The real problem is that the U.S. Government has subsidized petro-oil since the mid-70's. See John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hitman. After reading the book, I've come to believe that the federal government has been hijacked by thugs who use it to maximize their own profits (Haliburton getting no-bid contracts to clean up New Orleans).
If oil prices had stayed high/volatile after the 70's oil embargos, economic development in the U.S. would've been totally different. We certainly wouldn't have seen the mass proliferation of SUVs and suburban sprawl with gas at $2.50/gallon in the late 90's (I distinctly remember paying $.89/gallon in 1999).
I accept that the climate is changing, and don't worry about devising ways to try to stop it. After all, CHANGE is the only constant in the physical universe.
Yes, climate change will be a "bad thing" for the lifespan of most of the world's current population. But that's okay too - people have been dying for thousands of years. Less primitive cultures accepted dying as a part of living. Australian Aborigines threw a party when a member of the tribe passed on. When their time on Earth was up, Native Americans would wander into the wilderness to enter the spirit world directly, rather than become a burden on their tribe.
Besides, the world is horribly overpopulated as it is - like an infection of humans. Global warming is just the earth's "immune system" kicking in.:)
Since there's nothing I can do to prevent the change that's coming, I'm getting ready for it. The ride gets bumpier from here on out, until about 2011 or 2012, which is the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar. As I understand it, their calendar cycles back to zero on December 21, 2012. (The universe has an "overflow bug" too!:)
(IIRC, it happened to the engineers who signed off the design of the World Trade Center)
... Well that wouldn't be very fair, seeing as how all the debree from the WTC was hauled off to China and India for recycling before any failure analysis could be performed...
... are you referring to the teachings of Mr. Christ...
a litle late, I know, but technically it's "Jesus who became the Christ", not "first name Jesus, last name Christ". See _Edgar Cayce on Jesus and his Church_.
The company rebuilt electric motors on a car to use super-powerful rare-earth magnets (instead of cheap ceramic magnets), and found that the amps drawn decreased significantly. It's more than just a swap-out though - I think they had to re-wind the motor's wire coils...
Vitalism: (philosophy) a doctrine that life is a vital principle distinct from physics and chemistry. (life is the non-material 'spark' that animates the physical. -me)
Materialism: Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Both are philosophies. IMHO, there is more 'scientific' evidence supportive of vitalism than there is supportive of materialism, but I guess that just depends on what you'd rather believe...
See Ingo Swann's _Psychic Sexuality_ (a self-published book, search for the author's website) for more on this topic.
"Since when was non-ionizing EM radiation dangerous?"
It isn't.
don't be so sure... Living bodies are incredibly complex electrical devices. I think it arrogant to assume artificial electric fields cannot have an effect on their proper operation.
Now if you look at the question of: Are there biological effects, the engineers and the physicists say absolutely not. Their view in general of what living systems consist of is that the cells are little plastic bags filled with minestrone soup. And you can then with that sort of a concept calculate the field strength and the frequencies you would need to produce an effect on the minestrone soup. And this is exactly the concept that was employed after it became apparent that radar systems could heat up the human body. The physicists that were involved in answering the question: Are there effects? And at what level do they occur? And what would be a safe level? Basically, they followed a basic precept which was to consider a spherical cow, a circular oval object filled with conducting solution and composed of a skin that is transparent to the radio frequency waves that microwave generators produce. And on that basis, they asked: How much does it take to heat this up? Where does the cow's temperature start to rise?
And that number was calculated and confirmed in actual procedures in the lab using the spherical cow concept. They said, "OK, that's the number at which you are going to start heating people. Let's say that's not such a good idea and we'll set a level ten times lower as the safe levels."
That level was applied for several decades to everything that concerned electromagnetic pollution. Of course, this is not correct. Any biologist can tell you that the body is much more complicated than that and the work I had done up to that point had involved the body's actual use of electric currents generated in the body that regulated certain things like healing. Wound healing is associated with a rather specific electrical current and voltage. So, the premise that was applied by the physicists and the engineers was erroneous from the start.
That's number one. Number two, what would be the normal electromagnetic environment assuming that we're starting from scratch at Edison's time - and not Edison either because he went to DC current to light the light bulb. It was Nikolai Tesla who conceived of the system we presently use and who, incidentally, gets no credit for it: the 60 second electromagnetic field that is carried by power lines, the big lines that are strung across the country, and provides the current that comes into your home and appears in the wall socket and you use to run the coffee maker and the TV and all the rest of the things in the house 60 cycles. That didn't even exist one hundred years ago.
Or perhaps raw milk, with the lactic acid bacteria still intact.. You can leave raw milk out on the countertop for a couple of days, and all it'll do is "sour" (get pre-digested by said lactic acid bacteria). After a day or two it'll separate into curds & whey, still totally consumable. This is how sour cream used to be made.
See Nourishing Traditions (an awesome cookbook) for more uses for lactic acid fermentation (real sourkraut, chutneys, pickles, meats, etc)... There's another cookbook specifically on fermented foods, but I don't have it and the title escapes me at the moment...
I care about reliability (gone down hill since 2000)
2000, eh? That's about the end of the dot-com boom. So it fits, I guess...
Since the technology bubble burst, "there's been a scramble to move from the high-cost sites [North America/Western Europe -me] to the low-cost sites in China," said Flint Pulskamp, an analyst with the market research firm IDC. "In the late 1990s, Solectron used to make motherboards for Intel right here in Milpitas, in the heart of Silicon Valley. That's unthinkable now."
anyone got a link for when various manufacturers started moving offshore? Like, Maxtor/WD/Seagate/etc.? Many computing technologies originally came from American companies, but, with cutthroat competition being what it is, as soon as one company in a category moves to china, the rest probably aren't going to be too far behind...
like Ingo Swann said at his little Q&A session at the Remote Viewing conference last summer: "We had to get results, right from the start". Ingo was one of the prime movers behind the government's 20-year long Stargate program, that investigated Remote Viewing for "psychic" spying. Do you think the government would've financed it for 20 years, when they could've given the pennies they spent on the program to Haliburton or Bechtel instead, if the $million or $10million a year hadn't bought them something?
There are more things in heaven and earth, homer_ca, than are dreamt of in current "scientific" philosophy. (borrowing from Shakespeare). There is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something to occult phenomena, but only if you're willing to look (see Leadbeater's Occult Chemistry, for example).
And as for astrology, I refer you to a post of mine from a couple weeks ago. (I'm pretty sure the cyclical Mayan calendar is based on astrological principles).
I've had my phone for over 3 years now, same battery, a little worse for wear (some lines in the screen have gone out). My aunt's phone died recently, so I called up Verizon and tried to transfer my phone to her. (I have another phone of the same model that I was going to switch to.) "Sorry, we can't add any phones that aren't GPS-enabled". Hmm? FCC dictate since May 2005, I guess. All the more reason for me to keep it.:)
GWB knows that OBL has expired - kidney trouble and all, hard to get a dialysis machine into an afghan cave... But you gotta have an enemy to perpetrate a "war" (real Wars are declared by an act of congress), so the Osama bin Laden straw man gets hauled out from time to time.
... so I was talking to my cranial osteopath while he was working on me... "Do these 'lesions' ever come back?" He responded immediately with a "no", then paused, and corrected himself - "well, if they don't fix the work environment they will", and he modeled how a secretary might hold the phone up to their ear with their shoulder as an example of how someone might reinduce trauma in their myofascial tissue.
(the $10k slashdot post) (not all osteopaths are equally talented - that'll be another $500, please.:^] ) (a very small portion of "cranio-sacral therapists" are also good with modern osteopathic technique)
The day I cease to carry my own weight. 3/4 of grandparents are still alive, but they're not really living, not anymore. They're just sitting around (can't walk very well at all anymore), watching T.V., waiting to die.
In native American communities, when someone got "old and frail", they'd leave the tribe, go out into the wilderness, and leave their body for the spirit world. That's my plan.
Nobody forced your grandparents to have "unnecessary" surgeries.
My grandparent[s] are [/was] in the habit of waking up every morning. Social conditioning has made them a little afraid of dying. When their doctors said "we can treat this" and Medicare is willing to pick up the tab, why should they turn them down? "No thanks, that'd be a waste of the taxpayers' money, I'd rather end my time here on earth with grace and dignity"? Yeah right. Given the choice of living or dying, most people will choose to live, because it's the choice they're most familiar with. And with the financial cost being the same either way, there's little incentive to chose to decline fancy, expensive yet futile treatments.
Point 2) My wife (an MD) makes a lot more than I do...
That's because she's in a field that is highly subsidised by the government.
It used to be that people became doctors primarily because they wanted to help other people. Big money was reserved for doctors who were true healers; most doctors had the standard of living of their patients, or a little bit more. Now there's the perception that doctors are super-well-paid, which attracts a different kind of student. I have a friend from college (who was some kind of engineer) who said he was applying to med school because it was his best chance at pulling in the big $$$$.
Understand the history of insurance, and you understand the problems with the insane cost of medical care today. Nutshell version: In the early 20th century, lumber mills offered "hospital insurance" as a benefit for their workers. If they got injured on the job, the company would pay their hospital tab. Durring WWII, the government imposed price caps on what companies could pay their workers. Needing more workers, some companies said, "if you work for us, we'll cover your doctor bills." Medicare started in 1965. Today, many private insurers use the Medicare payment scales as a model for what they'll cover. Pretty soon doctors figured out that since the government was paying, cost was no object in taking care of their patients... Which just so happened to line their pockets as well.
My grandparents' experience demonstrates the folly of government insurance. My grandmother came down with end-stage blood-cancer about a year ago. Left untreated, she probably would have lasted a month or two. But she went to her doctors at the Mayo clinic, who left nothing on the table in trying to kill her cancer. I have no idea how much medicare spent on Grandma's behalf, but it was at least $50,000. The last visit they took a bone-biopsy, and her marrow was 90% cancerous. She died one week after starting hospice care, six months after the initial diagnosis - which was exactly how long her doctor said she'd last without treatment.
So what'd the goverment's $50k -> $100k buy? 4 months? maybe? If grandma had known what she would have to go through, I think she'd've gone for hospice first.
My grandfather collapsed and went unresponsive about two years ago. A couple of weeks later they said, "he needs a pacemaker". Didn't cost him anything, but Medicare and his secondary insurance put out $100,000 on his behalf. A year and a half after that (6 months ago), he collapses and goes unresponsive again. "You had a seizure, take these pills". (His pacemaker has NEVER fired...) Grandpa's case is a big guessing game for his doctors, and they don't care what it costs, because the government is picking up the tab.
I won't get into my maternal grandparent's experience (another $200k in the last 2-3 years?)
Medicare only serves to keep people alive past their expiration date, make medical providers vastly wealthier than they would be otherwise, and makes medical care for the rest of us cost more than it should.
Which infers that it also sucks smart people into the medical field with the promise of wealth and status, people who maybe would've been engineers.
It's kinda sad to see the Japanese wiping the floor with GM, whose sales have tanked completely because they weren't forward-looking. Sales of big trucks have plummeted about 40% while the Prius and other hybrids are selling like hot cakes.
GM had people begging them to sell them cars a couple of years ago. "We'll give you $24,000 apiece for these crappy 3 year old geo-metro-sized POS cars that we love!" GM had only leased their EV1s, and when the leases were up California's ZEV (Zero Emission Vehicle) mandate was no more, GM had canned the EV1 program, and was taking their cars back so they could crush them in the arizona desert.
GM also had an 80mpg hybrid, but nothing ever came of that one either...
...
Worst of all, GM long ago stopped listening to its customers, and that's just plain bad Car-Ma!;-)
The turning point occurred in the late 90's, when a group of visionary engineers, under the tutelage of then CEO Robert Stempel, attempted to "reinvent the corporation." Among their achievements, they built, on the relatively small shoestring budget of $350 million, the world's most advanced and efficient automobile -- the EV1. The EV1 assembly line in East Lansing, Michigan established new benchmarks in low volume custom manufacturing -- a key technology for the future, then and now dominated by Toyota Corporation.
But Stempel and his lieutenants were soon ousted by a corporate coup when GM's earnings took a downturn during a recession, and the Beancounters took over once again.
In 1997, GM showed off a hybrid electric version of the EV1 at the Los Angeles Auto Show -- just as Honda and Toyota were introducing their hybrids to the world. But the Beancounters at GM Corporate quietly tucked away their hybrid, never to be seen again, and openly derided the Japanese offerings for selling "below cost" -- forgetting the painful lessons that America has had to learn in so many other electronic-related technologies.... (source)
My ideal car is powered by AC Propulsions' AC-150 drivetrain and a couple thousand off-the-shelf lithium-ion cells. Alan Cocconi, the engineer behind AC Propulsion, built a battery for his t-zero that goes 300+ miles on a charge... Probably spent $50,000 doing it, but it was a proof-of-concept exercise, I think.
From the October 10th issue: "$1 Million Reward Offered to Prove No Explosives Used in WTC Collapse".
Entrants must prove, and support with detailed drawings for all significant events, how the twin towers collapsed in 8.5 seconds, as the video and seismic records show, without explosives. Contestants must show exactly whow the concrete was pulverized and ejected hundreds of feet with detailed drawings."
If it's really just "wacko paranoia", I'm sure it'll be an easy million bucks. You should enter. http://www.reopen911.org/
Yet while you're reading this on your computer screen, safe at home or work, thousands of people all over this country must silently wrestle with their thoughts: What if those wacko conspiracy theorists on the Internet are RIGHT?
Anyway the song that "we're doing it all to raise the natives" has been the standard line of the conqueror all through history, and the natives always get the shaft in the end.
Most the time "the natives" are perfectly happy living as they are. Couple hours of 'work' a day to provide for their needs, and the rest of their time is free to live and to be. Satisfying life, if you ask me.
Today people work 40+ hours a week, plus commute time. And they do that so they can spend the rest of their free time watching flashing lights on a "television". Most of us can't even read anymore (I couldn't even read Harry Potter), not really anyways (slashdot comments don't count).
It's a very shallow life that most westerners get to live. We've just been 'hypnotized' to believe that it's greater than it really is.
Besides, the world is now joined at the hip when it comes to economic and social prosperity.
By "joined at the hip" you're refering to, of course, the present condition where the rest of the world manufactures stuff and sells it to Americans.
Chinese factories produce widgets. Americans buy them. Americans don't produce anything the Chinese can't make themselves for less, so the ships are filled up with raw materials (including, ironically, cardboard for recycling from all the boxes they just sold us), which the Chinese turn into fancy tech gadgets to sell to Americans.
China takes all the dollars they earn in trade and buy U.S. Treasury bonds. Georgy Boy uses the money China lends him to pay for his stupid "war" (real wars are declared by an act of congress), and all the other pork-barrel programs politicians pass to get re-elected.
Trade is only a good thing when it's a two way street.
The future I 'see' leaves America on the sidelines.
I buy 'american' when I can, but even so, that's more a symbolic gesture than anything else.
there's more, but not tonight. Subscribe to America's Last Real Newspaper (American Free Press) for the news you won't get anywhere else.
The school system in this country also needs to be radically improved.
dood, talk to the children: almost all of them hate their government schools. School is the problem. Read some John Taylor Gatto and you'll understand why.
You're right on about needing CEOs who are Engineers and not Beancounters, though... Read about what happened at General Motors with their EV1 project. The engineer-CEO & board members who said "we can do this!" (meet California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate) got kicked out in 1992 after a recession caused them to miss profit expectations. They were replaced with Beancounters, who gave the EV1 project lipservice, but did everything they could to kill the mandate. Now look at GM: giving away their cars for 3+ months (employee discount program, losing >$1,000/car). There are no profit expectations because the analysts expect that they're going to lose lots of money.
it's not the "end of the world", but the end of the present "cycle". The mayan calendar is cyclic, so maybe I misstated in my original post.
I went and looked at those maps, does that dufus explain where all the water will come from? Cause there isn't enough water at the poles for his maps.
He's not saying that the melting of the poles will cause the changes in the map. Legend says that Atlantis "sank" into the ocean... With the coming shifts in the earth's crust, portions of the land now above sealevel will fall, and portions of land below sealevel will rise.
It's kind of funny - I've just be going along, living my life.. Then a couple years ago I "develop" a typing injury. Bump from one incompetent M.D. to another. I didn't think they were incompetent at the time, they just didn't know how to help me.
Finally I end up going to an Doctor of Osteopathy who specializes in Osteopathic Manipulation. He's like, "yeah, you're fucked up. I can fix you, no problem." And he does his ten-fingered medicine, and I slowly but magically start to feel better. Neat.
And over the course of the treatments, I realize that my being "fucked up" didn't start with the typing injury, or the head injury which preceded it by a year. My mom reminded me constantly last fall of what a "difficult baby" I was, as I was always crying for not provocation. Especially compared to my younger brother, who "would just coo...". I was crying because I hurt - "mom, please help". Mom takes me to my M.D. pediatrician, "nothing's wrong with him, he'll grow out of it." It's kind of weird to realize that I've been "fucked up" for my entire life - I have no idea what it means to be normal.
While it's true that some osteopaths go to D.O. school because they're somewhat easier to get into, more and more students are CHOOSING D.O. colleges because they believe in the philosophy. My Osteopath discovered the benefits of Osteopathy when a D.O. took away back pains that he'd had since injuring his back in a martial arts class 7 years earlier. 3 visits. Now he has the occasional patient who's been dealing with a health problem for TEN YEARS, and he's able to fix them in a single visit.
My D.O. isn't cheap. Unless you consider what I would go through with an M.D. - expensive tests, expensive drugs, expensive surgery. So, when I look at how I could be throwing money at not getting any better (at worthless tests, worthless drugs, and worthless surgery), I'm perfectly happy with his payment policy (cash or check, $175/20 minute visit, bill your own insurance).
But what if the "cause" is really just a symptom? And the H. pylori (which just about everyone has) is only taking over to clean up a different condition?
Ulcers are really just a degenerative disease:
All degenerative disease begins as a relatively acid condition in the tissues of the body. These tissues become oxidized, diseased and old.
Pleomorphic organisms come out of this acid environment, from elements in the blood in order to clean up these old, diseased, tissues. Bacteria are being found in the diseased tissues of all chronic, degenerative diseases. The Atlantic Monthly, A New Germ Theory by Judith Hooper, February 1999.) These bacteria are there as a result, not the cause. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) was wrong, these organisms are not caught from the outside, they come from within.
Most modern barbers are happy to continually treat symptoms since that's what brings in the big bucks.
Don't be too hard on today's doctors: they do the best they can, with the training they've been through at medical schools '0wned' by the pharmaceutical industry.:)
But if you want a real doctor, you gotta find an Osteopath who sticks to their profession's philosophical origin.
Slashdot Mirror
The real problem is that the U.S. Government has subsidized petro-oil since the mid-70's. See John Perkin's Confessions of an Economic Hitman. After reading the book, I've come to believe that the federal government has been hijacked by thugs who use it to maximize their own profits (Haliburton getting no-bid contracts to clean up New Orleans).
If oil prices had stayed high/volatile after the 70's oil embargos, economic development in the U.S. would've been totally different. We certainly wouldn't have seen the mass proliferation of SUVs and suburban sprawl with gas at $2.50/gallon in the late 90's (I distinctly remember paying $.89/gallon in 1999).
fact: the climate is changing
:)
why?
who cares why! forget the blame game!
I accept that the climate is changing, and don't worry about devising ways to try to stop it. After all, CHANGE is the only constant in the physical universe.
Yes, climate change will be a "bad thing" for the lifespan of most of the world's current population. But that's okay too - people have been dying for thousands of years. Less primitive cultures accepted dying as a part of living. Australian Aborigines threw a party when a member of the tribe passed on. When their time on Earth was up, Native Americans would wander into the wilderness to enter the spirit world directly, rather than become a burden on their tribe.
Besides, the world is horribly overpopulated as it is - like an infection of humans. Global warming is just the earth's "immune system" kicking in.
Some people say that the real "global warming" problem has to do with increased energy output from the sun. Good luck stoping that one.
Magnetic Poles May Be About To Flip
Earth's Magnetic Field Weakens 10 Percent
The New York Times On Earth's Magnetic Flip-Flop
Since there's nothing I can do to prevent the change that's coming, I'm getting ready for it. The ride gets bumpier from here on out, until about 2011 or 2012, which is the end of a cycle in the Mayan calendar. As I understand it, their calendar cycles back to zero on December 21, 2012. (The universe has an "overflow bug" too!
... Well that wouldn't be very fair, seeing as how all the debree from the WTC was hauled off to China and India for recycling before any failure analysis could be performed...
... are you referring to the teachings of Mr. Christ...
a litle late, I know, but technically it's "Jesus who became the Christ", not "first name Jesus, last name Christ". See _Edgar Cayce on Jesus and his Church_.
3) Fans would do better with better magnets. e.g. higher cost.
I was magnet shopping last month, and ran across this article:
Neodymium Magnets Boost Fuel Efficiency: Higher efficiency motors, using neodymium-iron-boron magnets, reduce loading on alternators and batteries.
The company rebuilt electric motors on a car to use super-powerful rare-earth magnets (instead of cheap ceramic magnets), and found that the amps drawn decreased significantly. It's more than just a swap-out though - I think they had to re-wind the motor's wire coils...
1)Unless you're a soulist, the mind is a product &reflection of the physical.
Technically speaking, you mean vitalist.
This is the materialism vs. vitalism debate.
Vitalism: (philosophy) a doctrine that life is a vital principle distinct from physics and chemistry. (life is the non-material 'spark' that animates the physical. -me)
Materialism: Philosophy. The theory that physical matter is the only reality and that everything, including thought, feeling, mind, and will, can be explained in terms of matter and physical phenomena.
Both are philosophies. IMHO, there is more 'scientific' evidence supportive of vitalism than there is supportive of materialism, but I guess that just depends on what you'd rather believe...
See Ingo Swann's _Psychic Sexuality_ (a self-published book, search for the author's website) for more on this topic.
don't be so sure... Living bodies are incredibly complex electrical devices. I think it arrogant to assume artificial electric fields cannot have an effect on their proper operation.
(emphasis added) From an interview of Robert O. Becker, M. D., who was a pioneer in the study of natural electrical currents in the human body.
Or perhaps raw milk, with the lactic acid bacteria still intact.. You can leave raw milk out on the countertop for a couple of days, and all it'll do is "sour" (get pre-digested by said lactic acid bacteria). After a day or two it'll separate into curds & whey, still totally consumable. This is how sour cream used to be made.
See Nourishing Traditions (an awesome cookbook) for more uses for lactic acid fermentation (real sourkraut, chutneys, pickles, meats, etc)... There's another cookbook specifically on fermented foods, but I don't have it and the title escapes me at the moment...
2000, eh? That's about the end of the dot-com boom. So it fits, I guess...
high-cost site: quality
low-cost site: quantity
anyone got a link for when various manufacturers started moving offshore? Like, Maxtor/WD/Seagate/etc.? Many computing technologies originally came from American companies, but, with cutthroat competition being what it is, as soon as one company in a category moves to china, the rest probably aren't going to be too far behind...
dood,
like Ingo Swann said at his little Q&A session at the Remote Viewing conference last summer: "We had to get results, right from the start". Ingo was one of the prime movers behind the government's 20-year long Stargate program, that investigated Remote Viewing for "psychic" spying. Do you think the government would've financed it for 20 years, when they could've given the pennies they spent on the program to Haliburton or Bechtel instead, if the $million or $10million a year hadn't bought them something?
http://www.biomindsuperpowers.com/ - Mr. Swann's website
There are more things in heaven and earth, homer_ca, than are dreamt of in current "scientific" philosophy. (borrowing from Shakespeare). There is proof beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is something to occult phenomena, but only if you're willing to look (see Leadbeater's Occult Chemistry, for example).
And as for astrology, I refer you to a post of mine from a couple weeks ago. (I'm pretty sure the cyclical Mayan calendar is based on astrological principles).
I've had my phone for over 3 years now, same battery, a little worse for wear (some lines in the screen have gone out). My aunt's phone died recently, so I called up Verizon and tried to transfer my phone to her. (I have another phone of the same model that I was going to switch to.) "Sorry, we can't add any phones that aren't GPS-enabled". Hmm? FCC dictate since May 2005, I guess. All the more reason for me to keep it. :)
GWB knows that OBL has expired - kidney trouble and all, hard to get a dialysis machine into an afghan cave... But you gotta have an enemy to perpetrate a "war" (real Wars are declared by an act of congress), so the Osama bin Laden straw man gets hauled out from time to time.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/osama_dead.html (random link)
... so I was talking to my cranial osteopath while he was working on me... "Do these 'lesions' ever come back?" He responded immediately with a "no", then paused, and corrected himself - "well, if they don't fix the work environment they will", and he modeled how a secretary might hold the phone up to their ear with their shoulder as an example of how someone might reinduce trauma in their myofascial tissue.
:^] )
(the $10k slashdot post)
(not all osteopaths are equally talented - that'll be another $500, please.
(a very small portion of "cranio-sacral therapists" are also good with modern osteopathic technique)
Tell me, when's your expiration date?
The day I cease to carry my own weight. 3/4 of grandparents are still alive, but they're not really living, not anymore. They're just sitting around (can't walk very well at all anymore), watching T.V., waiting to die.
In native American communities, when someone got "old and frail", they'd leave the tribe, go out into the wilderness, and leave their body for the spirit world. That's my plan.
Nobody forced your grandparents to have "unnecessary" surgeries.
My grandparent[s] are [/was] in the habit of waking up every morning. Social conditioning has made them a little afraid of dying. When their doctors said "we can treat this" and Medicare is willing to pick up the tab, why should they turn them down? "No thanks, that'd be a waste of the taxpayers' money, I'd rather end my time here on earth with grace and dignity"? Yeah right. Given the choice of living or dying, most people will choose to live, because it's the choice they're most familiar with. And with the financial cost being the same either way, there's little incentive to chose to decline fancy, expensive yet futile treatments.
Point 2) My wife (an MD) makes a lot more than I do...
That's because she's in a field that is highly subsidised by the government.
It used to be that people became doctors primarily because they wanted to help other people. Big money was reserved for doctors who were true healers; most doctors had the standard of living of their patients, or a little bit more. Now there's the perception that doctors are super-well-paid, which attracts a different kind of student. I have a friend from college (who was some kind of engineer) who said he was applying to med school because it was his best chance at pulling in the big $$$$.
Understand the history of insurance, and you understand the problems with the insane cost of medical care today. Nutshell version: In the early 20th century, lumber mills offered "hospital insurance" as a benefit for their workers. If they got injured on the job, the company would pay their hospital tab. Durring WWII, the government imposed price caps on what companies could pay their workers. Needing more workers, some companies said, "if you work for us, we'll cover your doctor bills." Medicare started in 1965. Today, many private insurers use the Medicare payment scales as a model for what they'll cover. Pretty soon doctors figured out that since the government was paying, cost was no object in taking care of their patients... Which just so happened to line their pockets as well.
100 years of Medical Robery (part 1, on the history of the AMA and establishing a medical monopoly)
Real Medical Freedom (part 2, which really gets into the history of insurance)
My grandparents' experience demonstrates the folly of government insurance. My grandmother came down with end-stage blood-cancer about a year ago. Left untreated, she probably would have lasted a month or two. But she went to her doctors at the Mayo clinic, who left nothing on the table in trying to kill her cancer. I have no idea how much medicare spent on Grandma's behalf, but it was at least $50,000. The last visit they took a bone-biopsy, and her marrow was 90% cancerous. She died one week after starting hospice care, six months after the initial diagnosis - which was exactly how long her doctor said she'd last without treatment.
So what'd the goverment's $50k -> $100k buy? 4 months? maybe? If grandma had known what she would have to go through, I think she'd've gone for hospice first.
My grandfather collapsed and went unresponsive about two years ago. A couple of weeks later they said, "he needs a pacemaker". Didn't cost him anything, but Medicare and his secondary insurance put out $100,000 on his behalf. A year and a half after that (6 months ago), he collapses and goes unresponsive again. "You had a seizure, take these pills". (His pacemaker has NEVER fired...) Grandpa's case is a big guessing game for his doctors, and they don't care what it costs, because the government is picking up the tab.
I won't get into my maternal grandparent's experience (another $200k in the last 2-3 years?)
Medicare only serves to keep people alive past their expiration date, make medical providers vastly wealthier than they would be otherwise, and makes medical care for the rest of us cost more than it should.
Which infers that it also sucks smart people into the medical field with the promise of wealth and status, people who maybe would've been engineers.
GM had people begging them to sell them cars a couple of years ago. "We'll give you $24,000 apiece for these crappy 3 year old geo-metro-sized POS cars that we love!" GM had only leased their EV1s, and when the leases were up California's ZEV (Zero Emission Vehicle) mandate was no more, GM had canned the EV1 program, and was taking their cars back so they could crush them in the arizona desert.
GM also had an 80mpg hybrid, but nothing ever came of that one either...
My ideal car is powered by AC Propulsions' AC-150 drivetrain and a couple thousand off-the-shelf lithium-ion cells. Alan Cocconi, the engineer behind AC Propulsion, built a battery for his t-zero that goes 300+ miles on a charge... Probably spent $50,000 doing it, but it was a proof-of-concept exercise, I think.
From the October 10th issue: "$1 Million Reward Offered to Prove No Explosives Used in WTC Collapse".
If it's really just "wacko paranoia", I'm sure it'll be an easy million bucks. You should enter. http://www.reopen911.org/
sincerely yours,
wacko paranoid conspiracy theorist.
Anyway the song that "we're doing it all to raise the natives" has been the standard line of the conqueror all through history, and the natives always get the shaft in the end.
Most the time "the natives" are perfectly happy living as they are. Couple hours of 'work' a day to provide for their needs, and the rest of their time is free to live and to be. Satisfying life, if you ask me.
Today people work 40+ hours a week, plus commute time. And they do that so they can spend the rest of their free time watching flashing lights on a "television". Most of us can't even read anymore (I couldn't even read Harry Potter), not really anyways (slashdot comments don't count).
It's a very shallow life that most westerners get to live. We've just been 'hypnotized' to believe that it's greater than it really is.
Besides, the world is now joined at the hip when it comes to economic and social prosperity.
By "joined at the hip" you're refering to, of course, the present condition where the rest of the world manufactures stuff and sells it to Americans.
Chinese factories produce widgets. Americans buy them. Americans don't produce anything the Chinese can't make themselves for less, so the ships are filled up with raw materials (including, ironically, cardboard for recycling from all the boxes they just sold us), which the Chinese turn into fancy tech gadgets to sell to Americans.
China takes all the dollars they earn in trade and buy U.S. Treasury bonds. Georgy Boy uses the money China lends him to pay for his stupid "war" (real wars are declared by an act of congress), and all the other pork-barrel programs politicians pass to get re-elected.
Trade is only a good thing when it's a two way street.
The future I 'see' leaves America on the sidelines.
I buy 'american' when I can, but even so, that's more a symbolic gesture than anything else.
there's more, but not tonight. Subscribe to America's Last Real Newspaper (American Free Press) for the news you won't get anywhere else.
The school system in this country also needs to be radically improved.
dood, talk to the children: almost all of them hate their government schools. School is the problem. Read some John Taylor Gatto and you'll understand why.
You're right on about needing CEOs who are Engineers and not Beancounters, though... Read about what happened at General Motors with their EV1 project. The engineer-CEO & board members who said "we can do this!" (meet California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate) got kicked out in 1992 after a recession caused them to miss profit expectations. They were replaced with Beancounters, who gave the EV1 project lipservice, but did everything they could to kill the mandate. Now look at GM: giving away their cars for 3+ months (employee discount program, losing >$1,000/car). There are no profit expectations because the analysts expect that they're going to lose lots of money.
http://ev1-club.power.net/ - 100+ people offered GM $24,000/each for USED compact-sized EV1's. GM said "no thanks" and took the cars to Mesa, Arizona where they were uncerimoniously crushed.
GM Deathwatch (part 1 of 34+)
it's not the "end of the world", but the end of the present "cycle". The mayan calendar is cyclic, so maybe I misstated in my original post.
I went and looked at those maps, does that dufus explain where all the water will come from? Cause there isn't enough water at the poles for his maps.
He's not saying that the melting of the poles will cause the changes in the map. Legend says that Atlantis "sank" into the ocean... With the coming shifts in the earth's crust, portions of the land now above sealevel will fall, and portions of land below sealevel will rise.
Magnetic Poles May Be About To Flip
Earth's Magnetic Field Weakens 10 Percent
The New York Times On Earth's Magnetic Flip-Flop
points go in this order:
I think the evidence is clear: the end of the present world is near. I'll be ready by 2012, will you?
It's kind of funny - I've just be going along, living my life.. Then a couple years ago I "develop" a typing injury. Bump from one incompetent M.D. to another. I didn't think they were incompetent at the time, they just didn't know how to help me.
Finally I end up going to an Doctor of Osteopathy who specializes in Osteopathic Manipulation. He's like, "yeah, you're fucked up. I can fix you, no problem." And he does his ten-fingered medicine, and I slowly but magically start to feel better. Neat.
And over the course of the treatments, I realize that my being "fucked up" didn't start with the typing injury, or the head injury which preceded it by a year. My mom reminded me constantly last fall of what a "difficult baby" I was, as I was always crying for not provocation. Especially compared to my younger brother, who "would just coo...". I was crying because I hurt - "mom, please help". Mom takes me to my M.D. pediatrician, "nothing's wrong with him, he'll grow out of it." It's kind of weird to realize that I've been "fucked up" for my entire life - I have no idea what it means to be normal.
While it's true that some osteopaths go to D.O. school because they're somewhat easier to get into, more and more students are CHOOSING D.O. colleges because they believe in the philosophy. My Osteopath discovered the benefits of Osteopathy when a D.O. took away back pains that he'd had since injuring his back in a martial arts class 7 years earlier. 3 visits. Now he has the occasional patient who's been dealing with a health problem for TEN YEARS, and he's able to fix them in a single visit.
My D.O. isn't cheap. Unless you consider what I would go through with an M.D. - expensive tests, expensive drugs, expensive surgery. So, when I look at how I could be throwing money at not getting any better (at worthless tests, worthless drugs, and worthless surgery), I'm perfectly happy with his payment policy (cash or check, $175/20 minute visit, bill your own insurance).
Ulcers are really just a degenerative disease:
Most modern barbers are happy to continually treat symptoms since that's what brings in the big bucks.
Don't be too hard on today's doctors: they do the best they can, with the training they've been through at medical schools '0wned' by the pharmaceutical industry.
But if you want a real doctor, you gotta find an Osteopath who sticks to their profession's philosophical origin.
On a related note, The Best of Steve Martin Saturday Night Live DVD has a skit called Theodoric of York: Medieval Barber...