Last Week I attended a Town Hall Meeting at the local bookstore/coffee shop. The Matter Book store here in ft. Collins is a mecca for local movement and progressive community endeavors. Owner Todd Simmons who also runs Wolverine Farm Publishing as well as owner of the Matter bookstore facilitated this event as a way to unite various projects within the local food movement. Ft. Collins is a progressive community rich with individuals who are striving to “do the right thing”. The panel who was presenting information to the public included, Happy Heart Farm, a Locally run CSA. Dennis and Baily Stenson have devoted their lives to Community Sustainable Agriculture here in this town for 27 years and continue to do so in a harmonious and Bio-dynamic way. Also Galemarie Kimmel of Be-Local, a local business which publishes an annual coupon book geared to support the local economy. John Anderson, who I call the Willy Wonka of worm world also sat in on the panel as well as the Growing Project and Grow Forth both Community Farms.
NaturalNews) In response to growing awareness about the dangers of artificial sweeteners, what does the manufacturer of one of the world’s most notable artificial sweeteners do? Why, rename it and begin marketing it as natural, of course. This is precisely the strategy of Ajinomoto, maker of aspartame, which hopes to pull the wool over the eyes of the public with its rebranded version of aspartame, called “AminoSweet”.
Over 25 years ago, aspartame was first introduced into the European food supply. Today, it is an everyday component of most diet beverages, sugar-free desserts, and chewing gums in countries worldwide. But the tides have been turning as the general public is waking up to the truth about artificial sweeteners like aspartame and the harm they cause to health. The latest aspartame marketing scheme is a desperate effort to indoctrinate the public into accepting the chemical sweetener as natural and safe, despite evidence to the contrary.
Aspartame was an accidental discovery by James Schlatter, a chemist who had been trying to produce an anti-ulcer pharmaceutical drug for G.D. Searle & Company back in 1965. Upon mixing aspartic acid and phenylalanine, two naturally-occurring amino acids, he discovered that the new compound had a sweet taste. The company merely changed its FDA approval application from drug to food additive and, voila, aspartame was born.
Father of the Gaia hypothesis
http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotian/1163947.html
SILVER DONALD CAMERON
Sun. Jan 24 – 4:53 AM
‘IT’S IMPORTANT for Gaia that human beings survive,” says James Lovelock .
“Our intelligence, if it can be integrated as part of the whole planetary system, would make ours the first intelligent planet in the galaxy, perhaps. What a wonderful future for humans!”
A great scientist needs great courage and a great imagination — and Jim Lovelock has both, in spades.
It is now 40 years since he rattled the scientific world and electrified the rest of us by publishing Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979), which argued that the Earth behaves like a single living organism that creates and maintains a viable environment for life.
The Gaia hypothesis — named for the Greek Earth goddess — implied that the world was far more complex than modern reductionist science had imagined. It offered a coherent vision of the whole living world that echoed all our wisdom traditions and renewed the human sense of wonder.
Mainstream scientists were horrified. Many still are. But Lovelock’s bold insights, and his continuing exploration of their implications, became the foundations of “Earth system science,” the study of systems like the circulation of the oceans, the maintenance of the atmosphere and the relationships among the earth’s many systems.
Noted author Gwynne Dyer considers Lovelock “the most important figure in both the life sciences and the climate sciences for the past half-century,” and compares his achievements to Darwin’s.
Slight, cheerful and white-haired, Lovelock is now 90 years old, though he looks decades younger. He published a new book last year, The Vanishing Face of Gaia. He and his American-born wife Sandy spend their summers in Devon, England, and their winters in her home town of St. Louis, Mo., where I came calling one brilliant January morning.
Lovelock resembles a geologist in his easy navigation of the vastness of deep time, but he recalls the Enlightenment sages in his assumption that science is a single enterprise, artificially split into disciplines. He has been self-employed as a freelance scientist and instrument-maker for 50 years, largely because of “silly people who would say to me, ‘You can’t do biology, you’re a chemist.’ As if I didn’t have a brain.”
Freedom from institutional politics allowed him to indulge his preference for observation over computer modelling and permitted him to follow the evidence fearlessly, wherever it led.
In 2007 he was “shocked” to learn that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had “reached a consensus on a matter of science.”
Science is about nature. Consensus is about politics.
So where has the evidence led him lately?
Sea level, Arctic ice cover and ocean algae populations, he says, are the best indicators of global warming — and they all reveal that the earth is heating up much faster than the panel’s projections. Furthermore, the evidence from the Earth’s last hot period, 55 million years ago, shows that global temperatures don’t necessarily change slowly and evenly; they can flip fairly quickly to hotter or colder states.
On that earlier occasion, most of the Earth became a scorching desert. Life retreated to the shores of an Arctic Ocean with surface temperature of 21 C, where crocodiles lived and bred.
Lovelock thinks that’s the kind of world we’re creating — and because of our essentially tribal politics, our efforts to avoid it will likely fail. Since a less habitable Earth won’t sustain a global population of seven billion, populations will crash. Human beings should plan a “sustainable retreat” to the Arctic region. Canadians should prepare for hordes of people trying to relocate to northern Canada.
Is this inevitable?
No, says Lovelock. Gaia is far more complex than we understand, and we do not even know the depth of our ignorance. A scientist can only say that this nightmare scenario is probable. But we should prepare for it now, while the world is still a reasonably civilized place.
The real horror would be if our species survived, but its finest achievements were lost — science, art, culture.
Lovelock believes we could be the evolutionary ancestors of an intelligent, post-tribal species that will serve an aging Gaia as her consciousness.
This is a colossal vision of tragedy — and redemption.
Lovelock smiles.
“Gaia needs us,” he says. “What a wonderful future for humans!”
Life can be a GIFT or a NIGHTMARE, depending on where you choose to operate from consciously. Practiced regularly, the following 10 tips will assist you in shining your beautiful unique light so brightly that your resulting raised consciousness will be a GIFT to yourself, humanity and the Cosmos.
1. Forgive yourself and others. Life is too short to hold on to regrets, grudges, miscommunicatio….ns or disappointments…. . Free yourself by forgiving and letting go of any negative energy you’re holding on to about yourself and/or others. There are many ways to do this. One way is to write down anything you’re ready to let go of and ceremonially tear it into small pieces and throw it away as you forgive. You may even choose to verbally forgive anyone you’ve been resenting. Either way, the process of forgiving yourself and others will result in your feeling light and free, and consequently raise your vibration.
2. Practice gratitude and appreciation. Whatever you focus on grows. So, when you focus on every thing in your life you have to feel grateful for and all the wonderful people you appreciate, the universe hands you more to feel grateful about. It’s a wonderfully reciprocal consciousness raising process.
3. Live each day as though it were your last. If today was your last known day in this lifetime, with what type of people would you surround yourself? What would you say to the people you care about? What personal gifts would you make sure you imparted to humanity and the earth? Live each day as if it was your last, and you will be living in a state of light, love and unconditional contribution.
4. Meditate/Pray. You open up a direct link between yourself and the spiritual realm when you meditate and/or pray. Meditation and prayer can be used to bring you closer to your creator energy, raise your vibration, bring you peace, clarity, joy, and connection, as well assist you in experiencing a perfectly balanced state between your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual bodies.
5. Suspend judgment. This world is laden with judgment, irresponsibilit…. y, and finger pointing. One judges another to feel less guilty about one’s own misgivings. Judgment energy is dense, dark, and heavy. On the other hand, unconditional acceptance is light, free, and accepting. Let go of judging and criticizing yourself and others. Everyone is on a different path, and some appear to be further ahead on their path than others. Neither path is better nor worse than another. Raise your consciousness to one of acceptance.
6. View every experience as a GIFT. If you look back at occurrences in your life, you can easily see how even the worst situations you experienced in your life ended up teaching you invaluable lessons and therefore ended up putting you in the perfect place for your continuing development. When you view every experience, the good, the bad, and the ugly as a GIFT, life flows more like a gentle, inspiring breeze.
7. Stay consciously aware of all of your thoughts and feelings. Until you raise the consciousness of the entire human race, it is extremely easy to fall back in to all pervasive negative patterns of complaining and feeling like a victim of society and a victim of your life. To stay out of these patterns, check in with yourself your present thoughts and feelings several times a day. When you catch yourself in the Negative zone, don’t feel badly about it and beat yourself up. Simply choose to switch your consciousness to one of gratitude and positive thinking. Remain conscious.
8. Treat your physical body as your temple. Your body is the only vehicle you’ve been given for this ride called “LIFE.” The better you care for your body by eating a healthy, balanced diet, and by implementing a regular exercise routine, and by giving your body the rest it requires, the more you will experience increased energy, vitality, joy, and freedom. Honor, love, appreciate and take extra good care of your body, and you will be raising your energy and your consciousness.
9. View the world through the eyes of a child. Observe a baby or a young child. It won’t take you long to notice that young children are constantly totally enthralled by the process of observing and experiencing the wonder and beauty in every single thing, color, texture, and person they meet. They can’t get enough! Look at every tree, sunset, cloud, and human being as a child would and you’ll be in a constant state of wonder, joy, surprise, acceptance, and enlightenment.
10. Give LOVE, LOVE, LOVE from your heart. It’s all about love. Do you remember the feeling of being in love for the first time? Why was it so wonderful? That’s because love is the highest vibration. Allow yourself to receive love unconditionally…... from others. Give love from your heart unconditionally…. to yourself and others, and you will experience the highest state of consciousness possible.
Campaigners throughout the United Kingdom are to take part in a protest by taking a mass overdose of homeopathic medicine as part of a national bid to prove that the medicines are worthless.
The so-called overdoses will occur outside Boots (a large pharmacy chain) in Birmingham, Bristol, Brighton, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hampshire, Leeds, Leicester, London, Liverpool, Manchester, Oxford and Sheffield. Boots sells homeopathic products and says it is committed to providing customers with a wide range of products. The company added that many people believed in complementary medicines.
Organizers say sympathy events will also take place in Australia, Canada, Spain and the USA.
One group, calling themselves the Edinburgh Sceptics said homeopathic medications were nothing more than ineffective sugar pills.
The protest is being organized by the Merseyside Skeptics Society MSS, a non-profit organization whose aim is to “develop and support the skeptical community.” Michael Marshall, MSS spokesperson, said “We believe that they shouldn’t be selling sugar pills to people who are sick. Homeopathy never works any better than a placebo. The remedies are diluted so much that there is nothing in them.” He took a product containing arsenic, but added that they are so diluted that the chances of finding one molecule of arsenic in the tablets were negligible.
Marshall added that shoppers trust Boots, a well known and reputable UK pharmacy chain, which should not be selling these products alongside other medications.
What is homeopathy?
As homeopathic remedies are person specific, and doses are generally small, the Society of Homeopaths said the protesters should not have any reaction to their overdoses, unless somebody had symptoms linked to their remedy.
Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine. It was first proposed by Samual Hahnemann (1755 – 1843), a German physician in 1796. He proposed that patients could be treated with heavily diluted preparations of products which are thought to cause effects similar to their signs and symptoms.
Homeopathic medications are prepared by succession – a form of serial dilution with shaking by forceful striking after each dilution. It is assumed that this process makes the treatment more effective. The whole process is called potentization. Sometimes dilution continues until there is none of the original substance left.
Homeopaths use aspects of the patient’s physical and psychological state, as well as their symptoms when recommending remedies. Repertories (reference books) are consulted and a remedy is selected.
In the vast majority of cases homeopathic remedies are considered as safe. There have been some cases of arsenic toxicity. Although most homeopaths work alongside mainstream medicine, there have been cases where patients have been advised not to take proven treatments for some serious diseases (Malaria Advice Risks Lives, BBC).
Homeopathic treatments are recognized by the National Health Service (NHS), UK, which spends billions each year on it. The protesters say this is a waste of resources.
What is the difference between alternative medicine and orthodox medicine?
Other related articles
What Is A Clinical Trial?
New Biological Models Of Homeopathy Published In Special Issues
British Researchers Call For WHO To ‘Condemn Homeopathy’ For Serious Diseases
Review which claimed that homeopathy is just a placebo, published in The Lancet, was seriously flawed
There are many interpretations. Put simply, orthodox treatments/medicine has been proven through well organized clinical trials, in which the treatment is compared with either another medication or a placebo (or both). Alternative medicines have not been proven, either because trials found no difference compared to a placebo, or proper trials have not yet been carried out.
Imagine that people claimed that placing a flag at the bottom of the garden helped get rid of flu faster – until proven, this would be an alternative treatment. However, if a proper clinical trial were carried out with a large group of people in several centers, comparing the use of the flag with a placebo, and it was found that the flag was significantly more effective and did not have serious side-effects, the flag treatment would become orthodox medicine as soon as the authorities studied the results of the trials and approved its use.
This month HuffPost Living has featured an abundance of great articles on the importance of sleep, with excellent tips on how to enhance your slumber from experts in a variety of fields.
An approach that can also aid in the quest for a good night’s sleep is that of Chinese Medicine. This ancient healing system has offered relief to the sleep challenged for thousands of years. While new to many, Chinese Medicine is mainstream in China, and it is used today for a wide range of conditions by an estimated one-fourth of the world’s population.
The Roots of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Chinese Medicine is considered the oldest, most continuously practiced, professional, literate medicine in the world. Written records date back over 2000 years, although the medicine is believed to go back even further. Some experts believe Chinese Medicine is at least 5000 years old.
Chinese Medicine employs acupuncture, herbal medicine, nutritional therapy, tuina (pronounced “twee nah”) massage, acupressure, and qigong.
Sales of alternative medicines are booming as consumers shake off their cynicism.
Analysts say the market has grown by 18 per cent in two years and is worth £213million a year.
And they predict sales will increase by 33 per cent to £282million over the next four years as more patients reject prescription drugs in favour of natural remedies.
Even relatively unknown treatments such as ayurveda – the Indian holistic system of diet, yoga, massage and herbs – are picking up in popularity.
Analysts Mintel said the rise can be explained by growing official acceptance of many treatments such as acupuncture, which is available on the NHS.
A rise in the number of patients diagnosed with depression and stress has also led to more people exploring holistic approaches in favour of potentially addictive prescription drugs.
Around 1.5million Britons bought St John’s Wort last year, predominantly for depression.
