Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto has created a beautiful, undeniably scary time-lapse map of the 2053 nuclear explosions which have taken place between 1945 and 1998, beginning with the Manhattan Project's "Trinity" test near Los Alamos and concluding with Pakistan's nuclear tests in May of 1998. This leaves out North Korea's two alleged nuclear tests in this past decade (the legitimacy of both of which is not 100% clear).

Each nation gets a blip and a flashing dot on the map whenever they detonate a nuclear weapon, with a running tally kept on the top and bottom bars of the screen. Hashimoto, who began the project in 2003, says that he created it with the goal of showing "the fear and folly of nuclear weapons." It starts really slow - if you want to see real action, skip ahead to 1962 or so - but the buildup becomes overwhelming.

Type 1 diabetes, also called "childhood" or "insulin-dependent" diabetes, is on the rise.

Type 2 diabetes, or "adult," diabetes, is also sharply escalating. But the causes for this are easy-to-identify: overconsumption of carbohydrates and resultant weight gain/obesity, inactivity, as well as genetic predisposition. A formerly rare disease is rapidly becoming the scourge of the century, expected to affect 1 in 3 adults within the next several decades.

Type 1 diabetes, on the other hand, generally occurs in young children, not uncommonly age 3 or 4. Type 1 diabetes also shares a genetic basis to some degree. But the genetic predisposition should be a constant. Obviously, lifestyle issues cannot be blamed in young children.
Then why would type 1 diabetes be on the rise?

For instance, this study by Vehik et al from the University of Colorado documents the approximate 3% per year increase in incidence in children with type 1 diabetes between 1978 and 2004:


(From Vehik 2007)

This is no small matter. Just ask any parent of a child diagnosed with type 1 diabetes who, after recovering from hearing the devastating diagnosis, then has to stick her child's fingers to check glucose several times per day, mind carefully what he or she eats or doesn't eat, watch carefully for signs of life-threatening hypoglycemic episodes, not to mention worry about her child's long-term health. Type 1 diabetes is a life-changing diagnosis for both child and parents.

If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then - after more study - it doesn't. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn't (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot). Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not - as a study released last week finds. Yet even if biomedical research can be a fickle guide, we rely on it.

But what if wrong answers aren't the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim. It isn't just an individual study here and there that's flawed, they charge. Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray - spurring often costly regimens that won't help and may even harm you.

It's a disturbing view, with huge im-plications for doctors, policymakers, and health-conscious consumers. And one of its foremost advocates, Dr. John P.A. Ioannidis, has just ascended to a new, prominent platform after years of crusading against the baseless health and medical claims. As the new chief of Stanford University's Prevention Research Center, Ioannidis is cementing his role as one of medicine's top mythbusters. "People are being hurt and even dying" because of false medical claims, he says: not quackery, but errors in medical research.

A jaunty romp through all the lovely things our governments have thrown at us and where they might one day lead to in the not so far off future.

Abstract

This paper provides an alternate theory for comet behavior and shows comets to be planetary, lunar, and asteroidal bodies in their formative stages. It demonstrates that tail matter is attracted towards an asteroidal comet nucleus by strong electrical forces. Additionally, two charging mechanisms are identified, both of which produce a net negative charge on the comet nucleus. This is supported by data from recent space probes.

Comet wandering, sunward spikes, a shrinkage of the coma as the comet approaches the Sun, curved tails, the gathering and maintenance of meteoroid streams, spiraling of tail material, and the rapid orbital circularization of large newly captured comets are also discussed.

Earlier papers used similar concepts to predict the existence of strong electrical fields in the vicinity of Saturn, showing Saturn and its ring system to be analogous to the Sun and its zodiacal disk. The realization of the proton wind-supported capacitors of Saturn and the Sun led to a number of unexpected theoretical considerations that included,

1. the recognition of the charging process used by comets
2. the postulation of an ion and dust cloud held back by solar wind pressure near the orbit of Jupiter - which is one source of comet tail matte
3. a postulated electric dipole red-shift in photons leaving the central star

Still another theoretical result was the possibility of an electrically induced magnetic dynamo powered by a planet spinning inside the orbit of a slightly charged moon. Empirical correlation between moons and magnetic fields has been known for some time, though the wandering of our Moon has remained an unsolved mystery.

An attempt is made to explain solar system formation from the time a newly formed twin star system leaves the galactic center to when it develops its solar system by the capture of comets. The reader's knowledge of planetary encounter and N-body literature is assumed since it is basic to the paper but unreferenced.

However, the text by T. J. J. See, which develops the first capture theory for the origin of the solar system (OSS), is indispensable. A major result of this paper is also the quantization of' Newtonian space. Finally, the link between planetary formation, geomagnetic reversals, and biological evolution is examined.

I have recently received a handful of uninformed responses from people who have read my series of essays on the possible influence of electricity in the solar system - including the electric nature of comets.

Several have written to me claiming that I was not giving proper credit to astrophysicist James McCanney, even asserting that McCanney "originated" the electric comet theory. Some have further stated that "electric universe" theorist Wallace Thornhill has "borrowed" from McCanney's theories without acknowledging a debt to McCanney.

Both of these assertions are false.

McCanney did not "originate" the electric comet theory, because:

1. the theory has roots in many 19th century speculations about comets
2. the catalytic work on the electric sun and electric comets was that of the twentieth century pioneer Ralph Juergens, whose published papers on the subject pre-date those of McCanney by several years
3. Thornhill's thesis was directly inspired by Juergens', whose work Thornhill diligently followed from the beginning
4. the hypothesis was favored by Thornhill, to which he has added many nuances, and differs significantly from McCanney's
5. the core of McCanney's thesis is thrown into doubt by space age discovery, while Thornhill's is not

Nevertheless, McCanney must be given credit for having explored cometary phenomena from a unique electrical vantage point and having added to scientific discussion of the "electric comet."

A brief historical outline of the evolution of the electric comet theory may be helpful.

The full extent of the Dresden Holocaust can be more readily grasped if one considers that as many as a half a million persons died within a 14-hour period, whereas estimates of those who died at Hiroshima range from 90,000 to 140,000. Author Kurt Vonnegut was in Dresden as an American POW when it was bombed in 1945; he wrote a famous anti-war novel, Slaughterhouse Five, in 1969, based on his experience. The book was banned in several US states - and branded a "tool of the devil" in North Dakota. Churchill, the monster who ordered the Dresden slaughter, was knighted. The rest is history...

The WWII Dresden Holocaust - 'A Single Column Of Flame'

"You guys burnt the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm, in that one big flame, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr

On the evening of February 13, 1945, an orgy of genocide and barbarism began against a defenseless German city, one of the greatest cultural centers of northern Europe. Within less than 14 hours not only was it reduced to flaming ruins, but an estimated one-third of its inhabitants, possibly as many as a half a million, had perished in what was the worst single event massacre of all time.

"And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed." - John Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath

John Steinbeck wrote his masterpiece The Grapes of Wrath at the age of 37 in 1939, at the tail end of the Great Depression. Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize and Pulitzer Prize for literature. John Ford then made a classic film adaption in 1941, starring Henry Fonda. It is considered one of the top 25 films in American history. The book was also one of the most banned in US history. Steinbeck was ridiculed as a communist and anti-capitalist by showing support for the working poor. Some things never change, as the moneyed interests that control the media message have attempted to deflect the blame for our current Depression away from their fraudulent deeds. The novel stands as a chronicle of the Great Depression and as a commentary on the economic and social system that gave rise to it. Steinbeck's opus to the working poor reverberates across the decades. He wrote the novel in the midst of the last Fourth Turning Crisis. His themes of man's inhumanity to man, the dignity and rage of the working class, and the selfishness and greed of the moneyed class ring true today.

So Omar "Sheik al-Torture" Suleiman has warned that the only alternative to dialogue with the opposition is "a coup". The suave United States Central Intelligence Agency point man for extraordinary renditions to Egypt, now Washington-anointed "orderly transition" conductor, may be more versed in electroshocks than onanism; otherwise he would have realized that a military dictatorship toppling itself still ends up as a military dictatorship.

Yet maybe that's exactly what he meant. Suleiman said protests are "very dangerous" - not so subtly implying the interference of hidden agendas by foreign journalists; a subversive coalition of the US, Israel, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and al-Jazeera; the Muslim Brotherhood (MB); and all of the above (and all duly evoked by the regime).

Osama Saraya, editor-in-chief of the pro-government newspaper al-Ahram, who was there when Suleiman uttered his sinister warnings, is assured he meant not only a military coup, but an Islamist coup as well.

Summary:

• The simplified view of cholesterol as "good" (HDL) or "bad" (LDL) has contributed to the continuing heart disease epidemic
• Not all LDL cholesterol is created equal. Only small, dense LDL particles are associated with heart disease, whereas large, buoyant LDL are either benign or may protect against heart disease.
• Replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates - which has been recommended by the American Heart Association for decades - reduces HDL and increases small, dense LDL, both of which are associated with increased risk of heart disease.
• Dietary cholesterol has a negligible effect on total blood LDL cholesterol levels. However, eating eggs every day reduces small, dense LDL, which in turn reduces risk of heart disease.
• The best way to lower small, dense LDL and protect yourself from heart disease is to eat fewer carbs (not fat and cholesterol), exercise and lose weight.

Not all cholesterol is created equal

By now most people have been exposed to the idea of "good" and "bad" cholesterol. It's yet another deeply ingrained cultural belief, such as the one I wrote about last week, that has been relentlessly driven into our heads for several decades.

But once we've put on our Healthy Skeptic goggles, which I know all of you fair readers have, we no longer simply believe what we're told by the medical establishment or mainstream media. Nor are we impressed or in any way swayed by the number of people that tell us something is true. After all, as Anatole France said, "Even if fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."

Words to live by.

The oversimplified view of HDL cholesterol as "good" and LDL cholesterol as "bad" is not only incomplete, it has also directly contributed to the continuing heart disease epidemic worldwide.

But before we discover why, we first have to address another common misconception. LDL and HDL are not cholesterol. We refer to them as cholesterol, but they aren't. LDL (low density lipoprotein) and HDL (high density lipoprotein) are proteins that transport cholesterol through the blood. Cholesterol, like all fats, doesn't dissolve in water (or blood) so it must be transported through the blood by these lipoproteins. The names LDL and HDL refer to the different types of lipoproteins that transport cholesterol.