Who Lied to You Today? Advertising about your Head
Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.
- Marilyn Monroe
Most of what we learn about our head and parts of it that require our personal care we learn from our parents, our peers or from advertising. Most of what we learn from parents and peers can be directed back to advertising. Most of that is misleading, distorted or clearly wrong. Some is even harmful.
But we believe it, which is why industries that create the advertising keep it going. To them, what is important is not the truth or your health or best interests, but the fact that you keeping buying their products.
A smile makes anyone beautiful. Cosmetics (and a smile) can make the proverbial silk purse out of the sow's ear. What we know as the cosmetics industry today began with the rise of Hollywood and Bollywood. Cosmetics were intended to attract attention to a character for a couple of hours. But life is longer than that.
Eventually the smile drops and the makeup comes off. Then two people who were attracted to one another in that artificial state must deal with real life. With "just a girl" as Marilyn said it. Cosmetics of one sort or another can be as important to a man wanting to influence others as to a woman.
No one can be certain how many breakups and divorces result from the realization that the real people involved in a relationship do not match with the artificial character behind or beneath the cosmetics. Cosmetics hide the real person only temporarily.
Teeth whitening began in Hollywood when actors and actresses wanted to be seen on screen and noted while those with real teeth colour were not. Off screen, whitened teeth look fake to anyone paying attention for more than a few seconds. Note that many teeth whiteners are composed of hydrogen peroxide, which used to be known as oxygen bleach. Yes, bleach.
Two grades of hydrogen peroxide are available on the market. The kind you buy in a dollar store or most pharmacies will say 3% on it. That is not food grade peroxide. Food grade is much harder to find and is about 35%. As the tissue (skin) inside your mouth is very porous and easily absorbs anything, you want to be certain that you do not put a chemical that is not food grade in there.
Mouthwashes promise to remove millions of vile and supposedly dangerous "germs" from your mouth. Yet saliva does that. A large majority of what advertising claims as "germs" are really microbes that are part of your immune system. Your body protects itself from stuff it doesn't want to hurt you by killing it as you are eating. Kill those microbes and you destroy part of your immune system. Mouthwashes that claim to kill 99% of mouth germs never tell you in their advertising about the fact that they also kill part of your immune system, your body's first line of defence. "Clean" your mouth, destroy your immune system.
Tooth brushing you see in commercials is all wrong and will do nothing to prevent caries (the proper dental term for what the rest of us call cavities). Mostly the brushes swipe the broad sides of teeth, which are kept clean by the foods you eat anyway. Nobody gets cavities there. Eating an apple will do that.
We get cavities, if at all, between our teeth and at their base where the gumline is. Brushes do not get there easily, no matter what the commercials say. Only floss can do that. You can buy a pick at a pharmacy that will allow you to remove anything that has built up at the base of your teeth or between them. That is what a dental hygienist uses.
If you use a brush on the flat surface of your teeth, don't spend more time doing it than a hygienist does. A few seconds per tooth. More than that and you will grind away at the enamel and dentin that protect your teeth from attack. That would result in tooth sensitivity, meaning pain, which would cause you to have to spend more money on toothpaste that is specially made to be gentle.
All toothpastes are designed to grind the teeth. Almost all contain fluoride, which is a poison. The advertising never mentions that. Poison. Read ingredient lists on stuff you put into your mouth to see how many end with "...ide". They are all poisons. Try to dispose of fluoride in the USA and you will find it is declared a hazardous waste and must be disposed of in an environmentally safe way.
If you must brush, understand that toothpaste accomplishes nothing. You don't need it at all. Brush, using water only, horizontally along the gumline, not vertically across your teeth. Cavities grow out of plaque, which is composed of harmful microbes that eat through the enamel and dentin. Remove that and you eliminate the cause of cavities. Those harmful microbes hide where you don't normally brush.
Any over the counter medication you buy at a pharmacy when you have an ache in a tooth or an ear will be mild and only act temporarily, if at all. If they work, you may be experiencing the placebo effect. Not bad considering that the placebo effect works in up to 30 percent of people who believe they are being helped. A doctor or dentist can prescribe something stronger, or cure your problem by eliminating the cause.
Shampoos that "clean" your hair while leaving something beneficial in it don't really clean. Yes, the take away protective oil from your hair, then leave deposits of other stuff that does nothing to add to your hair's health. Only pure soap, such as from a bar, will wash your hair clean. For a conditioner (to keep your hair shiny and deter tangles, use a mixture of one part apple cider vinegar and two parts water.
If you wash your hair with city water, remember that most city water contains chlorine, another poison. Chlorine kills microbes in water cities take from rivers or lakes. Inevitably it will also kill healthy bacteria on your skin, another way your body protects itself from attack with its own immune system.
Does it seem as if advertising presents you with a favourable impression about products that will or could do you more harm than good? Now you understand why it is important for you to know about them.
Cosmetics industries create repeat customers the way pharmaceutical companies create lifetime patients, by causing problems that keep you coming back for more.
The above is intended to cause you to think carefully about the chemicals you use on your body. It is not intended to be conclusive or persuasive, or medical advice. It is intended to make sense. Each point is backed by science. Advertising does not have to make sense to be effective at persuading people to buy a product. It just has to make money for the manufacturer. And it does, which is why you see so much of it.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book or inexpensive solutions parents and teachers can use to help grow healthy children. He has also authored hundreds of articles.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Sunday, November 01, 2015
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Who Lied To You Today? Fracking
Who Lied To You Today? Fracking
Almost all of what we are taught--we think of it as news--by television and other media, by politicians and by religious leaders is either false, misleading, misstatement of facts or plain deception. To them it's all part of the game of life.
Take the following for what it's worth, or leave it. It is not based on scientific research which, like statistics, can be manipulated to say anything the writer or sponsor wants. It is based on logic, what makes sense and what does not.
Hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) involves forcing toxic chemicals into permeable rock underground. Resource companies claim the process is safe, though they will not reveal what chemicals are used. The poisons remain within the rock forever, or until they are released into groundwater that people drink. In some cases fracking has been proven to cause minor earthquakes.
Chemicals are governed by law in the USA and available to public scrutiny in the Environmetnal Protection Agency's data base of toxic chemicals. Except for those that were in use before the law--Toxic Substances Control Act--came into effect in 1976. They were grandfathered and assumed to be safe, were never studied. Tens of thousands of chemicals in use today are not listed and need not be revealed by companies engaging in hydraulic fracturing.
That's why fracking companies need not reveal the chemicals used in their underground explosions. Chemicals that could leak into drinking water that would not even be tested by municipalities. Other countries depend on the EPA list of toxic chemicals as if it was exhaustive, which it certainly is not.
Why don't governments take action against the perpetrators of these crimes? The natural resource companies always claim that they offer jobs. To politicians, the offer of jobs may even been more attractive than a good bribe because more jobs mean a better chance of being elected next term.
When the resource companies--never ones to be inconvenienced by possible damage to the planet or to human health of its workers--feel threatened by politicians, they warn that closing down will mean loss of jobs. That tends to silence political interference.
As of 2015, the government of Canada has sole possession of and responsibility for 22,000 former mines contaminated with poisons in the area. In one former mine area alone, the Giant Mine in Yellowknife, once a few billion dollars of taxpayer money has been spent cleaning up the area, it will cost two million per year just to maintain the frozen ground where arsenic is stored. Residents around these areas fervently hope that flooding does not contaminate the soil of the land where they live, and their bodies in the process. All of those mining companies went "bankrupt" leaving taxpayers to clean up after them indefinitely.
Ironically, when the companies negotiate with the governments and find themselves forced to take measures to protect the health of workers and the environment, they tend to become more efficient and garner greater profits. However, this evidence has little impact on their drive to make profit as quickly as possible.
Our planet is not short of energy resources, no matter what you may hear. Big oil companies, who receive the most flack from the public, are the biggest investors in alternative energy sources such as solar energy and wind power.
The claim is that solar and wind are not dependable because they are not consistent and dependable sources of power when people need it most. For that reason, resource companies claim, taking resources from the ground is and always will be necessary.
But they never mention the most plentiful and dependable sources of all. Our planet is always warmer one kilometer and more beneath the surface--a common depth to dig for other resources--than it is higher up. Difference in temperature means a dependable source of power.
The oceans almost always have waves, even if they don't have much wind blowing above them. Waves have energy. Tides have energy so long as we have a moon.
More importantly, water temperature varies a great deal from the surface to a short distance below. That never varies, just as the heat from the interior of our planet never varies. Both are infinite for our purposes.
Even water itself is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, both sources of energy.
Could we run out of water to convert to power? Recent study has shown that there is at least as much water locked in rock in earth's mantel as there is in all the water on the surface of the planet.
What about desertification? Are not droughts causing fertile land to become deserts, as happened in the Levant, the land east of the Mediterranean that most westerners call the Holy Land? It is true that the Levant was once as fertile as the Garden of Eden--human agriculture began there--until climate change made it into mostly desert.
Even in Israel, Syria and Lebanon, farming takes place. It's all a matter of growing crops appropriate for the climate. Under the world's largest desert, the Sahara, lies the world's largest underground freshwater lake.
Fracking is not necessary to get cheap energy when free and sustainable sources that will last forever are available. We should not expect resource companies to be open about offering to do what is right by its employees or the planet. They have never behaved that way.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about do-able and inexpensive solutions to our worst problems. Fracking is a social problem when it affects the lives of many people.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Additional material about hydraulic fracturing
There are many, and I mean MANY, examples of fracking problems in the USA. Most of them involve leaking of chemicals into ground water that is later used as drinking water. Hydraulic fracturing involves having a soup of chemicals (no company will ever reveal the mixture because it would shock everyone and cause the practice to be stopped--they claim their mixture is an industry secret, a coverup) explode deep under ground. The purpose is to crack the rock (the explosions are that great) that natural gas that is trapped within the rock will seep out.
As you think about that and the nature of natural gas, being as gas that can seep anywhere, you can see that, unlike with liquids, natural gas is extremely difficult to control and contain. The chemical soup itself is easier to control if it is inside of a container on the surface of the ground. But underground, after an explosion of rock that no one can tell how much crack will happen (it is usually shale rock, not granite that would be easier to estimate and control) the liquid could go anywhere. In many cases in the US, it has gone into drinking water sources.
Many countries have banned fracking entirely, deeming it too risky. The USA and Canada, being essentially job whores, have made fracking legal and licensed in many places. (I use the term "job whores" as a derogatory condemnation, without meaning any reference to prostitution--which I do not condemn.)
The most attractive lure of fracking is jobs. That is what gets the attention of politicians and they in turn get votes based on their perceived creation of "new jobs."
In fact, fracking requires few workers. Some highly trained people are brought in from their last jobs (never from the untrained local labour group), plus truck drivers. I feel safe in saying that there is no community in existence where fracking has been used that is entirely satisfied with the industry. Most residents anywhere near the mines are afraid they or their children will die one day from contamination of their drinking water by the poisons from fracking.
Like virtually every natural resource company, when they have a financial problem they declare bankruptcy and vanish into the night. One Canadian mine will cost Canadian taxpayers $2 million every year, forever, to contain poisons that if let out would kill every person in the nearby town.
Two additional points are worth making about fracking.
First is that it uses an enormous amount of fresh water, which is then contaminated by its chemicals. In Saskatchewan, for example, where fracking is taking place full bore, fracking is taking away fresh water needed by the Canadian province's most important industry, agriculture. Farms cannot risk using water that could possibly be contaminated by fracking chemicals because produce from the farms is all used for food. Already a province that is usually not blessed with an abundance of clean water, Saskatchewan now does not have enough water to service its food-growing agriculture needs.
Second is that while the waste water from fracking can be reused--fracking companies would rather not reuse its own water because its used water has pulled heavy metals out of the ground it fractured--it must be stored in the meantime. Who wants contaminated water stored near their home? Where can you imagine it would be safe to store contaminated water indefinitely? My country, Canada, has water all over its surface, perhaps more than any other country in the world, and we are concerned about leakage that would contaminate our fresh water. Contaminated water in surface water could be used for drinking, but it is also used by countless animals, plants and beneficial microbes that allow food to be grown in the soil.
Even if the waste water from fracking were safe (bear with me, I know it is not), the heavy metals drawn from the ground would make it unsafe. When it comes to water, fracking is a lose-lose situation.
While Nova Scotia has put a moratorium on fracking, waste water from fracking exploration mines in NS still needs to be disposed of. No community in Nova Scotia would allow it to be put into their sewer system. No community in neighbouring New Brunswick would allow it to be put into their sewer system, even when large amounts of money were offered for doing just that by the company involved. International law forbids it from being dumped into the oceans.
How safe can a liquid be if it can't even be dumped into the ocean? Our oceans have two huge garbage patches each larger than small countries, but fracking waste water is not allowed.
Fracking companies, like every mining operation that ever existed in history, will lie through its teeth, swearing it is telling the truth on the grave of its mother. Not a single one of them could ever be trusted. They have done more damage to our planet and its (former, often now extinct) life forms than any other cause.
The University of Toronto Magazine online has an article in its Winter 2015 edition that will explain more about fracking from a political science professor who is as much of an expert on the subject as anyone (given the secrecy that surrounds fracking operations at all levels).
On Shaky Ground | Dale Sproule | Winter 2015 | University of Toronto Magazine
image
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/leading-edge/on-shaky-ground-dale-sproule-andrea-olive/
Almost all of what we are taught--we think of it as news--by television and other media, by politicians and by religious leaders is either false, misleading, misstatement of facts or plain deception. To them it's all part of the game of life.
Take the following for what it's worth, or leave it. It is not based on scientific research which, like statistics, can be manipulated to say anything the writer or sponsor wants. It is based on logic, what makes sense and what does not.
Hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking) involves forcing toxic chemicals into permeable rock underground. Resource companies claim the process is safe, though they will not reveal what chemicals are used. The poisons remain within the rock forever, or until they are released into groundwater that people drink. In some cases fracking has been proven to cause minor earthquakes.
Chemicals are governed by law in the USA and available to public scrutiny in the Environmetnal Protection Agency's data base of toxic chemicals. Except for those that were in use before the law--Toxic Substances Control Act--came into effect in 1976. They were grandfathered and assumed to be safe, were never studied. Tens of thousands of chemicals in use today are not listed and need not be revealed by companies engaging in hydraulic fracturing.
That's why fracking companies need not reveal the chemicals used in their underground explosions. Chemicals that could leak into drinking water that would not even be tested by municipalities. Other countries depend on the EPA list of toxic chemicals as if it was exhaustive, which it certainly is not.
Why don't governments take action against the perpetrators of these crimes? The natural resource companies always claim that they offer jobs. To politicians, the offer of jobs may even been more attractive than a good bribe because more jobs mean a better chance of being elected next term.
When the resource companies--never ones to be inconvenienced by possible damage to the planet or to human health of its workers--feel threatened by politicians, they warn that closing down will mean loss of jobs. That tends to silence political interference.
As of 2015, the government of Canada has sole possession of and responsibility for 22,000 former mines contaminated with poisons in the area. In one former mine area alone, the Giant Mine in Yellowknife, once a few billion dollars of taxpayer money has been spent cleaning up the area, it will cost two million per year just to maintain the frozen ground where arsenic is stored. Residents around these areas fervently hope that flooding does not contaminate the soil of the land where they live, and their bodies in the process. All of those mining companies went "bankrupt" leaving taxpayers to clean up after them indefinitely.
Ironically, when the companies negotiate with the governments and find themselves forced to take measures to protect the health of workers and the environment, they tend to become more efficient and garner greater profits. However, this evidence has little impact on their drive to make profit as quickly as possible.
Our planet is not short of energy resources, no matter what you may hear. Big oil companies, who receive the most flack from the public, are the biggest investors in alternative energy sources such as solar energy and wind power.
The claim is that solar and wind are not dependable because they are not consistent and dependable sources of power when people need it most. For that reason, resource companies claim, taking resources from the ground is and always will be necessary.
But they never mention the most plentiful and dependable sources of all. Our planet is always warmer one kilometer and more beneath the surface--a common depth to dig for other resources--than it is higher up. Difference in temperature means a dependable source of power.
The oceans almost always have waves, even if they don't have much wind blowing above them. Waves have energy. Tides have energy so long as we have a moon.
More importantly, water temperature varies a great deal from the surface to a short distance below. That never varies, just as the heat from the interior of our planet never varies. Both are infinite for our purposes.
Even water itself is composed of hydrogen and oxygen, both sources of energy.
Could we run out of water to convert to power? Recent study has shown that there is at least as much water locked in rock in earth's mantel as there is in all the water on the surface of the planet.
What about desertification? Are not droughts causing fertile land to become deserts, as happened in the Levant, the land east of the Mediterranean that most westerners call the Holy Land? It is true that the Levant was once as fertile as the Garden of Eden--human agriculture began there--until climate change made it into mostly desert.
Even in Israel, Syria and Lebanon, farming takes place. It's all a matter of growing crops appropriate for the climate. Under the world's largest desert, the Sahara, lies the world's largest underground freshwater lake.
Fracking is not necessary to get cheap energy when free and sustainable sources that will last forever are available. We should not expect resource companies to be open about offering to do what is right by its employees or the planet. They have never behaved that way.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about do-able and inexpensive solutions to our worst problems. Fracking is a social problem when it affects the lives of many people.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Additional material about hydraulic fracturing
There are many, and I mean MANY, examples of fracking problems in the USA. Most of them involve leaking of chemicals into ground water that is later used as drinking water. Hydraulic fracturing involves having a soup of chemicals (no company will ever reveal the mixture because it would shock everyone and cause the practice to be stopped--they claim their mixture is an industry secret, a coverup) explode deep under ground. The purpose is to crack the rock (the explosions are that great) that natural gas that is trapped within the rock will seep out.
As you think about that and the nature of natural gas, being as gas that can seep anywhere, you can see that, unlike with liquids, natural gas is extremely difficult to control and contain. The chemical soup itself is easier to control if it is inside of a container on the surface of the ground. But underground, after an explosion of rock that no one can tell how much crack will happen (it is usually shale rock, not granite that would be easier to estimate and control) the liquid could go anywhere. In many cases in the US, it has gone into drinking water sources.
Many countries have banned fracking entirely, deeming it too risky. The USA and Canada, being essentially job whores, have made fracking legal and licensed in many places. (I use the term "job whores" as a derogatory condemnation, without meaning any reference to prostitution--which I do not condemn.)
The most attractive lure of fracking is jobs. That is what gets the attention of politicians and they in turn get votes based on their perceived creation of "new jobs."
In fact, fracking requires few workers. Some highly trained people are brought in from their last jobs (never from the untrained local labour group), plus truck drivers. I feel safe in saying that there is no community in existence where fracking has been used that is entirely satisfied with the industry. Most residents anywhere near the mines are afraid they or their children will die one day from contamination of their drinking water by the poisons from fracking.
Like virtually every natural resource company, when they have a financial problem they declare bankruptcy and vanish into the night. One Canadian mine will cost Canadian taxpayers $2 million every year, forever, to contain poisons that if let out would kill every person in the nearby town.
Two additional points are worth making about fracking.
First is that it uses an enormous amount of fresh water, which is then contaminated by its chemicals. In Saskatchewan, for example, where fracking is taking place full bore, fracking is taking away fresh water needed by the Canadian province's most important industry, agriculture. Farms cannot risk using water that could possibly be contaminated by fracking chemicals because produce from the farms is all used for food. Already a province that is usually not blessed with an abundance of clean water, Saskatchewan now does not have enough water to service its food-growing agriculture needs.
Second is that while the waste water from fracking can be reused--fracking companies would rather not reuse its own water because its used water has pulled heavy metals out of the ground it fractured--it must be stored in the meantime. Who wants contaminated water stored near their home? Where can you imagine it would be safe to store contaminated water indefinitely? My country, Canada, has water all over its surface, perhaps more than any other country in the world, and we are concerned about leakage that would contaminate our fresh water. Contaminated water in surface water could be used for drinking, but it is also used by countless animals, plants and beneficial microbes that allow food to be grown in the soil.
Even if the waste water from fracking were safe (bear with me, I know it is not), the heavy metals drawn from the ground would make it unsafe. When it comes to water, fracking is a lose-lose situation.
While Nova Scotia has put a moratorium on fracking, waste water from fracking exploration mines in NS still needs to be disposed of. No community in Nova Scotia would allow it to be put into their sewer system. No community in neighbouring New Brunswick would allow it to be put into their sewer system, even when large amounts of money were offered for doing just that by the company involved. International law forbids it from being dumped into the oceans.
How safe can a liquid be if it can't even be dumped into the ocean? Our oceans have two huge garbage patches each larger than small countries, but fracking waste water is not allowed.
Fracking companies, like every mining operation that ever existed in history, will lie through its teeth, swearing it is telling the truth on the grave of its mother. Not a single one of them could ever be trusted. They have done more damage to our planet and its (former, often now extinct) life forms than any other cause.
The University of Toronto Magazine online has an article in its Winter 2015 edition that will explain more about fracking from a political science professor who is as much of an expert on the subject as anyone (given the secrecy that surrounds fracking operations at all levels).
On Shaky Ground | Dale Sproule | Winter 2015 | University of Toronto Magazine
image
http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/leading-edge/on-shaky-ground-dale-sproule-andrea-olive/
Saturday, April 04, 2015
How Vaccines Cripple Your Immune System
How Vaccines Cripple Your Immune System
During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, researchers at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control originally thought seasonal flu shots from 2008 might offer extra protection against the new pandemic strain. They were puzzled to find instead, seasonal flu vaccination almost doubled the risk of infection with pandemic flu.
- British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, http://tinyurl.com/kn2u4j4
One sad but undeniable characteristic of human nature is that most of us trust those in authority, follow what they say as truth, obey their rules and laws as if they were commandments dictated by God.
The good people of Germany, in a free and democratic election, elected Hitler and the Nazi (National Socialist) party to power in 1933.
Though a huge majority of medical doctors in Canada (two surveys said 92% and 100%) would refuse chemotherapy if they got cancer, it is still the #1 recommended therapy for newly diagnosed cancer patients. The "success" rate for chemotherapy is five years because doctors don't dare to look beyond that to see a failure rate close to 92%. Chemo is still the therapy accepted as first choice by people diagnosed with cancer.
We are so addicted to following what we are told that thinking people refer to mindless followers as sheeple [sheep + people]. It is in our nature as members of a social species to follow a leader, especially so if the leader shows confidence or is powerful. However, nothing in our nature demands that we accept everything we are told without question, especially when it comes to our own personal health.
Louis Pasteur was hailed as a hero when he discovered that heating would kill "germs" in our foods and beverages. At the time, every form of microscopic life was considered to be a germ by most people. The process of pasteurizing milk was named after him by a grateful world.
Even today we can watch many commercials on TV that promise to kill almost 100% of "germs" on whatever the product touches. The trouble is, most of what these products kill are beneficial bacteria.
Our immune system is comprised almost entirely of beneficial bacteria. In fact, we have 10 to 20 times (some estimates go as high as 100 times) as many good and healthful bacteria that comprise our immune system as we have cells of our own body. We are truly, as Star Trek called them, symbionts. We can't even survive without them and they can't live without us.
When we get sick we dutifully take antibiotics our doctor prescribes to kill the evil bacteria. Even when we suffer from a virus (which antibiotics do nothing to kill), we may be prescribed an antibiotic "just in case of attack by bacteria while you are vulnerable." Antibiotics, especially broad spectrum ones, kill the very bacteria that comprise our immune system. So, kill 10% bad and 90% good.
Vaccines and antibiotics were hailed as health saviours when they first came out. Both were intended to help our immune system defeat the dastardly microscopic pathogens.
While antibiotics kill a good percentage of the bacteria that comprise our immune system, vaccines do assist. Annual vaccine shots against influenza were considered to be so beneficial that many governments offered them free to citizens. So, because they were free and government said vaccines would protect them, people took the shot annually.
Now one study (see the top of this article) shows that the annual flu shot actually impairs the immune system so much that it increases the incidence of flu. Increases. Immune systems got so used to the vaccine doing their job for them that they got lazy.
Does that matter? Many children are required to have a minimum of 48 vaccines before they can enter school. Some kids get their first vaccine two months after they are born.
Please think about this. Before a child's immune system has had a chance to develop, it is already being encouraged to be lazy. Remember "childhood diseases" in years past? They helped to develop the immune system. Vaccines impair the immune system. Vaccines make the immune system lazy. Lazy things don't work.
What happens when we don't exercise enough? We gain weight and lose muscle mass (get weak). What happens when we don't think enough? We develop dementia, even Alzheimer's, when we get older. We know these things, yet people persist in not exercising either their bodies or their brains. We have epidemics because we are lazy.
Now we have chemical and drug companies intending to make permanent patients out of us until we die by impairing our health by depressing our immune system through chemical pesticides (they kill small creatures--including bees--then larger ones that eat the smaller ones), herbicides (they kill the food that small animals that benefit our food plants eat), antibiotics and vaccines.
Our medical systems fully support vaccines. Doctors never mention that at least some of them are rewarded financially and with gifts for prescribing certain drugs (that tend to be the most popular drugs prescribed).
Despite vigorous campaigns to get people to stop smoking (tobacco accounts for over half the diseases and a majority of deaths from health problems each year), an estimated 25 percent of adults in North America still smoke. Smokers know how to kill themselves, but not how to live.
People are knowingly harming their health, causing their own early deaths and making themselves dependent on others for the latter decades of their lives. Most don't yet know what they are doing to their own immune systems with the vaccines they willingly accept from their doctors.
You know. Think about it. How willing are you to harm your own health and limit your own future?
All you need to do to stay healthy is get some exercise, eat clean food and stay away from things that will harm your immune system. Think now while you still have time.
Bill Allin is the author of the book Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems and hundreds of published articles. It is a massive social problem when people knowingly and willingly harm their own health.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
During the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, researchers at the B.C. Centre for Disease Control originally thought seasonal flu shots from 2008 might offer extra protection against the new pandemic strain. They were puzzled to find instead, seasonal flu vaccination almost doubled the risk of infection with pandemic flu.
- British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, http://tinyurl.com/kn2u4j4
One sad but undeniable characteristic of human nature is that most of us trust those in authority, follow what they say as truth, obey their rules and laws as if they were commandments dictated by God.
The good people of Germany, in a free and democratic election, elected Hitler and the Nazi (National Socialist) party to power in 1933.
Though a huge majority of medical doctors in Canada (two surveys said 92% and 100%) would refuse chemotherapy if they got cancer, it is still the #1 recommended therapy for newly diagnosed cancer patients. The "success" rate for chemotherapy is five years because doctors don't dare to look beyond that to see a failure rate close to 92%. Chemo is still the therapy accepted as first choice by people diagnosed with cancer.
We are so addicted to following what we are told that thinking people refer to mindless followers as sheeple [sheep + people]. It is in our nature as members of a social species to follow a leader, especially so if the leader shows confidence or is powerful. However, nothing in our nature demands that we accept everything we are told without question, especially when it comes to our own personal health.
Louis Pasteur was hailed as a hero when he discovered that heating would kill "germs" in our foods and beverages. At the time, every form of microscopic life was considered to be a germ by most people. The process of pasteurizing milk was named after him by a grateful world.
Even today we can watch many commercials on TV that promise to kill almost 100% of "germs" on whatever the product touches. The trouble is, most of what these products kill are beneficial bacteria.
Our immune system is comprised almost entirely of beneficial bacteria. In fact, we have 10 to 20 times (some estimates go as high as 100 times) as many good and healthful bacteria that comprise our immune system as we have cells of our own body. We are truly, as Star Trek called them, symbionts. We can't even survive without them and they can't live without us.
When we get sick we dutifully take antibiotics our doctor prescribes to kill the evil bacteria. Even when we suffer from a virus (which antibiotics do nothing to kill), we may be prescribed an antibiotic "just in case of attack by bacteria while you are vulnerable." Antibiotics, especially broad spectrum ones, kill the very bacteria that comprise our immune system. So, kill 10% bad and 90% good.
Vaccines and antibiotics were hailed as health saviours when they first came out. Both were intended to help our immune system defeat the dastardly microscopic pathogens.
While antibiotics kill a good percentage of the bacteria that comprise our immune system, vaccines do assist. Annual vaccine shots against influenza were considered to be so beneficial that many governments offered them free to citizens. So, because they were free and government said vaccines would protect them, people took the shot annually.
Now one study (see the top of this article) shows that the annual flu shot actually impairs the immune system so much that it increases the incidence of flu. Increases. Immune systems got so used to the vaccine doing their job for them that they got lazy.
Does that matter? Many children are required to have a minimum of 48 vaccines before they can enter school. Some kids get their first vaccine two months after they are born.
Please think about this. Before a child's immune system has had a chance to develop, it is already being encouraged to be lazy. Remember "childhood diseases" in years past? They helped to develop the immune system. Vaccines impair the immune system. Vaccines make the immune system lazy. Lazy things don't work.
What happens when we don't exercise enough? We gain weight and lose muscle mass (get weak). What happens when we don't think enough? We develop dementia, even Alzheimer's, when we get older. We know these things, yet people persist in not exercising either their bodies or their brains. We have epidemics because we are lazy.
Now we have chemical and drug companies intending to make permanent patients out of us until we die by impairing our health by depressing our immune system through chemical pesticides (they kill small creatures--including bees--then larger ones that eat the smaller ones), herbicides (they kill the food that small animals that benefit our food plants eat), antibiotics and vaccines.
Our medical systems fully support vaccines. Doctors never mention that at least some of them are rewarded financially and with gifts for prescribing certain drugs (that tend to be the most popular drugs prescribed).
Despite vigorous campaigns to get people to stop smoking (tobacco accounts for over half the diseases and a majority of deaths from health problems each year), an estimated 25 percent of adults in North America still smoke. Smokers know how to kill themselves, but not how to live.
People are knowingly harming their health, causing their own early deaths and making themselves dependent on others for the latter decades of their lives. Most don't yet know what they are doing to their own immune systems with the vaccines they willingly accept from their doctors.
You know. Think about it. How willing are you to harm your own health and limit your own future?
All you need to do to stay healthy is get some exercise, eat clean food and stay away from things that will harm your immune system. Think now while you still have time.
Bill Allin is the author of the book Turning it Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems and hundreds of published articles. It is a massive social problem when people knowingly and willingly harm their own health.
Learn more at http://billallin.com
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Why The World Needs Stupid People
Why The World Needs Stupid People
I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.
- Stephen Malkmus, American musician (b. 1966)
[WARNING: This article does not encourage the development of stupid people or advocate that we keep stupid people stupid. We need some stupid people, some argue, but we have far too many and are developing more too quickly.]
First, an apology for the errors and misinformation in the quote above. While the United States has the third largest population on the planet, that means that--all other factors being equal--the US should have a greater number of stupid people, not a greater percentage. The United States is one country, so the verb should be in the singular form. Decide for yourself if that says anything about the author of the quote.
Despite the fact that the US is a highly developed nation in many ways--it even calls itself First World--it excels in turning bright children into stupid adults.
A redefinition of "stupid" is needed. The word originally referred to a range of IQ scores well below the "normal" of 100 (average being between 90 and 110). Some experts claim the average IQ score across the globe is now between 80 and 85. It is now generally accepted that IQ scores are not just flawed and skewed culturally, but that there are many kinds of intelligence other than that tested by Intelligence Quotient tests.
One key problem in defining intelligence is that the definitions are invariably made by people of high intelligence. Even the name of our species, homo sapiens sapiens (thinking man), was devised by highly intelligent thinking people. Those who came up with the name in fact described themselves, not the species in general. Even Albert Einstein said that if you define intelligence as the ability to climb a tree, a fish will not do well on such an intelligence test.
I prefer to use what is generally called the Law of Consequences in defining intelligence. As with Newton's Third Law of Motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction), the Law of Consequences states that every action has a consequence, sometimes more than one consequence.
If you hit your finger with a hammer, the finger will hurt. If you drive your car off a bridge, you will likely die. Those are consequences. No one intentionally does either. But people do these things regularly because they do other behaviours the consequences of which are hurt fingers or death from crashing a car below a bridge.
Holding a nail with one hand while swinging a hammer at the nail with the other hand requires intense concentration, on the nail and the hammer. The person who swings the hammer thinking only of the satisfying result of having the nail permanently in place will not be thinking of the necessity for intense concentration. Concentration requires a second level of thinking.
Someone who drives too fast is careless. Driving too fast is exciting, evokes thrills. A driver who focuses on the thrill but not on the danger of a slippery bridge surface may cause the car to career off the bridge, resulting in the death of the driver and likely of passengers as well. Focusing on the safety issue when driving (at all times) requires a second level of thinking that few people indulge in once they become familiar with driving.
Anyone who has played chess with a good player knows that the good chess player thinks ahead. Expert level chess players think ahead not just one move or two, but many moves in many different possible scenarios. Being able to hold these multiple scenarios in your head while assessing each to decide what move you should make next requires levels of thinking that few people ever use.
Stupid people think only of one consequence--having the nail in place, the thrill of driving too fast, or whatever. They think only of what is immediate, of one goal. They react to present circumstances, rather than initiating new actions or thinking.
To a scientist who studies the brain, that is using the unconscious, not the conscious mind. Basically, the unconscious mind reacts to stimuli. The stimulus might be having the nail in place or experiencing a thrill. Real thinking takes place with the conscious mind. The conscious mind considers possibilities beyond the immediate, including smashing a finger or driving off a bridge. It considers consequences. It thinks beyond the immediate.
Over a long term, people use their unconscious mind so much that they become used to it, rarely moving to the stage of using their conscious mind. With practice of using only the unconscious mind all the time, people become stupid. Consciousness researchers claim that we use our unconscious mind about 95 percent of the time, our conscious mind only 5 percent. I would maintain that many people nudge the use of their unconscious mind closer to 100%.
If you have ever watched someone do something and wondered "Why did that person do something so stupid?" you have seen someone who probably is stupid by this new definition. As evidence, watch what people do with their shopping carts in a supermarket (turning them sideways to block the aisle while they look at something on a shelf) or check out many examples of thrill-seeking but stupid and risky behaviour on YouTube.com Stupid behaviour is so common today that several shows focus on videos of it. One show is even called The Science of Stupid.
The argument is often made that we need stupid people to make pizzas, work on assembly lines, drive taxis, and so on. In a sense, that is true. But there are also highly intelligent Mensa members who do these jobs as well. Nothing about these jobs demands that the worker must not think. That part is voluntary, a commitment to laziness.
Where do we develop people to be stupid in our societies? At home and in schools when they are children. We don't stimulate kids enough, challenge their brains, give them enough stimulating activities to do, teach them the Law of Consequences.
Many people become uncomfortable or edgy when I speak of deficits in parenting skills or education systems. Fair enough. Look at our dog and cat pets. Most would agree that they become more docile, more cooperative, more friendly, more loving of cuddles as our pets get older. Ask yourself why. It's not age. The reason is that they have been dumbed-down, their natural intelligence and curiosity suppressed until they eventually just look for simple gratification from humans.
We make our children dumb in the same way we make our pets dumb.
Do we need stupid people for our society to function? Leaders of industry and natural resources companies say yes. They need employees to do a job, work on an assembly line or dig mines deep underground, without thinking about what they are doing to themselves or about what their activities are doing to the long term survival of our planet.
Should we maintain our present course of developing intelligent and naturally curious children into dumb adults? That depends on how much you want to encourage and support leaders of industry and natural resource companies who get obscenely rich from the labour of their dumbed employees. Please note that the rich never do these activities.
The system will remain the way it is until we bravely step forward and insist that our education systems teach kids what they really need to survive and thrive instead of what they need to be dumbed-down. And until we insist that every young adult who becomes a parent knows what their children will need in the way of developmental skills, before those skills are needed.
Are you tempted to wonder if you might be stupid? The answer is: you read, stupid people don't read. By reading to the end of this article you have already exercised your conscious brain more today than a majority of people in your country.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about easy and inexpensive solutions to our world's seemingly intractable problems. Stupidity is a highly fixable social problem.
Learn more at http://billallin.com Find the link there to join the TIA group to receive daily delivery of tips for teaching kids who seem to not want to learn from their parents, tips that all adults seem to enjoy as well.
I'm not sure if you can blame everything on the American way of life, but the United States are big. So, if you have a lot of people there, the percentage of stupid people is bound to be higher.
- Stephen Malkmus, American musician (b. 1966)
[WARNING: This article does not encourage the development of stupid people or advocate that we keep stupid people stupid. We need some stupid people, some argue, but we have far too many and are developing more too quickly.]
First, an apology for the errors and misinformation in the quote above. While the United States has the third largest population on the planet, that means that--all other factors being equal--the US should have a greater number of stupid people, not a greater percentage. The United States is one country, so the verb should be in the singular form. Decide for yourself if that says anything about the author of the quote.
Despite the fact that the US is a highly developed nation in many ways--it even calls itself First World--it excels in turning bright children into stupid adults.
A redefinition of "stupid" is needed. The word originally referred to a range of IQ scores well below the "normal" of 100 (average being between 90 and 110). Some experts claim the average IQ score across the globe is now between 80 and 85. It is now generally accepted that IQ scores are not just flawed and skewed culturally, but that there are many kinds of intelligence other than that tested by Intelligence Quotient tests.
One key problem in defining intelligence is that the definitions are invariably made by people of high intelligence. Even the name of our species, homo sapiens sapiens (thinking man), was devised by highly intelligent thinking people. Those who came up with the name in fact described themselves, not the species in general. Even Albert Einstein said that if you define intelligence as the ability to climb a tree, a fish will not do well on such an intelligence test.
I prefer to use what is generally called the Law of Consequences in defining intelligence. As with Newton's Third Law of Motion (every action has an equal and opposite reaction), the Law of Consequences states that every action has a consequence, sometimes more than one consequence.
If you hit your finger with a hammer, the finger will hurt. If you drive your car off a bridge, you will likely die. Those are consequences. No one intentionally does either. But people do these things regularly because they do other behaviours the consequences of which are hurt fingers or death from crashing a car below a bridge.
Holding a nail with one hand while swinging a hammer at the nail with the other hand requires intense concentration, on the nail and the hammer. The person who swings the hammer thinking only of the satisfying result of having the nail permanently in place will not be thinking of the necessity for intense concentration. Concentration requires a second level of thinking.
Someone who drives too fast is careless. Driving too fast is exciting, evokes thrills. A driver who focuses on the thrill but not on the danger of a slippery bridge surface may cause the car to career off the bridge, resulting in the death of the driver and likely of passengers as well. Focusing on the safety issue when driving (at all times) requires a second level of thinking that few people indulge in once they become familiar with driving.
Anyone who has played chess with a good player knows that the good chess player thinks ahead. Expert level chess players think ahead not just one move or two, but many moves in many different possible scenarios. Being able to hold these multiple scenarios in your head while assessing each to decide what move you should make next requires levels of thinking that few people ever use.
Stupid people think only of one consequence--having the nail in place, the thrill of driving too fast, or whatever. They think only of what is immediate, of one goal. They react to present circumstances, rather than initiating new actions or thinking.
To a scientist who studies the brain, that is using the unconscious, not the conscious mind. Basically, the unconscious mind reacts to stimuli. The stimulus might be having the nail in place or experiencing a thrill. Real thinking takes place with the conscious mind. The conscious mind considers possibilities beyond the immediate, including smashing a finger or driving off a bridge. It considers consequences. It thinks beyond the immediate.
Over a long term, people use their unconscious mind so much that they become used to it, rarely moving to the stage of using their conscious mind. With practice of using only the unconscious mind all the time, people become stupid. Consciousness researchers claim that we use our unconscious mind about 95 percent of the time, our conscious mind only 5 percent. I would maintain that many people nudge the use of their unconscious mind closer to 100%.
If you have ever watched someone do something and wondered "Why did that person do something so stupid?" you have seen someone who probably is stupid by this new definition. As evidence, watch what people do with their shopping carts in a supermarket (turning them sideways to block the aisle while they look at something on a shelf) or check out many examples of thrill-seeking but stupid and risky behaviour on YouTube.com Stupid behaviour is so common today that several shows focus on videos of it. One show is even called The Science of Stupid.
The argument is often made that we need stupid people to make pizzas, work on assembly lines, drive taxis, and so on. In a sense, that is true. But there are also highly intelligent Mensa members who do these jobs as well. Nothing about these jobs demands that the worker must not think. That part is voluntary, a commitment to laziness.
Where do we develop people to be stupid in our societies? At home and in schools when they are children. We don't stimulate kids enough, challenge their brains, give them enough stimulating activities to do, teach them the Law of Consequences.
Many people become uncomfortable or edgy when I speak of deficits in parenting skills or education systems. Fair enough. Look at our dog and cat pets. Most would agree that they become more docile, more cooperative, more friendly, more loving of cuddles as our pets get older. Ask yourself why. It's not age. The reason is that they have been dumbed-down, their natural intelligence and curiosity suppressed until they eventually just look for simple gratification from humans.
We make our children dumb in the same way we make our pets dumb.
Do we need stupid people for our society to function? Leaders of industry and natural resources companies say yes. They need employees to do a job, work on an assembly line or dig mines deep underground, without thinking about what they are doing to themselves or about what their activities are doing to the long term survival of our planet.
Should we maintain our present course of developing intelligent and naturally curious children into dumb adults? That depends on how much you want to encourage and support leaders of industry and natural resource companies who get obscenely rich from the labour of their dumbed employees. Please note that the rich never do these activities.
The system will remain the way it is until we bravely step forward and insist that our education systems teach kids what they really need to survive and thrive instead of what they need to be dumbed-down. And until we insist that every young adult who becomes a parent knows what their children will need in the way of developmental skills, before those skills are needed.
Are you tempted to wonder if you might be stupid? The answer is: you read, stupid people don't read. By reading to the end of this article you have already exercised your conscious brain more today than a majority of people in your country.
Bill Allin is the author of Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book about easy and inexpensive solutions to our world's seemingly intractable problems. Stupidity is a highly fixable social problem.
Learn more at http://billallin.com Find the link there to join the TIA group to receive daily delivery of tips for teaching kids who seem to not want to learn from their parents, tips that all adults seem to enjoy as well.
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