Thursday, April 11th, 2013
IVAN AMATO, - The Washington Post
Stephan: Did you ever wonder what caused lightning, and what it consisted of? Here's the answer.
A lightning bolt is one of nature’s most over-the-top phenomena, rarely failing to elicit at least a ping of awe no matter how many times a person has witnessed one. With his iconic kite-and-key experiments in the mid-18th century, Benjamin Franklin showed that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, and since then the general view has been that lightning bolts are big honking sparks no different in kind from the little ones generated by walking in socks across a carpeted room.
But scientists recently discovered something mind-bending about lightning: Sometimes its flashes are invisible, just sudden pulses of unexpectedly powerful radiation. It’s what Joseph Dwyer, a lightning researcher at the Florida Institute of Technology, has termed dark lightning.
Unknown to Franklin but now clear to a growing roster of lightning researchers and astronomers is that along with bright thunderbolts, thunderstorms unleash sprays of X-rays and even intense bursts of gamma rays, a form of radiation normally associated with such cosmic spectacles as collapsing stars. The radiation in these invisible blasts can carry a million times as much energy as the radiation in visible lightning, but that energy dissipates quickly in all directions rather than remaining in a stiletto-like lightning bolt.
Dark lightning appears sometimes […]
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Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
TIM ADAMS, - The Guardian/Observer (U.K.)
Stephan: Here is the latest on the death and resuscitation trend, which includes research into Near Death Experiences (NDEs). What I see is the growing awareness that there needs to be more rigor, and that comfortable old physicalist assumptions must be discarded if real development is to occur. I see papers in half a dozen disciplines, and I am fascinated by the papers I see written by obviously materialist/physicalist scientists who have pushed the physiological envelope as far as it will go and are now forced by their own data to consider nonlocal consciousness.
Here's one example that immediately comes to mind: Research into NDEs started out being retrospective anecdote gathering, a sort of cultural anthropological approach, subject to all sorts of criticism. Then much more attention was paid to gathering, again retrospectively, and the conditions and context of the experiences. Then, thanks to Pim van Lommel we got a good prospective study (the one he published in no less than The Lancet).
At the same time the processes of the brain moved into the quantum level. Physicalist deniers couldn't make the events go way, particularly the ones that produced verifiable information, so the argument became more and more arcance about dying brain chemistry. Thanks to researchers like Sam Parnia that criticism is now falling to pieces, because it is physiologically unsustainable. A conclusion that is continually being reinforced with each passing month as cardiovascular resuscitation becomes more and more effective and refined, and the times between brain death and what amounts to resurrection extend and become more common -- there are now accounts measured in multiple hours -- and more and more tightly controlled NDEs occur. And it is worth noting that these studies are being reported in major journals.
Fact motivated change is coming, and the world looks very different.
Sam Parnia MD has a highly sought after medical speciality: resurrection. His patients can be dead for several hours before they are restored to their former selves, with decades of life ahead of them.
The Lazarus Effect: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death
by Sam Parnia
Tell us what you think: Star-rate and review this book
Parnia is head of intensive care at the Stony Brook University Hospital in New York. If you’d had a cardiac arrest at Parnia’s hospital last year and undergone resuscitation, you would have had a 33% chance of being brought back from death. In an average American hospital, that figure would have fallen to 16% and (though the data is patchy) roughly the same, or less, if your heart were to have stopped beating in a British hospital.
By a conservative extrapolation, Parnia believes the relatively cheap and straightforward methods he uses to restore vital processes could save up to 40,000 American lives a year and maybe 10,000 British ones. Not surprisingly Parnia, who was trained in the UK and moved to the US in 2005, is frustrated that the medical establishment […]
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Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
Stephan: I have reached a point where I have been forced to conclude that Monsanto is an evil corporation, as I understand that word. I know, from what you have written me that many of you, as have I and Ronlyn, have signed petitions against Monsanto. Now take the next step. Stop buying their products. Here is a URL where you will find the list of the companies Monsanto owns.
http://fracturedparadigm.com/2013/04/02/boycott-monsanto-a-simple-list-of-companies-to-avoid/
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Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
Stephan: Here is some wonderful news. Finally, even in very poor countries in Africa, where one out of four may be HIV positive, a manageable AIDs regime is possible.
PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA — he South African National AIDS Council (SANAC) has welcomed the availability of Fixed Dose Combination (FDC) ARVs, saying it will encourage patients to stay on treatment and reduce incidences of non-compliance and non-adherence.
Health Minister Dr Aaron Motsoaledi launched the FDC ARVs on Monday at Phedisong 4 Community Health Clinic in Ga-Rankuwa, a township 37 km north of here. The once-a-day, single ARV (anti-retroviral) tablet contains a combination of three vital ARVs — tenofovir, efavirenz and emtricitabine.
It will be given to newly diagnosed HIV positive persons, all HIV positive pregnant women and breast-feeding mothers regardless of their CD 4 count. This will continue even after breast-feeding if their CD 4 count falls below 350.
Welcoming the roll-out of the FDC, SANAC chief executive officer Dr Fareed Abdullah said the fixed dose would simplify the way patients take ARV treatment.
‘This simplification of treatment makes taking AIDS treatment convenient. We hope that it will result in patients complying with and adhering to their treatment, and will enable many more patients to take their medication everywhere and anywhere they may be,’ he added.
‘We have come a very long way since the advent of ARVs. At one point, patients used to take […]
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Wednesday, April 10th, 2013
KATE SHEPPARD, - Mother Jones
Stephan: This is the latest in the Theocratic Right's obsession with what people are doing with their genitals. It isn't just Cuccinelli though. He has made a calculation that his election potential is increased by taking a position against oral sex. That is large numbers of Virginians, he believes, don't practice oral sex with their lovers, and think it ought to be illegal, and the government should be in the bedroom of otherwise law abiding Virginians. That's an astonishing position, if you think about it.
Last month, three judges on the US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit deemed a Virginia anti-sodomy law unconstitutional. The provision, part of the state’s ‘Crimes Against Nature’ law, has been moot since the 2003 US Supreme Court decision overruled state laws barring consensual gay sex, but Virginia has kept the prohibition on the books.
Now Virginia attorney general and Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli is asking the full 4th Circuit to reconsider the case. Cuccinelli wants the court to revive the prohibition on consensual anal and oral sex, for both gay and straight people. (The case at hand involves consensual, heterosexual oral sex, but, as the New York Times explained in 2011, it’s ‘icky’: The sex was between a 47-year-old man and two teenagers above Virginia’s age of consent.)*
Here’s more from the Washington Blade:
Virginia Attorney General Kenneth Cuccinelli has filed a petition with the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond asking the full 15-judge court to reconsider a decision by a three-judge panel last month that overturned the state’s sodomy law.
The three-judge panel ruled 2-1 on March 12 that a section of Virginia’s ‘Crimes Against Nature’ statute that […]
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