Have you read…?

From the #1 New York Timesbestselling author and master of narrative nonfiction comes the enthralling story of the sinking of the Lusitania, published to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the disaster

On May 1, 1915, a luxury ocean liner as richly appointed as an English country house sailed out of New York, bound for Liverpool, carrying a record number of children and infants. The passengers were anxious. Germany had declared the seas around Britain to be a war zone, and for months, its U-boats had brought terror to the North Atlantic. But the Lusitania was one of the era’s great transatlantic “Greyhounds” and her captain, William Thomas Turner, placed tremendous faith in the gentlemanly strictures of warfare that for a century had kept civilian ships safe from attack. He knew, moreover, that his ship–the fastest then in service–could outrun any threat.

Germany, however, was determined to change the rules of the game.

A really great book that sheds light on the USA entering the First World War and the sinking of the Lusitania is written by Erik Larson in Dead Wake.  This is a great read. You get to travel with the passengers on the Lusitania in 1915. It sheds light on how the Germans did not care if they sunk passenger liners with women and children, whether there was indeed ammunition on the Lusitania as claimed, and the clever code breaking done in secret. Also about Woodrow Wilson’s romance!

And a funny true little story –when the war broke out in 1904…

In Paris, the big fascination was the trial of Henriette Caillaux, wife of former prime minister Joseph Caillaux, arrested for killing the editor of the Paris newspaper LeFigaro after the newspaper had published an intimate letter that the prime minister had written to her before their marriage, when they were having an adulterous affair.

 

Enraged, Mrs. Caillaux bought a gun, practiced with it at the gunsmith’s shop, then went to the editor’s office and fired six times. In her testimony, offering an unintended metaphor for what was soon to befall Europe, she said, “These pistols are terrible things. They go off by themselves.” She was acquitted, after persuading the court that the murder was a crime of passion.

Yes and this is the horror story… and it is true!

‘We were smart enough to eradicate measles, but arrogant enough to invite it back. Welcome to a four-part series on the precise ways we’re fucking up 50 years of medical progress. ‘ By Leigh Cowart

The great Persian physician Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn Zakariyyāʾ al-Rāzī carefully documented  this little strand of RNA tucked in a protein envelope and which  has enjoyed a rare kind of notoriety, even in the shock-and-awe world of infectious diseases.

In 1529, the Spanish introduced it to Cuba, killing two out of three natives. Over the next decade or so, the virus ravaged Central America, decimating many populations and killing up to half of all Hondurans. And in 1693 in colonial America, Virginia governor Edmund Andros issued a proclamation for a “day of Humiliation and Prayer” in the hope of waylaying the virus.

It is one of the leading causes of death among young children, despite our ability to safely vaccinate against it. It is estimated that between the years of 2000 and 2013, vaccination has prevented 15.6 million deaths.

But please  read for yourself.

View at Medium.com

And if you are an anti vaccine being, hang you head in shame. THERE IS NO AND I STRESS ABSOLUTELY NO SCIENTIFIC PROOF THAT VACCINATION CAUSE AUTISM AND IF YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IT REMEMBER ONE PERSON WITH MEASLES CAN INFECT UP TO 18 UNVACIINATED PEOPLE AND SOME OF THEM MAY BE BABIES WHO WILL DIE.

The Boy who did not come back from Heaven

http://newsfeed.gawker.com/little-boy-who-claimed-to-die-and-visit-heaven-admits-h-1679811262?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

‘I did not go to heaven’: Paralyzed boy admits he made up best-selling book about how he ascended to paradise and met Jesus after car wreck.

Alex co-wrote the book with his father, pictured. He is now divorced from his mother and lives separately from his son

His story was made into the best-selling book The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven, which was co-authored with his father Kevin and first published in 2010.
The mother adds that Alex previously told a pastor that the book was made up, but was told the publication was ‘blessing’ people and to stay quiet.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2913259/Man-wrote-best-selling-book-saw-heaven-near-death-experience-six-year-old-admits-thing-up.html#ixzz3P3Ua9IhU
Some of the comments in the Dailymail are really very funny!

Was there not a similar case of a surgeon that also wrote a book about going to heaven but it was debunked by the doctors who attended to him?

So by the way near death experiences do have a neurological explanation about what happens when the brain is starved from oxygen. I am just saying. https://justfletcher.wordpress.com/2013/07/03/proof-of-heaven/

Is this a CONSPIRACY?

 

Interesting article about conspiracy theorists. I have always said and I am saying it again,  they  conspiracy theorists, hav e an (interesting ) not so balanced psychological profile with a ‘ touch of ‘ paranoia of course. No point arguing with them either.I have known a  few, say no more!

 

Once you buy into the first conspiracy theory, the next one seems that much more plausible.

To believe that the U.S. government planned or deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks, you’d have to posit that President Bush intentionally sacrificed 3,000 Americans. To believe that explosives, not planes, brought down the buildings, you’d have to imagine an operation large enough to plant the devices without anyone getting caught. To insist that the truth remains hidden, you’d have to assume that everyone who has reviewed the attacks and the events leading up to them—the CIA, the Justice Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, scientific organizations, peer-reviewed journals, news organizations, the airlines, and local law enforcement agencies in three states—was incompetent, deceived, or part of the cover-up.

Conspiracy theory psychology is becoming an empirical field with a broader mission: to understand why so many people embrace this way of interpreting history. As you’d expect, distrust turns out to be an important factor. But it’s not the kind of distrust that cultivates critical thinking.

The common thread between distrust and cynicism, as defined in these experiments, is a perception of bad character. More broadly, it’s a tendency to focus on intention and agency, rather than randomness or causal complexity. In extreme form, it can become paranoia. In mild form, it’s a common weakness known as the fundamental attribution error—ascribing others’ behavior to personality traits and objectives, forgetting the importance of situational factors and chance. Suspicion, imagination, and fantasy are closely related.

Read it for yourself!

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/11/conspiracy_theory_psychology_people_who_claim_to_know_the_truth_about_jfk.single.html

 

 

Exciting Times!

Exciting times! Indeed.

European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission successfully placed a small spacecraft on the surface of a speeding comet on Wednesday. Now maybe we will find out of comets filled the oceans of the Earth! Maybe we could find out of organic material exists on comets which could mean life was seeded from outer space.

But of course this news is not for the faint hearted, creationists and conspiracy theorists.

For scientists, one of the central mysteries that Rosetta will explore is whether Earth’s oceans are filled with melted comets.

Since the rocky bits that came together to form the planet were dry, water has to have come from somewhere else. One possibility is that comets slamming into the Earthearly on seeded it with water. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/science/space/european-space-agencys-spacecraft-lands-on-comets-surface.html

And how big exactly is Rosetta’s comet? Compared to Los Angeles very big.

 

http://www.iflscience.com/space/graphic-shows-size-rosettas-comet

Science!

 

People who take non scientific stuff as gospel make me

 

Maybe I am the crazy one?

Crazy people are not locked up, they walk the streets (of Hollywood too)!

Somebody sent me this clip and thought I may enjoy it. Well you have to define enjoy I suppose but my reply was that maybe she committed a crime and wants to claim insanity.
In the latest episode of ‘Gwyneth Paltrow states the absolute ridiculous’, the actress has claimed that saying negative things to water can hurt its feelings.

WATER?

OK but I think I prefer Shirley Valentine talking to the wall.

I am thinking of getting this book:-

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, May 2014: A successful young author suffering from writer’s block journeys to New Hampshire to visit his former professor. Shortly after he arrives, the bones of a girl are found buried in the professor’s backyard. Now the professor has been arrested for the murder of the girl–who disappeared in 1975 at the age of fifteen–and the author has an idea: he will write a book based on the case that will ultimately exonerate his professor and jumpstart his writing. Already a massive best seller in Europe (and translated into 32 languages), The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair arrives in North America amid such wild praise you might expect something groundbreaking. Instead, what you get is a wonderful, fun, and boisterous read, a book with an uncanny ability to both fascinate and amuse you. Twists and turns and oddball characters make this a rollicking bullet-train of a novel. –Chris Schluep

Anybody read it?

About a Queen (in drag?)

The bones of Elizabeth I, Good Queen Bess, lie mingled with those of her sister, Bloody Mary, in a single tomb at Westminster Abbey. But are they really royal remains — or evidence of the greatest conspiracy in English history?

If that is not the skeleton of Elizabeth Tudor, the past four centuries of British history have been founded on a lie.

Bram Stoker  most famous as the author of Dracula had heard persistent stories that a coffin had been discovered by a clergyman at Bisley during the early 1800s, with the skeleton of a girl dressed in Tudor finery, even with gems sewn onto the cloth.

It seemed to chime with local legends persisting for centuries that an English monarch had been, in reality, a child from the village.

Above all, Stoker believed, it was the most plausible explanation why Elizabeth, who succeeded to the throne in 1558, aged 25, never married.

American author Steve Berry believes Elizabeth could have been telling the literal truth — that she had the heart of a man, because her body was male. He has spent 18 months researching the conspiracy for his novel The King’s Deception, a Dan Brown-style thriller set in 21st-century London.

 I don’t read Dan the man but does that mean I have to skip Steve too?

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337774/Is-proof-Virgin-Queen-imposter-drag-Shocking-new-theory-Elizabeth-I-unearthed-historic-manuscripts.html#ixzz2VvD49tcL

 

All a Conspiracy?

 

We often read about conspiracy theories which one could define as a projection of fiction into some event (sic). There are some albeit few studies which seeks to uncover what distinguish ‘ believers’ from ‘non-believers’ – a kind of psychological profile if you want.

 

It does seem that it helps people gain some measure of understanding / control over an unpredictable world (Applied Cognitive Psychology).

 

The following characteristics are mentioned:- taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority (WHO DOES NOT?) , endorsing democratic practices, feeling generally suspicious toward others and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook.  One of the authors of the study calls it “selective skepticism.”

 

But what I find so interesting is that believers are highly doubtful about information from the government or other sources they consider suspect (not that I blame them ) BUT without criticism, believers accept any source that supports their preconceived views. Jumping to conclusions based on limited evidence.

 

“It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone’s fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I’m one of Us. I must be. I’ve certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We’re always one of Us. It’s Them that do the bad things.”

— Terry Pratchett, Jingo