On dying river crocks and implications for people

There may be an emerging thread of connection that seems worthy of concern to me. And I would think so for lots of other people too. Referencing some articles on the mysterious deaths of large portions of the South African river crocks in the past couple of years, (for example see
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=what-is-killing-crocs
) The scientists are not finding an obvious single cause. But the effect that is causing the deaths, is a hardening of the body fats, such as in their tail which they need to flex for propulsion while hunting food, becoming too stiff from the hardened fat to flex anymore, immobilized. They also found similar hardened yellowed fats in some fish in the river.

Examining the hardened yellowed fat from dead specimens, the scientists looking for some chemical known to be a toxin, "“Everything is there,” Bouwman says, referring to the detection of DDT, PCBs, dioxins and brominated flame retardants, “but nothing is screaming, ‘it’s me, it’s me, it’s me.’ ”"

The article continues, " Danny Govender, a disease ecologist for South African National Parks. .. notes that samples taken from live crocs in 2007 showed that the fat of some crocodiles was beginning to harden. Along with Bouwman, she hypothesizes that all these toxins, found below harmful levels individually, could be acting together in a deadly brew."

This concept of a lot of different kinds of toxic chemicals, none of which individually are considered lethal in their quantities, and thus each presumed "safe," reminds me of the L-Tryptophan fiasco several years back. Suddenly those taking this supplement, which had already been in use for decades without problems as a supplement to help brain function and sleeping, was causing people to die. The FDA totally banned the sale of L-Tryptophan in order to solve the problem. But L-Tryptophan is actually an essential nutrient without which people cannot live. Eventually it was found that one batch of the chemical had been contaminated somehow with a broad spectrum of toxic substances, so that none of them were deemed "unsafe in that quantity" but taken together they overwhelmed the body's ability to get rid of the toxins fast enough. (Note that the L-Tryptophan nutritional supplement has cautiously and expensively reappeared on the market although probably still deemed illegal by the FDA; it is obvious that the nutrient itself was not the real cause of the problem of that one batch of the supplement.) The factor of significance in our context here is that it was a collection of small quantities of toxins of many types that was the lethal agent.

Now remember that the human body uses fat to stash toxic substances that it cannot get rid of through the normal pathways fast enough; it is not just crocks and fish that do that. Once the toxins are stashed away in the fat, it is hard to get rid of the fat; and if so, the toxins stored in it must be dealt with then too.

Is there a connection with this to the "obesity/overweight plague" that has happened here in America in recent times? I myself had always been quite lean and wiry, but in the past decade or so I suddenly got a potbelly that seems quite out of place on my lean frame, upping my weight from 125 to 160 pounds, and my clothes did not fit anymore, of course. The weight seems amazingly constant regardless of how much I eat or don't eat. Or how much exercise I do. The potbelly size cannot get much bigger or I would burst. Thus my body's ability to deal with a plethora of toxins by stashing them in my abdominal fat has reached its capacity, and thus further toxins will probably have to go into the organs themselves, causing problems.

Lots of information is available on the many strange toxins that are now found in the typical living environment, along with learned estimates of safe levels of each one (but acting alone.) Some are incidental from the plastics and other derivatives of petrochemicals we use so abundantly and end up in the environment and thus into food and water supplies.

And there are very common food additives that are well known to decompose into very toxic substances when in the human body, such as the artificial sweetener Aspartame and the flavoring agent MSG (MonoSodium Glutamate and its many deceptive aliases on labels) also turns toxic components inside the body, such as into the toxic "wood" alcohol chemical, an extremely toxic substance well known to cause blindness and death as well as death of some brain cells in smaller doses.

It seems that it would be so easy for the FDA to ban their use in foods if it were not for the powerful business interests that would block that. And it would take a total ban - at least for MSG - because it causes people to eat more of the food with the additive in it thus more sales and more profits; any lone food manufacturer unilaterally stopping putting MSG in their foods would find sales would slump and that is not permitted in our culture; thus all businesses would equally have to simultaneously stop the use of MSG in order to not give any food corporation advantage over the others. BTW when I was younger and MSG was not being used in food, the food tasted great with natural flavorings, no MSG needed; in case that is a worry.

Are these valid connections that I have proposed here? If so, the implications are pretty scary.

Maybe ignoring it will make it go away. Sure it will, right.

Business integration and the five-sided star

Pondering how America could have a fully functional integrated business system, awakening this morning I had an insight, which I will describe here; understandably, I hope.

Remembering something called "Chinese Checkers" of my youth, which was a square flat board with a five-sided star painted on it, and along those lines there were rounded holes bored evenly spaced including one at each apex and line intersection. The rounded holes were an exact fit for the marbles that were used to play the game. There was a low edge around the outside of the board to retain the marbles if randomly rolled around. There were an equal number of marbles and holes, so one could tilt and roll the board a bit rolling the marbles around and eventually getting all the marbles to have landed in an empty hole, making the pattern complete.




Two insights about this: one is that it could be an analogy for the random business setup of America to get all the needs filled.

The second is that the five-sided star was a familiar thing when I was a youth and the nation was vigorous; even American warplanes had the five-sided star painted on them as part of their symbol, the star had a circle around it and a pair of rectangular bars horizontally to each side, too. One would doodle on paper, drawing the five-sided star. The five-sided star was and still is found on the American flag in the blue and white field, one star for each state of the union. The five-sided star seems to have fallen out of favor, possibly since the Chinese (who we fought for their freedom in WWII, note) adopted a filled in five-sided red colored star as their warplane symbol, if I remember correctly, used in battles against us in Korea, I think.

Symbolism can be a strong influence, identifying something such as a logo or a company. In WWII, our American warplanes had the five-sided star painted on them as part of their symbol; the five sided star has been a symbol for life and prosperity, I think. In contrast, the Nazi Swastica symbol used on German warplanes fighting against us, a kind of black colored four-sided right-angle armed pinwheel, had the curious property of symbolizing life's vigor if the pinwheel direction were painted in one direction, but had the opposite meaning when the pinwheel was painted in the opposite direction, thus when painted on a vehicle, the rectangular pinwheel symbolized life's vigor to the inside of the plane where the pilots were, but those seeing the symbol from the outside of the plane saw the pinwheel direction symbolizing the opposite of life's vigor, thus a powerful symbol for a predator; the symbol was created by the American Indians, if I recall correctly. The five-sided star, in contrast, symbolizes desirable properties the same as seen from either front or back, the same, good stuff for all. Could it be that we need to have this five-sided star in the American awareness now much more prominently than the tiny 50 stars on the American flag? Note also how that adopted red star on the Chinese vehicles is now associated with quite a vigorously thriving nation. Examples of the American symbol can be seen on my float decorating photos at http://www.escalatorhi.com/PhotoStories/rpfloat20056.html and http://www.escalatorhi.com/PhotoStories/rpfloat20045.html which was an activity that perhaps contributes to my thinking of this post.







A further thought about the five-sided star is that, with one apex pointed upward, it symbolized the arms legs and head of an active balanced human being, all integrated together. Maybe this symbolic reminder would be helpful if seen in American daily life nowadays, too. And, as in the random marbles on the Chinese Checkers board, things would be able to start falling into place again.

Musings on oil to not be sold in dollars and why

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.htm

This parallels another UK article today
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/oct/06/oil-us-dollar-threat-to-america
This ought to be a real wake-up call to Americans, big time, but it does not even make it into the native news.

I have been letting it be on the back burner all day boiling down to something a bit more substantial looking, sort of.

Common denominator as it seems now to me is that America needs to recognize herself as a nation responsible for herself. Instead of being only an uncoordinated basketfull of corporations, businesses employees and consumers, all buying and selling to each other, assuming where there is a need someone will start a business to fill the need. Unless we can figure out some way to make that work, we need to do it a far more integrated way, ever watchful that some tyrant does not see opportunity to take over big or little pieces. A nation needs to use its resources wisely and efficiently, and those resources include sustainable natural resources and most of all human resources. Human resources are the most renewable of them; yet like solar power must be used when it shines as there is no second chance to use yesterday. Wasting human resources is like wasting anything else; and more than most natural resources, human resources are running with their clock ticking 24/7 whether used or not, a definite "use it or lose it" phenomenon. We currently seem to be in a funky mode where America is sitting on its hands waiting for nameless faceless businesses and corporations to hire all the idle people so as to get the nation in optimum efficiency again, but all those individual businesses are effectively saying "we are not here to help the nation, we are here to make a fast buck for ourselves and get out of the game." Can a gaggle of such entities make a nation work? Would be nice if it did, maybe would avoid petty dictatorships corporate or regulatory in theory, but it has not yet worked in reality and does not seem to be headed that way at all, near as I can see.

In pointing out a problem, one ought to also point to a possible solution or source of solution to the problem. My efforts to do that seem to have fallen on mostly deaf ears - "so what's new" - but can be seen at
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2009_01_01_archive.html 2009-01-25 Home internet-linked manufacturing workstations
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14139124/Home-Internetlinked-Manufacturing-Workstations of which there have only been 87 reads since it was reformated and put there last April. (This is in comparison to 203 copies from the same site for my revised sci fi novel "It's Down to Earth" which is freely available at
http://www.scribd.com/doc/14225582/Its-Down-To-Earth )
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2009/08/co-located-industry-education-sites-to.html
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2009/07/filling-in-big-pictures-details.html
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2009_05_01_archive.html
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2009_03_01_archive.html 2009-03-07 Pondering what has gone wrong in this country and why; and 2009-03-02 The need to directly tie the needs of the consumer to the economy's process
http://kestsgeojedc.blogspot.com/2009_02_01_archive.html 2009-02-22 Identifying and fixing the real problems

Many decades ago, there was a survey made to find out what percent of Americans would take a million dollars in exchange for never ever being able to watch television again, and nobody took them up on the offer. We depend on the boob tube as an essential part of our life. That is where we learn about what is going on in the news, but more significantly it is where the ever-present ads are telling us what is available to buy and why we should buy it; if something is not advertised adequately in our face, it might as well not exist. There are no TV ads proclaiming the above suggestions; thus to Americans, they do not exist, are less real than, say, the Simpsons or Star Trek's doings.

If this is the causative phenomenon, surely we are deeper into the stuck muck than the change away from the dollar into other nation's currency indicates. It means somebody has to fork out the money to hire the advertising firms and buy air time - all very big bucks - or people won't even know there are such proposed solutions - but even then their hardened resistance to sales pitches would say its not on their grocery list or equivalent and ignore it.

So the proposed solutions have problems more than mere implementation problems.

I could say that, well, I did my part, was not me that dropped the ball; but that does not help a bit, just some cheap sleazy balm for my vestigial ego. And am weary now, need to get some rest.

Musing on the news, drama and powerplants

A friend, who had been a powerplant operator before retirement, has been in an ongoing email thread with me about the Siberian Dam Powerplant accident that happened recently. The conversation thread had reached to a point where he was commenting that I was pointing out info apparently not floating around among the local powerplant folks - hydroelectric dam operation is a big thing here in the Pacific Northwest. Ref http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8289182.stm He had commented that my reply was an interesting read and I ought to post it somewhere. So here it is:

Apparently one of the main ways I amuse myself in my retirement is to read over the front pages of several online newspapers each day, and the BBC one seems to have more news of interest to me than any of them. Especially re space activities, even more than our own online media does. Occasionally I stumble into something that might interest you, to help liven up your day. I know that stuff about hydroelectric dams is important to you. And I appreciate the feedback you have given in return, interesting stuff.

Of course, after any big news of some disaster, the first news is oh how awful look at that. Then of rescue teams that go try to help deal with the mess. Then third stage is pointing finger of blame, the whodunit mystery solving drama. This article was of the third stage. Rarely does the fourth stage, that of responsibly fixing it so it does not happen again, get into the news, not interesting to the drama-hungry readership. Unless, of course, it involves more drama of go beat em up who looks involved - like the Afghanistan and Iraq fiascos - lots of more oh how awful look at thats for the hungry audience, too tunnel-visioned to see their own part in making it happen - they somehow elected the folks that believed that government was only for waging war for mutual defense and all other functions are for private corporate predators to control as guided by maximizing profit or sheer power craving with no way to vote them out - guess what happens when they run the healthcare system, it is sick people that make them the most profit so guess what.

I have long hypothesized that most people crave to see drama - mostly in other's lives, not their own, of course - it seems to be a need, like food and water. Operas and stage plays have served that need for millennia. Sports of conflict like football and boxing put limits to similar drama, rules to follow in the fracas where the spectators get to yell and scream, therapeutic. Possibly the watching of others' drama serves to distract from one's own stress of the moment, of seeing worse mess than their own, making themselves look better.

If people were more interested in reducing the drama, they would be more interested in things like EFT. (EFT = Emotional Freedom Technique.) But the reality test results are that news of EFT falls on deaf ears almost universally, I have found. Similar to news of Laughter Yoga - learning how to laugh again as a happy child enjoying life's simple sensual delights of sight and sound and touch, enjoying laughter merely for the pleasant experience of feeling laughter - instead of the adult use of laughter to scorn the obviously inferior rivals. So instead for us adults it is ah delicious drama of conflict to nourish our day. Drama is better than doing it right the first time, it seems, and is much easier to figure out how to do and needs less cooperation from others.

That is why when I have gotten my fill of the daily news drama - and feel assured that probably no thunderbolt is headed my way for now - I go look at the many science and technology information websites, a much brighter world.

I hope the folks up at Grand Coulee Dam can learn something from the Siberian Dam happening. I don't have a life-raft sitting outside my door. And I like my electric lights.

Jim Cline

More of the alternative healing greats suddenly going down

Today it was announced that another of the greats in the alternative healing scene - Sara Klein Ridgley has passed away of an aggressive cancer. That makes the third in recent months; the type of cancer has not yet been told but the first two with similar descriptions were from the formerly rare pancreatic cancer type.

The other one of the greats in the alternative health field was already mentioned below - the tributes continue to pour in - who passed away a month ago was Hulda R. Clark, PhD - she was only one not to die of that cancer but of complications from a spinal injury.

Some quotes from Hulda Clark's last book have been circulating that say something about her attitude: “Ordinary laypersons have a great deal of wisdom. This book will help you to practice and express your own wisdom. Your instincts and questions are well worth pursuing. Your discoveries and experience, together with others’, are valuable and very much needed. When wisdom is accumulated, it can contribute to a new bank of information for persons in the future that face the same dilemma that you may have faced. Solutions can be found by communicating and listening to others in similar predicaments. It is my cherished belief that in this way you and others can solve human health problems that lie languishing as orphans as well as our most common ones. I invite you to do so" Also from "The Cure and Prevention of all Cancers" book: “Only when each layperson and common laborer possess the knowledge about cancer prevention, as they already do for scurvy prevention, will the medical profession stop claiming an exclusive right to cancer treatment. It will no longer be lucrative. Till then its power to restrict and hold hostage the patient will continue. At present this power seems quite misplaced, since medical professionals know neither how cancer begins nor how it progresses. In the future, preventing cancer, like preventing scurvy will not generate high incomes for anybody. Nor will herbal and natural treatments. These therapies will fall to lay health advisers and lay nutritionists. It will be a huge step of progress for humanity.”

One her key findings in her last research was a molecular combination she believed was common to all cancers, and for the first time it included a radioactive source as it requires an atom of Polonium in each molecular combination.


Although I have come to believe that she was a bit too optimistic about the wisdom in comprehending health existing untutored in the average person, as well as she did not fully understand the ruthlessness of faceless business corporations toward "potential competition" where profit is concerned for paying off investors, she made available a vast new area of health knowledge as her legacy; and if the Nobel Prize were given just for incredible achievements in the advancement of health of people, but without ties to corporate sponsors or academic organizations, Dr Hulda Clark would surely be deserving of that honor.

Meantime, I continue to notice the sudden taking down of the greats in the alternative healing field. What does this point to, I wonder; it seems far beyond randomness. That "wisdom" factor may have vanished too far these days.