The United States is the most media-saturated country in the world. We are bombarded daily with thousands upon thousands of images and sounds designed to get our attention, entertain, and inform us of everything from shoes to food to celebritydom to political ideology. Its been estimated that the average American is exposed to more than 3000 advertisements every day, but on top of that, there are the news programs, sitcoms, films, radio and other forms of media that we choose to consume. All of this works to shape our opinions of the world and a great deal of time, effort, and money is spent to guide our opinions down particular avenues. This used to be called "propaganda". Today, with the negative, Nazi-esque connotation which comes with that word, euphemisms such as misinformation, disinformation, image consulting, political consulting, news consulting, advertising, infomercials, public relations, damage control, and the art of spin have taken its place in the English lexicon, all but concealing its true nature and omnipresence. And omnipresent, it is. The industries that deal with information control – in both the commercial and governmental sectors—work with hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Uninformed, ignorant masses are far easier to manipulate than educated, thinking masses.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Fun Facts About Chocolate
You would have to eat more than a dozen Hershey Bars to get the amount of caffeine in one cup of coffee.
A favorite dish of the Aztecs was roast turkey with chocolate gravy.
The best selling candy bar in the U.S. is Snickers.
Chocolate manufacturers currently use 40 percent of the world's almonds and 20 percent of the world's peanuts.
Chocolate syrup was used for blood in the famous shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's movie, Psycho.
White chocolate contains no caffeine.
Half of Americans choose what chocolate they eat by the shape of the piece.
American chocolate manufacturers use about 1.5 billion pounds of milk—only surpassed by the cheese and ice cream industries.
On his fourth voyage to the New World, in 1502, Christopher Columbus was the first European to taste chocolate.
In soda fountain slang, a "bucket of mud" is a bowl of chocolate ice cream.
In a recent survey, 70 percent of female respondents said they would rather have chocolate than sex.
Chocolate first appeared on film when Jean Harlow ate candy in the 1933 comedy Dinner at Eight.
Sixty-three percent of Americans say they can't resist buying a chocolate for themselves when buying chocolates for someone else.
The average American eats about 10 pounds of chocolate a year. The Swiss average 20 pounds a year.
It takes 400 cacao beans to make one pound of chocolate.
Nabisco uses more than 37 million pounds of chocolate a year to make Chips Ahoy cookies.
The microwave was invented after a researcher walked by a radar tube and a chocolate bar melted in his pocket.
Chocolate was once considered a temptation of the devil.
Vanilla is used to make chocolate.
Of all cookies baked in the United States, 25 percent are chocolate chip.
A national survey showed 80 percent of U.S. teachers in grades kindergarten through eighth grade have received chocolate as a gift from their students.
There are 96 Hershey's Kisses in one pound.
The factory in Hackettstown, New Jersey which makes M&Ms produces 300 million M&Ms a day or about 100 billion M&Ms a year.
According to a survey of sex shop owners, chocolate is the least popular flavor of edible underwear.
Consumers spend more than $7 billion a year on chocolate.
U.S. consumers eat 2.8 billion pounds of chocolate annually, representing nearly half of the world's supply.
Chocolate can be lethal to dogs.
Each Hershey's Kiss is wrapped in five square inches of foil wrap.
Napoleon carried chocolate with him on his military campaigns, and always ate it when he needed quick energy.
Chocolate in a blue wrapper won't sell in Shanghai or Hong Kong because the Chinese associate blue with death.
Friday, July 07, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Monster
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
And once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey
(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem generous and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they won't pay it no mind
'Cause the people grew fat and got lazy
And now their vote is a meaningless joke
They babble about law and order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching
(America) America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster.
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
YOUR SPOUSE COULD BE A SPACE ALIEN
How well do you really know your mate?
The old saying about men and women being from different planets isn't always a joke: You may really be married to someone from outer space!
"As many as 5 million aliens are living in the United States after taking on human form," says Dr. James Kune, a physicist and former government UFO expert. "They're evenly split between male and female, and most of them are married though childless.
"My research has determined that the average person has a 50-50 chance of being married to one."
Dr. Kune says he has researched human-alien marriages for the past 10 years and uncovered at least 1,000 cases of aliens passing themselves off as humans -- so convincingly, few spouses have the slightest clue.
"Their motives for coming here remain unclear," he says. "World conquest, the desire to live on a strange planet, overcrowding on their home world -- take your pick. We will know the answer eventually."
Dr. Kune says aliens mate with us for both practical and emotional reasons.
"In the early years of alien visitation, many E.T.s were looking only for cover -- marrying a human man or woman took suspicion off them as outsiders. Eventually they realized that not all humans marry, that they could just as easily pass as 'confirmed bachelors' or 'old maids.' "
But most aliens actually did end up marrying. "For most other species, it's unnatural NOT to pair off with someone. The longer they stayed here, the lonelier and more eager for companionship they became. And so they began developing actual loving relationships with humans.
"One of the most surprising findings in my research is that these alien-human relationships are among Earth's strongest marriages. While the overall divorce rate for U.S. marriages is hovering around 50 percent, almost 90 percent of alien-human marriages last well beyond the so-called 'seven-year itch' that often marks the end of human-to-human marriage.
"I can only theorize that the aliens are working harder to make their relationships succeed, probably to protect their true identities. Or maybe they just like being married -- which," he says with a smile, "really should be our first clue that they're not human."
Getting serious again, Dr. Kune has several signs that point to your spouse being out of this world.
Alien husbands:
Love to fix things around the house -- and actually repair what's broken instead of making it worse. "This is obviously a function of their highly developed mechanical and scientific skills," Dr. Kune says. "They usually have every high-tech power tool they can get their hands on, and keep it all compulsively organized."
Do not use the TV remote to "surf" at lightning speed through channels, but stop at each program to absorb the information before moving on.
Are energized and stimulated by physical contact with their wife. They often initiate long conversations after a lovemaking session, in order to better understand the experience.
Will ask for directions when they're lost -- sometimes. "A significant number are just as stubborn about it as human men," Dr. Kune says. "I suspect that a lot of aliens are on this planet only because they couldn't find their way to their planned destination."
Alien wives:
Are fascinated by sporting events, especially those on TV. They become very quiet during a game and do not question their husband about it, preferring to focus on the game and tune in telepathically to the coaches and players.
Approach housework and meal preparation as research into human labor, which they prefer to conduct on their own. "When their husbands offer to help them with these duties, several alien wives reported feeling hurt and insulted," Dr. Kune says.
Work hard at being fit and attractive by getting regular exercise and practicing good nutrition. "I have not found a single instance of an alien wife asking her husband if she looks fat," Dr. Kune says.
Are analytical and logical in arguments with their husband, "although we are beginning to see the early development of the skill of weeping," Dr. Kune says, "as alien women become more assimilated into our civilization."
A Man or a Mouse? Or Both?
What happens when you cross a human and a mouse? Sounds like the beginning of a bad joke but, in fact, it's a serious experiment recently carried out by a research team headed by a distinguished molecular biologist, Irving Weissman, at Stanford University. Scientists injected human brain cells into mouse foetuses, creating a strain of mice that was approximately 1% human. Weissman is considering a follow-up experiment that would produce mice whose brains are made up of 100% human cells.
What if the mice escaped the laboratory and began to proliferate in the outside environment? What might be the ecological consequences of mice with human brain cells let loose in nature? Weissman says that, of course, he would keep a tight rein on the mice and if they showed even the slightest signs of humanness, he would kill them. Hardly reassuring.
In a world where the bizarre has become all too commonplace, few things shock the human psyche. But experiments like the one that produced a partially humanized mouse stretch the limits of human tinkering with nature to the realm of the pathological.
This new research field — creating hybrid creatures out of different species — is at the cutting edge of the biotech revolution and is called chimeric experimentation (after the monster of Greek mythology that was part lion, part goat and part serpent).
The first such chimeric experiment occurred many years ago when scientists in Edinburgh, Scotland, fused together a sheep and goat embryo — two completely unrelated animal species that are incapable of mating and producing a hybrid offspring in nature. The resulting creature, called a geep, was born with the head of a goat and the body of a sheep.
Now, scientists have their sights trained on breaking the final taboo in the natural world — crossing humans and animals to create new human-animal hybrids of every kind and description. Already, aside from the humanized mouse, scientists have created pigs with human blood running through their veins and sheep with livers and hearts that are mostly human.
The experiments are designed to advance medical research. Indeed, a growing number of genetic engineers argue that human-animal hybrids will usher in a golden era of medicine. Researchers say the more humanized they can make research animals, the better able they will be to model the progression of human diseases, test new drugs and harvest tissues and organs for transplantation into human bodies.
Some researchers are speculating about human-chimpanzee chimeras — creating a humanzee. A humanzee would be the ideal laboratory research animal because chimpanzees are so closely related to human beings. Chimpanzees share 98% of the human genome, and a fully mature chimp has the equivalent mental abilities and consciousness of a 4-year-old human.
Fusing a human and chimpanzee embryo — a feat researchers say is quite feasible — could produce a creature so human that questions regarding its moral and legal status would throw 4,000 years of ethics into utter chaos.
Would such a creature enjoy human rights and protections under the law? For example, it's possible that such a creature could cross the species barrier and mate with a human. Would society allow inter-species conjugation? Would a humanzee have to pass some kind of "humanness" test to win its freedom? Would it be forced into doing menial labor or be used to perform dangerous activities? If the whole purpose of creating this hybrid is to perform medical experiments, could those experiments possibly be morally permissible?
Please understand that none of this is science fiction. Anticipating a flurry of new experiments, the National Academy of Sciences, the country's most august scientific body, is expected to issue guidelines for chimeric research in April. What would be the ramifications of creating hundreds, even thousands, of new life-forms that are part human and part other creature? Creatures that could mate, reproduce and repopulate the Earth?
Bioethicists are already clearing the moral path for human-animal chimeric experiments, arguing that once society gets past the revulsion factor, the prospect of new, partially human creatures has much to offer the human race.
Of course, this is exactly the kind of reasoning that has been put forth time and again to justify what is fast becoming a macabre journey into a Brave New World in which all of nature can be ruthlessly manipulated and re-engineered to suit the momentary needs and whims and caprices of just one species, the Homo sapiens.
This time, we risk undermining our own species' biological integrity in the name of human progress. With chimeric technology, scientists now have the power to rewrite the evolutionary saga — to sprinkle parts of Homo sapiens into the rest of the animal kingdom as well as fuse parts of other species into our own genome and even to create new human subspecies and super-species. Are we on the cusp of a biological renaissance, as some believe, or sowing the seeds of our own destruction?
What scientists fail to mention is that there are other equally promising and less invasive alternatives to these bizarre experiments. There's sophisticated computer modeling to study disease and to test the effectiveness and toxicity of drugs. There's in vitro tissue culture, nanotechnology and artificial prostheses to substitute for human tissue and organs. When it comes to chimeric experimentation, then, the question is, at what price?
I believe the price is too steep. We should draw the line at this type of experimentation and prohibit any further research into creating human-animal chimeras.
Jeremy Rifkin is the author of "The Biotech Century" (Tarcher, 1999).
the real “Indiana Jones”
Otto Wilhelm Rahn (1904 - 1939) is one of the most enigmatic figures of the 20th Century but, paradoxically, one of the least known. Popular opinion has it that in the early 1930s, on the orders of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, Rahn was sent to the South of France to find and bring to his Nazi masters the fabled Treasures of the Temple of Solomon, which included the Grail Chalice and the Ark of the Covenant. These legendary artifacts would have been employed by Hitler and his cohorts as occult talismans of power to give them an upper hand in their demonic quest for world domination. Convinced he had cracked a code in the pages of Wolfram von Eschenbach's classic novel "Parsifal" and identified the hiding place, the language scholar Rahn travelled to Languedoc.
Even today no one knows if Rahn ever did find the Grail. Otto Rahn took his secrets to the grave when in March 1939 he committed suicide...or did he? Otto Rahn’s exploration objectives in the Pyrenees and their alleged outcomes have forged a legend which Steven Spielberg’s researchers readily conceded was their inspiration for the creation of one of Hollywood’s most exciting and notable screen characters: Indiana Jones.
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