This year it is more important that you protect your children and loved ones from the flu vaccines than influenza itself. Here are the reasons:
1. This flu is simply another flu. It is not unusually deadly. In fact, the H1N1 swine flu in circulation is less deadly than many other influenza outbreaks. The first 1000 confirmed swine flu cases in Japan and China produced zero deaths. The Centers for Disease Control alleges 36,000 Americans succumb to the flu each year, but so far, since March through August of 2009 (6 months), the swine flu has been attributed to ~500 - 600 deaths in the US. The swine flu of 2009 has already swept through the Southern Hemisphere's flu season without alarm. Only exaggerated reports have been issued by the World Health Organization regarding hospitalizations required during the flu season in South American countries. Getting exposed to influenza and developing natural antibodies confers resistance for future flu outbreaks. Artificially boosting antibodies by exposure to flu viruses in vaccines is more problematic than natural exposure. Americans have been exposed to the H1N1 swine flu throughout the summer of 2009 with far fewer deaths and hospitalizations than commonly attributed to the seasonal flu.
Health & Wellness
Guess how I spent my summer? Testing over 900 everyday consumer products to find out what hazardous chemicals they might contain. Our team tested everything from pet collars and chew toys, to women's handbags, sedans and SUVs. Yet, despite all of the attention in 2008 to lead in toys, we are still universally finding elevated levels of lead, mercury, arsenic and other chemicals that can be hazards to human health, especially for children and pets.
At our new website, HealthyStuff.org, consumers can find over 15,000 test results on over 5,000 common items including pet products, back-to-school items, children's toys, and the latest on cars and children's car seats.
At our new website, HealthyStuff.org, consumers can find over 15,000 test results on over 5,000 common items including pet products, back-to-school items, children's toys, and the latest on cars and children's car seats.
"The science is largely complete. Ten epidemiological studies have shown MMR vaccine doesn't cause autism; six have shown thimerosal doesn't cause autism."Conventional wisdom holds that the autism-vaccine question has been "asked and answered," and that least 16 large, well-constructed epidemiological studies have thoroughly addressed and debunked any hypothesis that childhood vaccination is in any way associated with an increased risk for autism spectrum disorders.
-- Dr. Paul Offit, "Autism's False Prophets"
"16 studies have shown no causal association between vaccines and autism, and these studies carry weight in the scientific industry."
-- Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC Today Show Medical Editor
But there are several critical flaws in such an oversimplified generalization, and they are rarely given close examination by public health experts or members of the media.
By testing formerly blind patients within weeks of sight restoration, Sinha and his colleagues found that subjects had very limited ability to distinguish an object from its background, identify overlapping objects, or even piece together the different parts of an object. The patients gradually improved over time, and the new study suggests that dynamic information - that is, input from moving objects - is critical to the brain's ability to learn to segregate objects from their backgrounds (a task known as visual integration).
Doctors have been hesitant to treat older patients because the conventional dogma holds that the brain is incapable of learning to see after age 5 or 6, but these findings support the idea of treating blindness in older children and adults. The results also offer insight into modeling the human visual system, diagnosing visual disorders, creating rehabilitation procedures and developing computers that can see.
After three patients, ranging in age from 7 to 29, were treated for blindness, they were asked to identify shapes on a computer screen. The patients performed poorly when objects were stationary, but if a shape was put into motion, success rates improved to about 75 percent. During follow-up tests that continued for 18 months after treatment, the patients' performance with stationary objects gradually improved to almost normal.
Doctors have been hesitant to treat older patients because the conventional dogma holds that the brain is incapable of learning to see after age 5 or 6, but these findings support the idea of treating blindness in older children and adults. The results also offer insight into modeling the human visual system, diagnosing visual disorders, creating rehabilitation procedures and developing computers that can see.
After three patients, ranging in age from 7 to 29, were treated for blindness, they were asked to identify shapes on a computer screen. The patients performed poorly when objects were stationary, but if a shape was put into motion, success rates improved to about 75 percent. During follow-up tests that continued for 18 months after treatment, the patients' performance with stationary objects gradually improved to almost normal.
For years now, many of us who advocate natural health and natural approaches to beating cancer have warned against the dangers and the ineffectiveness of chemotherapy. The following report presented at the 27th Annual San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium illustrates how chemo actually spreads cancer cells, as well as points out how little we are being told about the dangers of chemo:
"German investigators from Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena, have shown that taxol (the "gold standard of chemo") causes a massive release of cells into circulation.
"Such a release of cancer cells would result in extensive metastasis months or even years later, long after the chemo would be suspected as the cause of the spread of the cancer. This little known horror of conventional cancer treatment needs to be spread far and wide, but it is not even listed in the side effects of taxol."
The fight to eliminate dangerous, toxic chemicals in children's products continues, with Washington State having passed a law last year mandating manufacturers to report if specific products contain such products, writes the Associated Press (AP). Washington State was the first state to pass such a law: The Children's Safe Product Act.
Unfortunately, although the deadline passed nine months ago, the state is nowhere near creating a top 50 list of those chemicals manufacturers would have to disclose, said the AP. Officials created a list of 2,000 from some 80,000 chemicals known to cause cancer and interfere with fetal development, to name two, said the AP.
Unfortunately, although the deadline passed nine months ago, the state is nowhere near creating a top 50 list of those chemicals manufacturers would have to disclose, said the AP. Officials created a list of 2,000 from some 80,000 chemicals known to cause cancer and interfere with fetal development, to name two, said the AP.
New research from The University of St. Andrews in Scotland has discovered that teenage girls are attracted by deep male voices, while younger girls feel intimidated by them.
The study, to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and aimed to find out how the ideas of attractiveness change during adolescence and the early teenage years, which is a crucial period in development. This knowledge could help to guide young people as they begin to experience their first romances.
The researchers took pictures of males and changed them digitally to emphasize or minimize their masculinity. They also manipulated male voices to make them higher or lower in pitch. They played the same voice to each subject twice, with the pitch digitally altered. The pictures and voices were presented to young girls aged 11 to 15, who were asked to assess the attractiveness or otherwise of the males.
The study, to be published in the journal Evolution and Human Behaviour was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and aimed to find out how the ideas of attractiveness change during adolescence and the early teenage years, which is a crucial period in development. This knowledge could help to guide young people as they begin to experience their first romances.
The researchers took pictures of males and changed them digitally to emphasize or minimize their masculinity. They also manipulated male voices to make them higher or lower in pitch. They played the same voice to each subject twice, with the pitch digitally altered. The pictures and voices were presented to young girls aged 11 to 15, who were asked to assess the attractiveness or otherwise of the males.
More than a third of American infants and toddlers live in homes where the television is on most or all the time, even if no one's watching. A new study looks for the first time at the effect of background TV on interactions between parents and young children - and finds that the effect is negative.
The study, in the September/October 2009 issue of the journal Child Development, was carried out by researchers at the University of Massachusetts.
The researchers studied about 50 1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds, each of whom was with one parent, at a university child study center. Half of the one-hour session, parents and children were in a playroom without TV; in the other half-hour, parents chose an adult-directed program to watch (such as Jeopardy!). The researchers observed how often parents and children talked with each other, how actively involved the parents were in their children's play, and whether parents and children responded to each other's questions and suggestions.
When the TV was on, the researchers found, both the quantity and the quality of interactions between parents and children dropped. Specifically, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children and the quality of the interactions declined, with parents less active, attentive, and responsive to their youngsters.
The study, in the September/October 2009 issue of the journal Child Development, was carried out by researchers at the University of Massachusetts.
The researchers studied about 50 1-, 2-, and 3-year-olds, each of whom was with one parent, at a university child study center. Half of the one-hour session, parents and children were in a playroom without TV; in the other half-hour, parents chose an adult-directed program to watch (such as Jeopardy!). The researchers observed how often parents and children talked with each other, how actively involved the parents were in their children's play, and whether parents and children responded to each other's questions and suggestions.
When the TV was on, the researchers found, both the quantity and the quality of interactions between parents and children dropped. Specifically, parents spent about 20 percent less time talking to their children and the quality of the interactions declined, with parents less active, attentive, and responsive to their youngsters.
Part One: Ayn Rand's "real man"
Recently I was rereading Scott Ryan's fascinating, albeit highly technical, critique of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality, and getting a lot more out of it the second time, when I came across a fact culled from a posthumous collection of Rand's journal entries.
In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)
At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)
"A wonderful, free, light consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand's life, her kind of man.
So the question is, who exactly was he?
Recently I was rereading Scott Ryan's fascinating, albeit highly technical, critique of Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism and the Corruption of Rationality, and getting a lot more out of it the second time, when I came across a fact culled from a posthumous collection of Rand's journal entries.
In her journal circa 1928 Rand quoted the statement, "What is good for me is right," a credo attributed to a prominent figure of the day, William Edward Hickman. Her response was enthusiastic. "The best and strongest expression of a real man's psychology I have heard," she exulted. (Quoted in Ryan, citing Journals of Ayn Rand, pp. 21-22.)
At the time, she was planning a novel that was to be titled The Little Street, the projected hero of which was named Danny Renahan. According to Rand scholar Chris Matthew Sciabarra, she deliberately modeled Renahan - intended to be her first sketch of her ideal man - after this same William Edward Hickman. Renahan, she enthuses in another journal entry, "is born with a wonderful, free, light consciousness -- [resulting from] the absolute lack of social instinct or herd feeling. He does not understand, because he has no organ for understanding, the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people ... Other people do not exist for him and he does not understand why they should." (Journals, pp. 27, 21-22; emphasis hers.)
"A wonderful, free, light consciousness" born of the utter absence of any understanding of "the necessity, meaning, or importance of other people." Obviously, Ayn Rand was most favorably impressed with Mr. Hickman. He was, at least at that stage of Rand's life, her kind of man.
So the question is, who exactly was he?
© Unknown
Lukasz Laska
Lukasz Laska
As a young man I enjoyed listening to a particular series of French instructional programs. I didn't understand a word, but was nevertheless enthralled. Was it because the sounds of human speech are thrilling? Not really. Speech sounds alone, stripped of their meaning, don't inspire. We don't wake up to alarm clocks blaring German speech. We don't drive to work listening to native spoken Eskimo, and then switch it to the Bushmen Click station during the commercials. Speech sounds don't give us the chills, and they don't make us cry - not even French.
But music does emanate from our alarm clocks in the morning, and fill our cars, and give us chills, and make us cry. According to a recent paper by Nidhya Logeswaran and Joydeep Bhattacharya from the University of London, music even affects how we see visual images. In the experiment, 30 subjects were presented with a series of happy or sad musical excerpts. After listening to the snippets, the subjects were shown a photograph of a face. Some people were shown a happy face - the person was smiling - while others were exposed to a sad or neutral facial expression. The participants were then asked to rate the emotional content of the face on a 7-point scale, where 1 mean extremely sad and 7 extremely happy.
The researchers found that music powerfully influenced the emotional ratings of the faces. Happy music made happy faces seem even happier while sad music exaggerated the melancholy of a frown. A similar effect was also observed with neutral faces. The simple moral is that the emotions of music are "cross-modal," and can easily spread from sensory system to another. Now I never sit down to my wife's meals without first putting on a jolly Sousa march.
