Category: Science

A Good Clean Kill, And Other Beauty Secrets

I’m sure many of our “baby boomer” friends will remember the soap ads from the 1950s and 60s.  Clean was big business then, clean was beautiful, and nobody wanted to stink.  B.O. (body odor) was a hot topic thanks to decades of marketing.

Dial wasn’t the first “deodorant” soap, but it was the first one that didn’t smell like turpentine or paint thinner – oh, I’m talkin’ “Lifebuoy.” Lifebuoy, originally made by Lever Bros. (now Unilever) in England, has been around since 1895.  The smell was phenol, a compound made with carbolic acid extracted from coal tar.  To fight B.O. you could instead smell like an auto body repair shop.

Dial, named for its “round-the-clock” anti-B.O. protection (from perspiration), was introduced in 1948 by Armour Co. (yes, the meat-packers) in Chicago. Armour had made tallow-based laundry soap since 1888.  With the help of some clever chemists, Armour added hexachlorophene, or G-11 or AT-7.  How about those numbers?  Continue reading “A Good Clean Kill, And Other Beauty Secrets” →

Some Call it Forest Management, I Call it Racketeering.

When government agencies like the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management produce the danger, the propaganda hyping the danger, and the protection against it at a price, that’s racketeering.  The definition of a racketeer is someone who creates a threat and then charges for its reduction.

“War is just a racket. A racket is best described I believe, as something that is not what it seems  to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.”  – Smedley Butler

Government land management agencies commonly simulate, fabricate and exaggerate threats in ways common to all other racketeers.  Constantly at war with the forces of nature and the land they manage, this pattern of immoral extractive commerce targeting public land is a microcosm of a vast universe of Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE).  GSEs generate huge profits for private companies and government, in partnership Continue reading “Some Call it Forest Management, I Call it Racketeering.” →

Pharmaceutical Nightmare- My personal journey: Anti-depressants

About 15 years ago I was going through a very difficult and agonizing family upheaval. I was angry, not depressed, and felt the need to talk to a psychologist. Unfortunately, my insurance didn’t cover the services of a psychologist (who can’t prescribe medications), but it did include visits to psychiatrists.

I am no expert, nor am I a medical professional, but I have learned how to research and discover much-needed information about harmful pharmaceuticals. In this article, I will be sharing my personal experience with NSRI Anti-depressants (Nor-Epinephrine, Serotonin, Re-uptake Inhibitors.) Since two brain chemicals are involved, NSRI’s are much more difficult to taper (reduce dosage) than the older SSRI anti-depressants like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil. Continue reading “Pharmaceutical Nightmare- My personal journey: Anti-depressants” →

How not to rebel?

Immanuel Velikovsky died in 1979. The following passage is from his book Mankind in Amnesia, published in 1982. I found it, like him, profoundly insightful. He describes a situation that has not changed in the intervening years. It is, in fact, much, much worse. We are surrounded not just by stagnated and bureaucratic science, but with corrupt science. Warm your globe on that.

Continue reading “How not to rebel?” →

Trial by Fire

Last evening I participated as one of five presenters in a live-audience,  multi-media discussion/presentation with a group of foresters, a smoke jumper and State of Montana’s tourism specialist in the Dept. of Commerce.  The topic was “Can we manage wildfire; Should we manage wildfire.”  As the lone “tree-hugger” on the stage, I tried to probe other panel members for the reasons for their beliefs – most believed in management as a “solution” to our wildfire “problem.”  Needless to say, the anthropocentric viewpoint predominated.

Soldiering on, I tried very hard to interject a few self-evident truths about nature and fire’s natural role in the continuous mystery of life in its many forms.  When cornered with truth, however, the other participants simply lied to escape reality.  I’m sure they believed their lies, but even to the live audience lying seemed obvious, but generally an acceptable answer to a confrontation with an inescapable truth.  Continue reading “Trial by Fire” →

Eva Perón: The Rest of the Story

Evita lived on in the material world

Back in the day, when Straight was still here, we bounced from one discovery to another. The zombie matter was of great interest. Rarely did a day go by that I did not get an email from him suggesting I look into this or that person. The man has great instincts. He tired of the work, wanting to live in a more positive sphere. I get that, and wish him well, always. For me, just as I loved to curl up with Sherlock Holmes as a kid, I love the work I do here and would not trade it for journalism in any form. This is honest and rewarding work.

DSCN16935FBA7736-804C-4B63-B6E4-5C7CF15875A8There have not been too many new discoveries since Straight left, though I have moved far afield of facial analysis. But I do have my eye out. Thus it was that my wife suggested we visit La Recoleta Cemetery while in Buenos Aires with two crypts in mind: That of Liliana Crociati de Szaszak, a young woman killed in an avalanche in Switzerland (left), and Eva Perón, or Evita (right).

I knew very little about Evita other than that movie from 1995 and the Weber/Rice Broadway musical with its associated ear worms. I did not care for most of the movie but enjoyed the opening number in which Madonna sang Buenos Aires, train providing the percussion. The rest was not memorable for me, and anyway, what the hell was Che Guevara doing there? He seemed to be an anachronism. (He was put there for a reason, no doubt, but we can only guess.*)

Continue reading “Eva Perón: The Rest of the Story” →

A theory of everything plus one more

It was Miles Mathis who, to my knowledge, first asserted that the Stephen Hawking we all know, the guy who speaks through a computer and writes books with eye movements, was just an actor. As Mathis points out, all it takes is some reading between the lines. From Wikipedia:

During a visit to CERN on the border of France and Switzerland in mid-1985, Hawking contracted pneumonia, which in his condition was life-threatening; he was so ill that Jane was asked if life support should be terminated. She refused, but the consequence was a tracheotomy, which required round-the-clock nursing care and the removal of what remained of his speech.[270][271] The National Health Service was ready to pay for a nursing home, but Jane was determined that he would live at home. The cost of the care was funded by an American foundation.[272][273] Nurses were hired for the three shifts required to provide the round-the-clock support he required. One of those employed was Elaine Mason, who was to become Hawking’s second wife.[274]

Continue reading “A theory of everything plus one more” →

The Tychos …

B. Müller gave me permission to reprint his comment from a post down below regarding Simon Shack and his new book, The TYCHOS, The True Model of Our Solar System. I am curious the discussion this book will draw, and am keeping my distance, that is, I do not trust Simon Shack, but have never been vocal about it. It is my view that he has drawn interest from some of the very best thinkers in our community, but that his high-profile and the fact that he was able to make a major motion picture* make him at least suspect.

Continue reading “The Tychos …” →

Killing Cats for Sport and Profit

On January 11, 2018, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) released its “scientific review” of the Canada lynx in the contiguous U.S., which concluded that the species “may no longer warrant protection” under the ESA (Endangered Species Act of 1973).

An estimated 2,000 Canada lynx remain in the wild, its range extends from Maine, to northeastern Minnesota, and westward to western Montana, northeastern Idaho, north-central Washington and western Colorado. Lynx are a long-legged cousin of the bobcat – with tufted ears. Lynx can grow almost 36 inches long and weigh up to 30 pounds. These reclusive, snow-loving cats prefer dense forest habitat and feed primarily on the snowshoe hare, but will take pine squirrels when times are tough.

According to the Fish and Wildlife Service’s own scientist, Megan Kosterman, 50% of each lynx home range must be mature, dense forest to provide optimal habitat for lynx to breed and raise kittens, and no more than 15 percent of each lynx home range should be clearcut. Not a single National Forest is complying with this ecological recommendation – a system failure devastating to population trajectories.  FWS refuses to address this issue. Continue reading “Killing Cats for Sport and Profit” →

Too Many People? On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs

We’ve all heard it: “That can’t possibly be true—too many people would have to be involved. Somebody would have spilled the beans by now.” In fact, that is usually the first reaction I hear from people I’ve tried to enlighten about topics such as 9/11. It’s almost like a knee-jerk reflex, and it’s apparently enough to stop them from even considering any conspiracy theory further.

This objection has become all the more relevant in light of some of the recent discoveries made on this blog. For example, if so many celebrities are indeed twins, how is it possible that we haven’t heard about it? Wouldn’t hundreds or thousands of people working in the entertainment industry know about this? And what about all the paparazzi?  So how come nobody has come forward?

The “too many people” objection got a major boost in January with the publication of a paper by physicist David Grimes, entitled, “On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs.” Massive media coverage followed, touting his magic formula that “proved” once and for all that conspiracies were bound to fail. (To get a sense of this coverage, just type the following search terms into google: large-scale conspiracies reveal.) “Ah, those conspiracy theorists! Can’t they see it’s impossible? This was written by a physicist at Oxford University and published in a peer-reviewed journal. What more proof do you need?”

I’m here to show you that the paper actually proves the exact opposite of what we are told. That’s right, I’m telling you that the paper actually supports the viability of large-scale conspiracies. I also want to offer a few more words about the “too many people” response. But first, a bit about the author of the paper and the journal it was published in. Continue reading “Too Many People? On the Viability of Conspiratorial Beliefs” →