Favorite Link Friday December 27, 2015

Study Shows Water Has Memory

New research from the Aerospace Institute of the University of Stuttgart in Germany supports the theory that water has a memory. This idea was first coined by French immunologist Dr. Jacques Benveniste in a controversial article published in 1988 in the journal Nature as a way of explaining how homeopathy works. Later, others, including Dr. Emoto, took their hands and theories to this idea, all of which also proved controversial.

The experiment tested the hypothesis that water exposed to distant intentions affects the aesthetic rating of ice crystals formed from that water. Basically, it tested whether intentions could influence the physical structure of water (as mentioned earlier). Over a period of three days, approximately 2000 people in Austria and Germany focused their intentions towards water samples that were placed inside an electromagnetically shielded room in California. Other samples were located outside of the shielded room so that they could act as a distant control. Ice drops formed from multiple samples of water in different treatment conditions were photographed by a technician. Each image was assessed for aesthetic beauty by over 2,500 independent judges and the results of the data were analyzed by individuals who were blind with respect to the treatment conditions. Results showed that the test was consistent with a number of previous studies suggesting that intention may be able to influence the structure of water.” [Source]

Ecology: A World Without Mosquitos

Elimination of mosquitoes might make the biggest ecological difference in the Arctic tundra, home to mosquito species including Aedes impiger and Aedes nigripes. Eggs laid by the insects hatch the next year after the snow melts, and development to adults takes only 3–4 weeks. From northern Canada to Russia, there is a brief period in which they are extraordinarily abundant, in some areas forming thick clouds. "That's an exceptionally rare situation worldwide," says entomologist Daniel Strickman, programme leader for medical and urban entomology at the US Department of Agriculture in Beltsville, Maryland. "There is no other place in the world where they are that much biomass."

Views differ on what would happen if that biomass vanished. Bruce Harrison, an entomologist at the North Carolina Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Winston-Salem estimates that the number of migratory birds that nest in the tundra could drop by more than 50% without mosquitoes to eat. Other researchers disagree. Cathy Curby, a wildlife biologist at the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Fairbanks, Alaska, says that Arctic mosquitoes don't show up in bird stomach samples in high numbers, and that midges are a more important source of food. "We (as humans) may overestimate the number of mosquitoes in the Arctic because they are selectively attracted to us," she says.

Mosquitoes consume up to 300 millilitres of blood a day from each animal in a caribou herd, which are thought to select paths facing into the wind to escape the swarm. A small change in path can have major consequences in an Arctic valley through which thousands of caribou migrate, trampling the ground, eating lichens, transporting nutrients, feeding wolves, and generally altering the ecology. Taken all together, then, mosquitoes would be missed in the Arctic — but is the same true elsewhere?

Ultimately, there seem to be few things that mosquitoes do that other organisms can't do just as well — except perhaps for one. They are lethally efficient at sucking blood from one individual and mainlining it into another, providing an ideal route for the spread of pathogenic microbes.

"The ecological effect of eliminating harmful mosquitoes is that you have more people. That's the consequence," says Strickman. Many lives would be saved; many more would no longer be sapped by disease. Countries freed of their high malaria burden, for example in sub-Saharan Africa, might recover the 1.3% of growth in gross domestic product that the World Health Organization estimates they are cost by the disease each year, potentially accelerating their development. There would be "less burden on the health system and hospitals, redirection of public-health expenditure for vector-borne diseases control to other priority health issues, less absenteeism from schools", says Jeffrey Hii, malaria scientist for the World Health Organization in Manila. [Source]

Star Wars: Force Awakens Review

I have written many articles on many unimportant social and political issues, but nothing has the weight and gravity of this, my attempt review of STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS.

You may wonder why so much fervor and rhetorical pyrotechnics is now and ever will be expended on what is basically a Flash Gordon Space-Samurai Soap Opera adventure flick. Why is not the Internet invented by Al Gore (Peace Be upon Him!) lit up with discussion, debate and commotion about much greater, graver, more intricate and well-crafted films, such as CITIZEN KANE or THE SEVEN SAMURAI or ALEXANDER NEVSKY or SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO?

The answer is that there is no need to remake SPACE BATTTLESHIP YAMATO into a live action film, especially since Leader Desslok was not in the script, one of the most awesome villains of all Japanimation, if not of all sci-fi; he was replaced by some sort of generic hive-mind who possessed human host bodies, and what is up with that? What happened to Queen Starsha of Iskandar? Some remakes do not need to be remade, particularly if you are going to downgrade the villain, make the heroes less memorable and less likeable as the beloved childhood original, and do nothing imaginative with the material.

Just kidding. The real answer is that great, intricate, well-crafted movies are of interest only to a small cadre of socially awkward intellectuals. On the other hand, popular movies and stories define the dreams that define society. Mark Twain once quipped that the Civil War was caused by IVANHOE, with the popularization of notions of chivalry and manly honor among the South. Politics is downstream of culture, and culture is carried from one generation to the next in the form of storytelling.

Myths, not facts, rule mankind.

That is why the Elite are desperate, as desperate as puling drunk for one more mouthful of rotgut, desperate as a cokehead for another noseful of blow, to infuse political correctness into each new corner of pop culture, no matter how small. If they fail to destroy our dream and myths, they fail to reproduce to the next generation, and they are done for.

Likewise, this is why the Sons of Liberty, the Table Round, and the Rebel Alliance of Awesome — that would be us, dear readers, the Good Guys — are vehement to reject political correctness, and get on with the serious business of having fun.

Now, STAR WARS is special, STAR WAR is cyclopean, STAR WARS is Brobdingnagian, STAR WARS is larger than life.

Whoever controls STAR WARS controls the window into the imagination of an entire generation.

I should not need to explain to you why that is, but I will, for otherwise I cannot explain my review of THE FORCE AWAKENS.

In the decade before STAR WARS, flicks were a drag. They were filled with gloom, doom, grit, and anxiety, the kind of fretful worry-wart frenzies about non-issues in which Leftwingers love in indulge. It was the time of SOYLENT GREEN and EASY RIDER. They were made when America was at an apex of wealth and liberty. Meanwhile, back in the 1940s, we had polio, the Dustbowl, and Pearl Harbor, three of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, namely Plague, Famine, and War, were riding the land. And folks made Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon serials that were fun escapism telling simple stories about larger-than-life good underdogs fighting larger-than-life evil overlords like Killer Kane or Ming the Merciless. And so we were inspired to storm Normandy Beach and topple the Evil Empire of the Soviets. [Read the rest Here]

Government's Can't Stop the Use of this Cancer Cure

Cannabis oil is gathering an unstoppable momentum as a world class healer, and there is little or nothing Western Governments are going to be able to do stop it. Cases are popping up all over the world showing that cannabis oil has healed some very serious diseases, including anxiety disorders, epilepsy, MS (Multiple Sclerosis), cerebral palsy and cancer. This young man healed his stage IV throat, stomach and pancreatic cancer with cannabis oil. This Australian women healed her terminal stage IV lung cancer with it. Wallace Rose in the video clip above explains how cannabis oil cured his stage IV pancreatic cancer. It is a fundamental human right, no matter where you live on the planet, to be able to access and use whatever medicine you want to heal yourself. And, thankfully, we are beginning to see that Governments worldwide will not have the power to stand in the way of this natural right any longer.

To those unfamiliar with the beginning of the United States, it may come as a shock to learn that hemp was a big part of the inception. Not only was hemp (in all of its forms) completely legal, but also it was actually required to be planted by the early colonists! The Founding Fathers made references to it in their writings and grew it themselves. It was widely know that hemp was an incredible plant with a wide variety of uses: textiles, rope, clothing, paper, fuel, nutrition, medicine and recreation. So how did hemp fall from such exalted status to become an illegal “controlled substance”, for which you could be imprisoned due to mere possession of it? [Read the Rest Here]