From: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org (fegmaniax-digest) To: fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Subject: fegmaniax-digest V17 #210 Reply-To: fegmaniax@smoe.org Sender: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-fegmaniax-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk fegmaniax-digest Monday, August 3 2009 Volume 17 : Number 210 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Catching up: Duran Toad Porn [Great Quail ] Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn [Miles Goosens ] Shit-Howdy! A mid-year list of favorites! [Great Quail ] Re: Shit-Howdy! A mid-year list of favorites! [2fs ] New Tori Amos release [David Witzany ] Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn [Sebastian Hagedorn ] Re: "Follow The Money" ["Stewart C. Russell" ] Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn [kevin studyvin ] Re: "Follow The Money" [Marc ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:23:35 -0400 From: Great Quail Subject: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn James writes, > Definitely. Duran Duran are much hated I actually do not get that impression. In fact, among most people I know, Duran Duran get a lot of credit for their first two -- and sometimes three - -- albums. After that, not so much. But still, "Rio" as a whole remains something of an 1980s favorite among my generation, at least. I think there's some great songs on there, and some surprisingly good bass playing. Jeff writes, > A friend of mine asked, what do the bands Toad the Wet Sprocket and Heaven > 17 have in common, in terms of their names? Both are named after fictitious > bands (TtWS from Python, H17 from A Clockwork Orange). I do not think that "Toad the Wet Sprocket" comes from Pynchon. I have never run across the phrase in his works. Form my understanding, the name was drawn from Monty Python. I think Wikipedia bears that out. (I don't like the band, but I've always liked the name, and the ambiguity whether "toad" is a noun or a verb.) Bret asks, > Brilliant, but do people still *buy* porn? Sure they do -- but mostly on the Internet, now! Though more importantly, the original source on "Overheard in New York" was mistaken. Blu-ray has indeed succeeded, but its success has nothing to do with porn. In fact, HD porn is still surprisingly rare. The success of Blu-ray has more to do with the Sony marketing machine and the fact that the PS3 functions as a BRD player, whereas the Xbox 360 does not have any disc-based HD movie capacity (either Blu-ray or the now-extinct HD-DVD.) While it's true that the PS3 is struggling as a gaming platform, it's doing fairly well as a BRD player. In this case, gamers and geeks have driven the trend, not porno-hounds. In other words, PS2 owners who dropped the $600+ to upgrade to the PS3 found themselves with a BDR player, which generated a demand for Blu-ray discs. The market responded, and more BRDs became available; which created a bigger incentive to own a PS3. Something of a "pulling oneself up by one's own bootstraps" cycle. Because the Xbox 360 could not answer with an innate HD platform of its own, there was a lack of pressure driving Warner's competing format, the HD-DVD, which withered on the vine. However -- the Xbox 360 is not down for the count in the fight for HD movies! It has now aligned with Netflix, and promises to one day deliver HD movies right to your television set. Sadly, that does not include porn. - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 08:52:08 -0500 From: Miles Goosens Subject: Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 8:23 AM, Great Quail wrote: > Jeff writes, > >> A friend of mine asked, what do the bands Toad the Wet Sprocket and Heaven >> 17 have in common, in terms of their names? Both are named after fictitious >> bands (TtWS from Python, H17 from A Clockwork Orange). ^^^^^^^ > > I do not think that "Toad the Wet Sprocket" comes from Pynchon. Nor was it being claimed to have done so in Jeff's post. :) later, Raymond Luxury-Yacht - -- now with blogspot retsin! http://readingpronunciation.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:11:10 -0400 From: Great Quail Subject: Shit-Howdy! A mid-year list of favorites! Eddie "Sneeze on Me" Eddster writes, > by the way, quail, i always look forward to your half-year fave-albums > roundup. are you not going to submit one this annum? Happily! But the list may change by the end of the year, as albums settle deeper into my brain and new stuff comes out. Who knows? Maybe a new Rush album! Rock: 1. "No Line on the Horizon," by U2 2. "Hazards of Love," by the Decemberists 3. "Merriweather Post Pavilion," by Animal Collective 4. "Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane," by Elvis Costello 5. "Abnormally Addicted to Sin," by Tori Amos 6. "Goodnight Oslo," by Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus Three 7. "Horehound," by the Dead Weather 8. "Wilco," by Wilco 9. "Veckatimest," by Grizzly Bear 10. "Years of Refusal," by Morrissey Also enjoying the new Bob Dylan, Sonic Youth, and Les Claypool... Hip Hop/R&B 1. "Relapse," by Eminem 2. "The Ecstatic," by Mos Def 3. "Invisible Cities," by Nomo Experimental/Electronic 1. "The Dark Places of the Earth," by Lustmord 2. "The Cancelled Earth," by Cities Last Broadcast 3. "Interstellar 2," by Nordvargr Country 1. "Viper of Melody," by Wayne the Train Hancock 2. "Middle Cyclone," by Neko Case 3. " Midnight at the Movies," by Justin Townes Earle Though I also like the new Eric Church album more than I'd like to admit...! Top "Discoveries" of Older Stuff I Shoulda Known About: 1. Magazine & Howard Devoto 2. Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra 3. Kammarheit Album from Last Year I Just Really Fell For Hard This Year: 1. "Costello Music," by the Fratellis - --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 09:04:09 -0700 From: "Nectar At Any Cost!" Subject: Re: "Follow The Money" all right, *now* i'm done with this topic. didn't respond to everything i'd liked to have; or as thoroughly. but, that's the way the cookie crumble. bottom line: do some research before being vaccinated! <[...] Deusberg, who by the way is pretty much thought to be a whackjob these days by almost the entirety of conventional science.> not really. . but apart from that, let's critique him on the merits, shall we? for example, assuming he's not lying or somehow misinformed, how would you respond to his arguments in ? one *need not be* a scientist to *understand* the data -- again, assuming the data can be trusted. was the link i'd initially posted. these graphs are from australia only. is a list of links to other graphs. included among them is , graphs and discussion of polio trends in the u.s.. <> apologies if i gave that impression. obviously, we'll (excepting identical twins, perhaps?) all respond to like stimuli differently. even if it weren't the case, i should guess that there are as many different lifestyles as there are living humans. this, however, is simply not true. we know what causes heart attacks. and while we don't know *how much* abuse will trigger a heart attack in any one individual; it *is* the case that disease doesn't occur spontaneously and for no reason. it must be created. to repeat: the postulates are just logic. they're neither valid nor not-valid. what kind of science is that? if we were to notice that sometimes a dropped rock flies off into space rather than falling to the ground, would we respond, "oh, every dropped rock is different. the theory of gravity only describes generalities, probabilities, likely outcomes"? your explanation does not explain *causation*, but rather observes correlation. now, marc seems to be saying that exposure produces disease in all cases, except when there are overriding influences (what he calls "confounding factors"). kind of like, a balloon filled with helium *is* expected to fly off into space. all well and good. but unless we can *control* for the "confounding factors", to the extent that we can predict with certainty in which cases exposure will produce symptoms, then we have absolutely no idea what role, if any, exposure plays in the development of symptoms. we only know that there's a correlation. but...because bacteria mutate to fit their changing environments, we don't even know what the correlation *is*. as a practical matter, we know that those with healthy lifestyles tend to be in health, and those with un-healthy lifestyles tend to be sickly. we know that people with *very* healthy lifestyles don't get sick, ever. (doug graham, for example, hasn't been sick in 25 years; loren lockman for a similar period of time.) the medical industry acknowledges as much, in saying that exposure will only cause symptoms in "susceptible" subjects. pasteur himself conceded the same: "the microbe is nothing; the terrain is everything." (see for a treatment of the debate between bechamp and pasteur.) i should repeat, here, too, that vaccines are supposed to, "like clockwork", prevent disease in all who take them; and drugs are supposed to, "like clockwork", cure disease in all who eat them. no "generalities" and "probabilities" here? of course, in the real world we know that drugs don't cure, and vaccines don't prevent, disease. more "optimal" than "eternal". (although if you're into that kind of thing, you might look into *Man The Unknown*, by alexis carrel.) and it's only a "secret" to the extent that it's been ignored: as i say, the body of literature is pretty impressive -- the quantity, i mean; some may, sight-unseen, consider the quality as "crap"... and it's not that everyone else in the world is wrong; bur rather that we've not been exposed to the works of the "heterodox thinkers". i'll again just recommend one, a general overview: . see if you don't find its reasoning to be as sensible as can be. people that live healthfully from birth ought to, yes. as discussed in the piece i posted earlier, the thinkers themselves often tended not to follow their own advice. mainly, they were workaholics; while one of NH's principle tenets is to take as much sleep as the body asks for (i.e., never wake with an alarm clock). if interested, i've posted one installment of t.c. fry's *Master Health Series* to . in it, he discusses three tribes of exceedingly long-lived people, along with the people's lifestyles. (one was the hunza, who you may recall were a bit of a cause celebre in the '70s.) if anybody wants to hear the entire series, let me know, and i'll torrent it somewhere. i was asking about stewart's uncle. but thanks for trying. for the nine-bajillionth time: NH disparages "alternative" therapies as strongly as it does conventional. you won't find any recommendations for herbs, supplements, "superfoods", crystals, magnets, acupuncture, or what have you, among naturaly hygienists. as i've said, i agree that these are the bunk. but if no germ has ever, in 150 years' time, been shewn to cause any disease, then...well, okay, yeah, it might still be theoretically possible. but, should it really be considered accepted fact? okay, i overstated the matter. but by saying "not at all", you've understated it. 'cause we've got teevee news-anchors telling us that if we don't eat our drugs, then that nasty, evil swine-flu virus is gonna strike us down. or, it's, apparently, common belief that those living healthy lifestyles might be spontaneously killed off by a heart attack. we're also, on the flip-side, to believe that no matter how much abuse we heap upon our bodies, drugs give us a get-out-of-jail-free card. something for nothing. we need not be responsible, in other words, for our actions (so long as we can afford the drugs). well, why not have your cake and eat it, too? especially when your R&D is publicly subsidised. every few years there's a new epidemic scare; and a new vaccine gets paid for by the taxpayers. and the drug-makers are very closely linked with the state bureaucracy. maybe it's a coincidence. i, personally, don't think that it is. <> they were *fasting* and *resting*? and had access to fresh air and pure water? i'll need a citation. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 11:16:30 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Shit-Howdy! A mid-year list of favorites! On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Great Quail wrote: > Eddie "Sneeze on Me" Eddster writes, > > > by the way, quail, i always look forward to your half-year fave-albums > > roundup. are you not going to submit one this annum? > > > Rock: > > > 4. "Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane," by Elvis Costello > > > Country > > 2. "Middle Cyclone," by Neko Case > I'd have to say that that Costello album is way more country than that Case album...if it matters to anyone's genre classifications. (I prefer the Case album...the Costello's okay, but it hasn't really stuck yet.) - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.wordpress.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 11:20:27 -0500 From: 2fs Subject: Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 8:23 AM, Great Quail wrote: > > Jeff writes, > > > A friend of mine asked, what do the bands Toad the Wet Sprocket and > Heaven > > 17 have in common, in terms of their names? Both are named after > fictitious > > bands (TtWS from Python, H17 from A Clockwork Orange). > > I do not think that "Toad the Wet Sprocket" comes from Pynchon. I have > never > run across the phrase in his works. Form my understanding, the name was > drawn from Monty Python. I think Wikipedia bears that out. (I don't like > the > band, but I've always liked the name, and the ambiguity whether "toad" is a > noun or a verb.) I can't tell whether you merely misread me, or whether you're enjoying a little joke here. (If the latter, I'm enjoying it too.) But that, of course, raises the question of bands drawing their names from Pynchon. Both Laurie Anderson and (bizarrely) Pat Benatar have named songs after Pynchon, and both the Insect Trust and the Favourite Colour have set T. Slothrop's "Eyes of a New York Woman" to music...but any band names? > > > Bret asks, > > > Brilliant, but do people still *buy* porn? > > Sure they do -- but mostly on the Internet, now! > > Though more importantly, the original source on "Overheard in New York" was > mistaken. Blu-ray has indeed succeeded, but its success has nothing to do > with porn. In fact, HD porn is still surprisingly rare. "Surprisingly"? I think high-resolution on various zits, moles, scars, and whatnot on the actors' bodies would be a reason to keep the resolution relatively discreet... - -- ...Jeff Norman The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.wordpress.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 11:24:28 -0500 (CDT) From: David Witzany Subject: New Tori Amos release WEFT received the album in a standard-issue plastic jewelcase. If anyone is interested, I like this disc a bit better, now that I've listened to it a few more times. It occurs to me that the songs are perfectly OK, the album is just Too Darn Long. It's very listenable if I only play half of it at a sitting. (I haven't any fainter praise than that.) - ---- Original message ---- >Date: Sat, 1 Aug 2009 16:32:19 EDT >From: HSatterfld@aol.com >Subject: abnormally attracted to jewel boxes > >Does the new Tori Amos CD come in a digipak? I hates digipaks. > >I know the deluxe edition is in a digipak, but that's fine as I hate deluxe > editions also. > >The Borders nearest me has removed all CDs, or I would just go look at it >myself. (Don't make me go to Barnes and Noble.) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 12:44:19 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn 2fs wrote: > > "Surprisingly"? I think high-resolution on various zits, moles, scars, and > whatnot on the actors' bodies would be a reason to keep the resolution > relatively discreet... And then there's: http://xkcd.com/598/ Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 19:14:37 +0200 From: Sebastian Hagedorn Subject: Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn - -- 2fs is rumored to have mumbled on 3. August 2009 11:20:27 -0500 regarding Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn: > But that, of course, raises the question of bands drawing their names from > Pynchon. Both Laurie Anderson and (bizarrely) Pat Benatar have named songs > after Pynchon, and both the Insect Trust and the Favourite Colour have set > T. Slothrop's "Eyes of a New York Woman" to music...but any band names? I can only offer another song name: The Jazz Butcher's "Looking For Lot 49". - -- Sebastian Hagedorn Am alten Stellwerk 22, 50733 Kvln, Germany http://www.uni-koeln.de/~a0620/ "Being just contaminates the void" - Robyn Hitchcock ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 10:16:18 -0700 From: "John B. Jones" Subject: Re: New Tori Amos release That track 1 ("Give") is the goth-iest Tori Amos track I think I've heard. On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 9:24 AM, David Witzany wrote: > WEFT received the album in a standard-issue plastic jewelcase. If anyone > is interested, I like this disc a bit better, now that I've listened to it a > few more times. It occurs to me that the songs are perfectly OK, the album > is just Too Darn Long. It's very listenable if I only play half of it at a > sitting. (I haven't any fainter praise than that.) > > > ---- Original message ---- > >Date: Sat, 1 Aug 2009 16:32:19 EDT > >From: HSatterfld@aol.com > >Subject: abnormally attracted to jewel boxes > > > >Does the new Tori Amos CD come in a digipak? I hates digipaks. > > > >I know the deluxe edition is in a digipak, but that's fine as I hate > deluxe > > editions also. > > > >The Borders nearest me has removed all CDs, or I would just go look at it > >myself. (Don't make me go to Barnes and Noble.) ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 13:21:00 -0400 From: "Stewart C. Russell" Subject: Re: "Follow The Money" Nectar At Any Cost! wrote: > > not really. . I saw a lot of padding on that list; a whole bunch of random MAs and "Engineers". The one guy I traced is an editor at CBC who produced a couple of shows on health - he's also a director of Energy Probe Research Foundation, who in my line of business are *way* out in the bushes, and opposed to any form of power generation whatsoever. The fact is, life is finite, and we don't have time to try everything. Basically, you can go the way that's been statistically proven to be (sometimes only very slightly, but slightly when dealing with millions could be you and me and everyone we know) better than placebo, or you can make up your own stuff and see how well you do. And you know, I'm mostly okay with that - you wanna kill yourself, go freaking nuts, man. Just don't leave your corpse anywhere I could trip over it. But immunization is different. You're failing civic duty not to do so, as the value of society is far more than the individual. To extend Pasteur, "the terrain is everything", and you just gave up a bunch of terrain to the pathogens. Stewart ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 3 Aug 2009 10:53:07 -0700 From: kevin studyvin Subject: Re: Catching up: Duran Toad Porn Nice to hear from the Quail. On Mon, Aug 3, 2009 at 6:23 AM, Great Quail wrote: > James writes, > > > Definitely. Duran Duran are much hated > > I actually do not get that impression. In fact, among most people I know, > Duran Duran get a lot of credit for their first two -- and sometimes three > -- albums. After that, not so much. But still, "Rio" as a whole remains > something of an 1980s favorite among my generation, at least. I think > there's some great songs on there, and some surprisingly good bass playing. > > Jeff writes, > > > A friend of mine asked, what do the bands Toad the Wet Sprocket and > Heaven > > 17 have in common, in terms of their names? Both are named after > fictitious > > bands (TtWS from Python, H17 from A Clockwork Orange). > > I do not think that "Toad the Wet Sprocket" comes from Pynchon. I have > never > run across the phrase in his works. Form my understanding, the name was > drawn from Monty Python. I think Wikipedia bears that out. (I don't like > the > band, but I've always liked the name, and the ambiguity whether "toad" is a > noun or a verb.) > > Bret asks, > > > Brilliant, but do people still *buy* porn? > > Sure they do -- but mostly on the Internet, now! > > Though more importantly, the original source on "Overheard in New York" was > mistaken. Blu-ray has indeed succeeded, but its success has nothing to do > with porn. In fact, HD porn is still surprisingly rare. The success of > Blu-ray has more to do with the Sony marketing machine and the fact that > the > PS3 functions as a BRD player, whereas the Xbox 360 does not have any > disc-based HD movie capacity (either Blu-ray or the now-extinct HD-DVD.) > While it's true that the PS3 is struggling as a gaming platform, it's doing > fairly well as a BRD player. In this case, gamers and geeks have driven the > trend, not porno-hounds. > > In other words, PS2 owners who dropped the $600+ to upgrade to the PS3 > found > themselves with a BDR player, which generated a demand for Blu-ray discs. > The market responded, and more BRDs became available; which created a > bigger > incentive to own a PS3. Something of a "pulling oneself up by one's own > bootstraps" cycle. Because the Xbox 360 could not answer with an innate HD > platform of its own, there was a lack of pressure driving Warner's > competing > format, the HD-DVD, which withered on the vine. > > However -- the Xbox 360 is not down for the count in the fight for HD > movies! It has now aligned with Netflix, and promises to one day deliver HD > movies right to your television set. > > Sadly, that does not include porn. > > --Quail ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:23:12 -0400 From: Marc Subject: Re: "Follow The Money" Nectar At Any Cost! wrote: > all right, *now* i'm done with this topic. didn't respond to everything > i'd liked to have; or as thoroughly. but, that's the way the cookie > crumble. bottom line: do some research before being vaccinated! I have. All, and I mean all, credible research says that the current safety levels of vaccines are just dandy, and the risk of going unvaccinated is far, far higher than the risk of any harm caused by a side effect of the vaccine. This doesn't mean side effects don't happen, just that the folks you're reading have their heads where the sun don't shine on this stuff. > > <[...] Deusberg, who by the way is pretty much thought to be a whackjob > these days by almost the entirety of conventional science.> > > not really. . > > but apart from that, let's critique him on the merits, shall we? for > example, assuming he's not lying or somehow misinformed, how would you > respond to his arguments in ? one *need > not be* a scientist to *understand* the data -- again, assuming the data > can be trusted. > First of all, citing a pro-Duesberg site as proof that he isn't though a whackjob by the vast majority of the scientific community is unconvincing. And it is easy to respond to his arguments--studies that specifically addressed his claims were published in peer-reviewed journals, and what they found is that is that his allegations(and I quote) "have no basis in fact." > > haven't read all the links you've posted.)> > > was the link i'd initially > posted. these graphs are from australia only. > > is a list of links to other > graphs. > > included among them is > , graphs and discussion > of polio trends in the u.s.. Except your claim was that polio had declined 90% before the vaccine was introduced. This is clearly not the case from this graph. In fact, the opposite was true (whether you believe in their specious DDT connection or not--their dates are way off on the elimination of DDT which creates a false appearance of correlation)and polio cases were skyrocketing prior to the introduction of the vaccine. > > > this, however, is simply not true. we know what causes heart attacks. and > while we don't know *how much* abuse will trigger a heart attack in any one > individual; it *is* the case that disease doesn't occur spontaneously and > for no reason. it must be created. There certainly is a cause to disease, but your implication is that all disease is lifestyle related and that is demonstrably false. > believe that if all 4 points of Koch's postulates do not obtain each and > every time, no matter what other circumstances exist (and "other > circumstances" always exist), then there's no validity to them.> > > to repeat: the postulates are just logic. they're neither valid nor > not-valid. No, the proof is just logic. The validity of the proof depends on the soundness of the postulates. The postulates, in this case, are quite sound and have been used thousands of times to demonstrate that the germ theory of disease is valid. Basically, Koch postulated that if you find a microorganism in all the creatures afflicted with a given condition, and then you can isolate that microorganism and grow it and re-introduce it and cause the same condition in an otherwise healthy creature, you have the cause of your disease. So you're stuck with one of two things: either you believe that what Koch postulated is not enough to actually prove that germ theory is correct (and you'd probably need an alternative proof of medical causation that worked demonstratively better, which to my knowledge has never been provided); or you would need to believe that demonstrating the isolation, reintroduction and creation of disease in a healthy population somehow, over the course of humankind, was a confusion of correlation with causation. I think you have an extremely high burden of proof, if you hold either of these positions, why you're bucking the trends. The folks you link to, however, really don't believe in any burden of proof and I think you're falling into that same boat. > above. So the fact that there's variability does not mean that a theory is > false. The theory describes generalities, probabilities, likely outcomes.> > > what kind of science is that? if we were to notice that sometimes a > dropped rock flies off into space rather than falling to the ground, would > we respond, "oh, every dropped rock is different. the theory of gravity > only describes generalities, probabilities, likely outcomes"? Medical science, which is applied science and not hard science when it comes to the actual practice of medicine. A lack of understanding of the difference may explain some of the stuff you've written. > your explanation does not explain *causation*, but rather observes > correlation. Koch's postulates, however, demonstrate causation, as does the effectiveness of vaccines. > now, marc seems to be saying that exposure produces disease in all cases, > except when there are overriding influences (what he calls "confounding > factors"). kind of like, a balloon filled with helium *is* expected to fly > off into space. all well and good. That's not what I'm saying at all, but thanks for trying. What I'm saying is that when you look at alternative medicine, they claim cures without any scientifically proven cures but rather with anecdotes of cures. Those anecdotes do not deal with confounding factors, so they do not actually provide proof that the given regime in question actually provided a cure. That isn't so hard to understand, is it? > but unless we can *control* for the "confounding factors", to the extent > that we can predict with certainty in which cases exposure will produce > symptoms, then we have absolutely no idea what role, if any, exposure plays > in the development of symptoms. Science is all about controlling for confounding factors. That's why there is no such thing as alternative medicine. There is medicine that is scientifically proven to work at a given risk level and a given success rate, or there is medicine without proof that is usually based on pre-scientific ideas of how the human body and disease works that have been either been proven to be non-efficacious or they have yet to be sufficiently corrected for confounding factors to know if they are efficacious. Where the alt.med community falls down is they assume that their anecdotes provide proof, and hold to that believe like a god even when subsequent proof is provided contrary to their beliefs. > we only know that there's a correlation. but...because bacteria mutate to > fit their changing environments, we don't even know what the correlation > *is*. This is a red herring. We're not talking about bacterial mutation, we're talking about bacterial growth rates of a specific strain in extraordinarily complex chemical baths (which is pretty much what our bodies are). That is why you can separate correlation and causation and still not have 100% effectiveness. > as a practical matter, we know that those with healthy lifestyles tend to > be in health, and those with un-healthy lifestyles tend to be sickly. we > know that people with *very* healthy lifestyles don't get sick, ever. > (doug graham, for example, hasn't been sick in 25 years; loren lockman for > a similar period of time.) We know that people with healthy lifestyles still die from things like the swine flu, too. Lifestyle as a panacea won't get you very far. > the medical industry acknowledges as much, in saying that exposure will > only cause symptoms in "susceptible" subjects. pasteur himself conceded > the same: "the microbe is nothing; the terrain is everything." (see > for a treatment > of the debate between bechamp and pasteur.) I hope you do realize that the quote attributed to Pasteur that you cite above has been proven to be falsely attributed. None of his biographers prior to this bit of urban legend making the rounds ever attributed such a quote to him, and more recent biographers have found zero proof of any deathbed recantation. But let's say he had said that, so what? We have had more than 100 years of track record in public health since his death based on his pre-recantation theories that has proven to be extremely effective in increasing public health, reducing the risks of infectious diseases and increasing lifespans. > i should repeat, here, too, that vaccines are supposed to, "like > clockwork", prevent disease in all who take them; and drugs are supposed > to, "like clockwork", cure disease in all who eat them. no "generalities" > and "probabilities" here? Um, no they aren't. I was just prescribed levequin, an antibiotic. Want to hear what the script says in the package? "If you have certain conditions, you may need a dose adjustment or special tests to safely use Levaquin. Before you take Levaquin, tell your doctor if you have: a history of allergic reaction to an antibiotic; myasthenia gravis; joint problems; kidney or liver disease; seizures or epilepsy; diabetes; low levels of potassium in your blood (hypokalemia); or a personal or family history of "Long QT syndrome."" Does that sound like medicine works like "clockwork"??? If it were really that easy, we'd be living in Star Trek times where we'd just need a quick hypo of something or other and magically we'd be cured in seconds. > of course, in the real world we know that drugs don't cure, and vaccines > don't prevent, disease. Actually, we know in the real world with a very high degree of probability that drugs do cure and vaccines prevent disease. If you don't believe this, and believe that lifestyle is really the cause of all disease, how does this make you different from the medieval Church, who thought that disease were punishments for bad behavior? It is a pre-scientific voodoo belief with zero proof. Lifestyle changes are not unimportant, but to attribute them as the sole cause of disease is seriously off-base and quite dangerous. > everyone else in the world is wrong, and a small minority of heterodox > thinkers have...what, the secret to eternal life?> > > more "optimal" than "eternal". (although if you're into that kind of > thing, you might look into *Man The Unknown*, by alexis carrel.) and it's > only a "secret" to the extent that it's been ignored: as i say, the body of > literature is pretty impressive -- the quantity, i mean; some may, > sight-unseen, consider the quality as "crap"... > > and it's not that everyone else in the world is wrong; bur rather that > we've not been exposed to the works of the "heterodox thinkers". i'll > again just recommend one, a general overview: > . see if you don't find its reasoning to be > as sensible as can be. But we have been exposed to their thinking, and the thinking has been subjected to scientific investigation and found wanting. The idea that there are these poor misunderstood scientists out there who have THE TRUE INSIGHT (trademarked, of course) and they're being kept down by the man who has created an entire industry based on killing people with expensive medicine is conspiracy theory paranoia. > > outlive everyone else?> > > people that live healthfully from birth ought to, yes. Nice moving goalpost here. So if someone dies earlier than they should, then clearly it is their own fault, right, because clearly they had to have walked away from the straight and narrow. Fine--so how do you explain the nonogenarians we've all known in our lives who smoked two packs a day and ate nothing but rare beef but outlives their salad eating cousins? Or is it not that easy? Is it that health isn't supposed to work like clockwork, like you think that scientific medicines should work? > as discussed in the piece i posted earlier, the thinkers themselves often > tended not to follow their own advice. mainly, they were workaholics; > while one of NH's principle tenets is to take as much sleep as the body > asks for (i.e., never wake with an alarm clock). My girlfriend is a researcher for the NIH. She's never heard of not using an alarm clock as a tenet at all, much less as a principal tenet. > if interested, i've posted one installment of t.c. fry's *Master Health > Series* to . in it, he discusses > three tribes of exceedingly long-lived people, along with the people's > lifestyles. (one was the hunza, who you may recall were a bit of a cause > celebre in the '70s.) > > if anybody wants to hear the entire series, let me know, and i'll torrent > it somewhere. If this email is an example of the sort of stuff you're posting, don't mind if I pass on this. > > > for the nine-bajillionth time: NH disparages "alternative" therapies as > strongly as it does conventional. you won't find any recommendations for > herbs, supplements, "superfoods", crystals, magnets, acupuncture, or what > have you, among naturaly hygienists. as i've said, i agree that these are > the bunk. And they are. The germ theory of medicine, however, is not bunk. And besides, if the natural hygienists have any integrity, they'd be going around using their own form of medicine. After all, their own website says that getting smallpox correlated with a reduction in cancer death rates, so if they believe it why would they not go around injecting people with smallpox (or at least deliberately infecting people with it)? It would be for the greater good, as the website points out: http://naturalhygienesociety.org/review/0801/common_cold.html I'm sorry, Eddie, but this is just as crackpot as anything the other alternatives talk about. I read through a significant number of the pages there and this is complete and total non-sensical crap. You may as well just be a medieval Catholic praying for healing. > > doesn't cause that disease, not that germ theory itself is wrong.> > > but if no germ has ever, in 150 years' time, been shewn to cause any > disease, then...well, okay, yeah, it might still be theoretically possible. > but, should it really be considered accepted fact? It's a nice hypothetical, but as thousands of diseases have passed Koch's postulates, including AIDS, it's sort of a moot point. > for our own health? Not at all.> > > okay, i overstated the matter. but by saying "not at all", you've > understated it. 'cause we've got teevee news-anchors telling us that if we > don't eat our drugs, then that nasty, evil swine-flu virus is gonna strike > us down. or, it's, apparently, common belief that those living healthy > lifestyles might be spontaneously killed off by a heart attack. This is a strawman of the health profession based on news coverage, an industry that pays on sensationalism. Try reading JAMA or Lancet for an idea of the state of medical care instead of MSNBC and you'll be better off. As for people being killed off by heart attacks spontaneously, read up on Jim Fixx. The guy literally wrote the book on jogging, and died from a heart attack (as Denis Leary reminds us) while jogging. As I think I mentioned, I recently had knee surgery (tore my ACL again playing rugby), and after the surgery I was prescribed aspirin because blood clots from the surgery can break off and cause heart attacks or strokes. They don't happen out of thin air, but they do not have to be disease-related 100% of the time as you imply. > we're also, on the flip-side, to believe that no matter how much abuse we > heap upon our bodies, drugs give us a get-out-of-jail-free card. something > for nothing. we need not be responsible, in other words, for our actions > (so long as we can afford the drugs). I don't think any credible medical professional suggests that at all. > > all this shit up, vaccines would be a pretty pointless trick for them to > pull. Aside from the annual flu vaccine, usually one or two relatively > cheap shots are supposed to last the patient for years, even life. If you > really want to vaccuum the patient's bank account, the way to go is to > develop expensive treatments that must be taken continuously for life, a la > hypertension drugs.> > > well, why not have your cake and eat it, too? especially when your R&D is > publicly subsidised. > > every few years there's a new epidemic scare; and a new vaccine gets paid > for by the taxpayers. and the drug-makers are very closely linked with the > state bureaucracy. maybe it's a coincidence. i, personally, don't think > that it is. Every few years in the pre-scientific era there was an epidemic as well. They weren't necessarily recorded as new epidemics because they didn't know enough to understand that one strain of flu might be different from another. Does that mean the epidemics weren't new? And what about the epidemics of old diseases reappearing when vaccination rates drop below that of herd immunities? Seems as if you're the one who wants to look at his cake and eat it too. > < rather than eating drugs, eating *nothing*, drink only purified water. stay > in bed and rest, near an open window. note how quickly the symptoms > disappear, and compare to the times you've eaten drugs.>> > > of diseases and infections before vaccines and antibiotics were invented, > or lived after taking vaccines and antibiotics.> > > they were *fasting* and *resting*? and had access to fresh air and pure > water? i'll need a citation. Yawn. How about this--show me a study that fasting and resting and purified water near an open window has ever cured any infectious disease. You're the one with the extraordinary theory, so you should have the burden of proof. Marc ------------------------------ End of fegmaniax-digest V17 #210 ********************************