You can't take stem cells out of your own body, culture them, and put them back in your own body to treat previously untreatable diseases because the FDA says your own cells are a drug and now they have the power to regulate your own body.
The FDA started regulating cells taken from one person's body and put into a different person in 2005, but now they have begun regulating your own body. This is Brave New World NWO government trying to take control of every last little aspect of our lives to make us their slaves. This is the pernicious evil of Cass Sunstein and how all he ever wanted was to regulate peoples' lives. And on the heels of this, now the FDA wants to regulate your smart phone pros:
TheSlaveKeyboardist said it best: "The FDA needs to be done away with! Because of the FDA there's more treatments than cures. If there was no FDA cures would be more profitable than treatment, since the fda in effect raises the cost of rx's treatments are research so big pharm can still make a profit. There are cures for things but since they're orphan drugs no one wants to put up the money to get it approved!"
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Why Study History (PREVIEW)
(Note: This is a work in progress, started at around 1AM and continuing until my cold abates. The final version will be posted in a day or two. This is the first time I have ever put my history/memory dichotomy into writing since I first began to formulate it about a year ago.)
This is a very important question and I will attempt to give it a very good answer.
We study history to know who we are as a people, to know why we have the values that we have, to know why different people are living in different situations, but there is an even more important reason why we study history.
We study history to know the future.
How is this possible?
Before I answer that question, permit me to veer off in another direction for a moment. What is history? History is one subset of all past events. This might seem incorrect in the popular view of history as being everything that happened in the past, but this view popular view is wrong for at least two reasons.
First, history is a narrative; it is a story whose subject is the past. As such, history cannot exist without the structures in place needed to allow the formation of narratives (language, social structures, etc.), meaning there was a time when events did not pass into history, they were just lost. There is no history of Neanderthal man because there are no narratives surviving from that time, and furthermore, there is strong reason to believe that the necessary conditions for the creation of those narratives had not come into existence yet. This is why history does not begin until, largely, the invention of writing, because writing is a means of preserving that narrative from cultures that have been lost to time (although, there are oral traditions, such as the Nambudiri Brahmins of Kerala and the Australian Aborigines who do preserve historical narratives from before the invention of writing).
Second, there is a growing trend that is beginning to gain widespread attention, though not yet acceptance, that you cannot separate the subject from the experience. A scientist's role in performing an experiment cannot be separated out from the experiment to produce neutral results. No matter how you try to set something up, you cannot remove the subject. Put another way, all knowledge is subjective. This is where the big split occurs in past events for you, the subject. Events that you have not participated in are history, because they exist for you only as the narrative. Events that you did participate in are for you memory. A boy storming the beaches at Normandy will forever experience those events as memory, whereas I, removed from those events, can only experience them as history.
This is a very important question and I will attempt to give it a very good answer.
We study history to know who we are as a people, to know why we have the values that we have, to know why different people are living in different situations, but there is an even more important reason why we study history.
We study history to know the future.
How is this possible?
Before I answer that question, permit me to veer off in another direction for a moment. What is history? History is one subset of all past events. This might seem incorrect in the popular view of history as being everything that happened in the past, but this view popular view is wrong for at least two reasons.
First, history is a narrative; it is a story whose subject is the past. As such, history cannot exist without the structures in place needed to allow the formation of narratives (language, social structures, etc.), meaning there was a time when events did not pass into history, they were just lost. There is no history of Neanderthal man because there are no narratives surviving from that time, and furthermore, there is strong reason to believe that the necessary conditions for the creation of those narratives had not come into existence yet. This is why history does not begin until, largely, the invention of writing, because writing is a means of preserving that narrative from cultures that have been lost to time (although, there are oral traditions, such as the Nambudiri Brahmins of Kerala and the Australian Aborigines who do preserve historical narratives from before the invention of writing).
Second, there is a growing trend that is beginning to gain widespread attention, though not yet acceptance, that you cannot separate the subject from the experience. A scientist's role in performing an experiment cannot be separated out from the experiment to produce neutral results. No matter how you try to set something up, you cannot remove the subject. Put another way, all knowledge is subjective. This is where the big split occurs in past events for you, the subject. Events that you have not participated in are history, because they exist for you only as the narrative. Events that you did participate in are for you memory. A boy storming the beaches at Normandy will forever experience those events as memory, whereas I, removed from those events, can only experience them as history.
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Don't Take This The Wrong Way
The Amazing Atheist calls Rebecca sexist, and I completely agree. He also congratulates her for getting Richard Dawking to actually comment on her insignificant non-problem mere moment of discomfort. Wonderful, insiteful, very funny video.
Runs 13:50
Runs 13:50
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Absorb into Yourself, All the Rivers of Your Desires
Swami Kriyananda talks about how the joy from worldly desires drain us while the joy of the Self renews us. He also talks about how eternity is never boring because even though it never changes it's always new.
Runs 8:19
Runs 8:19
Friday, July 8, 2011
Why Democrats HATE Space Travel
Reflecting on the last shuttle launch I sit in dissapointment at the whole shuttle program. This is it? This is the best we can do? I came across the following article today from UD. Physicist Rob Sheldon explains that Republicans have been very good to NASA and the space program but Democrats HATE it because they can't get past partisan politics. They would rather turn America communist than explore space, advance science, increase national pride, and bolster international cooperation. He says:
Republicans have generally put US Space Policy or Foreign policy above politics, and have funded unpopular endeavors even when begun by previous Democratic presidents, recognizing that it takes 10 years to see a NASA program from start-to-finish, which is longer than the usual presidential double-term.
Democrats, however, believe that there is nothing more important than politics. Everything is short term. The future can be mortgaged. So for example George HW Bush started the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) to follow on the very successful Fermilab “Tevatron”.
Unfortunately, he built it in Texas, which gave it a partisan air. The very first thing Clinton did, was to cancel the SSC, thereby handing the next 20 years of high-energy physics to the European lab CERN in Geneva.
He continues with a point on the space station. The idea for the space station was started by Reagan as a means to develop technology needed to go to Mars. When Clinton got into office he did his best to axe the program.
But under Clinton, the Space Station was scaled back as far as possible without defaulting on commitments made to the Europeans. This meant that the Russians were brought in to supply the Space Station rather than use US Space Shuttles. So when the commitments to Europe had all been fulfilled, both the Station and the Shuttle were obsolete.
As a boy I wondered why it seemed the greatest days of space exploration were behind us. Why did we have grand visions of going to the Moon by the end of the 60s (which we did) and go on to Mars before 2000 and eventually on to the stars, but now we kept launching those damn shuttles into orbit where the astronauts ate their tubes of mush and powered ice cream and nothing ever got done? And why were our first astronauts the toughest people on the planet like John Glenn and Buzz Aldrin, people you could really look up to (Buzz Aldrin still is my hero and I still want to be like him), and the new astronauts include people you've never heard of and the "astro-nut" who tried to kill someone and didn't want to be bothered with having to use the toilet so she wore a diaper while she did it. The answer is clear: Democrats. Democrats took all the fun out of space. They turned space travel into a vacation for adults who like to wear diapers and eat floating candy at tax payers' expense instead of the most challenging exploration of the universe imaginable.
Capital Bush even wanted to go back to the Moon. He tried for Mars but the socialists wouldn't let him so he settled for the Moon. He started late in his tenure and didn't get enough finished and then Zero took office and killed the Moon mission. Instead of exploring space and promoting world peace, Zero is "humanitarianly" bombing the crap out of Libya (it's not a war, it's "kinetic military action" and that means it's totally not unconstitutional like BOTH Republicans and Democrats in Congress are now saying) and spending the country into oblivion.
Fuck you, Democrats. Fuck you Zero. Fuck you very much.
Republicans have generally put US Space Policy or Foreign policy above politics, and have funded unpopular endeavors even when begun by previous Democratic presidents, recognizing that it takes 10 years to see a NASA program from start-to-finish, which is longer than the usual presidential double-term.
Democrats, however, believe that there is nothing more important than politics. Everything is short term. The future can be mortgaged. So for example George HW Bush started the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) to follow on the very successful Fermilab “Tevatron”.
Unfortunately, he built it in Texas, which gave it a partisan air. The very first thing Clinton did, was to cancel the SSC, thereby handing the next 20 years of high-energy physics to the European lab CERN in Geneva.
He continues with a point on the space station. The idea for the space station was started by Reagan as a means to develop technology needed to go to Mars. When Clinton got into office he did his best to axe the program.
But under Clinton, the Space Station was scaled back as far as possible without defaulting on commitments made to the Europeans. This meant that the Russians were brought in to supply the Space Station rather than use US Space Shuttles. So when the commitments to Europe had all been fulfilled, both the Station and the Shuttle were obsolete.
As a boy I wondered why it seemed the greatest days of space exploration were behind us. Why did we have grand visions of going to the Moon by the end of the 60s (which we did) and go on to Mars before 2000 and eventually on to the stars, but now we kept launching those damn shuttles into orbit where the astronauts ate their tubes of mush and powered ice cream and nothing ever got done? And why were our first astronauts the toughest people on the planet like John Glenn and Buzz Aldrin, people you could really look up to (Buzz Aldrin still is my hero and I still want to be like him), and the new astronauts include people you've never heard of and the "astro-nut" who tried to kill someone and didn't want to be bothered with having to use the toilet so she wore a diaper while she did it. The answer is clear: Democrats. Democrats took all the fun out of space. They turned space travel into a vacation for adults who like to wear diapers and eat floating candy at tax payers' expense instead of the most challenging exploration of the universe imaginable.
Capital Bush even wanted to go back to the Moon. He tried for Mars but the socialists wouldn't let him so he settled for the Moon. He started late in his tenure and didn't get enough finished and then Zero took office and killed the Moon mission. Instead of exploring space and promoting world peace, Zero is "humanitarianly" bombing the crap out of Libya (it's not a war, it's "kinetic military action" and that means it's totally not unconstitutional like BOTH Republicans and Democrats in Congress are now saying) and spending the country into oblivion.
Fuck you, Democrats. Fuck you Zero. Fuck you very much.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Richard Dawkins is Right
About one issue in particular. I still disagree with him on practically everything else in the entire universe.
Apparently some broad got propositioned in an elevator at some conference, like that doesn't happen every day everywhere in the world and throughout all of human history and forever into the future (except the elevator part, which wasn't invented until the 19th century, although there were elevator-like transport sysems in place for thousands of years prior). The two most liked comments on that video sum up public, and my own, sentiment pretty well that this is a total load of horseshit and nothing wrong happened at all. As an outspoken atheist she should be flattered that he was (supposedly) just following what Darwin said, because it demonstrates that the cock and balls fairy story of Darwinism is right, or at least can be seen in that light if you choose to believe in that stuff (I don't, but as an outspoken media atheist fundamaterialist spep-dick she has to believe it, so of course she should be happy to see Darwinian principles in action!). After this complete and total non-event Dick-to-the-Dawk-to-the-PhD said this:
The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that....Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behavior, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.
And with that I finally found something to agree with Dawkins on! Never did I think that would ever happen.
Unfortunately, modern society is run by the New World Order and they are making people kowtow to pussies who are professional victims and it's not politically correct to say "shut up and deal with it," when either someone gets injured through their own stupidity or the laws of nature are percieved to be unfair.
Thank you, Mr. Dawkins, for being the voice of reason in this insane world (about this one issue, although I still think your other claims are asinine).
Apparently some broad got propositioned in an elevator at some conference, like that doesn't happen every day everywhere in the world and throughout all of human history and forever into the future (except the elevator part, which wasn't invented until the 19th century, although there were elevator-like transport sysems in place for thousands of years prior). The two most liked comments on that video sum up public, and my own, sentiment pretty well that this is a total load of horseshit and nothing wrong happened at all. As an outspoken atheist she should be flattered that he was (supposedly) just following what Darwin said, because it demonstrates that the cock and balls fairy story of Darwinism is right, or at least can be seen in that light if you choose to believe in that stuff (I don't, but as an outspoken media atheist fundamaterialist spep-dick she has to believe it, so of course she should be happy to see Darwinian principles in action!). After this complete and total non-event Dick-to-the-Dawk-to-the-PhD said this:
The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that....Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behavior, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.
And with that I finally found something to agree with Dawkins on! Never did I think that would ever happen.
Unfortunately, modern society is run by the New World Order and they are making people kowtow to pussies who are professional victims and it's not politically correct to say "shut up and deal with it," when either someone gets injured through their own stupidity or the laws of nature are percieved to be unfair.
Thank you, Mr. Dawkins, for being the voice of reason in this insane world (about this one issue, although I still think your other claims are asinine).
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The Other Wiki's Bias
You know, I know, and every sentient being in the universe knows that the other wiki is biased toward fundamaterialism. This topic has been written about before on the old Urban Mystic, and now it is being written about here.
But first, here's a bit of old news that really reminds me of the other wiki. On 7 February 2011, Muzzammil Syed Hassan, the founder of a Muslim-oriented television network, Bridges TV, behedded his wife inside the tv studio because she wanted a divorce. She filed for a divorce because he liked to beat her. Hassan believed he was in the right, as any good Muslim would beat and behead his wife, but he was convicted of second degree murder and is serving 25 years in prison (meaning he'll be out in 5, 10 tops, for making his bed and cleaning the toilet). The mission of the television network was to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims in the west after the 9/11 attacks.
On to the main story, Daily Grail writer Greg Taylor has posted a short piece on the bias of the other wiki in favor of fundamaterialism.
But first, here's a comment left on UD by someone writing as junkdnaforlife on the other wiki's bias (bold in original):
This is an expert from the talk page of the Shroud of Turin article. The problem here was that too many atheists were complaining that the Shroud article was too “pro-authentic”, and had to be changed. The re-butt to this claim was that all the “pro-authentic” info was from peer reviewed journals, and that if the scientific evidence pointed more towards authentic than not, than that is that. But the atheists would not have it. Scientific evidence is apparently only gospel if it fits with their dogma.
So what did the lead editor have to say about the weight of peer review articles vs. “skeptic websites”?
“Wikipedia does not work that way my friend. If the readers at large feel the article is too pro-authenticity, it does not matter what the academics think. At the moment there
is just one IP complaining, the key is not to get to the point where 20 IPs complain.
Then we will need a rewrite. And I must say the complaints of this IP are not all empty.
He has some valid points. I do not see Joe Nickle as respectable, but he has 1,000 times more readers than all the other academics combined, so he can not be ignored and must be mentioned. Wikipedia is a “public” item, not an academic item.” History2007 (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Again: Wikipedia is a “public” item, not an academic item.”
Remember this is a response to the overwhelming peer reviewed papers that support the Shroud’s authenticity. So to combat the peer reviewed papers, the science and reason police simply state that the academics do not matter more or less than a popular writer. The number of “readers” someone has now apparently holds as much weight than a Phd in the field. Perez Hilton can therefore weigh in on string theory. As long as the evidence goes against their dogma, then any BS is apparently allowed to hold as much water as peer review. And not just allowed but mandatory.
Back on track, Mr. Taylor corrected an article on trance medium Leonora Piper, pointing out flaws in skep-dick Martin Gardner's debunking. These corrections were removed and the original garbage put back up because Taylor's work was "original research":
According to user LuckyLouie, the reason for this was that "Wikipedia has a very clear policy of avoiding primary sources and instead using secondary sources that are at least one step removed from an event", and "On Wikipedia we like our 'informations' to come from reliable sources...rather than an editor doing their own original research and coming to their own original conclusions."
As an historian I can say folks in my field value primary sources over anything else. Historians want to get at primary sources, to know what really happened, rather than rely on what someone wrote later on. I learned about the value of primary sources first hand, so I can say that the other wiki and myself are fundamentally different in our view of what is and is not important in assessing facts (like Indiana Jones said, historians deal with facts, philosophers deal with truth).
Mr. Taylor points out that the other wiki holds up arch-skep-dicks as bastions of information, even when they have not done any relevant research on a topic, whereas any conflicting experts, people who have spent decades doing actual research in a given field, are tossed aside.
Gardner's article should never, ever be cited by anyone as having any authority in the Piper case. This is not based on opinion, or belief in the paranormal - it's based simply on Gardner's inability to provide factual information.
What follows is a list of Gardner's either ignorance of the facts or a deliberate attempt to mislead people.
Michael Prescott gives his take on the issue here. It's also short and a good read.
But first, here's a bit of old news that really reminds me of the other wiki. On 7 February 2011, Muzzammil Syed Hassan, the founder of a Muslim-oriented television network, Bridges TV, behedded his wife inside the tv studio because she wanted a divorce. She filed for a divorce because he liked to beat her. Hassan believed he was in the right, as any good Muslim would beat and behead his wife, but he was convicted of second degree murder and is serving 25 years in prison (meaning he'll be out in 5, 10 tops, for making his bed and cleaning the toilet). The mission of the television network was to counter negative stereotypes of Muslims in the west after the 9/11 attacks.
On to the main story, Daily Grail writer Greg Taylor has posted a short piece on the bias of the other wiki in favor of fundamaterialism.
But first, here's a comment left on UD by someone writing as junkdnaforlife on the other wiki's bias (bold in original):
This is an expert from the talk page of the Shroud of Turin article. The problem here was that too many atheists were complaining that the Shroud article was too “pro-authentic”, and had to be changed. The re-butt to this claim was that all the “pro-authentic” info was from peer reviewed journals, and that if the scientific evidence pointed more towards authentic than not, than that is that. But the atheists would not have it. Scientific evidence is apparently only gospel if it fits with their dogma.
So what did the lead editor have to say about the weight of peer review articles vs. “skeptic websites”?
“Wikipedia does not work that way my friend. If the readers at large feel the article is too pro-authenticity, it does not matter what the academics think. At the moment there
is just one IP complaining, the key is not to get to the point where 20 IPs complain.
Then we will need a rewrite. And I must say the complaints of this IP are not all empty.
He has some valid points. I do not see Joe Nickle as respectable, but he has 1,000 times more readers than all the other academics combined, so he can not be ignored and must be mentioned. Wikipedia is a “public” item, not an academic item.” History2007 (talk) 16:55, 6 November 2010 (UTC)
Again: Wikipedia is a “public” item, not an academic item.”
Remember this is a response to the overwhelming peer reviewed papers that support the Shroud’s authenticity. So to combat the peer reviewed papers, the science and reason police simply state that the academics do not matter more or less than a popular writer. The number of “readers” someone has now apparently holds as much weight than a Phd in the field. Perez Hilton can therefore weigh in on string theory. As long as the evidence goes against their dogma, then any BS is apparently allowed to hold as much water as peer review. And not just allowed but mandatory.
Back on track, Mr. Taylor corrected an article on trance medium Leonora Piper, pointing out flaws in skep-dick Martin Gardner's debunking. These corrections were removed and the original garbage put back up because Taylor's work was "original research":
According to user LuckyLouie, the reason for this was that "Wikipedia has a very clear policy of avoiding primary sources and instead using secondary sources that are at least one step removed from an event", and "On Wikipedia we like our 'informations' to come from reliable sources...rather than an editor doing their own original research and coming to their own original conclusions."
As an historian I can say folks in my field value primary sources over anything else. Historians want to get at primary sources, to know what really happened, rather than rely on what someone wrote later on. I learned about the value of primary sources first hand, so I can say that the other wiki and myself are fundamentally different in our view of what is and is not important in assessing facts (like Indiana Jones said, historians deal with facts, philosophers deal with truth).
Mr. Taylor points out that the other wiki holds up arch-skep-dicks as bastions of information, even when they have not done any relevant research on a topic, whereas any conflicting experts, people who have spent decades doing actual research in a given field, are tossed aside.
Gardner's article should never, ever be cited by anyone as having any authority in the Piper case. This is not based on opinion, or belief in the paranormal - it's based simply on Gardner's inability to provide factual information.
What follows is a list of Gardner's either ignorance of the facts or a deliberate attempt to mislead people.
Michael Prescott gives his take on the issue here. It's also short and a good read.
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