Thursday, July 29, 2010

Proper Diet-Johns Hopkins



Johns Hopkins Update – Very Good Article

AFTER YEARS OF TELLING PEOPLE CHEMOTHERAPY IS THE ONLY WAY TO TRY ('TRY', BEING THE KEY WORD) TO ELIMINATE CANCER, JOHNS HOPKINS IS FINALLY STARTING TO TELL YOU THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE WAY .



Cancer Update from Johns Hopkins :

1. Every person has cancer cells in the body. These cancer cells do not show up in the standard tests until they have multiplied to a few billion. When doctors tell cancer patients that there are no more cancer cells in their bodies after treatment, it just means the tests are unable to detect the cancer cells because they have not reached the detectable size.

2. Cancer cells occur between 6 to more than 10 times in a person's lifetime.

3. When the person's immune system is strong the cancer cells will be destroyed and prevented from multiplying and forming tumors.

4. When a person has cancer it indicates the person has nutritional deficiencies. These could be due to genetic but also to environmental food and lifestyle factors.

5. To overcome the multiple nutritional deficiencies, changing diet to eat more adequately and healthy, 4-5 times/day and by including supplements will strengthen the immune system.

6. Chemotherapy involves poisoning the rapidly-growing cancer cells and also destroys rapidly-growing healthy cells in the bone marrow, gastrointestinal tract etc, and can cause organ damage, like liver, kidneys, heart, lungs etc.

7. Radiation while destroying cancer cells also burns, scars and damages healthy cells, tissues and organs.

8. Initial treatment with chemotherapy and radiation will often reduce tumor size. However prolonged use of chemotherapy and radiation do not result in more tumor destruction.

9. When the body has too much toxic burden from
chemotherapy and radiation the immune system is either compromised or destroyed, hence the person can succumb to various kinds of infections and complications.

10. Chemotherapy and radiation can cause cancer cells to mutate and become resistant and difficult to destroy. Surgery can also cause cancer cells to spread to other sites.

11. An effective way to battle cancer is to starve the cancer cells by not feeding it with the foods it needs to multiply.

*CANCER CELLS FEED ON:

a. Sugar substitutes like NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc are made with Aspartame and it is harmful. A better natural substitute would be Manuka honey or molasses, but only in very small
amounts. Table salt has a chemical added to make it white in color Better alternative is Bragg's aminos or sea salt.

B. Milk causes the body to produce mucus, especially in the gastro-intestinal tract. Cancer feeds on mucus. By cutting off milk and substituting with unsweetened soy milk cancer
cells are being starved.

c. Cancer cells thrive in an acid environment. A meat-based diet is acidic and it is best to eat fish, and a little other meat, like chicken. Meat also contains livestock antibiotics, growth hormones and parasites, which are all harmful, especially to people with cancer.

d. A diet made of 80% fresh vegetables and juice, whole grains, seeds, nuts and a little fruits help put the body into an alkaline environment. About 20% can be from cooked food including beans. Fresh vegetable juices provide live enzymes that are easily absorbed and reach down to cellular levels within 15 minutes to nourish and enhance
growth of healthy cells. To obtain live enzymes for building healthy cells try and drink fresh vegetable juice (most vegetables including bean sprouts) and eat some raw vegetables 2 or 3 times a day. Enzymes are destroyed at temperatures of 104 degrees F (40 degrees C)..

e. Avoid coffee, tea, and chocolate, which have high caffeine Green tea is a better alternative e and has cancer fighting properties. Water-best to drink purified water, or filtered, to avoid known toxins and heavy metals in tap water. Distilled water is acidic, avoid it.

12. Meat protein is difficult to digest and requires a lot of digestive enzymes. Undigested meat remaining in the intestines becomes putrefied and leads to more toxic buildup.

13. Cancer cell walls have a tough protein covering. By refraining from or eating less meat it frees more enzymes to attack the protein walls of cancer cells and allows the body's killer cells to destroy the cancer cells.

14. Some supplements build up the immune system (IP6, Flor-ssence, Essiac, anti-oxidants, vitamins, minerals,EFAs etc.) to enable the bodies own killer cells to destroy cancer cells.. Other supplements like vitamin E are known to cause apoptosis, or programmed cell death, the body's normal method of disposing of damaged, unwanted, or unneeded cells.

15. Cancer is a disease of the mind, body, and spirit. A proactive and positive spirit will help the cancer warrior be a survivor. Anger, un-forgiveness and bitterness put the body into a stressful and acidic environment. Learn to
have a loving and forgiving spirit. Learn to relax and enjoy life.

16. Cancer cells cannot thrive in an oxygenated
environment. Exercising daily, and deep breathing help to get more oxygen down to the cellular level. Oxygen therapy is another means employed to destroy cancer cells.

This article was sent to me via email from a friend, my response to him is below.



It's interesting to see this go mainstream. It wasn't long ago that doctors thought diet had no impact at all on one's health. Much like cigarette smoking before.

When the article mentioned "alkaline environment", that is a very telling statement.

In our body we have what is called a PH factor, a balance between alkaline and acidic. Our bodies are designed to have a PH factor slightly alkaline.

When we begin to eat, the saliva in our mouth is alkaline. In animals that are carnivores, their saliva is acidic. Of course the acidic saliva is for digesting meats (proteins). As you know, proteins are made of amino acids. And it's the body via the liver and kidneys that must process these acids. (Think about this: the byproduct of acid is ammonia--the byproduct of carbohydrates is water, yet carbs are vilified. The word carbohydrate itself means nothing more than carbon + water.)

To keep our bodies alkaline, from eating a high protein diet, our bodies draw the calcium from our bones. Hence, even though we're the number one consumer of milk products in the world (supposedly for the benefit of calcium), we still have the highest incidence of osteoporosis in the world. African bantu women who bear 8 children, drink no dairy products, have rates of osteoporosis that is negligible.

I'm also in agreement about us having cancer pretty much all the time. And when it finally manifests itself, it's billions of cells along, and often too late. Preventive measures are surely the best way to attack this.

I drink almost daily a juice consisting of spinach, beets, banana, carrots, celery and apple. The man who invented the juicer, who calls himself the juice man, is now around 90 living in San Diego and says that juicing is what cured his cancer when he was in his twenties. His name is Jay Kordich.

As a hero of mine says, (to paraphrase) Imagine how our bodies are created from two cells not visible to naked eye, don't you think our bodies have the power to cure itself given the proper nutrition?

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Thursday, July 22, 2010

From Mother Jones--Journolist


Confessions of a Journolister

As my wife has said: "I don't know when journalism went from being the most honorable profession to the least".


It's shocking that progressive journalists have progressive ideas and share them with other progressive journalists.

Wait, no, it's not? Then I suppose I am misreading the series of stories in the conservative Daily Caller that have revealed the exchanges of the now-defunct Journolist, a supposedly off-the-record listserv for nearly 500 journalists and policy wonks, most of whom were progressive. (My deep dark confession: I was a member, mainly a lurker; I haven't posted anything in years. And, truth be told, when I did post it usually was to promote a column or article I had written, seeking links.) The Daily Caller and other conservatives have depicted the Journolist gang as practically a secret society coordinating the so-called liberal line in the media. But an ex-Daily Caller reporter was part of the group—which has gone unreported on by the Caller.

Click here for the entire article, the comments are especially revealing.

Here's an article about someone attacked by Journolist

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Time to Put Coffee Down


St. Thomas Aquinas defined “peace” as the tranquility of order, tranquillitas ordinis. He believed that the individual human soul and society find fulfillment when their actions are directed towards a good end in a prioritized manner. For most, the end, or goal of each day is simply earning a living to care for family and enjoy lives together.

A threat to this tranquility of order must often appear imminent before we are persuaded to divert our efforts to anything else. This fact of human existence accounts for many of the terrible totalitarian conquests of the last Century. During the rise of Adolph Hitler and the Communist Revolution, ample forewarnings were everywhere. While no one could be faulted for not extrapolating the precise details of horror that would accompany the regimes, the essence of promised utopias was clear enough to inspire early resistance among those who accepted to face reality, rather than enjoy imperiled order.

More

Context! For We, But Not For Thee

Context! For We, But Not For Thee
Such is now demanded by the NAACP in the Shirley Sherrod matter.

You remember her. She's the Department of Agriculture person who, at an NAACP meeting in March, told a story about how 20 plus years ago she had discriminated against a white farmer because he was white, but over the years realized she was wrong to discriminate on the basis of race.

In context, Sherrod at worst was a former racist who had realized the error of her ways.

But the NAACP did not waste time in demanding that action be taken against Sherrod because the NAACP had not seen the full clip, only the part where Sherrod related her racist past. (It appears that Ben Jealous, the President of the NAACP, was at that meeting, so he really should have known the context.) [added: @0.45 of the video Sherrod states that the President of NAACP was present - h/t J.S.]

Now the NAACP is backtracking because of context.

Media Matters and Think Progress, the ultimate out-of-context word and phrase manipulators, are hot on the case because Shirley Sherrod was taken out of context.

So how about some context for the handful (out of many millions) of people who have attended Tea Party rallies carrying racist signs?

How about considering that some of the people were not really Tea Party supporters but plants by the opposition designed to create controversy? Or that some of the photos were not even at Tea Party rallies? Or that some of the people were kicked out of the Tea Party movement? Or that some of the accusations of racist words being shouted are denied and the videos show otherwise? Or that numerous blacks who are active in the Tea Party movement deny that there is widespread racism? Or that the Tea Party philosophy of limited government and free enterprise is completely race neutral?

"Context for we, but not for thee," seems to be the philosophy.

Tuesday, July 20, 2010

On Newspapers/Blogging-Richard Fernandez


Seeing Michael Totten on the Pajamas Media Express blog line-up makes me feel like I’m in good company. Yet it also carries with it a realization of how much the weblog scene has changed since it sprang on the scene in the first days of the 21st century. Back then everything was amorphous; and everybody was a dog: that is just a name and not even a face. Everyone was an unknown writer — even to themselves. Very few of those who’ve gone forward since then could have anticipated his place in a landscape whose topography was still being created. In 2003, when the Belmont Club began on Blogspot, it was one of several ten of thousands of similar weblogs. Neither Pajamas Media nor the Huffington Post existed. A time-traveler going back as little as seven years would find that a lot has changed since then.

And in more than one way. One change that continues till now has been aggregation. What intially fed the blogosphere was the huge increase in the ease and cheapness of getting information made possible by the Internet. Since then the ’sphere has gotten much, much better at taking information and processing it. This has led directly to the expansion of editorial opportunity. The total bandwidth of the old New York Times/Washington Post era was pitifully small compared to total frontage that moves out of the Internet each day. With the expansion of the market the leads, tips and leaks which would have wound up in the trash, either due to the prevailing editorial policy or lack of space in an earlier day are now finding their way into the myriad spaces of the Internet. The early days of the blogosphere were probably characterized by information ‘push’. Now we are going to start seeing demand ‘pull’. That’s already happening with outfits like Big Journalism and in the case of the DOJ Black Panther case, with Pajamas Media.

That information space is now exceedingly complex. Simple typologies are hard to construct on the basis of mere scale. In terms of audience reach the difference between a mega-blog like Instapundit and a small newspaper are not that great. Nor is function a determinative factor. How exactly would one compare an outfit like Pajamas Media or the Huffington Post to Real Clear Politics? The role of individual bloggers seems maddeningly complex. Writers despite their differences in readership, aggregation strategy and subject matter seem comparable only in their ability to generate a narrative. The same person can be differentially important depending on which hat he wears.

Jake Tapper is arguably more influential as a blogger than as a straight journalist as is Andrew Bolt of Australia. The ability to mint a meme appears to be the distinguishing feature; the capacity to start something that gets picked up and spreads is the single thing that seems to matter. Michael Yon can get the attention of Stanley McChrystal and Perez Hilton can invite the interest of the district attorney, on himself alas, even though their styles, frequency of posting and subject have nothing whatsoever in common. But they can make things happen. Another thing that has changed is depth. There are specialist sites which focus on law, technology, regional studies, etc whose expertise is far and away deeper than the ‘desks’ at the old-style newspapers and yet are just as accessible as them. Something like City Journal can produce prose and research equal anything the old media ever created. Indeed the fate of old journalism is not to be superseded so much as swallowed. The gatekeepers are failing at least in part because their gates have been designed on far too small a scale.

Recently I was on IM with the editor of a well-known new media outlet and discovered that he had a PhD in computer science. It was strangely appropriate. Perhaps the ability to understand and manage information flows will become a much more important qualification for an editor than a knowledge of style and usage. Journalism has become a victim of the information torrent. Editors of the future, if they still exist, will be graduated from Carnegie Mellon, Caltech or MIT rather than the Columbia School of Journalism. The journalists themselves I think, will be replaced by what may be called embedded sensors in place. The age of scribbler is over and the age of the literate practitioner and whistle blower has just begun. Interior debates within the industry, the professions and government will soon become the primary source of news. The primary challenge of reporting in the future will be to find entree into a circle to which one does not belong in order to write a story as an outsider. Absent that the insiders will generate the story on their own.

That suggests the primary qualification of journalism will soon be, if isn’t already, the power of the reporter’s reputation. Right now reputation is derived in part from who he works for. In the future it will be largely correlated with who he is. This further suggests that no two ‘journalists’ — if the phrase may still be used — are going be funded or ‘employed’ in quite the same way. Each writer will find himself supported by a combination of patronage from readers, fees from publication, advertising revenues and his own day job earnings and consulting. He will be his own brand. Perhaps no one, except a very few, will ‘work full-time’ for a newspaper any more in the coming decades. Strangely this may be a harbinger of the general state of affairs. Individuals will still work for companies, but maybe they will be less defined by them than in the past. If so, one of the hardest things to do in the near future — and not just for journalists — will be write an old style resume. Over the last few years I’ve been struck by the immense variety and range of activities that apparently successful people are able to engage in. To the question ‘what do you do?’ the answers are becoming exceedingly complex, and not because people are being coy: it is just because they working for themselves and for things they believe in. The impact of the information revolution on our occupations is just beginning.

In retrospect, starting the Belmont Club changed my life and though at first I was at first tempted to believe that it was singular or perhaps a rare experience, I am increasingly convinced that it was typical; that hundreds of thousands of people who lived the last ten years can say the same thing. Indeed one of the reasons it has experienced a measure of success is probably because many of its readers, without quite thinking about it recognize in its voice something of an echo of their own experience. The next ten years are going to be full of uncertainty yet laden with exhilaration: the best of times and the worst of them. And most of the both still to come. “Remember what Bilbo used to say: It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

JournoList-from Big Journalism


Journalists love whistleblowers. Just not when the whistle is blown on them.
Journalists love transparency. As long as they’re not the ones being exposed.
No steadfast journalism rule is unbendable when it comes to justifying and protecting the racket that is modern journalism, specifically, political journalism in the United States today. The ends justify the means for the Democrat Media Complex. They lie when they claim to be objective. They lie when they claim to be unbiased, because these so called “truth seekers” are guilty of engaging in open political warfare. And when the whistle is blown, they simply double down. “Journolist” — like Media Matters, but more insidious, if that’s possible — is an attempt to put the genie back in the bottle, technology and “the masses” uncovered the conspiracy:

Talk radio and the Internet have allowed outsiders the ability to challenge a multiple generational shift from journalism being about the story, to journalism being crafted toward a partisan end. From Newsweek killing the Lewinsky story to the Swift Boat veterans (until the undermedia pressure got too big) to the Dan Rather implosion to the open attempt to keep the Al Gore masseuse story under wraps to the John Edwards/Rielle Hunter debacle to the Van Jones admission of missing the story to the networks ignoring the ACORN video footage to the media playing up trumped up charges of racism in the Tea Party — while ignoring exculpatory evidence — to the mother of all media-as-political weaponry: the non-vetting of candidate Obama, the mainstream media has shown that it is in an ideological death spiral. And the ground is right here.

More

Here is a related article

Here's another article worth a look

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

For True Believers of Global Warming


1. Your weight should be at the low end of normal, indicating that you are not overconsuming the products of agriculture.

2. You should not engage in vigorous physical exercise, as this will increase your caloric requirements. You may do simple weight-lifting or calisthenics to keep in shape. Check how many calories per hour are burned and choose a form of exercise that burns as few calories as possible.

3. Free time should be spent sitting or lying still without using electricity. Don't run the television or music playing device. Reading, done by sunlight is the best way to pass free time. After dark, why not have a pleasant conversation with friends or family? Word games or board games should replace sports or video games.

4. Get up at sunrise. Don't waste the natural light. Try never to turn on the electric lights in your house or workplace. Put compact fluorescent bulbs in all your light fixtures. The glow is so ugly that it will reduce the temptation to turn them on.

5. Restrict your use of transportation. Do not assume that walking or biking is less productive of carbon emissions than using a highly efficient small car. Do not go anywhere you don't have to go. When there is no food in the house to make dinner, instead of hopping in the car to go to the grocery store or a restaurant, take it as a cue to fast. As noted above, your weight should be at the low end of normal, and opportunities to reach or stay there should be greeted with a happy spirit.

6. If you have free time, such as a vacation from work, spend it in your home town. Read library books, redo old jigsaw puzzles, meditate, tell stories to your children — the list of activities is endless. Just thinking up more items to put on that list is an activity that could be on the list. Really embrace this new way of life. A deep satisfaction and mental peace can be achieved knowing that you are saving the earth.

Ann Althouse

Monday, July 12, 2010

Anne Wortham-I love this woman


This is Anne Wortham. She is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University
and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University 's Hoover Institution.


She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association.

She has been a John M. Olin Foundation Faculty Fellow, and honored as a Distinguished Alumni of the Year by the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education.

In fall 1988 she was one of a select group of intellectuals who were featured in Bill Moyer's television series, "A World of Ideas." The transcript of her conversation with Moyers has been published in his book, A World of Ideas.

Dr. Wortham is author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness" which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues.

She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality.

Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

This article by her is something of an eye opener from an educated and thinking person.


No He Can't
November, 2008


Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am Black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America .

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America .

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest.. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago , irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States , the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America . Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton , Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness. God Help Us all.






CONFIRMED BY SNOPES http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/awortham.asp
















****************




















"If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and
pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will
hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."
(2 Chronicles 7:14)

Enjoy--from VDH


Free at Last

For any of those who went into a coma around January of last year and just woke up, let me explain this new era after Bush (A.B.), variously known as “this is our moment,” “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” and the era when the “planet healed” and the seas “receded.”

In sum, in the year 2 AB, your fossilized world thankfully no longer quite exists. Global warming is “climate change” and its data is “interpreted” rather than blindly “followed.” Natural calamities like the old Katrina hurricane were really man-caused disasters; and man-caused disasters like the new BP spill and the federal reaction to it were really unpreventable natural disasters.

For more

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Down With Doom


Matt Ridley

When I was a student, in the 1970s, the world was coming to an end. The adults told me so. They said the population explosion was unstoppable, mass famine was imminent, a cancer epidemic caused by chemicals in the environment was beginning, the Sahara desert was advancing by a mile a year, the ice age was retuning, oil was running out, air pollution was choking us and nuclear winter would finish us off. There did not seem to be much point in planning for the future. I remember a fantasy I had - that I would make my way to the Hebrides, off the west coast of Scotland, and live off the land so I could survive these holocausts at least till the cancer got me.

I am not making this up. By the time I was 21 years old I realized that nobody had ever said anything optimistic to me - in a lecture, a television program or even a conversation in a bar - about the future of the planet and its people, at least not that I could recall. Doom was certain.

The next two decades were just as bad: acid rain was going to devastate forests, the loss of the ozone layer was going to fry us, gender-bending chemicals were going to decimate sperm counts, swine flu, bird flu and Ebola virus were going to wipe us all out. In 1992, the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro opened its agenda for the twenty-first century with the words `Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being.'

By then I had begun to notice that this terrible future was not all that bad. In fact every single one of the dooms I had been threatened with had proved either false or exaggerated. The population explosion was slowing down, famine had largely been conquered (except in war-torn tyrannies), India was exporting food, cancer rates were falling not rising (adjusted for age), the Sahel was greening, the climate was warming, oil was abundant, air pollution was falling fast, nuclear disarmament was proceeding apace, forests were thriving, sperm counts had not fallen. And above all, prosperity and freedom were advancing at the expense of poverty and tyranny.

I began to pay attention and a few years ago I started to research a book on the subject. I was astounded by what I discovered. Global per capita income, corrected for inflation, had trebled in my lifetime, life expectancy had increased by one third, child mortality had fallen by two-thirds, the population growth rate had halved. More people had got out of poverty than in all of human history before. When I was born, 36% of Americans had air conditioning. Today 79% of Americans below the poverty line had air conditioning. The emissions of pollutants from a car were down by 98%. The time you had to work on the average wage to buy an hour of artificial light to read by was down from 8 seconds to half a second.

Not only are human beings wealthier, they are also healthier, wiser, happier, more tolerant, less violent, more equal. Check it out - the data is clear. Yet if anything the pessimists had only grown more certain, shrill and apocalyptic. We were facing the `end of nature', the `coming anarchy', a `stolen future', our `final century' and a climate catastrophe. Why, I began to wonder did the failure of previous predictions have so little impact on this litany?

I soon found out. Like others who have tried to draw attention to improving living standards - notably Julian Simon and Bjorn Lomborg - I am beginning to be subjected to a sustained campaign of vilification by the pessimists. They distort my argument, impugn my motives and attack me for saying things I never said. They say I think the world is perfect when I could not be clearer that I advocate progress precisely because we should be ambitious to put right so much that is still wrong. They say that I am a conservative, when it is the reactionary mistrust of change that I am attacking. They say that I am defending the rich, when it is the enrichment of the poor that I argue for. They say that I am complacent, when the opposite is true. I knew this would happen, and I take it as a back-handed compliment, but the ferocity is still startling. They are desperate to shut down the debate rather than have it.

I now see at firsthand how I avoided hearing any good news when I was young. Where are the pressure groups that have an interest in telling the good news? They do not exist. By contrast, the behemoths of bad news, such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and WWF, spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year and doom is their best fund-raiser. Where is the news media's interest in checking out how pessimists' predictions panned out before? There is none. By my count, Lester Brown has now predicted a turning point in the rise of agricultural yields six times since 1974, and been wrong each time. Paul Ehrlich has been predicting mass starvation and mass cancer for 40 years. He still predicts that `the world is coming to a turning point'.

Ah, that phrase again. I call it turning-point-itis. It's rarely far from the lips of the prophets of doom. They are convinced that they stand on the hinge of history, the inflexion point where the roller coaster starts to go downhill. But then I began looking back to see what pessimists said in the past and found the phrase, or an equivalent, being used by in every generation. The cause of their pessimism varied - it was often tinged with eugenics in the early twentieth century, for example - but the certainty that their own generation stood upon the fulcrum of the human story was the same.

I got back to 1830 and still the sentiment was being used. In fact, the poet and historian Thomas Macaulay was already sick of it then: `We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all before us, and with just as much apparent reason.' He continued: `On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us.'

Indeed

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Islam baby saved by Jews


The Palestinian mother of a baby saved by Israelis wants him to get well so that he can kill them.
Haaretz reported, via Elder of Ziyon:

In Sheba’s pediatric hemato-oncology department was Mohammed Abu Mustafa, a four-and-a-half-month-old Palestinian infant. Protruding from his tiny body were pipes attached to big machines. His breathing was labored.

“His days may be numbered. He is suffering from a genetic defect that is causing the failure of his immune system,” said the baby’s mother, Raida, from the Gaza Strip, when she emerged from the isolation room. “I had two daughters in Gaza,” she continued, her black eyes shimmering. “Both died because of immune deficiency. In Gaza I was told all the time that there is no treatment for this and that he is doomed to die. The problem now is how to pay for the [bone marrow] transplant. There is no funding.”

“I got to her after all the attempts to find a donation for the transplant had failed,” [Eldar] relates. “I understood that I was the baby’s last hope, but I didn’t give it much of a chance. At the time, Qassam rockets falling on Sderot opened every newscast. In that situation, I didn’t believe that anyone would be willing to give a shekel for a Palestinian infant.”

He was wrong. Hours after the news item about Mohammed was broadcast, the hospital switchboard was jammed with callers. An Israeli Jew whose son died during his military service donated $55,000, and for the first time the Abu Mustafa family began to feel hopeful. Only then did Eldar grasp the full dramatic potential of the story. He told his editor, Tali Ben Ovadia, that he wanted to continue accompanying the family.

…Nevertheless, this idyllic situation developed into a deep crisis that led to the severance of the relations and what appeared to be the end of the filming. From an innocent conversation about religious holidays, Raida Abu Mustafa launched into a painful monologue about the culture of the shahids – the martyrs – and admitted, during the complex transplant process, that she would like to see her son perpetrate a suicide bombing attack in Jerusalem.

“Jerusalem is ours,” she declared. “We are all for Jerusalem, the whole nation, not just a million, all of us. Do you understand what that means – all of us?”

She also explained to Eldar exactly what she had in mind. “For us, death is a natural thing. We are not frightened of death. From the smallest infant, even smaller than Mohammed, to the oldest person, we will all sacrifice ourselves for the sake of Jerusalem. We feel we have the right to it. You’re free to be angry, so be angry.”

And Eldar was angry. “Then why are you fighting to save your son’s life, if you say that death is a usual thing for your people?” he lashes out in one of the most dramatic moments in the film.

“It is a regular thing,” she smiles at him. “Life is not precious. Life is precious, but not for us. For us, life is nothing, not worth a thing. That is why we have so many suicide bombers. They are not afraid of death. None of us, not even the children, are afraid of death. It is natural for us. After Mohammed gets well, I will certainly want him to be a shahid. If it’s for Jerusalem, then there’s no problem. For you it is hard, I know; with us, there are cries of rejoicing and happiness when someone falls as a shahid. For us a shahid is a tremendous thing.”

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Ayn Rand--America


“I can say—not as a patriotic bromide, but with full knowledge of the necessary metaphysical, epistemological, ethical, political and esthetic roots—that the United States of America is the greatest, the noblest and, in its original founding principles, the only moral country in the history of the world.” – Ayn Rand

Saturday, July 3, 2010

Obama-Socialist or Capitalist?


Is Obama more of a socialist or a capitalist?

Think about that. That I, an American, would ask that of my President. And, of course, not only am I asking that, but millions of other Americans too. And not as a rhetorical question, but legitimately concerned that President Obama wants to destroy our capitalist system.

Our victory over the Soviet Union was a triumph of capitalism vs socialism. As Ayn Rand states:

The moral justification of capitalism does not lie in the altruist claim that it represents the best way to achieve 'the common good'. It is true that capitalism does--if that catch-phrase has any meaning--but this is merely a secondary consequence. The moral justification for capitalism lies in the fact that it is the only system consonant with man's rational nature, that it protects man's survival qua man, and that its ruling principle is: justice.


So if capitalism is the most just form for running society, what does that say about socialism? Socialism is sharing the means of production. At least in theory anyway. As we've learned in the past, the State own the means of production and the people own nothing. The State has the power, and the People are beholden to the State. A capitalist system is the opposite--the State has little power, and the People have more power.

To even ask in today's time, after all the world has been through, which is better, capitalism or socialism, begs for common sense. Time and time again, when countries move toward a free market system (Poland), peoples lives benefit, they get richer. When states move toward a state controlled economy, IE socialism, peoples lives may benefit in the short run, but in the long term, they will become poorer with less freedoms (Venezuela).

It's only a matter of common sense. If I decide to get up at 4 in the morning to deliver papers and make $5, that is money I earned, to be saved or spent as I see fit. If the State usurps its power to take most of my money and to give it to someone that chooses to stay in bed and not work, its pretty simple to see what eventually will happen.

From Karl Marx, the father of communism: "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs". That is the basis of communism. Taking from him who has to give to him who has not.

Sadly, many Americans prefer socialism over capitalism. A vote for the Democratic party is a vote for socialism. In fact capitalism is a word that is not heard very much of today. It's a dirty word. It connotes selfishness, greed and immorality. But the reality is, capitalism is the opposite.

These are troubling times for America and the world. Obama has nationalized the car industry and health care. He desires to take more money that the average American earns, to distribute it as he sees best. Because of that, there's becoming less and less incentive for hard work. We are becoming a weaker nation.

Obama was a parishioner in Jeremiah Wright's church for many years. Hearing hate filled invectives like "God damn America" exposes what Obama's beliefs are. We have a man who is president of the greatest country ever, said that he wants to "fundamentally change America", and that's what he is doing.

And he's destroying this great nation like no other person has been able to in the past.

Does Obama hate America? I think so. If not, he's naive at best.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

A Tiger Woods Story



I apologize to Tiger if he wishes this story not be made public. If he desires that this post be removed, I will comply.

I played golf today at El Dorado Golf Course and I heard this story from a lady who actually witnessed what happened.

It was Tiger's wish that no Press/Newspapers be present. His mother, father, coach (when he was a child) were in attendance. From what I know, it was partly sponsored by Make A Wish Foundation.

Schools in the area selected one child. Each child getting personal instruction from Tiger at the back end of El Dorado's driving range. Also was set up a barbecue to serve food. From my understanding, Tiger spent time with each child, introducing himself by saying, "Hi, I'm Tiger Woods". After eating a hamburger, Tiger went and thanked the cook, saying it was the best burger he ever ate.

It was a dying child's wish to meet Tiger Woods. A helicopter had flown in this child via the Make A Wish Foundation. Tiger spent a half hour, talking alone to the child and his mother (the child was on a gurney). After the visit, the child was taken away in the helicopter.

It was this child's wish to see Tiger. This is what kept him alive. Later that night, he passed away.