I love this one from Infowars:

She makes a great point, actually…. buuuuut… science by definition must be falsifiable – i.e., you have to be able to disprove it.

So what exactly WOULD disprove “Global Warming”?

Well… NOTHING WOULD!

And that’s why, Rachel, “Global Warming” is NOT science!

My friend Richard died this year in January. Shortly after his death I submitted a paper he had written for publication in a scientific journal called Bioscience Hypotheses. The editors were interested, but they had questions. As I had contributed somewhat to Richard’s ideas, I was familiar with them and I felt I could refine the article for the editors. This I did and the paper was accepted for publication in late January. The article has finally been officially published at the journal and is available online here: Honey bee colony collapse disorder is possibly caused by a dietary pyrethrum deficiency and also on Richard’s personal website.

This paper presents a hypothesis regarding the possible cause of Bee Colony Collapse Disorder, but the inspiration for it actually came from consideration regarding the controversial cancer treatment laetrile and a general principle of economics known as the Law of Returns.

The Law of Returns was first made explicit for me after studying Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action. Mises discusses the law in relation to economics, but it is in fact a universal law which holds for any goal-oriented action. In essence it states that: if for the realization of goal G, a given system S requires ingredient I, then for I there exists an optimum; i.e., there is a “too much”, a “too little” and a “just right”. Aristotle boiled it down to a simple rule: “everything in moderation, nothing to excess.”

Put that way, it seems a little obvious. But despite most people having an implicit understanding of it, the lack of an explicit one leads people very often to violate it. They seem to say “If a little is good, then a lot will be even better!” The reverse is also popular: “If a lot is bad, none is best!” Hence, one can always find violations in the current news; a woman, for example, who died after drinking too much water, or the off-hand rejection of a treatment for cancer because the molecule includes a cyanide group.

Thankfully, our bodies can handle small deviations one way or the other fairly well, either by filtering out when we take in too much or by breaking down the least necessary of our tissues to reuse what we don’t take in enough of (this second principle is also discussed by Mises in relation to economic science, it’s known as the Law of Marginal Utility.) Still, our explicit understanding of the law can mean the difference between health and disease. After all, just what qualifies as a “toxin” or a “nutrient”? For the woman who drank too much water, the water was clearly toxic. But for the bee that consumes pyrethrum, a natural insecticide, the trade off may be resistance to parasites. The answer is not as easy as we might first think and is affected in no small part by the Law of Returns.

From my high school years to the years I spent at Rutgers University studying biology, I have been told that “evolution has no direction.” At first, I accepted this notion, although I always felt that there was something wrong with it. While it’s true that beings do not evolve to a specific end, they most certainly tend in a direction. No creatures can ever be said to “devolve”. A single celled organism evolves to a multi-celled organism – the reverse never happens. But it is not simply complexity that increases over time. Complexity could theoretically be lost – if such complexity did not increase the organism’s overall power. Certain powers may be lost, too, but such losses will always be matched by a gain elsewhere. This is my reasoning, anyway, for believing that despite the depressing assumptions that everywhere entropy is increasing – life in the universe in fact tends towards supreme beings.

The Discovery networks are really becoming ridiculous.  This even aside from the gratuitous references to “global warming” and “climate change” with the not-so-hidden message that people are the plague of the earth. I’ve gotten somewhat used to that message, really. And if you can stomach the backwards values, the shows can sometimes still provide interesting facts. Occasionally, if a more naive viewer is paying attention, he may note that a fact mentioned in connection with “global warming” provides evidence for the other side. In a recent Science Channel show about creatures that live in the mid-ocean depths, scientists were shown studying how jelly-like organisms consumed plankton and then passed droppings that would fall to the deep ocean, nourishing the creatures that lived there. The narrator couldn’t help but mention how this could “help us combat global warming” by fixing carbon in the oceans. In fact, this little piece of information serves as evidence for one of the opposing viewpoints: that Earth warms FIRST and only THEN does carbon dioxide increase in Earth’s atmosphere – after all they just explained to you that carbon is already being fixed in the ocean.

Slowly building toward the violence necessary to rid the world of those who do not share the religion, there’s Animal Planet’s Whale Wars, where fools put themselves in ridiculously dangerous situations engaging in war games with commercial whalers while soulful music plays to their horrified and melancholy faces. Now, let it be known, I love animals. It is very obvious to me that they are conscious beings deserving of respect and I am glad that there are others who agree. I am all for educating people on the subject. What appalls me is the underlying message of this show, that the best way to save animals is to risk the lives of people by engaging in physical confrontation. And this is clearly the purpose – to attract young people to stupid ways of risking their lives – and/or killing others.

And this is where it starts to get particularly egregious. For example, The Learning Channel (that’s right TLC, the network with the double-meaning of learning and tender loving care) has a new show called Police Women of Broward County. In the coming attractions for the show one of the women is heard saying this priceless gem: “There’s always a good time to use a taser.” Watch it here:

Oh yeah, she’s a “sweet old fashioned girl” alright. And I’ve no doubt this will have the desired effect – convincing the multitudes of insecure women that they don’t want to be the “sweet old fashioned girl”, they want to be the modern and tough “police” woman. The goal seems to be getting the girls interested in joining the military and police forces just like their male counterparts so they can become menaces to the rest of us. I suspect the targeting of women has to do with their relative naiveté with regard to political matters. But, note how these women treat people. In the past when I have stooped to watch one of these “real life” police shows, the male officers have tended to behave well (unlike their fictional counterparts in shows like CSI). These women have no such restraint. Perhaps their purpose is to perform those services which the men are too politically savvy to perform. I suppose you could say the female cop/soldier is also part of the socialist cliché.

On yet another Discovery network, the Science Channel, I recently came across a show discussing the desertification of northern China near Shanghai. This type of show is popular lately and I must admit they are of interest to me as I have lately taken to educating myself further in the areas of geology and geography. But, I have to watch while guarding myself against the horrid propaganda.

Northern China suffers terrible sandstorms and the intent of this show is to draw a parallel between them and the Dust Bowl in the US in the 1930’s – taking advantage of economic parallels while at the same time supporting the religion of environmentalism. In the 1930’s farmers, ignorant of the soil conservation methods necessary for farming on the semi-arid plains, loosened the soil such that when a 10 year drought hit the region, the bulk of the soil simply blew away in enormous “black blizzards” which were also particularly deadly because of the fine structure of the soil. I think it’s important to realize that the blizzards did not cause the drought. The drought, together with the poor farming methods, caused the blizzards.

In China, the situation seems to me to be somewhat different and perhaps after some study I will venture my own speculations on the matter. For now, whatever the cause of the drought, the purpose of programs such as these is to show how ignorant, stupid, and in need of government control the average farmer is. But the best was yet to come. At the very end, the producers decided to leave you with what they could only have considered the most important message of their piece. A Chinese farmer speaks in Chinese with subtitles running beneath his rugged face. He says “The problem isn’t the sand, it’s the people.”

And that about says it all, now doesn’t it?

This is very well done and it will definitely get you thinking about our place in the universe. I have no doubt there are civilizations galore out there. To me this is simple statistics. Seeing all of these galaxies out there is very humbling and I think it serves well as a step in the process of beginning to think outside the current paradigm. There is so very much we have yet to discover. What we do know is but a scratch on an all but infinite surface.

What exactly does it mean to be a “soft science”? Over the holidays I got into a discussion with a relative about just this topic. Economics, he told me, is a “soft” science, unlike physics which is a “hard” science. What exactly is the difference?

The word “science” itself is a somewhat fuzzy term. It can be defined as any form of rational inquiry, but it can also be used to describe a particular type of rational inquiry, that of inductive reasoning – i.e., the scientific method. For the purposes of my article, I would like to define science as any form of rational inquiry. Why will become clear a little later on.

So now, having defined that, we can ask the question, what is a “soft” science?

The idea of a “soft” science is, of course, even fuzzier. When people use the term they rarely know what they are trying to say. In the end, the term usually evokes a list of what the person believes are soft sciences and a definition has to be obtained by working backwards and figuring out what they all have in common. A “soft” science is almost always a science that is impacted in some way by human motives, aspirations, and emotions. The list usually looks something like this (depending on what the person includes in the term “science”):

Economics
Politics
Psychology
Ethics
Aesthetics

And of course, all the sciences that deal with human motives and emotions rarely predict anything and are subject to endless debate. It is assumed that the topics are either too complex – as is the case with economics – or that they are relative to whatever opinion you might hold – as is the case with all branches of philosophy. This is not a coincidence. People have powerful motives to obfuscate and confuse both themselves and others with regard to these topics and the reason for that is obvious. Continued…

Laying in bed this morning I realized just how insignificant I am to the vast majority of living creatures. Of course, there are a few among them to whom I am extremely significant, but if you were to consider them percentage wise, they wouldn’t even register. The number would be something like 0.000000000…01% with the number of zeros being some large undefined number. A strange thought, but this is what happens to you when someone who was not insignificant to you dies.

Mitchell Jones, who wrote an excellent book called The Dogs of Capitalism, once wrote an equally excellent forum post called Ego Identity and the Mechanical Universe, which I periodically return to and think upon. Of course, now, it is coming again to mind.

I used to think the argument had a flaw – namely the idea that there could be an infinite amount of matter in the universe or an infinite number of combinations of said matter. But I don’t actually think that argument works anymore. At least there is no axiomatic necessity. Time and space are necessarily infinite, but matter is not and the potential combinations of matter seems necessarily finite given the laws of physics as we know them – a point clearly made in Mitchell’s original post with reference to gunpowder.

The next question of interest to me was whether an individual is just an arrangement of matter or if in fact there has to be some unique particle in order to form him. The question is a side argument and does not negate the original deduction, but it’s kind of interesting and given my current state of mind, it seemed relevant. It seems to me that there would have to be such a particle (or wave, or soul if that be what you want to call it) based on the fact that there is the potential for the existence of two separate beings with the exact same arrangement of matter. Would they see through two different sets of eyes at the same time? If not, then a unique aspect must exist. Of course if that’s the case, another question arises. Could that unique aspect ever be destroyed?

None of this is particularly comforting, although if you read Mitchell’s original post, it is so beautifully crafted that it feels that way at least for those of us for whom faith yields little. So, I started wondering an entirely different question. What exactly would be comforting?

So far, the closest I can come up with is something similar, but not quite exactly like the Buddhist idea that each life led well leads to a better starting point in the next one. Since this is pure fantasy at this point, we could make this work by assuming that the (at least) one unique particle necessarily included in the recipe that makes you, could be changed with each incarnation by all that you learn and discover in life and that the more you learn and discover, the more that particle changes and puts you on the fast track, so to speak, in your next life.

Comforting? I don’t know. At one point, while conversing about this with my cousin, he said “I’m not sure it’s even necessary.” No, it really isn’t – unless of course you are grieving.

That's me!

Continued…

I’ve had this little Canon PowerShot SD850 IS for a little over a year now. I bought this little camera with a particular purpose in mind. I wanted to have a camera with me at all times, especially when I was out for a walk; something lightweight, something so that if I happened upon an interesting critter I would be able to document it. I have an eye for interesting critters, particularly insects, and I’m always catching something that I wish I was able to get on film. I was tired of missing the shot so to speak. This little camera is perfect for that, but something is definitely lost in quality when you are dealing with these little lenses, especially if what you want to take a picture of is particularly small… like a bug. Up until now I have been zooming in with the digital zoom in order to get the shot, while all along this little camera had a macro setting! Once I realized this, I went out with it in mind to try it out. These photos are the result of that. Continued…

Yes, I know. They are poisonous and you will drop dead if you so much as swallow one. NOT! In fact, I believed this fallacy since the time I was a small child. Many times throughout my life I wondered to myself how in the hell more people didn’t drop dead from cyanide poisoning since apple seeds were so damn ubiquitous. Maybe wondering that is proof I was a smart kid. Either way, it took me some days of trying to overcome my fear enough to take a bite of one. After I did that, I swore up and down that I was having some kind of reaction and wondered if I would fall over dead any minute. I didn’t.

And now, whenever I eat an apple, I also eat the seeds—anywhere from 5 to 12 of them depending on the apple. Apple seeds most definitely taste like “bitter almonds” too. I actually find them quite tasty, but if the flavor is bothersome, eating them at the same time as you eat the flesh of the apple cuts the bitterness. But, why do it, you might ask. One reason is to realize for yourself the lies you’ve been told. The other is because, I believe, they are good for you.

I became interested in this subject after reading G. Edward Griffin’s World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17. I highly recommend this book. Just click the link to pick up a copy from Amazon. It’s well worth it.

You can find a good overview of this controversy, on both sides, in a number of places on the web. A quick search on laetrile or amygdalin will bring up more than you can possibly read. A quick and easy way to get a taste of what it’s all about, though, is to view G. Edward Griffin’s video on the subject.

After doing a little bit of research on my own, I was able to note that certain areas of the world had less of an incidence of cancer than other areas. Africa for example, has a low incidence of cancer, while all the 1st world countries have a high incidence. Now that seemed backwards to me. Aren’t we supposed to be healthier? But if you take diet into consideration, it starts to make a lot of sense. In fact, at one point, I came upon a researcher with a smart idea. Why not look into different groups of people right here within the US that had lower incidences of cancer? What was different about them? For example, mormons have a lower incidence of cancer than do the non-mormon people living right next to them. Some of that might be attributed to the fact that they do not smoke cigarettes, but certainly not all of it. What’s different? Could it be their diets?

It seems to me that populations of people that consume nuts and seeds, and/or foods high in nitrilosides, (like cassava in Africa for example), have less of an incidence of cancer. Could there be something to this Vitamin B-17 thing?

While US researchers are looking into cases of “poisoning” where individuals clearly ate TOO MUCH of something (even WATER in excess will kill you) Asian scientists have no such problem with it. They are still studying the effects of amygdalin on cancers and finding that indeed it has an effect. You can find one such article here. You can also do your own search on “amygdalin” using Google Scholar. Look for more recent articles. Now these research articles may not seem definitive to you, that’s fine. But note that these researchers are not afraid to consider it, while here in the US it’s practically taboo. On top of this, the nitriloside/amygdalin/laetrile/cyanide scare of the 70’s and 80’s has many people literally AFRAID to eat something that is in fact NOT poisonous at all. That’s damn suspicious.

Now if the thought of eating an apple seed frightens you, I’m not surprised. I think this phenomenon is much worse if you were in fact a child during the 70’s and 80’s. It’s very difficult to overcome those long held beliefs. Nevertheless, they are simply false and it’s worth witnessing it for yourself. It’s kind of like finally putting on those sunglasses that let you read subliminal messages on the road signs, or swallowing the pill that lets you see the matrix.

Recently ABC performed a version of Stanley Milgram’s famous experiment on obedience to authority. Of course the psychology of the participants in the study is certainly interesting. But the psychology of the experimenters is, too. For example, the questions they ask reveal something about them. How can “ordinary” people perform “unthinkable” acts? How do “good” people go bad? These questions are interesting because they imply that people willing to cause pain and injury to another at the urging of an authority were, at least before the experiment, good people. Somehow, due to the psychological makeup of humans in general, the urgings of an authority figure “made” them go bad. What’s interesting is that it never occurs to the experiments that those who would do such a thing were never good people. The experiment exposes the immorality of the people, it doesn’t create it. Good people don’t suddenly go bad. They were always that way.

Morality is a very touchy issue. There are a lot of emotions wrapped up in the concept, at least partially because most “moralities” are attempts to fool people into doing things that are against their own interests. You heard that right. What passes for morality is actually a control mechanism put in place by authority figures to make people want to obey their rules. The only way to get people to obey rules that are against their own interest is to convince them that they will be rewarded for it eventually. And this is how most “moralities” operate.

Continued…