Ron Paul Picture

This is Ron Paul at his desk. It is hard

not to like a guy with this sign on his desk.

Picture of an Old Goat

I just figured out how to post pictures. Now I have to find some pictures that people will look at.

Who is This?

Ron Paul

Nominally a Republican, Ron Paul has a variety of traits which make him of greater interest as a nominee than his fellow candidates. While I am an independent who finds both parties wanting in a variety of ways, I must admit I can only find a few details of his history that give me pause. I know that is faint praise. But so far he seems to be a pretty appealing fellow compared to the other Republican candidates.

A Skeleton Comes Out Of The Closet

Below is a post on Skin Cell Forum made simultaneously here. I was responding to a post quite horrified about terrible abuse of human rights in another culture.

Sometimes it seems that double standards abound. It is easy to think we are the enlightened ones. The truth is, we have a natural tendency to notice the behaviors of cultures or faiths or ideologies which differ from ours and to ignore the horrors right under our noses within our own society.

We should be cleaning our own houses with the same thoroughness that we are prepared to employ on "those others." I am sensitive to the plight of children and of women, and am acutely conscious of having contributed to the problem by my previous inactions. Much of what I do today addresses issues that most others give no thought to at all.

I have spoken frequently here about our broken medical institutions, the pharmaceutical and chemical industries and the criminal (international) government cooperation with these conspiracies, both tacit and active. That is most appropriate for me to do here. This is a health oriented forum.

The rest is perhaps best dealt with on my website in spite of the fact that few people have found it. That is partly my fault. I don't seek dabblers and lurkers.

An isolated example. In recent years we have all seen the damage to the Catholic Church because of the exposure of priestly misbehavior with children, which was repeatedly swept under the rug until it could no longer be contained.

My father was a Presbyterian Minister. Many years ago I wrote a book which dealt with a multitude of crimes that were dealt with by the Presbyterian Church hierarchy in exactly the same way that the Catholics did, by transferring him to new congregations in new churches, with fresh opportunities to prey upon innocents. Law enforcement too had other priorities, perhaps in part because of the influence of the church.

When I originally wrote the book, a number of the people involved were still alive. If any still are, they are probably drooling in their gruel in some rest home. But I did not write it originally for the purpose of publication. It was simply a cathartic effort with which I could exorcise some of my demons.

But I did show it to an agent who had previously provided me with several ghostwriting clients. Without my authorization, he showed it to a publisher who expressed interest. I burned the manuscript on the barbecue.

I had pretty well forgotten about it for over twenty years. Then wave after wave of Catholic scandals kept coming along, and my perspective became, why should they be the only ones on the carpet for what I KNEW was a problem in the Presbyterian church, and which I learned secondhand was also occurring in other churches as well.

About eight years ago I discussed the book with a local Presbyterian Minister. Although it no longer existed, it had taken me about a year to write while I was working on several other projects. To rewrite it would take three or four months.

The Minister was a very skillful fellow. He talked of possible "ramifications" and "cans of worms" and letting "sleeping dogs lie." And of course he made no threats. He only said very vaguely that there were legal considerations that could pose some problems. And of course, since I was agnostic and not even a practicing Presbyterian, what did all this ancient history even matter to me anyway?

That fellow did some very effective sweeping that day, but the dirt still creeps up through the carpet. I am ashamed of him and of the Presbyterian Church and you can quote me. They hypocritically left a lot of victims twisting in the wind.

If you were victimized by a preacher of any denomination, including imam, rabbi, guru, auditor or psychiatrist, who used the position of great power and trust to prey upon you, you need not carry that burden alone.

Farewell by a Great Statesman

My apologies to those who are incurably addicted to sound bites. By your standards, this speech is long, and sound-bites are absent. In spite of our collective attention deficit, here is the entire Farewell Address by President Dwight David Eisenhower. Although this president was not known for his eloquence, neither did people hold their breath in anticipation of his next verbal blunder. Keep your eye on the worry about the military industrial complex becoming an uncontrollable force.

(I have periodically changed copy color in the hope that a few of you will be assisted to persist in your reading and to further draw your attention to the key elements of the message. I wish also to point out, for those of you who did not hear this broadcast as it was given, live, that this was a time of great turbulance and paranoia, as profound for the American citizen and our institutions as any of the purges in distant lands, with many devastating, severe and irrevocable consequences, and well beyond the control of even as great a leader as Eisenhower.) --Anthropositor

President Eisenhower's Farewell Address;

Good evening, my fellow Americans.

First, I should like to express my gratitude to the radio and television networks for the opportunity they have given me over the years to bring reports and messages to our nation. My special thanks go to them for the opportunity of addressing you this evening.

Three days from now, after a half century of service of our country, I shall lay down the responsibilities of office as, in traditional and solemn ceremony, the authority of the Presidency is vested in my successor.

This evening I come to you with a message of leave-taking and farewell, and to share a few final thoughts with you, my countrymen.
Like every other citizen, I wish the new President, and all who will labor with him, Godspeed. I pray that the coming years will be blessed with peace and prosperity for all.

Our people expect their President and the Congress to find essential agreement on questions of great moment, the wise resolution of which will better shape the future of the nation.

My own relations with Congress, which began on a remote and tenuous basis when, long ago, a member of the Senate appointed me to West Point, have since ranged to the intimate during the war and immediate post-war period, and finally to the mutually interdependent during these past eight years.

In this final relationship, the Congress and the Administration have, on most vital issues, cooperated well, to serve the nation well rather than mere partisanship, and so have assured that the business of the nation should go forward. So my official relationship with Congress ends in a feeling on my part, of gratitude that we have been able to do so much together.

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations. Three of these involved our own country. Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world.

Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America's adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.

To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people.
Any failure traceable to arrogance or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us a grievous hurt, both at home and abroad.

Progress toward these noble goals is persistently threatened by the conflict now engulfing the world. It commands our whole attention, absorbs our very beings. We face a hostile ideology global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose, and insidious in method.

Unhappily the danger it poses promises to be of indefinite duration. To meet it successfully, there is called for, not so much the emotional and transitory sacrifices of crisis, but rather those which enable us to carry forward steadily, surely, and without complaint the burdens of a prolonged and complex struggle – with liberty the stake. Only thus shall we remain, despite every provocation, on our charted course toward permanent peace and human betterment.

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties. A huge increase in the newer elements of our defenses; development of unrealistic programs to cure every ill in agriculture; a dramatic expansion in basic and applied research – these and many other possibilities, each possibly promising in itself, may be suggested as the only way to the road we wish to travel.
A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

But each proposal must be weighed in light of a broader consideration; the need to maintain balance in and among national programs – balance between the private and the public economy, balance between the cost and hoped for advantages – balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between the actions of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.


The record of many decades stands as proof that our people and their Government have, in the main, understood these truths and have responded to them well in the face of threat and stress.
But threats, new in kind or degree, constantly arise.
Of these, I mention two only.

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction.

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.

But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields.

In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.



Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.

It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.

Another factor in maintaining balance involves the element of time. As we peer into society's future, we – you and I, and our government – must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without asking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.

Down the long lane of the history yet to be written America knows that this world of ours, ever growing smaller, must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Such a confederation must be one of equals. The weakest must come to the conference table with the same confidence as do we, protected as we are by our moral, economic, and military strength. That table, though scarred by many past frustrations, cannot be abandoned for the certain agony of the battlefield.

Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war – as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years – I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

Happily, I can say that war has been avoided. Steady progress toward our ultimate goal has been made. But, so much remains to be done. As a private citizen, I shall never cease to do what little I can to help the world advance along that road.

So – in this my last good night to you as your President – I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I know you will find ways to improve performance in the future.
You and I – my fellow citizens – need to be strong in our faith that all nations, under God, will reach the goal of peace with justice. May we be ever unswerving in devotion to principle, confident but humble with power, diligent in pursuit of the Nations' great goals.

To all the peoples of the world, I once more give expression to America's prayerful and continuing aspiration:

We pray that peoples of all faiths, all races, all nations, may have their great human needs satisfied; that those now denied opportunity shall come to enjoy it to the full; that all who yearn for freedom may experience its spiritual blessings; that those who have freedom will understand, also, its heavy responsibilities; that all who are insensitive to the needs of others will learn charity; that the scourges of poverty, disease and ignorance will be made to disappear from the earth, and that, in the goodness of time, all peoples will come to live together in a peace guaranteed by the binding force of mutual respect and love.

Now, on Friday noon, I am to become a private citizen. I am proud to do so. I look forward to it.
Thank you, and good night.

Some Thoughts On a Medically Supervised Forum and Some Wider Implications

Last night I posed questions that had to do with structuring of the Med Help Forum. They weren't spam or other such nonsense. They pointed out that the problems I wanted to address could not easily be put into 2000 character sound bites. The questions never made it to the public area of the forum, although they were certainly relevant.

What have I found out? That although doctors are present here, or perhaps because doctors are present here, the way the system is set up only simple questions can be addressed and they can only deal with the health issue at hand, and not with a possible difficulty with the forum format and structure.

Your time is clearly too valuable, your services too greatly in need to have any consideration of such matters from ordinary plebeian individuals.
I understand your need to keep the chatty masses at bay. I really do. And your charitable efforts are to be commended.

Oops, once again my allowable word limit is almost at an end, and clearly I have wasted your time and mine. Guess I'll just write about my experience here on another forum and on my blog.

I had no expectation of censorship of my initial remarks, which were certainly in the public interest. I now regret that I didn't save a copy of them so that I could illustrate with precision what you elected to simply delete without comment.

I no longer have the expectation that you will not delete a thoughtful relevant post. If I err in this perspective I will listen to, and even publish your perspective. Know why? Because censorship is a malignant cancer in the social body.

I have written this with considerable dismay.
Anthropositor

Addition:
Now, a couple of days later, I am still trying to put this in the appropriate perspective. First, why am I even upset? It certainly comes as no surprise to me that this could happen. And certainly, in the name of efficiency, and being able to help the maximum number of people, a certain encouragement of brevity is not really out of line. But the truth is, proper assessment of medical problems does not lend itself to short questions or answers.

Having seen a years worth of comments about intractable health problems on a forum with no doctors ever participating, and read hundreds of comments concluding that doctors made misdiagnoses based on instant assessments of information provided by patients who were not uniformly well equipped to communicate in the first place, I found myself sometimes giving the doctor the benefit of the doubt.

It is really very difficult not to, because we are daily inundated with messages in our commercial media with phrases like "remember, only your doctor can diagnose..." or other such indoctrinations. We consumers collectively, are really incredibly gullible and largely incapable of making our own informed medical assessments and decisions.

So although this started out because of some routine censorship, the real issue is our mindless hero worship of medical professionals, and an unquestioning dependence on them which does not serve us well at all.

Even the smartest, most successful and best educated of us are pervasively inundated in doctrines which we are literally incapable of effectively evaluating or even recognizing. Why would I be so surprised and shocked at the routine censorship on that medical forum? And the doctors themselves and/or their staff, undoubtedly think of themselves as good guys doing good things.

Strange Report

Today the top story was the arrest of a half dozen young conspirators who, over a considerable span of time had been planning and preparing to commit suicidal armed assault against members of our military at Ft. Dix. Now, there are a variety of important and interesting elements of this story but at the moment I am moved to write about one.

I was totally mystified by one thing in three different network reports. I believe that these were pretty representative of news reports across the American spectrum. It was referred to as HOMEGROWN TERROR.

Apparently this phrase came from responsible government officials in response to questions, and there were apparently not too many reporters who read between the lines here. Instead, each commentator lent his own emphasis to this phrase. Lets look at the details.

Six young men. One, a U.S. citizen whose country of origin was Jordan. Four of them were illegal aliens from the former Yugoslavia. And a fellow from Turkey. The common denominator? They were all militant suicidal fanatical Islamic jihadists who got their conditioning and indoctrination from Internet Jihadist evangelical recruiters. I heard nothing in the reports that indicated there was previous exposure to Madrassa schools during the formative years of these young men, but I wouldn't be surprised.

I'll just say this. By no stretch of the imagination would an intelligent perceptive person characterize this as Homegrown Terror. Am I the only one who noticed this?

Message To a Silly Person

On a different thread titled: "I think this soap is working" you posted the following;

My mom begged me to try this soap for my psoriasis. It's called Cyclic Nano silver. I kind of ignored it because what soap can it do for the problem I have? After 2 weeks of dragging my heels, I used it on my face and the back of my hands tonight. After some tingling sensation, I washed it off and some risen patches of psoriasis on my face seemed to be flattened and less reddened. I'm going to try this product for a few days to see if it's beneficial. So far after the first try, it seems to be effective. I'm going to post the feedback on this soon. This particular soap is made up of pure silver in nano size which makes it able to permeate into the pores and clean out bacteria and fungi. It is supposed to be highly effective on acne and eczema skin.I also tried tinactin (anti fungi ointment) on this one red spot after I read some old post by some high school student who tried it and saw big improvement. It has been only two days for me and I tell ya, IT DOES WORK. The red spot had become more like a flesh color and flattened the skin by 30%. I'm going to be a guinea pig myself and try it out further on other spots, too. I hope it is not just a fluke. In the meantime I'll keep you posted on this. (End quote.)

If these two had been on the same thread that quote could have been inserted in its' own little box with a click or two, instead of copying and pasting as I have just done (and in the process, losing the first four paragraphs that I had already written in my response before the cutting and pasting.)

Other readers too have to go back and switch threads just to find out what you are talking about. Most won't do so.

Be that as it may, let us look at the message. In your first line you are in effect advertising a product called Cyclic Nano Silver, a very, very expensive product in very pretty containers.

You set off my spammer alarm system with the blue strobe lights and the disorienting sirens first invented by the Nazi's long before you were born. But reading on, I realized it was a false alarm.

I do not believe you are a spammer.You are just a fellow who doesn't realize when you have said something in a misleading way. Now here is the comment on this thread, inserted with a single click:

Quote from: skin77 on May 01, 2007, 06:40:12 PM
I posted a few days ago that Cyclic soap might be working on P. Yesterday, I used it on my whole body and actually got some of the spots worse. I guess it's not a help. As for Tinactin, I tried it on other spots 2x day. It made them worse too I don't know how this antifungi ointment worked for that highschool kid. My P(soriasis) got cherry red and itchy now so I put some protopic to calm it down.

Actually I used the generic brand of Tinactin which contains the same active ingredient. Could it be that it was not working because I was not using the exact brand? Did anyone get benefit from using Tinactin?

See the difference? Okay, so now we can sum up the informational value of both posts efficiently.

You obtained a very, very expensive product and applied it for two days concluding that "IT DOES WORK." (But it is hard to really know if you are talking about the subject of your post or the fungicide Tinactin with this comment.)

Your second post retracts your first assessment of the Nano stuff. But then you say you put on some protopic "to calm it down." Perhaps you are unaware of the heated controversy surrounding this third product.

In any case, you have now applied THREE different potentially dangerous products TO your skin, thinking you were doing some things FOR your skin. And since you have said nothing about your previous experiments or visits to a doctor, there is no way of knowing if you have experimented with hormonal, steroidal or antibiotic creams. My guess is that you have.

I don't even know your gender, age, continent of residence, or any of the other possibly important details of your life.I strongly advise you to learn as much as you can about your skin and general health and to stop experimenting until you have a much better understanding of exactly what you are doing.

I extend this advice to the hordes of others who are pretty much doing the same sorts of things you are, with as little real thought. You can bet I will be getting some Email about what a (expletive deleted) I am, and Do I have to be so harsh?

So let me apologize for my frankness and give you a big genderless hug and let you know that I truly would like it if things worked out for you.
Anthropositor

Another Chilling Abridgement of Freedom

http://alternet.org/drugreporter/50948/

The story above is quite chilling. It should be food for thought for any person, no matter how reputable, that speaking freely on important issues is not without great risk.

But the eventual risk is even greater if we remain mute and allow unabridged power to grow without impediment.

The Price of War

Cost of the War in Iraq
$436,488,514,999 and climbing sharply.
Now add to this our domestic spending against terrorism and the vast sums we are squandering in Afghanistan to very little apparent good effect.

Considering the current state of the planet, and the ecological disasters we must deal with, should we not also factor in the ecological costs of war?
To see more details, click here.

Poisonous Pet Food

Most humans and animals are well equipped to handle a certain amount of toxicity in food and drink without serious difficulty. Let me illustrate. For people, accidentally eating a few apple seeds is not likely to do irrevocable harm. Eating a quarter of a cupful could easily kill you.

Like many children, animals sometimes develop food preferences and they can be pretty stubborn about it. Some insist on a single brand of food to the exclusion of all else. Some pet owners are even told that they should feed their animal only one particular food. I don't believe this is a good idea.

The animals lost in this contamination tragedy were very likely to have been those confined to such an exclusive diet with no dilutions. If one of my cats eats a rodent my neighbor has poisoned with a commercial toxic bait, unless it is a very large rodent or the cat eats several over a short period of time, he is not likely to come to a lot of harm if the poison is a blood thinner, for example, instead of something like arsenic.

Among my outdoor feral colony and the few indoor cats there are only a few picky specialized eaters. The ones I lost were these few. The list of recalled foods was long. When I first heard of the recall, I had perhaps six brands of animal feed that had been the largest part if what the animals ate. It would not have been feasible to take all of this food back to the markets.

What I did instead was add a lot of chicken, turkey, eggs, and even some beef and liver to the rations, diluting any possible contamination as much as possible. The dead or missing cats were all from the group of stubborn picky eaters who absolutely refused to change their eating patterns.The remaining cats are more robust than ever and seem delighted with their new menu.

Honoring Mother Earth Each Day

On Sunday, Earth Day, I started a new topic on Skin Cell Forum, “Honoring Mother Earth Each Day.“

So far people have contributed a handful of good notions about how we can reduce our cumulative deleterious impacts. Little things which can do a lot of good if enough people do them. That is a good place to post the little notions that are ready for immediate implementation.

The topic title here will be the same, but the emphasis is considerably different. Here I would like to discuss much larger, more challenging notions. Concepts that will require research and development, but which can eventually make a more profound and long lasting difference. The three main subjects will still be Global Warming, the depleted Ozone Layer, and the diminishing supply of Potable Water, but let us all keep our attention on the larger subject of Pollution of the Ecosystem.

If you have an idea which you think could diminish one of these problems in a big way, This is the place to get the ball rolling.

Genocide

Mr. Anthropositor had some difficulty today. April is always a difficult month for him for several reasons. He tends to dwell on several battles with huge bureaucracies and the bureaucratically inspired and abetted genocides on several continents and islands. I can’t tell you why it seems to affect him more in April than in other months. It may have something to do with being required to report to faceless well-conditioned cogs in a soulless governmental machine who don’t even know where or when they err.

I am just the butler, but I feel I know him pretty well. Even so, I don't always see these upheavals coming or quite know why they occur.

Perhaps it is East Timor or the Armenians in Turkey or the Balkans or the Rape of Nanking or the current ongoing genocide in Darfur.

Or perhaps it has to do with the Rwandan genocide of about a million human beings which took place during this time of year which massively disrupted three ancient human cultures; the Twa‘s, the Hutu‘s and the Tutsi‘s.

In a bit more than a quarter of a year, a million people were hunted, tortured, raped and slaughtered. Roughly 10,000 people of all ages PER DAY were murdered. Even babies and young children.

The great superpowers knew about it in the first few days. They watched. They dithered. They applied a bit of ineffectual pressure. They fiddled while Rwanda burned. The could not even sort out who was at fault.

There were no strategic materials at stake in Rwanda. Why bother? Mind our own business. Who among us today even knows exactly who to blame? Perhaps we all are.

Think of it. A million people dead. Raped, beaten, shot, burned, hacked to pieces with machetes and pangas. Less than two dozen people were ultimately tried and imprisoned for these crimes. It was not just the soldiers on both sides of a revolutionary conflict doing this. Mobs of ordinary citizens went on the hunt for other ordinary citizens who were "different" than them. They were continuously moved to commit this ongoing murder and mayhem by Rwandan Radio broadcasts. Day after day. Month after month.

Those broadcasts could easily have been jammed. Why weren't they? Apparently freedom of speech issues. What nonsense! They were convincing people that mass murder was not only acceptable, but a patriotic duty!

I asked Mr. Anthropositor how he can keep thinking of these things. I simply can’t bear it. He said, “Someone needs to give a voice to the dead. I am just a dead man talking.”

And now that I have given him the Elixir of Shrinking Violet to arrest his grief and to silence his ravings, perhaps I must speak a little until he returns to his senses. I certainly don’t want to. I just want to forget. I can no longer bear even the sight of bright red liquids.

I think Mr. Anthropositor would tell you that these extreme examples are just the tip of the iceberg. That there is far more blame to be borne than that of the perpetrators of these crimes. Those who know, and do nothing, share the guilt.

Most Hutu’s and Tutsi’s are good people, just trying to get by and live as well as they are able. Even so, less than two dozen people were later held responsible for the murder of a million human beings! How can that be?

Some of the fault must go back to the original German Colonial regime of the early twentieth century, and the Belgians who took over after World War I. People long dead who were quite sure of the rightness and practicality of their actions.

These empire builders set the wheels of destiny in motion when they granted the Tutsi minority great economic and political advantage over the far more numerous Hutu people.

The Germans and the Belgians are sure to find it objectionable to shoulder the blame for any of this. Did the Belgians not give autonomy to Rwanda when they abandoned the country in 1959?

Well, not exactly. On the way out, they flipped the power structure upside down, apparently using the logic that the majority should take power over the minority which had been in charge of the real management of the country for a half century of colonial rule. That was the real fertilization of this particular serpent’s egg.

Perhaps I have been around Mr. Anthropositor too long. I sound a lot like him. I may even be as verbose. A final thought.

I am quite sure Mr. Anthropositor would point out, genocide is not decreasing. It is spreading. Numbers of victims continue to rise. Numbers of places it occurs continue to rise. The variety and methods of murder continue to rise.

This plague threatens us all. We must find our way to peace. We must find or make common ground no matter how extreme our differences. We must abjure fanaticism and extremism and terrorism in ALL of their forms. We must start now. Or our addiction to hatred will kill us all.
Ichabod

Much Ado About Nothing

(This is my response to a person with no apparent health problems whatsoever, except those in his head. The rest of the thread which initiated this answer can be found on skincell forum.)

Well Skinperson,

I wouldn't be too concerned about the lengthening of the healing process, even at the ripe old age of 29 (four years older than the average lifespan of the Roman citizen 2000 years ago).

I am 66. I guess my healing process virtually stopped about twenty years ago. I am, by all appearances, dead. Naturally, this is of some concern to me, so I pretend I'm living with a certain amount of vigor.

What you have is a discoloration on the tip of your toe which causes you no particular discomfort, and which might well have been initiated by some trauma or other. It is not of the slightest apparent importance, except that it is of concern to you.

This is a clear cut indicator that there is something serious happening. Your Dermacraptitis is at an acute stage and must be addressed immediately. It seriously affects the quality of your life. Do listen to me carefully. This is important.

Dermacraptitis affects the lining of the brain, the cerebral cortex. It can, in advanced cases, eventually be fatal. It is far more likely to foreshorten your life or damage the quality of your living than the age-related lengthening of the healing process.

It is an Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and if allowed to progress unimpeded, could ruin your life. I saw another case several months ago, of someone who was absolutely determined never to have another flake of skin fall off his head (dandruff).

We shed our skins about as often as snakes do. The difference is, we do not do it periodically all in one piece, but do it continuously a flake at a time, or I should say many flakes at a time. We literally snow flakes of skin. It is a big component of household dust.

I tell most people to listen to their bodies. The body gives many subtle signals which can lead one to healthy life choices which can enhance one's health and wellbeing. In your case, the volume seems to be turned up full-blast.

Pay some attention to your health; good nutrition, adequate rest and exercise, safe sexual practices, the EDUCATED use of trace nutrients, vitamins and minerals.

Do not obsess. I have no medical history on you. The facts presented here are sparse indeed. Even so, what I have seen sets off all kinds of alarm bells.

Get ahold of yourself sir (metaphorically speaking). And welcome to Skin Cell Forum.

Anthropositor (aka Dead Man Talking)

(Please note, I did not coin the word dermacraptitis. Skinperson did. It was therefore not prohibitively rude for me to use the word in making my point.)

Response To A Query About My Cuff Link Design

Hi Penny,
I agree entirely with your perspective. Having two grown boys, I remember well making my employment decisions based on their needs when they were young. It certainly paid off for me, not in money, but in the results of their upbringing. I could not be prouder of either one of them. I am a fortunate man indeed.

I was able, because of those same decisions to take care of my father personally after he suffered a massive stroke, which paralyzed one side of his body. He ultimately recovered fully and lived another seven years. I was his sole caregiver. This experience made me rather determined to do my best not to put my children through the same sort of thing, particularly before their children are grown. (My youngest grandson Cheval is autistic.)

I have mixed feelings about outsourcing labor. I realize that there are some practical reasons for it, but I am in full agreement with you that it is better to find other ways. Too that end, my emphasis as an inventor and innovator has been on finding ways of reducing labor by design.

It was for that reason that these cuff links did not really seem to me at first glance to be all that inventive. It is only upon reflection that I realize that they could really impact the course of events in men's fashion.

One of the negative impacts of the industrial mode of thinking is that we wind up with millions of identical copies of junk for the masses. Even if the design is artful originally, after seeing it reproduced everywhere, its' impact is totally lost.

When I attend a wedding or a formal event, I see a bunch of groomsmen wearing identical tuxedos with identical cuff links and identical bow ties and even identical shirts. As you may have noticed, I am not one who blends in easily or willingly. Although I wear tuxedos routinely, I like to think that there is nothing routine about the way I do it. There is also a singular lack of variety in bow ties readily available for under thirty dollars. I therefore make my own bow ties too.

I do not believe that this movement toward uniqueness is unusual in me. The impulse is widespread, but I just have it in a somewhat more pronounced way.

Fortunately the cuff link design lends itself exactly to this sort of design adaptability and to keeping the labor to an absolute minimum.

It is design innovation that can save us to a certain extent from the monetary drain on the industrial societies caused by using third world labor.

On the other side of the coin, we also need to give some thought to our responsibility to help the poverty stricken populations. Not by exploiting them directly or indirectly as starvation wage laborers, but by innovating ways for them to be able to live less desperate lives with reasonable nutrition and sufficient potable water and adequate shelter and rewarding employment.

No day passes in which I do not think of the plight of the abjectly poor and starving and afflicted people of the world. And the other problems we face are of such magnitude and variety that we are really just overwhelmed.

And we, as members of an affluent society, are just as close to disaster as our poverty stricken fellow humans. I realize that it does not seem so. We distract ourselves from this fact with what amounts to utter nonsense. Outsourcing of labor will not solve anything. It simply delays the disaster.
Innovation is one of the answers but it is fraught with problems. Even so, it is still okay for us to be chatting about cuff links and jewelry. We will not make the world a better place by stamping out all luxury. A little bit of sugar makes the medicine go down.

Dickens wrote perhaps the best opening line in any piece of fiction ever. I will close with it now.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, ..."

Cordially,
Crockett

A Censorship Controversy

This is a communication with a moderator of a forum over some recent censorship.

Hello __, hope you are well.

Justice delayed is justice denied.

No one is obligated to agree with everything I say. The free exchange of ideas is something that must be fought for on a regular basis even in free and democratic countries.

I note with dismay that even my copies of the posts on this thread have been removed from my profile. I am unable therefore to review them any longer to find the error of my ways.

I have always been a staunch supporter of Skin Cell Forum. I have told hundreds of people of the group. I am also a patriotic individual in spite of my rights sometimes being abridged by bureaucrats who have the force of law behind them... sometimes laws or policies which I have taken issue with. It is only resistance to tyranny that prevents it. It is a duty.

I am not a revolutionary who believes that the entire fabric of the social contract needs to be destroyed so that we can start fresh. Anarchy is no solution. We must improve things, not destroy everything and start fresh.
You may argue that you changed but a single word. I responded responsibly, reasonably gently, but with some vigor, entirely appropriate to the situation.

What happened next? The entire thread was removed. Why? Because it was making an addict uncomfortable with her addiction. It could well have had impact on other lurking addicts. We will never know. This particular addict is very probably beyond my help or anyone else's.

I do not fault Nick for making his comments. I applaud that. None of you have any obligation to agree with me. All of you can get on with your disagreements with me in an open forum. We will all grow in that kind of interchange. That is what the free exchange of ideas is all about.

Instead, you made my comments all disappear. And you sent a message to the addict as well. This wretched lady is in extreme distress and is bringing the greatest bulk of it on herself. She needs serious help. She does not need people feeding her Munchhausen Syndrome by giving her hugs and commiseration for ongoing and repeated failure and procrastination.

That is what most of you are doing. In most cases, a supportive attitude is a really excellent tool to help people and if you once again take a close look at my posts you will see that two thirds of them were congratulatory and extremely supportive.

What you have done here amounts to a Star Chamber Proceeding. The censorship of but a single word was responded to in a civil and appropriate way. The response was not addressed in any way.
Instead, you packed up the entire thread and locked it in a box which will never be opened again or ever see the light of day, as far as I can tell.
It is chilling __. It is wrong. What can it hurt to redact a single word? It opens the door to capriciously and dictatorially eliminating an entire quite useful thread a day or two later.

Look over those posts carefully. I tried on numerous occasions to simply withdraw. The addict herself said "No, don't do that. I came here for help." Then later she complained that my help was mean, uncompromising. You ALL enabled her to continue her addiction entirely without impediment "until she is ready." You sharply reduced her chances of success.

But worse, all the other addicts lurking and wishing to quit no longer have this reference material. You have kept the peace at considerable cost in my opinion.

It does not mean I won't be your friend or a friend to the other moderators who have joined you in this decision. It just means my friends sometimes err. So do I.

I did not make these remarks in the Rant and Rave section. I made them to you, someone who knows with certainty that I practice what I preach when it comes to censorship.

I present choices. I say "I can publish this and respond to it. Or I can simply delete it. You are the author. What do you want me to do?"
That is the only editorial latitude I employ on my blog.

Anthropositor

(I got a letter back today which assures me that the matter will not be in limbo forever... and that __ would have preferred never to have gotten involved with this controversy. So, who knows? Perhaps one day soon the thread will return to its' previous position and be unlocked so that people can decide for themselves based on the facts.)

As a later final edit, I would like to say I hold no ill will toward this moderator or the moderating team, and that even as this was being posted here, the moderator was doing the job that needed to be done and doing it pretty well I might add. Moderators are peacekeepers. I am a rather strong willed free thinker. I do shake things up now and then. I do it purposefully and in a good cause in almost all cases. (Sometimes I might get a little exasperated and go a bit further than makes everyone entirely comfortable.)

No permanent harm was done here. Good may have been done for a lot of people. Even the addict may have ultimately been helped in some way. I hope so.

Preventing Viral Infections

HOW TO PREVENT COLDS, INFLUENZA, SARS, H5N1 (Avian Flu) AND OTHER AIRBORN VIRAL DISEASES.This same procedure also reduces the affects of airborn allergens by 50% or more.This is not a speculative idea. It has been tested since 1984. It works.

But knowing how is not the central feature. Doing it is. I started teaching the method in 1990. The earlier six years was the time of testing. Now thousands of people are successfully doing it and the numbers are going up faster each year. Do let us know your experiences with it.In 1984 when I was in my early forties, I had, many years previously, lost the lower lobe of my right lung, due to Army injuries, an early tobacco addiction, and frequent pneumonias. This resulted in bronchiactasis, a distention of the alveoli in the lungs, allowing the stagnation of mucossal secretions and developing fertile ground for infected pockets to develop in my lungs which could ultimately be life-threatening if I kept coming down with frequent colds, flu and pneumonias.

Having quit smoking during the space program back in the 1970's was very beneficial to my overall health, but my respiratory system (my weakest link) was still on the verge of killing me at any point in time that an opportunistic infection took hold.Had I not developed this prophylaxis, I would very likely have died in the 1980's.

Since then, many thousands of people have learned how to do the procedure. My calculations indicate that a much smaller number, on the order of four or five thousand people do it regularly and consistently, reaping the maximum benefit.The sad truth is that most people will not incorporate even a simple two-minute procedure into their daily hygiene routine. Even in the SARS crisis of a few years ago and with the potential for an H5N1 (avian Flu) pandemic still threatening, the numbers of people who actually get into the firm habit of doing the procedure regularly, on a daily basis, do not exceed a third of those taught. That is sad indeed.

Even the fact that THE PROCEDURE ALSO CUTS ALLERGIC RESPONSES TO AIRBORN ALLERGENS BY HALF has not increased those numbers. I did not begin teaching large numbers of people outside my circle of family and friends until 1990. By the mid-nineties, I had heard from a great many allergy-prone individuals, of this serendipitous side-effect. What a pleasant surprise!But now, without further preamble, here is what you do:

While in the shower, take a couple of Q-tip style cotton swabs, saturated with (nothing but) clear warm water. NO SOAP OR ANY OTHER LOTION ON THE SWABS. Swab the nasal passages as high as you can comfortably reach. Do this gently but be thorough. I rinse the swabs perhaps a half dozen times during this swabbing. The purpose here is to clean out the great bulk of the detritus. You are only going up perhaps an inch or an inch and a quarter on each side. You are not trying to reach the brain-pan with the swabs. If the swabs won't go so far up, not to worry. It's going to work anyway. Now, most of the accumulation of debris and the populations of the indigenous organisms in the nasal passages have been largely eliminated. This was step 1.

After drying off, lay down on the bed with some fresh cooking oil of your choice and some fresh new swabs. You can use corn oil or safflower or rapeseed (canola) or olive oil. If you are allergic to peanut oil, DON'T use peanut oil. We have been talking about coconut oil. I had never used it, assuming that it had a strong coconut smell. I was not correct. Coconut oil is now at the top of the list of approved oils for this procedure. But there is good reason not to use other more highly aromatic oils.

There are two separate olfactory apparati working in the nose. Our ordinary sense of smell, which we are all familiar with. The other sense, which most of us never become consciously aware of, is governed by the vomeronasal organ. The function of this organ is sensing special aromas, pheremonal in nature. These scents are delivered to entirely different areas of the brain than the other smells we perceive. It is important not to interfere with the functions of this organ since it is so closely associated with our instincts, and subtle social behaviors, and we don't want to mess up the various elements involved. The procedure outlined here does not adversely impact the function of the vomeronasal system.

In any case, you are now laying on your back on the bed, have dipped the swabs in the vegetable oil of your choice, and are now swabbing your nasal passages just as far as you did with the water swabs when you were in the shower. You are now coating the nasal membrane, which has already been moisturized with the only real moisturizer there is. Water. You have now covered this pre-moistened surface with an oil sheen which will help prevent the moisture from being evaporated away by the cold desiccated air in the same way that chap stick prevents your lips from chapping.

Let's look at the nasal membrane with a little flashlight... Notice how red it is, particularly that portion which is hardest to observe, the narrow channel just below the bridge of the nose. It is even brighter red than the surrounding areas of nasal membrane. It is such a bright red because you are seeing the blood through the membrane. This is where the viruses most often make their illegal entry into your bloodstream.

Notice also the little cilia-like hairs which are so effective as filters of the larger particles in the air we breathe.I usually tell people that it is not generally a good idea to snort anything back further in the nasal passage. This is an exception to that. Your nose has been pretty thoroughly cleaned. It is still far from sterile, but the jungle of organisms are mostly gone. You have now coated the moist membrane and the tiny hairs with the oil, but if the oil gets up a bit further than the swabs have reached, so much the better.

What time of year do respiratory viruses occur? During colder, more variable weather. Those times when your lips are likely to chap. Why do your lips chap? You are frequently going into cold exterior environments with very dry desiccated air, contrasting from the moist interior environments. We do this often during the fall and winter. We notice the chapping of our lips because we flex them continuously by talking, and the cracks which develop are very large because of the flexing. The same thing is happening to the nasal membrane. The fissures are, by comparison to the lips, microscopic. Even so, to a virus particle, these membrane fissures are like the Grand Canyon.

VIRUSES CANNOT REPLICATE IF THEY DO NOT FIRST MAKE ENTRY INTO THE BLOODSTREAM, INVADE OUR INDIVIDUAL CELLS, SET UP THE CELLULAR MANUFACTURING APPARATUS WITH THE VIRAL BLUEPRINT AND TURN THE PLACE INTO A VIRAL FACTORY.

OK let's review:
Step 1. Cleanse the nasal passages with swabs saturated with clear, fresh water.
Step 2. Lay on the bed and swab passages with vegetable oil. NOT Vaseline, NOT mineral oil, NOT 10-30 Motor oil, NOT glycerin, NOT dimethylpolysiloxane. JUST VEGETABLE OIL that you are not allergic to.
Step 3. Wipe your nose. That is to say, remove the excess oil from the eighth inch or so of the vestibular area of the nasal passage until no more oil is coming out.
Step 4. Congratulate yourself for remembering to do it every day.
Step 5. If you have health care providers, show them this. Tell them you are doing it. Answer any questions they might have or refer them to me for any further clarification that might be required.
Step 6. Carefully teach others how to do it or let them read this.
Step 7. There is no step seven.

One final thing. When to do it. Do it every day that you are going to be exposed to other people. Do it before you go out into the world. Not before you go to bed at night.

For allergic responses, do it before you are going to be exposed to high concentrations of allergens, like vacuuming the carpets, mowing the weeds or raking the leaves. The allergic responses will be abated by more than half in severity, thus reducing sharply the medications you need. Respiratory viral disease will be eliminated in terms of symptomatically apparent disease. You are not living in a bubble or scrubbing your hands every 10 minutes or refusing to shake hands like Howard Hughes. You are just living a much healthier life.

Continue to do the other prudent things like washing your hands, getting proper nutrition and adequate rest.Please do it for yourselves and let us know here how it worked out for you. To your health!

(This will return to the top of the pile every few months. Who reads archives?)

A Letter To the Eye Surgeon

Dear Dr. B____,
We have known each other for perhaps twenty minutes total. Half exam and half short orientation. Three different technicians took ultrasound readings of the axial length of my eye because of conflicting results. Since the ultimate success of the surgery depends in part on the accuracy of these readings, I can only hope that the conflicting figures have not been averaged, which would of course incorporate error into the measurement.

I have looked at some of the less agreeable outcomes that some patients have reported (with other doctors). Some of them were due to unfortunate and perhaps unforeseeable complications. Others were perhaps caused by institutional, assembly-line practices.

But I kept noticing that many of these stories had a large factor in common. The patients themselves remained pretty oblivious about the details. They didn’t know what was happening and pretty much left all the details up to the doctor, just having hope and faith that everything was going to come out all right. I suppose that it is convenient for the various professionals and institutions involved, because most patients are not really well equipped to sort out many of the details, but such ignorance has to play a role in the results. I do not intend to be a party to anything going amiss here.

I did not have the opportunity to see the orientation videotape because the player was broken. I elected not to make another 140 mile roundtrip to see it. But I am not just leaving things up to fate. I am learning whatever I can even in our short time frame. Surgery is scheduled in two weeks. I will make sense of each enigma or potential problem that might arise before then, or we will reschedule if necessary.

Two things struck me about the sample implant that you showed me. It was very small in diameter, nowhere near the size of the clouded lens you are removing. This led me to wonder about the scattered unfocused light entering the eye around the smaller periphery of this lens and what effect that might have on such things as glare in night-vision after the procedure. And even though most lenses today filter the UV light that goes through them, what about the unfocused UV light that gets in around this smaller lens edge? It strikes me that scattered light could be playing a part in difficulties such as glare in night vision.

I presume that the central reason for the small size of the lens is the reduction of the size of the incision required for insertion. I am certainly in favor of that. But glare and haloes still seem to be quite a significant problem for some people and no one seems to know exactly why.

Another thing that I noticed is that there were two haptics, attached at 180 degree points of the model you showed me. This was counter-intuitive for me. From a stability standpoint, I would have thought that three haptics or even four would have been the number. I am also interested in knowing more about the interface between the haptics and the lens and how exactly the haptics anchor to the zonules and other tissues at the edge of the capsular cavity within the eye and what sort of changes occur in the tissue to accommodate the points of the haptics.
You mentioned the possibility of a secondary cataract developing after surgery which might need to be addressed later. If memory serves, you indicated a high probability that this would occur.

What we are dealing with now is a nuclear cataract of the lens itself. What we may have to deal with later would be a “posterior sub capsular “ cataract which develops frequently as a postoperative complication after the correction of the original problem, but can wind up being just as severe as the original. Do I understand that correctly?

The question occurs to me: Is there some clinically significant reason that the YAG laser procedure to correct this condition later, could not be done at the time of the original cataract surgery to prevent the problem from developing? It strikes me that you are already in the eye and removing the debris of the disintegrated lens. The debris of the laser procedure is also a consideration. But apparently the YAG lasering is usually done when there is no surgical procedure underway and therefore the resulting debris remains. Would it not be wise to do it when you are already in there slurping up the lens? This would certainly reduce the likelihood of this very common secondary cataract complication.

Another potential complication you touched upon had to do with the implant falling through a rupture in the posterior membrane and coming to rest on the retina. If memory serves, another specialist would quickly be called in to deal with this quite dangerous problem.

Indulge me for a moment while I brainstorm. Perhaps not too much can be done to prevent it but would it not make good sense if such a rupture were to occur, to prevent the lens from dropping through all the way down to the retina? It strikes me that such a falling lens must float down through a gel-like vitreous fluid until it reaches the retinal plane and comes to rest. I do not know how much time elapses, but it is not instantaneous. My guess is it takes ten seconds or more, and that the very worst spot for this fallen lens to come to rest is on the macula or on the fovea.

It also appears that the “natural” or “usual” or “conventional” or “accepted” position of the head during this operation is for the head to be pointing directly face up, placing the macula gravitationally directly under where the lens will fall if it breaks through the membrane. If there is even a short time between breaking through the membrane and the lens coming to rest, would it not be prudent to immediately reposition the patients head so that the lens would be more likely to come to rest in a peripheral area of the interior of the eyeball rather than the retinal surface?

You mentioned a brand or two and some materials which I did not write down or remember. We did not go into any detail about the actual structure of the lens, so I am going to take that up from the perspective of what would appear to have the greatest potential for success in my situation from my current perspective of limited knowledge.

If I refer to one particular brand or other, I do not mean to imply that I have “locked on” to that brand or even that it will be my preference when all facts are in. It just means that it seems from my perspective to have a lot of favorable things going for it. It is, after all, the critical component.

Another consideration is the corrective design of the intraocular lens. I am already monocular by habit and inclination, so I could easily live with it if the correction was very good at one extreme but less than perfect at the other. But lenses have improved markedly in the past few decades. I see no reason not to employ these improvements if possible. Both distant and close-up vision are important to me.

As I understand it, the choices I have are as follows. A single vision lens. A “bifocal” lens. A multi-focal lens. I am interested in a multi-focal accommodating lens.

I am interested in blue-blocking UV filtering as well.

Could you tell me more about the lenses that you currently use which meet these criteria?

As to stitches. Are they usually used in this operation? What is the usual length of the incision? If stitches are involved, are they self absorbing or do they need to be removed later?

Now as to anesthesia. I don’t recall our discussing it. It is my understanding that these operations can be done with topical anesthetic drops or with injections, which carry substantial additional risks, along with making the eyeball more fixed in position during the operation. What will be the game plan in this case?

And last, The manufacturer and the model and type of the lens in prospect may be of some interest from a financial standpoint. Some of the newer multi-focal accommodating lenses are not fully covered by insurers. Others are. I want to be sure that I am on the same page as my insurance provider before the operation.

Oh, and thank you for going out of your comfort zone on that prescription. I know I took you out of your specialty. You dealt with it and double checked what you were doing. That's one of the things I want in a doctor.

Cordially,


H.C.Benson

Heresy?

When a missionary goes into a primitive land with the backward natives and the daily challenges for survival, he may be quite proud of himself for having taken on the task of bringing the true faith to the ignorant heathen. More souls for the Lord. Of course, I speak of Christian missionaries but the principles apply with all religions and with political and nationalistic or fanatical terrorist groups as well.

These diverse groups of highly committed people have some things in common. They are “true believers” whatever their religious, political, scientific or revolutionary orientation. They may spend considerable time and effort learning the native tongue . This gives the impression that they are acquiring the linguistic skills to become further oriented to the “primitive” community, and developing a better notion of the native society. Although a certain amount of this learning occurs, It does not appear to be the central purpose of learning the language.

The real reason seems to be to better impart the new dogma to the backward savages. The missionary may learn that the naive native believes that the mountain god brings the blessed rain to the jungle. The missionary , without reflection, just knows that this notion is nonsense. He doesn’t even stop to consider it. He is too busy trying to couch scriptures in the native tongue.

And yet, it does not take much thought to realize that mountains impose a barrier to wind, causing updrafts which carry moisture laden clouds high where they will cool and drop the moisture that they contained in the form of rain. So the native “superstition” which seemed so quaint to the missionary held some nuggets of good sense.

It is hard for me to be too hard on the missionaries though, since I recognize that although I am a heretic (some have said a damnable heresiarch) I do advocate a certain open-mindedness with regard to science, philosophy and religion, and sometimes do so with considerable zeal.

One of the reasons missionaries go to strange lands to convert the primitives is that it is so practical. It works so well. They DO achieve significant numbers of converts. The primitives are at a considerable disadvantage, economically, educationally, socially. They are generally second-class in their own minds, and in the missionary’s mind, though he would rarely admit it.

This is what Sunday School is all about as well. Taking advantage of a helpless, powerless and comparatively inexperienced and credulous captive audience; using exceedingly powerful propaganda tools to persuade the little tykes before they are able to defend themselves with any sophistication at all. Young children should not be programmed with religious dogma in the absence of other balancing ideas. We are hardly conscious of this insidious missionary behavior, taking place in our churches continuously. We should be much more conscious of this kind of conditioning.

On the other side of the world in a whole slew of different countries Maddrassa schools do precisely the same sort of conditioning of millions of children who are not able to separate dogma and political propaganda from fact. We have ignored this terroristic tool for decades. Even our allies in the region have these schools operating in large numbers. A rather intractable problem. Any ideas?