That's just one study, not an established medical fact. It does give cause for concern and merits more research but doesn't prove anything yet.
"Medical Facts", eh? Science works with theories, and they are constantly evolving.
You keep taking those drugs, and I'll stick to what the research says: proper nutrition is essential for human health. There are other factors for depression too, but I think we both agree that depression is NOT caused by a dietary deficiency of "prozac".
Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw read all the journals: I'll trust what they say over Pfizer-sposored research every day of the week. The link (to the google cache, original link disappeared this week?) has a succinct biography on these two:
Pearson and Shaw have been studying life extension since 1968. They are largely self-educated. Pearson graduated from MIT with a triple major in physics, biology, and psychology, and Shaw graduated from UCLA with a double-major in chemistry and zoology. However, most of their knowledge comes from consuming scientific and medical journals with a voracious appetite, talking with colleagues, and experimenting on themselves. In this manner, they have become two of the most well-informed people on the planet regarding the biochemical mechanisms of aging, and they continue to study it full- time. Pearson and Shaw then apply this knowledge in designing nutritional supplement formulations for their own use...
Here's a passage which covers deperssion specifically... It comes after the vignette about how the FDA is enemy #1 of a scientific approach to health. Like I said, this is 'sacred cow' territory (whoever modded your comment up?), so don't read if you're a true believer in the pharmaceutical-based approach to health:
Sandy:... the FDA will not allow any information concerning the use of a natural product that is sold as dietary supplement in the treatment of disease, and yet there is a considerable amount of information that supports doing so. For example, fish oils have been used to treat people who have a very high risk of having a cardiac arrest from fibrillation.
Durk: For example, a friend of ours, his mother had very severe cardiac arrhythmias. She would have about half a dozen attacks a day, even though she was taking multiple prescription drugs to help prevent the cardiac arrhythmias. She wasn’t expected to live a year.
We said, continue with the prescription drugs, but add the cold water fish oil, a couple grams a day of EPA plus DHA, plus about four grams a day of taurine, which is a natural nutrient that stabilizes electrically-active tissues against excessive stimulation.
Sandy: Like the heart, the brain, and the eyes, for example.
Durk: She’s now down to having an arrhythmic episode about once every six months, instead of half a dozen times a day, and is doing just fine.
Sandy: But that’s just a case that we know about. This information is in the literature. It’s been in peer-reviewed, scientific publications, that people who have a high risk of arrhythmia can be treated with fish oils, and the fish oil is actually safer than the anti-arrhythmic drugs that people are being treated with these days. Believe it or not, if you don’t get exactly the right dose, if there’s a little bit too much, they can cause arrhythmias.
Durk: We have a lawsuit against the FDA concerning this. There is a dietary supplement called SAM-e, S-adenosylmet
europe(and the UK along with it) is in some pretty bad financial straights.
The current "global economic crisis" is more a about distribution of wealth than anything else... Money is plentiful, it's just more concentrated now than ever.
"Revolutionary Science" is a good way to correct the wealth imbalance. Disruptive technology will come along that will make the plutocrat's current investments obsolete. For example...
Utility stocks were always a popular way to concentrate wealth because they pay a consistent dividend.
What if someone comes up with an internal combustion engine that's simpler and cheaper than today's best reciprocating piston engine designs, but is more efficient than the best $million steam turbine? Small groups of people could set up their own power companies (due to the decreased capital requirement). Independently owned and operated power companies would mean cutting Wall Street out of the everyday economy of a lot of people.
There was a story here a few months back about the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's new air conditioning system that uses 90% less power. If I had one of those, my summer AC bill would've shrunk from about $800 to $80 (Phoenix, Arizona). The power company's business model would fall apart entirely if they lost the ability to charge "summer rates".
Or what about when someone finds a way to cheaply and effeciently store electricity? Imagine if power plants ran at 100% capacity all the time, and all the extra power generated at night could be stored until it's needed 8 hours later?
Health care is another wealth-concentrator that needs to be addressed. This is one of those 'sacred cows' which must not be questioned, so I'll just mention the recent study that found most anti-depressants are no better than a placebo. Imagine keeping all the money that the pharmaceuticals pay in dividends to plutocrats in the real economy, and enjoying better health at the same time (because you can afford a better diet, because you don't have side-effects from pills that do nothing for you anyways, etc)
Economic revolution is simply a matter of "follow the money", then dismantling the 'towers' that you find.
I tried various exercise routines, but exercise was only a small part of my path to recovery.
I mentioned a primary cause in my original post: getting whacked on the chin at the lake. Years later my hands-on-healer made a comment after an appointment, "we finally fixed your misshapen head." I was floored: I'd noticed my misshapen head before in the years following my head injury (it was very subtle), but didn't know what to think of it. I figured I was just born that way and just never noticed.
If the body's parts are out of position (due to an accident, or lack of muscle tone, or stress, or...) it won't be able to function properly.
What does it take to have a setup so bad that you get RSI?
Here's a RSI analogy. Imagine that everyone reading this comment takes a match, lights it, and gently sets it on the floor (so that it's still burning). Some people will burn their house down, while others will watch as their match slowly burns out.
The difference is in what the person's floor is made of. Some people's floors are made of tile, while other floors are a bit more flammable (maybe they're covered with a film of cooking oil).
A predisposition for RSI usually isn't recognized until someone's set their body "on fire" (where the trigger is usually stress, poor workstation ergonomics, overuse, laptop keyboard/mouse, etc). The process to putting out the metaphorical fire is different for everyone. Some RSI sufferers benefit from improved workstations and other ergonomic equipment, others benefit from massage or other forms of hands-on therapy, while still others need anti-inflammatory pills or dietary changes or vitamin B6 or any of a thousand other interventions (many of which I've written about here on Slashdot - search my comment history or send me an email.:).
The "kindling" for my RSI condition was set a year before the symptoms emerged, when I knocked myself out and nearly drowned at the lake. The cramping and pain in my hands, forearms, shoulders, neck and spine started in the months after I got a Thinkpad my first semester at teh college. If I hadn't sustained that head injury the year before, I'm certain that the RSI never would have appeared, or at least would have gone away when I stopped using the Thinkpad.
Also as you say gas heat is about 90% efficient, where electric heat is by definition 100% efficient...
My current place has a heat pump. When the temperature is between 40-60 degrees fahrenheit, I get significantly more heat out than electrical energy used by the appliance. Since I live in Phoenix, the low temperature only gets below 40 degrees for a couple days a winter.
Air-source heat pumps don't work so well in colder weather because ice builds up on the outside coils. Ground-source heat pumps are vastly superior to air-source year round... They just cost a lot more to install.
It seems to me that Governments should wield the power to make money, and politicians should debate about where to spend the newly created money.
But as it is, in the UK, the United States, and elsewhere, banks create money, and decide who to loan it to. Governments have no other choice but to levy taxes on the economy.
Like Colbert said in his testimony about migrant farm workers (8:54), the political game is all about power, and the biggest economic power of all is "who gets to create money first." Whatever happened to that bill to 'Audit the Federal Reserve" (which is owned by private member banks)? I haven't kept up... Whatever you think about the Fed, at least its profits are returned to the U.S. Treasury now.
Richard C. Cook's Bailout for the People (pdf) has a really nice overview of an economic system that would work for the benefit of everyone...
If so, I've never heard it before. It sounds like the kid you're referring to may have numerous health problems.
Yes, this kid has a multitude of problems.
Drawing a causal link between diet and autism seems like a bit of a stretch, especially without any studies having demonstrated even correlation, let alone causation, between diet and autistic behaviors.
I drew no such correlation - I just mentioned that my friend's kid does better with a certain kind of diet. My post was about "short circuits" in the lymphatic system of kids with autism being a consideration. My suggested therapy was castor oil packs, not dietary modifications. This was an appropriate suggestion based on what the AC I responded to said:
I also suspect that there is a link to the bowel. I don't know an Autistic kid who doesn't have bowel problems, but that is a limited view.
Here's some longer quotes and a link with more information about this approach to health:
INTERNAL CLEANSING: Because autistic symptoms were sometimes linked to problems with the alimentary canal resulting in poor eliminations, hydrotherapy is recommended to improve eliminations through the colon. Hydrotherapy includes drinking six to eight glasses of pure water daily and obtaining colonic irrigations to cleanse the bowel. Following the diet should also assist with internal cleansing. Hot castor oil packs applied over the abdomen are recommended to improve circulation (especially lymphatic) and eliminations through the alimentary canal.
DIET: The Basic Cayce Diet is intended to improve assimilation and elimination. The diet focuses heavily on keeping a proper alkaline/acid balance while avoiding foods which produce toxicity and drain the system. Essentially, the diet consists mainly of fruits and vegetables while avoiding fried foods and refined carbohydrates ("junk food"). Certain food combinations are emphasized.
I am confused as well. My son is autistic and damned if I could tell you how that occurs.
Usually it starts around 6months, correlated with the transition to solid food. This is because autism is most likely caused by abnormalities in the intestines. Sometimes these "short circuits" happen when a baby has a significant temperature, as when they fight an infection.
The injection of a vaccine can trigger the body's "fight or flight" response (mercury/formaldehyde/aluminum directly into body tissue is a factor). Temperature increase can lead to the the problems in the bowel.
I also suspect that there is a link to the bowel. I don't know an Autistic kid who doesn't have bowel problems, but that is a limited view. For my son, treatment for Candida and the use of probiotics has helped enormously.
I have a friend from high school whose kid has seizures/autism/etc. They've found that a low-carb ("ketogenic") diet helps significantly.
Cayce gave a few readings about people with autism-like symptoms... One factor in the case were "adhesions" and scar tissue in the lacteals, the lymphatic channels which are attached to the small intestines. The scar tissue serves to short-circuit parts of the abdominal nervous system.
The treatment advised included castor oil packs and other therapies, which slowly dissolve the scar tissue and help stimulate normal lymph flow.
See my website, or send me an email for more information (james @ teslabox.com - I don't check ye olde yahoo acct too frequently).
However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Maybe I just don't get who decides for official science what's an extraordinary claim and what's ordinary. Swann says Materialism became the official philosophy of science in the... 1800's I think. The switch was instituted by 3 guys in their 20's... I don't have a copy of that speech, but it was fascinating.
Also, please stop throwing James Randi's name around like a pejorative.
As I said before, he's an entertainer with an agenda. "He does excellent work exposing charlatans", but avoids people with real abilities. You're probably right that there are better people to use as a perjorative.
As far as I know, all proper studies on "psychic ability"
I have made a proper study of people with enhanced perceptive abilities, and I know they can do things that most people cannot. But that's just an anecdote, and you don't care about that because it's not a controlled study done by James Randi himself.
To answer the questions at the start of your post, see Ingo Swann's books, Secrets of Power, Volume I and II. Maybe you can find them on the torrents... Or you can listen to the Art Bell interview. (should be a few downloads left...) Swann says he only ever worked with scientists, and (usually) does not demonstrate his abilities publicly.
what it feels like you are driving at is that a supernatural force is required somewhere (if I am wrong with that assumption, please correct me).
There is nothing in the universe that is "supernatural". I maintain that there are influences in the physical world that originate from beyond the physical world.
Energy is all there is. E=MC^2. Every atom is composed of "empty space" and a latticework of force fields. In our usual everyday lives matter seems quite solid and unchanging... But at the same time, impressions can be deceiving. Consider the naval research lab's work on cold fusion.
However, because this force is supernatural, we by definition have no means by which we can understand it, as our observations are limited to the natural world.
It takes a different kind of observation and research to understand, but it is just as understandable as anything.
In the 1970's, US intelligence agencies started to hear about Soviet psychic spying programs (this was really a translation error - 'bio-informatics' would have been more appropriate). They snickered, but they were tasked with threat assessment: are the soviets on to something that we're not?
So they financed a program of their own at the Stanford Research Institute. Apparently they got very good results, and the program continued for 20 years. When the Soviet Union fell apart the spy agencies said "oh thank god we can kill this thing now..."
Ingo Swann said he was sitting on the throne in a restroom when two spies walked in to use the urinals. One said to the other (I'm going from memory, so it's not an exact quote), "wow, great stuff going on here." The other guy scoffed, "they'll be reading our minds next."
A lot of good work has been done with regards to human abilities. See the work of Robert Monroe (esp. Far Journeys), Ingo Swann (check the torrent sites for a copy of Penetration or Psychic Sexuality), etc.
"Search and the door shall be opened to you." Evidence of non-physical influences in the physical world are easy to ignore, but impossible to miss if you're open to the possibility.
It would be folly to think there isn't anything more that we haven't been able to detect yet.
This is exactly my point. I'm not a particularly eloquent proponent of the philosophy of Vitalism, and I wish I could explain how quantum entanglement and other newtonian-universe-breaking observations suggest Vitalism is more accurate than strict- or modified-materialism...
There's an old saying, "ask and you will find, search and the door shall be opened to you." If you can't consider the possibility that maybe the ancient Chinese were on to something with their concept of Qi/Chi/Life Force, you'll never have experiences that support anything besides the modified-materialist philosophy.
Considering that point about "scientifically observable entities"... I suppose materialists hold that science is currently capable of observing all that is, or at least, everything that is important.
If it can't be measured with currently-available tools it doesn't exist, right?
Living things cause electric fields, electric fields do not cause living things.
Citation? I think the only thing we can say for sure is that living things are associated with electric fields, and that non-living things do not have such fields.
Vitalism holds that a non-material field is what "animates" cold matter. Materialism holds that matter is all there is. You statement, "living things cause electric fields", is a philosophical position...
According to this [wikipedia.org], materialism is just that there is no magic "soul" or "spirit" and everything is simply composed of matter and energy.
Your link actually says that everything is composed of matter:
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter;
As for the L-Field... are you suggesting that electromagnetism has a non-material cause?
There isn't much to matter - science now knows that even the hardest of atoms is mostly empty space. When you push your hand against the keys on your keyboard, the electrons at the outer edge of the shells of the atoms that make up your fingers don't actually touch the electrons of the atoms of the keys of your keyboard.... The electrons get close, but the electro-magnetic fields repulse one another.
Scientists are still looking for that fundamental material building block, but they haven't found it yet. Why assume that matter is the basis of all that is, when the latest scientific evidence is heavily in favor of Energy being the first cause?
Every living organism has an electromagnetic field. See the work of Harold Burr and the L-Field.
Saying that life arose purely from random chemical reactions is like holding that the egg came first. (Ref: The Chicken May Have Come Before the Egg ). But materialists have just as much of an agenda as the creationists, which is why we're subjected to this crap about life emerging from a chemical soup. (Stephen Hawking is a materialist tool. Ref: Hawking Picks Physics Over God For Big Bang)
I really wish those people could understand this quote (last 2 lines of the article): "People start off with a belief and a prejudice—we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth."
The few lines before your quote are much more revealing:
The commonsense view is what we’re fighting against. So somehow you’ve got to move people away from that with these quite complicated scientific arguments based on even more complicated research. That’s why it’s such an uphill battle. People start off with a belief and a prejudice—we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth.
Mr. Singh is fighting commonsense. Fascinating. Sometimes the common's sense of an issue is distorted, while sometimes it's right on. For example, commonsense dictates that nutrition is important part of health, but people who fight commonsense think that it doesn't matter, and they sell us drugs to treat what clearly is influenced by nutritional deficiency (for example).
One of the things that makes this case so murky is that the chiropractors do have a point. Commonsense would hold that if one of the body's parts is dislocated from it's optimal position, it or surrounding structures will function suboptimally. Sometimes chiropractors do help their patients. Massage, craniosacral, etc - all help to improve the body's structure. There are better modalities than chiropractic, but sometimes they do help with conditions that, at first glance, aren't related directly to the area being treated.
I think I removed 7,000 'conversations' from my gmail inbox in an hour.
Which is an easily solved problem, assuming you actually cared about the content of those emails.
Ah, I see the confusion there. I actually used the gmail 'delete' feature because I didn't care about them. So it was more than just removing them from my inbox, as I'd originally stated.
I did have a few such filters... But for the most part I never read the messages. What's the point of receiving an email if I'm never going to look at it? That's the kind of information I use a search engine for.
There's a lot of crap that I used to think was important, or thought I'd be interested in... But the messages just piled up.
One day i just started deleting. I think I removed 7,000 'conversations' from my gmail inbox in an hour. Now I'm much better about deleting crap emails (without opening them) instead of letting them languish...
This 'priority inbox' will be interesting... Glad they're thinking about the problem - too bad it won't unsubscribe you from lists automatically.:)
Slashdot Mirror
That's just one study, not an established medical fact. It does give cause for concern and merits more research but doesn't prove anything yet.
"Medical Facts", eh? Science works with theories, and they are constantly evolving.
You keep taking those drugs, and I'll stick to what the research says: proper nutrition is essential for human health. There are other factors for depression too, but I think we both agree that depression is NOT caused by a dietary deficiency of "prozac".
True Hope's doing some research on their supplement. I think they make a pursuasive argument for the utility of addressing nutritional deficiencies in this video.
Durk Pearson and Sandy Shaw read all the journals: I'll trust what they say over Pfizer-sposored research every day of the week. The link (to the google cache, original link disappeared this week?) has a succinct biography on these two:
Here's a passage which covers deperssion specifically... It comes after the vignette about how the FDA is enemy #1 of a scientific approach to health. Like I said, this is 'sacred cow' territory (whoever modded your comment up?), so don't read if you're a true believer in the pharmaceutical-based approach to health:
europe(and the UK along with it) is in some pretty bad financial straights.
The current "global economic crisis" is more a about distribution of wealth than anything else... Money is plentiful, it's just more concentrated now than ever.
"Revolutionary Science" is a good way to correct the wealth imbalance. Disruptive technology will come along that will make the plutocrat's current investments obsolete. For example...
Utility stocks were always a popular way to concentrate wealth because they pay a consistent dividend.
What if someone comes up with an internal combustion engine that's simpler and cheaper than today's best reciprocating piston engine designs, but is more efficient than the best $million steam turbine? Small groups of people could set up their own power companies (due to the decreased capital requirement). Independently owned and operated power companies would mean cutting Wall Street out of the everyday economy of a lot of people.
There was a story here a few months back about the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's new air conditioning system that uses 90% less power. If I had one of those, my summer AC bill would've shrunk from about $800 to $80 (Phoenix, Arizona). The power company's business model would fall apart entirely if they lost the ability to charge "summer rates".
Or what about when someone finds a way to cheaply and effeciently store electricity? Imagine if power plants ran at 100% capacity all the time, and all the extra power generated at night could be stored until it's needed 8 hours later?
Health care is another wealth-concentrator that needs to be addressed. This is one of those 'sacred cows' which must not be questioned, so I'll just mention the recent study that found most anti-depressants are no better than a placebo. Imagine keeping all the money that the pharmaceuticals pay in dividends to plutocrats in the real economy, and enjoying better health at the same time (because you can afford a better diet, because you don't have side-effects from pills that do nothing for you anyways, etc)
Economic revolution is simply a matter of "follow the money", then dismantling the 'towers' that you find.
I tried various exercise routines, but exercise was only a small part of my path to recovery.
I mentioned a primary cause in my original post: getting whacked on the chin at the lake. Years later my hands-on-healer made a comment after an appointment, "we finally fixed your misshapen head." I was floored: I'd noticed my misshapen head before in the years following my head injury (it was very subtle), but didn't know what to think of it. I figured I was just born that way and just never noticed.
If the body's parts are out of position (due to an accident, or lack of muscle tone, or stress, or ...) it won't be able to function properly.
see my report, etc.
HTH, HAND.
What does it take to have a setup so bad that you get RSI?
Here's a RSI analogy. Imagine that everyone reading this comment takes a match, lights it, and gently sets it on the floor (so that it's still burning). Some people will burn their house down, while others will watch as their match slowly burns out.
The difference is in what the person's floor is made of. Some people's floors are made of tile, while other floors are a bit more flammable (maybe they're covered with a film of cooking oil).
A predisposition for RSI usually isn't recognized until someone's set their body "on fire" (where the trigger is usually stress, poor workstation ergonomics, overuse, laptop keyboard/mouse, etc). The process to putting out the metaphorical fire is different for everyone. Some RSI sufferers benefit from improved workstations and other ergonomic equipment, others benefit from massage or other forms of hands-on therapy, while still others need anti-inflammatory pills or dietary changes or vitamin B6 or any of a thousand other interventions (many of which I've written about here on Slashdot - search my comment history or send me an email. :).
The "kindling" for my RSI condition was set a year before the symptoms emerged, when I knocked myself out and nearly drowned at the lake. The cramping and pain in my hands, forearms, shoulders, neck and spine started in the months after I got a Thinkpad my first semester at teh college. If I hadn't sustained that head injury the year before, I'm certain that the RSI never would have appeared, or at least would have gone away when I stopped using the Thinkpad.
Also as you say gas heat is about 90% efficient, where electric heat is by definition 100% efficient...
My current place has a heat pump. When the temperature is between 40-60 degrees fahrenheit, I get significantly more heat out than electrical energy used by the appliance. Since I live in Phoenix, the low temperature only gets below 40 degrees for a couple days a winter.
Air-source heat pumps don't work so well in colder weather because ice builds up on the outside coils. Ground-source heat pumps are vastly superior to air-source year round... They just cost a lot more to install.
It seems to me that Governments should wield the power to make money, and politicians should debate about where to spend the newly created money.
But as it is, in the UK, the United States, and elsewhere, banks create money, and decide who to loan it to. Governments have no other choice but to levy taxes on the economy.
Like Colbert said in his testimony about migrant farm workers (8:54), the political game is all about power, and the biggest economic power of all is "who gets to create money first." Whatever happened to that bill to 'Audit the Federal Reserve" (which is owned by private member banks)? I haven't kept up... Whatever you think about the Fed, at least its profits are returned to the U.S. Treasury now.
Richard C. Cook's Bailout for the People (pdf) has a really nice overview of an economic system that would work for the benefit of everyone...
Some other sites:
http://www.monetary.org/
http://www.webofdebt.com/
If so, I've never heard it before. It sounds like the kid you're referring to may have numerous health problems.
Yes, this kid has a multitude of problems.
Drawing a causal link between diet and autism seems like a bit of a stretch, especially without any studies having demonstrated even correlation, let alone causation, between diet and autistic behaviors.
I drew no such correlation - I just mentioned that my friend's kid does better with a certain kind of diet. My post was about "short circuits" in the lymphatic system of kids with autism being a consideration. My suggested therapy was castor oil packs, not dietary modifications. This was an appropriate suggestion based on what the AC I responded to said:
I also suspect that there is a link to the bowel. I don't know an Autistic kid who doesn't have bowel problems, but that is a limited view.
Here's some longer quotes and a link with more information about this approach to health:
-Cayce on autism
(hard to breath = less oxygen to the brain?)
The abdominal brain is just as important in our daily experience as the sack of nerves on top of the shoulders.
I am confused as well. My son is autistic and damned if I could tell you how that occurs.
Usually it starts around 6months, correlated with the transition to solid food. This is because autism is most likely caused by abnormalities in the intestines. Sometimes these "short circuits" happen when a baby has a significant temperature, as when they fight an infection.
The injection of a vaccine can trigger the body's "fight or flight" response (mercury/formaldehyde/aluminum directly into body tissue is a factor). Temperature increase can lead to the the problems in the bowel.
I also suspect that there is a link to the bowel. I don't know an Autistic kid who doesn't have bowel problems, but that is a limited view. For my son, treatment for Candida and the use of probiotics has helped enormously.
I have a friend from high school whose kid has seizures/autism/etc. They've found that a low-carb ("ketogenic") diet helps significantly.
Cayce gave a few readings about people with autism-like symptoms... One factor in the case were "adhesions" and scar tissue in the lacteals, the lymphatic channels which are attached to the small intestines. The scar tissue serves to short-circuit parts of the abdominal nervous system.
The treatment advised included castor oil packs and other therapies, which slowly dissolve the scar tissue and help stimulate normal lymph flow.
See my website, or send me an email for more information (james @ teslabox.com - I don't check ye olde yahoo acct too frequently).
If the studies are not published, peer reviewed, and tested, ...
There is a fundamental flaw with the process you've outlined: peer review is anonymous. Here's a link about a superior system:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_peer_review
However, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Maybe I just don't get who decides for official science what's an extraordinary claim and what's ordinary. Swann says Materialism became the official philosophy of science in the ... 1800's I think. The switch was instituted by 3 guys in their 20's... I don't have a copy of that speech, but it was fascinating.
Also, please stop throwing James Randi's name around like a pejorative.
As I said before, he's an entertainer with an agenda. "He does excellent work exposing charlatans", but avoids people with real abilities. You're probably right that there are better people to use as a perjorative.
As far as I know, all proper studies on "psychic ability"
I have made a proper study of people with enhanced perceptive abilities, and I know they can do things that most people cannot. But that's just an anecdote, and you don't care about that because it's not a controlled study done by James Randi himself.
To answer the questions at the start of your post, see Ingo Swann's books, Secrets of Power, Volume I and II. Maybe you can find them on the torrents... Or you can listen to the Art Bell interview. (should be a few downloads left...) Swann says he only ever worked with scientists, and (usually) does not demonstrate his abilities publicly.
what it feels like you are driving at is that a supernatural force is required somewhere (if I am wrong with that assumption, please correct me).
There is nothing in the universe that is "supernatural". I maintain that there are influences in the physical world that originate from beyond the physical world.
Energy is all there is. E=MC^2. Every atom is composed of "empty space" and a latticework of force fields. In our usual everyday lives matter seems quite solid and unchanging... But at the same time, impressions can be deceiving. Consider the naval research lab's work on cold fusion.
However, because this force is supernatural, we by definition have no means by which we can understand it, as our observations are limited to the natural world.
It takes a different kind of observation and research to understand, but it is just as understandable as anything.
In the 1970's, US intelligence agencies started to hear about Soviet psychic spying programs (this was really a translation error - 'bio-informatics' would have been more appropriate). They snickered, but they were tasked with threat assessment: are the soviets on to something that we're not?
So they financed a program of their own at the Stanford Research Institute. Apparently they got very good results, and the program continued for 20 years. When the Soviet Union fell apart the spy agencies said "oh thank god we can kill this thing now..."
Ingo Swann said he was sitting on the throne in a restroom when two spies walked in to use the urinals. One said to the other (I'm going from memory, so it's not an exact quote), "wow, great stuff going on here." The other guy scoffed, "they'll be reading our minds next."
A lot of good work has been done with regards to human abilities. See the work of Robert Monroe (esp. Far Journeys), Ingo Swann (check the torrent sites for a copy of Penetration or Psychic Sexuality), etc.
"Search and the door shall be opened to you." Evidence of non-physical influences in the physical world are easy to ignore, but impossible to miss if you're open to the possibility.
Ah. So you have to believe in the supernatural in order to see evidence of it. Classic.
No, you just can't be closed to the idea. "search and the door shall be open to you" means that if you never look, you can't find.
It would be folly to think there isn't anything more that we haven't been able to detect yet.
This is exactly my point. I'm not a particularly eloquent proponent of the philosophy of Vitalism, and I wish I could explain how quantum entanglement and other newtonian-universe-breaking observations suggest Vitalism is more accurate than strict- or modified-materialism...
There's an old saying, "ask and you will find, search and the door shall be opened to you." If you can't consider the possibility that maybe the ancient Chinese were on to something with their concept of Qi/Chi/Life Force, you'll never have experiences that support anything besides the modified-materialist philosophy.
And with that, I'm off to bed. HAND
Considering that point about "scientifically observable entities"... I suppose materialists hold that science is currently capable of observing all that is, or at least, everything that is important.
If it can't be measured with currently-available tools it doesn't exist, right?
Living things cause electric fields, electric fields do not cause living things.
Citation? I think the only thing we can say for sure is that living things are associated with electric fields, and that non-living things do not have such fields.
Vitalism holds that a non-material field is what "animates" cold matter. Materialism holds that matter is all there is. You statement, "living things cause electric fields", is a philosophical position...
dueling philosophies, what fun! :)
According to this [wikipedia.org], materialism is just that there is no magic "soul" or "spirit" and everything is simply composed of matter and energy.
Your link actually says that everything is composed of matter:
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter;
hth, hand.
As for the L-Field... are you suggesting that electromagnetism has a non-material cause?
There isn't much to matter - science now knows that even the hardest of atoms is mostly empty space. When you push your hand against the keys on your keyboard, the electrons at the outer edge of the shells of the atoms that make up your fingers don't actually touch the electrons of the atoms of the keys of your keyboard.... The electrons get close, but the electro-magnetic fields repulse one another.
Scientists are still looking for that fundamental material building block, but they haven't found it yet. Why assume that matter is the basis of all that is, when the latest scientific evidence is heavily in favor of Energy being the first cause?
And what's this nonsense about biochemists and physicists having an "agenda" like creationists.
I said "materialists". For example, James Randi (the magician) is a materialist with an religious agenda.
I don't see how anything that is arguably scientific in origin could be in any way equated with that.
Sometimes even the best scientists fall in love with their guiding philosophy.
Every living organism has an electromagnetic field. See the work of Harold Burr and the L-Field.
Saying that life arose purely from random chemical reactions is like holding that the egg came first. (Ref: The Chicken May Have Come Before the Egg ). But materialists have just as much of an agenda as the creationists, which is why we're subjected to this crap about life emerging from a chemical soup. (Stephen Hawking is a materialist tool. Ref: Hawking Picks Physics Over God For Big Bang)
I really wish those people could understand this quote (last 2 lines of the article): "People start off with a belief and a prejudice—we all do. And the job of science is to set that aside to get to the truth."
The few lines before your quote are much more revealing:
Mr. Singh is fighting commonsense. Fascinating. Sometimes the common's sense of an issue is distorted, while sometimes it's right on. For example, commonsense dictates that nutrition is important part of health, but people who fight commonsense think that it doesn't matter, and they sell us drugs to treat what clearly is influenced by nutritional deficiency (for example).
One of the things that makes this case so murky is that the chiropractors do have a point. Commonsense would hold that if one of the body's parts is dislocated from it's optimal position, it or surrounding structures will function suboptimally. Sometimes chiropractors do help their patients. Massage, craniosacral, etc - all help to improve the body's structure. There are better modalities than chiropractic, but sometimes they do help with conditions that, at first glance, aren't related directly to the area being treated.
Which is an easily solved problem, assuming you actually cared about the content of those emails.
Ah, I see the confusion there. I actually used the gmail 'delete' feature because I didn't care about them. So it was more than just removing them from my inbox, as I'd originally stated.
I did have a few such filters... But for the most part I never read the messages. What's the point of receiving an email if I'm never going to look at it? That's the kind of information I use a search engine for.
There's a lot of crap that I used to think was important, or thought I'd be interested in... But the messages just piled up.
One day i just started deleting. I think I removed 7,000 'conversations' from my gmail inbox in an hour. Now I'm much better about deleting crap emails (without opening them) instead of letting them languish...
This 'priority inbox' will be interesting... Glad they're thinking about the problem - too bad it won't unsubscribe you from lists automatically. :)
I bet you could learn to get a similar effect without the binge drinking. The Gnaural software (mentioned in this story) might be helpful.