Bad science and bored men of a certain age

There seems to be a proliferation of retired and semi-retired bored men with too much money and free time on their hands for our good, not to mention theirs.

I envision you all sitting around a pub table, pill boxes spread out beside your beers, wondering among yourselves what to do until bedtime.
“Oh,” says one of you with a light bulb going on behind his eyes, finger raised. “What about we go out and find some bad science to support?”

May I suggest, wrong thought?

How about considering this list of leisure activities instead?

What about

• Golf? Bored men should always occupy their time with golf.
• Chess? This stimulates brain activity, something, apparently, a number of you need right now to make effective, genuinely socially conscious decisions.
• Gardening? I am a firm believer that growing your own vegetables makes for a good relationship with the earth you would otherwise be messing up with your support of bad science.
• Watching television? This will numb your brain into nothingness and provide a modicum of protection against your boredom - our protection against your boredom.
• Playing endless games on your favourite social network? Ditto above reason.
• Long cruises on notorious shipping lines? With a bit of luck you’ll come back a hero and spend your over-abundance of free time doing media interviews on this rather than on how you next plan to mess up our lives by supporting bad science.
• Buying lottery tickets? Wealth is addictive and so this is a perfect, and relatively harmless, way of investing in renewable capital.
• Shopping till you drop? Think of all the things you could buy at your friends’ stores, and how, by doing so, you boost their wealth and find a way of spending your own - and doing something to address that boredom of yours at the same time.
• Doing what other men of your age but not of your income do? Find a hobby more suited to your skills, like making string balls or spending the year planning a nice light festival in your garden with all those imported LED lights which can be seen from space and defy even the remotest notion of energy conservancy.

Try starting with something on this list, but if nothing appeals to you, I have many, many more ideas and you are welcome to contact me for additional suggestions.

Just, please, whatever you decide upon, concentrate your boredom on something that does not cost the rest of us in income, property and lives.

Source: Inspiration for this post came from this article in The Guardian.

Research on Fukushima worth sharing

As I write, there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of children who have been robbed of their innocence and right to a full, healthy life. Neither they nor their parents have committed a crime, yet they are punished for simply being alive in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is the raw truth, the stripped down reality of Fukushima.

We owe it to these children to inform ourselves to the best of our ability so that if our paths ever cross with theirs we are, at least, able to offer the compassion they, and those who love them, will need to face their futures.

Global Research is a Montreal based independent research and media organization which provides simple, scientific and informative material on many important issues affecting us today. GR has released an ebook, a compilation of data on Fukushima and its impact, not just on the Japanese, but on the world as a whole, wherever the trade winds blow and the oceans flow.

The ebook is called Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation.

I strongly suggest that this be read and kept as reference.

The authors invite sharing.

Censorship trivia

Or, these things too shall pass.

The recent furor about Internet censorship and copyright have left many roaringly indignant, including me.

Then I began to think about the good old censorship times in Nationalist South Africa.

• The time when the censorship board banned Black Beauty because they thought the book was about an African prostitute - only to learn later that the story was about a horse.
• The time when pornography and dirty literature were forbidden in the country but freely available in neighboring states, creating a flood of South African tourists who boosted teetering African economies.
• The time when communist history was not taught in schools, but available for perusal in books on world history available in local bookshops.
• The time when banned materials could be accessed by anyone who signed a single-page access form at the national repository.
• The time when overseas holidays meant filling in the blanks left by the shortfall in education and censorship, not mindless drinking sprees on South American beaches.

There have been other times in history when books were dragged off shelves in libraries and private homes, and burned on the street. When cultural centers were ransacked. When life seemed hopeless and intellectualism dead.

After each Dark Age there is rebirth.

I have a picture of a Chinese proverb hanging over my desk in the office which reads, "Pen and sword in accord."

The intended meaning is to keep life in balance, but a global, more historical interpretation can also refer to the cycle of mind vs body. That which we could become vs that which we prefer to be.

We are a species in constant circular motion, destined always to defeat itself by beating the higher self into a bloody pulp - just to see what it looks like.

There is no safe level of radiation exposure

Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated from Fairewinds Energy Education on Vimeo.

2012 Hiatus

I am on hiatus for 2012, exploring the world through means other than words.

I will, though, continue my occasional posts on something close to my heart - the Japanese tsunami and nuclear disaster.

Besides the ongoing release at the Fukushima 1 plant, there is now potential release from Fukushima 2 in 2012 but, as always, we simply do not have the facts. This is not the worst of it.

2012 will be punctuated by an increase in imported food and products as the Japanese government and business community dump their contaminated items on foreign markets, and it will also be the year in which the reality of the tsunami begins to wash ashore in North America, creating what will become one of the most devastating environmental disasters in history.

While I spend this next year finding joy in the little and very real things in life, I leave you with two warnings:

• Do not make trophies out of potentially toxic Japanese debris.
• Buy local. Although the planet is contaminated to lesser or greater degrees by Fukushima fallout, you do have the power to control you own exposure over time.

And, I leave you with an iota of hope.

Someone told me that we are here, now, because we chose to be the midwives of a new era.

Let's at least suspend disbelief and hope her analysis is correct.

Killing the future one child at a time

40 Years to decommission Fukushima

40 Years to decommission Fukushima means in your lifetime, that of your child's, and possibly your grandchild's, the oceans and land in both hemispheres will be void of healthy foods and drinking water.

40 years means that no country's medical scheme will be able to cover the debilitating illnesses which will be common place, and deformity will become the norm.

40 years means that the Occupy movement is redundant because long before 40 years is up we will be equal - we will all be part of a new mutant species incapable of being occupied or occupying.

40 years makes the scientific and political dream of a human colony on another planet science fiction, because no system, not even a hermetically sealed one, maintains itself indefinitely, and the seed like its protectors and donors will corrupt.

40 years means that conspiracy theorists and world enders are trumped at the finish line. A hidden red planet which sucks the life off Earth, or a meteor devastation, or a super volcano will be a blessing, a quick end to a burdened body and mind.

40 years is probably closer to the truth than the Japanese authorities have ever come, but the news is a non-event, as if we are already drugged to the reality around us. We are like sheep to slaughter, unseeing and uncaring that in 40 years we may momentarily wake and ask, "Why did we not react? Why did we not respond to save ourselves from this?"

The above post is based on http://www3.nhk.or.jp/daily/english/20111215_04.html - NHK World release dated December 15, 2011.

Are there gifts of radiation on your Christmas list?

In the rush to buy Christmas presents for those you love, you may forget to ask where the products were manufactured, and if the answer is Japan, were they shipped before 3/11.

This may sound strange, but anything manufactured or grown in Japan - after the Fukushima explosions which send radiation debris around the world on the Jet stream earlier this year - carries no guarantee that it is not contaminated to the point of injuring purchasers or users.

The unending log of lies both from the Japanese government and TEPCO, the constant alteration of research findings and radiation equipment readings, and the active suppression of information among Japanese citizens, should concern all of us at this time of year.

A gift as innocent as a Japanese manufactured camera or Japanese green tea could put a loved one at risk because there is no radiation monitoring of imports from Japan.

Yellow rice is a favorite dish on our Festive Season table, but I hesitate to buy fresh rice from the grocery store because of the level of contamination in Japanese rice, some of which has been exported but, seemingly, no one knows where to.

The amount of lies associated with the Fukushima cover up also suggests that companies, with the blessing of the Japanese government, are not beyond shipping contaminated products to other countries for repackaging, making it appear as if these are not from Japan. While there is no evidence that this is occurring, the idea set in several months back with a circulating rumor which suggested that products were being shipped to China for repackaging.

I would have put this rumor aside as a cheap shot at China-West trade, but given the lies, as I have said, I cannot help thinking that those who stoop so low to hide truth are capable of anything.

My Festive Season budget will be spent on products close to home. We have a great local meat supplier in Lake Land Meats, a Farmers' Market in town, and endless other suppliers of local goodies within easy reach. As for the yellow rice? I hope my dwindling supply of rice stocks in the pantry will see me through the holidays.

If you want to follow the Fukushima developments which could impact your day to day activities, visit Enenews and Fairewinds.

Let us help you become addicted

It was one of those radio ads which you wish you could rewind just to make sure you heard correctly, to make sure it wasn't some spoof put on for your amusement.

The gist of the advertisement was, "If you are not on medication, and have never been on medication, contact us to test a range of free medications."

If nothing else, barring the spoof potential, this proves an old suspicion of mine. Pharmaceutical companies promote addiction.

I say this, because my ancestors lived into their 90s without ever taking a pill or managing their diets. Their children smoked profusely but managed to survive into their 80s despite the hacking coughs and patently bad lifestyles encouraged by the early 20th century. Even for them, pills were a rarity. Subsequent generations became enslaved to a bucket load of pills and did not do so well. Mortality rates, in some instances, dropped by twenty years.

On a more pertinent note, this was poor advertising copy. I understand exactly what the intent was, but the manner in which it was expressed reflected badly on the client because highly cynical listeners like me make toast of the content.

Cute or catchy doesn't make good copy. All writers fall victim to their inner stupidity, but this should not happen when someone else is paying the bill.

Benefactors of the Fukushima legacy

It is easy to ignore the invisible. As humans, we do it all the time.

Radiation is invisible and, so, we choose to forget the Fukushima fallout in our rain and the creeping sickness spreading into our seas.

Ignoring between 5 and 20 tonnes of debris, some of which is likely to contain Fukushima contaminants, is not easy.

That debris is heading toward North American shores like a slow, lumbering monster - the stuff of nightmares, except, this time, we do not get to wake up.

 The water in the wake of the debris is radioactive.

While the Japanese government and TEPCO assure us that the ocean will dilute the contamination, early research results indicate that this is not true.

There could have been a reprieve if the contamination was related only to the March explosions at the nuclear plant, and the initial emergency dumping of tonnes of radioactive water off the Fukushima coastline. Could have been.

The contamination continues - 7 months after the explosions.

In a few years from now, children will be splashing in radioactive waves off the west coasts of Canada and the United States.

Long before then, these children will eat fish caught in contaminated waters, and sample rice which Japan continues to export despite the fact that exporters and government officials know the rice is toxic.

I would like to believe that Japanese authorities are suffering from a case of uncontrollable self-denial. That would lend a sense of human frailty to their decision-making.

But the decisions are cold, calculated economic ones.

Exporters need a market to survive even when that market is threatened by the toxicity of the exports.

This is no different to a parasite which survives only because it has a host - even when its dependence kills the host.

Perhaps, even more pathetic, is the realization that Japan as exporter is also taking the lives of its own children.

Fukushima released a monster, and we are all in its way.

***

This post is based on a personal summary of articles found on Enenews and Fairewinds websites.

District 9 as memory

I watched a rerun of District 9 last night. I knew it was a story about aliens produced in South Africa, and that it had won acclaim in science fiction circles, but nothing more. So, expecting a good dose of escape, I settled in with my happy mood popcorn.

The happy mood evaporated within seconds, and the popcorn remained untouched because I had a sudden and continued urge to throw up.

What the world perceived as science fiction, I saw as memory.

Only, in my version of the story, the aliens were humans severed from their birthright and dignity. In my memory, I can put faces and names to the prawns.

What I saw was a script writer subliminally haunted, unable to reach beyond memory into fantasy but, because his audience was ignorant of the past, his angst was perceived as genius.

Crone power

While on a visit to the Museum of London I was drawn to the archaeological remains of a woman displayed in the same room as a crystal skull.

Other visitors were drawn to the crystal skull like iron shavings to a magnet.  When released from its gaze they wandered from the room, blind to all else, including the bones of the ancient crone.

The metaphor, to me at any rate, was palpable.

Once girl power dwindles women become increasingly invisible.

Old bones, with or without flesh, are trodden underfoot in the scramble to play with something new and shiny.

But there is a reason why women of a certain age around the world have been, and continue to be, burned alive as witches. Their accusers believe they have unholy powers - and they do.

Invisibility is the essence of crone power.

When a woman has nothing more to lose she has everything to fight for.

Oh, and the burning thing?

Doesn't work.

No need to reincarnate.

Each generation of humans recreates this nifty little invisible monster over and over again for itself.

***

Witch nailed down to stop her rising.

My ancestor was killed by a watermelon

History shows that people will steal to feed themselves and their families. If pushed, they will even kill. In this world of hunger, there is no exploiter or exploited, only varying levels of very desperate individuals.

Dutch colonization of the Cape was a strategic business move by the Dutch East India Company designed to supply its ships with fresh produce on the journey between Europe and Asia. Like all big business the company wanted the most profit for the least amount of expenditure.

To this end, Europeans of different nationalities were lured with the promise of freehold land and a horizon of opportunity. To refugee Huguenots in the Netherlands it was a chance to kick start their lives in a place where they would not be murdered in their beds for their religious beliefs.

They arrived at the Cape laden with a casket of seeds and farm implements.

They thought, because there was no precedent for thinking otherwise, that they were moving to a secure, settled colony. In reality, they were dumped onto ox wagons and taken into the wilderness, to the base of a line of mountains which separated Dutch East India Company land from a group of very angry indigenous people who had been barred from roaming the Cape Peninsula at will.

The Huguenots were, in essence, the first line of defence for the Company, the expendable cannon fodder which would take the brunt of the anger and buy time for the Company's employees to build additional and layered levels of protection.

The Huguenots were not the first group of Europeans to find themselves in this position. Mercenary Germans and even Company employees, freed from their employment bonds, had preceded them. The difference was that the Huguenots were farmers and craftsmen with a smattering of military men - very few military men - in the mix.

Our family had one of the few military trained men in the mix. He had been an Army officer in Paris, so the story goes, and he was part of an underground movement which gave safe passage out of France to Huguenots.

Whether he was discovered, or whether he thought it was time to go, is lost in time, but he and his family migrated to Holland along the same escape system, and from there to their uncertain fate in the wilds of Africa.

The family arrived at the Cape and were taken to a patch of tenacious shrub and grass where they were unloaded and left to their own devices.

I have often tried to imagine how they felt as the truth of their situation dawned on them.

An alien world filled with the forlorn sound of night predators with only the flimsy walls of a makeshift shack between.

What little food they had was rationed as they scrambled to figure out how to reach the Dutch East India Company which lay at a distance across miles of sand and foliage - as they tore out scrub with bare hands and pitifully inadequate implements to expose a patch of land for seed.

And the desperation of knowing that that seed was their sole source of food and income.

Six months into the nightmare, my ancestors had a patch of green watermelon to show for their efforts. They guarded it with life and limb, and, so, when a Khoi made his way into the patch and asked for an unripe melon, the head of the household said no.

During the ensuing argument, the Khoi picked up a watermelon and threw it with some force at my ancestor's chest. The impact ruptured an artery.

A crazy way to die - in a food fight between two hungry people.

The difference between clinging to the past and preserving heritage

Disclaimer: This post is not written as an indictment against the many, many wonderful men on this planet.

Growing up we called them pale males, the vanguard of brut ignorance which ruled our daily lives by bullying, intimidating and, mostly, throwing very public tantrums.

For a brief, very brief, moment in time we seemed to shed these dinosaurs and be on track to prove that our species was better than its inheritance suggested.

But, like all horror movies, we missed the few lurking in the shadows and they have come back to haunt us with renewed energy.

I am older now, a wee bit wiser, and I know that things happen in cycles which are dominated by bad behavior interspersed with wispy spirals of rationality.

I know that we will survive this too, but so much poorer - not only materially but also intellectually.

Heritage is a reminder of what we can be both for the good and the bad. These reminders are embedded in books, documents, artifacts and traditions. When we lose these we lose the memory of how to rejoice in each other, and how to protect ourselves from each other. We lose our civility.

Pale males are hot-wired to cling to the past, but disrespect heritage.

Heritage is a reflection of what they never can be.

The past means something very different to them.

The past is always about what they've lost, or what they perceive is about to be lost to their way of life. And they are easily affronted - quick to use force.

In the end they lose the past anyway.

The tragedy is that in the process of losing what was never real they destroy everything else.

This is the difference between them and us.

This is the difference between clinging to the past and preserving heritage - preserving the future.

The new paradigm of growth vs progress

The new word is growth.

Those resistant to growth are the enemies of growth or those who stand in the way of growth.

Growth has replaced progress.

But growth and progress are not the same thing so the question becomes, "Do the spin doctors responsible for the change of phrase understand that they have also created a change of paradigm?"

Progress is a word associate with the development of societies, with the creation of jobs and the elevation of civilization.

Growth is a word associated with profit as in growth of a hedge fund. Profit is exclusively associated with the bottom line, shareholder not stakeholder and, in our contemporary times, corporations.

The enemy of progress was seen as someone who stood in the way of the evolution of mankind.

The enemy of growth suggests someone who stands in the way of that which profits groups of individuals - those who have a vested interest in specific industries with the potential to grow their bottom line.

If the divergence of connotation is intentional, then good and well.

If not, then those spin doctors responsible for the new phrase had better act quickly to plug the hole because they have just initiated a seriously dangerous shift in paradigm.