Can time speed up or slow down? According to Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, yes it can! Time acceleration plays an important role for your health, because it can cause you to age faster or slower. In this article, I will explain some important fundamental aspects of how time works and how it relates to your health.
The strange thing about time is that it is not always constant like how we are conditioned to believe. Below is a quote from wikipedia.org.
“When two observers are in relative uniform motion, and far away from any gravitational mass, the point of view of each will be that the other’s (moving) clock is ticking at a slower rate than the local clock. The faster the relative velocity, the greater the magnitude of time dilation. This case is sometimes called special relativistic time dilation. It is often interpreted as time “slowing down” for the other (moving) clock. But that is only true from the physical point of view of the local observer, and of others at relative rest”
The quote above is basically saying that a moving object and an object at rest will experience time at a different speed. The short video clip below should help clarify this concept.
Einstein did a good job explaining how time and space were related, but he missed many important aspect of how they worked. Modern physicists have been filling some of the holes that Einstein had missed, but they still have not grasped what time really is. What most modern physicists failed to notice is that time is not linear, but simultaneous and it does not move. The idea of time being linear is an idea that is preventing modern physicists from discovering many secrets about the Universe. Fortunately, there are some physicists who are starting to realize that time works in a simultaneous fashion.
What is linear time?
When you experience linear time, you are experiencing a multidimensional and holographic illusion created by the refraction of particles and anti-particles which pulsate and spin at different speeds and angular rotations. Pulsation is an important feature of time, because the way particles pulsate at various rhythms is what gives us the illusion of time.
Below is an excerpt from my book Staradigm about linear time.
“Linear time is achieved when an observer’s consciousness moves through portions of the unified field of time. It is important to know that time does not move. It only seems to move when the observer’s consciousness moves through it. The illusion of linear time is similar to watching a movie using an old projector. When the reel of the projector is still, there are no linear actions or movements. It is only when the reel starts moving that you see the images being projected as linear actions'”
Time acceleration and your health
Time acceleration is nothing new to NASA, special groups in the military and certain engineers who design special machines that rely on energy vibration. These people knew since the early 1980s that time has been accelerating. Before 1980 Earth’s base pulse frequency, also known as Earth’s “heartbeat,” was vibrating at a constant frequency. After 1980 Earth’s “heartbeat” started to increase. This changed in frequency caused problems to certain machines that were designed to rely on Earth’s “heartbeat.” As a result, these machines had to be adjusted or their calculations would be off.
Here is another excerpt from my book Staradigm about how time acceleration affects your health.
‘The human body and mind are also attuned to mother Earth’s heartbeat. As her heartbeat accelerates, so does the human body and mind. This accelerated pulsation gives you the illusion that time is speeding up. This is why you have been experiencing this strange phenomenon since the 1980s. The increase in mother Earth’s pulsation rate can cause negative health effects on your body if you do not adjust your body’s pulsation rate to match hers. If your body cannot increase its pulsation rate to match mother Earth’s pulsation rate, this will cause accelerated cellular deterioration. Common symptoms of time acceleration are fatigue, emotional and mental problems, and stress.”
Margaret and I have just returned from a trip to beautiful Lake Shasta in Northern California. Well … it was “more” beautiful a few years ago. This year we actually walked on the bottom of the lake in knee-high water. The drought has lowered the lake’s normal water line over 150 feet from previous years. Seventy percent of the lake’s capacity has dried up due to California’s severe drought.
The fact that California is running out of water and that its contribution to the country’s food economy, which represents 53% of the US food source, is not existent, has received only minor attention in the news. Accordingly, the mass media news organizations collectively decide not to publish negative stories to which they feel the public cannot alter or actively make a response. This is the old “ostrich with its head in the sand” approach to global problems.
This “for our own good news blackout” strategy specifically applies to stories on the planet’s 6th mass extinction, a planetary upheaval we are now facing. The extinction process has profound influence on the current state of our world (see news article attached below). However, the fact is that we CAN collectively alleviate this impending devolution process, for science has recognized that human behavior is the primary cause behind today’s extinction.
This month’s news video provides some positive insights into our ability to forestall the mass extinction so that we may be able to offer our children, grand children and future generations a world in which they can thrive.
With Love and Light,
Bruce
Scientists Warn We Are Approaching The Next Mass Extinction
July 25, 2014 | by Justine Alford
Photo credit: Mary Harrsch. “Southern White Rhinocerous looks us over at Wildlife Safari
near Winston Oregon,” via Flickr. CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
The decline of various animal populations and species loss are occurring at alarming rates on Earth, contributing to the world’s sixth mass extinction. While these deadly events may ultimately pave way for the emergence of new species, Stanford scientists have warned that if this “defaunation” that we are currently experiencing continues, it will likely have serious downstream impacts on human health. The study has been published in Science.
Biodiversity on Earth is extremely rich at present; it’s estimated to be the highest in the history of life on our planet. But scientists have been recording species abundance and population numbers for some time now and it is evident that we are experiencing a sharp downward trend. While the extinction of a species is normal and occurs at a natural “background” rate of around 1-5 per year, species loss is currently occurring at over 1,000 times the background rate.
Thanks to the fossil record, we are very familiar with large extinction events. Indeed, there have been 5 mass extinctions throughout the history of life on Earth, but there is a key difference between these past events and what is happening presently: humans are almost entirely to blame for the current mass extinction. Climate change, pollution, deforestation and overharvesting are all contributing factors. While it’s difficult to be certain of the causes of the previous mass extinctions, they have been attributed to natural events such as supervolcano eruptions and asteroid strikes.
By reviewing literature and analyzing various data sets, scientists have found that since 1500, 322 terrestrial vertebrates have become extinct. The remaining species are also suffering a 25% average decline in abundance. Invertebrates are also experiencing a huge blow with 67% of monitored populations showing 45% average abundance decline.
Among vertebrate species, it is estimated that up to 33% are threatened or endangered. Large animals, or megafauna, seem to be most affected, mirroring past mass extinctions. This is because large animals tend to have low population growth rates, produce few offspring and require large habitats to sustain viable populations.
Loss of megafauna has various downstream effects and may eventually impact human health. For example, studies conducted in Kenya where patches of land were isolated from large animals such as zebras and elephants found that the areas rapidly became plagued with rodents due to increases in food availability and shelter. Concomitantly, the levels of disease causing pathogens that they carry also increases, thus enhancing the risk of disease transmission to humans.
But it’s not just big animals that have an impact. Various insect species such as bees are valuable pollinators. According to a Cornell study, honeybees and other insects contributed $29 billion to farm income in the US in 2010. Furthermore, insects also play pivotal roles in nutrient cycling and decomposition, contributing to ecosystem productivity.
Lead author Rodolfo Dirzo hopes that raising awareness of the consequences of this ongoing mass extinction may stimulate much needed change, but acknowledges that solutions are far from simple given that approaches need to be tailored to individual areas and situations.
[Header image, “Southern White Rhinocerous looks us over at Wildlife Safari near Winston Oregon,” by Mary Harrsch, via Flickr, used in accordance with CC BY-NC-SA 2.0]
Young man, be aware of these four good-hearted friends: the helper, the friend who endures in good times and bad, the mentor, and the compassionate friend.
The helper can be identified by four things: by protecting you when you are vulnerable, and likewise your wealth, being a refuge when you are afraid, and in various tasks providing double what is requested.
The enduring friend can be identified by four things: by telling you secrets, guarding your own secrets closely, not abandoning you in misfortune, and even dying for you.
The mentor can be identified by four things: by restraining you from wrongdoing, guiding you towards good actions, telling you what you ought to know, and showing you the path to samsaric heavens.
The compassionate friend can be identified by four things: by not rejoicing in your misfortune, delighting in your good fortune, preventing others from speaking ill of you, and encouraging others who praise your good qualities.
DNA is essential to any scientific understanding of life. One strand of the double-helix holds the complete code that is needed to clone an entire organism. The process of DNA formation is one that is now up for debate, as the fundamentals of quantum physics aim to explain how DNA begins as a wave-form rather than a molecule. This new idea suggests that the universe is composed of an invisible wave-pattern complex that forms matter by the exertion of micro gravitational forces. On a molecular scale, information in the form of waves pulls atoms and molecules in to create more complex structures, such as DNA. So if these wave patterns were visible, empty space would appear as a fluid geometric patterns, such as the shape of a DNA strand, and would pull in atoms to form a physical replica of the wave-pattern.
New research reveals some remarkable properties of DNA which suggests that a “hidden force” plays a role in the formation of life in the universe .
In a study published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry by London Imperial College Department of Chemistry, the idea of micro gravitational forces forming matter out of wave patterns was witnessed in person. Dr. Sergey Leikin placed different types of DNA in a salt water solution, and differentiated the various strands by coloring them. Remarkably, the colored DNA were drawn to one and another moving very far distances to find the corresponding matches, and in time every DNA strand was paired up correctly. Although Dr. Leikin equated the phenomenon with possible electrical charges, other research revealed that gravity was the likely culprit.
In an astonishing experiment performed by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Luc Montagnier, DNA was randomly created out of nothing but sterilized water. The experiment used two separate sealed test tubes, one containing sterilized water and the other carrying both sterilized water and DNA. After electrifying both tubes and letting the tubes sit for eighteen hours, Dr. Montagnier was surprised to see that the tube that had originally contained nothing but water had produced tiny DNA strands. This was a shock for many reasons, mainly because water only contains hydrogen and oxygen and a DNA molecule is much more complex. How could something like this possibly happen? It seemed as though the DNA had “teleported” from one tube to the other, like they were connected by an unknown force.
Could this experiment reveal that forces of the universe are constantly trying to form life where ever it can by hidden micro gravitational waves? In 1984, a Russian scientist by the name of Dr. Peter Gariaev discovered another remarkable property of DNA, in which each strand had the naturally tendency to absorb and store hundreds to thousands of photons (light particles). Dr. Gariaev placed DNA inside a small quartz container, and to his surprise the DNA absorbed every photon in the room. Gravity is the only force that we know of that can bend light so therefore Dr. Gariaev’s experiment reinforced the idea of a hidden micro gravitational force.
Things got even stranger when Dr. Gariaev removed the DNA from the quartz container. To his amazement the photons that had originally been absorbed by the DNA stayed in the quartz container in the exact shape of the DNA. Anyone would have thought that the photons should have scattered, but there seemed to be an unknown force keeping the photons in place. Dr. Gariaev blasted the photons with nitrogen gas to disperse them, and within minutes the photons were drawn back to the same area and formed the same “phantom” DNA shape. This experiment suggests that gravity has a quantum structure and can exist without the presence of matter, permeating throughout the entire universe. If our DNA can store light, then could cosmic rays have an effect on the structure?
These discoveries could provide massive implications for science and our understanding of the universe. If gravity has quantum intelligent properties, then it could be proof that life exists or has the ability to form all throughout the universe. Further DNA studies revealed even more interesting abilities of the molecule when Italian scientist Pier Luigi Ighina was able to transform a living apricot tree into an apple tree by zapping it with DNA wave information. Ighina also zapped a rat with the DNA-wave of a cat, causing the rat to grow a cat-like tail within days. These experiments support the idea that DNA forms from information waves, and from this knowing we can suggest that our evolution may have been influenced by cosmic rays carrying encoded information from our Sun.
It is surprising that such astounding discoveries haven’t made it to the forefront of the mainstream media. These discoveries could change the foundation of physics and biochemistry as we know it. There is now evidence to suggest that an intelligent force is guiding the evolution of life throughout the universe which brings us another step closer to understanding the divine mysteries of our existence within the cosmos.
What Battlestar Galactica Can Teach Us About the Militarization of Police
“There’s a reason you separate the military and the police. One fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
In Battlestar Galactica there’s a scene where President Laura Roslyn and chief military Commander William Adama debate how to respond to the potential rioting of civilians. In the absence of a police force capable of handling the situation, Roslyn wants the military to police the civilians. Adama tells her the military won’t be her cops.
“There’s a reason you separate the military and the police,” he says. “One fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”
It’s difficult to imagine a more succinct warning for what’s unfolding in Missouri right now. The images coming out of Ferguson show police who are militarizing their policing tactics because they believe they cannot maintain law and order through regular policing. Police cars and batons have been traded for armored vehicles, tear gas, and assault weapons.
It is worth asking: Do Americans consider this behavior within the acceptable range of police enforcement?
This unfolding military-style policing highlights how difficult it is to determine what reasonable limits we should expect from our civilian police forces. Police do not possess absolute authority, nor do they wield the powers of the military. Yet many ordinary people are unsure what limits are, or should be, in place to restrict police behavior—or what lines should be drawn to protect citizens from the police.
Recent events have proved Adama is right.
The phrase “Hands Up Don’t Shoot” reflects the growing disparity between what citizens consider acceptable behavior from our police forces and what police forces often consider to be within their power.
For the past two weeks, we have seen images of police in camouflage aiming assault rifles at citizens, arresting journalists, and using tear gas on protesters. It is worth asking: Do Americans consider this behavior within the acceptable range of police enforcement?
Pew recently asked this question, and the response shows a clear division: Among African Americans, 65 percent of respondents said police response in Ferguson has “gone too far,” and 32 percent of white respondents agreed. So there’s no consensus on what the limits of police behavior should be. This makes determining the limits of American policing complicated.
Perhaps this is why popular culture so frequently explores these questions. The militarization of civilian police and the role of protests in police states are subjects that arise regularly in movies and television—especially in science fiction.
Here are four scenes that question the corrupting power of police authority.
1. Battlestar Galactica
In “Water,” the second episode of Season 1, a sleeper Cylon (Cylons are the robots that destroyed human civilization) who is secretly embedded on the central military battleship (Galactica) places explosives near the water tanks. The bombs detonate, the holding tanks explode, and 60 percent of water reserves are lost. The lost water means that one-third of the civilian population will run out of water in two days. Adama, the military commander, immediately orders the civilian ships to begin emergency water rationing.
The second in command predicts this action will create riots. “Civilians don’t like hearing they can’t take a bath, wash their clothes, or drink more than a thimble a day,” he warns. And he turns out to be right.
President Roslyn implores Adama to police the riots with military forces:
President Roslyn: Rioting broke out on the cruise ship when they reduced water rations. We need to demonstrate an ability to maintain order, and we need to do it now. Commander Adama: We don’t have extra manpower for fleet security. Roslyn: You have the only armed, disciplined force available. Adama: Yeah, but I’m not going to be your policeman. There’s a reason you separate the military and the police. One fights the enemy of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people. Roslyn: I appreciate the complexity of the issue, and I won’t let that happen.
Over the next four seasons of Battlestar, the role of the military in civil society is explored in exceptional detail. The show, which debuted in 2004, addresses the rise of terrorism and the control of Homeland Security, a fear of foreign peoples, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, restrictions on the press, and military-style policing.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
In the Hunger Games series, the people of Panem already live in a militarized police state. Order is maintained by “Peacekeepers” through any means necessary, including lethal force and public execution.
On a “victory tour” after winning the Hunger Games, victors Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark pay tribute to a young girl named Rue from District 11, who aided Katniss in the competition before she was eventually killed by another player.
In a show of solidarity, a man from District 11 makes the three-fingered salute, an illegal hand-gesture Katniss used in the Games. Soon, the rest of the district follows suit. The police, recognizing the dissent unfolding, seek to quell any further disobedience.
They drag the elderly black man who sparked the dissent in front of the crowd. Then, the cops shoot him.
The brief moments of rebellion that unfold in this moment are seen through the eyes of Katniss, and her horror of this execution reveals much what The Hunger Games are built on: the abuse of power, the subjugation of the poor, and the division of people by race and employment. These divisions are upheld by a police force with absolute power and enforced on people who have become enemies and slaves.
The Dark Knight
It is hard to imagine a stronger justification for the abuse of power over citizens than the beating and torture of a “bad guy” in custody.
In a very real sense, the central question of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy is about the very same question William Adama raises: How far we are willing to let our protectors go to keep us safe?
The Dark Knight Trilogy is filled with scenes that warn against the militarization of police forces. Batman Begins starts with police (paid by the mob) using brutal tactics to patrol the streets; The Dark Knight Rises ends by asking what it means to protect a city and its people from a madman.
But no scene raises the point more clearly than the interrogation (torture, really) of the Joker by Batman in The Dark Knight. It is hard to imagine a stronger justification for the abuse of power over citizens than the beating and torture of a “bad guy” in custody.
The Joker has abducted two people: District Attorney Harvey Dent, and Dent’s fiancee, Rachel Dawes. He has since been arrested by Gotham PD. To find out what the Joker has done with Rachel and Harvey, Police Chief Jim Gordon has locked the Joker in an interrogation room and handed the room over to the Batman.
“You have all these rules,” the Joker says, taunting Batman. “The only way to live in this world is without rules.” The Joker rightly predicts that Batman will go apeshit on him.
Batman reaches so far beyond the dictates of acceptable superhero behavior (at one point spying on every Gotham resident simultaneously) that even his allies question whether he has lost his moral tether to his position as hero.
Others have noted these themes in The Dark Knight trilogy. The philosopher Slavoj Zizek has considered how the series engages an era of anxiety over capitalism, terrorism, and the Occupy movement. He notes the irony of handing over the protection of society to a mega-rich arms dealer moonlighting as a moral authority figure.
But Zizek also notes the necessary “event” underlying the actions of the series, which is the power of the people reclaiming authority over society, wrested out the hands of villains and heroes.
Minority Report:
In Minority Report, a film based on Philip K. Dick’s 1956 short story, the police have access to a group pre-cognitive psychics who can predict murder. The Pre-Crime unit of the police force uses this information to stop murders before they occur. With absolute authority, they capture murderers before they act, place them into a catatonic state, and imprison them underground.
But herein lies the same old question about the limits of law enforcement: If you arrest a murderer before a murder is committed, did you not just arrest an innocent civilian?
If it didn’t happen, how can you be guilty? What right do the police have to seize an innocent man?
Early in Minority Report, this question is addressed by Detective John Anderton of the Pre-Crime unit, and Danny Witwer, a Department of Justice official sent to investigate the program.
Witwer asks whether the police have the right to arrest a man before his crime is committed. In response, Anderton rolls a ball off the edge of his desk. Witwer catches it.
Anderton: Why did you catch it? Witwer: Because it was going to fall. Anderton: You’re certain? Witwer: Yes. Anderton: But it didn’t fall. You caught it. The fact that you prevented it from happening doesn’t change the fact that it was going to happen.
Thus the authority of the Pre-Crime unit is established. The question of individual guilt has been determined in the minds of the guilty before they even reach the crime scene.
The police are meant to serve and protect. But here, preventative lock-up is used as a tool to keep the “inevitably guilty” off the streets and away from the law-abiding public, in a justice system that provides police an almost absolute authority to clean up the streets. That hardly sounds like science fiction.
The protests underway in Ferguson have already begun to calm, and the images of dramatic military policing will in time fade from our screens. But the importance of such moments in the public imagination should not likewise disappear.
We are constantly faced with the civic and moral questions surrounding police forces. Anytime, the events in Ferguson could unfold in the lives of American citizens anywhere.
Which makes wrestling with these questions all the more necessary.
Science fiction has long been a place to wrestle with collective social complexities. As we remember what happened in Ferguson, let’s also draw from the stories that caution us against turning our civil rights over to an unrestricted power.
The megaliths of Stonehenge, which were raised above England’s Salisbury Plain some 5,000 years ago, may be among the most extensively studied archaeological features in the world. Still, the monument is keeping secrets.
Scientists have just unveiled the results of a four-year survey of the landscape around Stonehenge. Using non-invasive techniques like ground-penetrating radar, the researchers detected signs of at least 17 previously unknown Neolithic shrines.
“Stonehenge is undoubtedly a major ritual monument, which people may have traveled considerable distances to come to, but it isn’t just standing there by itself,” project leader Vincent Gaffney, an archaeologist at the University of Birmingham in the U.K., told Live Science. “It’s part of a much more complex landscape with processional and ritual activities that go around it. That’s very different from how this has been viewed before. The important point is Stonehenge is not alone. There was lots of other associated ritual activity going on around it.”
cholars still aren’t sure why Stonehenge was built, as the monument’s Neolithic creators left behind no written records. But the ruins, which align with the sun during the solstices, stand as an impressive feat of prehistoric engineering. The biggest stones at the site, known as sarsens, are up to 30 feet (9 meters) tall and weigh 25 tons (22.6 metric tons); they are believed to have been dragged from Marlborough Downs, 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the north.
At the newfound satellite shrines around Stonehenge, Gaffney and his team revealed underground impressions, presumably left by wooden post holes, stones and ditches — some of which extend up to 13 feet (4 m) deep. Images created with geophysical prospecting tools show that some of these smaller monuments had a concentric circle design, much like Stonehenge.
The researchers also peered inside the Cursus, an immense prehistoric enclosure to the north of Stonehenge that dates back to about 3500 B.C. Stretching about 1.8 miles (3 km) long and 330 feet (100 m) wide, the Cursus had been deemed a barrier to Stonehenge, but it was so big that no one really knew what was inside of it, said Gaffney.
When the researchers surveyed this area, they found a large pit buried on the eastern end of the Cursus. This pit was aligned with Stonehenge’s “avenue,” a processional path that lines up with the sun at dawn during the mid-summer solstice. The team also found a matching pit at the other end of the Cursus. This pit is aligned with the Heel Stone at the entrance to Stonehenge, which is aligned with sunset during the solstice, Gaffney said.
“Suddenly, you’ve got a link between this very large monument and Stonehenge through two massive pits, which appear to be aligned on the sunrise and sunset on the mid-summer solstice,” Gaffney said.
The researchers also mapped dozens of burial mounds in the area, including a long barrow that dates back to an era before Stonehenge. The team detected a timber building buried inside the mound, and the project leaders think this structure might have been used for the ritual inhumation and defleshing of the dead.
Gaffney said it will take his team about a year just to process all the data they collected during their 120 days of fieldwork over the span of four years. And then it will likely be up to English Heritage (the government body in charge of archaeological and historic sites) to decide which features to dig up in a more traditional excavation. Further study should help reveal the ages of these monuments, pits and burial mounds, and help explain how Stonehenge evolved over time.
(Check out link below for Smithsonian Video.)
The findings were revealed as part of the British Science Festival and will be featured in a new BBC Two series, “Operation Stonehenge: What Lies Beneath,” which will air in the U.K. Thursday (Sept. 11) at 8 p.m. BST. A U.S. version of the special, dubbed “Stonehenge Empire,” will air on the Smithsonian Channel Sept. 21 at 8 p.m. ET/PT. The Stonehenge Hidden Landscapes Project is led by the University of Birmingham with the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Archaeological Prospection and Virtual Archaeology.
Let’s be completely honest. Nobody REALLY likes spiders. Even if they are completely harmless little things, nobody really wants spiders hanging around inside their house. But, how do you repel them naturally without hurting them, and without exposing your family to any potentially harmful chemicals? Read on for the answers you are looking for!
Mint Them Out
Did you know that spiders HATE peppermint? Most people don’t! An easy way to keep spiders from invading your space is to fill a spray bottle with peppermint essential oil and water, and then spray it around your home. Plus, your home will smell great!!
The cheapest and most organic way to repel spiders naturally is probably not the easiest! Keeping your home neat, tidy and free of dust or webs is the best way to keep spiders from moving in. Regular vacuuming, dusting, and de-cluttering will keep any insects from making themselves at home!
Use Vinegar
White vinegar has about five trillion uses around the house (look it up!), and repelling spiders is one of them! Repelling spiders with vinegar is much like repelling them with peppermint oil, in that you fill a spray bottle with vinegar and water, and spray all the cracks and crevices around your home.
Enlist The Help Of A Furry Friend
Cats are a great spider deterrent! Four legged furry friends can be great hunters and will definitely not let a spider crawl across the floor without going on the prowl and taking care of business!
Don’t Let Them In
A great way to keep spiders out of your home is to never let them in in the first place! Make sure the exterior of your home is free from leaves, grass clippings, wood piles, or any other notorious spider hangouts. You can also check all door openings and windowsills to make sure there isn’t room for spiders to get in that way,and apply caulk when needed.
Citrus Does The Trick
It’s common knowledge that spiders hate all things citrus. Rubbing citrus peels on areas where spiders are known to frequent, like baseboards, windowsills and bookshelves, is a great way to keep them from coming around. Even using lemon scented furniture polish can drive spiders away!
Let Cedar Do The Work
Cedar can be a great deterrent for spiders. You can use cedar mulch outside around the perimeter of your home to try to keep spiders from ever getting inside. If you have access to a cedar chest or cedar hangers to use in your closet, that is a good choice as well. Using cedar blocks or shavings inside closets, cupboards or drawers can make them think twice about hanging out in there too!
Chestnuts
Yes, you read that right, chestnuts! They have been known to drive away spiders, so placing a few in your windowsills or along your baseboards can keep spiders from hanging out there. Many people also believe that the same thing can be done with an osage orange (also known as a hedgeapple) You can keep chestnuts and hedgeapples in the house for a long time before they go bad, so it’s worth giving it a shot!
Tobacco
It sounds weird, but spiders hate tobacco just about as much as they hate lemons and chestnuts! You can sprinkle small pieces of tobacco where spiders are troublesome, or you can soak tobacco in water and then spray the mixture all around. However, tobacco is pretty expensive these days, so you can likely find a more affordable fix for keeping spiders at bay!
Two hundred years ago, English poet William Wordsworth bemoaned man’s preoccupation with the material world and our lost connection to nature and what truly matters. Can you relate? We are so attuned to the rhythms of social and daily commerce around us that new realities normalize and we settle for them. Even when they aren’t remotely acceptable.
This is the U.S. today:
54% of kids are sick, fat, and at risk for developmental delays: they have allergies, asthma, ADHD, autism, arthritis, apraxia, anxiety disorders, and that’s just the A’s
#5 C-section rate* (1 in 3 and double the rate of countries with the best infant and maternal outcomes)
* rank among developed countries
The new childhood normal is deeply unsettling. What’s a mama to do?
The Three Pillars of Radiant Health
Whenever there’s a health issue, medical anthropologist Syd Singer suggests we ask: What am I doing that may be causing the problem? Intrepid parents are asking the question. To find answers, we’re scouring the scientific literature, consulting researchers, acknowledging anecdotal and clinical experience, examining global best practices, and accessing ancestral wisdom.
When it comes to my family’s health, I rely on a few foundational principles that serve as guideposts for the many issues that come up. If you’re already pregnant or hoping to be soon, this two-part series focuses on the important things you can do to give your baby the best chance for a healthy start (and it’ll help the rest of your family, too). Preconception, they apply to mom and dad (and it pays to start early). Post birth, they apply to everyone. Here are the three pillars of radiant health:
Pillar #1: RESPECT THE MICROBIOME
Human health, immunity, and well-being pivot on a vast microbial foundation called the human microbiome. This is the total complement of microorganisms residing in and on our skin, and deep inside the body, including but not limited to the full length of our mucosal linings, from our nasal and oral membranes down through the gastrointestinal tract and beyond. One hundred trillion microbes — as many as three pound’s worth – call us home. The microbiome is an entire ecosystem teeming with 10,000 species of bacteria, fungi, yeasts, and more. Most of these microbes are benign or actively protective and productive. Watch this fantastic TEDx talk by researcher Jeroen Raes.
We owe a lot to our microbiome. It houses over two-thirds of our immune system. It produces important vitamins, such as B12 and K2. It synthesizes our own private stash of “feel good” chemicals, like dopamine, serotonin, and GABA. It inhibits colonization of pathogens by competing for attachment sites and essential nutrients (how cool is that?). New research offers tantalizing connections between the microbiome and what ails us, including:
Among other studies, the NIH is looking to better understand the vaginal microbiome during pregnancy. Fantastic, right? It’s a brave new microbial world.
Protect your microbiota. They are the guardians at the gate and the wizard behind the curtain. There’s an unfathomable intelligence in these bugs. Thank God.
Pillar #2: FOOD IS MEDICINE
It’s not just a matter of giving our engines good fuel to keep our bodies running efficiently. There’s an entirely separate idea that shouldn’t be revolutionary, but it is. It is the idea that food is medicine. For real. It can heal us. If we change how we eat, we can change our lives. The corollary, of course, is that, if food is so important, then the wrong food can be harmful and increase our risk of chronic illness.
Tempted though we might be on occasion, we can’t, don’t, and shouldn’t eat all day. We’re busy and we’re probably not getting what we need. We want every bite we take to count. This is true for babies, too. It’s why you will hear that we must eat densely. We’re talking about food that’s chock-full of of the good stuff we need to power up, build and repair tissues, and sustain life. The collection of chemical reactions in which our bodies engage to convert or use energy is called metabolism. Digestion, respiration, elimination, and circulation. It’s what keeps us alive and kicking. Metabolism uses nutrients. Carbs, fats, and proteins provide 100% of the body’s energy. Vitamins and minerals are “co-factors” the body needs for metabolism to take place.
There’s a food revolution underway. It’s highlighting the many different ways to eat and providing a “feast” of new research and cutting edge ideas, with online and community-based education, conversation, and support. People are doing phenomenal things for their health with food.
Changing how and what you eat can help your body to be more efficient at doing what it does best: keeping you alive and helping you thrive.
Pillar #3: LESS IS MORE
We are a consumerist society. We love stuff and believe that the latest is the greatest. We embrace better living through innovation in science, medicine, and technology, which we equate with progress. If one is good, more is better, and before we know it, we find ourselves wanting as much as possible of something we never really needed in the first place. This is why reality shows feature Hoarders and Storage Wars, PODS appear on front lawns, and 70% of Americans take prescription drugs (and 19 million abuse them).
It’s my nature to jump in and take action, but that’s not the case when I’m addressing my children’s health. I start with the premise that less is more. Our bodies hold more intelligence about what we need to be well than I could ever hope to acquire and orchestrate on my own. I have a definite bias against medical interventions. All things equal, I prefer to say “no, thank you” to a drug, treatment, or a procedure, especially when one (or more) of these things is true:
There’s no emergency.
It’s something new.
I don’t understand it.
It sounds too good to be true.
I don’t think we need it.
There are risks.
I’m feeling pressured.
It makes me nervous.
There’s a PR firm behind it.
As pediatrician Larry Palevsky says to fretting parents: “Don’t just do something. Stand there.”
The toxins in allopathic drugs and medical treatment are just one category of toxic environmental exposure. It’s a numbers game and less is definitely more. Contrary to what you might hear, there’s no debate. Environmental toxins are absolutely implicated in most of what ails us, from illness, autism, and cancer to brain damage and birth defects. Beware when people say: “the body can handle it,” “the risk is worth the benefit,” or “the genie is out of the bottle.” They’re trying to comfort themselves or convince you to do something you may not want to do. Here’s what I can say for sure:
Everyone isn’t born with the same genetic strengths and vulnerabilities.
Everyone doesn’t inherit the same degree of transgenerational toxicity.
Everyone doesn’t live in the same place and do the same things.
We’re not in control of all our toxic exposures. However, we are in control of many of them. Choosing non-toxic substitutes can make a big difference, particularly since we’re subjected to some of these substances multiple times a day, or all day and all night, over very long periods of time. We apply toxins directly in and on our bodies, and on things that come into contact with our bodies. This includes all the activities that comprise our waking and resting moments, when we eat, drink, clean, cook, primp, wash, brush, protect, entertain, travel, medicate, decorate, renovate, fix, furnish, exercise, work, romp, and sleep.
We should decrease toxic overwhelm to be kind to our precious organs and pathways of detoxification and excretion. When they’re not optimized, bad things start to happen.
Fearless Parent is the thinking parent’s daily dose of unconventional, evidence-based news about health, wellness, green living, and holistic parenting choices. Find them on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and on the air.
Louise Kuo Habakus runs Fearless Parent, an online media platform combining her passion for health/wellness, green living, scientific research, and holistic parenting. She is a published author, runs a nonprofit think tank, and is the lead host/producer of the popular Fearless Parent Radio. Louise was a Bain consultant and C-level financial services executive, and holds two degrees from Stanford University.
STORM WARNING (UPDATED): Among space weather forecasters, confidence is building that Earth’s magnetic field will receive a double-blow from a pair of CMEs on Sept. 12th. The two storm clouds were propelled in our direction by explosions in the magnetic canopy of sunspot AR2158 on Sept. 9th and 10th, respectively. Strong geomagnetic storms are possible on Sept. 12th and 13th as a result of the consecutive impacts. Sky watchers, even those at mid-latitudes, should be alert for auroras in the nights ahead. Aurora alerts:text, voice
EARTH-DIRECTED X-FLARE AND CME: Sunspot AR2158 erupted on Sept. 10th at 17:46 UT, producing an X1.6-class solar flare. A flash of ultraviolet radiation from the explosion (movie) ionized the upper layers of Earth’s atmosphere, disturbing HF radio communications for more than an hour. More importantly, the explosion hurled a CME directly toward Earth. The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory photographed the expanding cloud:
Updated: Radio emissions from shock waves at the leading edge of the CME indicate that the cloud tore through the sun’s atmosphere at speeds as high as 3,750 km/s. By the time it left the sun’s atmosphere, however, the cloud had decellerated to 1,400 km/s. This makes it a fairly typical CME instead of a “super CME” as the higher speed might suggest.
Even with a downgrade in speed, this CME has the potential to trigger significant geomagnetic activity when it reaches Earth’s magnetic field during the mid-to-late hours of Sept. 12th. NOAA forecasters estimate an almost-80% chance of polar geomagnetic storms on Sept. 12-13.
Margaret and I have just returned from a trip to beautiful Lake Shasta in Northern California. Well … it was “more” beautiful a few years ago. This year we actually walked on the bottom of the lake in knee-high water. The drought has lowered the lake’s normal water line over 150 feet from previous years. Seventy percent of the lake’s capacity has dried up due to California’s severe drought.
and his follow up book 
. I highly recommend you check out both of these books for further information.
New research reveals some remarkable properties of DNA which suggests that a “hidden force” plays a role in the formation of life in the universe .
