Showing posts with label Modern. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Modern. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 26, 2014

Filipinos in San Francisco Rally Against Modern Slavery

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Filipinos in San Francisco Rally Against Modern Slavery

Friday, March 14, 2014

What an 18th Century Painting Reveals About Modern Venice | Strip the City


Comparing an 18th century painting to Venice as it looks today, scientists can determine how far and how fast the water level is rising. | For more Strip the…



What an 18th Century Painting Reveals About Modern Venice | Strip the City

Tuesday, March 11, 2014

If 2nd Amendment Doesn"t Protect AK-47s, 1st Amendment Doesn"t Protect Modern Media

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If 2nd Amendment Doesn"t Protect AK-47s, 1st Amendment Doesn"t Protect Modern Media

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Run For Your Life – My Flight From the Modern Medical Establishment

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Run For Your Life – My Flight From the Modern Medical Establishment

Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Another Election Cycle, Another Faux-Outrage/Movement Needed To Stir The Masses – Michael Sam Is The ‘More Modern’ Sandra Fluke….

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Another Election Cycle, Another Faux-Outrage/Movement Needed To Stir The Masses – Michael Sam Is The ‘More Modern’ Sandra Fluke….

Monday, February 3, 2014

The six best retro consoles for modern gamers

The six best retro consoles for modern gamers
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Fancy dipping a toe into the gaming world of yesteryear? Here are the six classic consoles we think you should start with












Technology news, comment and analysis | theguardian.com


Read more about The six best retro consoles for modern gamers and other interesting subjects concerning NSA at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Monday, January 27, 2014

A Martian"s Eye View of Modern Art

A Martian"s Eye View of Modern Art
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Blake Gopnik

The Daily Pic


01.27.14


Tomoo Gokita paints worlds no one has seen.


“Mystic Revelation” is one of the deeply peculiar paintings by the Japanese artist Tomoo Gokita, now gettting his first solo at Mary Boone Gallery in New York. Gokita’s pictures feel like they were made by someone surveying the entire history of 20th-century art afresh, with no special attachment to any particular moments, and asserting no hierarchy between them. Normally, the idea that a work is “timeless” is both praise and empty cliche. Here “timelessness” yields anxiety, and a sense of a world out of whack. Even reference seems to float free: Are those ten appendages swollen fingers, or dreadlocks, or sea cucumbers? The surrealism in these pictures doesn’t seem to come from recombining what’s out in the world, so much as from not recognizing reality’s parts.


For a full visual survey of past Daily Pics visit blakegopnik.com/archive.


 comments





The Daily Beast – Latest Articles




Read more about A Martian"s Eye View of Modern Art and other interesting subjects concerning Commentary at TheDailyNewsReport.com

Saturday, October 12, 2013

A right royal rip-off - What the Royal Mail privatisation tells us about modern Britain



Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter




Published time: October 12, 2013 14:52

Postal workers travel aboard an open top bus as they campaign against the privatisation of the Royal Mail, London (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)


It’s the wilful destruction of another much-loved British institution. The privatisation of the Royal Mail, the British postal service, brings to an end nearly five hundred years of history- stretching back the days of King Henry VIII. 


By privatising the Royal Mail, our coalition government has shown that it does not care a jot for our national heritage, or the devastating impact the sell-off will have on remote rural communities, or how the elderly and the poor will be disproportionately affected. They have shown us that all they care about is rewarding their wealthy backers in the City of London and keeping in with the giants of global capitalism.


Even Mrs Thatcher, the Prime Minister who started the privatisation process in Britain in 1979 thought that selling the Royal Mail was a step too far. However the current UK government with its fanatical commitment to neo-liberalism is determined to take us to dark, scary places that even the Iron Lady shied away from.


The British public, who know only too well from first-hand experience that privatisation invariably means higher prices and worse services, was overwhelmingly opposed to the sale. An opinion poll in July revealed that 67% were against the privatisation, with 36% ‘strongly’ opposed. Just 4% were ’strongly’ in favour. 96% of Royal Mail employees were against the sale too. Yet despite this overwhelming public opposition, the government arrogantly pushed ahead with its plans, showing once again the contempt with which it regards the views of the majority. Ludicrously the sell-off has been hailed by Prime Minister David Cameron as ‘a piece of popular capitalism’. In fact, it’s a piece of highly unpopular capitalism, in which the public have lost out in a massive way. 


Once again, an asset that we- the British people- owned has been flogged off way below its real value. The fact that shares leapt by as much as 38% on the first day of conditional trading, shows us how much the government undervalued the company. 


Postal workers travel aboard an open top bus as they campaign against the privatisation of the Royal Mail, London (Reuters / Suzanne Plunkett)


For instance, the Royal Mail’s real estate was valued at just £787m-a laughable figure considering that it owns some prime sites in our major cities, including a depot in London estimated to be worth £1bn. The Royal Mail plans to reduce its number of sites from 45 to 37 by 2016, with the profits from property sales going to the new private owners. Meanwhile, as the private investors gorge on the profits, we – the taxpayers – have been left holding Royal Mail pension fund liabilities of around £37.5bn – a clear case of nationalising the losses and privatising the gains.  


The pledge by the Business Secretary Vince Cable that  only ‘responsible, long-term institutional investors’ would be permitted to buy Royal Mail shares is at variance with the news that hedge funds, the vilest manifestation of modern vulture capitalism, have been allowed to invest. It’s been reported that Lansdowne Partners, one of the world’s biggest hedge funds, had taken ‘a massive stake’ in Royal Mail.  Lansdowne are not the only giant of global capitalism to benefit, for the lead adviser to the government on the sale was none other than the ’great vampire squid’ itself, Goldman Sachs.  Overall, the government paid £21.7m in fees to ‘advisers’ for advice on selling a company which the owners – the British public – didn’t want sold.


 Whichever way you look at it the sell-off represents a right royal rip-off for the British taxpayer. There’ll be further costs down the line too. On Wednesday, the Royal Mail admitted that more postal workers will lose their jobs following the sell-off. And although the universal service obligation remains, it’s likely that the privatised Royal Mail, whose sole aim will be profit maximisation, will lobby hard for it to be dropped. What are the odds that in a few years time, the taxpayer will be subsiding a privatised Royal Mail to enable it to continue delivering the mail to remote rural areas six days a week? Let’s not forget that Britain’s privatised rail companies have received around four times in taxpayer subsidy than the publicly-owned British Rail did. It’s a neo-liberal myth that privatisation saves the taxpayer money – on the contrary; it invariably costs us far more than keeping the service ‘in house’.


 If Britain was a genuine democracy- as it used to be in the period 1945-79, before the neo-liberals and neo-cons took over, the issue of Royal Mail privatisation would not even have been on the agenda.


 But the very fact it was sold – with such a blatant disregard for public opinion – tells us everything we need to know about the country we have become. Our government doesn’t act in our interests, in the interests of the majority, but in the interests of powerful financial and business elites. It’s these elites who wanted the Royal Mail sold, not the British people. 


The sell-off of this much-loved historic institution is proof that even after the successful democratic people’s uprising which stopped our government taking us into a war against Syria – a war which no one outside elite circles wanted – there is still an awful lot of work to do.


The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.




RT – Op-Edge



A right royal rip-off - What the Royal Mail privatisation tells us about modern Britain

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

A Modern Exorcism



(wayne’seyeview/flickr)

The entrance to Ward D, in the bowels of Jackson Memorial Hospital, was through a thick steel door with a chest-high peephole. A cop sat on the other side. The room was a bare concrete rectangle with steel manacles embedded in the walls and a piss trough at the far end. I figured the D stood for dungeon. In front of each set of wall irons there was a gurney, usually with an inmate from Miami’s Dade County Jail sitting or lying on it.


Many years ago, I was doing my residency at Jackson Memorial, the major teaching hospital for the University of Miami School of Medicine, and part of our emergency room training was caring for sick prisoners. Inmates from the jail, one of the largest and most overcrowded in the country, were transported to Ward D for their medical care.


I remember a young man who’d been stabbed in the eye, a toothbrush quivering in his socket while his hands were shackled over his head to the wall behind him. There was a famous musician, high on a multi-drug cocktail, who had scraped his nimble guitar fingers raw trying to claw his way up his cell wall. And usually, there were a number of heroin addicts having seizures from going cold turkey. The word was that nine or 10 inmates had died in the Dade County Jail the year before, from overdoses, suicides, or murder.


Several of my fellow residents and I tried to improve conditions for the prisoners. We began staffing regular clinics in the jail, and at the minimum security Dade County Stockade, and we were able to substantially cut down on transfers to Ward D.


One late afternoon, as I was leaving the jail clinic, one of the guards asked me if I would mind checking on an inmate he was concerned about. He said he looked like he was in a trance, that he hadn’t moved or batted an eye since they brought him in the night before.


We walked up to the fifth floor, accompanied by a surround sound cursing cacophony. “Hey Doc, look at this!” “Fuck you!” Screams. Urine thrown.


The young man was alone in his cell, sitting in a lotus position, staring straight ahead. He was slender and wore an overlarge white jumpsuit. He was handsome and Hispanic, with dark brown curly hair. His name, the guard said, was Jose, and he’d been brought in the night before on a burglary charge. The guard had no more information.


Jose was motionless, catatonic. I suspected he was schizophrenic—although seeing him sitting like a baby-faced Buddha on the cell floor, it was difficult to imagine him stealing anything the night before. He did not respond to any of my questions. I picked up his hand and felt his pulse, holding his wrist, and he kept it there, chest high, when I let go. He had very long fingernails on his thumb and pinkie. Probably not a guitar picker, but handy cocaine spoons, I thought.


The guard called downstairs for more help and a gurney. We picked Jose up and rolled him to the small jail clinic.


Ron, a physician assistant, was there starting duty for the night shift. He was tall, fit, and smiling, with short blonde hair in a flat top and a clean-cut, confident presence. This was the first time we’d met. Ron watched as I examined Jose. He had evident needle track marks on his hands and forearms, and he kept his arms in the same positions I put them in while examining, like a doll, unmoving. His heart and lungs were fine and his pupils responded normally, contracting to my penlight, but I didn’t even try to have him lie down—he was stuck in his rigid, cross-legged posture.


Ron nodded his head at me, and we walked into our small office. Ron told me he thought that someone had put a mojo on Jose—that he was hexed, and that his fingernails were a clue. “Santeria,” he said.


I’d just learned about Santeria the week before—an Afro-Caribbean belief system that spread from the Yoruba culture of West Africa to Cuba and the Americas. Joan Halifax, a PhD. student in anthropology, had given a fascinating talk to our residents about hexing, spells, mojos, and witchcraft among the mix of Cubans, Haitians, Puerto Ricans, and Bahamians living in South Florida.


I suggested to Ron that we might be seeing hysteria, a conversion reaction in which overwhelming mental stress can cause paralysis. But in any event, we ought to have him evaluated by the hospital psychiatrists, in Ward D.


I called Joan Halifax, introduced myself, and told her about Jose. She said she’d come right over, and I arranged with the warden to allow her to come up to the clinic.


An hour or so later, Ron explained to Joan and me that he had been a medic before physician assistant school, and that after Vietnam, he’d spent considerable time in the “islands” at an unnamed military installation. There he’d become interested in Santeria and had befriended an Obispo, a bishop in this complex religion that blended elements of Catholicism with Yoruba gods and goddesses. The Obispo had taught Ron how to do exorcisms, and Ron said Jose needed one.


I could have said no. I could have just sent him to Ward D. But then Joan and I wouldn’t have this story to tell.


***


Ron placed a large brown grocery bag on the floor, from which he produced a beautiful king conch shell. We all walked into the exam room, and standing in front of Jose’s staring face, Ron lifted the conch shell above his head and smashed it into a hundred pieces on the floor. Then he picked up a sharp piece of shell, gripped Jose’s left wrist, and cut an X into his forearm, blood oozing out from the pattern. Then, with another piece of shell, he cut a matching X into his own left forearm. Jose did not flinch. Facing Jose, Ron bound their cut arms together, palm-to-palm, with a red bandana. They spent the night in the clinic like that, tied together.


I called the clinic in the morning and Ron told me that Jose was talking, He said that he’d performed some other Santeria rituals that night, and that Jose finally blinked a couple of times and asked where he was. He wasn’t hearing voices, and didn’t seem paranoid, but was pretty scared, reasonably normal behavior under the circumstances. As a physician, I’m still not sure why Jose woke up, but it could have something to do with grooming—that special behavior that we humans share with many animals—the ability to soothe each other, by touch, or talk, or tradition.


We all met late that afternoon at the jail, and Ron related Jose’s history. Jose was in his early 20s. His family had come to Florida from Cuba shortly after the 1959 revolution, while they still could. They moved to New York City to be closer to relatives, but as a teenager, Jose started using heroin, and his mother moved the family back to Miami to try to escape the drugs. It didn’t work. His mother finally kicked him out of the house, and she told him that she’d consulted the Obispo about him, and that he could return if he got clean. Jose told Ron that he’d only come back to his family’s house because he was looking for a place to hide after he’d robbed a convenience store. But when he arrived, he found a king conch shell by the front door and cops waiting in the bushes. Ron said, the king conch shell represented Elegua, the Santeria god and guardian of the crossroads of life, the spirit that controls entrances, exits and decisions, and that Elegua had put a spell on Jose, or at least Jose thought he had. 



(mikebaird/flickr)

Although Ron’s rituals had apparently cured Jose’s trance state, Ron explained that an exorcism would be needed to finally cure Elegua’s spell. Before we had time to worry about how we’d be able to pull off an exorcism in the Dade County Jail, Ron gave us a list of things we’d need for the ceremony: 12 carved wooden signs of the zodiac, or saints, maybe even a mix and match; a syringe and IV needles; 3 small bowls; fingernail clippers; 3 bandanas, preferably red; and 12 candles with holders. And we needed a room where no one would disturb us. I went to see the warden and told him our story. Surprisingly, he said we could use a small jail laundry room. He said he knew something about Santeria, and as I recall, he wished us luck.


We met the next morning in the laundry room, flanked by banks of industrial washers and dryers. A guard brought Jose down and said he’d be right outside if we needed him.


We arranged the candles in a full circle, about 5 feet in diameter. Then, Joan pulled the array of zodiac symbols out of her bag and Ron directed their placement, a small wooden Pisces here, a Cancer there, a Virgin of Guadalupe in the middle, forming a concentric semicircle in front of the candles. The bowls were covered with the bandanas and placed in the middle of the circle. Ron also put a number of sacred stones in the circle. Jose sat down in front of the carved figures. Joan, Ron, and I were seated opposite him, with Ron in the middle.


I speak Spanish, but what happened next, Ron’s soliloquy of incantations was like no language I’d ever heard. I think it was probably a pidgin patois. I do remember one Spanish phrase—circulos dentro circulos, or circles within circles. I remember watching the candles flickering, a distorted reflection of our ceremonial circle in the glass door of the dryer across the room. I could feel my pulse beating in my ears.


After several minutes of chanting, Ron turned to me and asked that I draw about 3 CCs of blood from Jose. I’d forgotten to bring a tourniquet, but that wasn’t the only problem. Jose’s hands and arm veins were scarred by track marks, the vertical signposts of heroin use, making it difficult to insert the needle. Jose said it would be easier if he did it, that he knew where to find a good vein. So we used my belt as a tourniquet, and Jose gently tapped the needle into a vein on his wrist. He squirted the blood into a bowl.


Joan clipped a lock of Jose’s hair and put it in another bowl. Very long fingernail clippings curled in the last bowl, and we covered all three with bandannas and placed them the middle of the circle. We all sat back down and Ron, his head tilted back, holding the stones in his hands, cast his own verbal spell over the bowls. Then Ron stood and walked around the circle. Kneeling behind Jose, he quickly pressed on a point behind his jaw. Suddenly unconscious, Jose slumped to the floor. Ron waited for 20 or 30 seconds and then massaged Jose’s face, woke him up, and gradually helped him back to a sitting position. Ron brought the ceremony to a close with another prayer to the Orisha spirits.


There was a port at the Dade County Jail, just inside the main gate, where vehicles could turn around after delivering prisoners. Beside the guardhouse, a small grassy area fronted the main cellblock. Ron had left a shovel with the guard at the port, and we walked there, bearing the cloth covered bowls like offerings. Jose dug a hole there, in the only green space around, and carefully poured the blood, hair and nails in. Then, he was taken back to his cell.


Months later, I heard from Ron that Jose was out of jail and supposedly in a drug rehab program, but soon after, I completed my residency, moved and lost touch. About 20 years ago, I read a magazine article about Joan Halifax. We both were living in New Mexico, where she was a Zen Buddhist Roshi, the Abbot of the Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe. I called her up.


We see each other once or twice a year, and have reviewed “our story” at least 10 times. There are a number of newspaper reports and other references to Ward D that one can find through a quick Google search. The ward was finally demolished in 1995. 


I’ve resisted flying to Miami to find Ron through old paper employment records and microfiche files for the Dade County Corrections Department. I’ve written and called university physician assistant programs, but history and memories have faded, and institutional legal protections abound.


I still occasionally run into spirits. In New Mexico, a number of my Hispanic patients also get their care from traditional healers—called curanderas and curanderos—and like Santeria’s santeros, they use herbal remedies, representative religious icons and incantations to care for people.


Cubans and Puerto Ricans have brought Santeria to Chicago, Seattle and New York and many places in between. There are estimated to be thousands of disciples of “La Religion” across North America.


I believe Jose was cleansed somehow, and I hope it stuck. I’ve wondered what would have happened if we’d sent him to Ward D—what the shrinks would have thought, how he would have been treated, whether he would have been chained to the wall and shot full of Thorazine. I think we did the right thing. 






    








Master Feed : The Atlantic



A Modern Exorcism

Thursday, September 19, 2013

Jaden Smith Has His Finger on the Pulse of Modern Education

Perhaps you heard the other day that Jaden Smith, son of actor Will Smith, sent out a tweet that stirred up a hornets nest of criticism. Take a peek:


“School Is The Tool To Brainwash The Youth.”


He continued:


“If Everybody In The World Dropped Out Of School We Would Have A Much More Intelligent Society.”


Jaden Smith is 15 years old, and if we take the comments at face-value (who didn’t hate school at that age?), they are easy to dismiss. But let’s ignore face-value for a moment and assume he knows exactly what he’s talking about. He has, apparently, reached the same conclusion many of us have who suffered through public school, who found that when we questioned authority, were told we were behaving inappropriately. When I say “question authority” I don’t mean we were doing anything particularly “wrong” in the usual sense. Maybe we were writing conservative editorials in the school paper, or writing essays in English class that went against the established narrative. Maybe we wrote that popular culture and the growing trend of “if it’s true for you, you shouldn’t be judged” was corroding our nation. Maybe we refused to write about something else, even when enough teachers complained to the point the principle invited you into her office for a chat.


Of course, you can’t be given detention or expelled because you wrote something teachers disagree with, especially since they had no cause for doing so (you didn’t use profanity, didn’t attack a religious or ethnic group, etc.). The only thing you did wrong was not write what they were telling you to write. Why the fuss? Because other students were reading what you wrote, especially the school paper editorials, and maybe there was a danger that others would convert to your way of thinking.


One reaction to Jaden Smith’s tweet pretty much sums up all of the responses I looked up: “He has such a huge group of fans that really look up to him,” Us Weekly reporter Jennifer Peros told ABC News. “So this isn’t really the example you should really be setting.”


Exactly. Heaven forbid that young people actually question what so-called authorities tell them.


Now, we do need basic education. No question about that. But after so many “they never taught me that in school” moments as an adult, I have come to realize that school really wasn’t there to teach me anything except conformity. And when I didn’t conform, I wound up having to explain myself to an authority figure who thought she knew better, yet was in the untenable position of being an educator telling me not to think and explore other ideas.


If you can break away from the collective group-think of modern education, as Jaden Smith suggests, you might actually stand a chance of truly learning something.


And what drives Jaden Smith’s point home is a new text book that, basically, rewrites the entire Constitution, and is aimed at “advance history” students. Brainwashing 101.


We used to say, “Don’t trust anybody over 30,” which was fine until one turned 30. And then it became, “Don’t trust anybody.” Especially teachers.


Teachers are the new sacred cows. They are not to be criticized in any way and if you do, you are tarred and feathered. I have little respect for a collective industry that follows progressive policies and passes those policies onto kids in the name of “education.” I know many teachers, and they are good people. I like dating teachers because when you do something wrong, they make you do it over again. But the good ones are a drop in the bucket compared to the juggernaut of the educational industry that has a death-grip on your kids’ necks.


You know what I’ve also learned after 38 years on God’s green earth?


Sacred cows make the best burgers.



BRIAN DRAKE is a broadcaster in California and the author of The Rogue Gentleman, a thriller in the tradition of Vince Flynn and Brad Thor. Follow him on Twitter.



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Thursday, September 12, 2013

VIDEO: Brooke Burke-Charvet"s Tips For All Busy Moms!







To say that Brooke Burke-Charvet has her hands full is an understatement. The Dancing with the Stars host is a mom of four kids and the CEO of modernmom.com. And now that moms everywhere have gotten their kids back to school, we’re taking a closer look at this Get It Done Mom and giving all of you helpful tips on managing life as a modern mom while still having fun! From meal time to getting organized, these are tips all moms will appreciate! Take a look!













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Sunday, September 1, 2013

origins of modern language being pushed back by a factor of ten to maybe 1 million + years ago!!



The study, reported in the journal Frontiers in Language Sciences, pushes back the origins of modern language by a factor of ten – from the often-cited 50,000 years to 500,000 – 1,000,000 years ago – somewhere between the origins of our genus, Homo, some 1.8 million years ago, and the emergence of Homo heidelbergensis.



This reassessment of the evidence goes against a scenario where a single catastrophic mutation in a single individual would suddenly give rise to language, and suggests that a gradual accumulation of biological and cultural innovations is much more plausible.



www.sci-news.com…


In my way of thinking all pack animals communicate to varying degrees.. Watch dolphins hunt or wolves tracking and killing and tell me they are not communicating in some way…Chimps in the wild


Chimpanzees make tools and use them to acquire foods and for social displays; they have sophisticated hunting strategies requiring cooperation, influence and rank; they are status conscious, manipulative and capable of deception; they can learn to use symbols and understand aspects of human language including some relational syntax, concepts of number and numerical sequence;[28] and they are capable of spontaneous planning for a future state or event



The modeling of human language in animals is known as animal language research. Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee, was successfully taught 125 signs during his life, though some disagree on whether this can be constituted as true language. There have been other, more successful animal language projects, such as Kanzi and Koko, as well as some parrots



So to me it is not a stretch at all to assume language of some sort has been with our species since the beginning…Tarzan and Jane seemed to get along just fine with very few words….OK maybe not a great example but you probably get the idea.! Jane was smart in her way and Tarzan was well versed it what they had to do in their habitat to survive; great pair without all the comforts of a modern home…….I am amazed that the study is finally pushing the so called language barrier back so far….Interesting…


I have a little experience in Asia and some of the languages around here are tonal…Which means one simple word can have 9 different meanings (mandarin) or 5 different meaning (Thai) Context kind of makes a different but it is as though they ran out of words and started using descending, flat, rising, rising and falling, and falling tones for the same words…both are very old languages or parts of older languages. Over the last 40 years the Thai language has changed with the times. It used to be a softer language than it is today.. No doubt due to T.V. and everyone trying to make a buck (Baht) has had an effect…Then you add in the slang that has become a normal vocabulary…language is a thing that grows and changes over time… unless it is a dead language…




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origins of modern language being pushed back by a factor of ten to maybe 1 million + years ago!!

Thursday, August 22, 2013

The 10 false assumptions of modern science (and how to set science free with new paths to discovery)


Mike Adams
Natural News
Aug 22, 2013


Much of modern science remains stuck in an endless inward spiral of false paradigms. That’s why “scientific” medicine, for example, offers no real answers to the really big diseases: cancer, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, and so on.


More importantly, modern medicine will never solve these problems unless it abandons its false assumptions and embraces the “higher science” beyond reductionism and materialism.


This is the message of one of the most important books of our time: Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake.


This book, available both in hardcopy and audio formats (from Audible.com), outlines 10 new pathways to discovery that promise to allow human civilization to leap forward into a new era of understanding, achievement and the harnessing of the power of nature and the cosmos. (I own the audible.com edition and have been excitedly listening!)


“Rupert Sheldrake may be to the twenty-first century what Charles Darwin was to the nineteenth: someone who sent science spinning in wonderfully new and fertile directions.” – Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Reinventing Medicine


The ten false assumptions of modern day science


Much like myself, Sheldrake is very much “pro science.” But he is disturbed by how scientific advancement has become trapped in a cultural tar pit of delusional beliefs and false assumptions. These false assumptions, listed below, hold science back and prevent human civilization from progressing toward a more profound understanding of nature, ourselves and our universe. (And that’s the whole point of science in the first place. Not to enrich corporations but to deepen our understanding of the universe.)


  • A d v e r t i s e m e n t


The following 10 items are Sheldrake’s, but the comments for each item are my own. For the record, Sheldrake may or may not agree completely with my own explanations for each heading here, but they are written in the spirit of what I believe he is wanting to say. If you want his full explanation of these ten items, read his book.


False Assumption #1) The universe is mechanical


Modern science believes the entire universe is made of up “stuff” and nothing else. There is no consciousness, no spirit, no mind and nothing other than mechanical and chemical stuff.


This explains modern science’s obsession with finding smaller and smaller particles at CERN. Many scientists actually believe that if the smallest bits and pieces of a mechanical universe are finally identified and labeled — because labels are really, really important to the materialistic worldview — then the entire cosmos will finally be understood and the “delusion” of God / creator / architect can finally be dismissed forever (in their view). Their goal is the ultimate pessimism: to destroy any belief in a higher intelligence and to doom humans to living pointless lives that end in their total destruction at the moment of death.


False Assumption #2) All matter is unconscious


The most astonishing delusion in modern science is the fact that most modern scientists do not believe they are, themselves, conscious beings. This is also true with Stephen Hawking, whom I have written about in some detail. (See my popular mini-documentary The God Within for a full explanation.)


Modern science assumes that humans are nothing more than biological robots and that animals are not conscious either. They literally believe that consciousness is an illusory artifact of the chemical brain. Not surprisingly, they also do not believe that plants and other living systems are conscious. Even further, the idea that inanimate objects such as minerals or crystals might have some sort of consciousness is considered heresy by most modern scientists.


This denial of consciousness is an assumption, however. There is no evidence supporting the assumption. In fact, first-person evidence of the human experience appears to directly contradict the false assumption that humans are not conscious.


Story continues below…


False Assumption #3) The total amount of matter and energy is always a constant


This assumption of modern science is especially suspicious given that even conventional cosmologists readily admit that 96% of the universe has yet to be detected at all. That’s the “dark matter / dark energy” portion of the universe, and to my knowledge, neither dark matter nor dark energy have ever been directly measured or seen by human scientists.


Except for the theoretical Big Bang, there is no phenomenon by which modern scientists believe the totality of matter and energy can come into existence or exit our universe.


This assumption is especially bizarre considering the theoretical framework of the Big Bang theory, which claims all the known matter and energy in the entire cosmos spontaneously appeared without cause, all on its own, without any intention or reason. The Big Bang theory — and its accompanying theory of cosmological inflation – are, by any definition, a bizarre kind of material mysticism that goes to great lengths to deny the existence of a creator / designer / engineer / intelligent advanced civilization / etc.


False Assumption #4) The laws of nature are fixed


This, too, is an assumption that looks to have already unraveled thanks to the efforts of a few modern-day scientists themselves. As a simple example, multiple physics experiments are now being conducted all over the world — and widely replicated — which show “faster than light” teleportation of information via quantum entanglement.


As just one example of this, here’s a ScienceDaily.com article describing faster-than-light quantum teleportation spanning 143km:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120905134356.htm


(In theory, instantaneous quantum teleportation could take place over a billion kilometers. The distance makes no difference. Quantum teleportation ignores the apparent laws of physics, including the “cosmological speed limit” known as the speed of light.)


According to classic laws of nature, such quantum teleportation is impossible. In fact, all quantum computing should be impossible, and come to think of it, transistors shouldn’t function either. But they do. And they do it by breaking the classic laws of physics.


Yet the far stronger argument for challenging false assumption #4 is found in multiverse theory which states that our known cosmos is just one of an infinite — yes, infinite! — number of other universes, each with its own variation of the laws of physics. Only in a small fraction of all universes is, for example, the strength of the weak nuclear force set at precisely the right number to result in the formation of stars, planets and carbon-based life. But because there are an infinite number of universes, there are also an infinite number of universes where the laws of physics exactly equal our own… and even where “mirror” human civilizations almost perfectly reflect our own.


Look up the “anthropic principle” if you’d like to dig into this subject a little more. Or read Goldilocks Engima: Why Is the Universe Just Right for Life? by Paul Davies.


I also recommend author David Deutsch.


False Assumption #5) Nature is purposeless, with no goal or direction


The Darwinian framework of biological science assumes that nature achieves highly complex biological structures, social structures, mechanical engineering and behavioral cultures simply through the process of natural selection. While natural selection is constantly taking place throughout nature, it alone is not sufficient to explain the ability of plants, animals, humans and possibly even universes to achieve remarkable end goals purely through chance and inheritance.


There appears to be a “driving creative force” behind much of what we observe in nature, including in animals and humans. This driving creative force, if you get right down to it, appears to have a connection with spirit — a non-physical “mind” which gives consciousness to physical beings of all kinds.


What we see in the natural world — in ecosystems, plants, animals and even humans — is not explainable through natural selection alone. There exists intention, consciousness and a seeming desire to achieve complex goals by taking fantastic evolutionary leaps which modern science cannot explain.


As a simple example of this, consider the fact that although many thousands of humanoid-like fossils have been unearthed in the last two centuries, there are still no fossils that record the theoretical “missing link” which is supposed to link humans to primates. Why have no such fossils been found? Almost certainly because they do not exist.


False Assumption #6) All biological inheritance is material, carried in DNA


The idea that your DNA controls your body and your life is now an ancient myth. Only in the materialistic circles of old school “science” do people still think DNA alone controls your health, your behavior and all your inherited attributes.


Today we know that there are epigenetic factors beyond DNA which strongly influence the development of biological beings. We also know that environmental factors (i.e. exposure to chemicals, heavy metals, nutrients, etc.) strongly influence either the suppression or the hyper-activation of genes. Vitamin D, for example, is one of the most powerful gene activators in human biology, turning on “healing genes” light microscopic light switches.


Furthermore, consciousness and free will overrides DNA. While you may have an inherited tendency toward a particular behavior, you can choose to override that behavior as a matter of choice. The mind trumps the mechanics, in other words, if the mind is sufficiently trained (through meditation, typically).


False Assumption #7) There is no such thing as a “mind” other than an artifact of brain function


I find it bewildering that most modern-day scientists still do not dare acknowledge the existence of the “mind” — a non-material awareness / presence / consciousness that coexists with the brain but is not derived from the mechanics and chemistry of the brain.


Comically, many scientists use their minds to attempt to disprove the existence of all minds. They would like us to believe self-awareness is an illusion or that terms like “mind” or “consciousness” are just “word tricks” used to talk about brain chemistry, not actual concepts that really exist.


But they have failed. To date, there is no scientific proof whatsoever that supports the odd notion that consciousness does not exist or that the mind is not present in a conscious being. “Science” cannot disprove these things because the tools of modern-day science are materialistic by definition and therefore incapable of proving or disproving non-material phenomena. It’s like trying to measure the speed of a moving object with a thermometer.


False Assumption #8) Memories are stored chemically in the brain and disappear at death


In summary, modern scientists believe that memories are stored chemically, using the brain as some sort of biological hard drive, and that if they could only find the location of the brain in which these chemicals are stored, they could literally “read your mind” like copying files from a thumb drive.


This assumption is wildly off the mark. I’m convinced that memories are holographically stored across not only brain matter itself, but also in a non-material spirit matrix of some sort which interacts with the physical brain.


This is why the physical location of memories in the brain can never be located by scientists. This is also why some people are shockingly found to be fully functional in our world even though they have virtually no brain matter whatsoever. For example, here’s a New Scientist story about a man who had almost no brain matter whatsoever but still possessed average IQ and was a normal part of society.


And yes, the man had memories, too. So if memories are “stored” somewhere in the brain as modern-day scientists falsely believe, then how could this man have memories if he had virtually no physical brain to begin with? How could he function at all? (And his story is just one of many…)


False Assumption #9) Unexplained phenomena such as telepathy are illusory


Modern-day “skeptics” go to great lengths to try to disprove anything that even smacks of “mentalism” or telepathy. But they can’t rationally refute the scientific work of people like Dean Radin, author of The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena.


Radin has, over and over again, scientifically shown strongly convincing evidence for low-level telepathy and other phenomena such as premonition. Explanations for such phenomena are entirely consistent with quantum non-locality and quantum entanglement, which Einstein called “spooky action [at a distance].”


The most likely explanation for all this is that the human brain, being a holographic, hybrid physical / non-physical computational and awareness engine of sorts, is also “entangled” with all matter in the universe at a quantum level. The brainmind, if you will, seems to be both a transmitter and receiver of quantum information that is continually and instantly rippling across the cosmos. Tuning in to that information is a lot like tuning to the correct radio station and suddenly finding the music becoming crystal clear. (David Icke uses this same analogy to explain many of his own concepts about consciousness and the nature of reality.


“Skeptics” who attempt to refute the science of the work of people like Dean Radin eventually end up declaring something like, “If that were true, we would already know it” — a classic example of failed circular reasoning bordering on self-congratulatory dogma.


False Assumption #10) Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works


On this point, much of the Natural News website is dedicated to explaining why mechanistic medicine is a failed system of medicine. Get this: most modern-day scientists do not believe that any vitamin, any mineral or any food has any biological effect whatsoever on the human body other than providing calories, sugars, proteins, fiber and fat. This wildly delusional belief is enshrined in the FDA’s regulatory framework and is practiced throughout hospitals and health clinics across the planet.


Yet it is a truly moronic belief. How can vitamin D have no effect on the human body when nearly every organ in the body has vitamin D receptors? How can minerals play no role in human health when elements like magnesium and calcium are necessary for the most fundamental chemical processes of muscle neurology?


The physical part of the human being obviously requires physical building blocks. Those building blocks are nutrients, plant-based chemicals, minerals, proteins and water. They are not statin drugs, blood pressure meds, chemotherapy and radiation. The mechanistic model of medicine is an utter failure for human civilization. It has been a huge success in generating profits for drug companies and hospitals, however, which is exactly why this failed system is so desperately defended by those who profit from it.


Get the book “Science Set Free” and learn more


In this article, I’ve only touched on some of these important concepts. To really delve into this, read Science Set Free by Rupert Sheldrake.


The ideas described in the book are truly revolutionary. They are also perfectly natural — and in fact, many should be obvious to any true scientist who isn’t brainwashed by academic dogma or corporate profit agendas.


Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying, “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” Yet that’s what much of modern science is trying to do… let’s solve the cancer problem by finding a chemical that kills cancer! Yeah, that’ll do it!


Or let’s study the tiny particles created by an atom smasher, then we’ll know the mind of God, yeah!


But these approaches will never succeed in answering the really big questions because they are rooted in 19th-century assumptions which we now know to be false. There is more to our universe than mere materialism. There is more to human consciousness than brain chemistry. There is more to biology than genetics and natural selection.


How obvious does it have to get, folks? THERE IS MORE TO DISCOVER if we only set ourselves free from the mental shackles of dogmatic, permanently pessimistic “science” as practiced today in our westernized, materialistic culture.


Join me in spreading the word about Rupert Sheldrake. This man is a true scientist taking part in the consciousness revolution which I believe to be a necessary step to the true uplifting of human civilization.


Related posts:


  1. Climategate: how the MSM reported the greatest scandal in modern science

  2. The God Within: Science vs. Consciousness (Video)

  3. The Higgs boson ‘God Particle’ discovery explained in the context of conscious cosmology

  4. Curcumin is the most widely-studied plant-derived medicinal chemical in modern science, statistical analysis reveals

  5. Scientists create false memories: what part of Matrix is this?

This article was posted: Thursday, August 22, 2013 at 5:44 am









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The 10 false assumptions of modern science (and how to set science free with new paths to discovery)