I just stumbled onto one of the most ridiculous things I’ve read in a long time.   Apparently it’s believed that Bill Gates, who has, though his foundation, contributed hundreds of millions to global vaccine efforts said something which some believe was an admission that vaccines are killing everyone and that his contributions are entirely aimed at reducing world population by destroying the health and reducing the lives of people who are vaccinated.
Via “World Truth TV”:

In a recent TED conference presentation, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to new vaccine efforts, speaks on the issue of CO2 emissions and its effects on climate change. He presents a formula for tracking CO2 emissions as follows: CO2 = P x S x E x C.

P = People S = Services per person E = Energy per service C = CO2 per energy unit

Then he adds that in order to get CO2 to zero, “probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty close to zero.”

Following that, Bill Gates begins to describe how the first number — P (for People) — might be reduced. He says:

“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

You can watch this yourself at: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=A…
Reducing the world Population through vaccines

This statement by Bill Gates was not made with any hesitation, stuttering or other indication that it might have been a mistake. It appears to have been a deliberate, calculated part of a well developed and coherent presentation.

So what does it mean when Bill Gates says “if we do a really great job on new vaccines… we could lower [world population] by 10 or 15 percent?”

Perhaps that’s the whole point of it. Given that vaccines technology help almost no one from a scientific point of view (http://www.naturalnews.com/029641_v…), it raises the question: For what purpose are vaccines being so heavily pushed in the first place?

Bill Gates seems to be saying that one of the primary purposes is to reduce the global population as a mechanism by which we can reduce CO2 emissions. Once again, watch the video yourself to hear him say it in his own words: http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=A…
How can vaccines actually be used to reduce world population?

Let’s conduct a mental experiment on this issue. If vaccines are to be used to reduce world population, they obviously need to be accepted by the majority of the people. Otherwise the population reduction effort wouldn’t be very effective.

And in order for them to be accepted by the majority of the people, they obviously can’t just kill people outright. If everybody started dropping dead within 24 hours of receiving the FLU shot, the danger of vaccines would become obvious rather quickly and the vaccines would be recalled.

Thus, if vaccines are to be used as an effective population reduction effort, there are really only three ways in which they might theoretically be “effective” from the point of view of those who wish to reduce world population:

#1) They might kill people slowlyin a way that’s unnoticeable, taking effect over perhaps 10 – 30 years by accelerating degenerative diseases.

#2) They might reduce fertility and therefore dramatically lower birth rates around the world, thereby reducing the world population over successive generations. This “soft kill” method might seem more acceptable to scientists who want to see the world population fall but don’t quite have the stomach to outright kill people with conventional medicine. There is already evidence that vaccines may promote miscarriages (http://www.naturalnews.com/027512_v…).

#3) They might increase the death rate from a future pandemic. Theoretically, widespread vaccination efforts could be followed by a deliberate release of a highly virulent flu strain with a high fatality rate. This “bioweapon” approach could kill millions of people whose immune systems have been weakened by previous vaccine injections.

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This is nearly identical to the talk Neil Tyson gave about the movie Titanic and how the stars were not accurate in the sky during the final scenes of the movie at TAM last year…

A little anal? I’d say so, considering how bad science and history are generally portrayed in movies. I doubt anyone actually noticed this besides Dr. Tyson.

Whatever your side on this, I also think James Camron did have a pretty good shoot-down for Dr. Tyson.

But he did get his way…

Via Contact Music:

Cameron Changes Stars In Titanic
Moviemaker James Cameron has re-edited a scene in Titanic showing stars sparkling in the night sky – after a leading astronomer told him the astral alignment was incorrect.

The director unveiled a 3D version of his multi-Oscar winning classic last month (Mar12) and he resisted the temptation to use its reworking as an excuse to cut scenes he’s no longer happy with.

But there was one shot Cameron felt obliged to alter, because a top stargazer informed him the astral pattern onscreen was incorrect for the night the liner sank in 1912.

The scene involves Kate Winslet’s character, Rose DeWitt Bukater, drifting on a piece of wood and gazing at the night sky as the disaster unfolds.

Cameron tells British magazine Culture, “Oh, there is one shot that I fixed. It’s because Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is one of the U.S.’ leading astronomers, sent me quite a snarky email saying that, at that time of year, in that position in the Atlantic in 1912, when Rose is lying on the piece of driftwood and staring up at the stars, that is not the star field she would have seen, and with my reputation as a perfectionist, I should have known that and I should have put the right star field in.

“So I said, ‘All right, you son of a b**ch, send me the right stars for the exact time, 4.20am on April 15, 1912, and I’ll put it in the movie.’ So that’s the one shot that has been changed.”

So you’ve come to believe that aircraft are spraying dangerous substances above your heads and you want to get rid of them?   So, how about using some vinegar?

Um…

Well… it is a weak acid so it could possibly react with chemicals that are either alkaline in nature or are just prone to breaking down in acid.  But those “chemicals” are rather high up in altitude, and aside from that obvious problem, one might think that if the chemicals were potent enough to be dangerous even after drifting down and surviving the harsh conditions of the upper atmosphere than vinegar probably would not do much.

Really, do I need to explain the flaws in the logic here?

Apparently so.

There are actually a lot more videos about this on Youtube. I did not have time to look at them all, so some may be even more lame.

Recently came across an especially irritating editorial in the Washington Times and decided I really could not let the contentions stand.

Here it is, by Dariusz Leszczynski:

Helsinki/Finland, January 11, 2012-Epidemiological studies are given the most weight in evaluation of human health effects. Therefore, when researchers started their effort to find out whether cell phone radiation causes brain cancer, epidemiology was given the most of attention – and the most funding.

Well… yes, since Epidemology is the study of health events, disease patterns, health statistics and disease rates and their relation to factors like environment, lifestyle and other causes, it would seem to be the field of study that would apply to such a question.

It’s as straight forward as determining that geology is the appropriate field of science to look to when trying to determine the characteristics of a rock.

However, and please let me play “devils advocate”,

Only if I can play with science advocate.

is the epidemiology overrated?

No.

There, are we done?

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I have to admit, this really does not amount to much of a story, since it’s unlikely to change anyone’s mind, but god I love watching something like this…

Interesting that she brought up the “M or J” thing.   I mean, how can you mistake an M for a J, which one is it?  And why do spirits always provide things one letter at a time?    The funny thing is that it actually would apply to me to a huge extent.  My deceased paternal grandfather was named Joseph Joyce.  My grandmother is Mary Joyce.  I have an uncle whose name is also Joe Joyce, I have an aunt named Mary Anne, a cousin named Megan and my brother’s name is James.  It might be more of a stretch (although that never stopped a psychic from claiming success), but my sister’s middle name is Marie and my paternal Grandmother’s maiden name was Moriarty.   I have many J and M names in my relations, although names starting with either one of those letters are extremely common.

I love how she says she didn’t know the age of the anchor woman’s daughter and therefore couldn’t know if she had a boyfriend.   The whole damn point of being a psychic is you’re supposed to know stuff without being given all the information necessary to figure it out.   If you know a person’s daughter is seventeen, for example, it’s not a long shot to guess she either has a boyfriend or has some kind of romantic interests.   If she’s six, you can probably guess she does not.    It’s so ridiculous to think a real “psychic” would need to be primed with the information to know this.

The best part is the other news anchor who actually takes her to task, pointing out that she didn’t guess the name of the woman’s daughter but only guessed J or an M for someone relating to the woman.   It’s very common for a psychic to claim success for something they didn’t get outright but were lead to.  It’s also rare to get a news personality who will take them to task for this.  I wonder why she wants to do his reading off camera?

Stories like this really just grind my gears, because the way it is portrayed in the media is simply false.   If you read any of the reports about the recent extension of a moratorium on mining (uranium mining included) in the Grand Canyon area, you’d think that the big bad uranium mining industry was hell bent on destroying one of the world’s natural wonders and was only stopped by the Obama Administration from doing so.

Via the Mail and Guardian:

Obama rescues the Grand Canyon

Barack Obama took a big step towards preserving one of the world’s natural wonders on Monday, banning uranium mining on 400 000 hectares of land around the Grand Canyon.

The move, announced by the interior secretary, Ken Salazar, at a film screening in Washington DC, bans new mining claims around the canyon for the next 20 years. The area is rich in uranium deposits.

“A withdrawal is the right approach for this priceless American landscape,” Salazar said. “People from all over the country and around the world come to visit the Grand Canyon. Numerous American Indian tribes regard this magnificent icon as a sacred place and millions of people in the Colorado river basin depend on the river.”

Environmental groups said the move, which was opposed by the mining industry and some Republicans, would secure the American president’s environmental legacy.

The measure does not affect about 3 200 existing mining claims around the canyon, however. The administration said there would be continued development of 11 uranium mines.

Conservation groups said Obama had shown political courage in going ahead with the ban in the face of opposition. “Despite significant pressure, the president did not settle for a halfway measure,” said Jane Danowitz of the Pew Environment Group. In the final years of the George Bush presidency, when uranium prices were rising worldwide, mining companies filed thousands of claims in northern Arizona on lands near the Grand Canyon.

They also proposed reopening old mines adjacent to the canyon.

Salazar ordered a temporary halt to claims in 2009 after Obama came to office. Government officials proposed the 20-year ban in October last year, after an environmental review calling for the preservation of an “iconic landscape”.

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Okay, I admit it.  I’ve been at work in a circumstance where I should have been writing code or responding to e-mails and I may have hit up Facebook or Google News.  Sometimes I had a half-assed excuse to it, like that the weather was bad and I needed to know if there were any impending weather emergencies that might force the business to close early.  I might also say justify my Facebook surfing as “exploring the possibilities of social marketing.”   The fact of the matter is that I was slacking a little from time to time.   Who amongst us hasn’t?

But uh oh… it seems nuclear plant operators may have surfed the net

Via CNN:

NRC: Nuclear technicians surfed web on the job

Nine technicians responsible for monitoring operations at a Louisiana nuclear power plant spent on-duty time surfing the Internet — visiting websites that included news, sports, fishing and retirement information — jeopardizing the safety of the plant, federal regulators say.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission disclosed the web-surfing activities Monday in a letter that proposes a $140,000 fine against the River Bend nuclear power station, 24 miles northwest of Baton Rouge.

No pornography sites were accessed, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said. And importantly, the NRC said, the computer use did not present an avenue for hackers to gain access to reactor control systems, a modern-day fear at industrial plants.

But the NRC said the web-surfing control room operators were directly responsible for monitoring the reactor and other plant systems, and that their actions violated plant procedures requiring operators to remain attentive and focused on their work.

According to an NRC investigation, nine operators “deliberately violated” the safety procedures by surfing the web between January and April of 2010. Three of the nine did so with such frequency and duration that they are being issued “severity level three enforcement violations.” (Severity level one represents the greatest significant violation and severity level four is the lowest.) The remaining six operators will receive severity level four violations.

The operators were not named by the NRC.

An NRC spokesman said the proposed fine for web surfing is the only such action for web surfing in memory, and may be the only such action in the history of the agency.

In a notice to Entergy Operations Inc., operators of the River Bend Station, the NRC said that it appears that operators “remained attentive to reactor operations, indications, and alarms” while surfing the Internet.

“However, because most of the operators involved knew and understood” the prohibitions on Internet access, they exhibited “deliberate misconduct” and engaged in “hundreds of instances” of accessing the Internet from the “at-the-controls” area of the control room.

Score one for ridiculously reporting.

No, there was never a safety risk. While I don’t know exactly what the operators were assigned to do or how the systems operated here, all indications are that they were simply passing some time by surfing the net when they didn’t have any need to directly interact with the controls. Nuclear reactors certainly do not require continuous second by second human input nor do they need to have a reactor operator spending hours blankly staring at the dials that usually don’t change. Granted, all indicators are checked frequently, as they should be, but that was never interrupted.

It seems that in this case the operators were doing something many of us have: using company computers with internet access for personal surfing. Companies don’t like this, of course, because it tends to encourage employees to spend their time non-productively. If not for the internet, the operators might be more prone to doing something more useful for the company during the time they spend babysitting the control room. It’s like anything else, where the operator is primarily there for contingencies or if problems arise.

Still, this really just isn’t a news story. The workers never left their posts and they were ready to respond to any incident. That’s the important thing. I guess in the future they’ll have to go back to old fashioned paper crossword puzzles and magazines.

It seems that the mythology of “Organic” farming somehow being wonderful for the environment, for everyone’s health, for the farmers, the animals, the children and whatever other cliche you would like to insert is starting to come apart.  The New York Times recently ran an article about the realities of “organic” farmed products and the environmental impact that comes with them.

I was disappointed by how apologetic the article was, but it still made an important point about where our food actually comes from.   Indeed, the “ideals” that the Times refers to never really were embodied by the organic farming movement in any meaningful way.   The entire idea really comes down to a philosophy that certain things are bad simply because they are man-made, while others are acceptable.   There’s no science to it at all and there never was.

Via the New York Times:

Organic Agriculture May Be Outgrowing Its Ideals

TODOS SANTOS, Mexico — Clamshell containers on supermarket shelves in the United States may depict verdant fields, tangles of vines and ruby red tomatoes. But at this time of year, the tomatoes, peppers and basil certified as organic by the Agriculture Department often hail from the Mexican desert, and are nurtured with intensive irrigation.

Growers here on the Baja Peninsula, the epicenter of Mexico’s thriving new organic export sector, describe their toil amid the cactuses as “planting the beach.”

Del Cabo Cooperative, a supplier here for Trader Joe’s and Fairway, is sending more than seven and a half tons of tomatoes and basil every day to the United States by truck and plane to sate the American demand for organic produce year-round.

But even as more Americans buy foods with the organic label, the products are increasingly removed from the traditional organic ideal: produce that is not only free of chemicals and pesticides but also grown locally on small farms in a way that protects the environment.

The explosive growth in the commercial cultivation of organic tomatoes here, for example, is putting stress on the water table. In some areas, wells have run dry this year, meaning that small subsistence farmers cannot grow crops. And the organic tomatoes end up in an energy-intensive global distribution chain that takes them as far as New York and Dubai, United Arab Emirates, producing significant emissions that contribute to global warming.

From now until spring, farms from Mexico to Chile to Argentina that grow organic food for the United States market are enjoying their busiest season.

“People are now buying from a global commodity market, and they have to be skeptical even when the label says ‘organic’ — that doesn’t tell people all they need to know,” said Frederick L. Kirschenmann, a distinguished fellow at the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University. He said some large farms that have qualified as organic employed environmentally damaging practices, like planting only one crop, which is bad for soil health, or overtaxing local freshwater supplies.

Many growers and even environmental groups in Mexico defend the export-driven organic farming, even as they acknowledge that more than a third of the aquifers in southern Baja are categorized as overexploited by the Mexican water authority. With sophisticated irrigation systems and shade houses, they say, farmers are becoming more skilled at conserving water. They are focusing new farms in “microclimates” near underexploited aquifers, such as in the shadow of a mountain, said Fernando Frías, a water specialist with the environmental group Pronatura Noroeste.

They also point out that the organic business has transformed what was once a poor area of subsistence farms and where even the low-paying jobs in the tourist hotels and restaurants in nearby Cabo San Lucas have become scarcer during the recession.

To carry the Agriculture Department’s organic label on their produce, farms in the United States and abroad must comply with a long list of standards that prohibit the use of synthetic fertilizers, hormones and pesticides, for example. But the checklist makes few specific demands for what would broadly be called environmental sustainability, even though the 1990 law that created the standards was intended to promote ecological balance and biodiversity as well as soil and water health.

Lets stop and consider the greater context here: there are eight billion people in the world. That’s a lot of people to feed. Thankfully, we can feed them all. The fact that not everyone gets enough food is not due to a lack of capacity to produce it but more because of localized socioeconomic and political issues in getting it to those who need it. We grow enough food in the modern world to feed everyone. Not only that, we do it at a very reasonable cost, which results in people generally not having to spend the majority of their income just to get their daily nutritional needs filled.

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SSRI’s or Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor’s are used as anti-depressant and anti-anxiety drugs. They’re often regarded as about the safest drugs we have, since it’s almost impossible to overdose on them and the negative long term health effects seem to be negligible. However, there has been some concern expressed about their safety during pregnancy.

A number of studies have been conducted on the use of various SSRI drugs during various stages of pregnancy and breast feeding. The majority of the studies done have not found any harmful effects of the use of SSRI’s on developing fetuses or infants who breastfeed. While these drugs do pass through the placenta, the concentration of exposure is at least two thirds less for the developing fetus than for the mother.

However, one study, done in 2007, did find a slight increase in a few birth defects in mothers who received relatively high doses of certain SSRI medications during the first trimester of their pregnancy. The study did not find any significant increase in overall odds of most birth defects, but did find an increase in a few birth defects, such as certain cardiac defects. Still, the total risk remains tiny with or without SSRI’s, and while the increase was greater than the statistical error of the study, confounding factors cannot be ruled out, such as the possibility that depressed mothers might have less healthy babies for a variety of reasons.

You can read the entire study here.

The reception of the study in the medical community was generally more one of reassurance than concern. While it indicated that there was at least a possibility that a few narrow birth defects might possibly be associated with SSRI’s, the overall risk is very low. Interestingly, the study did not find that these risks increased for all types of SSRI drugs. Zoloft and Paxil did appear to produce slight increases in some birth defects, but Prozac, Lexapro and other antidepressants did not produce any detectable increase in any birth defects.

Given that the risks are not completely proven and appear to be extremely low, the Mayo Clinic says the following about the use of antidepressants during pregnancy:

Overall, the risk of birth defects and other problems for babies of mothers who take antidepressants during pregnancy is low. Still, few medications have been proved safe without question during pregnancy and some types of antidepressants have been associated with health problems in babies.

It should also be noted that these slight increases in risk have been speculated about since before the 2007 study, and most women who received the drugs during pregnancy would have been told (or should have been told) by their doctor that the possibility existed that there could be a small increase in some birth defects.

Now enter the lawyers. Lets say, you happen to have had a child with a common and minor birth defect, like a cleft lip or a club foot, both of which are fairly common and correctable. You might have just put your child’s foot in a brace or taken them for minor plastic surgery and then thought nothing of it. Well, if you happen to have been taking an anti-depressent, there are lawyers out there who want to be sure you don’t just go on with your life without giving them a crack at the drug companies. And they’re paying for advertising to make sure you know.

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I’m not entirely sure what the “occupy” protesters generally want.  They talk a lot about corruption in business and government.  Certainly, we can all agree that’s a bad thing and needs to be eliminated.   Other than that, most have little idea what the “corruption” is or where it needs to be routed out and how to do it.   Some are socialists, a few are anarchists and others just seem to not be sure what they are.

Now there has been a turn toward trying to blockade ports.   I’m not sure what the reasoning is.  Perhaps it’s a hatred of imports or a belief that blocking trade will somehow undermine the big businesses.  Regardless of their goals, it seems that some of the tactics have gone far beyond just getting in the way to the point of absolutely astounding danger.

Here is an amazing example of how bad it has gotten.

Faith in humanity? Okay, that’s fine. I really don’t think that any train driver wants to blow through a crowd or run over a toddler. I’ll even go so far as to say that the majority of the evil corporate executives at a railroad or transportation company would be horrified by the idea of a young child being torn apart under the wheels of a massive locomotive. I’m sure that the train driver, upon realizing that there is a child in the track will do everything possible to avoid running them over, which, unfortunately, is not much.

Perhaps this is just evidence that the educational system is failing, because in addition to humanity, there are some things you should always count on because they always work.

Inertia – It’s the property of an object to resist any change in its motion. It’s directly proportional to mass. In other words, heavy objects are more difficult to get moving that light objects. Makes sense, right? Well, conversely, once you get them moving, they’re also hard to stop.

Ever try pushing a car because it wouldn’t start? It’s hard to get it going but once you do it’s also hard to stop, which is why you need someone inside it to push the brake when it needs to. A two ton car has too much inertia for a human to easily stop it, even when it’s moving quite slow.

Trains have a lot more. A locomotive can weigh over one hundred tons. Fully loaded, each of the additional cars weighs anywhere from fifty to one hundred or more tons. So even a small freight train weighs thousands of tons. The ones that are used for transporting containers to and from ports are not small, however, and weigh a real real lot. They have a lot of inertia. When they get going, even at slow speed, it’s not easy to stop them.

Friction – It’s the property of two solid surfaces to resist motion against each other.  With wheels, it’s often considered to be synonymous with traction, the ability of the wheels to “grip” a surface and provide control and acceleration or stopping ability.   When you hit the brakes in a car, it’s the friction of a surface that keeps the car from just sliding away forever.

Not all surfaces have the same friction.  You will notice this if you are driving in different conditions.   Dry asphalt against rubber has quite a lot of friction, so if you hit the brakes on an asphalt road, you’ll stop pretty fast.   You may skid a bit, but it won’t be that much because the road provides plenty of friction against your wheels.   Now if you do the same on a wet road, which has less friction, you’re going to skid a lot farther.  Do it on an icy road and you’ll skid further still.  If you hit your brakes on a patch of smooth ice you will keep going almost like you didn’t hit them at all, although your car may also spin out.   One thing that will not happen on ice is a nice sudden stop, because there’s not enough friction.

You know what else doesn’t have a lot of friction?   Smooth steel rails against steel wheels.

And this is why, regardless of the humanity of a train driver, the train is not going to stop unless it has a good mile or so of warning that you’ve put your kid on the track.  It will keep going and kill you and your child.

For those interested in what actually happened: The original story can be read here. While it’s pretty clear from the video that the idiots were in the track right in front of a train, there are no reports of any deaths. Either the train was already coming to a stop and was light enough to not kill them all, or they realized it was not going to stop before it ran them over. Note that they are on the tracks but not chained to the tracks.

Just the same, this is one of the worst parents I have ever seen. It makes not vaccinating your children seem rather mild.