Miscellany 41: Observations since March:
Recent Activities; My Alien Implant; The Bloods and the Crips On My Doorstep; Shock Absorbers: One More Icon of the
American System of Waste; The Cost of a Mattress; Bad Peanut Butter Spreads to
the Third World; The Benefit of Exercise; Whites Need Not Apply; Natural Cures
/ Home Remedies; The Rust Destroys the Steel; The Reason for the Obesity
Epidemic?; Rewriting American History; George Bush on Climate Change; Nobody’s
Worth $200 Million; Nooses?; Immigration Finally Hits Home; No Down Payment
Required; US Homes for Illegal Alien Drug Smugglers; The US Home Security
Racket; The Illusionist; The High Cost of Knock-Offs; Free Music; No Respect
for Ahmadinejad; Children Play Indoors Now; Bad Real
Estate Contracts; Whatever Happened to the Greenwich Meridian?; Leprosy
Skyrocketing; Not Invented Here; Avoiding a Humanitarian Disaster in Iraq;
General David Grange on the Iraq War; Bodies Protected, Faces Ravaged; The
Discrediting of Che Guevara; Ann Coulter Interview;
Conservation Will Help? Rubbish!; Tesla, Not Marconi,
Invented Radio; The White Man’s Burden; Georgia Chain Gangs; No One Dresses Up
Anymore; Recent Critiques on Religion; Hyperinflation in the US; Neale Donald Walsch Is from
Spartanburg; Plans for Coal-Fired Plants Dropped; Hal Lindsey’s Prediction
about the Demise of Israel; Blue Jeans Are Farmer’s Pants; Another Case of
Terminal Development; None of the Above: The Democrats Are the Same as the
Republicans; What’s In a Name, Hillary Clinton; The US Border Fence Should Be
Cancelled?
© 2007 Joseph George Caldwell. All rights reserved. Posted at Internet web
sites http://www.foundation.bw and http://www.foundationwebsite.org
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Commentary on recent news, reading and events of personal interest.
Contents
The
Bloods and the Crips On My Doorstep
Shock
Absorbers: One More Icon of the American System of Waste
Bad
Peanut Butter Spreads to the Third World
The
Reason for the Obesity Epidemic?
US
Homes for Illegal Alien Drug Smugglers.
Whatever
Happened to the Greenwich Meridian?
Avoiding
a Humanitarian Disaster in Iraq
General
David Grange on the Iraq War
Bodies
Protected, Faces Ravaged
The
Discrediting of Che Guevara
Conservation
Will Help? Rubbish!
Tesla,
Not Marconi, Invented Radio
Neale
Donald Walsch Is from Spartanburg
Plans
for Coal-Fired Plants Dropped
Hal
Lindsey’s Prediction about the Demise of Israel
Another
Case of Terminal Development
None
of the Above: The Democrats Are the Same as the Republicans
What’s
In a Name, Hillary Clinton
The
US Border Fence Should Be Cancelled?
I have been very busy recently. I am semi-retired at the current stage of my life, and I enjoy spending my spare time writing. Since March, when I wrote the article about my opinion of the new Microsoft Vista operating system, I have not had a chance to write a single word on my personal items of interest. My schedule looks pretty clear now, however, and I am “back in business.”
I have spent most of the past six months consulting on a job
in
A friend of mine visited Roatan,
in the
The worst thing about
Last February, my wife and I took a one-week vacation in the
In 1975, I visited a “blue grotto” outside of
Our flight to
When I awoke the next morning, while showering, I could not
help but notice a large bump on the top of my left forearm. It was slightly itchy, and when I scratched
it while on the flight to DR, I made it bleed slightly. It was a noticeable bump, and I showed it to
my wife. She was quite surprised. A few weeks later, I had a medical exam
(prior to my expected consultancy in
From what I read on alien implants, they are often associated with “missing time.” Interestingly, but not surprisingly, I can’t recall a thing about the night in the motel room.
A neighbor of mine told me recently that she had had a discussion with a Spartanburg Country Sheriff’s deputy, who told her that the Bloods and the Crips gangs were now in our area, and active within a mile of our neighborhood. Why does our government allow this? Why must our neighborhood become an armed camp, simply because our government refuses to take effective action to promote public safety?
I had to buy a new car battery the other day, and noticed a sale on shock absorbers. They were about a hundred dollars a pair. When I was a boy, shock absorbers were repairable. You unscrewed the top and put a new washer inside. The cost was negligible. For the economic elite who run the country, however, this is intolerable. It is far better from the viewpoint of generating wealth for the elite to waste the energy required to replace old shock absorbers with new ones, for $100, than to allow people to rebuild them for $1.00. At some point, perhaps in the 1950s, shock absorbers became throw-away items. Rebuildable ones were no longer sold.
We have two mattresses (plus “box springs / foundations”) in
my home. One, in our guest bedroom, is a
Simmons Beautyrest mattress that we bought about ten
years ago for perhaps two hundred dollars when we owned a condominium in
How things have changed. For the previous mattresses, the foundation is about 8 inches thick and the mattress about 10 inches thick. For today’s mattresses, the foundation is either 5 inches or nine inches thick (it is now just a frame, without box springs), and the mattress may be 12-18 inches thick. Some mattresses come with a “pillow top,” which is a soft pillow-like top a couple of inches thick, and some come with a top layer of moldable plastic foam that reminds me of silly putty or “plasticene” modeling clay. Some even come with inflatable air bags, for which you can adjust the air pressure and firmness. The cost of the mattresses is about $1,000 for standard ones of good quality and up to $3,000 or more for the unusual ones. There were a few models for less, but they were not comfortable.
I find these prices amazing! A standard mattress, in a model that is very comfortable, is a low-tech commodity. It is just some wire surrounded by foam or other padding and cloth. If it cost less than $100 20-40 years ago, with all of the country’s productivity improvements, it should cost substantially less (in current dollars) now – or at least still be a reasonable-cost item. A good color television set cost about $300 10-40 years ago, and now costs less than $100 (recently $88 for a full-size model at WalMart). A good quality mattress was inexpensive 20-40 years ago, and should be even more inexpensive today. It should cost less than $100 today, if things made any sense. Furthermore, our old mattress is over 20 years old, and still in quite good condition – the new mattresses come only with a ten-year warranty, and then only if you purchase both the foundation and the mattress.
So where are they? Where are good quality mattresses for low cost? My wife and I visited four stores on Saturday while shopping for a mattress – a furniture store, Sears, and two “mattress” stores. With the absurd prices of today’s mattresses, it is easy to understand why there are “mattress” stores. The amazing thing is that a good quality mattress, of standard design, can no longer be found for a reasonable price. There is no reason why a low-tech commodity such as a mattress must cost $1,000 or more. The sad thing is that there appears to be no alternative. US retailers are simply not stocking reasonably priced quality mattresses.
After shopping for a few hours, we ended up purchasing a
Stearns and Foster mattress for about $1,000.
It is as comfortable as our old one.
Unfortunately, it is so thick (13 inches, rather than the eight inches
standard in older mattresses) that my wife cannot lift it to make the bed (tuck
in the sheets under the mattress. The
fact that the
This is just one more example of the extreme wastefulness of
(The pricing of today’s mattresses is reminiscent of the
pricing of Polaroid polarized plastic – it cost virtually nothing to produce
very high quality polarized plastic, but the Polaroid company though that it
was a shame to let the public have a good quality product at a reasonable
price, so it introduced impurities into most of the production lot and would
sell the normal, flawless product only at a high price. Good quality mattresses were available at low
cost many years ago, but they are no longer available in the
The
Last year I purchased a pair of polycarbonate sunglasses in
When I was a kid, peanut butter always “separated,” i.e., the peanut oil slowly rose to the top, and it was necessary to stir it from time to time. Then, probably in the 1950s, someone got the bright idea of “hydrogenating” the oil in the peanut butter. Hydrogen gas is bubbled through the oil, and the chemical product that results solidifies at room temperature. This may be very convenient in helping a person to avoid the terrible task of having to stir his peanut butter from time to time, but, unfortunately, hydrogenated vegetable oils are bad for your health – they clog your arteries, they make you very sick, and they kill you.
Of course this doesn’t matter much to
When I started working in
My wife and I always shopped at stores frequented by “expats,” and British and American brands were always available. Jiff, Skippy and Peter Pan (and sometimes Superman) peanut butter, fully hydrogenated, were always on the shelves. But they were substantially more expensive than Black Cat and the other local brands, which outsold them by a large margin. (You have to pay a lot more for the peanut butter that will clog your heart and veins – how do you figure that one out?) You would not believe how large the containers of Black Cat peanut butter were – you could buy it in five-gallon cans!
A few years ago, I was delighted when Smuckers
introduced non-hydrogenated peanut butter, and I have been using it ever
since. On my last trip to
(While in
My friend, Sharon, sent me an e-mail a few days ago, containing a list of tongue-in-cheek “health tips.” Two of the funnier ones were:
“The cardiologist’s diet: If it tastes good, spit it out.”
“Walking can add minutes to your life. This enables you at 85 years old to spend an additional 5 months in a nursing home at $5000 per month.”
One of my sons has a serious back condition. As a youth he suffered from Scheurmann’s disease, in which the spine curves forward. A couple of years ago he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a severe degenerative form of arthritis of the spinal column. He was in great pain, but the physicians would not prescribe opium-based painkillers. Instead, they prescribed ineffective painkillers at the cost of about $1,000 per month.
The prognosis was not good.
His physician told him that he would end up in a wheelchair within a few
years. He might try an operation, but
this might lead to total paralysis. At
work, he was in agony from the pain, breaking out in a cold sweat. For some months, he received disability
payments from his medical insurance through his employer. Eventually, his employer (Intuit) moved his
job function to
With no work and no prospects for work with his painful and
debilitating condition, he applied for Social Security disability. He was denied. I was amazed at this – I had told him that if
anyone deserved Social Security disability, it was he. He was a natural-born
I spoke with my brother-in-law, who knows a lot about such
matters – he is a CPA and his daughter is a social worker (both in
Without support, and with a wife and two children to support, my son’s problems have worsened. He has lost custody of his two children (my grandchildren), has been beat up by the local police while out of his mind on his pain medication, and was illegally – and “mistakenly” thrown in jail for a long weekend. Without income, he is now losing his house. It appears that, as a white male, our “system” has no way of helping him, and is in fact working hard at making his problems infinitely worse.
Home Remedies for Insect Control. Whenever I have a health or insect problem, I try to find a “natural,” environmentally friendly way of addressing it. For example, I have known for many years that if you want to stop ants or cockroaches or other insects from invading your home, simple dust some boric acid powder at the places where they enter (door thresholds, windowsills, wall moldings). The mild acid stings their feet, and they quickly disappear.
I purchased my current home in
Brewer’s Yeast for Ticks and Fleas. If your dog has a tick or flea problem, mix a dose of brewer’s yeast in with his daily meal. It is not totally effective, but it is helpful (I have been told that the ticks don’t like the taste of the blood when the dog eats brewer’s yeast).
The preceding are a few natural cures for environmental problems. I have come across a number of interesting responses to health conditions. There is a tremendous variation in human response to foods and chemicals, and what works for me does not necessarily work for someone else. [By the way, I am not a licensed health-care provider, and I am not making any recommendations for treatment of any kind. I am simply reporting on my own personal experience or opinions and what I have read about a number of problems of personal interest to me. If you have a health problem, consult a licensed health-care practitioner. Do not try any of the remedies suggested below on your own – consult a licensed professional. As the label on one of my vitamin-pill bottles states, after claiming all sorts of health benefits: “These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.” Moreover, my personal experience represents a sample of one, namely, yours truly, and not a “scientifically designed experiment.”]
Sodium Bicarbonate (“Baking Soda”) to Stop Incipient
Colds and Sore Throats. While I was living
in
Frozen-Shoulder Treatment with a Copper
Bracelet. While
in
In a golf shop one day, I noticed a copper bracelet, recommended to alleviate golf aches and pains. I decided to give it a try. After a week, I thought that the pain was lessening. Within six weeks, the pain was gone, and I had regained complete mobility of the arm. After a few weeks, I decided to try to dispense with the bracelet. After about a week, my shoulder started feeling “funny,” and so I put the bracelet on and have worn it ever since.
I told a physician about my experience, and he laughed it
off. My next door neighbor in
(On my physician’s response – don’t trust everything modern science tells you. After many years of mammograms, it was discovered that they had caused more breast cancer than they had helped cure from early identification. My mother recently had a bout with polymyalgia rheumatica. It was totally misdiagnosed, based on standard blood tests, by a licensed physician (in a group practice). After three months of pain she changed physicians. The new physician trusted his judgment more than the blood tests, and agreed that the condition was very likely polymyalgia rheumatica. He began the standard treatment, and she gradually recovered.)
Restless Leg Syndrome. Restless leg syndrome (RLS) is caused by diet, such as consuming monosodium glutamate (MSG), a popular flavor enhancer. In fact, MSG is so notorious as a cause of RLS that RLS used to be called “Chinese Food Syndrome.” Rather than effect a cure by identifying the offending component of one’s diet, the standard approach of modern medicine is to prescribe expensive and dangerous drugs, such as Mirapex (pramipexole).
Potassium Sorbate Reaction. Potassium sorbate, a common preservative in many soft drinks, fruit juices and mixers, can cause severe reactions, ranging from chest pain and difficulty in breathing to death. If you ever have this sort of reaction after drinking apple juice, wine coolers, daiquiris, or piña coladas, start reading ingredient labels.
Garlic and Mosquitoes. Some people attract mosquitoes, and some people don’t. If you are one of the latter, then eating a clove of raw garlic each day can effectively reduce your attractiveness to mosquitoes. The quinine in tonic water (quinine water, the mixer for gin-and-tonic) is also helpful in reducing susceptibility to malaria.
Chocolate and Headaches; Potassium Metabisulfite and Headaches. Severe headaches can be caused by chocolate and potassium metabisulfite (a preservative added to many wines). Reducing chocolate intake and using wines having no sulfites added (or treated only with sulfur dioxide) can eliminate these headaches.
For me, the headache from wine starts the following day about midmorning, and it lasts for two days. One glass of wine is all it takes. The headache is not severe, but it is sufficient to put a real damper on things. It is always behind my right eye. The headache is something to be avoided. Here are some of the things that can be done. (1) Don’t drink any wine (not a very good solution). (2) Only drink wine that is advertised as “No sulfites added”; the variety of such wines is quite limited and they are often expensive, so this is also not a good solution; (3) While in countries such as Australia, that produce lots of good wine without potassium metabisulfite, drink up!; (4) Add a capful of hydrogen peroxide to a glass of wine, just before drinking it; (5) Use wines that have high alcohol content, such as 14 percent (these wines need less preservatives); (6) Drink a large glass of water before retiring at night; (7) If a wine tastes harsh, don’t drink it; (8) Try carbonated wines such as champagne (they seem to give me fewer headaches); (9) Drink wine only occasionally, such as when dining out (the preservative seems to be cumulative – if I drink only one glass every few weeks, I rarely get a headache from the wine).
From my experience, it seems that my headaches are not caused by the fusil oil in wine.
Some beers in developing countries give me the same headache as I get with wine. I have been told that it is because of formaldehyde. I never get headaches from drinking beers made in compliance with the German Reinheitsbegot (Purity Law), such as all German beers and many other beers from Europe (e.g., Holland, Austria, Czech Republic).
Caffeine and Heart Palpitations. Caffeinated soft drinks and tea can cause heart palpitations. (These can last all night long and through much of the next day.)
Soft Drinks and Halitosis. Drinking several Coca Colas a day over an extended period can cause severe chronic halitosis (“bad breath”).
Leg Cramps. If
the level of potassium in your body is too low or too high, you can develop
severe leg cramps. There is a myth that
if you experience leg cramps while running, then your potassium level may be
too low, and eating bananas may help.
This is not correct. If the
potassium level is either too low or
too high, cramps may result. It may be
that eating bananas may cause
cramps. I discovered this the hard
way. When I was younger, I used to jog about
twenty minutes each day (and later, every other day) for one or two months each
year. While living in
Other cures for leg cramps at night are to drink a large glass of water before going to bed, and make sure that your legs stay warm (i.e., under the sheets / blankets). The customary practice of stretching before running does not work for me to prevent cramping.
Menière’s Syndrome. I used to suffer from Menière’s syndrome. Menière’s syndrome is the following three symptoms, with unknown etiology: (1) tinnitus (noise in your ear(s) similar to the noise of a conch shell); (2) immediate and severe attacks of vertigo (intense dizziness, to the point where you may fall over and become very nauseous, to the point of vomiting); (3) deafness, which may be temporary or permanent. It turns out the if you dramatically reduce your salt intake, you may be able to reduce the severity and frequency of the attacks. This worked rather well, but not perfectly, for me. (My attacks stopped completely only after my affected (left) ear went stone deaf (except for the constant loud tinnitus, which continues unabated.)
Periodontal Disease. Gingivitis and pyorrhea (now called periodontal disease) can be slowed or stopped by use of baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), in brushing, flossing, or “Water-Piking.”
Coffee and Colitis. I know from personal experience that coffee
(not caffeine – coffee) can cause colitis.
I never drank coffee until I did some work in
After I returned to the
During my visit to
After a few years, the problem was more than simple diarrhea. I would wake up at about three in the morning with a pain in my colon. Sometimes it was mild. Sometimes it hurt so that I would stand up beside the bed for a while. I had a colonoscopy, and got a clean bill of health (this was many years before Katie Couric, and the cost was just a few hundred dollars – now that colonoscopy is popular, this diagnostic procedure costs thousands of dollars). The severity of the problem varied from gone to irritating, but never went away for good.
Seventeen years later, in 1992, my wife and I were visiting
my mother and father in
I still enjoy coffee, but drink a cup only every few days.
Effective Treatment of Osteoarthritis. During my college years, I ran cross-country for one year. I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t very good at it. At Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), sports were not emphasized, however, so the competition was not very strong and I came in fifth on the team and was awarded a varsity “letter” (and a very nice wool sweater to wear it on) at the end of the year. I would have continued in the program, but family responsibilities prevented it. (Carnegie Tech used to be a football powerhouse – it has a winning average against Notre Dame, back in the days when Notre Dame was also a football powerhouse.)
Through the rest of my life, I continue to run, to keep in shape. (I say “run,” but “jog” is more descriptive – I don’t run fast.) Running is rather boring, however, and I did it for about six weeks each spring. In 1997, at age 55, when I was living in Charlotte, NC, I would wake up in about three o’clock at night with aching hips, and so I started running only every other day. That worked well.
I continued this regimen until 2000, when I was living in
About a year ago, I started having pain in my hips every
night. It would start – a dull and
increasing ache – about the middle of the night (
I had tried glucosamine and chondroitin compounds (sulfate / hydrochloride) for a
frozen shoulder in
I have a very large library – thousands of books and documents, many of which I have not read. In looking through the “health” section of my library this morning, I noticed the book, The Arthritis Cure, by Jason Theodosakis, Brenda Adderly and Barry Fox (St. Martin’s Press, 1997). I leafed through it and saw that it promoted the use of glucosamine and chondroitin (in various forms) to cure osteoarthritis. Here is a paragraph from the introduction by Amal Das:
“Excited to learn about the European success with glucosamine and chrondroitin sulfate, I cautiously began to give them to my patients who were not able to tolerate nonsteroidal antiinflammatory medications because of their side effects. [JGC Note: One of these products, ibuprofen, almost killed my wife – she is now in 4th stage renal disease (the stage just before you require kidney dialysis).] These were patients who had few treatment alternatives. One patient with chronic pain in her hip, whose X rays demonstrated severe osteoarthritis, was contemplating hip replacement surgery. After taking glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, her pain and disability had decreased significantly and she as yet has not required the surgery. Other patients suffering from severe osteoarthritis reported similar results, so I began to expand the indications of these two substances. I've been using glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate for two years now. My patients and I are gratified at the positive results.
“American physicians have been criticized for their failure
to use glucosamine and chondroitin
sulfates. But American physicians are reluctant to use anything not proven
effective in American studies, and the European data has not yet been
duplicated in the
I am convinced that the glucosamine / chondrotin cured my hip problem. (Perhaps the MSM helped – I have no way of knowing.) The pain was sufficiently annoying that eventually I suspect that I would have asked my doctor about treatment, which would doubtless have meant hip-joint replacement. A friend of mine, John, had his joints replaced a few years ago. After a couple of years, one pulled out, and he had to have the operation repeated. The second one also pulled out after a year or so. The hip-joint-replacement operation caused him much trouble and pain. I am very pleased that I have been able to solve my hip problem with a simple “home remedy.” This past weekend I started jogging again in the morning. So far, so good – no pain or discomfort at all.
(By the way, before the advent of chondrotin and glucosamine, a number of books had been written on “home-remedy” treatment of arthritis. Three of these are Folk Medicine by D. C Jarvis (Fawcett / Crest, 1958), Arthritis and Fold Medicine by D. C. Jarvis (Fawcett / Crest, 1960) and There Is a Cure for Arthritis by Paavo O. Airolo (Parker Publishing Company, 1968). These books contain useful tips, but it seems clear that chondroitin and glucosamine are far more effective than other remedies. From personal experience, I know that the “honey and vinegar” regimen is not effective for everyone. I am an “acidic”-type person. My stomach produces much hydrochloric acid. I don’t need any more acid. If I use much lemon juice in iced tea, it causes me problems. The thing that is not generally realized is that there is a wide range of variation in response to foods and chemicals by human beings. What may work well for one type (e.g., an “acidic” type person, such as I) does not necessarily work well for another. Vinegar and honey do little for me, evidently because I am “acidic.” Baking soda works wonders for me, for example, but may not work well for some (“basic”) people.)
Toenail Fungus. Rigorous hygiene (clean socks every day, or more frequently in humid conditions; no shoes and socks at all when practical; vigorous brushing of toes with soap and a nail-brush), cut back infected toenail and treat daily with a fungicide (e.g., miconazole nitrate (e.g., Micatin), tolnaftate (e.g., Tinactin), clotrimazole (e.g., Lotrimin)).
Be Wary of Hydrocortisone. Before using any remedy, it is important to
know what your problem is. A medical
doctor is your best source for information, but, they are not always right and
they are not always available (e.g., if you are traveling in
By the way, a safer and much more effective treatment (than hydrocortisone) for insect bites is benzocaine (e.g., SolarCaine, Lanacane).
Niacin for Healthy Skin. When I had my first attack of Menière’s syndrome in 1967, the doctor prescribed nicotinic acid, or niacin (vitamin B3). Niacin is a “vasodilator” – it makes your capillaries expand. For several minutes, you “flush” – you turn bright red and feel very itchy perhaps just on your face and perhaps all over your body. Menière’s syndrome is an inner-ear problem, and the theory is that disturbing the inner ear with niacin might help. It turns out that the niacin did not help my Menière’s syndrome at all, but I certainly remembered its flushing effect. It is best not to take much niacin, or for an extended period of time (e.g., more than a few days), since it is toxic and may damage the liver.
A number of years later, I read where niacin is very effective in repairing skin damage from overexposure to sun. The treatment is to take it for a number of days, and look each day for “patterns” in the red flush that the niacin causes. It is said that you can see the pattern of severe sunburn from decades earlier, still “memorized by,” or “imprinted on,” or “burned into” your skin. After several days, the patterns gradually disappear, at which point your skin is “repaired.” I take niacin for several days each year. My skin is in very good shape. (By the way, if you wish to take niacin for skin treatment, make sure you buy the “flushing” kind, not the non-flushing (“controlled release” or “timed release” or “slow release”) kind. Also, it appears to have a cumulative effect. When I have not taken it for a while, I can take up to half a pill or a whole pill (where 1 pill = 250 mg). After a few days, a quarter-tablet is sufficient to cause a flush. I have never taken it for more than a week, once every six months or year.)
While my brother was visiting me in
Petroleum Jelly and Mineral Oil for Dry Skin. If you move to a dry climate, or to a very cold one in winter (where home heating will cause the relative humidity to be low), the skin on your lips, elbows, heels and soles may dry and crack. A very effective treatment is petroleum jelly. After several days of treatment, the problem is gone. If you have dry skin all over, petroleum jelly is not a very good solution, because it is so greasy. I have found that mineral oil works better in this case. Even regular mineral oil (the same as is used as a stool softener) is rather greasy, but Johnson’s Baby Oil is very light and pleasant to use. If your dry skin is cracked and sore in places, use a “triple antibiotic” ointment for a few days, to clear up possible infection.
For a while, I used Vaseline Intensive Care hand and body lotion for my hands, every time after washing, to prevent dryness. At some point, I developed an allergy to one of the many chemicals in this product (and similar products, such as Lubriderm) – just touching it to my skin would cause my eyes to itch. I have never had any reaction to petroleum jelly or mineral oil. (It is difficult to determine which of the many chemicals in foods or lotions causes allergic reactions. The list of ingredients of Vaseline Intensive Care Aloe Cool and Fresh Light Moisturizing Lotion, for example, is: water, glycerin, stearic acid, glycol stearate, isopropyl palmitate, petrolatum, aloe barbadensis (aloe vera) leaf juice, cucumis sativus (cucumber) extract, helianthus heliuus (sunflower) seed oil or glycine soya (soybean) oil, glycine soya (soybean) sterol, sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, tocopheryl acetate (vitamin E acetate), retinyl palmitate (vitamin A palmitate), sodium acrylate/acryloyldimethyl taurate copolymer, dimethicone, glyceryl stearate, cetyl alcohol, lecithin, mineral water, sodium PCA, potassium lactate, lactic acid, collagen amino acids, urea, fragrance, triethanolamine, DMDM hydantoin, iodopropynyl butylcarbamate, disodium EDTA, titanium dioxide (Cl 77891). The list of ingredients for Lubriderm Daily Moisture Lotion for Normal to Dry Skin Fragrance Fee is: water, mineral oil, petrolatum, sorbitol solution, stearic acid, lanolin, lanolin alcohol, cetyl alcohol, glyceryl stearate / PEG-100 stearate, triethanolamine, dimethicone, propylene glycol, microcrystalline wax, tri (PPG-3) myristyl ether) citrate, disodim EDTA, methylparaben, ethylparaben, propylparaben, xanthan gum, butylparaben, and methyldibromo glutaronitrile. With so many similar compounds in both products, it is not possible to deduce which one of them is causing the problem.)
In addition to using mineral oil to treat dry skin dryness, make sure you are not exacerbating the problem with harsh bath soaps. Try using mild ones containing few chemical additives, such as Ivory or Johnson’s Baby Soap.
Humidifier and Air Purifiers to Alleviate Dryness and Allergies. In dry climates (or in cold climates during winter, when the home heating lowers the relative humidity), you may find your nasal passages drying out, making you much more susceptible to sore throats. Installing a humidifier on your furnace will help tremendously. If this is not possible (e.g., in a building using a forced air heating system over which you have no control), then running a humidifier all night long in your bedroom can work wonders. If you suffer from mild allergies that cause nasal “stuffiness,” running an air purifier all night long in your bedroom can also help a lot.
Hair Dressing. Johnson’s Baby Oil. Strong solution of fermented (black) tea (e.g., lapsang oolong) applied topically (contains tannin) for dressing (will shade white hair slightly blonde). If you wear white underclothing, then use of this hair dressing, in addition to keeping your hair in place, will allow you to subscribe to the Bible’s admonition to “always wear white, and anoint your head with oil” (Ecclesiastes 9:8)
You Are What You Eat. If you have a mysterious health ailment, there is a very good chance that you have caused it yourself, by ingesting today’s chemical-rich foods. If you wish to try to determine the cause, try switching to an all-organic diet for a few weeks. (Don’t discount the value of medical checkups, but they are much better in identifying signs such as abnormal levels of body chemicals than in identifying the source (cause) of symptoms or signs such as chemical imbalances.) In today’s world, this will mean preparing your meals at home, since you have no control over what a restaurant uses for ingredients. Drink plenty of water. Don’t drink coffee. Drink tea only in moderate amounts. Use garlic (a natural antibiotic) for flavoring, if you like it. If you consume alcohol, limit it to a pint of German beer per day. Avoid foods heavy in fats and oils (e.g., fat-fried foods). Read the labels on everything you eat or drink, and don’t eat or drink anything that sounds synthetic / artificial. If your symptoms disappear, then you have good reason to suspect that it is something that you are eating that is causing your problem.
If the above doesn’t help, then try switching to a vegetarian diet – animal fats are known to be responsible or exacerbate lots of health problems.
Hemorrhoids. Rigorous hygiene and petroleum jelly can be very effective. Hemorrhoids are much more easily prevented than cured. If you eat a lot of animal flesh and fat (which can contribute to hard stools, constipation, straining, and hemmorhoids), try switching to a mainly vegetarian diet, or take psyllium (Metamucil) with meals.
Erectile Dysfunction / Penis Enlargement. I am amazed at how many “spam” e-mails I receive advertising cures for erectile dysfunction (“ED”), or for penis enlargements. These ads are total scams. The problems are real, but there is no need to take expensive drugs such as Viagra or Cialis to treat them. There is a very effective manual-therapy cure for both of these conditions.
My Filipina friend, Anna, once quoted the Filipino saying, “The rust destroys the steel.”
Recently I read three interesting books recently on natural cures and weight loss. They are:
The thesis of the first book is that
When I was a boy, obesity was very rare. It was so rare that if you went to the circus, you would invariably see a “fat lady” on display. There might be a fat child in your school or in your classroom, but obesity was present in a tiny minority of children. Now, you see fat and obese people in large numbers everywhere you go.
Trudeau cites research done by a British physician, Dr. A. T. W. Simeons, and presented in Pounds and Inches: A New Approach to Obesity (available on the internet at http://www.hcgdietinfo.com/Dr-ATW-Simeons-Pounds-and-Inches.htm ). To follow Simeons’ “weight loss cure protocol,” it is necessary to stop eating highly processed and chemically laden food. Today, this is very difficult. Most supermarket foods are both highly processed and chemical-laden. So are most restaurant foods. To follow this regimen, it would be necessary to purchase unprocessed foods and prepare them at home. I tried to follow the prescribed diet for a few days, but it was causing stress for my wife, who prepares all of the meals. I started reading ingredient labels on foods, however, and I was reminded of the massive amounts of synthetic chemicals in our supermarket foods.
In view of the fact that Americans are eating food quite different from that that they “evolved” on, it is not surprising that strange results would occur. Human beings cannot be healthy on unhealthy diets. The diabetes epidemic in American Indians is a stunning example of the damage caused by an unhealthy diet.
By the way, another very interesting book on food is The Food Revolution: How Your Diet Can Help Save Your Life and Our World, by John Robbins (son of the founder of the world’s largest ice-cream company, Baskin and Robbins Ice Cream) (Conan Press, 2001). Also, see his Diet for a New America (Starseed Press, 1998). Since my wife has a weight problem, I have read a number of diet books. If you read only two books on diet / food, Robbins’ are the best ones to read.
I never cease to be amazed at the extent to which the
founders of
On
On
Ogborn was awarded $5 million in punitive damages and just over $1.1 million in compensatory damages, for a total of $6.1 million. Commenting on the award, Juror Kay Parrish told reporters that the award would enable Ogborn to live well the rest of her life and put the incident behind her. “There’s nobody in the world worth $200 million,” she remarked. Amen.
In the news recently, there is a lot of talk about nooses,
and that displaying them represents a racial slur against US blacks, since many
of them were lynched by hanging. This is
something new. In all my life, there was
no connotation at all associated with nooses.
The
I have been writing for a number of years on the fact that
mass immigration is destroying
There are now an estimated 400,000 Mexican immigrants in
I realized that other people were finally beginning to take notice of the mass immigration when my brother in law, who was born here and lived here most of his life, mentioned to me that immigration is all of a sudden a major topic of conversation in his morning coffee klatch.
When I returned from
Yesterday, I purchased some replacement lenses for my
eyeglasses. The salesperson who helped me was born and raised in
In
How things have changed! Evidently, there are now federal programs that allow lower- and middle-income people to purchase homes with no money down. The problem is that many of the people now buying homes are not financially responsible and do not have the financial capacity to carry a home mortgage. In our neighborhood, there has been a number of people who have moved into new homes with no money down, been unable to pay the mortgage, and have lost the homes to foreclosure. In my day, if a person could not save a down payment for a home or a car or an appliance, he could not purchase it. That rational approach seems to have gone the way of the dodo bird. If you have to put a lot of your hard-earned savings into a house as a down payment, you are unlikely to jeopardize it by purchasing a more expensive house than you can afford. Also, if your income is unstable, you may avoid purchasing a home at all. If you can buy a new home no money down, you have no equity in it and will not worry much about losing it.
The no-down-payment phenomenon is evidently not peculiar to
The government has no business passing laws and introducing
regulations or programs that enable unqualified people to move into new homes,
with the resulting loss paid for by the
The
In many cases the foreclosed homes will remain empty, after
the hapless mortgagees are evicted. From the government’s viewpoint, that is
fine. That is in fact exactly what it
wants. It wants these homes to remain
unoccupied, so that it is necessary to build more new ones. At this very moment, the
My wife’s hairdresser had an interesting tale to tell recently. After a lifetime of working and saving, she and her husband were finally able to sell their home of many years for $80,000, and buy the home of their dreams. At the closing, they met the purchaser of their old home. He was a young kid – a Mexican who could barely speak English. When the lawyer asked him what bank he would be using for the financing, the kid blurted out “No bank, no bank!” He then pulled a wad of 100-dollar bills from his pocked and counted out $80,000 in cash.
It is a sad day for America when the government allows thousands of illegal aliens, drug dealers and other criminals into the country, and provides them with the opportunities and the wherewithal to immediately acquire what honest, hardworking Americans must earn with a lifetime of hard work.
When my wife and I lived in
When I was young, personal security was not a concern in
most of the
Because of the collapse of personal security, when we
returned to the
While watching CNN En Español in
In my e-mail “spam” (junk mail)
every day, I receive many ads for “knock-offs” – illegal copies of items such
as medical pills, computer software, and expensive watches. What really amazes me is the high cost of these
items. From my overseas travels, I have
a good idea of what pirated copies are worth, and it is not very much. You can by any of a number of Rolex models,
or any other famous luxury brand of watch, on the street in
The curious thing is that the e-mail ads that I receive
advertise $1,000 software packages for, say, $69, and $5,000 watches for, say
$65. These prices for knock-offs are
ridiculously high. Why pay $69 for a
knock-off software package that sells for $1, or $65 for a knock-off designer watch
that sells for $10? Once you have
decided to break the law or ignore a copyright owner’s suggested price, why pay
more than you have to? Why pay $65 for a
$1,000 software knock-off, when you can get it for $1? The crime is the same. As they say, if you are going to swallow a
frog, make it a big one. (By the way,
buying knock-offs in many places is perfectly legal, as long as you do not
bring them to the
As you know, I offer (and always have) all of my recordings free of charge, on the Foundation website. I was pleasantly surprised to read last week in Time magazine (“Radical Remix,” October 15, 2007) that a popular band [by name of Radiohead – I’ve never heard of them, but, on the other hand, they’ve probably never heard of me either] has now decided to offer its new recording release free of charge. Here are some clips from the article:
“While a deluxe boxed-set version [of the new album, In Rainbows] for superfans is available for $80, the downloadable album’s 10 songs have no price. Drop them into the online checkout basket, and the register says ‘It’s up to you.’ Click again, and the word’s ‘It’s really up to you’ appear – and really, it is. In Rainbows is the first major release whose price is set by you. And it’s perfectly acceptable to pay zero.”
“Many record-company lifers were stung by the rejection of a band on a decade-long run of excellence, but the real damage could stem less from Radiohead’s determination to go it alone than from its ‘stadium sound at museum pricing’ scheme. ‘That’s the interesting part of all this,’ says an American hip-hop producer. ‘Radiohead is the best band in the world. If you can pay whatever you want for music by the best band in the world, why would you pay $13 or 99 cents for music by somebody less talented?’”
In my opinion, music, like water, should be free. I am pleased that at least some part of the world is returning to this paradigm.
I was disappointed at the lack of respect shown by
When I was a child, parents “put their children out to play” each day. We were rarely ever allowed inside each other’s homes, except for special occasions such as birthday parties. We were never bored. We always had a lot to do. Games to play, walks to take, fields to romp in, woods to play in, places to visit, things to talk about. We played many games on our paved street, including “Red Rover,” hopscotch, skip rope, and India-rubber ball game (“Ordinary, moving, …), and hockey (in the street on the hard-packed snow under the streetlamp in wintertime). We had snowball fights. We played “potsies” (a game of marbles), and “kick the can” (a form of hide-and-seek). We traded milk bottle tops, comic books, hockey cards and Nabisco Shredded Wheat Straight Arrow Injun-uity cards. We collected stamps and matchbook covers. We played “commandos” with wooden rifles that we made by ourselves. We caught garter snakes, leopard frogs, monarch butterflies, bees and fireflies. We picked wild raspberries, strawberries, grapes and blueberries, and cracked hickory nuts. We played “knockers” with chestnuts (there were still lots of chestnut trees then – they hadn’t all died.). Sometimes, we built soap-box derbies and tree-houses in summer and igloos in winter. We walked downtown to the movies, the municipal park or the library. On rainy days, we read, made puzzles, played with cars, tin soldiers, Chinese checkers, or Battleships. In later years, we rode bicycles, and our horizons expanded immensely.
Now, it seems, children spend much of their time indoors, and they are often bored. “What’s to do?” is often heard. How sad. Why?
We often got dirty, and this didn’t seem to hurt us a bit. In fact, I read recently where today’s children are raised in such aseptic environments that they do not have as strong immune systems as the children of previous generations.
Have you ever read a “standard” real-estate agreement of purchase and sale? If you have, you will see that it is filled with draconian clauses that are obscenely in favor of the real-estate agent or the buyer, and very detrimental to your interests. This is very strange, inasmuch as it is you who is paying the sales commission.
The worst clauses are those that require you to pay a massive amount of money to correct any problems that may be identified (e.g., through inspections), after you list the house with the broker. For example, you may be asked to agree to pay up to three percent or five percent or ten percent of the listing value to repair a roof, or termite damage, or anything else that is found to be wrong. These costs can easily run to many thousands of dollars. The problem is that if you do not pay, then you are in violation of the contract and the realtor is entitled to his fee, whether the house is sold or not.
I have bought and sold a number of homes in my lifetime, and it seems that these noxious clauses are in every “standard contract.” I immediately strike them out, at which point the real-estate agent complains that this is simply a standard contract approved by the local real-estate board, and I am being unreasonable. I insist, and in most cases they agree to strike all of the offending clauses – something is better than nothing. If they do not, I simply find another listing agent (most real-estate brokers work through multiple listing services, and so it does not matter much who you list with).
What I request in the contract is that if problems are detected, then I have the option of fixing them or not, and if I do not, the buyer is buying the home in full knowledge of the problem. If the problem is serious, then I have the option of lowering the price, if I choose. If the problem must be fixed in order for the house to be legally sold (e.g., a termite infestation), and I do not wish to spend the money to address the issue, then I may terminate the listing contract. In other words, I am in complete control of my money throughout the transaction. There is no possibility that the broker may force me to spend a large amount of money just to keep his deal alive.
When I was a child, we were taught that the meridian passing
through
Allowing the Prime Meridian to be called the Greenwich Meridian could never be allowed to continue in today’s politically correct world, in which all ethnicities are equal. It would be a serious ethnic slight to all of the other peoples of the world to suggest that Greenwich, England, was of special significance relative to the science of geography. We wouldn’t want them to feel bad, would we, now?
Lots
of words are being replaced today. When
I was a child, the words, idiot, moron, imbecile and genius all had specific
meanings, defined in terms of intelligence quotient. If you look these terms up in the American
Heritage Dictionary today, you will find the note: “The term belongs to a
classification system no longer in use and is now considered offensive.” When I was a child, you could call a spade a
spade. If someone was an idiot, we
called him an idiot.
Postman / postal worker; fireman / firefighter; man-month / person month; chairman / chairperson; rape / sexual assault; rapeseed oil / canola oil, he / he or she. When will it ever end?
Now that the
For many years, British police used DNA testing in their
forensic investigations. After a long
delay, US police finally adopted this useful technique. Why were
For many decades, the Russians have been using a stretching
device to lengthen a leg that was shorter than the other, or to lengthen two
legs that were extremely short.
The French (Michelin Comapny)
introduced radial tires several decades ago.
Glucosamine and chondroitin compounds were used in
Osteopathic medicine (American Heritage Dictionary
definition: A system of medicine based on the theory that disturbances in the musculoskeletal system affect other bodily parts, causing
many disorders that can be corrected by various manipulative techniques in
conjunction with conventional medical, surgical, pharmacological, and other
therapeutic procedures.) has been used in Britain for decades, and is of proven
worth. The
The “not-invented-here” complex is alive and well in the
On the news, you hear it said a lot that if the
The
On the
As quickly as we kill an insurgent, another rises to take his place. The supply of enemy combatants is cheap and inexhaustible. The cost of our troops is about three quarters of a million dollars per soldier per year. The medical cost of treating a soldier wounded by a roadside bomb (“improvised explosive device”) can easily run to more than a million dollars, and his future care to millions more. There is no way in the world that we can win this war, the way that we are fighting it. General Grange should have said so, instead of waffling to the point of lying.
As I have written before, Machiavelli
long ago identified three ways to administer a conquered people: (1) annihilate
them; (2) move in among them in such large numbers as to overwhelm them, as the
Europeans did with the North American Indians several centuries ago and China
is now doing in Tibet; (3) set up a puppet ruler who is beholden to you. The
You see a lot of reports these days about the terrible face
wounds being received by our combat troops in
This is a terrible situation. But it is unnecessary. And unnatural. Nature does not provide its creatures with an unusually high degree of protection in one area. It “balances” the risk.
There are worse things than death – we are all going to die, it is simply a matter of when. Going to war and dying a hero is one fate. Returning from battle alive to face a lifetime as a hideous, disfigured monster is another. The soldier, his family, and his country would be better off emotionally if he were dead, but the medical profession has a strong financial interest in keeping him alive and treating him to the cost of millions of dollars.
The story goes that Henry Ford sent a team of investigators
to junk yards across
The American fighting man’s body armor is no longer in balance. A very large proportion of the total weight of his body armor is allocated to his chest. The speed with which soldiers are given effective medical care has increased dramatically. The result is a large number of surviving veterans return home alive with horrific head and face wounds, eye damage, brain damage, ear damage and missing limbs. Unless and until a means is found to provide his head, face and limbs with protection comparable to his chest, the weight of the chest armor should be reduced. The weight of present chest armor is very substantial, to the point where it interferes significantly with the soldier’s mobility. The weight of his body armor should be reduced. In fact some consideration might be given to allowing the soldier an option of whether he wishes to use it at all.
It is well known that from the enemy’s viewpoint a wounded combatant is worth far more than a killed one, because of the support needed to care for him. A reduction in chest armor would benefit the commander as well as the soldier. An “operations research” study of body armor would surely show that it is not desirable, given any reasonable objective function (and keeping a soldier alive no matter what his condition is not a reasonable objective function).
All of a sudden, there is a lot of attention being given to Ernesto
“Che” Guevara, pointing out that he was a ruthless
killer. See, e.g., the
I have never had respect for Guevara – not because he executed a lot of people, but because of his intellectual inconsistency / superficiality. Many years ago, I read his book, Guerrilla Warfare (University of Nebraska Press, 1985). Unlike profound thinkers, Guevara would formulate a theory (of guerilla warfare) based on an experience and then, some time later, based on another experience, he would revise it and formulate another theory. He deserves no respect from an intellectual viewpoint, and so it is not surprising to me that he is now being discredited from a moral viewpoint as well.
I caught the tail end of an interview between Danny Deutsch
and Ann Coulter on
The incredible thing is that his view was exactly the opposite – that Jews do not need to be “perfected” at all. He was just as assertive in his viewpoint as she was in hers. He was just as dogmatic as she was. His position was exactly as extreme (and arbitrary) as hers, and yet he was trying to imply that it was she who was the bigot, not he.
This sort of behavior is typical of Jewry. The Jews can tell their daughters not to date
or marry gentiles (“goyim”), and they claim that they are simply practicing
their religion. They refuse Israeli citizenship
to nonJews, and yet demand that the
More than any other single group, it is Jewish interests (the
ADL, along with Senator Edward M. Kennedy) who pressed for passage of the
Immigration Act of 1965, which has flooded the US with people from all cultures
and as a result has destroyed the hegemony of European culture in the US and a
massive amount of American land (150 million acres of natural land has been
destroyed – converted to roads, parking lots, homes, buildings, and other
infrastructure – since passage of that Act, to make room for immigrants). Using racial, ethnic and religious
discrimination to preserve and promote Jewish culture and build up the Jewish
state of
It is time for people who have an interest in preserving
what is left of European culture in the
A few weeks ago on the Today show, a scientist was presenting his views on the destruction of the planet by industrial society. Incredibly, he stated that conservation would help. Conservation will not help at all. What is the point to conserving by 10 percent, when the global population increases by that amount in seven years?
In a recent issue, The Economist stated that Marconi invented the radio. This is an egregious falsehood. Radio was invented and demonstrated by Nicola Tesla several years before Marconi was awarded a patent for it. Marconi did not conceive or invent radio at all. He saw radio demonstrated by Tesla, and then proceeded to construct his own radio and apply for a patent for it.
I sent an e-mail to The Economist requesting that they correct this error, but they did not respond.
A few months ago, radio personality Don Imus
was fired by MS-NBC for referring to the
Imus sued MS-NBC for damages and won, since his contract required him to be deliberately outrageous and provocative.
Immediately after this flap, many people pointed out that black Rap music uses this language all of the time – even in published CD recordings – and no public outrage is heard whatsoever. So why was there such an outrage over Imus’ use of the term?
As I have commented on numerous occasions, only whites can
be racist, and so this seemingly strange inconsistency is explained. A totally different standard of morality is
applied by
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a known libertine, but this was
never publicly discussed in the mass media.
If a white
The point that seems not to be recognized by non-European cultures is that there are tremendous benefits to be realized by adhering to strict discipline and moral actions. It is not for nothing that European culture rules the world. From the viewpoint of running empires, whether political or financial, white morality is significantly superior to the alternatives.
When, as a boy, our family drove through
While waiting in line for a visa in
It appears that no one dresses up anymore. Not in restaurants, not in airplanes, and not even in the workplace.
I spent this past weekend at
[Beginning of excerpt.]
Ascots, the narrow neckbands with pointed wings, once were
reserved for proper morning dress of
Any man knows that a necktie can be constricting, like wearing a barber's cape through several meetings, a long lunch and two commutes. But an ascot gives open-collar freedom and a not-so-subtle look of individuality
In this flip-flop generation, dress codes for men – pre-ripped jeans with perfectly distressed creases that cost $300 but look like a rummage sale find – are contrived and conformist. And that's not saying anything about Air Jordans and boxy, tent-like white T-shirts.
The Southern dress code – khaki pants, white collared shirt, blue blazer and, of course, boat shoes – is even more uniforming. Though a uniform does seem a better choice than, say, going to the post office in Nike sneakers, Adidas ankle socks, carpenter Jean shorts and a Vans T-shirt.
Almost out of necessity, Bill Stubbs, a retired commercial real estate agent, chose the ascot look about five years ago.
‘I lost 90 pounds and I had nothing in my closet that fit at all," he said. "Literally, I had to rebuild my wardrobe, so I wanted to do something different."
Stubbs, 59, who doesn't wear ascots until the temperature dips below 80 degrees, pairs his with blazers and crew neck sweaters. He is fond of the traditional ascot: a scarf knotted around the neck, which invokes an image of aviators coolly navigating a high-altitude dogfight.
Ascots, as Stubbs pointed out, are for men who aren't afraid of widening their fashion palate. A lot of men in this jeans and T-shirt fashion era – and women, for that matter – might see the ascot and men's neckwear as effeminate. "Which is utterly ridiculous," Stubbs said.
Though not endorsed in Esquire's latest Big Black Book volume, men who know fashion – like Andre 3000, a former Esquire best-dressed man honoree – are comfortable in an ascot.
Ascots are beholden to an age when people rarely went out except in their Sunday best.
"I'm still young enough to remember when people got dressed up for ball games and to get on airplanes," said Sewell, 40, who wore a goldfish ascot to the Oct. 4 University of South Carolina-Kentucky game.
"Everybody looked good. You should always look your best."
In addition, the ascot is easier to knot than a conventional tie and more of a statement than a bow tie.
It's for a man of indefatigable confidence; a man who doesn't need his wife, girlfriend or mother to dress him; a man who knows what he wants in his outfits.
"I'll do anything not to wear a regular tie," said Sewell, who has been wearing ascots for almost 10 years. "To match a tie with a blazer, that's work."
[End of excerpt.]
I recently completed reading Christopher Hitchens’
book, god is not Great: How Religion
Poisons Everything (Twelve / Warner, 2007).
It was an interesting description of the terrible damage that religion
causes in human relationships. I
purchased Richard Dawkins’ The God
Delusion (Houghton Mifflin, 2006) some time ago, but have not had time to
read it. Some time ago I read Edward O.
Wilson’s The Creation: An
Appeal to Save Life on Earth (W. W. Norton, 2006). It seems that all of a sudden there is a lot
of interest in religion. Here follows
excerpts from a column appearing in the
[Beginning of excerpts.]
The Associated Press
The author, columnist and commentator was nominated for "God Is Not Great," a polemic with a self-evident theme. Hitchens' book received mixed reviews, but became a best seller over the spring and summer and continued a wave of anti-religious works, including Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" and Daniel Dennett's "Breaking the Spell."
Besides Hitchens, nonfiction nominees include Edwidge Danticat for her memoir, "Brother, I'm Dying," Woody Holton's "Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution" and Tim Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA."
It was the first National Book Award nomination for the
British-born Hitchens, who wasn't even eligible for
the prize until last April, when on his 58th birthday he became a
[End of excerpts.]
I read recently where an Honus Wagner baseball card sold for USD 1.2 million
dollars. This is both a comment on the
misplaced values of
The income distribution in the
The
I am always surprised at the number of persons and companies
that hail from my home town of
Not too long ago, I read where Neale
Donald Walsch, author of the Conversations with God
series, is from
Long before Neale Donald Walsch authored the best-selling series "Conversations
with God," he was known locally as "Bob White" on
When Walsch wasn't on air, he was on stage, starring in Spartanburg Little Theatre productions including "Mary, Mary" and "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" in 1965.
"I had a beautiful home in
It's been years since Walsch
visited
He had no idea the Little Theatre is now housed at David W. Reid Playhouse.
"You can thank me for that," he joked. "I was wildly successful at elping them raise that money. Nah, just kidding."
Walsch, who was once homeless and pondering
the point of life after leaving
now on a mission to launch a "global civil rights movement for the soul."
The globe-trotting guru's new book, "Home with God," is the final installment in his series. The film version of "Conversations with God'' was recently released on DVD.
Walsch will visit
Question: For people unfamiliar with your work, how did you become an "accidental spiritual messenger?"
Answer: Well, by accident ... I had lost my then-current job, my relationship was faltering, my health was going downhill. This was in the early '80s, actually, and I thought, "Gosh, what does it take to make life work? I don't understand." I began having bouts of periodic depression. Finally, one night, I got up in the middle of the night and just started pacing around and was angry with myself and yelling inside my head, "What does it take to make life work?"
I heard a voice, a very real and audible voice in the room, say, "Do you really want answers to all of these questions, or are you just ranting?"
I began to receive – I think – inspiring insights. That led to writing many of those things in my journal because I didn't want to forget what I was hearing. Those journal notes later became the book that we know as "Conversations with God."
Q: What did God's voice sound like?
A: The sound of my own thoughts.
Q: Why has "Conversations with God" resonated with so many readers?
A: People the world over are searching for answers, and they're very clear that life the way we're living it is not functioning, it's not working…. We're looking at the world and how angry it's become, and how violent it's become, and how oppressive it's become, and how filled with suffering it's become, and we're saying to ourselves, "Golly, gee willikers. For a species of sentient beings that imagines itself to be somewhat evolved, surely we can do better than this."
I think that yearning for something better to hand to our children, and to their children, is what has led to the popularity of the books that I've written, and for that matter, almost all books that have to do with personal growth and spiritual development.
Q: What was your lowest point when you were living on the streets?
A: The moment it felt very clear to me I was never going to get off the street – I was never going to be able to pull myself up out of that ... it's very difficult to get off the street once you're there for any length of time at all, because you can't afford a haircut, you can't even afford a shower.
It starts to be a huge deal to get $8 together to get a haircut and maybe clean yourself up.
Q: You say dogma is killing us. How so?
A: Dogma limits us. It stops us from asking questions. I think that if we don't start asking some very important, serious questions, we're going to continue our self-destructive behaviors which are killing us, both the more overt behaviors which are conflict and killing between human beings, not only in the Middle East, but around the world, as well as not quite so obvious but equally self-destructive behaviors such as the spoiling of our environment and the slow but sure erosion of the quality of life.
Q: Can you tell me about Humanity's Team?
A: It's an organization, a worldwide membership, that is placing into the space of our lives the civil rights movement for our souls – the last great civil rights movement on the earth. Free humanity at last from the oppression of its beliefs in a violent, angry and vindictive God.
Q: Why should people read your newest book, "Home with God?"
A: People may wish to read "Home with God" if they have an interest in learning one person's point of view about what happens at the moment of our death, and the moments beyond, and the cycle of all life from the realm of the spiritual to the realm of the physical ... death as we understand it – meaning the end of everything – does not exist.
I read recently (I can’t find the article just now) that plans to develop about a dozen coal-fired electricity generating power plants in the US west have been abandoned. Even with the price of a barrel of oil over $80, these plants are not practical, either for economic or environmental reasons.
By the way, I told my wife earlier this year, when I heard someone predict that the price of oil would probably reach $100 a barrel within two years, that it would reach $100 a barrel before the end of this year (this was back when it was in the $60 range). Barring a global recession, I still hold to my prediction.
In his book, The Late Great Planet Earth (with C. C. Carson, Zondervan Publishing House, 1970. Harper Paperbacks, 1992), Hal Lindsey promotes the idea that Israel will be destroyed by Russia and its allies, and that China, with an army of 200 million soldiers, will wipe out one-third of the world’s population (as predicted by John of Patmos in the Christian Bible’s book of Revelation).
When I was a teenager in the 1950s, I and practically every other teenage boy wore blue jeans. There were three major brands – Wrangler (by far the most popular), Lee, and Levi’s. Levi’s typically were sold with a button fly rather than a zipper fly. Levi’s were not preshrunk (or “Sanforized”), and you had to buy a couple of sizes larger than you needed, and wash them before wearing.
At some point, I happened to notice that my father never wore blue jeans. (In fact he never owned a pair in his life.) I asked him why not. He said to me that blue jeans were farmer’s pants. That’s all. Enough said.
This past weekend (
My friend, Archie, and his wife Liz, bought one of the first “packages” on the island – two lots for $4,000. The average price of homes on the island is now close to one million dollars apiece.
A few years ago, the island was about half developed, and a motion-picture company filmed The Jungle Boy in the undeveloped part. The original plan called for 1500 lots. All of the island has been developed now and there are over 1,500 buildings on the island, but there are still about 500 empty lots for sale.
Originally, the homes used septic tanks. A couple of years ago, the density of homes / population reached the point where septic tanks could no longer handle the sewage load, and the island is now in the process of installing a high-tech “vacuum” sewer system. If you do not agree to hook up to the system, your water is cut off.
This is such a tragedy, but it is so typical of our
times. The country’s population modus operandi (I am reluctant to call
it a “plan”) is to maintain
Before the 2006 midterm election, I told my wife that there
was no point in voting at all, since there was no difference between the
Democrats and the Republicans. They are
all thralls to the wealthy elite that control the country, and they all stand
for open borders, mass immigration and massive international free trade, which
are destroying the country’s land, its culture, and the quality of life for the
Recently, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, Mr. Dobbs has been reporting that the Democratic majority that was voted into both houses of Congress has not made any difference at all. No surprise here.
(By the way, if you want to pass a pleasant evening with strangers, it is best to follow the old adage, “Never talk about politics or religion in a social context.” My wife and I were at a “Wednesday Night Supper” at our church some time ago, and the couple next to us asked what we thought about the current political situation. I told them my view that the Republicans were as bad as the Democrats, that one party was as bad as the other, and that they were both bent on destroying the country and the middle class. Well, this remark, ill-considered in the context of polite dinner conversation, was guaranteed to offend them whether they were Democrats or Republicans. And it did. They promptly got up and left the table.)
When Hillary Clinton first hit the scene, she insisted that
everyone refer to her as “Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Now that she is running for president of the
On the Foundation website today, I received a hit from a Google search using the phrase, “border fence should be
cancelled.” It certainly should. Given that the
Another hit I received today was from the search term, “how
many government workers are there in