Climate Change is Natural

i get this depressed little laugh when people are so swayed by manbearpig’s global warming creation.

that’s not to say it doesn’t feel a little warmer than when i was a kid; however, i just don’t think people are the solitary reason for it. nor do i feel that it’s a trend that will last forever. in fact, this summer has been rather cool compared to last summer.

i find it silly to think that the earth herself cannot go through cycles. everything else does. i’m not saying to use that as an excuse to be wicked to her. she’ll get you eventually. but when i think about all these wealthy bigwigs leaving way more of a “carbon footprint” than i ever could expecting me to front the cash to make the world a better place…….hey, i already use way less utilities than the average person. i’ve lived without utilities. i don’t just drive to town on a whim…..and if i lived in a city i wouldn’t be using a car. but you really can’t afford solar paneling or other really cool get-you-off-the-grid-but-still-have-power-to-run-your-laptop-for-work-and-communication-etc devices when your earnings are poverty level. and guess what, i receive no benefits or aid from the government/taxpayers either.

and florescent bulbs aren’t the answer. they contain mercury. and blow just as quickly as incandescents in my house. sometimes quicker. and i know they do better in “turn them on leave them on” areas. they still blow. i’m lucky to get a few months use out of them, and i hate the type of light they give off too. so unnatural. gave me massive headaches every single day when i started middle school (went from an old elementary school without florescents to a brand new middle with nothing but…)

but here is something interesting i came across some weeks back to demonstrate the fads of science:

in the june 1965 issue of National Geographic, that’s Vol. 127 No.6 on pages 794-795 they have this large picture of Mendenhall Glacier in Alaska. but it’s the caption that really interests me:

“Tortured ice pinnacles 60 to 100 feet high dwarf visitors at the face of the Mendenhall, a glacier that melts faster than it moves forward. Scientists predict that the face may begin advancing again toward the end of the 20th century. By then, as their study of climatic cycles indicates, colder temperatures and heavier snowfalls will have replaced the relatively warm and snow-scant winters now prevailing along the Alaska coast. Mendenhall Lake, 115 feet deep near the glacier, did not exist when this century began.”

science has fads too. it has philosophies. it has its own religious fundamentalists. i really don’t believe we know much more than the ancients did. we have a lot more technology…but since when did technology improve us as humans? it made some things easier, but have we truly changed for the better? have we truly become more intelligent, or have we merely altered our culture, our language so that we are merely different today–not better. big words and big machines do not a genius make.

gods & gurus

the simplest way to express my feelings on religions/cults/philosophies (including those “anti-religious” paths of science/politics/sociology/etc) is that i don’t worship anything. you could call that my “belief system” i suppose…the belief that absolutely nothing, no matter how wicked or wonderful, is worth my mindless and utter devotion. and why isn’t it? well, i see no justification for denying myself to give it all to something a) that’s just like me or b) that isn’t like me. nothing in existence, known or unknown, could ever prove to me that it needed me to belittle myself for it. really, if i was some omniscient, omnipotent being i certainly wouldn’t be going around begging other beings to bow down to me. that kind of desire seems to only come from some weird need for a power/ego-trip…which if you truly were so omniscient/etc, i don’t think you would need. (so, why was yahweh so jealous of all those other “gods”……hmmm? remember, he was only “god of the mountain.”)

granted, some people may just be in that kind of mental/emotional state of development where they actually have some need to blindly devote themselves to something seen or unseen–perhaps to learn that they really don’t need to be doing that. it just seems to me that worship & devotion of any nature makes you completely forget yourself. at that moment, you stop developing. you as a person no longer exist nor can you grow because you have traded yourself for the worship of another being. i prefer to keep the freedom of my own being. to be able to discern life without the colored glasses of any one set of dogma. some might find that selfish i suppose, that the whole point of life is to deny yourself–to “altruistically” give of yourself. but i think if you take a good look, you’ll see that most of the time there is no actual “altruism” occurring….and if you’re giving yourself away just because that’s what someone else or some book told you to do, well…remember, you can’t help anyone else until you’ve helped yourself. your issues don’t just disappear because you’ve devoted yourself to someone/something….in fact, they tend to come back quite a bit more powerful and problematic because you denied yourself for your object of worship.

then there is always the struggle to unlearn social conditioning…to cease merely reacting to everything because that’s how your family/peers/society does it. so many people nowadays speak about a global worldview, but i do not find the concept possible if we are all simply reacting to everything because that’s how the generation before us reacted. i myself am not immune from reaction. i’m much better at recognizing it than 10 years ago and, albeit not as often as i would like, better at consciously choosing an action. i don’t find it an easy to task to undo the conditioned aspects of oneself, but in the long run it’s the only way to global improvement–and that global worldview. how can one respect another and coexist peacefully if we all are just reactive creatures, with little actual thinking and slaves to our emotions/beliefs/gods/gurus? and i’m an emotive person too! i’m all for recognizing a feeling, but you really need to combine some mental thought with all that emotional reasoning to come up with an action and not just a reaction. i will have to admit that the balance of daoism has something going for it. (and no, buddhism is not an answer. it forces a lot of denial/repression especially in westerners, and has had quite a violent history. to me it’s no different than any other religion as much as they try to say it’s not.)

so, i don’t worship anything. even the trees i love so much, even the earth, the forces of the universe….nope, nothing. doesn’t mean i won’t hand out some respect where it’s deserved, but i won’t grovel before anything. i’ll shake hands, look it in the eyes (if it has either of those), but i won’t kiss its feet. and it better not try to kiss mine. that’s so annoying!

stop watching television already

so there used to be one show that i would adjust the antenna for…alas no longer as it has truly passed into the realm of “every other show on television”…….but this isn’t my actual point.

what i really wanted to mention, was that in waiting for that show a couple weeks back, i was so lucky to catch the grainy tail-end of that wonderful piece of drivel called grey’s anatomy. the part where they wax “philosophical.” it was absolutely infuriating. their main point was that what makes humans different or better than their animal instincts is humans can think & feel. obviously none of the writers or actors must have animal companions. even chickens have distinct personalities.

and these commercials i’ve caught that make it seem cute that the dog is owned by a human…..

animals definitely are different from humans, but it is ludicrous to assume they cannot feel or think. it is so obvious that they do, i live with enough of them to know. and yes, though chickens can be rather pea-brained most of the time, they can learn, they do exhibit intelligence….and when given a decent home, you can even see that each chicken is distinct. they aren’t all carbon copies of one another, they actually have individual distinctions in their characters. but our culture certainly prefers to prevent that from being known, or even from occurring. of course in those wretched overcrowded chicken farms, cattle pens, too quickly fattened on corn and other animals……concentration camps for animals. of course they appear to have no identity, how could they in such an environment? what do you think happens to a person’s sense of self after a lengthy imprisonment in war camps, concentration camps????

and back to the antenna-adjusting….i wonder what is in those little black boxes they want everyone to buy now besides just a digital TV receiver/converter…? you know, with the right equipment your current television can be used to see/hear you whenever plugged in (doesn’t matter if it’s on or off)….and i would have to say that any electrical wiring can be used similarly, for hearing at least. kind of creepy. like those electric meters that automatically read your KWH but don’t actually tell you what that amount is…nor can you tell if your electricity is completely turned off, like you could tell on the older models. odd odd odd.

brain-eating amoebas!

to carry on in the vein of microscopic brain infesters, here’s some clips from a little story about Naegleria (i feel like this should be an x-files episode* or something….):

Killer Amoeba Blamed for Six Deaths

...thanks to the amoeba Naegleria that is often found in fun places to swim. it likes to destroy tissue on its way to your brain. that's where the feast really begins. mm-mm-mm. braaaaiiiinnnnsssssssssssss. wait, is it the zombie apocalypse already? need to prepare pronto!

anyhoo.

read up about Naegleria in the CDC factsheet. it likes to get in through your nose. think of THAT next time you go for a swim in your local freshwater lake or river. <shudder>

and check out these photos from Thomas Buckelew’s Parisitology Images.

i am both fascinated and repulsed. bugs in my brain, ewww!

[*I was later informed that this WAS in an X-Files episode. "Darkness Falls" (1x19) in which Spirit Lake is mentioned as a place where swimmers have been infected by brain-sucking amoeba.]

maybe i'm a little bit psychic...

or maybe it’s just the heat. it’s not luck, ’cause i’m not the lucky type.

but my beau lost his place in his book, didn’t feel like looking for it, so asked me what page he was on.

of course, i had no idea–this was just a lark.

so he tells me the range of pages and without thinking i reply “213″.

he turns there and then acts a little odd.

apparently that WAS the page he was on.

RFID zapping

RFID tags are in pretty much everything you buy nowadays. they collect a lot of data which can be extracted when in range of a RFID reader. basically, the object is scanned throughout the delivery process to a store, inside a store, upon leaving the store, after you take it home, wherever you happen to take it. as long as you have a reading device, you (or anyone else) can access this info and the other data stored in the tag. it’s a tracking & monitoring device of sorts. (similar to how they can track every mile you drive in your car and where you are spending those miles to a very exact degree. i believe the chips/tags for this started to be in every vehicle in the early 1990s, but i could be misinformed. however, the information is stored indefinitely………your life private? ha!)

two simple ways you can disable an RFID tag are by cutting off their antennas or by frying them in a microwave for a bit (that is, if you want to risk those microwaves….they give me a massive headache). but what to do when they’re in your clothes or anything else sensitive to scissors & radiation boxes?

why, make an RFID zapper using a disposable camera! (see also here & the following video uploaded by tmmbach)

MAKE magazine also has lots of little articles & links to DIY RFID projects. (just do a search at their site for "rfid zapper")

get zapping!

parasitic mind control

don’t think you’re immune, ’cause you’re full of them too! every living thing is crawling with them, at least every animal. i suppose it’s only when something upsets that delicate balance called health that we might notice them. or rather, we notice their effects.

i will finish with human parasites in a moment. here are some interesting insect/animal parasite stories:

apparently, there is a type of parasite (“hairworms”) that likes to live off grasshoppers. when it is ready to reproduce, it excretes neurotoxic chemicals that cause the grasshopper to essentially commit suicide by leaping into water. while its host is drowning, the parasite safely swims away to breed in the water. no kidding. read it at national geographic.

there is another parasite who spends part of its youth in ants. however, once it matures enough, it really would rather move to birds. how to solve this problem? easy! control the mind of the ant, causing it to attach itself to the top of a blade of grass, where the ant is more likely to be eaten by a bird. science says it’s the Dicrocoelium dendriticum, a lancet fluke. (the ant section is in the middle of the article, more or less, but you should read all of it anyways.)

three’s the charm, right? so when mice smell cat urine, it normally causes high anxiety and other fear reactions in them, and they avoid those areas. but there is a certain parasite that spends part of its life cycle in a mouse and at a certain point wishes to advance to cats. in order to get to the cats, the parasite causes a mouse to no longer have a reaction to cat urine, thus giving it a better chance of wandering across the path of a hungry kitty. don’t believe me? it’s the Toxoplasma parasite. (see here too)

and you thought your thoughts were yours and yours alone!

now, people can get parasites in their brains too, just like this lady who ate a bad taco in 2001. the worm (at first just an egg) goes from her gut to her bloodstream, then makes it's way through the bloodstream to her brain. everything's fine & dandy until it the grown worm dies, starts decaying, and makes her brain inflamed. that's when her brain finally notices there's a foreign object lodged in it...

And finally, here are some examples of the types of parasites probably enjoying you RIGHT NOW as you sit here reading about them:

A SMALL SAMPLE OF HUMAN PARASITES

• GIARDIA
• Cryptosporidium
• Genital Protozoa = TRICHOMONAS
• Nervous System Protozoa = NAEGLERIA FOWLERI
• Tissue Protozoa = ACANTHAMOEBA, PNEUMOCYSTIS CARINII, TRICHINELLA SPIRALIS
• Blood Parasites = MALARIA, BABESIA SPP.
• Intestinal Nematodes = ASCARIS LUMRICOIDES, E. VERMICULARIS, TRICHURIS TRICHIURA, HOOKWORMS, TRICHOSTRONGYLUS SPP.
• Liver & Lung Trematodes or Flukes = Clonorchis, Opisthorchis, Fasciola, PARAGONIMUS SPP.
• Blood Trematodes or Flukes = SCHISTOSOMES

 do take note that in many of these cases--including the insect/mice stories--the key to becoming infected with the parasite is ingesting the flesh of another animal. (of course if you eat unwashed fruits & veggies or drink from a water source that something has crapped on or in at some point, that won’t help you out either.)

doesn’t it just make you feel all warm & fuzzy?