I have never liked or trusted the Big Bang Theory.  I sure had not nearly enough education to offer an alternative.   Call it a hunch.  Below from Richard Greene on FaceBook.   Click link at end to get to the sldeshow with explanations.

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Benoit Mandelbrot announced in 1977 that the distribution of galaxies in space shows a fractal pattern.

Images from the best telescopes, equipped with CCD cameras and backed by digital processing, now show enough detail to add support to his observation.

The implications are immense.

        "Bread and circuses" (or bread and games) (from Latin: panem et circenses) is a metaphor for handouts and petty amusements that politicians use to gain popular support, instead of gaining it through sound public policy. The phrase is invoked not only to criticize politicians, but also to criticize their supporters for giving up their civic duty.

        In modern usage, the phrase has become an adjective to deride an infantilized populace so defined by entertainment, instant self gratification, and personal pleasures that they no longer value civic virtues and the public life (not necessarily accomplished through deliberate pacification by politicians but through the popular culture itself). To many social conservatives, it connotes the wanton decadence and hedonism that defined the Roman Empire prior to its decline and that may similarly contribute to the decline of modern society.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bread_and_circuses

bruce_schneier.

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Tuesday, December 8, 2009

The National Football League appeared to back off Friday on its trademark ownership claims to the phrase "Who Dat" and the fleur-de-lis logo, saying it is challenging the sale of items only "when those products contained or are advertised using other trademarks or identifiers of the Saints."

" 'Who Dat' we do not claim to own by itself," said Brian McCarthy, a spokesman for the NFL. "It's when 'Who Dat' is used in conjunction with Saints marks that it's a problem."

McCarthy said T-shirts and items with 'Who Dat' and a fleur-de-lis logo unlike the one owned by the Saints are allowed as long as they are not advertised as being Saints or NFL paraphernalia.

'Who Dat' shirts being sold at the Fleurty Girl shop on Oak Street would be acceptable, McCarthy said, as long as the shop removes advertising referring to the Saints.

In a letter to Sen. David Vitter, R-La., the league described the trademark tussle, which has enraged New Orleans Saints fans across the country since it erupted this week, as "a significant misunderstanding."

The controversy began when the NFL sent letters to two New Orleans shops ordering the retailers to stop selling a host of merchandise that it said violates state and federal trademarks held by the New Orleans Saints. That, the letter said, included items with the words 'Who Dat.'

According to the letter, "any combination of design elements (even if not the subject of a federal or state trademark registration), such as team colors, Roman numerals and other references to the Saints" are also trademark violations.

The shop owners and others interpreted the letters as the NFL claiming ownership of 'Who Dat' and the fleur-de-lis even as fans were flocking to buy gear before the Saints play the Indianapolis Colts in the Feb. 7 Super Bowl.

Vitter sent a letter Friday to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, stating that he "was stunned to learn recently that the NFL is taking the position that it owns the exclusive trademark of the term 'Who Dat' and has even threatened legal action against some mom-and-pop merchants selling T-shirts using the term."

Current Music: Banco De Gaia - China (Clouds Not Mountains) (Space Station Soma: Tune in, turn on, space out. Ambie

In his book on World War II in the Pacific, War Without Mercy, John Dower tells an extraordinary tale about the changing American image of the Japanese fighting man.  In the period before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, it was well accepted in military and political circles that the Japanese were inferior fighters on the land, in the air, and at sea -- “little men,” in the phrase of the moment.  It was a commonplace of “expert” opinion, for instance, that the Japanese had supposedly congenital nearsightedness and certain inner-ear defects, while lacking individualism, making it hard to show initiative.  In battle, the result was poor pilots in Japanese-made (and so inferior) planes, who could not fly effectively at night or launch successful attacks. 

In the wake of their precision assault on Pearl Harbor, their wiping out of U.S. air power in the Philippines in the first moments of the war, and a sweeping set of other victories, the Japanese suddenly went from “little men” to supermen in the American imagination (without ever passing through a human phase).  They became “invincible” -- natural-born jungle- and night-fighters, as well as “utterly ruthless, utterly cruel and utterly blind to any of the values which make up our civilization.”

Sound familiar?  It should.  Following September 11, 2001, news headlines screamed “A NEW DAY OF INFAMY,” and the attacks were instantly labeled “the Pearl Harbor of the twenty-first century.”  Soon enough, al-Qaeda, like the Japanese in 1941, went from a distant threat -- the Bush administration, on coming into office, paid next to no attention to al-Qaeda’s possible plans -- to a team of arch-villains with little short of superpowers.  After all, they had already destroyed some of the mightiest buildings on the planet, were known to be on the verge of seizing weapons of mass destruction, and, if nothing was done, might soon enough turn the Muslim world into their “caliphate.” 

Al-Qaeda was suddenly an organization against which you wouldn’t launch anything less than the full strength of the armed forces of the world’s “sole superpower.”  To a surprising extent, they are still dealt with this way.  You can feel it, for instance, in the recent 24/7 panic over the thoroughly inept underwear bomber and the sudden threat of a few hundred self-proclaimed al-Qaeda members in Yemen.  You can feel it in the ramping up of the Af-Pak War.  You can hear it in the “debate” over moving al-Qaeda detainees from Guantanamo to U.S. maximum security prisons.  The way some politicians talk, you might think those detainees were all Lex Luthorsand Magnetos, super-villains incapable of being held by any prison, just like the almost magically impossible-to-find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri in the wild borderlands of Afghanistan and Pakistan. 

Because most Americans have never dealt with or thought of al-Qaeda as a group made up of actual human beings or accepted that, for every televisually striking success, they have an operation (or several) that go bust, the U.S. can’t begin to imagine what it’s actually up against.  The current president, like the last one, claims that we are “at war.”  If so, it’s a war of one, since al-Qaeda and the U.S. military are essentially not in the same war-fighting universe, which helps explain why repeatedly knocking off significant punortions of al-Qaeda’s leadership (even if never finding bin Laden and Zawahiri) doesn’t seem to end the threat. 

Ideal Diet in the UK has Horrible Food Combining

ankh_f_n_khonsu

Many Americans were shocked by Obama’s meteoric rise to power. Although plenty of other ‘relative unknowns’ have made the jump from Congress or a governorship to the Oval Office, none of them were visible minorities or able to galvanize public sentiment nearly as well as Obama. Following 8 years of despotic rule by George Bush & Co., huge segments of the American public embraced Obama’s candidacy with wanton enthusiasm. His campaign rallies took on an imperialistic tenor, and for many confused Americans he was psychologically conflated as a political messiah – ready, willing and able to act as civilization’s great panacea. Unfortunately, much of the public was simply projecting dreams for a better future onto Obama. They saw in him a clear improvement over Bush and more integrity than Hillary Clinton, and this branding helped him handily mop the floor with John McCain. Nevertheless, branding aside, with a little critical attention Obama’s rise to power begins to seem less accidental, and takes on all the hues of a prolonged, successful grooming process. Barack Obama did not become a global sensation by accident. He had help getting where he is. That help obviously included corporate and financial interests, but it may also have included the involvement of covert intelligence agencies – perhaps most especially the CIA.

In contrast with the enthusiastic shock many felt towards Obama’s rise to success, fewer would be surprised at the suggestion that the military-industrial complex exercises undue influence in the American political system. Eisenhower warned the world before leaving office in 1961, and JFK’s condemnation of ’secret societies’ operating within the American government may have contributed to or hastened his assassination. A few decades later the Iran-Contra debacle illustrated that the military-industrial complex could act with impunity without fear of legitimate censure. Oliver North, the scandal’s sacrificial lamb, now works as a ‘political commentator’ for Fox News and is a best-selling NYT author. If this is how we punish culprits found dabbling in treason, one might begin to wonder if Lady Justice should remove her blindfold.

RDA for Vitamin C is 10% of USDA Standard for Guinea Pigs
Are You Healthier than a Lab Animal?

Comment by Andrew W. Saul
Editor-In-Chief, Orthomolecular Medicine News Service

(OMNS, Feb 4, 2010) The US RDA for vitamin C for humans is only 10% of the government's vitamin C standards for Guinea pigs.

Wait a minute; that cannot possibly be true.

Can it?

The US Department of Agriculture states that "the Guinea pig's vitamin C requirement is 10-15 mg per day under normal conditions and 15-25 mg per day if pregnant, lactating, or growing." (1)

Well, that sounds reasonable. But how much is that compared to humans?

An adult guinea pig weighs about one kilogram (2.2 pounds). Guinea pigs therefore need between 10 and 25 milligrams of C per kilogram.

In the US, an average human weighs (at least) 82 kg (180 lbs). (2)

That means the USDA's standards, if fairly applied to us, would set our vitamin C requirement somewhere between 820 mg and 2,000 mg vitamin C per day.

The US RDA for vitamin C is different than that. Quite different.

It is lower. Much lower.

The US RDA for vitamin C for humans is 90 mg for men; 75 mg for women. (If you smoke, they allow an additional 35 mg/day extra. Wow.)

Why are we humans repeatedly urged to consume only the RDA when the RDA is one-tenth or less of that same government's official nutrient requirement for an animal?

No wonder so many people are sick and no wonder their medical bills are so high.

If we are going to have health insurance coverage for everyone, wouldn't it be nice for the government to first offer us the same deal it gives to Guinea pigs?

Mainstream Drugs are Neither Safe nor Effective, Part I

(NaturalNews) In a report just published online in The Journal of Infectious Diseases, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California at San Diego say they've found a reduction of blood flow in the brains of people who are infected with HIV, the virus believed to cause AIDS. What makes this so concerning is that it indicates something is rapidly aging the brains of these patients. In fact, the blood flow in the brains of the HIV-infected research subjects was reduced to levels normally seen in uninfected persons who are 15 to 20 years older.

Does this mean HIV is causing premature brain aging? Maybe. However there's another possibility: according to the researchers, the drugs used to treat HIV/AIDS might play a role in this super fast brain aging.

AIDS drugs may damage the brain