Quote:Catch one if you can



As I tell my students, humans think in pictures. Our minds are full of images. We visualize things we like or dislike, desire, dream about, and want to achieve, then we encode those pictures and transmit them to others, or receive them from others, using something we call language.

Languages are like file formats — some people transmit TIFs, or GIFs, or PNGs, or JPGs. If you have the proper algorithms, you can encode and transmit your pictures to someone else, or decode their transmissions and rebuild their images in your head. If you don’t have the proper algorithms, then what you send or receive is gibberish.

There are three aspects to language: grammar, which is the actual grid on which the pixels (words) are laid out; logic, which is the bit size, or amount of information, in your pixels; and rhetoric, which is the bandwidth you use to transmit and receive.

The more accurate and sophisticated your aspects are, the higher the resolution, the greater the color depth, and the more accurate your transmissions are. The more languages you know, the more file types you can encode and decode, send and receive.

The interesting thing about languages is that each one adds its own flair to the images, with some being better at color reproduction, others higher in resolution, and still others offering faster and more accurate transmission. Pronunciation and enunciation are the means by which we attenuate the frequencies and control “noise” to ensure accurate transmission.


Some languages require a lot of bandwidth to transmit even simple images. Others are very efficient, with compression algorithms and self-correcting carrier waves. Some have vast amounts of metadata in the headers (connotation), while others almost none.

Idioms are highly specialized compression techniques, allowing large amounts of information to be transmitted with relatively few bits of data. Idioms are “function calls” that reference shared databases, like metaphors and allusions, that are culturally unique. For instance, I can say, “Mona Lisa,” and those eight sounds reference an entire cultural database that we share, allowing me to reference large amounts of information that I don’t need to transmit.

In language, resolution (# of pixels) is known as lexicon, or sheer number of words available. Latin has a lexicon of 40,000 words, Spanish has 93,000, Indonesian has 127,000, German offers 145.000, and Mandarin boasts roughly 375,000 words.

English has a resolution of 600.000 words, and possibly upwards of a million if one includes various jargons and specialized terms — the highest resolution language on the planet. As a writer, I am fortunate that English is my native tongue, and that my teachers were master artists when it came to painting verbal pictures. We might think of English as the TIF format of languages…uncompressed with high resolution and layers of data in the same file.



I am rather fastidious when it comes to the pixels, er…words I choose. I use them for their common definitions, as well as their etymology (history, origins). I especially do not allow special interest groups to redefine words to fit their agendas. Nor do I allow groups to arbitrarily change the grammar to purposely dumb it down. Both of these are deliberate efforts to seal off cultural databases with “dangerous” ideas, so that they can not be accessed by the general population.

We may not use “thou, thee, thy, thine” anymore, but we should still know what it means (informal “you”) and how to conjugate verbs with it. If not, then suddenly just about any English text pre-1800 is that much harder to decipher.

Spelling is absolutely vital to the English language. We have 16 vowel sounds, and spelling is the key to recognizing short and long sounds in written words. If you type “travelling” into Microshaft Word, using the English (United States) dictionary, it will be highlighted as incorrect. However, without the double “L,” the rules of grammar say that the word is pronounced “traveeling”. This is a subtle but effective way of walling off data from general access.

American English is under full-on attack. Someone is trying to block young minds from accessing information from the past. Efforts to normalize urban patois, or erase gender, or modify definitions are purposely blocking people from accessing information. They are manipulating our pictures to ensure we can not see accurate images from the past.


They are actually trying to create a New Speak dictionary, in which there is no concept of “liberty,” “freedom” or “individual”. We can not see information that is not there.

For example, English is one of the least gendered languages I can think of, certainly among the European language groups. The only gender in English grammar is third-person singular pronouns (he, she, it), and a handful of nouns (actor/actress, aviator/aviatrix). Perhaps some Asian languages, like Indonesian, have even less gender built in, but languages like German and French are incomprehesible without noun gender.

Language is an incredible tool. It allows us to see the pictures that were in the minds of humans thousands of years ago, but only because we have the algorithms to reconstruct them. If we allow those algorithms to be deleted, then even English will become as inscrutable as Egyptian hieroglyphics were before the discovery of the Rosetta Stone.

Language and culture are inseparable. Language is how we transmit our hopes and aspirations, history and traditions, experience and warnings to future generations. That is why it is under attack.

Someone wants us to be cast adrift, without a past or a future, unable to transmit our pictures and form communities of those who share those pictures.

If a word is a color, then connotation is the hue and saturation. Someone is trying to change the color of the sky to green, and make it a dark forboding green at that. They want us to be repulsed by colors like “freedom” and “individual,” and see repulsive colors like “servitude” and “collective” as bright and gay.

Just now, did the word “gay” conjure images of “happy, carefree,” or “homosexual males”? If the latter, then your language is being manipulated.

For those who dispair that we humans have no power, it is time to realize that power spills from your lips every waking moment. Power flows from your fingers at every keyboard, and with pen and paper. Power swirls like a maelstrom in your mind, whether you channel it to useful work or not.

If you are an English speaker, you have an arsenal of 26 characters, with 44 phonemes, and well over 600,000 rounds of ammunition. If you are a polyglot, you multiply your power with additional arsenals. Like electricity, though, if it is not harnessed and channelled from source to load, then it does no useful work — it communicates nothing, it creates nothing, it defends nothing. You can not hit a target if you do not aim at it.

Our most cherished inheritance and most valuable legacy is our language. We must protect it with our lives and transmit it to our children. There is nothing that empowers us more than the language we so often take for granted. Language is the pavement that turns a path into a road.

"Si non possum caelum moveo, infernum erigam,” said Julius Caesar. If I can not move Heaven, then I shall raise Hell.

Our film of the day comes in the form of a documentary called The Linguists (2008), which follows two language specialists across literal hell nad high water to document and preserve languages on the verge of extinction — an amazing story about language and passion.

Quote:The Story Went Like This… Inside the Integratron?



I was told the story in segments over the course of four decades:

I recall the first discussion being in the spring or summer of 1974. My family was living in West Virginia and my dad had pulled out his old magazines which included the now classic Look and LIFE issues [1] on UFOs. I recall it was one of those Sunday afternoons mentioned previously because I have a memory of looking at the color funny pages that day and those were featured only in the Sunday newspaper.

During a discussion on what UFOs might be, he vaguely alluded to having learned about something that crashed in the New Mexico desert years before he was in the air force. He suggested that it might have been from another world. Imagine my intrigue.

The next time I recall it coming up was during a TV show about UFOs sometime in 1975, after we had returned to California. I had recently seen the Sun Classic Pictures’ release of The Outer Space Connection [2]. Again, my father alluded to the possibility that something from another world had crashed in New Mexico. By this time, my sisters and I had many times heard his stories about his days at George AFB and of Chuck Yeager, Scott Crossfield, Iven Kincheloe and the altitude chamber.

When Columbia Pictures released Steven Speilberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind [3] a couple of years later, I was hooked on the UFO mystery. Between the popularity of the film and the growing number of UFO related shows on television in the year or so leading up to it, our family could not avoid the discussion. Again my dad alluded to the crash in New Mexico and this time he said that what had crashed was a small craft, and there was an additional detail: He said the people aboard the craft were not like the aliens that had begun to appear in UFO stories, certainly not like the little beings in Spielberg’s film.

How did he know?

Because he had seen the bodies at Wright-Patterson AFB in the late 1950s, so he said.

The next time we had a significant conversation about the subject was in 1980 when I discovered William Moore’s and  Charles Berlitz’ book The Roswell Incident. I showed the book to my dad but he merely glanced through it, more insistent that the beings on the craft were not little aliens, rather they were like us and virtually hairless. He also said there was nothing to fear from these beings. And, he added, the 1947 incident in New Mexico was not the only time such a thing had happened.

Six years later, I was revisiting everything I had learned about the UFO phenomenon to that time. It was in the spring of 1986 when I sat down with all my UFO books and re-examined them, coming to a new and unexpected personal insight: There was something very earthly going on with this stuff. At the time, my suspicion was that secret military technology might indeed explain much of the reports. I was certainly not the first guy to consider that idea but for me it was eye-opening in its implications. I thought of my what my dad had been saying over the years about the Roswell case. He could very well have learned something about it while in the air force.

By this time, my mentor had begun to work with me and I was hearing things from him that augmented what my dad had been saying about the 1947 New Mexico incident. Within two years, I would be reporting for duty with the FBI [4], and just a few years after that would come the next major leap forward in my dad’s tale.

Wilson

But I mustn’t get ahead of myself for there’s an episode in my life which I later realized had bearing on this Wilson business. I’m referring to 1987 when I first visited the Integratron in Landers, California, out by Yucca Valley. I’d been working at a hospital while waiting for FBI employment. My jobs were cashier part of the week and physical therapy aide two days per week. Turned out that the head of the PT department was a USAF veteran and enthusiast of weird stuff including UFOs and esoteric technology – and when he was a kid was acquainted with George W Van Tassel, the builder of the Integratron. After an interesting story about a camping trip in Yucca Valley and meeting Van Tassel the first time, he suggested I go out and see the curious structure myself. I did just that three days later, taking along a friend and her boyfriend. I also took along my Ruger handgun (just in case) (at the suggestion of my mentor). The short version is that there were rough-looking glaring men parked outside the Integratron when we got there and two vehicles came speeding from the direction of old Giant Rock Airport, apparently alerted by our presence. The weird thing is that my friend, Tracy, was describing her psychic viewing of some individuals inside the Integratron at that moment. She said there was a smaller man being bullied by two large men – and there was a third man, older, urbane and well dressed, who somehow knew we were there. She said he knew our names!

With the vehicles speeding our way – a small white compact sedan and a small yellow pickup truck – I decided we could look from somewhere else and I got us out of there, heading back to Highway 62, where I pulled over beside a bunch of boulders stacked high enough to give a vantage point. We had no longer pulled over and got out of the car to climb the rocks than here came the yellow pickup and the white sedan. They pulled over and stopped just a few car lengths behind our car. A man got out of the pickup and ran back to speak to the female driver of the white car, both of them watching us. I told my friends it was time to go, so we got into our car and I turned back to Yucca Valley. The man ran back to his pickup and he and the white car did a U-turn and followed us. We sped back to town, pulling into the Carl’s Jr at Old Woman Springs Road and the main drag through the town of YV. The pickup and car turned back and went away. Though we intended to eat, we hit the restrooms first. As I waited for them, I noticed an older gentleman dressed very neatly in jeans, plaid western shirt with pearl buttons, and perfectly cut silver hair, clean shaven. He was reading a paperback (which I wish I could recall the title) but had no tray, no food, no drink. And he was calmly smiling. I got a feeling about him.

When my friends came out from the restrooms, I told them we weren’t staying. As we walked past the man at the table, he closed his book and got up and followed us out! We walked to our car and got in – his small white pickup truck happened to be parked next to our spot, oddly. Yes, he followed us out of the parking lot and all the way through town and back toward Interstate 10. If you’ve been out there, you know it’s not a few blocks, to say the least. When it was clear that we were heading away from the area as fast as possible, the gentleman’s pickup did a U Turn and headed back to Yucca Valley. There is no way it was a mistake. He intended to follow us.

Who was he? Had he been the man Tracy ‘saw’ inside the Integratron? He certainly would have had time to change into the jeans and western shirt and head to Carl’s Jr in town before we got there.

In 1991 my father was hospitalized for a blood clot. I was working in New York as a counterintelligence specialist for the FBI and flew out on short notice, that’s how concerned we were for his life. Naturally, being the one who lived farthest away, by the time I could quickly get a flight to California, and drive directly from the airport, he had made it through the danger zone. He was still heavily sedated when I walked into his hospital room.


It was the next day when I was alone with him for a couple of hours that my dad started muttering about a ‘crystal house’ and a man getting killed. He seemed agitated. And then he mentioned the name for the first time: Wilson.

At the time I had no idea who this Wilson was or what his significance might have been. My sisters came into the room just moments after he was saying this stuff so I didn’t press him and said nothing to them about it. I did call my mentor as soon as I got to a phone at my mom’s house.

“Was there anyone else in the room when he was talking about Wilson?” he asked.

I told him there was not. The nurse was at the station and I was alone with my dad.

“Good,” he said, “Keep him off that subject when anyone else is around, if you can.”

I asked about Wilson.

“We’ll talk about Wilson when I see you next time.”

I was hooked.

All I learned over the years from my mentor is that Wilson was the smartest man in the world whom you’d never heard about. What I learned from my mentor is that Wilson had been the civilian in charge of the deeply classified project my dad had been assigned to in 1958 – the strange project for which he claimed to have been briefed on Roswell, all of which I wrote about in my book Shimmering Light. The next person who seemed to know about Wilson was my friend Joseph P Farrell the summer we met at a conference, and he was surprised I knew much about Wilson. Joseph introduced me to the Harbinson book Genesis which features a (VERY) loose adaptation of the mysterious Wilson. In the years that followed, I learned about the Sonora Aero Club and much more than I previously knew about the 1896 Airship Mystery – both legends which featured multiple genius Wilsons. The last bit I learned about Wilson was from my father in the last year of his life. He told me that Wilson had been doing hush-hush research into an alternative fuel source in the California Channel Islands. These are the islands of which Catalina is one along with the others mostly controlled by the US Navy where deeply secret exotic technology research is conducted – and is likely the true explanation for the wildly exaggerated Tic Tac UFO report. The source of the alternative fuel which Wilson was investigating, according to my father, was rather curious.

It was apples.

Were ‘apples’ a code for something? My father didn’t say. He died before I could get anything more on Wilson. My mentor died a few years later, not telling me anymore about Wilson. But I suspect Wilson may have known something about me. After all, my mentor told me that my dad had worked for the man back in ‘58 on the secret project.


It may be that I sort of met Wilson. On that day I first went to the Integratron in 1987, in the Carl’s Jr in Yucca Valley at the corner of Old Woman Springs Road.

Stranger things have indeed happened since then.

– Walter Bosley

Here is yet another story of child violence and murder. This story is of a 6 year old murdering his 2 year old brother. 

Police say 6-year-old boy stabbed 2-year-old brother to death in Joliet
by Adam Harrington
9/6/2024 · 10:36 PM EDT


JOLIET, Ill. (CBS) -- A 6-year-old boy stabbed his 2-year-old brother to death in Joliet late Friday afternoon, police said.

Joliet police were called at 5:04 p.m. to the 2700 block of Fairway Drive, near Pembroke Road, for a child who had been stabbed. They found the 2-year-old boy in the house with multiple stab wounds, police said.


A preliminary investigation determined the toddler had been stabbed with a kitchen knife by his 6-year-old brother, police said.

Numerous questions remained Friday night about what exactly happened.

The 2-year-old was taken to Ascension St. Joseph Medical Center in Joliet in an ambulance. He died at the hospital, police said.

The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has been notified and is investigating, police said.
https://ssnews.page.link/p8FKvRJ9ww7U4k2E8

I know every time I bring up the fact that violent crimes, done by young children, is on the rise, people dismiss it as ramped up media.
Well, The numbers are there, and law enforcement agrees.

I recently had a conversation with my brother in law, who has been Law Enforcement for 26 years, with the same force. I asked him directly, "Have you seen a rise in violent crimes by young children?"

His answer was an absolute, yes. He has seen more violent crimes performed by young kids, in the last 5 years or so, than in his entire 26 year career. He also stated that the numbers of these crimes are rising, as well the crimes becoming more and more violent and weird. 

This is not just something the MSM has ramped up. This is a real problem, and it's getting worse. 

There is a common factor in these crimes by these kids...

Medication.

The majority of the children committing these crimes are medicated. Most, not all.


Medications aren't always the answer. Tablets arent the answer. 

The proof is in the pudding.

This will only get worse.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...-food-dye/

Quote:Scientists Make Living Mice’s Skin Transparent with Simple Food Dye
New research harnessed the highly absorbent dye tartrazine, used as the common food coloring Yellow No. 5, to turn tissues in living mice clear—temporarily revealing organs and vessels inside the animals
By Lauren J. Young

Skin normally scatters light, a phenomenon represented by white lines in the beginning of this clip. When the food, drug and cosmetic dye Yellow No. 5 is absorbed by skin, however, it reduces scattering and allows light to penetrate deeper, making the tissue transparent. (This technique has not been tested on humans. Dyes may be harmful. Always exercise caution with dyes and do not consume them directly, apply them to people or animals or otherwise misuse them.)

Keyi “Onyx” Li/U.S. National Science Foundation


In mere minutes, smearing mice with a common food dye can make a desired portion of their skin almost as transparent as glass.
In a study published today in Science, researchers spread a solution of the dye tartrazine, a common coloring for foods, drugs and cosmetics, onto living mice to turn their tissues clear—creating a temporary window that revealed organs, muscles and blood vessels in their body. The procedure—a new form of a technique known as “optical tissue clearing”—has not yet been tested in humans, but it may someday offer a way to view and monitor injuries or diseases without the need of specialized imaging equipment or invasive surgery.

“One unique part about our strategy is that we are changing the optical properties of the tissue directly,” says the study’s lead author Zihao Ou, a physicist at the University of Texas at Dallas.
Skin, like most mammalian tissue, is highly opaque because its mix of water and densely packed lipids, proteins and other essential molecules scatters light in all different directions. “The concept is similar to bubbled water,” Ou explains. “When you have water and air, both of them are transparent separately. However, if you mix them together, you form microbubbles that are no longer transparent.” Think of a rushing river or a crashing wave. The change in clarity comes because water and air molecules have different refractive indexes—the amount of light that bends passing through an object or substance. The fats and proteins in rodent and human skin typically have higher refractive indexes than the water, which creates a contrast that you can’t see through. In the new study, Ou and his colleagues looked for light-absorbing molecules that could make the various refractive indexes within the layers of skin more similar—essentially reducing the amount of light scattered throughout.

Photographs of “scattering phantoms,” or samples that mimic the optical distribution of human tissue, composed of agarose hydrogels. The phantoms contain increasing concentrations of tartrazine and the same concentration of silica particles. The scale bar represents five millimeters.

Guosong Hong/Stanford University

The team investigated 21 different synthetic dyes before landing on the highly absorbent tartrazine, more commonly known as Yellow No. 5. The zingy lemon-yellow coloring is approved by the Food and Drug Administration to be used in limited quantities in foods, drugs and cosmetics. It’s commonly found in chips, sodas, candies, butter, vitamins and drug tablets. Tartrazine makes the refractive indexes of molecules it encounters more uniform and lets through red and yellow light, similar to the color of underlying tissue. At the same time, the dye absorbs most light at wavelengths in the near-ultraviolet and blue spectrums and decreases the scattering of those types of light. “The higher the absorption, the more efficient the molecule is,” Ou explains. The FDA’s limits on chemicals and additives in foods causes the food industry to look “for chemicals that are extremely efficient,” even in small amounts.


The researchers tested various concentrations of the dye on “scattering phantoms” (square samples that mimic the optical distribution of human tissues) and slices of raw chicken breast. They then gently massaged the dye onto the skin of anesthetized mice, where it was absorbed like a “facial cream,” Ou says. In less than 10 minutes, the team began to see internal features beneath the top layers of tissue under visible light—rubbing tartrazine onto the animals’ stomach revealed the digestive tract in action, and spreading it onto one of their legs exposed muscles. Using high-resolution laser imaging, the scientists also saw details of nerves in the gastric system, small units in muscles called sarcomeres and, when the dye was applied to the mice’s scalp, even structures of the brain’s blood vessels. If the tartrazine wasn’t washed off, the effect lasted about 10 to 20 minutes before the skin returned to its original state.
A still image of a real-time video demonstrates the optical transparency in a mouse abdomen, enabling the visualization of the animal’s abdominal organs. The scale bar represents 5 mm. (The red hue is from the dye.)

“Achieving Optical Transparency in Live Animals with Absorbing Molecules,” by Zihao Ou et al., in Science, Vol. 385. Published online September 5, 2024

Past research that rendered skin transparent focused on introducing already transparent materials, including glycerol and fructose solution. Those molecules were also able to reduce light scattering but were “not as efficient [as tartrazine] because they are not ‘colored’ enough,” says Guosong Hong, a materials science engineer at Stanford University and senior author of the new paper. Other approaches that remove essential molecules in tissues rather than adding new ones accomplish similar effects but can only be done in nonliving animals or biopsied tissue. For example, Oregon Health & Science University dermatologist Rajan Kulkarni worked on an optical tissue clearing project in 2014 in which researchers completely dissolved the lipids from whole organs and animals and replaced them with clear hydrogel. “That was always a limitation, it required something to be ex vivo. We had to remove the tissues or remove the organ, or the organism itself was no longer living,” says Kulkarni, who was not involved in the new study. “This method [in the new paper] is interesting because it does allow the skin, or the epidermal layer, [in living animals] to be made transparent so that you can visualize what is underneath.”
While it is far from human trials, the concept may someday have helpful medical applications. Hong proposes it could potentially assist in the early detection of skin cancer and make laser-based tattoo removal more straightforward. It could also make veins more visible for drawing blood or administering fluids via a needle—especially in elderly patients with veins that would be difficult to locate—he says. In some cases, such a strategy may be a more compelling option than the use of imaging technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and ultrasound. “I can definitely see this could be useful for mouse and other kinds of animal visualizing experiments because it would give you the ability to visualize at light microscopy resolution, whereas other methods of MRI, CT [computed tomography], ultrasound are not as finely resolved,” Kulkarni says. “In terms of a proof of concept, it’s really fantastic. Clinically, it remains to be seen.”
The researchers didn’t observe any adverse side effects in the mice after the dye was removed. Ou says that tartrazine and similar, more efficient molecules must be further tested for human safety, however. Tartrazine can cause allergic reactions. And although the coloring is FDA-approved, the agency has strict limitations on amounts used in products. In the study, the mice were able to tolerate the highest concentration used, 0.6 molar, during the short testing periods. But “human skin is about 10 times thicker than [that of] mice, which means that the time required for diffusion is probably much greater—a few minutes for mice is going to be hundreds of minutes for humans,” Ou says. “We hope that with our initial work, there will be more follow up proposing new molecules that are going to be more efficient and safer for human application.”

Quote:

Quote:A minister dies and is waiting in line at the Pearly Gates.
Ahead of him is a guy who’s dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, a leather jacket, and jeans.
Saint Peter addresses this guy,
"Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?"
The guy replies, "I’m Joe Cohen, a taxi driver, of Noo Yawk City."
St. Peter consults his list. He smiles and says to the taxi driver,
"Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
The taxi driver goes into Heaven with his robe and staff, and it’s the minister’s turn.
He stands erect and booms out,
"I am Joseph Snow, pastor of Calvary for the last forty-three years."
St Peter consults his list. He says to the minister,
"Take this cotton robe and wooden staff and enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Just a minute," says the minister.
"That man was a taxi driver, and he gets a silken robe and golden staff. How can this be?!"
"Up here, we work by results," says Saint Peter.
"While you preached, people slept; while he drove, people prayed."

An Email from a friend

Quote:Are we fools?? When will we wake up??

Quote:

Quote: 
Subject: Fwd: Are we fools?? When will we wake up?
 
Goodbye beautiful Australia- how can they let this happen??!!
 
Muslim family has eleven children (Australia)
Breadwinner is the Fertile daughter
This story is from a doctor in Melbourne...
So, where do you think it will all end, OR, when do you think our governments will wake up !!!???
The new breadwinners in Australia:
 Here is how a doctor explains it:
A woman in her late 20's came to the hospital today with her 8th pregnancy.
 She said to me "My mum told me that I am the breadwinner for the family."
 I asked her to explain.
She said that she can make babies and babies get money from the Government for the family.
It goes like this:
 The Grandma calls the Department of child services and Centrelink, and states that the unemployed daughter is not
capable of caring for all of her kids.
 They agree, then tell her the children will need to go into foster care.
 The Grandma then volunteers to be the foster parent, and
receives a cheque for $400 per child each month..
 Total yearly income $72,000 and soon to be more when
the 8th one is born, tax-free and nobody has to go to work!
 In fact, they get more if there is no husband/father/man in the home! The brother does not count.
 Not to mention free dental treatment, free housing,
free school dinners, free tuition fees at college or Uni, free eye care and glasses, free prescriptions and various other benefits...
 Total value of all benefits combined probably approaching $120,000 per annum.
 That's about my salary as a senior consultant with years of
experience and surgical skills in a Melbourne teaching hospital.
 Indeed, Grandma was correct that her fertile daughter is the "breadwinner" for the family
 This is how the politicians spend our taxes.
 When this generous programme was invented in the '60s, the Great Society architects forgot to craft an end date, and now we are hopelessly over run with people who vote only for those who will continue to keep them on the dole.....
 No wonder our country is broke!
 Worse, our Muslim brothers have been paying attention, and by mandating that each Muslim family have eleven children.
 They will soon replace the voting bloc above and can be running this country in around 12 years.
 Are we alarmed yet, is anybody listening?
 
Please know I am not racist nor am I against Immigration, I
just worry where this uncontrolled sort of immigration is going to take this wonderful country.
 There must be limits and controls in place or in around 12 years or less we will be going to midday prayers at the local mosque.
 That's a simple fact of life my friends. They clearly intend to force that upon us.
 Sincerely,
Sebastian J. Ciancino - Obstetrician,
Melbourne Vic
 
Don't forget to pay your taxes!!
There are a lot of “breadwinners” depending on you!

Before modern religions came around to spoil the party with their rules about idolatry, many pagan groups and other cultures—from Ireland to India to elsewhere in the world—worshipped or mythologized trees. Some people used trees as oracles. Some incorporated them into worship rituals. And some, like the ancient Celts, regarded them as the homes of certain spirits and gods.

The first possible origin of the phrase knock on wood is that it’s a more modern equivalent to the ruckus that pagan Europeans raised to chase evil spirits away from their homes or to prevent them from hearing about, and thereby ruining, a person’s good luck

The other suggested origin is that some of these tree worshippers laid their hands on a tree when asking for favor from the spirits or gods who lived inside it, and they would touch and thank the tree after a run of good luck as a show of gratitude to these supernatural powers. Over the centuries, the religious rite may have morphed into the superstitious knock that acknowledges luck and keeps it going.

“In either case, you are seeking protection against envy and anger,” Bechtel wrote. “The envy of evil spirits and the anger of the gods, who take a dim view on mortals bearing too much pride, and who get especially annoyed when they’re responsible for your run of good luck and you’re not grateful.”

Another possibility? That it simply came from Tig Touch-Wood, a Victorian-era children’s game. As described in the 1891 book The Boy's Modern Playmate, “Tig” is the person who is “It,” and after a number of trees have been chosen as bases, “as long as the player is touching one of these authorized posts, Tig cannot touch him; his only chance is to catch him while flitting from one post to another.”

But for anyone who may be superstitious, we’re sure knocking on wood is no child’s play.


It's eery to think of how many of these little "rituals" we've been doing for so long are actually deeply rooted in pagan mystical magick and, in this case, the worship of trees. Essentially, asking the "tree gods" to ward of evil spirits by knocking on wood.

Looks like it could be considered Idolatry to "knock on wood," apparently. 

Who knew...¿

https://ssnews.page.link/nvYg7TUA5pwbQxwE9

Weird how the DOJ & FBI have been cracking down on New York political corruption all of a sudden. Apparently someone or some group is not happy with NY swamp rats. Details are sketchy.

Quote:NEW YORK — Federal authorities raided the homes of at least three of New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ most senior aides and closest friends, five people with knowledge of the situation told POLITICO.

The search Wednesday morning of the Manhattan home shared by Sheena Wright, the city’s first deputy mayor, and her romantic partner, Schools Chancellor David Banks, as well as the Queens home of the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks, marks yet another federal inquiry into the mayor’s orbit.

Adams’ Chief Counsel Lisa Zornberg distanced administration officials from any potential wrongdoing Thursday.

“Investigators have not indicated to us the mayor or his staff are targets of any investigation,” she said in a statement. “As a former member of law enforcement, the mayor has repeatedly made clear that all members of the team need to follow the law.”

The mayor is a retired NYPD captain. David and Philip Banks are brothers.

A person who talked to Wright said she was confident she had done nothing wrong.

Two other people familiar with the matter said the latest searches do not appear to be related to the ongoing federal investigation into the government of Turkey trying to influence Adams. It also appears unrelated to a federal investigation into Adams’ special adviser and campaign fundraiser Winnie Greco, whose homes were raided in February.

The homes of at least three other Adams’ aides, including Greco, have been searched since last November as part of the Turkey probe. Adams himself was served a grand jury subpoena in July and had his electronic devices seized (and later returned) last November.

But Wright and the Banks brothers are the highest-ranking administration officials yet known to have their homes searched as part of the federal action.

David Banks declined to comment on the raid to reporters Thursday during an appearance in Queens for the first day of school.

“Today’s all about the kids,” he said.

Two of his next-door neighbors, who declined to give their names, said they didn’t hear or see anything Wednesday morning. Other neighbors on Wright and Banks’ block were similarly unaware anything had happened.

The investigation involving Turkish influence revolves at least in part around whether the mayor’s 2021 campaign colluded with foreign interests, including the Turkish government.

A spokesperson for the FBI declined comment. Adams is up for reelection in 2025, and his campaign also declined to comment.

Adams, a Democrat serving his first term as mayor, and his attorneys have said he is cooperating with the investigation and stressed he has not been accused of wrongdoing.

City Hall and his election committee were also subpoenaed in July, The New York Times reported last month.

Last November, federal officers raided and collected evidence from the homes of the mayor’s top campaign fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, and his international affairs aide, Rana Abbasova.

No, that's not a metaphor. Literal iron wind discovered.

Astronomers discover iron winds on an ultra-hot exoplanet
by Science X staff
9/5/2024 · 9:55 AM EDT
WASP-76 b has been the subject of numerous studies since its discovery in 2013. The temperature there reaches 2,400 degrees Celsius. Credit: Tania Cunha (Planetário do Porto - Centro Ciência Viva/Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço)
An international team of astronomers, including scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the PlanetS National Center of Competence in Research, has identified the presence of iron winds in the atmosphere of the ultra-hot Jupiter WASP-76 b.

This planet with its extreme conditions—over 2,000 degrees Celsius—is a prime target for researchers, who for several years have been dissecting the slightest physical mechanisms at work in its atmosphere. The presence of a ''rainbow'' was detected there last April, for example.



The discovery of iron winds sweeping across the day side of the planet offers new insight into the complex climatic dynamics of this distant world. These results can be found in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

The ultra-hot exoplanet WASP-76 b has been the subject of numerous studies since its discovery in 2013, revealing numerous extreme atmospheric phenomena. Previous research by international teams, including those at the UNIGE, has identified iron rain on its night side, the presence of barium in its upper atmosphere and the existence of a ''rainbow'' at the boundary between its day and night sides.

"The work on WASP-76 b shows us just how extreme atmospheric conditions can be on ultra-hot Jupiters," explains David Ehrenreich, associate professor in the Astronomy Department at the UNIGE Faculty of Science, member of the NCCR PlanetS and co-author of the study. "In-depth analysis of this type of planet provides us with valuable information for a better understanding of planetary climates as a whole."

Flux of iron atoms
For this new study, the team of astronomers focused on the day side of WASP-76 b, which has a temperature of 2400 degrees Celsius, by observing it at high spectral resolution in the visible light. The main result was the detection of a stream of iron atoms moving from the lower to the upper layers of the planet's atmosphere.

"This is the first time that such detailed optical observations have been made on the day side of this exoplanet, providing key data on its atmospheric structure," explains Ana Rita Costa Silva, a doctoral student at the Instituto de Astrofísica e Ciências do Espaço (IA), on a long term visit at the Astronomy Department of the UNIGE Faculty of Science and first author of the 

"Our observations indicate the presence of powerful iron winds, probably fueled by a hot spot in the atmosphere."

Thanks to the ESPRESSO spectrograph
This breakthrough was made possible by the use of the ESPRESSO spectrograph, renowned for its precision and stability. The instrument, built largely by the UNIGE and installed on ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, was used to acquire high-resolution spectra of the planet.

By analyzing this light, the team was able to identify the chemical signatures of iron moving in the planet's atmosphere. This technique, known as high-resolution emission spectroscopy, is particularly powerful for studying the atmospheres of exoplanets.

"ESPRESSO's ability to make such precise measurements is crucial," says Christophe Lovis, associate professor in the Astronomy Department at the UNIGE Faculty of Science, member of the NCCR PlanetS and co-author of the study. "This level of precision allows us to explore the dynamic processes in the atmospheres of exoplanets like WASP-76 b with an unprecedented level of detail."



The successive discoveries made on WASP-76 b are paving the way for a better understanding of exoplanetary climates, particularly in the case of gas giants subjected to extreme irradiation from their host star.

The detailed mapping of atmospheric winds and their chemical composition is helping astronomers to develop a complete model of the evolution of these distant worlds. By detecting iron winds on WASP-76 b, the astronomers are providing crucial new information for building 3D models of this exoplanet's climate, which could one day help them predict similar phenomena on other distant planets.

The fact that a rainbow was seen on such a hot and violent planet is really interesting. Usually it takes water, or vapor, at least to make a rainbow. I wonder if this was some sort of "gas rainbow."

"Iron winds"
https://ssnews.page.link/iU9wRAzkdv45daVK7
Pretty neat.

Video is here: https://x.com/IsraeliPM/status/1831422396986765707

Transcript:

Quote:"Israel is experiencing days of horror, sorrow and rage. A week ago, we experienced such horror.

Yesterday, I visited in Ashkelon the family of one of the hostages murdered in cold blood. A day earlier, I spoke to several of the families of these murdered hostages. It tears your heart out. I said to them that I'm sorry. I apologized that we, we didn't get them out. We worked so hard to get them. We were close. But we didn't. And they changed the torment of families worried about their loved ones to families grieving for their fallen beloved. That sentiment I know because I belong to that family. But it's a horror.

We also lost brave policemen and brave soldiers who were fighting in the Gaza front and I embraced their families as well. All our people do.

On October 7th, we experienced the worst savagery in this century. On October 7th, we experienced the worst savagery meted on the Jewish people since the Holocaust. These Savages massacred our people. 1,200 civilians. They beheaded our men. They raped our women and then murdered them. They burnt babies alive. They took 255 of our people hostages to their underground dungeons. That's a horror that the world saw and responded to initially.

It's important that we remember it. But we were given a reminder. A terrible reminder. Last week, when these savages murdered six of our hostages in cold blood. They riddled them with bullets. Then they shot each of them in the head. Some of them several times.

And these are the savages, these are the terrorists that Iran implanted next to our border as elsewhere. And we're committed to defeating them, to extirpating this evil from our midst. I want to talk to you today about some of the things that we must do to achieve that goal, including the questions of the Philadelphi Corridor.

But before I do that, I want to give your readers and viewers some context because often you see maps of Israel. You think it's a Goliath.


Well, I'd like to give you first an overview of where Israel is.

This is the Middle East, and this is the entire Arab world, and this is Israel. It's one of the world's tiniest countries. I give it the, you know, the thumb test. This is a big one, so you need a bigger thumb. But it's a tiny country. It's one of the tiniest countries on the planet. It's, I think one tenth of one percent of the territory of the Arab world, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's two tenths of one percent.



It goes from the river. The river is right here. That's the Jordan River. To the sea, the Mediterranean Sea. So, when Hamas is talking about liberating Palestine from the river to the sea, basically, what they're saying is destroying Israel.



And the entire width of this, it's probably around the width of the Washington Beltway, it's all together in its widest point is about 50 miles. Right here. Tiny.

And here's Gaza there. This is the red thing that you see here. That's Gaza. Now I want to zoom in. When I zoom in, remember how tiny this is. Remember the distances here.



Now, take a look. Here it is enlarged. This is Israel. This is the Mediterranean Sea. The Jordan River is right here.

This is Egypt and the Sinai desert. Now, look at Gaza. Where is Gaza? Gaza is implanted in this tiny country 30 miles from Tel Aviv, 40 miles from our capital Jerusalem, 30 miles from Beer-Sheva. These are three of Israel's largest cities. Gaza is within spitting distance to them.

Israel, up to the disengagement agreement of 2005, Israel controlled this border under an agreement with Egypt after the Camp David Peace Accords. We controlled this part, which is called the Philadelphi Corridor, I'll talk about that in a minute, right down to Eilat in the Red Sea. This was our border. And while there was, umm, I would say a minimal amount of terrorism, that wasn't, we didn’t really face a big problem.

Let's zoom in on that a bit more. Here's Gaza Strip enlarged. Again, this is the situation in Gaza before the disengagement of 2005. And the Gaza Strip is firmly under Israeli control. We control the maritime border. You can't smuggle in weapons. They tried but we stopped it. 



You control the land border. And you control this border between the Sinai desert, Egypt and Gaza. The Gaza Strip, it's controlled. This is the Philadelphi Corridor. This is the Rafah Crossing. Controlled by the IDF.

Now look at the distances from Gaza. It's four miles to another city in Israel called Ashkelon, where I visited that bereaved family yesterday. It's a population of 170,000 people. They are four miles away. But some of our communities like kibbutz Be'eri, which was one of the hardest hit, is one mile away from Gaza. Kfar Aza is less than one mile away. It's literally walking distance. Okay.

And so, as long as we controlled this, these communities, sometimes they were harassed by this rocket or that rocket but it was marginal. We controlled the security situation. But something happened in 2005. Israel unilaterally disengaged from Gaza. It just went out. It took out everything. It took out the army. It stripped, uprooted communities, took out 10,000 people.

The army left the Philadelphi Corridor. Here's what happened.

This is Gaza after the disengagement. And Hamas now has a weapon smuggling operation nurtured by Iran, financed by Iran, supplied by Iran, delivered by Iran.



And here's what happened. That Philadelphi Corridor became completely porous. The other borders controlled by us. But once this was perforated, even though the policy of Egypt was to prevent it, you know, it didn't necessarily work, it didn't, it didn't succeed. And this border once we left our side of the Philadelphi Corridor, rockets went in, missiles went in, drones went in, ammo went in, weapons manufacturing equipment came in, tunnel drilling equipment came in.

Once we got out, once we left the Philadelphi Corridor, Iran could carry out its plan to turn Gaza into a base, a terrorist enclave that would endanger not only the communities around it but would endanger Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Beer-Sheva, the entire country of Israel. It became a huge terrorist base because we left that Corridor.



So, we vowed, or I would say, all this, you have to understand that the centrality, the centrality of the Philadelphi Corridor to the arming of Gaza, to the arming of Hamas and this all led to the October 7th massacre, which Hamas has vowed, proudly vowed to do again and again and again.

We vowed that they won't be able to do it. So we said, as far as Gaza is concerned, three war goals: The first war goal was to destroy Hamas's military and governing capabilities. The second was to free our hostages. And the third was to ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.

And all three of those goals, all three of them go through Israel's control of the Philadelphi Corridor. And it's obvious why. You want to destroy Hamas's military and governing capabilities – You can't let Hamas rearm. It's obvious. So you have to control the corridor. You can't let them have…by the way, it's not only to prevent them from terrorizing us, attacking us, it's also to prevent Hamas or any other terrorist organization from terrorizing the people of Gaza.

Gaza cannot have a future if Gaza remains porous and you can enable rearmament of terrorists through the Philadelphi Corridor.

The second thing is to release the hostages. First of all, you can't prevent, if you leave this Corridor, you can't prevent Hamas from, not only, not smuggling weapons in, you can't prevent them from not smuggling terrorists, hostages out. It's walking distance, nothing.



They can easily smuggle hostages out here to the Sinai desert in Egypt, they disappear. It's crossing distance. The distance is nothing, it's meters, meters away.
They cross the, the barrier above ground. They don't even have to go underground. They disappear in the Sinai and then they end up in Iran or in Yemen. They're gone forever.

And you need something to squeeze them, to prevent them, to put pressure on them to release the remaining hostages. So if you want to release the hostages, you've got to control the Philadelphi Corridor. And the third reason, the third goal of ensuring that we prevent Gaza from being again a threat to Israel. It's clear. Gaza must be demilitarized. And it can only be demilitarized if the Philadelphi Corridor remains under firm control and is not a supply line for armaments and for terror equipment.

I think that's clear to most Israelis, to all Israelis. But a question has arisen: that may be the case, but why don't you leave Gaza for 42 days, you could come back. Well, aside from what I said that they could smuggle the terrorists out… I want to show you what they've got under Gaza. I didn't show you that. So I want to show you that.



This is what they have under the Philadelphi Corridor. Just so you understand the supply lines we're talking about. This is one of the tunnels there. Look at the engineering, look at the investment here, look at what they've got. We've got dozens of such tunnels, dozens of such tunnels, underneath the Philadelphi Corridor. To give you an impression of the size of these things: This is a soldier. This is a tunnel. You could drive a truck through this. Indeed, you could. Here's a truck, or it's a Humvee. This is a huge, huge problem.



Now, you're just going to walk away? It's obvious we have to control it, right? I think, once you see this, you understand that? But then the next question is, okay, you leave and you come back. That's what they tell us. Okay. We'll have complete international legitimacy to come back. Sorry, we've gone down that route. We were down that route when we left Lebanon, and people said you can leave Lebanon and you can come back. The first time they fire a rocket you can come back, the world will support you. It didn't. And we've been out of Lebanon for 24 years.

They said the same thing when we left Gaza in the disengagement. They said, you can leave, and the first rocket… I remember, Prime Minister Sharon said this to me. The first rocket above ground or below ground, we'll be able to go back in. It's been 20 years and we haven't gone back in. Because you all know and understand that the international community, including friendly countries, under enormous domestic pressure because of the propaganda that's leveled against Israel and against them, there'll be enormous, international pressure not to come back. What is their message? End the war. End the war. And so, when we want to come back and resume, we'll pay an exorbitant price in many fields, including in the lives of our men.

To come back? It's not a just a military question. It's a military, political, strategic question. And we make that decision. We're not going to leave. 42 days? We're there. I don't want to leave in order to come back in, when I know that we didn't come back in. And it's not going to take another 24 years to come back in. And God knows what price we'll have? How many more massacres? How many more kidnappings? How many more hostages? How many more rapes? It's not going to happen.

So, people said, yeah, but if you stay, this will kill the deal. And I say, such a deal will kill us. And there won't be a deal that way. This is a false narrative. I'm willing to make a deal. I made one already, one that brought back 150 hostages, 117 alive. And I'm committed to return the remaining 101. I'll do everything I can to get them in.

But leaving Philadelphi does not advance the release of the hostages, because the deal cannot be advanced. They'll give you a minor part if they give anything, and keep the rest. Go and argue… You know when they started giving us hostages? When we went into Philadelphi. When we went into Rafah. When we controlled the Rafah Crossing. That's when they felt the pressure. As long as they didn't feel the pressure, they wouldn't do it. The first batch, the first deal that we got, was a result of our invasion, the military pressure we put in. They gave us the hostages. After that, they thought, well, you know, we'll have the international pressure turn on Israel so we won't have to do, we won't have to make any concessions. But after Rafah, their tune changed, and they began to change. If we leave Rafah, if we leave the Philadelphi Corridor, there won't be any pressure. We won't get the hostages.

I said I'm willing to make a deal. The real obstacle to making a deal is not Israel and it's not me. It Hamas. It's Sinwar. On April 27th, I put forward a proposal by Israel, which Secretary Blinken called extremely generous. On May 31st, having met Blinken again, I said, we agreed to the US-backed proposal, and Hamas refused. On August 16th, the US brought forth what they called the final bridging proposal. Again, we accepted, Hamas refused. On August 19th, Secretary Blinken said, Israel accepted the US proposal, now Hamas has to do the same. On August 28th—that's a week ago—the deputy CIA director said Israel showed seriousness in the negotiations, now Hamas must make the deal. This was last week. So, I ask you, what has changed. What has changed in this week? What's changed is that they murdered six of our hostages in cold blood.

Now, the world will seriously demand that Israel make concessions after this massacre? What message does this send to Hamas? I'll tell you what the message is. Murder more hostages, you'll get more concessions. That's not only illogical, it's not only immoral, it's downright insane. So, it's not going to happen. We have red lines before the murder. They haven't changed. We'll hold to them. But we also had flexibility. And I'll tell you one thing, Hamas will pay for this. That you can be assured. We'll make sure that we extract that price from them. But we are firm on our red lines, including the Philadelphi Corridor, for the reasons I described here. I'm flexible where I can be. I'm firm when I have to be.

I think there is a possibility of getting this deal if we stick to this strategy. I said before, we got 150 hostages out because we combined a firm stance with military pressure. And I said that Hamas after that relied on international pressure, but it had weakened. And then we went into Rafah and the Philadelphi Corridor, so it got strengthened, and they were beginning to balk. A condition that they said they'd never accept, a red line, is that we must commit to getting out of Gaza and enabling Hamas basically to take over Gaza again. End the war, get out, let them retake Gaza. That's obviously something we couldn't do.

They said there'll never be a deal. Well, they started caving in there after we took the Philadelphi Corridor. And then they started backing off. You know why they waited? Why they started backing off? Because they waited for Iran to start a general war with Israel. That didn't happen. So then they waited for Hezbollah to start a general war with Israel. That didn't happen either. So now they resort to the final tactic. They're going to sow discord and create international pressure, again using the hostages, even after the murder. And this is something that's not new because they started this a year ago.

You should see this. I mean, this is their tactic. This is Hamas orders for psychological warfare, found in Hamas underground command post on January 29th, that's right after the beginning of the war, 2024. And this is the original document in Arabic. Our soldiers found it.

And here's what it says: Push photos and videos of hostages. Put it out in the media, because that creates enormous psychological pressure. Who's not affected by it? Any human being seeing these souls, these girls, these people, young people from those dungeons, you're affected by. Second: Increase psychological pressure on defense minister. Third: Continue blaming Netanyahu. And fourth: Claim ground operation will not release hostages.

That's Hamas', it's not only their talking points, it's their strategy. And their idea is this will sow internal discord and increase international pressure on Israel. That's what they hope to achieve. And they hope, they think this will happen. Well, it won't happen. I can tell you why it won't happen. I'll tell you why they'll fail. Because overwhelmingly the people of Israel are united. They understand everything that I said here. Overwhelmingly. You should know that. It's important. And the second thing is, we're committed to achieving our goals—all three goals: Destroying Hamas' military and governing capabilities, releasing all our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza does not become a threat to Israel anymore. And all these require standing firm on the things that will ensure the achievement of these goals. And with God help, and with our people's will, and with the courage of our soldiers, we will achieve all goals".