You will get emails when I post a new blog. You will not get them for any other reason. I post on average 4 times a month. Each email will have a link to unsubscribe. You will not get any spam from me or Blog-Alert.
Turns out this isn't the first panic over "swine flu"
Only 1 person died from swine flu in 1976. Hundreds of Americans were killed or seriously injured by the inoculation the government gave them to stave off the virus.
Of course it isn't just about ratings and selling papers. Some of it is human nature. I think we enjoy panicking.
I understand that people have a hard time taking history into account. If it didn't happen in one's own lifetime it becomes an abstraction, and therefor not something to learn from. But "bird" flu was only, what, 3 years ago? The "global pandemic" of bird flu killed a little over 200 people world-wide over the course of about 5 years.
Before that was y2k. It was supposed to shut down every computer, crippling all of modern civilization.
The supposed financial "crises" hasn't even wore itself out, and already we are on to our next one.
I stopped watching/reading "news" a long time ago, and yet somehow I keep hearing about this stuff.
I keep imagining to myself that somehow humanity is going to collectively stop being so stupid.
I know how terribly deluded I am.
I think I should just give in.
Anyone know where I can buy one of those masks?
We consider it medicine. We use anti-life to keep us alive.
We don't like to think that we are animals. The "higher" primates. "More" evolved - if a specie is still here, its equally highly evolved. We are more recently evolved.
We like to think our motives are better, more pure or more altruistic - we want to make the world a better place, which shows we have souls, we are not animalistic motivated by lust and hunger and fear. But altruism is common is social species, it is animalistic; and we are motivated by lust, hunger, and fear.
We teach our children early on - not on purpose, but by example, that things that are slimy are "gross". Amphibians, for example.
I can barely imagine a more pleasant sensual experience than a Japanese "SoapLand" - all slimy and slippery and soft and squishy and squirmy.
We, humanity, most societies, are antagonistic toward even just the concept of sex. We take it as given that knowing that sex exists will harm, or at least confuse children. Sex is bad for children? Without sex there are no children! Sex is life. We're not going to learn how to bud off clone offspring anytime soon.
We like everything purified and sanitized. Sanitized for your protection. Antibiotic. Wouldn't want to make your immune system have to work. Don't drink the water. The people who live in second and third world countries drink the water everyday, and they haven't all died. We avoid dirt. Dirt is soil. Soil grows plants, primary producers, that every other specie depends on for sustenance. Dirt is life. We can't photosynthesize. We need dirt. A little dirt with your water, with your food, it won't hurt you. What other specie drinks water only after its been distilled, or reverse osmosised. Its unnatural.
We can see, we can hear, we can feel, we can taste, we can smell. We don't seem to care much for smell. Things have scents. Saying something "smells" is synonymous in our language for something smells bad. As though every smell were bad. Something is making a sound doesn't automatically mean a gratingly annoying sound. Most creatures that smell, they use it, they recognize each other by smell, they find food. We don't like each others smell. We wash it away. We deodorize it. The fact that we overly concentrate it with clothing even on a warm day certainly doesn't help. Most animals don't like the small of strong chemicals, but who else finds the smell of their own species to be gross?
Some of the best things about being alive, like sex and food and some of the best play, is slimy and smelly and dirty and filled with bacteria - but not the kind of bacteria that are going to kill you.
We don't find much visual stimulus to be repulsive. Seems like half of all scents stinks to someone.
If we are protected from life, what is the point of living?
Why would anyone want to ingest something which is called an "anti-biotic"?
Step 1:
Sell your car. Buy a bicycle. Ride it to work, and to the store, and everywhere else you need to go. Better yet, run. Yes, you can do it. Guess what people do in countries where there are no cars? Guess what humans did before cars were invented? Ever see a fat cave man?
What you mean is "I don't desire to be healthy if it means inconvenience!" Quit whining and either accept that you will die of a heart attack before you reach 50, or go post an ad for your car.
Step 2:
Become vegetarian. Throw out all the stupid "low-fat" this and "carb" that. It's all worthless junk trying to get fat people's dollars. It is unnatural and unhealthy for humans to eat mammals. Fish is OK, poultry in moderation is OK. Also, stop eating crap like cakes and pies and ice cream. Too difficult to give up fast food? Then you don't really want to be healthy. Stop pretending that you do. Instant gratification is clearly more important than either your appearance or your health.
People try to rationalize that weight genetic. Right, because as we all know, Americans are genetically all the same. This explains why Americans have a greater obesity rate than any other country in the world, in all of history, it's the United Statesian Fat Gene.
Being over weight is voluntary. It results from a culture of laziness. We have more cars than drivers in this country. Every TV comes with a remote. You wouldn't want to have to get up and walk the three feet to the TV! We are a nation which watches sports on TV instead of getting up and PLAYING them.
Imagine this:
A corporation takes out a patent on your name. Now, if you ever write or speak your own name, you owe that corporation money. If you introduce yourself to someone new, sign a document, or send an e-mail with your name as the sender, you owe them money, and they get to decide how much. Or if they wanted, they could say you can't use it at all. If you do, you could be sued and ultimately jailed for violating the law, because they have a valid patent.
In reality, you can change your name or use a different one. You can't change you genes. They are more personal to you than your fingerprints or retina patterns.
More importantly, they hold clues to diagnosis, and cures, of all sorts of genetically related diseases including cancer and heart disease. Not only could this be important to an individual, but gene patenting prevents any company or individual from doing research on the patented gene except the patenting company. If the company which first took out the patent on a particular gene chooses not to do research, the research doesn't get done at all.
Gene patenting is happening.
In fact, 20% of your genes have been patented already.
Legally, you can not learn your own gene sequence without the approval - and fees - of dozens of differant pharmaceutical and biotech corporations and companies.
Although this is the most extreme example, the fact is that the very concept of patenting puts profit of the wealthy above the advancement of humanity. It slows the advancement of technology, because when one person comes up with a good idea, no one else can build upon it without paying them.
Imagine if Leonardo DaVinci, Galileo, or Pasture had to deal with patent laws like the ones we have today. Einstien and the Curries did not work so they could become billionaires; they worked because of interest in science.
Imagine if fire, the wheel, the bow and arrow, clothing, bread, were patented. Someone had to come up with these things, but they spread, and were improved upon through out all of humanity ultimately to the benifit of everyone.
If corporations will not research medical advancment without profit as an incentive, then it should be taken over, like all other aspects of societal benefit with no profit to be made, by the goverment.
That is the one thing government is actually good for - providing those things to society which can not be sustained through the free market economy, like roads, fire departments, the military, weather sattelites, social security, public schools - things which don't produce any profit but which are nessecary to have a complex socitey and all the comforts and conveniences we take for granted. These are things which we all agree everyone should have access to, even if they aren't wealthy, like school and emergency health care. Having unrestricted access to your own genetic make-up should be a basic human right; it should go without saying.
On the other hand, having unrestricted profit should not be a basic human right. No one ever earns billions of dollars. Earns - as in: actually makes it through hard work and ingenuity. Marketing, patents, monopolies, and government contracts through bribes and corruption don't count as earning any more than robbery does. Yes, you CAN make money those ways, but no individual would willingly pay you for it, because it offers no benefit to them.
We as a society need to realize the differance and decide if we really wish to allow our leaders (both the government and the CEOs) to prioritize their own profits over the betterment of life for all.
