Veritas, wherein Dr. Wakefield published a 2006 follow-up study to his 1998 report in The Lancet, is "one of the few remaining journals that places emphasis on the health interests of individuals rather than [the pursuit of] profits."

Vaccinations linked to spontaneous abortions
"The current climate of vaccine science is very controversial," said Eileen Dannemann. In recent months, the Director of the National Coalition of Organized Women (http://www.progressiveconvergence.com) collected and analyzed data of spontaneous abortions following injections of H1N1 vaccines into pregnant women.

"The information that people are given by vaccine authorities, and through the media," Dannemann insists, "is inconsistent with the safety studies conducted that lack placebo controls and long-term surveillance of adverse reactions to these vaccinations." Contrary to the PharmaMedia's propaganda character-assassinating Dr. Wakefield, he is not the only scientist concerned about vaccinations causing deadly side effects. In recent days, a new study from The Center for Modeling Optimal Outcomes in New Jersey published, "If it hadn't been for so many parents insisting that vaccines were responsible for the condition [of autism], we might never have found the fact that the stabilizer in MMR, and a few other vaccines, is hydrolyzed gelatin -- a substance that is approximately 21% glycine. It appears that, based on readily verifiable science, the use of that form of glycine triggers an imbalance between the amino acid neurotransmitters responsible for the absorption rate of certain classes of cells throughout the body. It is that wide-spread disruption that apparently results in the systemic problems that encompass the mind and the body characterized in today's 'classic' autism." (http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/scientific-link-to-autism-identified-70354482.html)

Special note to journalists
There is a courtesy copy of Medical Veritas, available free for online review for only 2 more weeks (http://web.mac.com/len15/PHARMAGANDA__A_Study_of_Conflicting_Interests/Leonard_G._Horowitz_and_Sherri_Kane.html) -- including Dr. Horowitz's commentary and links to "PHARMAGANDA: A Study of Conflicting Interests."

After February 15, 2010, there will be a $35 charge for accessing the Medical Veritasjournal via PDF downloads, with individual articles in this issue available for separate purchase at $15 per download, including Dr. Harold Buttram's important article on the future of human DNA corrupted by the mutagenic viral injections accompanying childhood vaccinations.

Please help alert medical doctors about this report, and this free limited time access. Medical doctors and patients must be informed that their intelligence has been tainted by pharmaceutical special interests. This publication contains urgent life-saving knowledge.

February 05, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Continuing our 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days, today we focus on cleansing your digestive tract and energizing your cellular energy with the help of some living foods. This is in preparation for part six in the series, which we'll get to tomorrow.

Here's the cool part about this: You don't need a juicer to do this step. All you really need is a blender and a nut milk bag (a fine mesh bag used to squeeze out the juice). Of course, a proper juicer really helps, but it's not required. Below, I'm going to give you an absolutely delicious live foods juicing recipe that I think you'll really enjoy. I'm using special ingredients in this juice that help mask the more bland tastes of the green ingredients, so even if you've tried fresh living juices in the past and didn't like them, check out what you'll read below...

Raw living foods offer one of the greatest secrets to disease reversal and lasting health, and nothing beats fresh living foods right out of the garden. So if you can grow any of your own ingredients for this when Spring comes around, definitely make an effort to do so. Otherwise, buy them at a store or farmer's market.

Here's what you'll need (always choose organic):

• 1 container of Blackberries (use all the blackberries) • 1 bunch of Parsley (use all the parsley) • 1 bunch of Kale (only use 2-3 large leaves in this recipe) • 1 bag of Carrots (only use 3 large carrots for this recipe) • 1 bunch of Celery (use 2-3 stalks for this recipe) • 2 Pears (use both pears)

If you can't find these ingredients, substitute something close. It's crucial to have some berries in the mix, however. They are part of the recipe for making it all taste good.

After proper preparation (washing, etc.), push all these ingredients through a juicer to generate the fresh juice. If you only have a blender, then blend all these ingredients with water, then pour the juice into a nut milk bag and squeeze out the juice from that. With either method, you'll end up with a container of fresh juice.

This juice will be extremely potent, so mix this with water (add an equal amount of water to the juice). You may also wish to add some stevia if you'd like to sweeten up the taste a bit.

Health benefits of the fresh living juice
• The blackberries will mask the bitter tastes of the other ingredients with their acidity. This acidity greatly improves the overall taste of the recipe. It also improves digestion of the minerals in the vegetables (you need an acidic digestive environment to absorb minerals).

• Blackberries also have a powerful anti-cancer effect through your entire digestive tract, from your mouth and gums down through your colon.

• Parsley is a super digestive cleanser. It will help eliminate toxins while providing your body with a burst of chlorophyll that will help cleanse your blood and liver.

• Kale contains potent anti-cancer phytonutrients. It also contains healthy plant-based proteins and lots of chlorophyll.

• The carrots are used primarily as a sweetener here (they really do sweeten up the juice), and they also contain a wide assortment of beneficial nutrients, most notably beta carotene (from which carrots get their name).

• The pears are the sweeteners here. I find that pear juice tastes much better than apple juice in these raw living juices, but of course it's your choice of what's best for you. If you're diabetic or want to reduce the sugars in this recipe, reduce the numbers of pears to just one or eliminate them altogether (when I juice here in Ecuador, I don't use pears at all. I just use carrots.) Some people prefer to use oranges instead of pears. The tart taste of the oranges in some ways provides a better overall taste. Try the recipe both ways and see what you like best.

In addition to all the benefits listed above, these foods are alive with nutrients and energies. They are live foods, not dead processed foods, and they provide both the nutrients and the energies of life! It's a simple concept, really: If you want to stay alive, eat more living foods. If you want to be dead, eat more dead foods.

Your body will thank you
The point of today's living foods juice is to both introduce you to the joy of juicing (if you don't already know about it), and to prepare your digestive tract for tomorrow's action item.

How much juice should you drink? Just drink whatever amount you feel comfortable with. I recommend an 8 oz. glass of this juice at minimum, but if you only feel like drinking half that much, that's fine, too. Some people will drink as much as 64 ounces of fresh juice in a day! (Juice Feasting)

For the purposes of this 15-day experience you can still eat all your other normal food during the day. This isn't about eliminating everything else, it's about adding some fresh, living juice to your day. Ideally, you'll make this a regular part of your diet because whatever your diet consists of -- whether it's pure vegan or based on McDonald's cheeseburgers -- it will be helped by adding several ounces of fresh juice.

Pointers and shortcuts
Don't have time to make your own fresh juice? There are shortcuts, but none of them are as good as actual living fresh juice.

You can, if you wish, consume juice from a superfood powder such as EnerFood, VitaMineral Green, Boku Superfood, Delicious Greens or others. These are all reasonable alternatives to fresh juice, but by their very nature they are not as fresh as living foods would be.

Do NOT reach for a Naked Juice, or Odwalla juice and make the mistake of thinking they are fresh living juices. All of those juices are DEAD, pasteurized juices made by the big soft drink companies (Coke and Pepsi). None of them are fresh, raw and alive. They still have nutritional benefits, so I'm not saying they're worthless, but they pale in comparison to fresh, raw juices that you make at home.

You can drink this juice between meals, or during a meal, or any time you want. Just drink it quickly after making it, because fresh juice oxidizes in mere minutes. The nutritional quality of the fresh juice you make literally starts to degrade with each passing second. Ideally, start to consume it within two minutes of juicing it, and finish it in no more than five.

You may feel some "detox" side effects from this juice, especially if you currently pursue a relatively unhealthful diet. But they should be mild. After all, this is just simple juice from simple foods. These aren't drugs or extracts. They are the foods your body was meant to consume.

By the way, I'm not here to push a vegan diet or a vegetarian diet on you. Decide to eat whatever you wish to eat, for your own reasons. Just add this fresh juice to your day and see what happens for yourself. Even if you gobble down pepperoni pizza and diet soda, these fresh juices will improve your health results in a noticeable way.

In case you're curious, I drink about 16 ounces of this fresh juice each day, right from my own garden. Except I don't use the pears, and I add in fresh aloe vera gel from fresh leaves that I grow myself here in Ecuador. I grow all my own fresh berries, kale, carrots, parsley, broccoli, cucumbers and more, and these go right into my juice.

Just so you know how powerful this is, I just finished a 90-hour fast. Aside from a raw coconut food bar a friend gave me, I didn't eat any solid food for 90 hours. I did, however, drink one glass of fresh, living vegetable juice each day.

If I had been consuming a junk food diet, my energy would have collapsed within the first 24 hours. I would have been dead tired, detoxing in bed and probably suffering through it all. But because my daily diet is so clean, I was able to eat virtually nothing for nearly four days and still have the energy to write these articles, to go hiking up the mountains behind my house and generally get along with a normal day. (Yes, it got difficult on the fourth day, which is why I ended the fast at 90 hours.)

Fresh living juice is such a powerhouse of nutrition and energy that even when you eat virtually nothing for several days in a row, the juice you had before the fast keeps you alive, healthy and energetic. That's been my experience, at least.

What about the pulp?
I've added this section to the article because people are asking why they shouldn't drink the pulp and fibers of the fruits and veggies instead of juicing them.

Here's my take on it:

First off, I don't want vegetable fibers, and I don't need 'em. The fruit fibers, on the other hand, are very good for your digestive health. Fruit pectin even helps prevent cancer according to many naturopaths. So if you want more pulp in your juice, then do this:

#1) JUICE the vegetables to get pure juice while tossing out the fibers. #2) BLEND the fruits to keep the fruit pulp. Then pour in the veggie juice and add water.

To me, this is the best "pulpy" juice. It's easy to remember, too: KEEP the fruit fiber, TOSS the vegetable fiber.

But for those who are using juice therapeutically to treat disease under the care of a naturopathic physician, for example, they will probably want no fiber at all. That's because the fiber makes it more difficult for your body to absorb the juice. So for people who are fasting, or treating cancer, or detoxing or whatever, it's often recommended that they discard all the fiber and go for the pure juice.

There's no absolute right or wrong about this. What's important is what works for you! Try it both ways and do what makes you feel healthier and happier.

Tomorrow I'll talk more about fasting. For today, enjoy your juice!

February 05, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) An extract made from one of the main antioxidants found in green tea may be able to slow the progression of prostate cancer, according to a study conducted by researchers from Louisiana state University and published in Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Researchers gave 26 prostate cancer patients between the ages of 41 and 68's four capsules of day of Polyphenon E, an extract of epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) made by Polyphenon Pharma. EGCG is a powerful antioxidant to which many of the health benefits of green tea have been attributed. The dosage given to the participants in the study was equivalent to that acquired from drinking 12 cups of green tea per day.

After 12 weeks, the researchers found that levels of the prostate cancer markers Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and prostate specific antigen (PSA) had fallen by an average of 18.9 percent, 9.9 percent and 10.4 percent, respectively, indicating a slowed progression of the disease.

PSA is a marker of inflammation, and indicates disease severity in prostate cancer patients. HGF and VEGF are both produced by prostate tumors as they spread to other parts of the body.

In some patients, HGF and VEGF levels fell as much as 30 percent upon treatment with the EGCG extract.

The researchers were cautiously optimistic about the study findings.

"It's still in an early stage," researcher Jim Cardelli said. "Green tea can keep cancer from growing very fast, but it may not be able to shrink tumors. But it can be a good addition to traditional therapies, like chemo (chemotherapy) or radiation."

Researchers do not know whether the same effects could be seen in other cancers, but the antioxidants in green tea have previously been linked to a reduced risk of a variety of cancers, skin and autoimmune conditions, cardiovascular disease and inflammation.

Sources for this story include: www.reuters.com.

February 05, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Goji berries, also known as Wolfberries, are one of the most nutritionally dense superfoods on the planet. They contain a vast array of unique carotenoids, vitamins, minerals, and phytonutrients. Among these it is also believed by many to be one of the best sources of antioxidants on the planet.

Antioxidants Antioxidants help to protect our DNA from damage by free radicals and radiation. Without an ample supply of antioxidants our body becomes open to illness and accelerated aging. Free radicals are generated as a byproduct of normal metabolism and exposure to toxins and radiation. This eventually results in an early cell death which has been contributed to a variety of diseases and to the accelerated development of mutated cells that may lead to cancer. All of this is countered with the help of antioxidants.

Carotenoids Goji berries are one of the best sources of the carotenoid antioxidants, even more than carrots. This is important since research has indicated that the carotenoid content of human tissue is a statistically significant factor in determining our maximum lifespan potential. This means the more carotenoids we consume, the better the possibility we may live a longer life.

Eye Health Goji berries also contains some very important nutrients for eye health. These include zeaxanthin and lutein. A diet with increased levels of zeaxanthin and lutein has been helpful in decreasing the risk of developing age related macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness and loss of vision in people above the age of 65.

Immunity And Longevity Goji berries have also been found to boost the immune system. There are three main components in the goji berry that do this: polysaccharides, beta-carotene, and germanium. Polysaccharides are well known for their immune boosting properties, while beta-carotene seems to boost interferon`s stimulation on the immune system. Germanium, which has been found to be effective in treating certain types of cancer, is also critical in boosting interferon levels. Goji berries also contain sesquiterpenoids which have anti-inflammatory properties. The sesquiterpenoids contained in goji berries are found to be a powerful secretagogue. A secretagogue stimulates the secretion of the human growth hormone by the pituitary gland.

Due to the vitamin and mineral content of goji berries, and the fact that they are the only known food sourced with secretagogue, goji berries have long been known as a longevity food. In fact, legend has it that a man named Li Qing Yuen was believed to have lived to the age of 252 years. It is still unknown if this case is true or not.

Nutritional Profile Goji berries contain 18 amino acids including all eight of the essential amino acids, making it a complete protein. They also contain 21 trace minerals including: calcium, copper, germanium, iron, magnesium, phosphorus, selenium, and zinc. For a vitamin content they contain vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin B-complex, and vitamin E.

How To Use Goji berries can be used a variety of ways. Traditionally in Chinese medicine they were used in teas and eaten raw. They are great to add to any of your teas that you make since the heating process extracts the polysaccharides into the tea water. They are also good added to soups and trail mixes. You can find goji berries in a good local health store or via the internet.

As we can see, goji berries are really a superfood of the top magnitude. Antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, polysaccharides, protein, it has them all in an abundance. This is one of the many superfoods available to us in our modern age that can truly help to take our health to the next level.

Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfberry

http://altmedicine.about.com/od/completeazindex/a/goji.htm

Superfoods: The Food And Medicine Of The Future, By David Wolfe, 2009

About the author
Brett Brown is a contributing journalist with a strong desire to help others receive factual information in the health industry. He also writes for and updates his own blog on a regular basis which can be found at: http://rawhealthforce.blogspot.com

February 05, 2010 07:00 AM

	Pulsed Direct Current Electricity	From: spiritelemental Views: 124 2 ratings
	Time: 02:42	More in Science & Technology

February 05, 2010 05:21 AM

Steve's got a new vid already -- he had suggested making a vid based on my research....

Carolyn Harris' video library and radio show

I met Carolyn on the mystic politics chat

Mystic Politics had posted my Actual Matrix Plan expose about a month ago

And so I took questions while transmitting full lotus energy -- in real time -- for a couple hours. It was pretty fun -- for sure! A couple people ordered my lulu.com book while we chatted. haha.

I guess the deal is that most of the conspiracy occult politics scene is still Western based with a focus on tarot, Crowley, astrology, Rosicrucians, etc. so bringing in the Chinese Bushmen angle with the nonwestern music twist is definitely new.

For example pointing out the different emotion and organ connections.

Because of the CIA Missionary drug deaths in Peru - the plane getting shot down -- I was reminding of Daniel Hopsicker who has his new video available

There's some preview on his site -- I had preordered this DvD but that was over a year ago -- maybe 2 years ago! haha

Well there's a new radio interview with Chris Everard -- the Enigma t.v. producer of occult conspiracy docs -- with Carolyn Harris on her iconoclastreport

So I talked about the moon energy a lot and complementary opposites, etc. Carolyn said she wanted to have me on her radio show. It's a 4 hour show with tons of commericals! haha. I just down loaded it to realplayer and then can fast forward the commercials.

Yeah so I've sold maybe 6 copies of my book -- although I don't have a copy myself -- too dangerous to leave that lying around the house! haha. Of course I pointed out I don't get any money -- it's just the lulu costs. But then the book is only roughly edited with an obtruse yet intense writing style. haha.

When we were on chat someone gave the link to "illuminati teaches sacred geometry to kids on t.v." vid -- and so Carolyn had it uploaded to her site -- it's pretty trippy

Still most of the videos in the library seem to have missing parts and the library categories section does not work --

February 04, 2010 11:02 PM

Rosetta Project Director Laura Welcher recently took part in a segment on The History Channel’s Life After People series. In an episode titled “Crypt of Civilization,” Laura discusses the Rosetta Disk and The 10,000 Year Clock.   

The central question of the series is “How long would it last?” The series explores various materials, systems [...]

February 04, 2010 10:15 PM

In this podcast I play a recording of Chapter 13 of "The Genesis Generation", a novel about a 29 year old corporate geek who gradually evolves into an underground hero in the psychedelic community. The complete novel is available at www (dot) GenesisGeneration (dot) us ... Chapter 1 may be heard in podcast #186 of this series.

February 04, 2010 09:12 PM

Dedicated to bringing together video documentation of the daily lives of disparate global citizens, the Global Lives Project celebrates the opening of its first installation on February 26th at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.  This installation is sponsored by the Long Now Foundation through a grant from the William and [...]

February 04, 2010 08:35 PM

Seek the Mysteries Hidden in Plain Sight.

The Gates are Opening - The Harmonic Keys of Light and Vibration.

February 04, 2010 07:37 PM

What if all phages on this planet went on strike and refused to have their genes expressed?

February 04, 2010 05:10 PM

New research in marijuana cultivation has pointed to a link between the absence of the cannabidol compound (CBD) in certain strains of skunk weed and the development of psychosis. The elimination of CBD through selective breeding increases the THC content, which may play a key role in the development of psychosis. Studies on the role of these two compounds have shown that "pure synthetic THC causes transient psychosis in 40 to 50 percent of healthy people.

read more

February 04, 2010 05:03 PM

Our friend Freeman returns to Red Ice Radio to talk about the latest strange developments in the ongoing space war. There have been so many developments in this department in the last months, especially up in the north. We recently saw the Norway spiral up in Tromsö and aurora light phenomena just a few weeks later. What part did Scandinavia's HAARP facility EISCAT (the European Incoherent Scatter facility) play in all of this? There has also been strange pattern showing up on radar over Australia. Large spherical objects have been seen near the Sun by NASA satellites. We talk about the Cloud of Care, CERN, the LHC, the New Age Messiah Maitreya and much more with Freeman. Do NOT miss these two very exciting hours with Freeman. Topics Discussed: Human Programming, Flash Gordon, Princess Warrior Program, Weather Modification, HAARP, SURA, Norway Spiral, Obama Nobel Peace prize, Cloud of CARE, CERN, New space Program, ARIES, UFOs, 9 19 09, Earthquake in HAITI, Plasma Turbulence, Ring Cloud over Russia, Astana, Maitreya steps forward, G 1.9, U.S. general urges world war on space debris, The New Messiah Maitreya, Benjamin Creme, Space X, Freemasonry, Virgin Galactic's, White Knight one & White Knight Two, Arnold, Obama, ET & CFR, Kodiak Launch pad in Alaska, Vatican, Moon, Designer Babies, GATTACA, Simcores, Mind Transferring Technology, Blue Brain, Avatar, Obelisk and Dome symbolism, Sirius, Alpha-Dranonis, Cleopatra's Needle, 1877, Mars Moon suddenly Visible, Phoboes, Buzz Aldrin says there is a Monolith on Phobos, 2010, July 4th, E.T., Kaaba Stone, "Humanitarian Invasion" of Haiti, Resources on Haiti, UK Military leaving Porta-au-Prince shortly before the Earthquake, Gold, Iridium, Resources and more. Do NOT miss hour two with Freeman as we proceed down the rabbit hole and continue to discuss the latest developments. We talk about the human race being quarantined, are the "Sirians" and or the "Alpha Draconins" trying the break out of the barrier with the technology that they are building? We talk about all the blue stuff that keeps coming up. Like "the Blue Book", the Urantia Book, about the chronology of earth. The book It has some strange origins and contains some really interesting information. We talk about some of it and where it possibly came from. We talk about transferring of the soul into an "e-body", a robot body or a genetically engineered body. Can a soul be sent to another planet? We talk about Avatar and the Navi people in the film and the tarot connection to their name. We talk about the creation of "robo-sapiens" and the hijacking of kids through mind control. We discuss CERN and the new computer grid that they are building there, the Blue Brain project, Blue Gene, kabbalism, A.I. the secret Destiny of America, "going after the guilty", the 9/11 truth movement and how important it is to use your own mind and heart to break away from the programming and mind control techniques that the elite and guiding forces constantly are trying to subject us to. Many people fall to it but there's always an alternative. Don't miss this superb second hour with Freeman.

February 04, 2010 04:45 PM

O.K. first Dorothy Izatt saw light beings while meditating and then they showed her the ufos. Then she took photos with a super 8.



The paracast radio interview about Dorothy Izatt

What made that even more compelling was the fact that David Biedny offered his services as a verifier of all the photographic evidence gathered and that maybe she could be persuaded to use equipment other than that of her normal Super 8 camera such as something digital and high def.

So the paracast Biedny is a photoshop expert -- and this story is not over possibly -- but wait...

Excerpt from Dorothy Izatt book about one of her alien encounters

Some of the original material on Dorothy Izatt

Izatt is contacted by the aliens while she meditates in her room

In that time the footage has been shot with four different cameras..all film. The effects that you see exist only on one single frame..film video experts attest to the fact that this can't be reproduced..either in live filming or in development.

A second radio interview with the director of "Capturing the Light" documentary

As of now Dorothy Izatt has been debunked but still it's cool footage, no less.

This whole case rests on the fact that individual frames interspersed throughout film footage taken of bright lights show dazzling "scribblings" of light. Dorothy interprets these scribblings as messages from aliens.

The problem here is that these "scribblings" look pretty much like time exposures of lights taken with a handheld (shaky) camera. The impression I get when looking at these is that the film advance mechanism in her camera is faulty and, every once in a while, a single frame is immobilized in the camera for a few seconds. This results in an unintentional time exposure on that single frame. Since the camera is handheld, camera shake alone draws these patterns of light.

That was my theory of course and only a theory until a test was discreetly conducted by a CBC crew during a segment on Mrs Izatt on a show called "On the road again". During that taping, they simply asked Dorothy to shoot film footage of regular scenery and of her grand children using the same camera she used to record those patterns of light. Sure enough, when the film was processed, flashes of light occurred in the same frequency as on her "UFO" videos. However, in this case, the frames with the "flashes" were actually completely washed out (totally overexposed).

What this means is simply that the same technical problem was occurring with her camera in the daytime but since the amount of light coming into the camera during the unintentional time exposure was much greater because of daylight, it caused the film to be totally overexposed instead of registering a single point of light as a scribble as it would do at night.

This was conclusive evidence, not that Dorothy was faking this effect, but that she misinterpreted the cause of this effect. This does not detract from the fact that some of her film footage does show unusual moving lights in the sky. But the single film frames showing the light patterns should be discounted as they can be attributed to a faulty camera. I do know that claims were made to the effect that she got the same results using two other cameras, but this has never been substantiated. What HAS been verified is that the main camera she used to get these results exhibits the same characteristics even when she is shooting footage of her grandchildren playing on the lawn.

The rest of her images are so blurry that a lot of imagination is required to try and make sense of them. That is why in most cases, an artist's impression accompanies her pictures, so we can be made to see what she would like us to see in those pictures.

Radio interview with the director of the Dorothy Izatt documentary



More debunking from a link through abovetopsecret

I kept noticing similar patterns over and over as I watched the lady's film. You see how the streaks of light all have the same shape? That's an indication that the camera was moving during the taking of the photo. Over and over as I watched the video, I kept noticing these repeated shapes. There's be fairly static pictures of 3 or 4 lights, then a frame with 3 or 4 streaks that had similar shapes. I'd keep trying to look at these pictures non-judgmentally, and my brain would just keep saying 'but that's camera shake. You've seen it a million times.'

OK - but there were a production designer, a visual effects guy, and a cinematographer who all swore there was no way she could have created this effect with computers or developing equipment. Quite true. What I found strange was that nobody considered the possibility that it arises out of a fault in the camera.

Now, I know something about film (aka movie) cameras (video too, but I am nostalgic about film cameras). I've shot with 8mm cameras, 16mm cameras, and 35mm cameras. I'm not a cinematographer, but I do work in the film world and I've owned 8mm and 16mm cameras, and am able to perform basic maintenance and repairs on them. So I sometimes buy a broken camera on eBay if I am pretty sue what's wrong with it, fix it, and maybe make a few bucks. Or not. I just like fixing things, and I like the feel of shooting film although it's too expensive for me to do regularly.

Well, what I see here is called a 'registration problem'. The lady is shooting with an 8mm camera. Hard to say which model, but most such cameras shoot film that is called 'super 8'. It has holes just down one side of the film stock, and you get a bigger (=better) picture by exposing the other side of the film (where there are no holes) than just a square in the center.

Anyway, the way a film camera works is there's a motor (electric or sometimes wind-up) turning gears which open the shutter and move the film along, sometimes using pins or sometimes a clamp mechanism. And what I think is happening in these single-frame 'flash' pictures is that the mechanism is momentarily jamming, leaving the shutter open and letting the film be over-exposed. It could be for a very short time, like 1/9th, 1/6th or 1/3 of a second (I choose these numbers because Super 8 is normally shot at 18 frames per second, as is mentioned in the film).

The film has all the qualities of being over exposed (when the video stops on a frame long enough to let you look), and the repeating patterns described above would also be consistent with the momentary shake while the shutter is open for too long. The streaks in some other examples which look like lines of dashes would be consistent with a light source flashing while moving - for example, some lights on planes or the indicator lamp on a moving car.

The google preview on the Dorothy Izatt book

the DvD website



Dorothy Izatt has proven the existence of Annunaki aliens -- according to some:



This blogger was one of the first viewers of Izatt's movies



Tons of Dorothy Izatt links on one site



Abovetopsecret radio interview with 84 year old Dorothy Izatt from 2 years ago



ATS provides other anomalous lights Izatt type UFO videos while a poster further debunks Izatt

For example, look at just after 1.5 minutes into the video, where you can see the treeline at times. When the light is still, so is the treeline. When the light moves, so does the treeline.

What can we conclude from this?

The conclusion is that the motion we see in the video is due to camera motion, and not motion of the light. Anyone who thinks there is any significance at all to the Izatt captures needs to see this video which demonstrates what total garbage the Izatt stuff is. Thanks for further debunking the Izatt photos with your good observation that this video looks like them.. it DOES!!!!

Here abovetopsecret provides links arguing that Dorothy Izatt saw some secret military technology which makes three dimensional laser images in the air

the fifth podcast interview with the director of "Capturing the Light" documentary

O.K. so the final word is that the money from the book and movie sales is being used to digitize the some 30 hours of film footage that Dorothy Izatt has.

February 04, 2010 11:13 AM

(NaturalNews) Here's one of the secrets of really healthy people: Make hemp seeds a regular part of your diet. They're rich in omega-3 fatty acids, plant-based proteins and phytonutrients. That makes them a nutritional powerhouse for supporting good health!

And today, NaturalNews has teamed with the Raw Food World to bring you an unbeatable deal on certified organic Nutiva hemp seeds. While supplies last, you can get a 5-pound bag of these nutritious hemp seeds, plus a 16 oz. bottle of Nutiva hemp oil in a fancy dark glass jar for just $41.95.

This is the best price you are going to find anywhere on certified organic Nutiva hemp seeds (+ hemp oil). We put this special deal together for NaturalNews readers, and we just received the shipment of hemp seeds two days ago. This offer is good while supplies last. Take advantage of it right here: http://store.naturalnews.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=100151_100302_100303

Normally, a 5-pound bag of hemp seeds costs $49.95 all by itself. (Roughly $10 per pound.) Through this limited offer for NaturalNews readers, the price drops to $41.95 and you get a free 16 oz. bottle of Nutiva hemp oil which is worth at least another $16. Plus, this hemp oil is shipped in a glass bottle unlike most hemp oil products that are shipped in plastic bottles.

The total value is just under $66, but it's all yours for just $41.95 today while supplies last:

http://store.naturalnews.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=100151_100302_100303 (It's the top-most item on the page...)

This is a great opportunity to stock up on certified organic hemp seeds! You can use them in all sorts of ways: Sprinkle them on salads, cereals or other foods. Blend them into superfoods. Or mix with flax, agave nectar and spices to make your own raw dried herb crackers! (With the help of an Excalibur dehydrator, of course...)

You can even make your own trail mix or healthy granola with these hemp seeds. Or give away a 5-pound bag to a friend who would appreciate the healthfulness of what they're receiving. It's a deeply appreciated gift!

I've been covering Nutiva for years, and I've interviewed John Roulac several times. Nutiva is a company with the best ethics in the business (along with Ruth's Hemp Foods which has admirable ethics as well). Everything he does is honest, clean and widely trusted. When he says his seeds are certified organic, it's an honest claim backed by years of solid experience and a trusted reputation across the industry.

That's why I'm so happy to be able to bring this incredible price discount to you on certified organic Nutiva hemp seeds. I don't think you'll ever find a better price anywhere. And the nutrition you'll receive from these hemp seeds is truly outstanding. Try them yourself and you'll see what I mean.

You may also find lots of other interesting items in the NaturalNews store: http://store.naturalnews.com

Enjoy exploring all the raw foods, healthy foods, food ingredients and much more. Thank you for your support, and I hope you enjoy your hemp seeds!

February 04, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) The 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) requires that manufacturers of products containing potentially toxic chemicals disclose their ingredients to the federal government, however a loophole in the requirement allows manufacturers to arbitrarily withhold information that they deem sensitive to their business. As a result, over 17,000 product chemicals remain secret not only from the public but from government officials.

Each year, over 700 new chemicals are introduced by manufacturers, many of which do not get disclosed either to the public or to government agencies. About 95 percent of new chemical notices submitted to the government request some kind of secrecy. Critics allege that manufacturers are exploiting the original intent of TSCA, abusing it to hide sensitive information about ingredients that are likely toxic and may otherwise get banned.

For the first time in many years, Congress is addressing the issue of disclosure abuse with promises of reforming the regulatory provisions. Consumer and environmental groups, in conjunction with many government officials, are demanding that all ingredient information be made public with no exceptions.

Mike Walls, vice president of the American Chemistry Council, argues otherwise, insisting that public disclosure would reveal confidential information that could benefit competitors and hurt business. He believes that even the names and addresses of manufacturers should not have to be made public because competitors may trace the information and somehow figure out secret recipes.

According to EPA records, more than half of the 65 "substantial risk" reports submitted to agency last March involved secret chemicals. Of these, 151 of them are produced in quantities over one million tons a year and ten of them are used primarily in children's products.

Last year, a Colorado chemical spill nearly cost a nurse her life after she treated a man who had been exposed to the spill. Following his recovery, nurse Cathy Behr fell seriously ill herself, her lungs filling up with fluid and her liver on the verge of failing. Concerned doctors traced the contamination back to a product called ZetaFlow, produced by Weatherford International. After requesting information Weatherford provided some material but utilized ZetaFlow's confidential status to withhold the secret ingredients.

To this day, Behr does not know exactly what triggered her near death. She would like to see a list of all the chemicals contained in ZetaFlow. She also believes that the ingredients in all chemical products should be made public information to ensure safety. She continues to suffer from respiratory problems due to the unknown chemicals.

Steve Owens, assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, first arrived in his position back in July and within a week ended confidentiality protection for 530 chemicals. In each of these cases, manufacturers had obtained secrecy for ingredients that were otherwise publicly available on the manufacturers' websites and in trade journals.

Lynn Goldman, a former EPA official who now works as a pediatrician and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, explained that the few EPA officials who are in the know about secret chemicals do not have enough information to properly assess risk by themselves and are legally bound not to share the information with anyone else. Officials who could otherwise help are unable to do so because they are not privy to the secret ingredients. Thus the entire system is unable to operate properly due to secrecy.

When specific chemicals are banned for safety reasons, manufacturers often change them slightly and begin using them again as secret ingredients. Heather Stapleton, a Duke University chemist, saw a case like this while researching flame retardants. She labored for months to identify a chemical found in dust samples taken from homes in Boston but was unable to figure it out. While at a conference, she came to realize from a diagram that the mystery chemical was a slightly varied version of another that had been banned for causing reproductive and other damage.

Richard Wiles, senior vice president of the Environmental Working Group (EWG) believes there are thousands of chemicals currently being used that are potentially toxic and people do not even realize they are there. He questions how a regulatory agency like the EPA can even do its job when a great many of the chemicals it is supposed to be regulating are being withheld from the agency and the public.

Federal officials are working towards establishing regulations that would require manufacturers to provide evidence and reasoning why a chemical must remain secret. Under their proposal, the burden of proof would be on manufacturers to establish proof that disclosure would harm business. The EPA would then have 90 days to appeal the claim and prove otherwise if it believed necessary.

Others are not buying this idea, insisting that if public health is to be regarded then no chemical should remain a secret.

Sources for this story include: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/03/AR2010010302110_pf.html, http://yubanet.com/enviro/Off-the-Books-Industry-s-Secret-Chemicals.php

February 04, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Magnesium, as NaturalNews has reported through the years, is an essential nutrient that benefits health in many important ways. For example, research has shown it helps to prevent heart disease (http://www.naturalnews.com/027392_magnesium_disease_heart.html), slashes the risk of cerebral palsy (http://www.naturalnews.com/025350_magnesium_Cerebral_Palsy_premature_birth.html), and can even treat age-related hearing loss (http://www.naturalnews.com/026834_hearing_loss_magnesium_Vitamin_D.html). Now a study by Chinese scientists, published in the in the January 28th issue of the journal Neuron, shows magnesium could have a powerful impact on the brain, too -- and boost learning and memory.

In a statement to the media, the researchers noted that diet can affect cognitive capacity. Because learning and memory tend to decline with age and disease, they decided to search for dietary factors that could prevent these changes by having a positive influence on the sites of communication between brain cells (neurons) called synapses. Professor Guosong Liu, Director of the Center for Learning and Memory at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, led the new study to see whether supplementing the diet with magnesium could boost brain power in this way.

The results suggest increasing magnesium intake could be a successful, drug-free way to improve brain function. It also supports the idea that too-low levels of magnesium could result in increased deterioration of memory in aging humans.

"Magnesium is essential for the proper functioning of many tissues in the body, including the brain and, in an earlier study, we demonstrated that magnesium promoted synaptic plasticity in cultured brain cells," Dr. Liu explained in the press statement. "Therefore it was tempting to take our studies a step further and investigate whether an increase in brain magnesium levels enhanced cognitive function in animals."

Using a new magnesium compound dubbed magnesium-L-threonate (MgT) that can significantly increase magnesium in the brain when used as a dietary supplement, the research team gave magnesium to lab rats of different ages along with their regular diet. Then the scientists checked the animals for behavioral and cellular changes associated with memory.

"We found that increased brain magnesium enhanced many different forms of learning and memory in both young and aged rats," stated Dr. Liu. In fact, the research revealed an increase in the number of functional synapses and enhancement of a host of processes in the brain that are necessary for learning and memory. "Our findings suggest that elevating brain magnesium content via increasing magnesium intake might be a useful new strategy to enhance cognitive abilities," Dr. Liu concluded in the media statement. "Moreover, half the population of industrialized countries has a magnesium deficit, which increases with aging. This may very well contribute to age-dependent memory decline; increasing magnesium intake might prevent or reduce such decline."

Editor's note: NaturalNews is opposed to the use of animals in medical experiments that expose them to harm. We present these findings in protest of the way in which they were acquired.

For more information: http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(09)01044-7 http://www.naturalnews.com/magnesium.html

February 04, 2010 07:00 AM

We go into the topics of Free Energy, Zero Point Energy, over unity devices and magnetic motors with our guest Rasa who joins us all the way from China. We don't hear too much about what is going on in China or Asia regarding these kinds of technologies. Is it from China that these Zero Point Energy devices or over unity devices will come from? We talk with Rasa for an hour on what of kind of work and research he's been doing in China and elsewhere to bridge the world of inventors and financiers. Topics Discussed: AMURT, Superconductors, Room Temperature, the Race for Zero Point, Over Unity Devices, Water Devices, battery charger, Variable load, inventors, electric car, Tesla, Home Generator and more.

February 03, 2010 11:56 PM

KMO welcomes Charles Cresson Wood to the program to talk about the need for a radical transition to a new style of consciousness, how crises might prompt the shift and how the internet will prove essential in facilitating the process. Charles encourages us to embrace unity consciousness, confront our fears and challenge the reigning assumptions about the value of selling the hours of our lives to corporations.

February 03, 2010 08:50 PM

 

The following is excerpted from Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences by Jeffrey Long and Paul Perry, available from HarperCollins. 

Build it and they will come. --W. P. Kinsella, Field of Dreams

 

Journey Toward Understanding

read more

February 03, 2010 07:17 PM

by Elio

The Royal Society announced that it has put 60 of its most memorable papers online. One of them concerns the discovery of bacteria by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. The original paper as published in the Society’s Philosophical Transactions of 1677-1678 was entitled:

Observations, communicated to the Publisher by Mr. Antony van Leewoenhoeck, in a Dutch Letter of the 9th of Octob. 1676, here English’d: Concerning little Animals by him observed in Rain-Well-Sea- and Snow water; and also in water wherein Pepper had lain infused.

Here are two excerpts that can be expected to tickle the present day microbiologist’s mind. (Note that in the style of the time, the letter “s” looks like an “f.”)

The eye of a body louse is approximately 100 µm in diameter or 10⁴ µm³. The organisms van Leeuwenhoek saw were 1/10 that length, or 10 µm, and 1/1000 that volume, around 10 µm³. Many bacteria reach such dimensions. The movement described matches the runs and tumbles of chemotactic bacteria.

Let’s assume he was talking about lengths. A honey bee is about 1.2 cm in length, a horse, about 250 cm. Thus, the ratio of their lengths is approximately 200x. Cheese mites are around 0.5 mm in length, thus making the organisms he observed approximately 2.5 µm long. I haven’t found out how thick the hair of a cheese-mite is.

February 03, 2010 05:19 PM

When the article states "it seems algae new about" quantum mechanics 2 billion years before humans -- that's hilarious because it brings up the whole quantum consciousness as superposition time paradox -- there's about a quadruple-entendre in there.

"This and other recent discoveries have captured the attention of researchers for several reasons," says Scholes. "First, it means that quantum mechanical probability laws can prevail over the classical laws of kinetics in this complex biological system, even at normal temperatures. The energy can thereby flow efficiently by—counter intuitively—traversing several alternative paths through the antenna proteins simultaneously. It also raises some other potentially fascinating questions, such as, have these organisms developed quantum-mechanical strategies for light-harvesting to gain an evolutionary advantage? It suggests that algae knew about quantum mechanics nearly two billion years before humans," says Scholes.

Another science greek site states

It is this efficiency that the article makes the most of. Quantum entanglement allows plants to not only make the most of the energy they receive, but deliver that energy from leaves with near 100% efficiency. This means that plants have not only harnessed quantum entanglement, but have achieved feats of engineering that allow them to use it.

The secret is phase coherence of quantum beats

Of course from the classical angle you'll have to invoke massless potentials in higher dimensional geometry to create biophotons

LOW FREQUENCY SOUND = SUPERCONDUCTIVITY QUANTUM ALCHEMY?

I was pondering this electrochemical electromagnetic transduction after the Tesla "cold" gas ionization light technology

He deduced that the activity in the cell is not just electrochemical, and looked at the cell function as if the organelles were three-dimensional semiconductors. His theory suggests that all the structures within the cell can be considered to be in a field in which there is constant interaction between all subatomic particles, not just between the charges on electrons. Cope published a paper in 1978 showing that hydrated nucleic acids or dry melanin produce low-frequency sound in measurements of electrical conductivity when exposed to magnetic fields at room temperature. From this, he concluded that superconductivity, analogous to superconductivity in metals at very low temperatures, was occurring in living systems in the presence of a magnetic field. His overall view was that superconductive pathways play a controlling role in biological functions.

I wonder if algae bilocate while remote viewing in their natural photosynthetic qi bigu alchemical reality

In light of these observations, we would like to suggest that the RV process consists of a very rapid cycling between entanglement (anaerobic consciousness/ shared mental images/ identification with the target) and the state preparation process (aerobic /analytical interpretation of the signal perception). What may happen then in bilocation is that for some reason one experiences an unusually massive q-coherence (timescale is massive compared to the norm) so that it takes much longer for the viewer to naturally disentangle from the signal and return to an analytical mode where he can record impressions. Possibly the same is true for out-of-body experiences and for the Bigu phenomenon in Qigong (2). A very interesting test would be to use functional magnetic resonance (fMR) imaging to compare the brain oxygen uptake during bi-location to that in normal RV function and to that of control, non-RV states.

HARMONICAL SPIRAL STRUCTURES ENABLE LIGHT STORAGE

Yeah it's the secret of the complementary opposite rainbow vortex of reality natural resonance revolution

February 03, 2010 11:19 AM

twife.100131

February 03, 2010 07:30 AM

twife.100124

February 03, 2010 07:20 AM

Damien and I have been talking lately about tying my writing here at ADVENTUREinPROGRESS to certain themes. Not to restrict me in any way but to 1) capitalize on the unique perspective I have in our family as mother, homeschooler and (once reluctant) spouse and 2) provide information and encouragement specific to a certain group of our readers and hopefully future readers. I'm not interested in writing about gear for a family and minimalist footwear, two areas my husband is becoming a trusted source in. I like to write about my everyday - kids, homemaking, creativity, homeschooling and other stuff that can be found at my personal blog, FIMBY. I'm thinking of ways I can take those angles and apply them here. To help round out the techie information and make this a better resource for families.

One of the things I am passionate about is my kid's education. So I'm going to start there.

First a little background. This past weekend we experienced our first hard core winter hike. It was a colder day than any we've ever hiked, the temperature hovered around 16F (about -10C) and was colder in the wind. We choose to drive to the mountains anyway and cut our winter hiking teeth (told you I wrote from a mother's perspective) on a short 2.4 mile loop on a relatively easy (in summer time) trail.

The trail was steep at points. We were climbing on hands and knees and without our crampons we would of been sliding down the mountain. The children were challenged. We knew they were perfectly safe in our care but they hadn't ever pushed themselves like this before. Our son was exhilarated (I think stoked is the word we used in the 90's). Our 10 year old daughter sure and steady. Our 7 year daughter was freaked out and crying, trusting heavily in Daddy's sure grip right behind her.

We summitted with much triumph and "we did it" exclamations. We encouraged Brienne that she was probably the only 7 year in the whole state of Maine hiking on that frigid January day. I've certainly never met or read of young Mainers hiking on days so cold. She rocks! Someday Damien can share with you our strategies for staying warm and we're still learning. We were pretty cold by the time we finished our lunch and started back down. But we succeeded that day in accomplishing what we wanted to do; go for a hike on cold winter's day and have fun doing it.

Sharing these type of successes with our kids is part of what we call adventure education, and we're all learning together.

Adventure education is not nature study or outdoors study. It's about learning something about yourself, pushing your limits, going to the edge and coming back a stronger person. Being the only 7 year out for a serious hike in the Maine mountains on a given day (not scientifically verifiable but I'm fairly certain true) is an achievement. And I'm proud of my daughter for her perseverance in the face of fear.

I want my children to be able to identify flora and fauna, I want them equipped with survival knowledge and I want them to learn the history and geography of a local area through their interactions with the natural world. But just as importantly I want them to learn about themselves, I want them to face doubt and insecurity and then to overcome difficulty and rise above discomfort. Knowing of course that we are there to provide for their needs and help them along the way. And that is what we consider an adventure education.

In the future I hope to share more about our growth in this area. I, myself, am learning right along with my children how to enjoy the outdoors in all its seasons and with all the lessons it teaches us.

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February 03, 2010 02:05 AM

February 02, 2010 11:32 PM

In recent years, the issues of supposed 'Climate Change' and 'Global Warming' have been thrust upon us from all directions. The weather is important to us all, so we should look carefully at the skies, and we should avail ourselves of some facts. Is someone modifying the weather? Can it be true that so many people are blind to something being done in 'plain sight'? Andrew Johnson is behind the website checktheevidence.com and joins us to discuss Chemtrails, weather modification and climate change in our first hour. Topics Discussed: The Origins of the Website, Aircraft Grid, Chemtrails, Contrails, Persistent Jet Trails, Clifford Carnicom, HAARP, Morgellons Disease, Discovery Channel documentary on Chemtrails, Where are the whistleblowers or pilots speaking out? Geo-Engineering, Global Dimming, Weather Modification, FOIA in the UK, Traffic over 15000 feet, Circular Chemtrails, Azores, HAARP, ELF, Tetra System, Energy, Health Effects, EISCAT, Environment Effects, Chemtrails only one part of a bigger program and more. Make sure you join us for a very exciting second hour for Red Ice Members with Andrew Johnson. We begin to talk about weather modification, but we'll take this into another arena pretty quickly and begin to discuss Hurricane Erin and some of the anomalies that happened on the morning of 9/11. This will take us into the area of Directed Energy Weapons - this is where 9/11 research and weather modification connects. Was the World Trade Center buildings destroyed by some kind of Energy Weapon, well we'll discuss some of this evidence with everything from strange bent metal to people reported to have been levitating close by. We talk about Thermite, Controlled Demolition, and the interesting connections of Professor Stephen E. Jones and towards the end we even tie in Crop Circle research and point to the similar effects. You don't want to miss our second hour with Andrew Johnson!

February 02, 2010 10:31 PM

Reality Sandwich and Chimbre present

Master Shaman Retreat with Mancoluto and Daniel Pinchbeck

April 22 - May 2, 2010

read more

February 02, 2010 04:33 PM

BOL-148 is the 2-brom derivative of LSD. There is a bromine in place of hydrogen at position 2.

From molecules

In spite of its close structural relationship to LSD, BOL-148 has no psychedelic effects. In 15 healthy males, doses of 75-110 ug/kg BOL-148, which 100X exceed an effective dose of LSD, caused no change in pupillary dilation, patellar reflex, or blood pressure (H. Isbell, 1959). BOL-148 did not alter the behavior of 6 individuals with schizophrenia, when given at 10X the dosage of active LSD, although for BOL-148 these doses may have been too low to observe any effect. One mg BOL-148 twice a day for 2 weeks, or 5 mg for 3 days had no evident effect on their psychoses (W.J. Turner, 1958).

Unlike LSD, which is one of the most potent drugs known to affect the electrical potentials of the brain, BOL-148 is without effect on the EEG. There was no sign of the fast electrical activity or alerting behaviour seen with injections of LSD in cats, even when doses of up to 100 ug/kg of BOL-148 were used intraventricular (P.B. Bradley, 1956). BOL-148 produced no EEG changes in Macaca mulatta, in high dose ranges 110-175 ug/kg (R.R. Monroe, 1961). Saline gave the same response as 1000 ug/kg BOL-148 in cats with permanently implanted EEG electrodes (E. Eidelberg, 1965). In rabbits, 500 ug/kg BOL-148 failed to produce EEG alerting for longer than 15 minutes (A.K. Schweigerdt, 1966).

BOL-148 has a very slight change in molecular structure compared to LSD, but it has none of the behavioral effects of LSD. When LSD or BOL-148 were administered intraventricularly to cats, LSD caused behavioral arousal whereas BOL-148 produced mild sedation (P.B. Bradley, 1956). In rabbits, BOL-148 had a neutral effect on eyeblink conditioning, whereas LSD enhances this specific type of behavioral learning (J.A. Harvey, 2003). No affective changes in Papio papio were observed after BOL-148 in doses of 2-4 mg/kg (M.D. Fairchild, 1980).

Table 3 below shows the questionnaire responses for LSD and several LSD derivatives. LSD is the most potent drug, and caused the most positive responses on the questionnaire. BOL-148 is on this table, and at doses of 80 ug/kg, or 50 times the active dose LSD, there were few positive responses on the questionnaire. This shows a lack of effect of BOL-148 as reported by human volunteers.

From other human hallucinogens, LSD derivatives

There is some evidence that BOL-148 pre-treatment protects against LSD psychosis. Studies with rabbits have shown that a dose of 1 mg/kg BOL-148 had no direct temperature effect on rabbits, but prevented the pyretogenic actions of LSD (A. Horita, 1958). In humans, BOL-148 did not function as a direct LSD antagonist since intravenous injections of BOL-148 at the height of a LSD trip did not cancel the LSD effects, but pre-treatment with BOL-148 in nonpsychotic humans did produce tolerance to the LSD reaction, though the tolerance-producing effect of BOL-148 for equal weights of LSD is much less, approximately 1/30 that of LSD but the attenuation of the LSD reaction observed after pre-treatment with BOL-148 is still less than that which occurs after pre-treatment with LSD. (H. Isbell, 1959)

In an experiment with 10 men, pretreatment with BOL-148 for 5 days (1 mg BOL-148 three times daily) significantly attenuated LSD psychosis caused by 0.5-1.5 ug/kg LSD. As shown in the figure below, blood pressure, pupil size and number of positive responses to questionnaire were reduced during LSD challenge 5 days after BOL-148 pretreatment. (Isbell, H. 1959)

From other human hallucinogens, LSD derivatives

Assays that have indicated similarities between LSD and BOL-148 have usually involved simplified preparations. For example, LSD and BOL-148 were found to have the same affinity for beta-adrenergic receptors (A. Dolphin, 1978), and were equally effective as MAO and acetylcholinesterase inhibitors in histochemical analysis of rat brain (T.R. Shanthaveerappa, 1963).

All of the evidence is for BOL-148 lacking psychotogenic activity, however there is one report from 1957 indicating that BOL-148 is a hallucinogen in high doses. Two normal volunteers experienced psychic effects when BOL-148 was administered intravenously to total doses of 18 and 22 mg (which in terms of LSD is equivalent to ~200 hits).

"In man small doses of bromo-LSD are said to produce none of the bizarre psychic effects noted with LSD but this is not the case when bromo-LSD is administered intravenously in large doses. Thus, when constant intravenous infusions of bromo-LSD were given to normal subjects, both experienced psychic changes, which became more severe as the infusion continued and persisted for 3 to 4 hours after the infusion was stopped. No hallucinations were noted but there were feelings initially of drowsiness, depression, anxiety, and apprehension followed by feelings of irritation, restlessness, and tenseness, and later, intensely disagreeable sensations of unreality and depersonalization, inexplicable feelings of strangeness and mild confusion." (R. Schneckloth, 1957)

Among the LSD analogs, BOL-148 is important because it indicates that substitution at the 2-position can change the activity of whole molecule. Also, research into BOL-148 has shown that LSD does not induce a psychosis by creating a relative deficiency of 5-HT within the brain. BOL-148 was shown to have more anti-5-HT activity than LSD in vitro and in vivo, thus if LSD worked by blocking 5-HT neurotransmission, BOL-148 would be expected to be a more potent hallucinogenic drug, but BOL-148 is inactive on many accounts.


References

BRADLEY P. B. and A. J. HANCE. (1956). The effects of intraventricular injection of d-lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD 25) and 5-hydroxytryptamine (serotonin) on the electrical activity of the brain of the conscious cat. J.Physiol.
132, 50-1P.

Dolphin, A., A. Enjalbert, J.P. Tassin, M. Lucas and J. Bockaert (1978). Direct interaction of LSD with central "beta"-adrenergic receptors. Life Sci. 22, 345-352.

Eidelberg E., M. Long and M. K. Miller. (1965). Spectrum analysis of EEG changes induced by psychotomimetic agents. Int.J.Neuropharmacol. 4, 255-264.

Fairchild M. D., D. J. Jenden, M. R. Mickey and C. Yale. (1980). EEG effects of hallucinogens and cannabinoids using sleep-waking behavior as baseline. Pharmacol.Biochem.Behav. 12, 99-105.

Harvey J. A. (2003). Role of the serotonin 5-HT(2A) receptor in learning. Learn.Mem. 10, 355-362.

HORITA A. and J. H. GOGERTY. (1958). The pyretogenic effect of 5-hydroxytryptophan and its comparison with that of ISD. J.Pharmacol.Exp.Ther. 122, 195-200.

ISBELL H., E. J. MINER and C. R. LOGAN. (1959). Relationships of psychotomimetic to anti-serotonin potencies of congeners of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD-25). Psychopharmacologia. 1, 20-28.

ISBELL H., E. J. MINER and C. R. LOGAN. (1959). Cross tolerance between D-2-brom-lysergic acid diethylamide (BOL-148) and the D-diethylamide of lysergic acid (LSD-25). Psychopharmacologia. 1, 109-116.

MONROE R. R. and R. G. HEATH. (1961). Effects of lysergic acid and various derivatives on depth and cortical electrograms. J.Neuropsychiatr. 3, 75-82.

SCHNECKLOTH R., I. H. PAGE, F. DEL GRECO and A. C. CORCORAN. (1957). Effects of serotonin antagonists in normal subjects and patients with carcinoid tumors. Circulation. 16, 523-532.

Schweigerdt A. K., A. H. Stewart and H. E. Himwich. (1966). An electrographic study of d-lysergic acid diethylamide and nine congeners. J.Pharmacol.Exp.Ther. 151, 353-359.

SHANTHAVEERAPPA, T. R., K. NANDY and G.H. BOURNE (1963). Histochemical studies on the mechanism of action of the hallucinogens D-lysergic acid diethylamide tartrate (lsd-25) and D-2-bromo-lysergic acid tartrate (bol-148) in rat brain. Acta Neuropathol. 3, 29-39.

TURNER W. J. and S. MERLIS. (1958). Chemotherapeutic trials in psychosis. III. 2-Brom-d-lysergic acid diethylamide (BOL 148). Am.J.Psychiatry. 114, 751-752.

February 02, 2010 04:14 PM

Jesuacute;s Sepuacute;lveda is a Chilean poet with roots in Spain, Italynbsp;and Eugene, Oregon. His important work is both critical and inspirational,nbsp;a human and plant-centered antidote to the globalist technocracy. Sepuacute;lveda'snbsp;doctoral dissertation (Toward a Poetic of De-Inhabitation) covers a wide rangenbsp;of aspects of Peruvian, Chilean and Argentine literary history from the Avant-gardenbsp;period toward the New Avant-garde, and New Baroque periods. Shamanism is anothernbsp;of his areas of interest. His upcoming book, Realidades Multidimensionales,nbsp;explores the topic of shamanism from the perspective of Nagualism as well asnbsp;studying shamanic phenomena in their interconnection with dreams, plants ofnbsp;power, consciousness and literary subjectivity. "If we are to survive, we must remember the wisdom in this powerful andnbsp;poetic book. The Garden of Peculiarities will in time, I believe, become anbsp;classic. Jesuacute;s Sepuacute;lveda shows us how to remember what we already know in ournbsp;bodies." mdash; Derrick Jensen Jesuacute;snbsp;Sepuacute;lveda speaks with Joanna about his books "The Garden of Peculiarities" and "Realidadesnbsp;Multidimensionales", the teachings of the sacred plants, the magical perceptionnbsp;of reality and its relationship with the evolution of humankind, and a nagualnbsp;message from the future...among other topics.

February 02, 2010 02:09 PM

 

The following conversation is excerpted from The Psychotropic Mind: The World according to Ayahuasca, Iboga, and Shamanism
by anthropologist Jeremy Narby, filmmaker Jan Kounen, and writer/filmmaker Vincent Ravalec, available from Inner Traditions Bear & Company.

read more

February 02, 2010 12:43 PM

(NaturalNews) An important new study published in the Archives of General Psychiatry reveals that fish oil supplements beat mental illness. The study involved 81 people deemed to be at high risk for psychosis. The randomized, placebo-controlled study provided fish oil supplements to half the study subjects for just 12 weeks (the other half received placebo supplements). The results? While 11 people in the placebo group developed a psychotic disorder, only 2 in the fish oil group did.

Although the study was relatively small, it helps demonstrate the wide-ranging benefits of omega-3 fatty acids, which are thought to be the key nutritional factor in fish oils. We already know that omega-3 fatty acids / polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) help protect people against cardiovascular disease. We also know they can play a role in preventing diabetes and cancer. It's little surprise that they also protect against mental illness, given the importance of healthy fatty acids for the functioning of the nervous system.

As the BBC reports, Alison Cobb, from the mental health charity Mind, said in response to this study: "If young people can be treated successfully with fish oils, this is hugely preferable to treating them with antipsychotics, which come with a range of problems from weight gain to sexual dysfunction, whereas omega-3s are actually beneficial to their general state of health."

She's exactly right: Antipsychotic drugs actually cause diabetes. They promote blood sugar disorders and weight gain, among other problems. Some psychiatric drugs have also been linked to school shootings and violent outbursts (suicides, murders, etc.). They're also expensive and they pose an environmental hazard, since many of the chemicals used in those drugs pass right through the body and end up in waters downstream.

Fish oils have none of these negative side effects. In fact, they have positive effects throughout the body. That's why fish oils are such a remarkable solution to replace antipsychotic drugs: They're safer, cheaper and they work better!

You're supposed to keep taking drugs, says Big Pharma
The drug companies, of course, are terrified that people might learn this truth. They want to keep patients on expensive, patented antipsychotic drugs while discrediting "natural remedies" like fish oils or nutritional supplements. The entire war being waged against nutrition and supplements is, of course, nothing more than the pharmaceutical industry trying to protect its own turf by destroying the competition.

Because, let's face it: For (virtually) every popular pharmaceutical on the market, there's a nutritional supplement that works better (and that's also safer and more affordable). Antipsychotic drugs can be replaced with fish oils. Cholesterol drugs can be replaced with B vitamins. Anti-cancer drugs can be replaced with vitamin D and medicinal mushrooms. Diabetes drugs can be replaced with a healthy plant-based diet and targeted supplements. The list goes on and on...

Nutrition works so well that in this study, subjects experienced a protective effect from fish oils for an entire year even though they only took those fish oils for 12 weeks! Imagine how much better the outcome might have been if they continued on the fish oils for the entire year...

Get quality fish oils
Of course, when it comes to fish oils, don't settle for just any cheap fish oil supplement. Many of the cheaper store-bought brands are largely made of olive oil filler combined with a tiny amount of fish oil extract. Search out quality supplements or oils from companies like Moxxor, Nordic Naturals or Carlson Labs.

Make sure your supplements are free from heavy metals, pesticides and other residues. Make sure they are harvested in a truly sustainable way, and make sure you can trust the source to provide consistent quality.

Fish oils can provide astonishing health benefits. If the medical industry were truly honest about researching what works for patients rather than what makes money for drug companies, they would have openly prescribed fish oils long ago (and abandoned many of the antipsychotic drugs they still push).

But as you already know, the pharmaceutical industry isn't interested in what works for people unless it's something they can sell at monopoly prices. They don't want people to know about natural remedies, nutritional cures or healing foods. They would much rather see people stay ignorant about those things while pumping their minds full of advertisements and propaganda that ridiculously suggests the human brain is somehow deficient in Big Pharma's patented chemicals and that the only way you'll ever be truly healthy, happy or sane is to keep swallowing their pills for the rest of your life.

The real insanity in the world is not in the minds of mental patients; it's in the evil plans of the FDA, the WHO and the pharmaceutical cartel -- all of whom conspire to peddle dangerous medications when far safer, more natural and more effective alternatives are readily available.

Abstract of study from the Archives of General Psychiatry
Long-Chain Omega-3 Fatty Acids for Indicated Prevention of Psychotic Disorders http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/67/2/146

A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled Trial

G. Paul Amminger, MD; Miriam R. Schäfer, MD; Konstantinos Papageorgiou, MD; Claudia M. Klier, MD; Sue M. Cotton, PhD; Susan M. Harrigan, MSc; Andrew Mackinnon, PhD; Patrick D. McGorry, MD, PhD; Gregor E. Berger, MD Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2010;67(2):146-154.

Context: The use of antipsychotic medication for the prevention of psychotic disorders is controversial. Long-chain omega-3 (omega-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) may be beneficial in a range of psychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia. Given that omega-3 PUFAs are generally beneficial to health and without clinically relevant adverse effects, their preventive use in psychosis merits investigation.

Objective: To determine whether omega-3 PUFAs reduce the rate of progression to first-episode psychotic disorder in adolescents and young adults aged 13 to 25 years with subthreshold psychosis.

Design: Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted between 2004 and 2007.

Setting: Psychosis detection unit of a large public hospital in Vienna, Austria.

Participants: Eighty-one individuals at ultra-high risk of psychotic disorder.

Interventions: A 12-week intervention period of 1.2-g/d omega-3 PUFA or placebo was followed by a 40-week monitoring period; the total study period was 12 months.

Main Outcome Measures: The primary outcome measure was transition to psychotic disorder. Secondary outcomes included symptomatic and functional changes. The ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids in erythrocytes was used to index pretreatment vs posttreatment fatty acid composition.

Results: Seventy-six of 81 participants (93.8%) completed the intervention. By study's end (12 months), 2 of 41 individuals (4.9%) in the omega-3 group and 11 of 40 (27.5%) in the placebo group had transitioned to psychotic disorder (P = .007). The difference between the groups in the cumulative risk of progression to full-threshold psychosis was 22.6% (95% confidence interval, 4.8-40.4). Omega-3 Polyunsaturated fatty acids also significantly reduced positive symptoms (P = .01), negative symptoms (P = .02), and general symptoms (P = .01) and improved functioning (P = .002) compared with placebo. The incidence of adverse effects did not differ between the treatment groups.

Conclusions: Long-chain omega-3 PUFAs reduce the risk of progression to psychotic disorder and may offer a safe and efficacious strategy for indicated prevention in young people with subthreshold psychotic states.

Trial Registration: clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00396643

Author Affiliations: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria (Drs Amminger, Schäfer, Papageorgiou, and Klier); Orygen Research Centre, Centre for Youth Mental Health, The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia (Drs Amminger, Cotton, Mackinnon, and McGorry and Ms Harrigan); and Department of Research and Education, The Schlössli Clinic, Oetwil am See, Switzerland (Dr Berger).

Other sources for this story include: BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8490937.stm

WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107204575039590838522222.html

February 02, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) In a report just published online in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California at San Diego say they've found a reduction of blood flow in the brains of people who are infected with HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS. What makes this so concerning is that it indicates something is rapidly aging the brains of these patients. In fact, the blood flow in the brains of the HIV-infected research subjects was reduced to levels normally seen in uninfected persons who are 15 to 20 years older.

Does this mean HIV is causing premature brain aging? Maybe. However there's another possibility: according to the researchers, the drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS might play a role in this super fast brain aging.

AIDS drugs may damage the brain
Previous studies have found the HIV virus may adversely affect many parts of the body, including the heart, liver, kidneys, endocrine system and skeleton. Although a strong "cocktail" of antiviral medications has been credited with extending the life span of those with HIV, these drugs are known to come with a host of side effects -- many of which are health problems often associated with aging. For example, the drugs can cause anemia, digestive problems, peripheral neuropathy and osteoporosis. So it can be difficult to distinguish between any signs of rapid aging that are due to HIV or to the drugs used to treat it.

When it comes to the brain, HIV patients are sometimes known to develop dementia. And HIV infected people often complain of thinking problems.

"The graying of the AIDS patient community makes this infection's effects on the brain a significant source of concern," Beau Ances, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor of neurology at Washington University and first author of the new study, said in a statement to the media. "Patients are surviving into their senior years, and a number of them are coming forward to express concerns about problems they're having with memory and other cognitive functions."

To investigate possible premature brain aging in HIV patients, Dr. Ances and his research team used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanners and a new technique known as arterial spin labeling that allows precise, non-invasive blood flow measurement to check the brain blood flow in 26 subjects with HIV. The scientists also looked at the brains of 25 uninfected controls. Both groups were about the same age and had the same education.

When the study participants were resting in the scanner, the brain blood flow was found to be significantly reduced in those who tested positive for HIV compared to those in the uninfected control group. Significantly, the scientists found that having HIV was associated with reduced brain blood flow even among the younger, most recently infected patients.

The research team asked the research subjects to perform a visual task which normally triggers blood flow to increase in specific regions of the brain involved in the task. The MRIs revealed the HIV group had greater blood flow increases, suggesting their brains had to work harder in order to accomplish the task.

"Brain blood flow levels decline naturally as we age, but HIV, the medications we use to control it or some combination of the two appear to be accelerating this process independent of aging. Could we reduce the harmful effects of the virus if we started treatment earlier, or does treatment significantly contribute to the harm that's being done?" Dr. Ances said in a press statement. "These are the kinds of issues we urgently need to start examining as the AIDS patient population ages."

For more information: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20047503 http://www.naturalnews.com/HIV.html http://www.aids.org/factSheets/550-Side-Effects.html

February 02, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) For generations we have been told by mainstream medicine that their drugs are safer and more effective than natural alternatives such as those man has used for healing for thousands of years. Similarly, we have been told that herbs and other natural alternatives are unproven, usually of little or no value and often may be dangerous. History tells us an entirely different story.

Proponents of mainstream drugs and critics of natural healing usually cite the lack of scientific studies proving the effectiveness or safety of herbs and natural alternatives. Likewise, mainstream drug advocates point to the wealth of studies which prove the effectiveness and safety of patented mainstream drugs. However, relatively few comprehensive studies have been conducted on herbs other than to find a compound that can be synthesized or uniquely isolated so it can be patented and profited from by the drug companies. Drug companies are by far the largest source of funding for medical studies and the cost of such studies is a huge barrier for natural alternatives. The FDA trial process costs hundreds of millions of dollars, and no one can afford to get a natural item approved that they cannot control. Whole herbs and extracts of herbs that contain multiple compounds found in nature cannot be patented.

Despite the complicated, expensive and time consuming process of getting FDA approval, many point to all the harmful drugs that have been approved as an indication that the system is deeply flawed and rigged in favor of those who have the money. It has been shown that studies tend to return positive results for the funders up to eight times more often than independent studies on the same item.

The FDA approval process did not prevent us from having rigged studies on Vioxx. Nor did it prevent rigged studies for decades on the safety - and even claimed health benefits - of smoking cigarettes. Those are just two examples in a very long list of drugs and other items mainstream science told us were safe but weren`t. For example: thalidomide, heroin, opium, cocaine, Avandia, Fosamax, Prozac, Paxil, Aleve, Bextra, Aspartame . . the list goes on and on.

Another problem with mainstream medical studies is the apparent lack of quality standards employed by pharmaceutical companies in selecting doctors who oversee drug testing. A New York Times investigation in 2007 found that in Minnesota alone at least 103 doctors who had been disciplined or criticized by the state medical board received a total of $1.7 million from drug makers between 1997 to 2005. The median payment over that period was $1,250; the largest was $479,000.

One such doctor was Dr. Faruk Abuzzahab, whom the Minnesota Medical board accused of a "reckless, if not willful, disregard" for the welfare of 46 patients, 5 of whom died in his care or shortly afterward. The board suspended his license for seven months and restricted it for two years after that. One of Dr. Abuzzahab`s patients was David Olson, whom the psychiatrist tried repeatedly to recruit for clinical trials. Drug makers paid Dr. Abuzzahab thousands of dollars for every patient he recruited. In July 1997, when Mr. Olson again refused to be a test subject, Dr. Abuzzahab discharged him from the hospital even though he was suicidal, records show. Mr. Olson committed suicide two weeks later.

To be continued . . .

Sources included:

http://news.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/05/09/doctors-getting-paid-to-prescribe-drugs/ http://www.naturalnews.com/027962_Paxil_antidepressants.htm The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, July 26th 2000 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy

About the author
Tony Isaacs, is a natural health advocate and researcher and the author of books and articles about natural health including "Cancer's Natural Enemy" and "Collected Remedies"as well as song lyrics and humorous anecdotal stories. Mr. Isaacs also has The Best Years in Life website for baby boomers and others wishing to avoid prescription drugs and mainstream managed illness and live longer, healthier and happier lives naturally. He is currently residing in the scenic Texas hill country near Utopia, Texas where he serves as a consultant to the Utopia Silver colloidal silver and supplement company and where he is working on a major book project due for publication later this year. Mr. Isaacs also hosts the CureZone "Ask Tony Isaacs" forum as well as the Yahoo Health Group "Oleander Soup"

February 02, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) This article continues part four of the 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part three, we explored how you are what you absorb, not merely what you eat (http://www.naturalnews.com/028067_self_healing_digestion.html). Today, in part four, we take a closer look at how to transform your health by changing your blood.

Your blood is a useful focal point for exploring your health. Whatever health outcome you are experiencing today, it is largely a result of what's in your blood.

Think about it: Your blood bathes your cells in nutrients 24 hours a day. Blood not only brings vital nutrients to your cells; it also carries away metabolic waste products. It is the superhighway of nutrition and detoxification that reaches into (virtually) every organ and cell in your entire body.

It stands to reason, therefore, that altering your health outcome depends largely upon altering the composition of your blood. If you want to make someone really healthy for a short time, for example, you can give them blood from a healthy person. Research has already documented that when you take blood from people whose bodies prevent cancer and then inject that blood into people who are suffering from cancer, the anti-cancer benefits of the blood are immediately reflected in the cancer patient (through tumor shrinkage, for example). There is such a thing as anti-cancer blood. And if you eat an anti-cancer diet, you're making anti-cancer blood every single day.

I eat a very strong anti-cancer diet. Most vegans do, too. They could theoretically help heal cancer patients by simply giving them some of their blood. The anti-cancer effects would be immediate and powerful. The FDA, not surprisingly, prohibits you from selling your own blood as "medicine," so don't think you can make money by eating a healthy diet and then selling your blood for $1,000 / pint (although it might very well be worth that much in a truly free market).

The other limitation with this idea is that the benefits from receiving donated blood are short-lived. If the blood recipient does not alter his or her lifestyle in some meaningful way, the anti-cancer properties of the "healthy" blood will, within just a few days, be erased and overpowered by the blood that person is manufacturing on their own.

And this leads me to the important question: How is your blood made?

How your body makes your blood
A typical human red blood cell only survives about 4-5 months. Your body is constantly producing new blood and releasing it into the bloodstream to do important work -- the work of carrying nutrients, hormones, water, chemical messages and even information throughout your body.

Blood is primarily made of three things: Red blood cells (oxygen carriers), white blood cells (immune function) and blood plasma (a liquid solution that carries everything else).

When more red blood cells are needed, your body (with its infinite healing wisdom) automatically generates new ones. Naturally, it must create those red blood cells using the materials that are available: Materials that are circulating in your blood at the time.

Got that? So the blood cells you make TODAY, which circulate throughout your body for the next four months, are made out of the materials being carried in your blood right now.

So what's in your blood right now?

Your blood is largely comprised of the things you ate, drank and absorbed over the last several months.

So if you ate a McDonald's cheeseburger today and chased it with a large Coke, the blood cells your body generates today are going to be made, in part, of materials from that cheeseburger and Coke. If you think about where cheeseburgers really come from -- with all the cruelly slaughtered, hormone-injected animals, the ammonia-injected beef parts, the refined white flour in the bun, the processed cheese "food" substances, and so on, it's not exactly the kind of thing you probably want coursing through your veins for the next few months.

If, on the other hand, you spent the last several days consuming fresh living juices, superfoods and clean, energized water, then guess what your new blood is going to be made of? It will be super blood that's energized with the elements and vibes of all the good stuff you've been consuming!

Bad blood leads to bad health results. It leads to angry, moody mental function and chronic disease. But good blood results in happy, healthy outcomes. Good blood improves your sleep, your sex, your moods and cognitive function. Good blood keeps your body free from cancer, youthful, energized and actively healing itself at multiple levels.

Once you understand all this, it only seems natural to work consciously towards creating good blood every single day.

Amazing facts about your red blood cells
• A whopping one-quarter of the human cells in your body are red blood cells. But most cells in your body are actually non-human cells (bacteria).

• A red blood cell circulates around your body in about 20 seconds. The same red blood cell makes tens of thousands of trips around your body, transporting oxygen to cells, before it is recycled by your own immune system.

• Red blood cells in humans are molecularly quite similar to chlorophyll cells in plants.

• Your red blood cells are made partially of cholesterol. Although the drug industry has tried to label cholesterol a villain, in truth you couldn't survive without it!

Check out this amazing real-time animation of a red blood cell in a human body: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Erytrocyte_deoxy_to_oxy_v0.7.gif

Cleaning your blood
Having good blood means keeping it clean! Your blood is cleaned primarily by your kidneys and liver, but some additional "cleaning" functions are also accomplished by your lungs (through respiration) and even through your skin.

Ask anyone on a dialysis machine and they'll tell you what a huge difference it makes to keep your blood clean. Your kidneys normally do this for you, but in many people, kidney function is impaired and kidney cells don't work as well as they should to remove waste products from the blood. (Drinking sodas can impair kidney function, by the way...)

Hence the thinking behind an occasional kidney cleanse or liver cleanse. Keeping these organs functioning smoothly and efficiently helps keep your blood clean, and that translates into improved health for both body and mind. The two best cleansing product lines I know of are offered by Ed Group's Global Healing Center (www.GlobalHealingCenter.com) and Baseline Nutritionals (www.BaselineNutritionals.com).

How to create good blood
You are your own blood bank. You manufacture and distribute all your own blood. Given that your life depends on your own blood, doesn't it make sense to manufacture the healthiest, most life-giving blood possible?

In fact, you can! You have conscious control over the qualities of the blood you manufacture. Because your blood is made of what you eat, drink, breathe and absorb, you can alter the composition of your blood by consciously choosing healthier things to eat, drink, breathe and absorb.

Here are some of the most powerful pointers for making healthy blood:

Healthy blood needs healthy fats
You must consume healthy fats in order to create healthy red blood cells. This means consuming healthful omega-3 fatty acids. From the world of plants, healthful fats come from coconuts, avocados, flaxseed, Chia seeds and other similar sources. From the animal world, the best source for omega-3 fatty acids is, in my opinion, the green-lipped mussels oils in Moxxor, which come from a pristine marine environment. To learn more about Moxxor, check out Jonathan Landsman's Moxxor page at: http://moxxbiz.com/clients/getVideolink.aspx?videoLinkId=353&clientId=229

There are other quality sources, too, including fish oil supplements from companies like Nordic Naturals or Carlson Labs. Some people take krill oil to get their omega-3s, and companies like Living Fuel (www.LivingFuel.com) offer high-end fish oil supplements. This isn't a complete list of good sources for omega-3s. Do your research and use what works best for you. The more healthful omega-3 fatty acids you take, the healthier your blood will be (to a point, of course).

Consuming damaging fats will harm the health of your blood. Damaging fats include trans-fatty acids and fried fats (such as those used in fried foods).

Making healthy blood also requires the right minerals. Red blood cells themselves need iron, but you'll want all the trace minerals, too, so they can be delivered by your blood to your cells. When you lack sufficient quantities of minerals like calcium, magnesium, zinc and selenium, biological functions start to go awry.

Healthy blood also needs plenty of water, of course. Water is the primary fluid of your blood plasma -- it's a solvent that can dissolve and transport all sorts of crucial building blocks for health including water-soluble vitamins like Vitamin C. Without adequate water, your blood turns to sludge blood -- sticky, gooey blood that your heart can't easily pump through your circulatory system. The forceful pumping required to push this blood through your system is frequently diagnosed as high blood pressure.

Human blood also needs many other elements, all of which can be found in a plant-based diet (including the proteins needed for blood).

You can make what modern science can't
When thinking about the health-enhancing qualities of your blood, remember this astonishing fact:

Modern science cannot make human blood. But YOU can.

Sure, they can try to make artificial blood. But clinical trials have shown that artificial blood doesn't work very well. It carries only a fraction of the oxygen of real blood, and it's no long-term replacement. YOU can manufacture blood that's more technologically advanced than anything ever invented by modern medicine. The only question you need to ask yourself is: What kind of blood will I make today? (And tomorrow...)

Will you manufacture blood out of trans fats, Gatorade, pharmaceuticals and junk food proteins? Or will you make your blood out of living fruits and vegetables, healthful omega-3s and positive energies from Mother Nature?

It's your choice, each and every day. You can have good blood or bad blood, and the health results you get will directly reflect the quality of your blood.

Want to transform your health? Transform your blood and your health results will automatically follow.

February 02, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) So many US women have difficulty becoming pregnant that the fertility industry has become a huge business, raking in between three and five billion dollars a year. Now a new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives raises the possibility that a lot of women who can't have babies could have flame retardant chemicals to blame -- specifically, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), which are commonly found in an alarming number of household consumer products.

In a study involving over 200 women, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) discovered that women with higher blood concentrations of PBDEs took far longer to become pregnant than those with low amounts of the chemicals in their blood. In fact, for every ten-fold increase in blood levels of four PBDE chemicals tested, there was a 30 percent decrease in the odds a woman would conceive a child during a month.

"There have been numerous animal studies that have found a range of health effects from exposure to PBDEs, but very little research has been done in humans. This latest paper is the first to address the impact on human fertility, and the results are surprisingly strong. These findings need to be replicated, but they have important implications for regulators," the study's lead author, Kim Harley, said in a statement to the media. Harley is an adjunct assistant professor of maternal and child health and associate director of the Center for Children's Environmental Health Research at UC Berkeley's School of Public Health.

PBDEs are a class of organobromine compounds found in foam furniture, electronics, fabrics, carpets, plastics and other common household items. They were commonly added to these and other products as flame retardants after the 1970s when new fire safety standards were implemented in the US. So how big is the problem of homes contaminated by PBDEs? Unfortunately, it appears to be huge. The chemicals are known to leach out into the environment and accumulate in human fat cells. Previous studies have suggested that 97 percent of U.S. residents have detectable levels of PBDEs in their blood and that the levels in Americans are 20 times higher than in their counterparts in Europe.

The most prevalent form of PBDEs found in the blood of women participating in the UC Berkeley study were from a specific formulation known as a pentaBDE mixture. Both this kind of PBDE and another type, octaBDE, have been banned for use in several states -- but they are still widely found in products manufactured before 2004.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally got around to addressing the danger of PBDEs at the end of 2009. Did the agency issue an urgent alarm about products containing the chemicals -- even ban them outright to protect consumers? No. Instead, the EPA quietly announced an agreement with three major manufacturers of some forms of PBDEs to phase out production by 2013. Unfortunately, this is clearly too little too late to protect countless Americans from the potential danger of these contaminants.

"Although several types of PBDEs are being phased out in the United States, our exposure to the flame retardants is likely to continue for many years," said the study's principal investigator, Brenda Eskenazi, UC Berkeley professor of epidemiology and of maternal and child health at the School of Public Health. "PBDEs are present in many consumer products, and we know they leach out into our homes. In our research, we have found that low-income children in California are exposed to very high levels of PBDEs, and this has us concerned about the next generation of Californians."

What's more, the scientists pointed out in the press statement that there's reason to be concerned about additional chemical contaminants in the immediate future. True, PBDEs are being phased out from consumer products -- but they are being replaced with other potentially toxic compounds. "We know even less about the newer flame retardant chemicals that are coming out," said Dr. Harley. "We just don't have the human studies yet to show that they are safe."

For more information: http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action;jsessionid=1FE650D5C7D321A57B9D05840B5B7418?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.0901450

February 02, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Even though the vast majority of elderly drivers use one or more medications, few of them area aware of the effects that their drugs can have on driving performance, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Alabama-Birmingham and released as a report by the nonprofit AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

"That's really scary," said Peter Kissinger of the AAA Foundation. "The risks are real."

The researchers interviewed 630 drivers between the ages of 56 and 93, and found that 78 percent of them were taking one or more medications. Yet only 28 percent of the respondents knew of the potential risks from driving while medicated. Only 18 percent of those taking drugs especially known to impair driving ability -- including ACE inhibitors, beta blockers and sedatives -- had received warnings about the effects from their doctors or pharmacists. Health care workers yet "are not effectively communicating known risks," Kissinger said. The researchers also found that awareness of the risks of driving while medicated decreased with age, while the number of prescription medications used increased.

Studies have conclusively linked certain drugs or combinations of drugs to an increase in the risk of automobile collisions. However, the exact number of crashes caused by medications is still unknown because few safety agencies regularly test for the presence of drugs in drivers' systems after a crash, except when alcohol use is suspected.

An aging population and the increasing prevalence of multiple prescription use are only likely to worsen the problem of uninformed medicated drivers, Kissinger said. To attempt to reverse the trend, the AAA Foundation plans to release a free web-based resource known as Roadwise Rx in early 2010. Roadwise Rx will include a searchable database of the effects that drugs have, individually or in combination, on driving ability. Users will also be able to input personalized data, such as age, sex and weight. The program will be able to advise users about potential drug interactions, the effects of food, and when driving may be unsafe.

Sources for this story include: wheels.blogs.nytimes.com.

February 02, 2010 07:00 AM

In this installment, Mr Lens sounds happy and on form again, especially as he has been back to the October Gallery to record a talk by Andy Roberts of the Fortean times on 26/1/2010. According to the blurb Mr Lens received in an email: “Andy [Roberts]'s book, Albion Dreaming: A popular history of LSD in Britain (Marshall Cavendish, 2008) was born from a desire to chronicle the history of this intriguing drug. Andy's talk, illustrated by powerpoint and DVD takes you on a history picnic to sample everything from the drug's arrival on these shores in 1952, through the medical and military experiments, the counterculture, to the sad death of Albert Hofmann. It is probably the only talk on LSD in which you'll hear the words of the Reverend Ian Paisley.” Mr Lens cannot resist an impression of Ian Paisley which causes distortion on the microphone. It’s worth hearing this podcast for that alone! Music by Neil Young.

February 01, 2010 11:36 PM

This article is adapted from one published in the January issue of the magazine Wines and Vines, with permission of the publisher and the author. Microbiologists with epicurean interests in microbiological end-products would do well to become acquainted with this magazine.

by John Ingraham

Early in my career, by good fortune, I encountered the malolactic fermentation. Investigating it by standard microbiological methods led to results that changed the way California red wines are made, for the better most agree. How satisfying it is to think that I was following in the footsteps of Pasteur, no less, and his early career encounter with wine making.

The story started when a highly skilled wine maker, Brad Webb, was freshly hired by James D. Zellerbach of paper and ambassadorial fame shortly after building the fabulously beautiful, Hanzell Winery in Sonoma County, California. Brad was given his complete instructions in a bottle. Zellerbach presented a bottle of Romanée Conti Pinot Noir telling him, “This is what I want.”

The winery, nestled among new hillside plantings of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay, was meticulously built in the Burgundy style. Made of native stone, with resident moss kept intact during construction, its walls were maintained lush and verdant with distilled water (tap water would have left an unsightly white crust). The lampshades on interior lights were French, double-lobed, grape-picking baskets. But much more relevant to his ambitious goals were the custom stainless steel equipment (such as temperature-controllable fermenters fabricated to Brad’s specifications), French oak barrels, and nitrogen-protecting bottling capabilities. This impressive combination of quality facilities along with Brad’s skills and dedication paid off handsomely. He made superb Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays, recently making Wines and Vines’ list of “Wines that Changed the Industry.”

Some of the stainless steel equipment at Hanzell Winery.
Source.

But not at first. Brad’s initial Pinot Noir wines, made from purchased grapes, refused to undergo what is known as the malolactic fermentation, an alarming and perplexing disappointment to him. Alarming, because Brad well knew that the malolactic fermentation, by converting malic acid to the less-acidic lactic acid and CO₂, not only adds flavor components, but is the sine qua non for conferring the softness and subtle flavors of a quality Pinot Noir. And it was perplexing because grapes from the same vineyards regularly underwent the fermentation in other cellars. He tried a number of maneuvers, none of which worked. Even wines that had undergone the malolactic fermentation elsewhere failed at Hanzell. Using such wines to inoculate batches made at Hanzell didn't work either. Brad was exasperated, but he realized that malolactic-free Hanzell offered the opportunity to research the fermentation and solve his dilemma.

Malolactic fermentation in California had a long, solid reputation for capriciousness and independence. Most winemakers of the era became aware that the fermentation was underway only when tanks of wine began to rumble softly, usually in midwinter. Winemakers didn’t start it; they couldn’t stop it; it just happened. But why only then? Malolactic fermentation seemed to have a mind of it own.

Knowing that I, then an Assistant Professor of Enology at UC Davis, was venturing into the microbiology of the malolactic fermentation, Brad dropped by to see me. He offered Hanzell as a negative control for experiments on spontaneous malolactic fermentations. This began a brief but richly rewarding collaboration as well as a warm friendship. I began my studies by searching for bacteria capable of causing the malolactic fermentation. From samples of dry wines and lees collected at seven California wineries, I had isolated about 50 strains of lactic acid bacteria (the parent class to which malolactic acid bacteria belong). The isolates proved to be a diverse lot, representing all four major types of lactic acid bacteria: rods and cocci that did (heterofermentative) and did not (homofermentative) produce gas from glucose. But strikingly, all were able to utilize malic acid in laboratory culture, converting it readily to lactic acid and CO₂. That is, all were metabolically able to mediate a malolactic fermentation, at least in the benign environment of laboratory culture. But individual samples almost always contained only a single type, suggesting that these bacteria weren’t randomly spread throughout wineries. Only one established itself and became dominant.

Brad and I evaluated all 50 of these “ML” strains for their ability to grow and remove malic acid from fresh and partially fermented must. We selected number 34, the most vigorous, for further studies. ML-34 had been isolated from a sample of Barbera (as I recall) that I had taken from a redwood tank at Louis Martini’s winery in Saint Helena. Louis was welcoming and fully cooperative, but preferred that his winery not be identified as the source of this bacterium. Bacteria in wineries didn’t project a positive image. After all, they are the bête-noir, causative agents of Pasteur’s “maladies des vins.”

In 1959, Brad and I took ML-34 to Hanzell to study it under winery conditions. There, we added 100 ml of a culture to 4 gallons of freshly pressed grape juice (must). Two days later all its malic acid was gone. It worked. In various assays and with different grapes, malolactic fermentation was complete in 21 days.

We were delighted. We were, we believed, the first to induce a malolactic fermentation from a pure culture of a known strain of a bacterium. It turned out that others in Europe had achieved the same thing somewhat earlier. And to our satisfaction, we had learned how to control malolactic fermentation.

What was the key to this control? Why hadn’t the malolactic fermentation occurred spontaneously at Hanzell as it did so readily elsewhere? That seemed obvious enough. There were no resident malolactic bacteria in these new sanitary facilities. But why had an inoculum from a malolactic-fermented wine failed to induce a fermentation at Hanzell? Certainly the wine must have contained malolactic bacteria. We found several reasons, the main one being that ML-34 needed many growth factors. Now, it turns out that when yeasts stop growing, they glean growth factors from their surroundings and store them inside their vacuoles until they have nutritionally impoverished their environment. The trick, then, was to add ML-34 before, not after, the yeast fermentation took place, and thus before the yeast had sequestered the needed growth factors.

Oenococcus oeni. Source.

Nothing is absolute when dealing with the rich complexity of wines as well as the numbers and condition of bacterial cells used as inocula for malolactic fermentations. Subsequent investigators have experienced little difficulty starting malolactic fermentations in finished wines. But the ability of yeast to deplete must of nutrients essential for malolactic bacteria has also been established. Over the years, ML-34’s name changed, becoming increasingly more elegant and wine specific. It eventually graduated to Oenococcus oeni (from the Greek, oinos, for wine).

In spite of their important contributions to wine quality, malolactic bacteria have not escaped suspicion and criticism. As they convert malic acid to softer lactic acid and CO₂, they marginally increase volatile acidity, and they decarboxylate some amino acids forming corresponding amines. For example, they convert histidine to histamine and tyrosine to tyramine. These amines induce allergy-like symptoms. Although their concentrations in wine are minute, some speculate that accumulation of histamine and tyramine could present a hazard for persons taking antidepressants that inhibit monoamine oxidase, the enzyme that metabolizes these amines. On the plus side, we should remind ourselves that the delightful Portuguese vinho verde wines rely on the CO₂ from a malolactic fermentation for their slightly sparkling spritz of “pétillance”. It’s a mystery why California vintners have never accepted this other gift that malolactic bacteria proffer.

Outside the wine world malolactic bacteria have attracted attention for their remarkable ability to scrape by on very little energy. A number of bacteria are well known energetic misers, but malolactic bacteria might well be the world-record holders among heterotrophs. The conversion of malic acid to lactic acid and CO₂ releases only about a third of the energy needed to generate a single molecule of ATP. By pushing one proton (hydrogen ion) out of their cell each time they utilize a molecule of malic acid, malolactic bacteria incrementally accumulate a reserve of potential energy until they have enough to make a molecule of ATP.

Important as it is to the winery, that’s not malolactic fermentation’s only home. It occurs wherever appropriate lactic acid bacteria (and most are) encounter malic acid or malate. One such venue is our mouths. Streptococcus mutans, the causative agent of dental caries, which most of us host, is an example of a lactic acid bacterium that mediates that conversion. So each time we ingest malic acid-containing foods, principally fruits and vegetables, we carry out our own malolactic fermentation. Thus, ingested malate exerts an alkalizing effect right at the site of incipient caries formation. Some dental researchers reason that the resulting neutralization helps to control dental caries, yet another of the fermentation’s gifts.

If bacteria capable of the malolactic fermentation can be found almost everywhere, even on our teeth, what’s special about Oenococcus oeni? It’s special because it can grow in wine. It tolerates wine’s low pH and considerable alcohol content. O. oeni probably achieved these abilities rather quickly in evolutionary terms because we now know that it’s an exceptionally rapid evolver. But that’s another intriguing aspect of its complex and still expanding story. We’re just pleased that it did.

Upon retirement from UC Davis as Professor of Microbiology, John took up writing and consultation in biotechnology. His latest book, March of the Microbes: Sighting the Unseen, which takes a bird-watcher’s approach to microbiology, will be released by Harvard University Press in February.

February 01, 2010 04:29 PM

This show is being released on Monday, January 31, 2010. My interview with Michael Labossiere was recorded on January 29, 2010. Today we continue our series with Dr. Michael Labossiere on general grammar and the subject and the predicate.

February 01, 2010 07:40 AM

(NaturalNews) This article continues part three of the 15-part article series called Heal Yourself in 15 Days. In part two, we explored your innate healing potential and saw how powerful your self-healing abilities really are (http://www.naturalnews.com/028060_self_healing_immune_system.html). Here in part three, we look at a powerful principle of nutrition: You aren't what you eat; you are what you ABSORB.

Many people suffer from poor digestion. In fact, you might say that most people aren't able to absorb the nutrients they swallow, so they remain in a state of nutritional starvation even though they're taking supplements that would otherwise be quite helpful.

These people tend to scratch their heads, wondering why all the nutrients they're swallowing aren't having the positive effects they had hoped for. The answer to this conundrum is found in enhancing the absorption of those nutrients.

Strong stomach acid is good for you
Pharmaceutical pill pushers have convinced many people that stomach acid is bad for your health. By promoting diseases like "acid reflux" or GERD, they misinform consumers into believing that heartburn and stomach pain are caused by too much stomach acid. But the truth is that in most (but not all) cases people actually suffer from weak stomach acid and they need stronger stomach acid to properly digest foods.

It's easy to test this by swallowing a teaspoon (or so) of vinegar with your meal and asking yourself whether it feels better or worse. For a surprisingly large percentage of people, the extra vinegar halts the pain they might normally feel after such a meal. This is a strong indication that they lack proper stomach acid production and could benefit from stronger acid. Vinegar is acidic, you see. Not as acidic as stomach acid, but far more acidic than most foods or beverages.

Consumers have been persuaded by drug advertising to swallow over-the-counter antacid tablets -- products that are actually very alkaline and therefore lower the acidity (i.e. raise the pH) of the liquids in your stomach.

What most people don't realize is that minerals require an acidic digestive environment to be properly digested and absorbed. If you lack proper stomach acid, you won't be able to properly absorb minerals even if you swallow them! And this can lead to mineral deficiencies that promote the development of diabetes, cancer, chronic pain, arthritis and even heart problems (among other things).

So how do you encourage the production of healthy stomach acid? In my experience, drinking fresh vegetable juices each day -- especially celery and cabbage juices -- greatly boosts stomach health, ultimately supporting healthy stomach acid production.

Digestive enzymes from living foods
Digestion is a complex process. It requires biochemical and physical processes to break down ingested substances into their nutritional components. This process is significantly aided by digestive enzymes which exist naturally in living foods (fresh, raw vegetable and fruit juices, for example).

Heating foods (cooking them) destroys all digestive enzymes. This is one reason why cooked foods steal life away from people while raw, living foods impart life. Living foods usually come with their own digestive enzymes, aiding your digestive processes in breaking down and absorbing nutrients.

Dead foods -- which include anything pasteurized -- stress your liver, pancreas and gallbladder by requiring these organs to produce extra digestive enzymes that are missing from the foods themselves. Because many people suffer from poor digestive organ function, they have difficulties absorbing the nutrients they've swallowed.

Probiotics
Many people suffer from serious intestinal flora imbalances. Western medicine, for the most part, remains astonishingly ignorant about the importance of intestinal flora to overall health, but those who study more holistic medicine understand the important role that these "inner bacteria" play in your health: The bacteria in your gut actually digest and transform nutrients you eat into other nutrients.

They are, in essence, nutrient transformers that operate inside your body, producing nutrients needed for your health. That's why people who take antibiotics often suffer serious digestive side effects in the days that follow: They've wiped out all the friendly intestinal bacteria that were providing essential nutrients!

It's easy to remedy this imbalance: Take probiotic supplements on a regular basis. This will feed your digestive tract the friendly bacteria you need.

And don't fall for the marketing sham of eating yogurt, thinking it's loaded with probiotics. Virtually all store-bought yogurt is pasteurized, and pasteurization kills the friendly bacteria. This makes most "probiotic yogurt" products nothing more than a dishonest marketing gimmick.

By the way, if you want healthy intestinal flora, it's also important to reduce your consumption of dietary sugars. When you consume more sugars, you alter the bacterial population in your gut, causing a shift toward bacteria that feed on sugars. As you alter your diet to exclude refined sugars, the population of bacteria in your gut follows suit, shifting towards a non-sugar bacterial population.

References
Everything I've said here is supported by quotations on the website www.NaturalPedia.com where I've assembled over one million unique web pages covering tens of thousands of natural health topics.

For those looking for more specific scientific references, simply use Google.com or Google Scholar to search for the topics described here. You'll even find many of them right here on NaturalNews if you use the search box at the top of this page.

(I'm often amazed when some people demand references for things that can be easily found with a simple Google search. The classic use of article references dates back to the era of library card catalogs when finding information was a laborious task. But today, not even 20 years later, finding information is virtually effortless on the 'net. If you want to find information about how eating sugars alters the bacteria in your gut, for example, just search Google for "eating sugars alters the bacteria in your gut".

When I run that search on Google, I get over 70,000 page results...

Coming up next: This "Heal Yourself in 15 Days" article series continues tomorrow, when you'll learn how to change your health by changing your blood...

February 01, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) A University of Washington research team recently released the results of a study it conducted on contaminant residue in the waters of Puget Sound in Washington State. Various spices, flavorings and other substances are being identified as making their way out of water treatment plants and back into the world's water supply.

Winter holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas bring extra amounts of cinnamon while chocolate and vanilla are especially popular on the weekends. Likewise, caramel corn residue and waffle-cone pieces are particularly excessive around the Independence Day. The most popular contaminant found in the sound is artificial vanilla flavor which is found at an average of 14 milligrams per liter of water.

Around the world, scientists are finding all sorts of things from pharmaceutical drugs to illegal drugs in water supplies despite rigorous efforts to remove them at water treatment facilities. Piggy-backing a report from last year that found trace levels of pharmaceutical drugs in most U.S. water supplies, this report highlights even further how easily water is being contaminated by various human elements.

While spices and flavorings may not inflict any noticeable harm, the concept that traces of everything flushed end up in the water is what researchers wish to convey. Contaminant byproducts, also known as metabolites, regularly make their way out of water treatment plants back into natural waters. Experts hope that awareness of this will encourage people to be cautious about what they flush and engaged in working toward a solution.

Illegal drugs have become a problem in many water supplies where the residue is toxic to both animals and other humans. A 2008 study found that 92 percent of water samples at a Spanish treatment plant contained trace elements of cocaine. Italy's longest river, the Po River, is also said to carry daily noticeable levels of the narcotic through its waterways as well as 44 pounds of daily pharmaceutical drugs which are also highly problematic.

Of notable concern is water contaminated by perchlorate, a chemical used in rocket fuel and fireworks that inhibits the uptake of iodine. Iodine is vital for proper thyroid gland function, and without it serious diseases like hypothroidism run rampant. Perchlorate is currently unregulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Current EPA guidelines require that more than 90 known contaminants be removed from water supplies, but the introduction of new chemicals as well as the use of ones that are not completely filtered out are becoming troublesome. Awareness of the issue will hopefully drive the effort to remedy the problem.

Sources for this story include: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/11/091112-drinking-water-cocaine.html

February 01, 2010 07:00 AM

(NaturalNews) Radiation therapy for the treatment of brain tumors may lead to cognitive decline later in life, according to a study conducted by researchers from VU University Medical Centre in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and published in The Lancet Neurology.

Scientists have known for some time that radiation therapy can damage healthy brain tissue, but prior research found no immediate negative effects from the treatment. In the new study, researchers conducted brain function tests on 65 patients who had undergone treatment for low-grade glioma 12 years previously.

Low-grade glioma is one of the most common forms of brain tumor. It is non-carcinogenic, and can often be removed with surgery. However, many doctors use radiotherapy following surgery.

The researchers found that a full 53 percent of patients who had been treated with radiation exhibited problems with mental function 12 years after their treatment, compared with only 27 percent of those who had not undergone radiation treatment. Radiotherapy patients were especially likely to have problems with memory and attention.

Because the average patient survives a full decade after being diagnosed with low-grade glioma, the researchers noted that large numbers of patients will survive long enough to suffer the negative cognitive effects of radiotherapy. For this reason, they recommended that doctors avoid using radiation in the treatment of glioma unless absolutely necessary -- such as in cases where the tumor returns after surgery, for example.

"It always depends on the patient, but if it is possible to defer radiotherapy, maybe people should," lead researcher Linda Douw said.

Cancer research scientist Jeremy Rees of the United Kingdom's National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery Honorary said that his hospital already avoids radiotherapy for low-grade glioma patients except when the tumor is already progressing or when the patient suffers from uncontrolled epilepsy.

"Surgery is generally a preferred option with chemotherapy or radiotherapy coming into play at a later stage, if the glioma progresses," he said.

Sources for this story include: news.bbc.co.uk.

February 01, 2010 07:00 AM

I wanted to share a few recent podcast episodes that feature an enormous wealth of knowledge on improving ones ability to think, learn, de-program, use logic, the Trivium, Hegelian dialectics, Philosophy, free thinking and more with out trying to sell you anything! I believe any and every one can benefit their mind by simply from listening these podcasts. Thank you Jan Irvin, Dr. Michael Labossiere, Lisa Arbercheski, Richard Grove, Paul Verge and everyone else who help make these recordings possible!

If you find these useful, please support these podcasts & websites

 Peace Revolution episode 002: The Million Dollar Education
Download: MP3
Tragedy and Hope Magazine & website

REFERENCES:
Gorgias  by Plato 386 B.C.E.
The Republic by Plato 380 B.C.E.
Phaedrus by Plato 370 B.C.E.
The Art of Rhetoric by Aristotle 322 B.C.E.
The Metalogicon: A 12^th Century Defense of the Trivium by John of Salisbury 1159 C.E.
Utopia by Sir Thomas More 1516
The Last Will and Testament of Cecil J. Rhodes by William T. Stead
Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann 1921
Propaganda by Edward Bernays 1928
The Trivium: The Liberal Arts of Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric by Sister Miriam Joseph 1937
The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers, Oxford 1947
Great Books of the Western World edited by Dr. Robert M. Hutchins
The Reece Committee Report by Norman A. Dodd, Carroll Reece 1954
Tragedy and Hope, a History of the World in Our Time by Carroll Quigley 1966
The Hidden Agenda: How the Foundations controlling Education are also creating a World Government - An Interview with Norman Dodd (Transcript and Video) by G. Edward Griffin 1981
Dumbing us Down by John Taylor Gatto 1992
Outcome-Based Education by Ron Sunseri 1994
The Underground History of Education by John Taylor Gatto 2001
(you can also read The Underground History of Education on his site)
The Trivium Study Guide by Gene Odening 2009
Gnostic Media Podcasts 49, 50, and several recent podcasts
The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations: Shaping the Moral, Spiritual, Cultural, Political, and Economic Decline of the United States of America by Dr. John Coleman 1991

---

Gnostic Media Podcast #62
Download: Mp3

What would happen if everyone in society received an immunization against all of today's media and political propaganda? Is there a simple, logical process to arm ourselves against such attempts at mind manipulation and control? What if you had the ability to quickly and easily break down words and sentences to identify lies and untruths and propaganda? What do grammar and rhetoric have to do with logic and critical thinking, or, for that matter, marketing, PR and propaganda spin, and more importantly, exactly how can they help you? If someone presents evidence of a claim, do you have a mental duty to study it before you attack it? How can we make our minds sharper? Is it possible to level the playing field against corporate and government propaganda by creating a critical thinking meme? Today we launch the critical thinking meme into society and I ask for your help to spread it, to share today's talk with all you know: friends, co-workers, family, business associates and school mates. If you want to help make an immediate change in your own and other people's lives for the better, today's show is one of the primary ways to do it. We're going to continue our study of the trivium with Dr. Michael Labossiere who is here to discuss logical fallacies. Micheal will be back in the next week or two to also discuss the subject and predicate. This show is being released on Monday, January 25, 2010. My interview with Michael Labossiere was recorded on January 09, 2010. Michael LaBossiere is a guy from Maine who went to school in Ohio and ended up in Florida. Professionally he is a philosophy professor at Florida A&M University. He started teaching there in the Fall of 1993 and greatly enjoy his choice of careers. He teaches a wide variety of classes that range from Aesthetics (theories of art and beauty) to Theory of Knowledge. His first philosophy book, What Don't You Know? hit the shelves in the spring of 2008. He also blogs for The Philosophers' Magazine and has numerous academic publications.

Links:
Philosophy blog: http://aphilosopher.wordpress.com/
The Philosophers' Magazine Blog: http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com 
website: www.opifexphoenix.com

---

Gene Odening on the gnostic media podcast

Podcast #49: The Trivium
Download: Mp3

Podcast #50: The Quadrivium
Download: Mp3

www.GaianBotanicals.com

February 01, 2010 04:20 AM

A summary of various observations and developments that have occurred or are occurring following Mylow having been shown in May, 2009 to be running a hoax -- alleging that he had a working Howard Johnson all-magnet motor design that worked, when in reality he employed methods of deception, but not as a malicious person but as a Don Quixote. (PESWiki; Jan. 31, 2010)

February 01, 2010 04:10 AM

There are a wide range of variables upon which the success of the open source project depends. Here is a list of the determining factors in sequence of importance, as I see it. Revenue will likewise depend on how well the project meets these ideals. The ideal free energy technology will need to be in harmony with a higher level of enlightenment. (PESWiki; Jan. 31, 2010)

February 01, 2010 04:10 AM

Today's demonstration summarized the findings of 1) no back EMF, 2) no component degradation (e.g. Gauss diminishing) to produce the effect, and 3) inductance gain (energy being harvested from somewhere). With this final demonstration, the technology is now being released to developers to prepare the technology for market. (PESN; Jan. 30, 2010)

February 01, 2010 04:10 AM

In a YouTube video, user ubozkurt1 gives the rotor on his Perendev replica a push by hand to get close to what appears to be a resonant speed which then appears to be maintained by the magnetic interactions alone. Visual and audio analysis conclude "constant speed". (PESWiki; Jan. 30, 2010)

February 01, 2010 04:10 AM

A Nashville jury found Carl Tilley and his wife guilty on several counts and levied both compensatory and punitive damages against them jointly, individually and the two companies. Tilley made a splash in 2002 with the claim he could run a DeLorean he had converted to electric, powered by his device that could keep the car running indefinitely. (PESN; Jan. 29, 2010)

February 01, 2010 04:10 AM

Last week, Tommy Reed did a live demonstration on the SmartScarecrow show, using compressed air. The engine allegedly could be 85 percent efficiency compared to 35% for the best conventional internal combustion engines. (PESWiki; Jan. 28, 2010)

February 01, 2010 04:10 AM

Physicist Chet Sapalio, author of “Sworn to Secrecy — The 1947 Roswell Incident,” discusses his onsite research into the Roswell UFO incident, some of his own UFO sightings, and what the government may or may not know about the phenomenon.

February 01, 2010 04:08 AM

There's a lot of intro chit-chat for about 1/2 hour and it's a slow download but still worth it -- great interview with Dr. Marc Seifer

pronounced "cipher"

Dr. Seifer's website



Tesla vs. Einstein -- a Seifer article



The inventions of Tesla --- overview by Dr. Marc Seifer



Dr. Marc Seifer's Radio interview on "transcending the speed of light"

Dr. Marc Seifer's coasttocoast interview on Tesla and Tunguska

January 31, 2010 09:30 PM

The un-making of a Cyborg (detail) – Scloopy &#038; Foldable Fractal 2.0 - Sanch Scloopy&#8217;s &#8216;The un-making of a Cyborg&#8217; contains a set of compositions of wirey extrusions and explosions. As the title suggests the structures pertain to the deconstruction of a some kind of robotic/cybernetic entity. A Processing script was used to generate the [...]

January 31, 2010 12:59 PM

O.K. J. Allen Hynek stated in regards to UFOs that "violation of logic is not proof." So what you are saying is correct in the sense that while UFOs violate logic that still does not prove what they are. But in the other sense violation of logic precedes the need for proof. We can logically infer something without proving it -- we can violate logic and we do not need to prove anything.

This is the basis for nonwestern philosophy -- logical inference of pure consciousness. Western science is based on proof by contradiction so that a negative is proven through mutually exclusive opposites. In other words a person hypothesizes a theory, then proves the theory is wrong, therefore the opposite is true. This proof by contradiction only works under a rigorously controlled mathematical and technological construct -- the first example being the Pythagorean Theorem to prove irrational magnitude as an infinite number. Archimedes then connected distance of math with weight of physics through geometric ratios as philosophy. Archytas and Plato and Eudoxus were the original formulators of this "Greek Miracle" and the latest research on Archimedes Codex proves that already there was the modern understanding of calculus, and irrational magnitude by the ancient Greeks.

So Western science is based on proof with a certain type of logic tied to number -- that's why Bertrand Russell's "negative set" paradox is not allowed in Western mathematics. Russell stated that the square root of two is a "convenient fiction." Logically the square root of two is fiction -- it violates logic -- yet it's the basis, the foundation, for proof in Western science.

I actually documented in my own research that "reptilians" do exist -- they have been proven -- in anthropology. I've given the citations online -- Paul Stoller is one, another was from Senegal -- In the Eyes of Witchcraft is the book title, another is the academic book "Iron, Gender and Power" about alchemy in Africa. So shape-shifting is real in the sense that a human spirit can travel into an animal and then then reptile can attack another human -- or on an even more powerful level a human can create another physical body as a reptile. In terms of UFOs, Nick Redfern talks about this, as does Christopher O'Brien, using the concept of the Tibetan tulpas.

In order to properly understand UFOs there does have to be a deep analysis of logic -- of the violation of western logic -- which thereby precedes the need for Western proof. Still this does not exclude secret military technology which does have effects on spacetime itself -- or some sort of ether as consciousness. In other words there could very well be a realm of occult technology and in fact science can be considered a religion from Freemasonry. Professor David F. Noble wrote about this secret society control of science when he was at M.I.T. and he was fired because of this expose -- now he teaches in Canada. Nick Redfern's next book will be about a secret society in the military who believes in occult technology behind UFOs -- that there is a channeling of evil energy going on. My own research is based on this expose -- http://nonduality.com/hempel.htm is a summary.

What is key to understanding this nonwestern logic is similar to the recent DMT claims about alien abductions -- made by Persinger, another "mind control" scientist thought by some to have secret society connections. I corresponded with Persinger about CIA mind control scientist Dr. Andrija Puharich. Anyway the DMT experience, which I have done, can also be recreated using electromagnetic pulses -- and this trance is similar to sleep paralysis. Stan Gooch has argued that it is a direct communication with the reptilian brain -- the cerebellum -- and mirror neurons can be combined with the newly discovered "Ghandi neurons." The phantom limb phenomenon (the Ghandi nuerons) means that our sense of self dissolves and our neurons directly communicate with the matter-energy around us.

So I've studied with an alchemist master who works with the Mayo Clinic for his healing -- he spent 49 days in a cave not needing food, water or sleep -- he was in the Pyramid Power position -- the full lotus -- his name is Chunyi Lin. I also went 8 days on half a glass of water so I know some of the shape shifting skills -- how to create strong electromagnetic fields that are stored in the body and then create holographic laser energy called biophotons by science.

But I've also had a very close encounter with a big black triangle, no fuselage -- I saw the craft up close, and it was preceded by big balls of plasma, each a different color, which were on each corner of the craft. There was a mass sighting of this same craft in my area back in 1978 along with cattle mutilation and even the abduction of a lady into the craft. Does that mean it is extraterrestrial? Nick Redfern documented the triangle UFO on a U.S. military base in the U.K. in the late 1940s.

So again I do think that the military has secret technology from the Nazis and from Tesla before that, along with Schauberger and a few others -- but at the same time it does not mean that science is not an occult religion relying on mass sacrifice to maintain its power. Our whole culture is based on science as rationality but consider the ecological crisis -- science breaks down in ascribing cause to either human industry or to cosmic origins. In fact the science for ecology is called "quantum chaos" and it's also the secret for occult technology as well -- in "quantum chaos" the machines and math are in control without human rationality!

90% of human history is the Bushmen culture of Africa -- the dominant human culture from 100,000 BCE to 10,000 BCE -- and 90% of the Bushmen males had to learn alchemical trance dance healing which included shape shifting. Also the Bushmen were peaceful with no warfare. So there is a radically different experience of human reality -- a neurologically different experience based on the cerebellum -- the reptilian brain -- and the third eye of the pineal gland which makes DMT. Some humans can flex their pineal gland at will -- and therefore are completely different than the modern left-brain dominant humans. I, am one of these humans who can now flex my pineal gland at will and thereby activate my reptilian brain.

January 31, 2010 09:38 AM

A new departure for Warty Theorems as Jason chats with Louis Proud, author of Dark Intrusions, about sleep paralysis, spirits, dead people and tulpas, aural hallucinations and nocturnal visitations, the hypnogogic and hypnopompic states, shamans&rsquo; journey to the underworld, the movement of the assemblage point, the mystery of sleep, the Psychopomp, Louis&rsquo; experiments in sleep paralysis and troll visitations, the question of mediumship, Louis&rsquo; religious background, the afterlife, are the dead in denial, the subject of channeling, Joe Fisher and the hungry ghosts, Buddhist offerings to the dead, astral shells and entities, how inorganic beings cobble together id-entities using the elements of our unconscious, Akashic records or genetic memory, the incalculable advantages of being inorganic, why the Men in Black never quite get being &ldquo;human&rdquo; right, the discarnate realms, shadow matter and alien abductions, how Imaginal beings attain physical manifestation using our psychic energy, tuning between alternate frequencies of existence, poltergeist and pubescent girls, are alien abductees unconscious mediums?

January 30, 2010 08:45 PM

Please post any comments if you desire.

January 30, 2010 05:35 PM

Well at least I have an excuse now for my general lack of content here at psychopraxis recently. For the last few months I’ve been a busy cyber-elf helping source articles for the new edge cutting blog and website on consciousness, creativity and culture – Brainwaving.com

Established and created by the UK’s leading charitable foundation for research into altered states of consciousness and drug policy, the Beckley Foundation, the excellent (imho) new site features hard-hitting articles, films and documentaries on everything from parapsychology and ecology to drug policy, politics, the internet and the future of reality itself. Check it out.

According to the Beckley Foundation’s founder and director, Amanda Feilding… “Our world is changing fast, to adapt successfully we must have our wits about us. We must both maximise our access to the most useful and interesting information and optimise our consciousness, loosening the mind in the quest for better solutions. The Beckley Foundation was set up to investigate consciousness and its full range of altered states. It has a strictly academic, scientific approach to consciousness, how better to understand it and thus how to manipulate it in the quest for enhancing human happiness. The purpose of the new site Brainwaving.com is to expand the Beckley’s reach, to be an Exchange, thereby covering new areas not currently included in the scientific approach of the Beckley Foundation, and reaching new audiences, particularly the young.

The website will be an exchange of interesting information and ideas with the purpose of exploring love, creativity and the quest for human happiness. It will aim to be entertaining and illuminating. We expect it to evolve as it goes along. We see it as an information exchange for people interested in consciousness, evolution and a better world. We hope that with the collaboration of friends and fellow travellers, we will bring together a stimulating train of knowledge and ideas.

Around the world, there are many millions of people who are looking for commonsense solutions to the urgent problems facing humanity. But to see these solutions, we must free ourselves from the constricting shackles of redundant concepts. Brainwaving.com aims to provide a platform on which new ideas can be explored. It can be seen as an intellectual Go-board, an evolving web for the exchange of fresh thoughts at the frontiers of our cultural outreach.”

January 30, 2010 08:35 AM

This talk has appeared under several different titles, including "Empowering Hope in Dark Times", "Alchemy", and "Unfolding the Stone" among others. IMO it is the most positive and hopeful talk that we have yet heard from Terence here in the salon. For example, he says, "It's absolutely irrational to not be filled with the fire of consuming hope. You just have to overcome the leveling that we inheirit from these empty, existential, scientific ideas."

January 30, 2010 03:40 AM

I just read in this great article why people prefer cooked food over raw food meals in winter. And why this is stupid.

January 29, 2010 11:15 PM

8*8*8 &#038; 9 (detail) - Erwin Keustermans Erwin Keustermans has created a number of hand drawings using the human equivalent of a sub-divisioning algorithm (as well as a number of other process based systems). The &#8216;Patterns by Partition&#8217; collection derive two dimensional circular networks from this simple repetitive process of gesture constraint. The circular lattices in [...]

January 29, 2010 09:56 PM

Physicist Holger Bech Nielsen, one of the founders of string theory, joins us from the Neils Bohr Institute in Copenhagen to discuss his theories about CERN, the world's biggest and most expensive physics experiment. We talk about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the model that they are developing at the Neils Bohr Institute and the search for the mysterious Higgs boson particle, also known as the "god" particle. We ask why the LHC haven't been working properly? We further discuss Holger's claim that he made in an interview with the New York Times that the Large Hadron Collider is being "Sabotaged from the Future". We talk about "god", time, history and the future. Topics discussed: Collision, The Standard Model, Higgs Particle, Superstring Theory, Technicolor, 9 Space Dimensions in String Theory, Kaluza-Klein Particles, Quantum, Einstein, Heisenberg, Newton, Big Bang, "God", Imaginary Part of the Action, Big Bang, Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), Bird dropping a bread crumb in the LHC and more. We continue talking about the mystery of "god", the search for the Higgs boson particle, Gluons, Quarks, Protons and Hadrons with physicist Holger Bech Neilsen in our second hour for Red Ice Members. We continue to talk about the ATLAS detector, the development of string theory, the mystery of quantum mechanics and the wave function collapse. We also talk about time travel, we ask if the future is written in stone? How does free will play into this? We talk about random dynamics and their model. We conclude talking about cosmic rays and the Milky Way black hole as a colossal particle accelerator.

January 29, 2010 08:16 PM

A series of unusual mandala shapes have appeared on Australian weather radar over the last two weeks, according to crop circle researcher Colin Andrews.  The images come from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology website, which shows a satellite view of the continent overlaid by radar data that displays rainfall.

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January 29, 2010 04:48 PM