I think you missed my vision for the future. Your post is about the gradual evolution of the current energy economy, my post was about a sudden and drastic revolution in scientific understanding. It's happened before (see my link to the outline of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, or the book's wikipedia page), it is foolish to think that it won't happen again.
"Cold Fusion" is only a scientific revolution away. I don't know that "fusion" is the right term - perhaps electro-chemistry, in a transmutation-of-the-elements sorta way, would be more accurate.
Energy won't be "free", of course, but close enough so that it would be effectively so. The neighborhood power plant could split water to generate its own hydrogen (if hydrogen will indeed be necessary) - no need for "fuel" (natural gas, coal, petroleum, etc) as we know it today. Eventually the technology will be simplified to the point that anyone with a machine shop could build their own "Mr. Cold Fusion".
Suppose technology developed to the point that the existing oil industry became irrelevant - free energy for all, with elegant, simple, low-cost fusion reactors in every neighborhood, and some sort of "cold-fusion" device powering every car. No more $100million nuclear fusion plants, no more need for gasoline or diesel. Would it not be in their best interest to muddy the water a bit, so to speak?
Also, oil companies are some of the ones leading the alternative energy charge, believe it or not.
This reminded me of one Native American method for buffalo hunting:
To start the hunt, "Buffalo Runners", young men trained in animal behavior would entice the herd to follow them by imitating the bleating of a lost calf. As the buffalo moved closer to the drive lanes the hunters would circle behind and upwind of the herd and scare the animals by shouting and waving robes. As the buffalo stampeded towards the edge of the cliff, the animals in front would try to stop but the sheer weight of the herd pressing from behind would force the buffalo over the cliff.
In this analogy, the oil companies "leading the alternative energy charge" are analogous to the young men getting the herd to follow them. The oil companies lead the charge away from the truly revolutionary breakthroughs, towards business models where they're still relevant.
I met a physicist some 4 years ago who was working on his doctorate, on Cold Fusion-style research. At the time said he'd have to modify one of his papers to acknowledge some tokamak-fusion research that'd just been published - the experiment turned out just like he thought it would, but he had to mention it. Just finished his doctorate a month or two ago...
Scientific revolutions come in waves. Right now we have the old-guard (established energy companies & rogue energy terrorists) fighting to suppress the coming paradigm shift. They'll lose eventually, and we'll all be better off.
Rather presumptuous, don't you think? What do you know of Mrs. Eden's life work, other than the two pages I graciously typed up for the benefit some anonymous slashdotter's father? (who, I might add, has endured 20 years of "mainstream medicine's" failing to address his non-phantom limb problem.)
I understand physics enough that I can confidently say...
ah yes, "physics". Would that be Newtonian physics? Newtonian physics + relativity? What about Quantum Mechanics? What happens to your understanding of physics when "the experts" discover new principles and "laws", expanding their world of possibility? Do you keep yourself limited to materialist physics, or do you expand your world of possibility to include things which were previously impossible?
I have personally benefited from both the modalities I suggested, even though I initially did not 'believe' in such non-materialist possiblities. My experience with Mrs. Eden's system of Energy Medicine is such that I consider it a valid discipline, even though its effects are as yet unexplained by mainstream science.
I just read Modern Medicine's Sleight of Hand a day or two ago... Makes me wonder about the validity of "double-blind tests" for evaluating treatment options. Empiricism should really be the guiding philosophy for the medical sciences, rather than pharmacology.
Humans are individuals, and every health problem is unique. While in some cases drugs are an appropriate treatment option, they frequently don't work. Drugs are mostly for the "Screwing of the Average Man" (to borrow the title of Mr. Hapgood's book), by charging for modern snake-oil that does little to address the underlying cause[s] of a health problem.
Here's a paragraph from a different book, just for you:
Chapter XII
Mediumship -- Mrs. Leonard (1)
We have seen that one factor in particular seems to encourage the emergence of/psi/. That is faith of some kind in something. Mrs. Curran implicitly believed that Patience Worth was the disembodied spirit she claimed to be. In both the Holland and Willett scripts the purported Myers and his friends insisted that the automatists' belief in their reality immensely increased their powers to communicate. Conversely, hostility and doubt on the part of any one involved, including the investigator, is water to flame, even in the case of straightforward experimental ESP between the living.
The jury's definitely in on this one. People who are "hostile" to subtle energies fail to find evidence thereof, whereas people who are open to the possibility (not "true believers", just "open") frequently are successful beyond their wildest dreams.
Odd that I would have run across such an appropriate quote tonight. I just found Ms. Heywood's book this week at the thrift shop [excellent source for all kinds of used books], and opened it for the first time tonight. (I like to start in the middle...) I wonder if someone's trying to get through to you.:) I'm not a medium, so I can't say. Maybe you should look into it yourself.
Donna Eden talks about treating phantom limb pain in Energy Medicine.
Unbearable Phantom Pain A good-looking man who had lost both of his legs in Vietnam was brought to me in a wheelchair. No one had been able to help with the pain at the end of where his right foot had been. He vividly recalled the scene of stepping on a land mine and watching the bones and flesh of his right foot explode into pieces. The pain he now had was massive. The sensations were so similar to the original shock that he could never get relief from the traumatic memories. The relentless pain also led to terrible nightmares. His left foor wasn't as painful. It sometimes itched, but it was a mild discomfort compared with the area of his right foot.
As he sat there with his friend, he cried and said, "The pain is so excruciating, and the way it keeps me tied to my past is so bad, that I sometimes think of taking a gun to my head." I could see the energy still there in both of his absent legs, and I could feel it with my hands. I followed the energy along his absent legs to the end of where his feet had been. It was palpable. My hand began to hurt terribly. I asked him if my hand was in the area of the worst pain, and it was. The most painful areas were at the sides of his feet, which happens to be at the end of the bladder meridian. I said to him, "This may sound crazy to you, but I believe I can hold some points in midair hwere your feet were and help you."
I moved my hands to the ends of his legs, where his feet had been, and held the points on the bladder meridian. As the two men watched thses strange conjurings, it must have seemed to them that I was just holding air. But I was not! I felt and saw the meridian lines as strongly as if his legs were still there. At first it was painful for him to have me touch the area of his absent right foot. After a couple of minutes, he reported that not only was the foot being relieved of the pain, but another chronic pain in his back, just above his waist, was also lifting. Interestingly, that area is also goverened by the bladder meridian.
His kidney and liver meridians were also involved, and I held those points as well.... By the time I had finished holding his liver points, he was pain free. I showed the friend, who lived with him, how to hold points and which points to hold. The man and his friend never returned, but on my invitation they called me about once a month. The friend told me that after the session, the manbegan to lift out of his deep depression. While the phantom pain would return every now and then, they knew how to deal with it.
-pg 31-32
I'm sure someone will come along and scoff - "haha, meridians, quackery". Whatever. Western science has established that Accupuncture works well. Western science knows that bodies generate mild electric fields - never impulses, etc. Western science knows that there is electrical behavior when bones are broken, and has devices to apply electric fields to speed healing thereof. The body's energy systems are all closely associated with physical systems - each of the chakras corresponds with a gland: thymus, pituitary, etc. Energetic approaches to health really shouldn't be such a streach, but in a medical system dominated by the rockefeller drug cartel I'm not surprised that affordable approaches such as Mrs. Eden's are suppressed and ridiculed.
While Donna does not take clients anymore (she started teaching when demand for her services became too great), her senior teaching assistants are all quite capable. She has a list on her website.
Hypnosis is often a good option for dealing with chronic pain. The classic example in the Erickson material (conversational hypnosis) is the doctor asking a terminal cancer patient how her pain would be if there was a big, hungry tiger under the bed. The lady responded that she wouldn't have any pain at all. She spent the rest of her days with a comforting hallucination of a big cat under her bed, purring.
I'm pretty sure the case is covered in this video. Dr. Erickson died 25 years ago, but a good hypnotist should be able to get the same effect.
By your line of reasoning, all medical practices relating to humans are BS.
I'd say that most modern practices are inappropriately applied.
In medical school, doctors are trained in the extremes of medicine (emergency and surgical medicine). But then when they go into practice, 80 percent of the patients have conditions that are lifestyle oriented (aches, pains, fatigue etc...). In medical school, students aren't trained in the area of diet and lifestyle.
Over the past 100 years this mentality has caused medicine to treat normal individuals with abnormal therapies -- drugs and surgeries. To me, that became the basis of the modern medical monopoly and how we have been brainwashed into thinking this is the way it should be and it's not.
Considering that the majority, if not all of Osteopathy is a pseudoscience and treatments like Bowen technique are unproven it's no surprise your doctor wouldn't recommend it. I'd question any doctor who would.
yeah, because things that are 'unproven' don't work. right?
Osteopathy fixed my creaky TMJ (jaw joint) when nothing else did (not even Bowen). Osteopathic Manipulation's usefulness has been proven to the people who use it day-in and day-out, and to the patients who experience the 'magic'. In Spontaneous Healing Andrew Weil, M.D., told how he couldn't get his fellow medikal doktors to watch Dr. Fulford work on people with all sorts of health problems. Chronic ear infections and behavioral problems in children would typically disappear after one or three visits.
No, doktors are trained to prescribe drugs which typically don't work. Osteopathy represents a threat to the medical status quo, though progressive doctors refer their patients to competent practitioners whenever they think it might be warranted.
My "stepbrother" has had behavioral problems for quite some time. He'd had his tonsils chopped out when he was younger and spent several months sleeping on a "slant board" so he wouldn't asphyxiate, which indicated to me that he desperately needed proper attention. I'd told his mother he needed osteopathic-style manipulation, but she just ignored me. Finally I set him up with a guy I'd had some experience with. After a few visits his daily headaches had mostly become memories - 17 years worth. The Cranial Osteopathic Manipulation/craniosacral therapy process is one of removing layers of trauma stored in the body - sometimes a single visit is all that's necessary, sometimes a specific body needs more work. Every case is unique, and gets treated accordingly.
As for "non-pseudoscientific medicine", consider:
Greg: The way you laid the book [Death By Modern Medicine] out is fantastic. You start out Chapter 1 with the title, "Death by Modern Medical Doctors." Tell us more about that?
Carolyn: A certain mentality exists in medicine where medical doctors believe they should have a monopoly on everything to do with a person's health. Anybody who does something other than treatments with drugs or surgery becomes the enemy. This mentality existed long before I became a medical doctor.
The history of modern medicine began in America with a survey that was done by Abraham Flexner. It was called the Flexner Report. Flexner was an educational reformer who was hired by the Carnegie Foundation to survey North American medical schools. Flexner had fallen in love with the German scientific model of education when he visited Berlin in 1906. He began to see this as the way to set up the North American medical education system. The German model was based on science and lab medicine using drugs, science, and treating very, very ill people.
In medical school, doctors are trained in the extremes of medicine (emergency and surgical medicine). But then when they go into practice, 80 percent of the patients have conditions that are lifestyle oriented (aches, pains, fatigue etc...). In medical school, students aren't trained in the area of diet and lifestyle.
Over the past 100 years this mentality has caused medicine to treat normal individuals with abnormal therapies -- drugs and surgeries. To me, that became the basis of the modern medical monopoly and how we have been brainwashed into thinking this is the way it should be and it's not.
I'm a naturopathic doctor as well as a medical doctor. I always held out hope that naturopathic medicine would fill in this gap....
Neither did I. But many people just can't handle the truth, and they get modpoints too.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
Aids doesn't kill people, drugs kill people
on
AIDS Can Fight AIDS
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· Score: 1, Informative
One example of someone who declined to take an AIDS cocktail:
Traywick [one-time heavy meth user] was diagnosed 21 years ago and has been healthy ever since, despite never having taken anti-HIV medications. Antibody tests demonstrate conclusively that he harbors the virus. But his immune system has controlled it so effectively that repeated blood assays have never shown a detectable level of the invader, even though Traywick still occasionally uses speed and engages in unprotected sex.
I like your proposition, as I'm moving towards becoming more self-sufficient myself.
Another idea is families having their own milking cow. Cows are one of the most efficient means of converting sunlight into protein-rich food usable by humans. They can graze on rocky slopes where tractors can't operate (that is, where you can't grow corn/wheat/etc very well), and require little maintenance. Whereas chickens and pigs require supplemental feeds, cows can subsist entirely on grass and weeds.
Saddam rose to power by killing anybody he suspected of showing the slightest disloyalty.
I'm no historian, but didn't he rise to power with the help of western allies? Wikipedia says the U.S. Feral Government's CIA was quite instrumental in getting the Ba'ath party in power. He even asked for permission before invading Kuwait, and was told that the U.S. government had nothing to do with the Iraq/Kuwait border dispute.
Saddam & the CIA stopped being buddies when he didn't do what they wanted anymore. Saddam was only able to stay in power for so long because he's a psychopath. Nice guys are easy for covert operatives to take out.
Poor Saddam's biggest mistake was trying to stand up to the U.S. Leviathan (definition #2).
yes, they work quite well. My father has used two for tomatoes for 10+ years. This picture was taken mid-summer (June?), iirc. I didn't know to put a fertilizer strip on the top of the soil, so the plants ran out of nutrients by late July/early August and didn't produce so well thereafter.
I ordered ten boxes for myself in September, and put them at my Grandfather's in the desert. See my Earthbox picture gallery.
I think the Tomatoes and Cucumbers are the best use of the box, with broccoli running a close third. The Red peppers would probably benefit from more heat - it's topping out around 80 right now, and getting down into the 60's/50's at night. Hopefully I'll be able to over-winter them under the grapefruit tree.
The company redesigned their boxes recently (my father has 1st gen models), and the new staking system is quite convenient for vine plants (cucumbers & tomatos).
Any other questions? I'm happy to share more about my Earthbox gardening experience.:)
Just remembered - they sent me a mailing about half-price shipping for the Christmas season... (Shipping begins on December 4th).
The U.S. Feral Government has been busy telling us that fish is healthy, and that we should eat at least a serving a week. This ignores problems like mercury and PCB contamination, not to mention severe overfishing of the world's oceans. Also, farmed salmon just doesn't taste right, and is an ecological disaster in progress to boot. Search for 'salmon sea lice' for information on how salmon farms in Canada infect their wild cousins with lice, devastating the wild salmon runs in certain areas.
I've stopped eating fish - partially because it's expensive to get good wild salmon, but mainly because I think I can do better for less of a financial outlay. I figure that fish are best eaten for their Omega-3 essential fatty acid, and I can get that fat elsewhere. I buy grass-fed beef from a family farmer, and omega-3 enriched eggs when I can't find any eggs from local farmers. The omega-3 enrichment in eggs typically comes from flax in the chicken feed.
I'm currently growing purslane in my Earthbox, and am working on some Perilla seedlings too. Both are high in omega 3 (in the form of alpha-linolenic acid [ALA]), and I plan on eating them as salad greens. (Summer heat kills plants in the desert, so fall/winter/spring are the best growing months.)
And if I ever start raising chickens, I can grow Perilla and Purslane as feed for home-grown DHA and EPA-enriched eggs (letting the chickens do the ALA->DHA/EPA conversion).
Tyson Foods, inc is not a "poultry farmer". They are an industrial chicken producer. No self-respecting american would work in such an environment, thus Tyson has to import illegal immigrants to keep their operations profitable.
Chickens with reasonable living accomodations and an environment free of dioxin contamination simply don't get bird flu.
Arsenic in chicken feed also likely causes (subtle?) health problems... "But the lack of arsenic in organic chickens is suggestive: USDA standards do not allow arsenic in organic-chicken feed."
Usually when I address the public school myth, I reframe the terminology around 'government schools'. Public libraries operate for the benefit of the public, and the 'public schools' we formerly had in the united States were operated for the benefit of the students. The children could take as much or as little schooling as they wanted.
But the government allows no choice in their schools. They mandate that children & young adults attend their child prisons until they're 16 (or 18, in certain states) years of age. The child's personal interests are irrelevant to the prescribed course of study.
The U.S. Feral Government needs dysfunctional schools to produce good soldiers, willing to obey whatever their commander tells them to do. See Gatto's videos. All modern imperial states (Prussia, Germany, U.K., United States, etc) implement disfunctional school systems to get the home populace under their thumb first.
I believe you when you state that the public schools work well in Nordic countries - they don't have to support an empire.
Women are only fertile for a couple days a month, and it's relatively easy to know when if you know what to look for. Morning temperature spike, change in the mucus texture, etc.
I gave a Natural Family Planning book to a friend/acquaintance as a wedding gift some years back, because she didn't want any children ever. (I finished highschool at a catholic school, and was thus exposed to the practice.)
it needs to be brought down now or the economy will eventially collapse.
It needed to be brought down 10-20 years ago. Economic collapse is now inevitable.
Housing bubble is going-, going-, (gone in 4-6 months). This is huge. Economic restructuring is in our very-near future, which is a good thing. It'll force an end to the Feral Government's perpetual quest for empire, and will level the economic playing field. Hardest hit will be "illegal immigrants", many of whom will emmigrate back to Mexico or to South America. Some links on the future structure of the economy are in canary in a coal mine - worker cooperatives & the like. Corporatism's days are certainly numbered.
Question the first: Can you name an industrialized country where one is not required to have a medical degree to practice medicine?
The one article at Mises.org talked about how the government shut down about half of the medical-degree-granting institutions early in the 20th century, via the "Flexner report". This was supposedly to improve quality, but it also had the effect of significantly reducing the number of trained physicians, thereby increasing the cost of care (and, coincidentally, physician's incomes).
With respect to doctors, a similar situation has been put in place. We have basically outlawed all Chevy doctors who focus on the less expensive minor health problems (which is, in fact, all that most people have) and are forced instead to use Mercedes doctors who charge Mercedes prices even for ailments that can be fixed by people with significantly less training.
I think you're asking a limiting question. "Medicine" and its pharmaceuticals is but one path to wellness. The state makes it the primary role, while "doctoring" as we're familiar with should really be relegated to emergency care. Witness the rise in heart disease and cancer - the system profits immensely because of its failure to address teh causasitive factors behind these and other modern-day epidemics.
Question the second: If not, then how can our especially poor showing among industrialized countries be blamed on a practitioner's monopoly?
The monopoly strips innovation from the health care system. If a doctor doesn't follow the 'Standards of care' (status quo), they're liable to get sued when one of their patients gets a less-than-satisfactory result (inevitable, in that line of work).
There are so many techniques and technologies that work very well, and Aren't in Medical Doctor training (mostly limited to the twin hammers of pharmaceuticals and surgery). I'm infatuated with Osteopathic Manipulation at the moment. Proper nutrition is essential, but is only briefly touched upon in MD training. So many physical disfunctions stem from psychosomatic causes, but MDs aren't trained with any tools to help their patients in this regard (prescribing antidepressant drugs is worse than doing nothing, because it doesn't fix the actual problem, and mostly gets the patient to stop looking for a solution). EFT works fabulously well for most emotional disturbances. I've seen many health problems (phobias, back pain, etc) disolve upon proper application of the various energy psychology methods.
Accupuncture has proved itself over thousands of years in China. Donna Eden has expanded upon Traditional Chinese Medicine in her system of Energy Medicine, and the practitioner I visited was essential in helping me find the path to wellness I had been seeking for so many years.
Did you read the two articles at mises.org that I linked to?
What's so bad about restricting international trade? I know the free-trade propaganda dictates that any restrictions on trade is 'bad, mkay?', and I used to believe it too, but then I started to realize who benefits.
Free trade has definitely lowered the cost of goods across the spectrum. The price of shoes, clothes and electronics have all moved down decisively since free-trade policies were implemented (NAFTA circa 1993, and the WTO circa 1995 or 1996). But at what cost? What happened to the americans who used to put shoes, clothes, and electronics together? Perhaps they're now a part of the United State's stealth unemployment epidemic (if our government measured unemployment the way most European countries do, it'd be around 12%. See Shadow Statistics).
Free trade benefits the corporate middleman - Walmart et. al, who can keep their trinkets' prices low in the inflationary monetary environment we find ourselves in today. It only benefits their customers temporarily, because since their job has moved overseas, they'll only be able to afford Walmart's trinkets until their savings run out.
Patrick Buchanan New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers covers how the government's tax policy actively encourages production to flee the United States.
If one can read, they can become a self-directed learner, as the world's libraries are open to them. Books contain the accumulated knowledge of the human species; by preventing many children from ever learning to read, and most from learning to read well (see Gatto's A different kind of teacher), the government relegates a large portion of the populace to servile roles. Which is, of course, what our new self-appointed ruling class had planned all along.
A story, to make my point:
When my mother was kindergarten-aged, kindergarten cost extra. Her parents did the math, and decided that a caretaker was cheaper, so that's where she spent that school year. Imagine their surprise when my mother's first grade teacher told her parents that their daughter already knew how to read. They were shocked because they certainly hadn't taught her.
Mom says that she was bored at the caretaker's, so with a little help from some slightly older children, she taught herself to read. And she learned much more than that too: she learned that if there was anything at all she wanted to learn, it was her responsibility to teach herself. That lesson served her well, and even though she jumped from school to school to school (moved every other year or so growing up), her family finally settled down for the last 3 years of highschool, and she graduated valedictorian, and has done pretty well for herself since. She taught college courses for a while, and was good at it too. Many of her students told her she was their best professor.
Self motivation is the only motivation worth a damn, and schools snuff it out by design. Search up a copy of Gatto's The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher essay.
With the vast majority of people remaining uneducated, which wouldn't work out too well in the current state of the world.
Literacy was higher in the colonies than it is today. Anyone who wanted to learned to read without much difficulty. See Gatto's Underground History, and the slashdot review for the source of the statistic.
No, they haven't. They've allowed companies to send the jobs away without penalty. There's a big difference. See, without government, it would be even easier for corporations to do this, with essentially no hope in reigning them in.
Uhm - just re-read what I wrote, and I guess the government itself hasn't sent the jobs away. They've just encouraged it with their tax policy. See Patrick Buchanan's New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers.
As for my grandparents - I'm not going to off 'em, but Grandpa's been suffering for a good long while, and sincerely hopes that the end of his life is near. My other grandparents have been on a slow descent into senility for a while now - their "higher functions have already crossed over", and the 'caretaker' is just keeping the body running out of habit. They're all shadows of their former selves. But my mother's parents both still collect full Feral Government pensions, and get the Feral Government to pick up 90% of their perscription drugs.
Less primitive societies accept dying as a part of living, and handle the inevitable appropriately. But ours tries to keep dead and nearly-dead people (e.g. Terri Schiavo, my grandmother when she was an end-stage cancer patient, etc) going as long as technologically possible, no matter the cost to the individual or to society at large. Which I guess is just an artifact of our materialist indoctrination - even most christians doubt that there's more to existence than the physical world, and avoid the inevitable like the plague.
If it wasn't for taxes all those problems would be fifty times worse.
hmm, really? Seems to me that if it wasn't for the government, none of those specific problems would exist.
public education - the species got along fine without government schooling just fine for thousands of years
social security and medicare programs - how to punish people for getting old. My poor grandfather would've expired, were it not for Medicare paying for his defibrillator... I have three grandparents left, aged 86 to 91, and they're all sitting around watching T.V. and waiting to die.
war on drugs - if not for the war on drugs, we'd still have access to safe whole-plant drugs (coca leaf, marijuana, mushrooms, etc). Thanks to the war on drugs, we have new choices like cocaine and meth amphetamine. I don't use any of them, but I recognize that the 'war' has created more problems than it's solved.
government... debt - no government, no debt. That one's quite simple.:)
medical and college education costs - government has sent all the jobs that don't require education away to Mexico (via NAFTA) or China/Asia (via WTO). People who previously wouldn't have considered college are now flooding the system, driving up prices across the board. See my other post for more on how the government has driven up medical costs...
war - simply a case of fueding governments. There'd still be disagreements amongst individuals, of course, but there'd be no need to lob million dollar cruise missles at pharmacies in third-world countries...
Almost all the problems the world has today are creations of government terrorists.
The US spends the tax dollars it collects unwisely that's all.
Why should the bureaucrats care, when they're speding someone else's money?
Nobody is for the elimination of taxes. Nobody. Not even the liberterian party.
The Libertarian party is for the elimination of 90+% of the government. That'd eliminate a lot of taxes...
Public schools do not educate, according to reformed schoolteachers like John Gatto and John Holt. If they did, the populace wouldn't take the crap that 'we' do - teh masses would know how to recognize tyranny when it happened, and find a way to circumvent it.
The government is in debt because of the tax "cuts" Bush pushed through.
The government has been in debt for a very long time - Johnson started printing money to pay for Vietnam, and there was no turning back. Clinton only balanced the budget by borrowing money from social security. If the government had to abide by the same accounting standards as corporations, there would have never been a 'surplus', and the current deficits would be much, much worse than the numbers they currently put out.
Our medical and college education costs are out of reach because... because the government subsidizes college, and has sent all the low-skill jobs (that used to pay well) to Mexico and Asia, and has looked the other way while corporations imported Mexicans for the jobs that couldn't be moved. College has, therefore, become the new highschool diploma, not that the original ever meant anything in the first place...
we're spending our money on things like the War on Drugs(which just makes illegal drugs more expensive)
If not for the war on drugs driving up prices, how could the various black-op agencies finance their nefarious operations? Read something about Clinton being in on cocaine smuggling through Arkansas - seems like a possibility to me...
and the War on Terror(abject failure due to our inability to concentrate on the nation that actually caused the terror).
You are refering to the traitors in the whitehouse, right?
The United States has the lowest tax levels of the Western world. We also have the highest debt and the worst healthcare. There is a connection.
'Highest debt' is because our Feral Government has had free reign to "print" money for its various programs for 35+ years, and no one's had the ability to call them on it. See Ron Paul's The End of Dollar Hegemony.
'Worst healthcare' is because a certain kind of doctor lobbied themselves a monopoly, and the government set the rules such that employers paid their employees' healthcare bills (wage ceilings during WWII led companies to pick up their workers' doctor bills). Medicare was created to pay for retired workers who'd gotten accustomed to the 'health insurance' paradigm, and that program's costs have been spiraling out of control ever since. See 100 Years of Medical Robbery and Real Medical Freedom.
... unfortunately, teh masses have been conditioned to believe the things you speak of are un-possible. Just look what happened to my post on the same topic yesterday: (-1, Troll). Disbelief is widespread.
There's always been a dedicated few fighting the globalist gangsters, and now a few in the media are starting to pick up on the plot too - namely, Keith Olberman (see his special comments, also on YouTube) and Lou Dobbs. Hopefully when the elections get stolen (again), this time we'll have riots in the street...
The global economy is in meltdown, plan accordingly. China will do well after the restructuring, because they now have so much production capability. America will have to re-industrialize, so we'll be able to produce the things we still need...
Slashdot Mirror
I think you missed my vision for the future. Your post is about the gradual evolution of the current energy economy, my post was about a sudden and drastic revolution in scientific understanding. It's happened before (see my link to the outline of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, or the book's wikipedia page), it is foolish to think that it won't happen again.
"Cold Fusion" is only a scientific revolution away. I don't know that "fusion" is the right term - perhaps electro-chemistry, in a transmutation-of-the-elements sorta way, would be more accurate.
Energy won't be "free", of course, but close enough so that it would be effectively so. The neighborhood power plant could split water to generate its own hydrogen (if hydrogen will indeed be necessary) - no need for "fuel" (natural gas, coal, petroleum, etc) as we know it today. Eventually the technology will be simplified to the point that anyone with a machine shop could build their own "Mr. Cold Fusion".
Also, oil companies are some of the ones leading the alternative energy charge, believe it or not.
This reminded me of one Native American method for buffalo hunting:
In this analogy, the oil companies "leading the alternative energy charge" are analogous to the young men getting the herd to follow them. The oil companies lead the charge away from the truly revolutionary breakthroughs, towards business models where they're still relevant.
I met a physicist some 4 years ago who was working on his doctorate, on Cold Fusion-style research. At the time said he'd have to modify one of his papers to acknowledge some tokamak-fusion research that'd just been published - the experiment turned out just like he thought it would, but he had to mention it. Just finished his doctorate a month or two ago...
Scientific revolutions come in waves. Right now we have the old-guard (established energy companies & rogue energy terrorists) fighting to suppress the coming paradigm shift. They'll lose eventually, and we'll all be better off.
Rather presumptuous, don't you think? What do you know of Mrs. Eden's life work, other than the two pages I graciously typed up for the benefit some anonymous slashdotter's father? (who, I might add, has endured 20 years of "mainstream medicine's" failing to address his non-phantom limb problem.)
I understand physics enough that I can confidently say
ah yes, "physics". Would that be Newtonian physics? Newtonian physics + relativity? What about Quantum Mechanics? What happens to your understanding of physics when "the experts" discover new principles and "laws", expanding their world of possibility? Do you keep yourself limited to materialist physics, or do you expand your world of possibility to include things which were previously impossible?
I have personally benefited from both the modalities I suggested, even though I initially did not 'believe' in such non-materialist possiblities. My experience with Mrs. Eden's system of Energy Medicine is such that I consider it a valid discipline, even though its effects are as yet unexplained by mainstream science.
I just read Modern Medicine's Sleight of Hand a day or two ago... Makes me wonder about the validity of "double-blind tests" for evaluating treatment options. Empiricism should really be the guiding philosophy for the medical sciences, rather than pharmacology.
Humans are individuals, and every health problem is unique. While in some cases drugs are an appropriate treatment option, they frequently don't work. Drugs are mostly for the "Screwing of the Average Man" (to borrow the title of Mr. Hapgood's book), by charging for modern snake-oil that does little to address the underlying cause[s] of a health problem.
Here's a paragraph from a different book, just for you:
The jury's definitely in on this one. People who are "hostile" to subtle energies fail to find evidence thereof, whereas people who are open to the possibility (not "true believers", just "open") frequently are successful beyond their wildest dreams.
Odd that I would have run across such an appropriate quote tonight. I just found Ms. Heywood's book this week at the thrift shop [excellent source for all kinds of used books], and opened it for the first time tonight. (I like to start in the middle...) I wonder if someone's trying to get through to you.
I think it quite comical that "fools" explain away technology they don't understand with a phenomena they don't understand either.
All pills have placebo effects, even the ones that are more than just 'sugar'.
I'm sure someone will come along and scoff - "haha, meridians, quackery". Whatever. Western science has established that Accupuncture works well. Western science knows that bodies generate mild electric fields - never impulses, etc. Western science knows that there is electrical behavior when bones are broken, and has devices to apply electric fields to speed healing thereof. The body's energy systems are all closely associated with physical systems - each of the chakras corresponds with a gland: thymus, pituitary, etc. Energetic approaches to health really shouldn't be such a streach, but in a medical system dominated by the rockefeller drug cartel I'm not surprised that affordable approaches such as Mrs. Eden's are suppressed and ridiculed.
While Donna does not take clients anymore (she started teaching when demand for her services became too great), her senior teaching assistants are all quite capable. She has a list on her website.
Your father might benefit from Osteopathic manipulation too.
Hypnosis is often a good option for dealing with chronic pain. The classic example in the Erickson material (conversational hypnosis) is the doctor asking a terminal cancer patient how her pain would be if there was a big, hungry tiger under the bed. The lady responded that she wouldn't have any pain at all. She spent the rest of her days with a comforting hallucination of a big cat under her bed, purring.
I'm pretty sure the case is covered in this video. Dr. Erickson died 25 years ago, but a good hypnotist should be able to get the same effect.
I'd say that most modern practices are inappropriately applied.
The quote is from a Medical Doctor who's also a naturopath. I'm a big fan of Osteopathic Manipulation myself...
yeah, because things that are 'unproven' don't work. right?
Osteopathy fixed my creaky TMJ (jaw joint) when nothing else did (not even Bowen). Osteopathic Manipulation's usefulness has been proven to the people who use it day-in and day-out, and to the patients who experience the 'magic'. In Spontaneous Healing Andrew Weil, M.D., told how he couldn't get his fellow medikal doktors to watch Dr. Fulford work on people with all sorts of health problems. Chronic ear infections and behavioral problems in children would typically disappear after one or three visits.
No, doktors are trained to prescribe drugs which typically don't work. Osteopathy represents a threat to the medical status quo, though progressive doctors refer their patients to competent practitioners whenever they think it might be warranted.
My "stepbrother" has had behavioral problems for quite some time. He'd had his tonsils chopped out when he was younger and spent several months sleeping on a "slant board" so he wouldn't asphyxiate, which indicated to me that he desperately needed proper attention. I'd told his mother he needed osteopathic-style manipulation, but she just ignored me. Finally I set him up with a guy I'd had some experience with. After a few visits his daily headaches had mostly become memories - 17 years worth. The Cranial Osteopathic Manipulation/craniosacral therapy process is one of removing layers of trauma stored in the body - sometimes a single visit is all that's necessary, sometimes a specific body needs more work. Every case is unique, and gets treated accordingly.
As for "non-pseudoscientific medicine", consider:
And, for the records, I did not intend to troll.
Neither did I. But many people just can't handle the truth, and they get modpoints too.
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
-Arthur Schopenhauer
I understand that all the AIDS patients who took AZT in the 80's are now dead. Not much of a surprise, when you consider the side effects.
Follow the money, and you too can understand why AIDS is still getting the "teh cure is just around the corner", after over 20 years of research.
I like your proposition, as I'm moving towards becoming more self-sufficient myself.
Another idea is families having their own milking cow. Cows are one of the most efficient means of converting sunlight into protein-rich food usable by humans. They can graze on rocky slopes where tractors can't operate (that is, where you can't grow corn/wheat/etc very well), and require little maintenance. Whereas chickens and pigs require supplemental feeds, cows can subsist entirely on grass and weeds.
See Keeping a Family Cow. The Untold Story of Milk looks interesting too (currently reading the introduction).
Saddam rose to power by killing anybody he suspected of showing the slightest disloyalty.
I'm no historian, but didn't he rise to power with the help of western allies? Wikipedia says the U.S. Feral Government's CIA was quite instrumental in getting the Ba'ath party in power. He even asked for permission before invading Kuwait, and was told that the U.S. government had nothing to do with the Iraq/Kuwait border dispute.
Saddam & the CIA stopped being buddies when he didn't do what they wanted anymore. Saddam was only able to stay in power for so long because he's a psychopath. Nice guys are easy for covert operatives to take out.
Poor Saddam's biggest mistake was trying to stand up to the U.S. Leviathan (definition #2).
yes, they work quite well. My father has used two for tomatoes for 10+ years. This picture was taken mid-summer (June?), iirc. I didn't know to put a fertilizer strip on the top of the soil, so the plants ran out of nutrients by late July/early August and didn't produce so well thereafter.
:)
I ordered ten boxes for myself in September, and put them at my Grandfather's in the desert. See my Earthbox picture gallery.
I think the Tomatoes and Cucumbers are the best use of the box, with broccoli running a close third. The Red peppers would probably benefit from more heat - it's topping out around 80 right now, and getting down into the 60's/50's at night. Hopefully I'll be able to over-winter them under the grapefruit tree.
The company redesigned their boxes recently (my father has 1st gen models), and the new staking system is quite convenient for vine plants (cucumbers & tomatos).
Any other questions? I'm happy to share more about my Earthbox gardening experience.
Just remembered - they sent me a mailing about half-price shipping for the Christmas season... (Shipping begins on December 4th).
The U.S. Feral Government has been busy telling us that fish is healthy, and that we should eat at least a serving a week. This ignores problems like mercury and PCB contamination, not to mention severe overfishing of the world's oceans. Also, farmed salmon just doesn't taste right, and is an ecological disaster in progress to boot. Search for 'salmon sea lice' for information on how salmon farms in Canada infect their wild cousins with lice, devastating the wild salmon runs in certain areas.
I've stopped eating fish - partially because it's expensive to get good wild salmon, but mainly because I think I can do better for less of a financial outlay. I figure that fish are best eaten for their Omega-3 essential fatty acid, and I can get that fat elsewhere. I buy grass-fed beef from a family farmer, and omega-3 enriched eggs when I can't find any eggs from local farmers. The omega-3 enrichment in eggs typically comes from flax in the chicken feed.
I'm currently growing purslane in my Earthbox, and am working on some Perilla seedlings too. Both are high in omega 3 (in the form of alpha-linolenic acid [ALA]), and I plan on eating them as salad greens. (Summer heat kills plants in the desert, so fall/winter/spring are the best growing months.)
And if I ever start raising chickens, I can grow Perilla and Purslane as feed for home-grown DHA and EPA-enriched eggs (letting the chickens do the ALA->DHA/EPA conversion).
Tyson Foods, inc is not a "poultry farmer". They are an industrial chicken producer. No self-respecting american would work in such an environment, thus Tyson has to import illegal immigrants to keep their operations profitable.
Chickens with reasonable living accomodations and an environment free of dioxin contamination simply don't get bird flu.
Arsenic in chicken feed also likely causes (subtle?) health problems... "But the lack of arsenic in organic chickens is suggestive: USDA standards do not allow arsenic in organic-chicken feed."
Usually when I address the public school myth, I reframe the terminology around 'government schools'. Public libraries operate for the benefit of the public, and the 'public schools' we formerly had in the united States were operated for the benefit of the students. The children could take as much or as little schooling as they wanted.
But the government allows no choice in their schools. They mandate that children & young adults attend their child prisons until they're 16 (or 18, in certain states) years of age. The child's personal interests are irrelevant to the prescribed course of study.
The U.S. Feral Government needs dysfunctional schools to produce good soldiers, willing to obey whatever their commander tells them to do. See Gatto's videos. All modern imperial states (Prussia, Germany, U.K., United States, etc) implement disfunctional school systems to get the home populace under their thumb first.
I believe you when you state that the public schools work well in Nordic countries - they don't have to support an empire.
Women are only fertile for a couple days a month, and it's relatively easy to know when if you know what to look for. Morning temperature spike, change in the mucus texture, etc.
I gave a Natural Family Planning book to a friend/acquaintance as a wedding gift some years back, because she didn't want any children ever. (I finished highschool at a catholic school, and was thus exposed to the practice.)
all good points/clarifications...
it needs to be brought down now or the economy will eventially collapse.
It needed to be brought down 10-20 years ago. Economic collapse is now inevitable.
Housing bubble is going-, going-, (gone in 4-6 months). This is huge. Economic restructuring is in our very-near future, which is a good thing. It'll force an end to the Feral Government's perpetual quest for empire, and will level the economic playing field. Hardest hit will be "illegal immigrants", many of whom will emmigrate back to Mexico or to South America. Some links on the future structure of the economy are in canary in a coal mine - worker cooperatives & the like. Corporatism's days are certainly numbered.
The one article at Mises.org talked about how the government shut down about half of the medical-degree-granting institutions early in the 20th century, via the "Flexner report". This was supposedly to improve quality, but it also had the effect of significantly reducing the number of trained physicians, thereby increasing the cost of care (and, coincidentally, physician's incomes).
I think you're asking a limiting question. "Medicine" and its pharmaceuticals is but one path to wellness. The state makes it the primary role, while "doctoring" as we're familiar with should really be relegated to emergency care. Witness the rise in heart disease and cancer - the system profits immensely because of its failure to address teh causasitive factors behind these and other modern-day epidemics.
Question the second: If not, then how can our especially poor showing among industrialized countries be blamed on a practitioner's monopoly?
The monopoly strips innovation from the health care system. If a doctor doesn't follow the 'Standards of care' (status quo), they're liable to get sued when one of their patients gets a less-than-satisfactory result (inevitable, in that line of work).
There are so many techniques and technologies that work very well, and Aren't in Medical Doctor training (mostly limited to the twin hammers of pharmaceuticals and surgery). I'm infatuated with Osteopathic Manipulation at the moment. Proper nutrition is essential, but is only briefly touched upon in MD training. So many physical disfunctions stem from psychosomatic causes, but MDs aren't trained with any tools to help their patients in this regard (prescribing antidepressant drugs is worse than doing nothing, because it doesn't fix the actual problem, and mostly gets the patient to stop looking for a solution). EFT works fabulously well for most emotional disturbances. I've seen many health problems (phobias, back pain, etc) disolve upon proper application of the various energy psychology methods.
Accupuncture has proved itself over thousands of years in China. Donna Eden has expanded upon Traditional Chinese Medicine in her system of Energy Medicine, and the practitioner I visited was essential in helping me find the path to wellness I had been seeking for so many years.
Did you read the two articles at mises.org that I linked to?
What's so bad about restricting international trade? I know the free-trade propaganda dictates that any restrictions on trade is 'bad, mkay?', and I used to believe it too, but then I started to realize who benefits.
Free trade has definitely lowered the cost of goods across the spectrum. The price of shoes, clothes and electronics have all moved down decisively since free-trade policies were implemented (NAFTA circa 1993, and the WTO circa 1995 or 1996). But at what cost? What happened to the americans who used to put shoes, clothes, and electronics together? Perhaps they're now a part of the United State's stealth unemployment epidemic (if our government measured unemployment the way most European countries do, it'd be around 12%. See Shadow Statistics).
Free trade benefits the corporate middleman - Walmart et. al, who can keep their trinkets' prices low in the inflationary monetary environment we find ourselves in today. It only benefits their customers temporarily, because since their job has moved overseas, they'll only be able to afford Walmart's trinkets until their savings run out.
Patrick Buchanan New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers covers how the government's tax policy actively encourages production to flee the United States.
canary in the coal mine, and 1970's, redux both apply here too.
If one can read, they can become a self-directed learner, as the world's libraries are open to them. Books contain the accumulated knowledge of the human species; by preventing many children from ever learning to read, and most from learning to read well (see Gatto's A different kind of teacher), the government relegates a large portion of the populace to servile roles. Which is, of course, what our new self-appointed ruling class had planned all along.
A story, to make my point:
When my mother was kindergarten-aged, kindergarten cost extra. Her parents did the math, and decided that a caretaker was cheaper, so that's where she spent that school year. Imagine their surprise when my mother's first grade teacher told her parents that their daughter already knew how to read. They were shocked because they certainly hadn't taught her.
Mom says that she was bored at the caretaker's, so with a little help from some slightly older children, she taught herself to read. And she learned much more than that too: she learned that if there was anything at all she wanted to learn, it was her responsibility to teach herself. That lesson served her well, and even though she jumped from school to school to school (moved every other year or so growing up), her family finally settled down for the last 3 years of highschool, and she graduated valedictorian, and has done pretty well for herself since. She taught college courses for a while, and was good at it too. Many of her students told her she was their best professor.
Self motivation is the only motivation worth a damn, and schools snuff it out by design. Search up a copy of Gatto's The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher essay.
With the vast majority of people remaining uneducated, which wouldn't work out too well in the current state of the world.
Literacy was higher in the colonies than it is today. Anyone who wanted to learned to read without much difficulty. See Gatto's Underground History, and the slashdot review for the source of the statistic.
No, they haven't. They've allowed companies to send the jobs away without penalty. There's a big difference. See, without government, it would be even easier for corporations to do this, with essentially no hope in reigning them in.
Uhm - just re-read what I wrote, and I guess the government itself hasn't sent the jobs away. They've just encouraged it with their tax policy. See Patrick Buchanan's New Deal For U.S. Manufacturers.
As for my grandparents - I'm not going to off 'em, but Grandpa's been suffering for a good long while, and sincerely hopes that the end of his life is near. My other grandparents have been on a slow descent into senility for a while now - their "higher functions have already crossed over", and the 'caretaker' is just keeping the body running out of habit. They're all shadows of their former selves. But my mother's parents both still collect full Feral Government pensions, and get the Feral Government to pick up 90% of their perscription drugs.
Less primitive societies accept dying as a part of living, and handle the inevitable appropriately. But ours tries to keep dead and nearly-dead people (e.g. Terri Schiavo, my grandmother when she was an end-stage cancer patient, etc) going as long as technologically possible, no matter the cost to the individual or to society at large. Which I guess is just an artifact of our materialist indoctrination - even most christians doubt that there's more to existence than the physical world, and avoid the inevitable like the plague.
hmm, really? Seems to me that if it wasn't for the government, none of those specific problems would exist.
- public education - the species got along fine without government schooling just fine for thousands of years
- social security and medicare programs - how to punish people for getting old. My poor grandfather would've expired, were it not for Medicare paying for his defibrillator... I have three grandparents left, aged 86 to 91, and they're all sitting around watching T.V. and waiting to die.
- war on drugs - if not for the war on drugs, we'd still have access to safe whole-plant drugs (coca leaf, marijuana, mushrooms, etc). Thanks to the war on drugs, we have new choices like cocaine and meth amphetamine. I don't use any of them, but I recognize that the 'war' has created more problems than it's solved.
- government
... debt - no government, no debt. That one's quite simple. :) - medical and college education costs - government has sent all the jobs that don't require education away to Mexico (via NAFTA) or China/Asia (via WTO). People who previously wouldn't have considered college are now flooding the system, driving up prices across the board. See my other post for more on how the government has driven up medical costs...
- war - simply a case of fueding governments. There'd still be disagreements amongst individuals, of course, but there'd be no need to lob million dollar cruise missles at pharmacies in third-world countries...
Almost all the problems the world has today are creations of government terrorists.The US spends the tax dollars it collects unwisely that's all.
Why should the bureaucrats care, when they're speding someone else's money?
Nobody is for the elimination of taxes. Nobody. Not even the liberterian party.
The Libertarian party is for the elimination of 90+% of the government. That'd eliminate a lot of taxes...
Public education is underfunded.
... because the government subsidizes college, and has sent all the low-skill jobs (that used to pay well) to Mexico and Asia, and has looked the other way while corporations imported Mexicans for the jobs that couldn't be moved. College has, therefore, become the new highschool diploma, not that the original ever meant anything in the first place...
Public schools do not educate, according to reformed schoolteachers like John Gatto and John Holt. If they did, the populace wouldn't take the crap that 'we' do - teh masses would know how to recognize tyranny when it happened, and find a way to circumvent it.
The government is in debt because of the tax "cuts" Bush pushed through.
The government has been in debt for a very long time - Johnson started printing money to pay for Vietnam, and there was no turning back. Clinton only balanced the budget by borrowing money from social security. If the government had to abide by the same accounting standards as corporations, there would have never been a 'surplus', and the current deficits would be much, much worse than the numbers they currently put out.
Our medical and college education costs are out of reach because
we're spending our money on things like the War on Drugs(which just makes illegal drugs more expensive)
If not for the war on drugs driving up prices, how could the various black-op agencies finance their nefarious operations? Read something about Clinton being in on cocaine smuggling through Arkansas - seems like a possibility to me...
and the War on Terror(abject failure due to our inability to concentrate on the nation that actually caused the terror).
You are refering to the traitors in the whitehouse, right?
The United States has the lowest tax levels of the Western world. We also have the highest debt and the worst healthcare. There is a connection.
'Highest debt' is because our Feral Government has had free reign to "print" money for its various programs for 35+ years, and no one's had the ability to call them on it. See Ron Paul's The End of Dollar Hegemony.
'Worst healthcare' is because a certain kind of doctor lobbied themselves a monopoly, and the government set the rules such that employers paid their employees' healthcare bills (wage ceilings during WWII led companies to pick up their workers' doctor bills). Medicare was created to pay for retired workers who'd gotten accustomed to the 'health insurance' paradigm, and that program's costs have been spiraling out of control ever since. See 100 Years of Medical Robbery and Real Medical Freedom.
... unfortunately, teh masses have been conditioned to believe the things you speak of are un-possible. Just look what happened to my post on the same topic yesterday: (-1, Troll). Disbelief is widespread.
There's always been a dedicated few fighting the globalist gangsters, and now a few in the media are starting to pick up on the plot too - namely, Keith Olberman (see his special comments, also on YouTube) and Lou Dobbs. Hopefully when the elections get stolen (again), this time we'll have riots in the street...
The global economy is in meltdown, plan accordingly. China will do well after the restructuring, because they now have so much production capability. America will have to re-industrialize, so we'll be able to produce the things we still need...