Showing posts with label Mantra. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mantra. Show all posts

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Looking for safe cookware? Try cast iron

© Courtesy Natural News
Natural News | Nov 22, 2014 | Jonathan Benson

With so many different types of cookware on the market today, making the best and safest choices for our families can be a challenge. But tried-and-true cast iron is still among the most durable and non-toxic types of cookware available -- and if you know how to use it properly, it can be just as easy to use and clean as the much more convenient but chemical-laden varieties branded as "non-stick."

Cast iron is about as classic as it gets when it comes to durable cookware. And if properly cared for, it can last a lifetime and be passed down from generation to generation. But a common complaint is that food tends to stick to pure cast iron since it hasn't been layered with Teflon or other non-stick surfaces, which often contain perfluorinated chemicals, or PFCs, that release noxious fumes into the air and leach toxic substances into food.

Stainless steel cookware is one safer option, but if scratched it, too, can leach nickel and other undesired substances into food. For pots and pans, stainless steel is still an excellent choice, as is copper, but when it comes to frying pans and griddles, cast iron is probably your best bet, and here's why.

Cast iron gets better over time 

On his blog, permaculture aficionado Paul Wheaton explains how to select quality cast iron cookware, how to properly care for it, and how to make it not only last but thrive. Unlike most other types of cookware, cast iron actually gets better over time when it is regularly scraped and seasoned. Individuals with anemia or iron deficiencies can also benefit from the iron found in cast iron.

According to Wheaton, the best types of cast iron are older pieces found at garage sales and online trading sites like Craigslist and eBay. Many older cast iron pieces were machine surfaced to be smooth, as opposed to the rough surfaces found on newer cast iron cookware. Older skillets have also typically been seasoned over many years of use, meaning they have already been "broken in."

"Many of the experienced cast iron folk [recommend] buying a heavily used skillet," he wrote. But if a new skillet is your only option, he recommends using a stainless steel spatula with a flat edge to "take the 'peaks' off as the 'valleys' fill with 'seasoning.'"

More on this is available here:  RichSoil.com.

Bacon grease, palm oil excellent for seasoning cast iron cookware 

Properly "seasoning" a cast iron skillet involves allowing natural cooking oils to permeate the cooking surface without washing them off after each use. This process is unique to cast iron, and it allows a smooth polymerized fat surface to form, making the cooking surface slick and easier to clean.

In Wheaton's experience, saturated fats like bacon grease and "organic shortening" (palm oil) that remain solid at room temperature tend to work best at creating the ideal cast iron cooking surface (though we don't recommend pal oil for anything). Hydrogenated oils are toxic and should thus be avoided, and mono- and polyunsaturated fats tend to leave the cooking surface sticky.

Seasoning cast iron with saturated fats also helps protect the surface against rust, which can form when pans aren't properly dried after use. Wheaton recommends heating cast iron pans on the stovetop to remove excess water, as towel drying typically won't get it dry enough. If rust, pitting, or caked-on gunk is already present, Wheaton advises using the self-cleaning option on your oven to literally bake off the crud.

You can learn more about that here:

RichSoil.com.

Sources:

http://www.ewg.org

http://www.richsoil.com

http://www.thekitchn.com

Monday, November 17, 2014

Climate Perception, Projection and Propaganda

Watts Up With That | Nov 17, 2014 | Dr. Tim Ball

A major reason why Al Gore’s deceptive use of the melting Arctic ice was so effective is because most people have little idea what the real world is like. They have no image of the Arctic Oceans, shape or size, partly because they effectively live in a two-dimensional world. That is not a problem for them or society until someone exploits it. Gore was part of a global political agenda that exploited it. It was an agenda that expanded H L Mencken’s comment about politics to a global scale.
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed, and hence clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Now, it was less likely people would know it was imaginary.

People have no accurate image of the Arctic Ocean because of how they are born, nature, and educated, nurture. They are primarily a combination of nature/nurture that prioritizes what is necessary for individual survival. In addition, their inabilities are a result of several things, but primarily, a limited ability to grasp and imagine three dimensions. Their daily visual stimuli tell them it is a flat earth. As humans moved to expand their horizons, they were confronted with the challenge of producing two-dimensional maps that attempt to portray a three-dimensional world. I learned about all these limitations when teaching and running labs for students using weather maps, topographic maps, aerial photographs and satellite imagery. It is why two-dimensional weather maps are adequate, but a forecaster needs to be able to visualize the third dimension depicted by isobars.

One of the most difficult ideas to explain to students about weather and climate is the Coriolis Effect. First, there is the challenge of it causing a change, so it appears logical to assume there is a force involved. As a result, people speak incorrectly of a Coriolis Force. Second, is the challenge of understanding a three-dimensional world, when our perceptions are essentially two-dimensional. Nowhere is this more evident than in map projections and people’s perceptions and understanding of the world.

Human adaptation of the third dimension is very much an intellectual, philosophical, and perceptual issue. The “Greek Miracle”, from approximately 700 to 400 BC, is embodied in the Parthenon. It wasn’t just the mathematical proportions, but also accommodation to a world seen by the curvature of the eye. The base of the Parthenon is not level, but raised in the center. If built level then, if viewed from either end, it would appear to dip in the middle.

Read more..

NASA map downplays sharp rise in meteor fireball impacts over last 20 years

SOTT | Nov 17, 2014 | Gary Boyle & Niall Bradley

© NASA/JPL
NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Program published a diagram a few days ago, showing 556 mapped comet/asteroid fragment impacts on Earth over the last 20 years (see above). NASA says it's based on data gathered from 1994-2013 on small asteroids impacting Earth's atmosphere to create 'fireballs, adding that "the sizes of yellow dots (daytime impacts) and blue dots (nighttime impacts) are proportional to the optical radiated energy of impacts measured in billions of Joules (GJ) of energy, and show the location of impacts from objects about 1 meter (3 feet) to almost 20 meters (60 feet) in size."

Note the random distribution of impacts around the globe. But note also what the map and accompanying NASA report do not indicate: the year-on-year distribution of those impact events over that 20-year period. This omission enables them to give the following misleading subheading to their report:
It happens all the time: small asteroids impact Earth's atmosphere
By not providing a year-on-year breakdown of the impacts, and by including their rather banal headline, NASA leaves us to assume that these events were more or less evenly distributed over those 20 years - on average, 27 fireball events of note in 2013 (556 total events/20 years). But we have serious doubts about this.

We know from the American Meteor Society that there were nearly 3,500 observed events in 2013 alone - and just in the US.

Read more..

Monday, October 6, 2014

Food Affected By Fukushima Disaster Harms Animals, Even At Low-Levels Of Radiation


Sleuth Journal | Oct 5, 2014

Butterflies eating food collected from cities around the Fukushima nuclear meltdown site showed higher rates of death and disease, according to a study published in the open access journal BMC Evolutionary Biology.

Researchers fed groups of pale blue grass butterflies (Zizeeria maha) leaves from six different areas at varying distance from the disaster site, and then investigated the effects on the next generation. Feeding offspring the same contaminated leaves as their parents magnified the effects of the radiation. But offspring fed uncontaminated leaves were mostly like normal butterflies, and the authors say this shows that decontaminating the food source can save the next generation.

The 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant released substantial amounts of radiation into the surrounding area. Humans were evacuated, and no significant health effects have been reported, but the scientists from the University of the Rukyus, Okinawa, Japan, are studying the impact on the area’s wildlife.

In a previous study, the group suggested that eating leaves with high levels of radiation seriously affected the pale grass blue butterfly. Their new study investigated the effect of eating leaves with much lower levels of radiation, which had been collected in 2012, a year after the disaster, from six areas that were 59km to 1760km from the site.

Their study showed that even in these comparatively low levels of radiation, there was an observable difference in the butterflies’ lifespan, depending on the dose of caesium radiation in their food, which ranged from 0.2 to 161bq/kg. For comparison, leaves collected in the months after the disaster around 20km from the site had radiation in the thousands of Bq/kg. Butterflies fed leaves with higher caesium radiation doses were also smaller and some had morphological abnormalities such as unusually shaped wings.

Professor Joji Otaki, University of Rukyus, says: “Wildlife has probably been damaged even at relatively low doses of radiation, and our research showed that sensitivity varies among individuals within a species.”

In the second part of the experiment, the researchers looked at the next generation of butterflies. These were split into groups fed an uncontaminated diet, and those fed the same diets as their parents.

The offspring fed an uncontaminated diet had a similar lifespan, irrespective of the amount of radiation their parents had been exposed to. The only effect seemed to be that those whose parents had been exposed to higher caesium diets had smaller forewings. But those fed the same contaminated diet as their parents showed magnified effects.

The authors say that this shows that the effects of eating contaminated food can be significant, and that they can be passed on, but are minimized if the next generation have an unaffected diet.

Professor Otaki says: “Our study demonstrated that eating contaminated foods could cause serious negative effects on organisms. Such negative effects may be passed down the generations. On the bright side, eating non-contaminated food improves the negative effects, even in the next generation.”

Source: Stone Hearth News

Monday, September 22, 2014

NASA Sound of the Sun Miracle

David Sereda | Sep 16, 2014

The Sound of the Sun is the Great Mantra OM in Rig Veda! Jesus truly prayed to LOGOS as God in the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic. Find out in this short video!

Monday, September 8, 2014

New study supports binary star system hypothesis!

The Kepler field of view, located between two bright
stars in the summer triangle, rising over
the WIYN telescope in southern Arizona.
Sott.net | Sep 4, 2014

(Phys.org) - Imagine living on an exoplanet with two suns. One, you orbit and the other is a very bright, nearby neighbor looming large in your sky. With this "second sun" in the sky, nightfall might be a rare event, perhaps only coming seasonally to your planet. A new study suggests that this could be far more common than we realized.

The NASA Kepler Space Telescope has confirmed about 1000 exoplanets, as well as thousands more stars considered "Kepler objects of interest", dubbed KOIs - stars that could possibly host planets.

Until now, there has been an unanswered question about exoplanet host stars; how many host stars are binaries? Binary stars have long been known to be commonplace - about half the stars in the sky are believed to consist of two stars orbiting each other. So, are stars with planets equally likely to have a companion star, or do companion stars affect the formation of planets?

A team of astronomers, led by Dr. Elliott Horch, Southern Connecticut State University, have shown that stars with exoplanets are just as likely to have a binary companion: that is, 40% to 50% of the host stars are actually binary stars. As Dr. Horch said, "It's interesting and exciting that exoplanet systems with stellar companions turn out to be much more common than was believed even just a few years ago."

Read more..

Saturday, August 16, 2014

Rosetta Mission Findings and The Myth of Dirty Snowballs | Space News

ThunderboltsProject | Aug 15, 2014


The European Space Agency's Rosetta mission to the Comet 67P is attracting worldwide attention to comet science. While months remain until the team attempts to land a probe on the comet's surface, astonishing revelations are already confronting scientists on Earth.


Story, Three Surprising Facts About Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko: http://www.popularmechanics.com/scien...

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Giant 80m Siberian crater at 'world’s end' (VIDEO)

Still from YouTube video/Bulka
RT | Jul 16, 2014

A mysterious giant crater has been discovered in a remote part of Siberia, dubbed by locals ‘the end of the world’, and is now puzzling scientists. An urgent expedition was sent to the far-northern peninsula to try and solve the mystery.

The team arrives on Wednesday to survey the seemingly bottomless pit, located in one of Russia’s northernmost points, at a latitude closer to that of Greenland than Canada.

The hole is about 80 meters wide and apparently had some extreme thermal event contributing to its formation, according to scarce detail gleaned from video footage, Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported. It wasn’t until that footage started to make the rounds that the media and the scientific community woke up to the possibility of surveying its origins.

The crater is believed to have been formed two years ago. No one knows how.

The seriousness of the find is evidenced by Russia’s Emergencies Ministry being present among the expedition. The Russian Academy of Sciences is also on board, planning to take samples of the soil, air and water from the area, which is big enough to fit several MI-8 helicopters.


Yamal, the peninsula where the spooky hole is located, is far up in the northern-Russian steppes. The precise location of the crater is some 30km from the gas field of Bovanenkovo. The whole area is within Russia’s key strategic oil and gas region – the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug.

The 700km area is a huge stretch of ancient permafrost otherwise known for its variety of animal species and is renowned as an archaeological goldmine where wooly mammoth skeletons have been discovered.

While some of the more absurd theories about the hole’s origins have been readily dismissed – chief among them that it was caused by a UFO – others see a potential relationship with global warming, believing that salt and gas were mixed underground, causing a subterranean explosion.

The one thing everyone agrees on is that the soil found around the crater was thrown out of it.

When asked if it’s possible that the hole was caused by a meteorite, a spokesman for the Yamal branch of the Emergencies Ministry said “we can definitely say that it’s not a meteorite. No details yet.”

© RT
The theory about the ignition of underground gas posits that ice and sand helped gas accumulate over time. When this mixed with salt, the explosion took place. The reason for this theory is that sometime around the last Ice Age (about 10,000 years ago) the area was still all sea, according to the Sub-Arctic Scientific Research Center’s Anna Kurchatova.

When global warming happens and permafrost begins to melt, large deposits of natural gas are released, which may have led to an effect similar to popping open a bottle.

Much will remain hidden about the mysterious crater until the researchers come back with more answers.
Something that takes away from the mystery slightly is that this might after all be a naturally occurring, quite boring, phenomenon.

“Occurrences like this are nothing new in Yamal,” a spokesman for the governor’s office told Interfax-Ural.“This happened last year, as well as two years ago… earth and ice behave unpredictably An underwater river might have moved the soil,” he added, explaining how these processes repeat over time as surfaces melt and freeze over again. “So, there’s no emergency to speak of here.”

The spokesman flat-out rejected the meteor theory, but said that a further investigation of the area should yield further information.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Enslaving Humanity By Weaponizing Water

The ultimate control:
The Weaponizing of Water
Sleuth Journal | Jun 15, 2014 | Dave Hodges

Many people are aware that the globalists are attacking humanity in every aspect on multiple fronts. However, what many do not realize is the globalist attacks upon humanity is present in every fabric of our lives. It is stories like these that make this fact so abundantly clear.

Venezuela: The Canary In the Mine


In a scene reminiscent of the 2008 bailouts in which Hank Paulson and friends raped the American economy, Venezuela’s economy is in shambles because its leaders are more worried about pleasing bondholders and importers than meeting the basic needs of its citizens.

Venezuela presently is a record $25 billion in arrears to importers and has its citizens waiting hours in line to buy drinking water. Further, its citizens are finding it increasingly necessary to cross borders in search of medicine. Meanwhile, President Nicolas Maduro is using the nation’s dwindling supply of dollars to enrich bondholders.

The real story in Venezuela is not the declining dollars, but the emerging water crisis. The situation is turning very threatening to the well-being of the population. If Maduro continues to serve the banksters and the preferred insiders, the water crisis could lead to a civil war. In fact, there are widespread water shortages across the planet that threaten to push the entire planet into a state of perpetual social unrest and even war could break out over control of this most precious resource. 

Much has been written about the past wars that have been fought over oil (e.g. Gulf War 1), the wars that have been fought over oil and gas (e.g. Arab Spring) and the wars which will be fought over oil and gas (e.g. Ukraine, Syria and Iran). What is missing from most conversations is that the wars of the future will be fought over water, leaving oil as a secondary consideration.

The Next Ten Years


According to the United Nations research and scientific studies, nearly two-thirds of the entire population inhabiting the planet will face severe, life-threatening water shortages by the year 2025. The reasons most often cited for the water shortages are waste and poor planning which will result in uneven distribution.

Presently this problem is primarily a third world problem. However, the UN report and other ancillary reports mention that England faces serious water shortages and the United States is not far behind England.

In the United States, the planning and contrived water shortages are already underway. T. Boone Pickens is buying up the Ogallala Water Aquifer, the largest in North America. Jesse Ventura, on his show Conspiracy Theory, documented how Nestle is shipping Great Lake water to places like China at the expense of the American taxpayers. I have also documented how in places like Northern and Central California and Southern Oregon, the EPA is systematically removing local farmer and rancher access to water.

The Defense Intelligence Agency Warns the World


Even the Defense Intelligence Agency has clearly echoed the dire warnings of the United Nations report by stating that unstable water supplies will greatly impact all and water will subsequently be used as a weapon. The DIA report evoked a reaction from former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, just prior to leaving office as she commented that the DIA’s findings are “sobering” and that as the world’s population continues to expand, the demand for water will increase but fresh water supplies will not keep pace.

Overpopulation Is the New Globalist Paradigm


Please take note of the fact that the globalists never miss an opportunity to promote the false paradigm of overpopulation in order to justify their depopulation agenda. In several places, the globalists are proclaiming overpopulation to be the new threat to humanity. This has become necessary because the globalists believe that an increasing number of people are waking up to the man-made climate change fraud. Hillary Clinton has commented that as water shortages grow, this inevitably will lead to regional conflicts and violence between nation states and within nation states and that overpopulation is at the root of the problem.

One has to tip their hat to the globalists for their dynamic and flexible approach to achieve total global domination. As the world tires of the phony excuses to fight the banker inspired wars over oil, the globalists have shifted their strategy to appeal to human beings’ basic instinct, the inherent need to possess food and water in order to survive. Clinton, the United Nations and the Defense Intelligence Agency are nicely setting the table for what is to come; a planned global water shortage which can be manipulated into a greater stranglehold on vital resources by the globalists. Look at the latest media documentaries, many are merely a reproduction of this same mantra. This is a classic case of the Hegelian Dialectic in action.

In reality, the plan to bring the world to its knees through the global elite’s creation of artificial water shortages, is already underway. The reports from the DIA and the UN should be labeled status reports, instead of futuristic projections. Consider the following water-related facts from an existing set of realities. Twenty percent of the world’s population, presently lack access to an adequate supply of clean drinking water. Global water consumption is doubling every 20 years, more than twice the rate of human population growth.

The Progress of Contrived Water Shortages


The above-mentioned facts can be exploited by the globalists through controlling water supplies and creating more artificial shortages. The globalist plan to bring the world to its knees by controlling water is already bearing fruit as 31 countries currently face water scarcity. Globalist industries have been doing their part to ferment this conspiracy as more than half the world’s major rivers are either dead or are hopelessly polluted. More evidence to support the notion that the globalist plan is working is evidenced by the fact that, in third world countries, water borne illnesses account for most deaths. Water safety issues are being exacerbated and the death curve is dramatically spiking. Tragically, these deaths are almost completely preventable. As both the UN and DIA reports mention, that by 2025, two-thirds of the world’s population will live in absolute water scarcity and accompanying food shortages. There will be no shortage of willing and desperate soldiers to fight in the coming water wars.

The globalists plan for complete planetary domination is brilliant. First, the globalists are making very good progress at privatizing (i.e. stealing) the most precious resource on the planet. Secondly, the globalists will be in position to carry out their much exalted strategy of depopulation. Their plan is incredibly evil due to the hundreds of millions, if not billions, of innocent people who will perish, but it is very brilliant.

Bolivia Was the Beta Test


Bolivia was the beta test for this planned takeover of water.  Bolivia defaulted on its World Bank debt obligations and their water supplies went into receivership, controlled by the globalists, and water prices skyrocketed by 400%.

This scheme is also present in Lima, Peru, where the typical poor family pays private vendors up to $3 per cubic meter to collect contaminated water in buckets while the elite pay 30 cents per cubic meter for treated water that pours out of taps in their homes.

In India, some families spend a quarter of their income on water. Debt manipulation, for the ultimate purpose of controlling water, is not just in play in the third world. The derivative debt has paralyzed the economies of Europe and the United States. Debt default, followed by the banker bailouts. How long will it be until the globalists have to bail out the American economy while we continue on our trek towards unsustainable debt?  When America’s economy falters, the bankers, armed with their central bank printing presses, will come to the rescue. The price for their intervention, judging by what happened in Bolivia, will be total control over our infrastructure and the control of all water will be at the top of the list. Collecting rainwater and purifying stream water to drink, will become illegal acts. All water will be obtained through the public private partnership corporations and you can bet, as history has set the precedent, water will get very expensive. The legal framework for the takeover of American water is already underway in many states, like Colorado, which has adopted policies which prohibit the trapping of rainwater or the reuse of irrigation water. This is how it started in Bolivia and now we are seeing the same thing within the United States.

Controlling Water Gives the Banksters Control Over Food


The DIA report prominently mentions that agriculture uses 70% of the world’s water supply. Therefore, it follows that water shortages will quickly lead to food shortages. And what do the globalists see as the solution to the resulting food crisis which will follow on the heels of the contrived water shortages? The globalists are using this opportunity to promote drought resistant GMO crops. That is right, they are promoting GMO’s on the heels of artificially contrived water shortages!  So, if you don’t die of thirst or break the family budget by attempting to obtain water, you will increasingly find yourself being poisoned by toxic, drought resistant GMO’s. These are the same GMO’s, when examined in French longitudinal studies that demonstrated that lab rats who consumed GMO’s developed fatal tumors and died. Again, the brilliance of this plan is stunning in which an artificial water shortage is created and the public will clamor for GMO drought resistant crops.


A False Paradigm


The globalist notion that they must reduce population in order to save humanity, is a based upon unproven facts and should be considered to be nothing but a deception.

History clearly shows that if one would want to reduce population the best way to do so is through massive industrialization. Presently, the Italian birthrate is 1.2 and the in the United States, the indigenous birthrate is 1.8. Both countries are symbolic of the fact that in industrialized societies, the birthrate declines dramatically because high numbers of children are not needed to work on farms that are far fewer in number. Any sociologist will tell you that birth control and industrialization go hand in hand. Therefore, the globalists should be trying to industrialize the third world instead of preventing progress and deindustrializing everyone else.


Conclusion



The United States is also being pulled into this unhealthy paradigm of an artificially contrived water shortage, through outright theft, government assisted privatization and subsequent hording. Some local American municipalities are already experiencing similar rate increases which are common in the third world.

If all of the other globalist plans to manipulate the planet into accepting a world-wide government and economic system were to fail, the control of water would still represent their default position. If one controls the water, one controls the planet and everyone in it.


(click to enlarge)

Dave Hodges
is the host of the popular weekly talk show, The Common Sense Show, which airs on Sunday nights from 9pm – Midnight (central) on the Republic Broadcasting Network and its 29 affiliate stations. Dave also hosts a website (www.thecommonsenseshow.com) in which he writes daily articles on the geopolitical state of affairs both nationally and internationally. The theme of Dave’s show and website centers around exposing the corruption and treason which has invaded the presidency and Congress as well as their corporate and banking benefactors. Dave is an award winning psychology, sociology, statistics and research professor. He is also a former college basketball coach who retired as the winningest coach in his college’s history. A mental health therapist by training, Dave brings a broad based perspective in his fight against the corrupt central banking cartels which have hijacked the US government. Dave and his wife, Nora have one son and they presently reside in rural Arizona approximately 25 miles north of the greater Phoenix area. Dave was drawn to the fight for freedom when the globalist central banking forces, led by Senator John McCain, attempted to seize his home and property and that of 300 of his neighbors, without one dime being offered in compensation. This attempted public theft of private property was conducted for the purpose of securing cheap land in which the globalists intended on putting in an international highway through their area known as the Canamex Corridor. Dave’s community appointed him the spokesperson and eventually his community won their fight against the bankers and their front man, Senator McCain. This event launched Dave’s career as a broadcaster and an investigative journalist. Dave’s website presently enjoys over a half a million visitors every month.

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Food addictions exposed: why the food supply is designed to keep you addicted

TheHealthRanger | Jun 10, 2014 | Mike Adams


The Health Ranger explains why food addictions are engineered into the food supply by food manufacturers. This explains why many food consumers are so strongly addicted to the very foods that are making them sick and diseased.

Hear all episodes of Awakenings at:
www.NaturalNews.com/Awakenings

Sunday, May 11, 2014

The greatest health conspiracy of all time: Awakenings with the Health Ranger

TheHealthRanger | May 11, 2014 | Subscribe

This episode of "Awakenings" with the Health Ranger reveals the greatest health conspiracy of all time - you are programmed for perfect health! (All you have to do is unlock it...)


Hear more episodes of "Awakenings" at NaturalNews.com/awakenings

Thursday, May 1, 2014

National Park Service Creates an Historic Landmark that can’t be Visited

Recovery team with filled body
bags at Grand Canyon crash
site in 1956 (photo: Getty/LIFE)
ALLGOV | Apr 30, 2014 | Noel Brinkerhoff

A remote stretch of the Grand Canyon has been declared a historic landmark to commemorate a fatal plane crash that proved instrumental in the development of U.S. aviation. But Americans won’t be able to visit the landmark because the National Park Service (NPS) intends to keep its location a secret.

The landmark covers an area of rugged terrain about 1.5 square miles in size within the Grand Canyon, above which two planes collided in midair on June 30, 1956.

Flying in inclement weather, a United Airlines Douglas DC-7 crashed into a TWA Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation. All 128 people aboard the two planes were killed, making it the deadliest accident in commercial aviation history at the time.

The accident prompted the federal government to expand its regulatory authority over the industry, culminating in the establishment of the Federal Aviation Administration two years later.

It also encouraged the development of nationwide radar, collision avoidance systems, flight-data recorders, and more advanced navigation equipment.

Given the turning points in aviation operations that followed the crash, NPS officials decided it was time to designate the area as a historic landmark.

Alexandra Lord, branch chief of the National Historic Landmarks Program in Washington, DC, admits the marker represents the first time the agency has given such a designation to a crash site. It also may be the first time that a landmark was created for something that happened exclusively in the air.

“In some ways we can argue that the crash itself—which led to the scattering of pieces over a huge debris field—is what's crucial. And it sort of doesn't matter if you think of it as on the air or on the ground,” Lord told The Atlantic.

Efforts were made to retrieve human remains after the accident, but no bodies were found intact, making identification difficult or impossible. The remains of 29 United victims were buried in four coffins, and 66 of the 70 TWA passengers were interred in a mass grave.

Although most of the wreckage was removed, to this day the area reportedly still contains some remnants of the destroyed aircrafts.

Hikers have been banned from the area since the 1950s, but it wouldn’t be wise anyway for the curious to make the trek, advised Lord. “It’s extremely remote, so it would take a very long time for someone to get there backpacking and it would be very difficult to reach,” she said.

One man did reach the crash site a year after the disaster. He claimed to have found various items from the planes, including some burnt coins and a TWA spoon.

The NPS wants to preserve the area and consequently won’t reveal the site’s coordinates. In fact, it redacted that information from the Historic Landmark Nomination document (pdf). “But we know where it is,” said Lord, “and we're going to work to preserve it.”

Monday, April 28, 2014

Former NASA Scientist: Global warming is nonsense

© Breitbart, London
Sott.net | Apr 26, 2014 | Source

A former NASA scientist has described global warming as "nonsense", dismissing the theory of man-made climate change as "an unsubstantiated hypothesis" and saying that it is "absolutely stupid" to blame the recent UK floods on human activity.

Professor Les Woodcock, who has had a long and distinguished academic career, also said there is "no reproducible evidence" that carbon dioxide levels have increased over the past century, and blamed the green movement for inflicting economic damage on ordinary people.

Professor Woodcock is Emeritus Professor of Chemical Thermodynamics at the University of Manchester and has authored over 70 academic papers for a wide range of scientific journals. He received his PhD from the University of London, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a recipient of a Max Planck Society Visiting Fellowship, and a founding editor the journal Molecular Simulation. (h/t Climate Depot)

Professor Woodcock told the Yorkshire Evening Post:
"The term 'climate change' is meaningless. The Earth's climate has been changing since time immemorial, that is since the Earth was formed 1,000 million years ago. The theory of 'man-made climate change' is an unsubstantiated hypothesis [about] our climate [which says it] has been adversely affected by the burning of fossil fuels in the last 100 years, causing the average temperature on the earth's surface to increase very slightly but with disastrous environmental consequences.

"The theory is that the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuel is the 'greenhouse gas' causes 'global warming' - in fact, water is a much more powerful greenhouse gas and there is 20 time more of it in our atmosphere (around one per cent of the atmosphere) whereas CO2 is only 0.04 per cent.

"There is no reproducible scientific evidence CO2 has significantly increased in the last 100 years."
He also said:
"Even the term 'global warming' does not mean anything unless you give it a time scale. The temperature of the earth has been going up and down for millions of years, if there are extremes, it's nothing to do with carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, it's not permanent and it's not caused by us. Global warming is nonsense."
Professor Woodcock dismissed evidence for global warming, such as the floods that deluged large parts of Britain this winter, as "anecdotal" and therefore meaningless in science.
"Events can happen with frequencies on all time scales in the physics of a chaotic system such as the weather. Any point on lowland can flood up to a certain level on all time scales from one month to millions of years and it's completely unpredictable beyond around five days."
Also, the only reason we regularly hear that we have had the most extreme weather "since records began" is that records only began about 100 years ago.
"The reason records seem to be being frequently broken is simply because we only started keeping them about 100 years ago. There will always be some record broken somewhere when we have another natural fluctuation in weather.

"It's absolutely stupid to blame floods on climate change, as I read the Prime Minister did recently. I don't blame the politicians in this case, however, I blame his so-called scientific advisors."
When asked how can say this when most of the world's scientists, political leaders and people in general are committed to the theory of global warming, Prof Woodcock answered bluntly:
"This is not the way science works. If you tell me that you have a theory there is a teapot in orbit between the earth and the moon, it's not up to me to prove it does not exist, it's up to you to provide the reproducible scientific evidence for your theory.

"Such evidence for the man-made climate change theory has not been forthcoming."
This lack of evidence has not stopped a whole green industry building up, however. At the behest of that industry, governments have been passing ever more regulations that make life more difficult and expensive.
"...the damage to our economy the climate change lobby is now costing us is infinitely more destructive to the livelihoods of our grand-children. Indeed, we grand-parents are finding it increasingly expensive just to keep warm as a consequence of the idiotic decisions our politicians have taken in recent years about the green production of electricity."
Professor Woodcock is the latest scientist to come out against the theory of man-made global warming. James Lovelock, once described as a "green guru", earlier this month said that climate scientists "just guess", and that no one really knows what's happening.

Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, also said that she was "duped into supporting the IPCC" and added "If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic."

Friday, April 18, 2014

Scientists Discover How to Generate Solar Power in the Dark

Defenseone | Apr 16, 2014 | Todd Woody

The next big thing in solar energy could be microscopic.

Scientists at MIT and Harvard University have devised a way to store solar energy in molecules that can then be tapped to heat homes, water or used for cooking.

The best part: The molecules can store the heat forever and be endlessly re-used while emitting absolutely no greenhouse gases.  Scientists remain a way’s off in building this perpetual heat machine but they have succeeded in the laboratory at demonstrating the viability of the phenomenon called photoswitching.

“Some molecules, known as photoswitches, can assume either of two different shapes, as if they had a hinge in the middle,” MIT researchers said in statement about the paper published in the journal Nature Chemistry. “Exposing them to sunlight causes them to absorb energy and jump from one configuration to the other, which is then stable for long periods of time.”

To liberate that energy all you have to do is expose the molecules to a small amount of light, heat or electricity and when they switch back to the other shape the emit heat. “In effect, they behave as rechargeable thermal batteries: taking in energy from the sun, storing it indefinitely, and then releasing it on demand,” the scientists said.

The researchers used a photoswitching substance called an azobenzene, attaching the molecules to substrates of carbon nanotubes. The challenge: Packing the molecules closely enough together to achieve a sufficient energy density to generate usable heat.

It appeared that the researchers had failed when they were only able to pack fewer than half the number of molecules needed as indicated by an earlier computer simulation of the experiment.

But instead of hitting a projected 30 percent increase in energy density, they saw a 200 percent increase. It turned out that the key was not so much packing azobenzene molecules tightly on individual carbon nanotubes as packing the nanotubes close together. That’s because the azobenzene molecules formed “teeth” on the carbon nanotubes, which interlocked with teeth on adjacent nanotubes. The result was the mass needed for a usable amount of energy storage.

That means different combinations of photoswitching molecules and substrates might achieve the same or greater energy storage, according to the researchers.

So how would molecular solar storage work if the technology can be commercialized? Timothy Kucharski, the paper’s lead author and a postdoc at MIT and Harvard, told The Atlantic that most likely the storage would take a liquid form, which would be easy to transport.

“It would also enable charging by flowing the material from a storage tank through a window or clear tube exposed to the sun and then to another storage tank, where the material would remain until it’s needed,” Kucharski said in an email.  “That way one could stockpile the charged material for use when the sun’s not shining.”

The paper’s authors envision the technology could be used in countries where most people rely on burning wood or dung for cooking, which creates dangerous levels of indoor air pollution, leads to deforestation and contributes to climate change.

“For solar cooking, one would leave the device out in the sun during the day,” says Kucharski. “One design we have for such an application is purely gravity driven – the material flows from one tank to another. The flow rate is restricted so that it’s exposed to the sun long enough that it gets fully charged. Then, when it’s time to cook dinner, after the sun is down, the flow direction is reversed, again driven by gravity, and the opposite side of the setup is used as the cooking surface.”

“As the material flows back to the first tank, it passes by an immobilized catalyst which triggers the energy-releasing process, heating the cooking surface up,” he adds.

Other versions of such device could be used to heat buildings.

Kucharski said the MIT and Harvard team is now investigating other photoswitching molecules and substrates, “with the aim of designing a system that absorbs more of the sun’s energy and also can be more practically scaled up.”

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Sott net Summary of Earth Changes: March 2014

The SOTT Report | Apr 12, 2014 | Subscribe

SOTT Summary, March 2014: Fireballs, Extreme Weather, and Earth Changes

The following video compiles footage of 'signs of the times' from around the world during the past month. From 'strange lights' in the skies to extreme weather events, from geological upheaval in the form of volcanic eruptions, sinkholes, landslides and earthquakes to loud booms rattling communities and meteor fireballs turning night into day, the Big Blue Marble is rocking and rolling!

Thursday, March 27, 2014

‘A complete surprise’: Astronomers find asteroid called ‘Chariklo’ has twin rings

Raw Story | Mar 26, 2014 | Agence France-Presse

Astonished astronomers said Wednesday they had found rings around an asteroid, the smallest object known to have this feature and only the fifth after Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The twin rings around a rock called Chariklo were spotted in June last year as it passed in front of a star, scrutinised by seven telescopes dotted over a 1,500-kilometre (930-mile) stretch of South America.

As expected, the star seemed to vanish for a few seconds as Chariklo blocked its light — a phenomenon known as occultation, an international team reported in the science journal Nature.

But the mini-eclipse turned out to be much more than the astronomers were expecting.

“A few seconds before, and again a few seconds after the main occultation, there were two further very short dips in the star’s apparent brightness,” the European Southern Observatory (ESO) said in a statement.

“Something around Chariklo was blocking the light!”

It turned out to be two narrow, dense rings — a feature believed to be limited to the four giant planets of our Solar System.

By comparing data from the different sites, the team not only reconstructed the shape and size of Chariklo itself but also the shape, width and orientation of its twin halos.

These were seven and three km (4.3 and 1.8 miles) wide respectively, separated by a nine-km gap. Like Saturn’s rings, Chariklo’s may be composed of water ice.

“We weren’t looking for a ring and didn’t think small bodies like Chariklo had them at all, so the discovery, and the amazing amount of detail we saw in the system, came as a complete surprise,” said Felipe Braga Ribas of Brazil’s National Observatory.

- Celestial centaur -

Chariklo, a lumpy 250-km-wide rock discovered in 1997 and named after a water nymph in Greek mythology, orbits the Sun between Saturn and Uranus, more than a billion kilometres from Earth.

It is a Centaur, a category of celestial bodies that share the characteristics of comets, which are made of ice and dust and form tails when they pass near the Sun, and asteroids which are made of metallic rock, have shorter orbits and tend to cluster in groups.

Centaurs have unstable orbits that cross those of the giant planets and live for a few million years. Like other “minor planets”, they are not massive enough for their own gravity to pull them into a near-spherical shape.

The origin of Chariklo’s rings are a mystery for now, but may be the result of a debris-releasing collision with another body.

“I try to imagine how it would be to stand on the surface of this icy object… and stare up at a 20-km-wide ring system 1,000 times closer than the Moon,” said fellow researcher Uffe Grae Jorgensen of the University of Copenhagen’s Niels Bohr Institute.

The debris may eventually become welded together into a single, larger moon orbiting Chariklo — one of the theories for how our own Moon was formed.

Studying occultations is the only method astronomers have to determine the size and shape of bodies so far from Earth that even with the best telescopes they appear as faint points of light.

The rings around Uranus and Neptune were found in the same way, in 1977 and 1984. Galileo, in 1610, became the first person to observe the brilliant rings of Saturn, while the dusty rings around Jupiter were first spotted by the US probe Voyager 1 in 1979.

The project leaders have named Chariklo’s rings after the Brazilian rivers of Oiapoque and Chui, but the epithets have yet to be confirmed by the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

- Planet-like body? -

In a separate study in Nature, astronomers said they had found a second planet-like body in what was long thought to be an uninhabited zone beyond the orbit of Pluto.

The remote area, said to represent the outer edge of our Solar System, is a supposed repository of comets known as the Oort Cloud.

Only one other body, a 1,000-km-diameter dwarf dubbed Sedna, has been spotted in what is thought to be the inner region of the hypothetical “cloud”.

The newcomer, spotted by the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory’s four-metre telescope in Chile, has been dubbed 2012 VP.

The point of its orbit closest to the Sun is about 80 astronomical units (1 AU = the distance from the Sun to Earth). Neptune is the furthest planet from the Sun at 30 AU.

“2012 VP is the smoking gun for the existence of the inner Oort Cloud,” Megan Schwamb of the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taipei, wrote in a comment.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Anti-Food: New Food Marketing Is All About What Isn't In It

TRUTHStream Media | Mar 16, 2014 | CHANNEL

With all the chemicals and genetic modification adulterating our food supply, it's pretty sad that it's come to this: food and beverage companies selling their products by assuring you what *ISN'T* in your food.