Monthly Archives: January 2019

A New Look at Animal Emotions

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The Emotional Lives of Animals

Grief, friendship, gratitude, wonder, and other things we animals experience.
animalempathy.jpg
Marc Bekoff

This article from the YES! Media archives was originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of YES! Magazine.

Scientific research shows that many animals are very intelligent and have sensory and motor abilities that dwarf ours. Dogs are able to detect diseases such as cancer and diabetes and warn humans of impending heart attacks and strokes. Elephants, whales, hippopotamuses, giraffes, and alligators use low-frequency sounds to communicate over long distances, often miles. And bats, dolphins, whales, frogs, and various rodents use high-frequency sounds to find food, communicate with others, and navigate.

Many animals also display wide-ranging emotions, including joy, happiness, empathy, compassion, grief, and even resentment and embarrassment. It’s not surprising that animals—especially, but not only, mammals—share many emotions with us because we also share brain structures, located in the limbic system, that are the seat of our emotions. In many ways, human emotions are the gifts of our animal ancestors.

Grief in magpies and red foxes: saying goodbye to a friend

Many animals display profound grief at the loss or absence of a relative or companion. Sea lion mothers wail when watching their babies being eaten by killer whales. People have reported dolphins struggling to save a dead calf by pushing its body to the surface of the water. Chimpanzees and elephants grieve the loss of family and friends, and gorillas hold wakes for the dead. Donna Fernandes, president of the Buffalo Zoo, witnessed a wake for a female gorilla, Babs, who had died of cancer at Boston’s Franklin Park Zoo. She says the gorilla’s longtime mate howled and banged his chest, picked up a piece of celery, Babs’ favorite food, put it in her hand, and tried to get her to wake up.

I once happened upon what seemed to be a magpie funeral service. A magpie had been hit by a car. Four of his flock mates stood around him silently and pecked gently at his body. One, then another, flew off and brought back pine needles and twigs and laid them by his body. They all stood vigil for a time, nodded their heads, and flew off.

I also watched a red fox bury her mate after a cougar had killed him. She gently laid dirt and twigs over his body, stopped, looked to make sure he was all covered, patted down the dirt and twigs with her forepaws, stood silently for a moment, then trotted off, tail down and ears laid back against her head. After publishing my stories I got emails from people all over the world who had seen similar behavior in various birds and mammals.

Empathy among elephants

A few years ago while I was watching elephants in the Samburu National Reserve in Northern Kenya with elephant researcher Iain Douglas-Hamilton, I noticed a teenaged female, Babyl, who walked very slowly and had difficulty taking each step. I learned she’d been crippled for years, but the other members of her herd never left her behind. They’d walk a while, then stop and look around to see where she was. If Babyl lagged, some would wait for her. If she’d been left alone, she would have fallen prey to a lion or other predator. Sometimes the matriarch would even feed Babyl. Babyl’s friends had nothing to gain by helping her, as she could do nothing for them. Nonetheless, they adjusted their behavior to allow Babyl to remain with the group.

Waterfall dances: Do animals have spiritual experiences?

Do animals marvel at their surroundings, have a sense of awe when they see a rainbow, or wonder where lightning comes from? Sometimes a chimpanzee, usually an adult male, will dance at a waterfall with total abandon. Jane Goodall describes a chimpanzee approaching a waterfall with slightly bristled hair, a sign of heightened arousal:

“As he gets closer, and the roar of the falling water gets louder, his pace quickens, his hair becomes fully erect, and upon reaching the stream he may perform a magnificent display close to the foot of the falls. Standing upright, he sways rhythmically from foot to foot, stamping in the shallow, rushing water, picking up and hurling great rocks. Sometimes he climbs up the slender vines that hang down from the trees high above and swings out into the spray of the falling water. This ‘waterfall dance’ may last 10 or 15 minutes.” After a waterfall display the performer may sit on a rock, his eyes following the falling water. Chimpanzees also dance at the onset of heavy rains and during violent gusts of wind.

In June 2006, Jane and I visited a chimpanzee sanctuary near Girona, Spain. We were told that Marco, one of the rescued chimpanzees, does a dance during thunderstorms during which he looks like he’s in a trance.

Shirley and Jenny: remembering friends

Elephants have strong feelings. They also have great memory. They live in matriarchal societies in which strong social bonds among individuals endure for decades. Shirley and Jenny, two female elephants, were reunited after living apart for 22 years. They were brought separately to the Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tenn., to live out their lives in peace, absent the abuse they had suffered in the entertainment industry. When Shirley was introduced to Jenny, there was an urgency in Jenny’s behavior. She wanted to get into the same stall with Shirley. They roared at each other, the traditional elephant greeting among friends when they reunite. Rather than being cautious and uncertain about one another, they touched through the bars separating them and remained in close contact. Their keepers were intrigued by how outgoing the elephants were. A search of records showed that Shirley and Jenny had lived together in a circus 22 years before, when Jenny was a calf and Shirley was in her 20s. They still remembered one another when they were inadvertently reunited.

A grateful whale

In December 2005, a 50-foot, 50-ton, female humpback whale got tangled in crab lines and was in danger of drowning. After a team of divers freed her, she nuzzled each of her rescuers in turn and flapped around in what one whale expert said was “a rare and remarkable encounter.” James Moskito, one of the rescuers, recalled, “It felt to me like it was thanking us, knowing it was free and that we had helped it.” He said the whale “stopped about a foot away from me, pushed me around a little bit and had some fun.” Mike Menigoz, another of the divers, was also deeply touched by the encounter: “The whale was doing little dives, and the guys were rubbing shoulders with it … I don’t know for sure what it was thinking, but it’s something I will always remember.”

Busy bees as mathematicians

We now know that bees are able to solve complex mathematical problems more rapidly than computers—specifically, what’s called “the traveling salesman problem”—despite having a brain about the size of a grass seed. They save time and energy by finding the most efficient route between flowers. They do this daily, while it can take a computer days to solve the same problem.

Dogs sniffing out disease

As we know, dogs have a keen sense of smell. They sniff here and there trying to figure who’s been around and also are notorious for sticking their noses in places they shouldn’t. Compared to humans, dogs have about 25 times the area of nasal olfactory epithelium (which carries receptor cells) and many thousands more cells in the olfactory region of their brain. Dogs can differentiate dilutions of 1 part per billion, follow faint odor trails, and are 10,000 times more sensitive than humans to certain odors.

Dogs appear to be able to detect different cancers—ovarian, lung, bladder, prostate, and breast—and diabetes, perhaps by assessing a person’s breath. Consider a collie named Tinker and his human companion, Paul Jackson, who has Type 2 diabetes. Paul’s family noticed that whenever he was about to have an attack, Tinker would get agitated. Paul says, “He would lick my face, or cry gently, or bark even. And then we noticed that this behavior was happening while I was having a hypoglycemic attack so we just put two and two together.” More research is needed, but initial studies by the Pine Street Foundation and others on using dogs for diagnosis are promising.

It’s OK to be a birdbrain

Crows from the remote Pacific island of New Caledonia show incredibly high-level skills when they make and use tools. They get much of their food using tools, and they do this better than chimpanzees. With no prior training they can make hooks from straight pieces of wire to obtain out-of-reach food. They can add features to improve a tool, a skill supposedly unique to humans. For example, they make three different types of tools from the long, barbed leaves of the screw pine tree. They also modify tools for the situation at hand, a type of invention not seen in other animals. These birds can learn to pull a string to retrieve a short stick, use the stick to pull out a longer one, then use the long stick to draw out a piece of meat. One crow, named Sam, spent less than two minutes inspecting the task and solved it without error.

Caledonian crows live in small family groups and youngsters learn to fashion and use tools by watching adults. Researchers from the University of Auckland discovered that parents actually take their young to specific sites called “tool schools” where they can practice these skills.

Love dogs

As we all know, dogs are “man’s best friend.” They can also be best friends to one another. Tika and her longtime mate, Kobuk, had raised eight litters of puppies together and were enjoying their retirement years in the home of my friend, Anne. Even as longtime mates, Kobuk often bossed Tika around, taking her favorite sleeping spot or toy.

Late in life, Tika developed a malignant tumor and had to have her leg amputated. She had trouble getting around and, as she was recovering from the surgery, Kobuk wouldn’t leave Tika’s side. Kobuk stopped shoving her aside or minding if she was allowed to get on the bed without him. About two weeks after Tika’s surgery, Kobuk woke Anne in the middle of the night. He ran over to Tika. Anne got Tika up and took both dogs outside, but they just lay down on the grass. Tika was whining softly, and Anne saw that Tika’s belly was badly swollen. Anne rushed her to the emergency animal clinic in Boulder, where she had life-saving surgery.

If Kobuk hadn’t fetched Anne, Tika almost certainly would have died. Tika recovered, and as her health improved after the amputation and operation, Kobuk became the bossy dog he’d always been, even as Tika walked around on three legs. But Anne had witnessed their true relationship. Kobuk and Tika, like a true old married couple, would always be there for each other, even if their personalities would never change.

Jethro and the bunny

After I picked Jethro from the Boulder Humane Society and brought him to my mountain home, I knew he was a very special dog. He never chased the rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, or deer who regularly visited. He often tried to approach them as if they were friends.

One day Jethro came to my front door, stared into my eyes, belched, and dropped a small, furry, saliva-covered ball out of his mouth. I wondered what in the world he’d brought back and discovered the wet ball of fur was a very young bunny.

Jethro continued to make direct eye contact with me as if he were saying, “Do something.” I picked up the bunny, placed her in a box, gave her water and celery, and figured she wouldn’t survive the night, despite our efforts to keep her alive.

I was wrong. Jethro remained by her side and refused walks and meals until I pulled him away so he could heed nature’s call. When I eventually released the bunny, Jethro followed her trail and continued to do so for months.

Over the years Jethro approached rabbits as if they should be his friends, but they usually fled. He also rescued birds who flew into our windows and, on one occasion, a bird who’d been caught and dropped in front of my office by a local red fox.

Dog and fish: improbable friends

Fish are often difficult to identify with or feel for. They don’t have expressive faces and don’t seem to tell us much behaviorally. Nonetheless, Chino, a golden retriever who lived with Mary and Dan Heath in Medford, Oregon, and Falstaff, a 15-inch koi, had regular meetings for six years at the edge of the pond where Falstaff lived. Each day when Chino arrived, Falstaff swam to the surface, greeted him, and nibbled on Chino’s paws. Falstaff did this repeatedly as Chino stared down with a curious and puzzled look on her face. Their close friendship was extraordinary and charming. When the Heaths moved, they went as far as to build a new fishpond so that Falstaff could join them.

An embarrassed chimpanzee: I didn’t do that!

Embarrassment is difficult to observe. By definition, it’s a feeling that one tries to hide. But world famous primatologist Jane Goodall believes she has observed what could be called embarrassment in chimpanzees.

Fifi was a female chimpanzee whom Jane knew for more than 40 years. When Fifi’s oldest child, Freud, was 5 1/2 years old, his uncle, Fifi’s brother Figan, was the alpha male of their chimpanzee community. Freud always followed Figan as if he worshiped the big male.

Once, as Fifi groomed Figan, Freud climbed up the thin stem of a wild plantain. When he reached the leafy crown, he began swaying wildly back and forth. Had he been a human child, we would have said he was showing off. Suddenly the stem broke and Freud tumbled into the long grass. He was not hurt. He landed close to Jane, and as his head emerged from the grass she saw him look over at Figan. Had he noticed? If he had, he paid no attention but went on being groomed. Freud very quietly climbed another tree and began to feed.

Harvard University psychologist Marc Hauser observed what could be called embarrassment in a male rhesus monkey. After mating with a female, the male strutted away and accidentally fell into a ditch. He stood up and quickly looked around. After sensing that no other monkeys saw him tumble, he marched off, back high, head and tail up, as if nothing had happened.

Animal rescues: feeling compassion for those in need

Stories about animals rescuing members of their own and other species, including humans, abound. They show how individuals of different species display compassion and empathy for those in need.

In Torquay, Australia, after a mother kangaroo was struck by a car, a dog discovered a baby joey in her pouch and took it to his owner who cared for the youngster. The 10-year-old dog and 4-month-old joey eventually became best friends.

On a beach in New Zealand, a dolphin came to the rescue of two pygmy sperm whales stranded behind a sand bar. After people tried in vain to get the whales into deeper water, the dolphin appeared and the two whales followed it back into the ocean.

Dogs are also known for helping those in need. A lost pit bull mutt broke up an attempted mugging of a woman leaving a playground with her son in Port Charlotte, Florida. An animal control officer said it was clear the dog was trying to defend the woman, whom he didn’t know. And outside of Buenos Aires, Argentina, a dog rescued an abandoned baby by placing him safely among her own newborn puppies. Amazingly, the dog carried the baby about 150 feet to where her puppies lay after discovering the baby covered by a rag in a field.

Raven justice?

In his book Mind of the Raven, biologist and raven expert Bernd Heinrich observed that ravens remember an individual who consistently raids their caches if they catch them in the act. Sometimes a raven will join in an attack on an intruder even if he didn’t see the cache being raided.

Is this moral? Heinrich seems to think it is. He says of this behavior, “It was a moral raven seeking the human equivalent of justice, because it defended the group’s interest at a potential cost to itself.”

In subsequent experiments, Heinrich confirmed that group interests could drive what an individual raven decides to do. Ravens and many other animals live by social norms that favor fairness and justice.

from:    https://www.yesmagazine.org/issues/can-animals-save-us/the-emotional-lives-of-animals-20190117

What Can I Say???

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YAKAMA NATION REACTS TO CATHOLIC SCHOOL STUDENTS IN “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” CAPS TAUNTING NATIVE ELDER

BY LEVI RICKERT / CURRENTS / 20 JAN 2019

YAKAMA INDIAN RESERVATION — Following the disgusting display of disrespect of taunting American Indian elder, Nathan Phillips, at the Lincoln Memorial by a group of boys from the all-boys Covington Catholic School, the chairman of the Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, based Toppenish, Washington, issued the following statement:

Statement from Yakama Nation Chairman JoDe Goudy:

“Yakama Nation along with the rest of the world has observed the shameful actions and behaviors of the school children from Covington Catholic School. Their actions were not only distasteful but dangerous. For the young people involved to be so bold and blatant with actions that promote hate and fuel ignorance reminds us all of the great challenge that knows no boundaries of race or origin.That we must guide and raisethe next generations to conduct themselves in a manner that promotes the opposite of this unfortunate event, peace, prayer, tolerance, patience should have ruled the day.It is as though the very thing wrong with the current condition of the United States showed us its spirit. Fortunately, Elder Nathan Phillips and the others that were verbally accosted were able to remain peaceful and resilient. The boys from Covington are themselves victims, victims to the Doctrine of Discovery and it’s teachings. Teachings of domination, dehumanization, social injustice, racism, and violations of basic and fundamental human rights. It should be of no surprise to the United States or the Catholic Church that if both are not ready to rescind and denounce the Doctrine of Christian Discovery and move away from Its dark teachings, the hatred and intolerance will continue. Yakama Nation stands with Elder Phillips. We call on Covington Catholic School to do what is right. This is a very teachable moment in our history. If we choose to learn from the resilience that Elder Phillips showed it will make us all stronger as Nations and Peoples.”

from:    https://nativenewsonline.net/currents/yakama-nation-reacts-to-catholic-school-students-in-make-america-great-again-caps-taunting-native-elder/

The actions of these students are indefensible.  Something is definitely wrong with an educational system and the current societal ethos that allows for such behavior.  

Water Fluoridation & Your Health

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Why Water Fluoridation Is A Forced Experiment That Needs To Stop

By.  

The United States stands almost entirely alone among developed nations in adding industrial silicofluorides to its drinking water—imposing the community-wide measure without informed consent. Globally, roughly 5% of the population consumes chemically fluoridated water, but more people in the U.S. drink fluoride-adulterated water than in all other countries combined. Within the U.S., just under a third (30%) of local water supplies are not fluoridated; these municipalities have either held the practice at bay since fluoridation’s inception or have won hard-fought battles to halt water fluoridation.
Dozens of studies and reviews—including in top-tier journals such as The Lancet—have shown that fluoride is neurotoxic and lowers children’s IQ.

The fluoride chemicals added to drinking water are unprocessed toxic wasteproducts—captured pollutants from Florida’s phosphate fertilizer industry or unregulated chemical imports from China. The chemicals undergo no purification before being dumped into drinking water and often harbor significant levels of arsenic and other heavy metal contamination; one researcher describes this unavoidable contamination as a “regulatory blind spotthat jeopardizes any safe use of fluoride additives.”

Dozens of studies and reviews—including in top-tier journals such as The Lancet—have shown that fluoride is neurotoxic and lowers children’s IQ. Fluoride is also associated with a variety of other health risks in both children and adults. However, U.S. officialdom persists in making hollow claims that water fluoridation is safe and beneficial, choosing to ignore even its own research! A multimillion-dollar longitudinal study published in Environmental Health Perspectives in September, 2017, for example, was largely funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences—and the seminal study revealed a strong relationship between fluoride exposure in pregnant women and lowered cognitive function in offspring. Considered in the context of other research, the study’s implications are, according to the nonprofit Fluoride Action Network, “enormous”—“a cannon shot across the bow of the 80 year old practice of artificial fluoridation.”

According to declassified government documents summarized by Project Censored, Manhattan Project scientists discovered early on that fluoride was a leading health hazard to bomb program workers and surrounding communities.

A little history

During World War II, fluoride (a compound formed from the chemical element fluorine) came into large-scale production and use as part of the Manhattan Project. According to declassified government documents summarized by Project Censored, Manhattan Project scientists discovered early on that fluoride was a “leading health hazard to bomb program workers and surrounding communities.” In order to stave off lawsuits, government scientists “embarked on a campaign to calm the social panic about fluoride…by promoting its usefulness in preventing tooth decay.”

To prop up its “exaggerated claims of reduction in tooth decay,” government researchers began carrying out a series of poorly designed and fatally flawed community trials of water fluoridation in a handful of U.S. cities in the mid-1940s. In a critique decades later, a University of California-Davis statistician characterized these early agenda-driven fluoridation trials as “especially rich in fallacies, improper design, invalid use of statistical methods, omissions of contrary data, and just plain muddleheadedness and hebetude.” As one example, a 15-year trial launched in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1945 used a nearby city as a non-fluoridated control, but after the control city began fluoridating its own water supply five years into the study, the design switched from a comparison with the non-fluoridated community to a before-and-after assessment of Grand Rapids. Fluoridation’s proponents admitted that this change substantially “compromised” the quality of the study.

In 1950, well before any of the community trials could reach any conclusions about the systemic health effects of long-term fluoride ingestion, the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) endorsed water fluoridation as official public health policy, strongly encouraging communities across the country to adopt the unproven measure for dental caries prevention. Describing this astonishingly non-evidence-based step as “the Great Fluoridation Gamble,” the authors of the 2010 book, The Case Against Fluoride, argue that:

“Not only was safety not demonstrated in anything approaching a comprehensive and scientific study, but also a large number of studies implicating fluoride’s impact on both the bones and the thyroid gland were ignored or downplayed” (p. 86).

In 2015, Newsweek magazine not only agreed that the scientific rationale for putting fluoride in drinking water was not as “clear-cut” as once thought but also shared the “shocking” finding of a more recent Cochrane Collaboration review, namely, that there is no evidence to support the use of fluoride in drinking water.

Bad science and powerful politics

The authors of The Case Against Fluoride persuasively argue that “bad science” and “powerful politics” are primary factors explaining why government agencies continue to defend the indefensible practice of water fluoridation, despite abundant evidence that it is unsafe both developmentally and after “a lifetime of exposure to uncontrolled doses.” Comparable to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s book, Thimerosal: Let the Science Speak, which summarizes studies that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and “credulous journalists swear don’t exist,” The Case Against Fluoride is an extensively referenced tour de force, pulling together hundreds of studies showing evidence of fluoride-related harm.

… death rates in the ten most fluoridated U.S. states are 5% to 26% higher than in the ten least fluoridated states, with triple the rate of Alzheimer’s disease.

The research assembled by the book’s authors includes studies on fluoride biochemistry; cancer; fluoride’s effects on the brain, endocrine system and bones; and dental fluorosis. With regard to the latter, public health agencies like to define dental fluorosis as a purely cosmetic issue involving “changes in the appearance of tooth enamel,” but the International Academy of Oral Medicine & Toxicology (IAOMT)—a global network of dentists, health professionals and scientists dedicated to science-based biological dentistry—describes the damaged enamel and mottled and brittle teeth that characterize dental fluorosis as “the first visible sign of fluoride toxicity.”

The important 2017 study that showed decrements in IQ following fluoride exposure during pregnancy is far from the only research sounding the alarm about fluoride’s adverse developmental effects. In his 2017 volume, Pregnancy and Fluoride Do Not Mix, John D. MacArthur pulls together hundreds of studies linking fluoride to premature birth and impaired neurological development (93 studies), preelampsia (77 studies) and autism (110 studies). The book points out that rates of premature birth are “unusually high” in the United States. At the other end of the lifespan, MacArthur observes that death rates in the ten most fluoridated U.S. states are 5% to 26% higher than in the ten least fluoridated states, with triple the rate of Alzheimer’s disease. A 2006 report by the National Research Council warned that exposure to fluoride might increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s.

The word is out

Pregnancy and Fluoride Do Not Mix shows that the Institute of Medicine, National Research Council, Harvard’s National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Toxicology Program all are well aware of the substantial evidence of fluoride’s developmental neurotoxicity, yet no action has been taken to warn pregnant women. Instead, scientists with integrity, legal professionals and the public increasingly are taking matters into their own hands. A Citizens Petitionsubmitted in 2016 to the EPA under the Toxic Substances Control Act requested that the EPA “exercise its authority to prohibit the purposeful addition of fluoridation chemicals to U.S. water supplies.” This request—the focus of a lawsuit to be argued in court later in 2019—poses a landmark challenge to the dangerous practice of water fluoridation and has the potential to end one of the most significant chemical assaults on our children’s developing bodies and brains.

Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. CHD is planning many strategies, including legal, in an effort to defend the health of our children and obtain justice for those already injured. Your support is essential to CHD’s successful mission.

from:    https://www.collective-evolution.com/2019/01/10/why-water-fluoridation-is-a-forced-experiment-that-needs-to-stop/

Time To Protect Your IN-PHONE-FO

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Change your phone settings so Apple, Google can’t track your movements

Your phone tracks your movements all the time. grapestock/Shutterstock.com

Author

  1. Director of Consumer Privacy, Center for Internet and Society, Stanford University

Disclosure statement

The Center for Internet and Society receives funding from multiple organizations; information is available here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about-us

Technology companies have been pummeled by revelations about how poorly they protect their customers’ personal information, including an in-depth New York Times report detailing the ability of smartphone apps to track users’ locations. Some companies, most notably Apple, have begun promoting the fact that they sell products and services that safeguard consumer privacy.

Smartphone users are never asked explicitly if they want to be tracked every moment of each day. But cellular companies, smartphone makers, app developers and social media companies all claim they have users’ permission to conduct near-constant personal surveillance.

The underlying problem is that most people don’t understand how tracking really works. The technology companies haven’t helped teach their customers about it, either. In fact, they’ve intentionally obscured important details to build a multi-billion-dollar data economy based on an ethically questionable notion of informed consent.

How consumers are made to agree

Most companies disclose their data protection practices in a privacy policy; most software requires users to click a button saying they accept the terms before using the program.

But people don’t always have a free choice. Instead, it’s a “take-it-or-leave-it” agreement, in which a customer can use the service only if they agree.

Consumers often do not have a free choice when it comes to privacy agreements. Marta Design/Shutterstock.com

Anyone who actually wants to understand what the policies say finds the details are buried in long legal documents unreadable by nearly everyone, perhaps except the lawyers who helped create them.

Often, these policies will begin with a blanket statement like “your privacy is important to us.” However, the actual terms describe a different reality. It’s usually not too far-fetched to say that the company can basically do whatever it wants with your personal information, as long as it has informed you about it.

U.S. federal law does not require that a company’s privacy policy actually protect users’ privacy. Nor are there any requirements that a company must inform consumers of its practices in clear, nonlegal language or provide consumers a notice in a user-friendly way.

Theoretically, users might be able to vote with their feet and find similar services from a company with better data-privacy practices. But take-it-or-leave-it agreements for technologically advanced tools limit the power of competition across nearly the entire technology industry.

Data sold to third parties

There are a few situations where mobile platform companies like Apple and Google have let people exercise some control over data collection.

For example, both companies’ mobile operating systems let users turn off location services, such as GPS tracking. Ideally, this should prevent most apps from collecting your location – but it doesn’t always. Further, it does nothing if your mobile provider resells your phone’s location information to third parties.

App makers are also able to persuade users not to turn off location services, again with take-it-or-leave-it notifications. When managing privileges for iOS apps, users get to choose whether the app can access the phone’s location “always,” “while using the app” or “never.”

But changing the setting can trigger a discouraging message: “We need your location information to improve your experience,” says one app. Users are not asked other important questions, like whether they approve of the app selling their location history to other companies.

And many users don’t know that even when their name and contact information is removed from location data, even a modest location history can reveal their home addresses and the places they visit most, offering clues to their identities, medical conditions and personal relationships.

Why people don’t opt out

Websites and apps make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for most people to say no to aggressive surveillance and data collection practices. In my role as a scholar of human-computer interaction, one issue I study is the power of defaults.

When companies set a default in a system, such as “location services set to on,” people are unlikely to change it, especially if they are unaware there are other options they could choose.

Further, when it is inconvenient to change the location services, as is the case on both iOS and Android systems today, it’s even less likely that people will opt out of location collection – even when they dislike it.

Companies’ take-it-or-leave-it privacy policies and default choices for users’ privacy settings have created an environment where people are unaware that their lives are being subjected to minute-by-minute surveillance.

They’re also mostly not aware that information that could identify them individually is resold to create ever-more-targeted advertising. Yet the companies can legally, if not ethically, claim that everyone agreed to it.

Overcoming the power of defaults

Monitor your phone’s default settings. Georgejmclittle/Shutterstock.com

Privacy researchers know that people dislike these practices, and that many would stop using these services if they understood the extent of the data collection. If invasive surveillance is the price of using free services, many would rather pay or at least see companies held to stronger data collection regulations.

The companies know this too, which is why, I argue, they use a form of coercion to ensure participation.

Until the U.S. has regulations that, at a minimum, require companies to ask for explicit consent, individuals will need to know how to protect their privacy. Here are my three suggestions:

  • Start by learning how to turn off location services on your iPhone or Android device.
  • Turn location on only when using an app that clearly needs location to function, such as a map.
  • Avoid apps, such as Facebook Mobile, that dig deeply into your phone for as much personal information as possible; instead, use a browser with a private mode, like Firefox, instead.

Don’t let default settings reveal more about you than you want.

from:    Change your phone settings so Apple, Google can’t track your movements January 14, 2019 6.41am EST Your phone tracks your movements all the time. grapestock/Shutterstock.com Author Jen King Director of Consumer Privacy, Center for Internet and Society, Stanford University Disclosure statement The Center for Internet and Society receives funding from multiple organizations; information is available here: http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/about-us Partners View all partners Republish this article Republish Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons license. Email Twitter103 Facebook421 LinkedIn Print Technology companies have been pummeled by revelations about how poorly they protect their customers’ personal information, including an in-depth New York Times report detailing the ability of smartphone apps to track users’ locations. Some companies, most notably Apple, have begun promoting the fact that they sell products and services that safeguard consumer privacy. Smartphone users are never asked explicitly if they want to be tracked every moment of each day. But cellular companies, smartphone makers, app developers and social media companies all claim they have users’ permission to conduct near-constant personal surveillance. The underlying problem is that most people don’t understand how tracking really works. The technology companies haven’t helped teach their customers about it, either. In fact, they’ve intentionally obscured important details to build a multi-billion-dollar data economy based on an ethically questionable notion of informed consent. How consumers are made to agree Most companies disclose their data protection practices in a privacy policy; most software requires users to click a button saying they accept the terms before using the program. But people don’t always have a free choice. Instead, it’s a “take-it-or-leave-it” agreement, in which a customer can use the service only if they agree. Consumers often do not have a free choice when it comes to privacy agreements. Marta Design/Shutterstock.com Anyone who actually wants to understand what the policies say finds the details are buried in long legal documents unreadable by nearly everyone, perhaps except the lawyers who helped create them. Often, these policies will begin with a blanket statement like “your privacy is important to us.” However, the actual terms describe a different reality. It’s usually not too far-fetched to say that the company can basically do whatever it wants with your personal information, as long as it has informed you about it. U.S. federal law does not require that a company’s privacy policy actually protect users’ privacy. Nor are there any requirements that a company must inform consumers of its practices in clear, nonlegal language or provide consumers a notice in a user-friendly way. Theoretically, users might be able to vote with their feet and find similar services from a company with better data-privacy practices. But take-it-or-leave-it agreements for technologically advanced tools limit the power of competition across nearly the entire technology industry. Data sold to third parties There are a few situations where mobile platform companies like Apple and Google have let people exercise some control over data collection. For example, both companies’ mobile operating systems let users turn off location services, such as GPS tracking. Ideally, this should prevent most apps from collecting your location – but it doesn’t always. Further, it does nothing if your mobile provider resells your phone’s location information to third parties. App makers are also able to persuade users not to turn off location services, again with take-it-or-leave-it notifications. When managing privileges for iOS apps, users get to choose whether the app can access the phone’s location “always,” “while using the app” or “never.” But changing the setting can trigger a discouraging message: “We need your location information to improve your experience,” says one app. Users are not asked other important questions, like whether they approve of the app selling their location history to other companies. And many users don’t know that even when their name and contact information is removed from location data, even a modest location history can reveal their home addresses and the places they visit most, offering clues to their identities, medical conditions and personal relationships. Why people don’t opt out Websites and apps make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for most people to say no to aggressive surveillance and data collection practices. In my role as a scholar of human-computer interaction, one issue I study is the power of defaults. When companies set a default in a system, such as “location services set to on,” people are unlikely to change it, especially if they are unaware there are other options they could choose. Further, when it is inconvenient to change the location services, as is the case on both iOS and Android systems today, it’s even less likely that people will opt out of location collection – even when they dislike it. Companies’ take-it-or-leave-it privacy policies and default choices for users’ privacy settings have created an environment where people are unaware that their lives are being subjected to minute-by-minute surveillance. They’re also mostly not aware that information that could identify them individually is resold to create ever-more-targeted advertising. Yet the companies can legally, if not ethically, claim that everyone agreed to it. Overcoming the power of defaults Monitor your phone’s default settings. Georgejmclittle/Shutterstock.com Privacy researchers know that people dislike these practices, and that many would stop using these services if they understood the extent of the data collection. If invasive surveillance is the price of using free services, many would rather pay or at least see companies held to stronger data collection regulations. The companies know this too, which is why, I argue, they use a form of coercion to ensure participation. Until the U.S. has regulations that, at a minimum, require companies to ask for explicit consent, individuals will need to know how to protect their privacy. Here are my three suggestions: Start by learning how to turn off location services on your iPhone or Android device. Turn location on only when using an app that clearly needs location to function, such as a map. Avoid apps, such as Facebook Mobile, that dig deeply into your phone for as much personal information as possible; instead, use a browser with a private mode, like Firefox, instead. Don’t let default settings reveal more about you than you want.

from:https://theconversation.com/change-your-phone-settings-so-apple-google-cant-track-your-movements-109059

Marian Apparitions

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A world map of Virgin Mary apparitions

She met mere mortals with and without the Vatican’s approval.

FRANK JACOBS

10 January, 2019

  • For centuries, the Virgin Mary has appeared to the faithful, requesting devotion and promising comfort.
  • These maps show the geography of Marian apparitions – the handful approved by the Vatican, and many others.
  • Historically, Europe is where most apparitions have been reported, but the U.S. is pretty fertile ground too.

The divine is supernatural, but religion is very much of this world. The way people worship even has an impact on their physical surroundings. Here’s a telltale sign that you’re in Catholic country: chapels, shrines and grottoes dot the roadside. The latter are replicas of the cave in southern France where the Virgin Mary appeared to a local peasant girl in the early 19th century.

Those Marian apparitions themselves are another peculiar point of contact between faith and the world. Typically, they happen in times of crisis to young children from a humble background. They are often the only ones able to see the apparition. The visitations sometimes reoccur over a prolonged period. If the Virgin speaks to those who can observe her, it is to ask for a chapel or church to be built, to implore the faithful to be more devout, and/or to offer warnings for the future. Witnesses are often able to report in great detail on the dress and attributes of the apparition, but mostly there is no direct contact between the Virgin and the observers.

What is a Marian apparition?

Marian apparitions are generally associated with Catholicism, which has great devotion for Mary, the mother of Jesus. Despite her being the mother of Christ, the church does not consider Mary to be divine herself. According to Catholic doctrine, the age of public revelation ended when John, the last apostle, died around the year 100 AD. Marian apparitions therefore are ‘private revelations’, illuminating aspects of faith but never revealing new ones.

Apparitions often are the object of ridicule. Some may be fraudulent. Most do not get an official church approval, neither from the local bishop or from the Vatican. Unrecognized apparitions may thus lead to schisms with the official church. The visionary and their followers may decide to found their own independent movement or join existing sects. Either path is usually characterized by a traditionalist approach to the faith, often rejecting the innovations of the Second Vatican Council.

A world map of Marian apparitions

Image: National Geographic

Outside Europe, the U.S. leads the world in Marian apparitions – all but one unrecognized by the Catholic church.

Image: National Geographic

The Virgin Mary tends to appear in regions mostly inhabited by Catholics.

These maps, produced by National Geographic, show the geography of Marian visitations, in Europe and in the rest of the world.

  • Crosses show where the Virgin Mary appeared to a future saint.
  • Yellow dots mark visitations related by tradition (but not attested by the Vatican).
  • Blue dots denote more recent, but as yet unconfirmed apparitions.
  • Green dots signify visions approved as ‘worthy of faith’, but not supernatural.
  • Red dots mean a local bishop has ‘approved’ the apparition as genuine.
  • Larger red dots (for named apparitions) mark those that have also been recognized by the Vatican.

In Europe, the Virgin’s favorite destinations appear to be Italy and France, followed by southern Germany (i.e. the Catholic half) and Belgium. Considering the traditional hold of the faith on Spain and Poland, the number of Marian apparitions is relatively small. A fair number in western Ukraine, but none in eastern Germany. A handful in Hungary, almost none in the Balkans (Medjugorje being the most notable exception). Ireland out-Marys England, and Scandinavia is entirely free of Holy Mothers.

The U.S. leads the rest of the world in the number of apparitions, although most are unrecognized. Two apparitions in Africa and one in Mexico are officially recognized by the Vatican. Here’s an overview of all Vatican-approved apparitions of the Virgin Mary.

from:   https://bigthink.com/strange-maps/world-map-marian-apparitions

As If Things Weren’t’ Bad Enough

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The meteor shower that brought Tunguska is due in June

That disastrous rock may now looks to have been a Beta Taurid passenge

ROBBY BERMAN

05 January, 2019

  • Analysis of the Tunguska tree-fall patters suggests a familiar source for the asteroid that caused it
  • Its timing also fits perfectly with a late June annual meteor shower
  • Nonetheless, it’s more interesting than dangerous. Put down that helmet.

It’s just after seven in the morning on June 30, 1908 as a man sits on the front porch of a trading post in Vanavara, Siberia. That is, until a sudden blast of heat at 7:17 hurls him from his seat. It comes from a huge asteroid exploding about 28,000 feet above the Podkamennaya Tunguska River 40 miles away.

Suddenly in the north sky… the sky was split in two, and high above the forest the whole northern part of the sky appeared covered with fire… At that moment there was a bang in the sky and a mighty crash… The crash was followed by a noise like stones falling from the sky, or of guns firing. The earth trembled.

Such asteroids are not that rare — scientists estimate they happen about every 300 years. There was one over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, and though smaller at 11,000 tons than the Tunguska rock, it nonetheless injured 1,200 people and caused damage to buildings up to 58 miles away.

It seems like we now know how the Tunguska asteroid got here. Physicist Mark Bosloughof Los Alamos National Laboratory recently presented, at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting, a new analysis of the tree-fall pattern in the Tunguska area. It suggests that the rock may have arrived during the annual Beta Taurid meteor shower. The next one’s in June 2019. (There’s another Taurid shower each October.) A quote from the presentation: “If the Tunguska object was a member of a Beta Taurid stream … then the last week of June 2019 will be the next occasion with a high probability for Tunguska-like collisions or near misses.”

The Tunguska event

(Wikipedia)

The Tugnuska asteroid , a 220-million-pound space rock, is believed to have been traveling at about 33,500 miles per hour, heating the air around it to 44,500° Fahrenheit before it exploded, flattening trees for about 800 square miles. As NASA puts it: “Eighty million trees were on their sides, lying in a radial pattern.” The timing for being a Beat Taurid is about right, too, since it arrived in their typical late-June window.

The first scientific investigation occurred 19 years after the event, led by Leonid Kulik of the St. Petersburg Museum. Don Yeomans, of NASA’s Near-Earth Object Office describes what Kulik found when he arrived in the area: “At first, the locals were reluctant to tell Kulik about the event. They believed the blast was a visitation by the god Ogdy, who had cursed the area by smashing trees and killing animals.” Kulik was able to follow the flattened trees to identify “ground zero. “Those trees,” according to Yeomans, “acted as markers, pointing directly away from the blast’s epicenter.” And eventually, “when the team arrived at ground zero, they found the trees there standing upright — but their limbs and bark had been stripped away. They looked like a forest of telephone poles.”

The Taurus

(Big Think/NASA)

The Taurus’ elliptical orbit

The Earth encounters the Taurids twice a year due to the belt’s odd orbit, which is roughly on the same plane as ours. We pass through it twice a year, as the belt carries Taurid materials toward the sun in October, and away from the sun in June. It’s also a very elliptical orbit that gets as close to the sun as Mercury, but also stretches far beyond Earth’s orbit.

The October encounter is visible in our autumn night skies, but the June visit occurs during daylight so it’s not as visible. Its passengers are primarily spotted via radar.

Some years we encounter denser regions of the Taurid stream than others, and 2019 is one of those years, with scientists saying we’ll be seeing more incoming material than any year since 1976. That year, Apollo-mission seismometers installed on the moon’s surface recorded an unusually high number of Taurid impacts.

The odds of another Tunguska blast early this summer

(Allexxandar/Shutterstock)

Neither Bosloughof of anyone else predicts a Tunguska-style event in June, but if the new calculations are correct, it’s just the meteor shower in which it probably arrived back in 1908. According to physicist Peter Brown, who presented the new analysis with Bosloughof, “This is not something that should be keeping you up at night.” Paul Chodas, of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, says, “There are no objects in our catalogue that have any significant impact probability in the next 100 years.”

In fact, if there are any near misses this summer, as Bosloughof says, our best odds of finding out if the Beta Tarids did, in fact, carry any Tunguska-sized asteroids would be to spot them in telescopes them as they streak away through space from a much-relieved Earth.

from:    https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/tunguska-beta-taurid

Dealing with the Hard times

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Why is it so important to face our low points on the path?

Posted

We have all been enchanted with getting high and having a free awareness, and so we have tried to repress or deny lows when our awareness once again gets caught in this or that.

We love the illusion of being high but we are afraid of coming down. As your journey proceeds, you realize that you can’t hold on to your highs and deny your lows. Your lows are created by the remaining attachments that blind your awareness. Facing your lows – your anger, loneliness, greed, fears, depressions, and conflicts – is the most productive fire of purification you can find.

As your connection with the spirit deepens, you might even choose to seek out those things that bring your attachments to the surface, so that you might confront them and free your awareness from them.

It’s a tricky business – playing with fire. You must feel your own way, unless you have a guide to say when to go and when to stop. If you don’t have a guide, trust your own judgment. For example, if anger still traps your awareness, you might put yourself in a situation which usually elicit anger and then attempt to maintain clear awareness.

If you confront your attachments out of guilt, out of “oughts” or “shoulds,” or through some externally imposed discipline, it won’t work. For these confrontations are difficult and your motives to confront them must come from deep within.

It takes the innermost resolve to resist your powerful temptations, or separate your awareness from your strong desires, be they lust, anger, or whatever.

Your gains through meditation give you the enthusiasm that can bring a breakthrough into another plane, or the heartfelt desire to go in deeper, or the hunger to change your life. But it still takes much courage and fortitude to face the deepest attachments head on.

When you feel that your life is committed to the spirit you can no longer avoid confronting these weaknesses. Your strategy changes, you seek to move faster, wishing to confront head-on the things that bring down your awareness. You can no longer let them have their way. So you ask for a hotter fire, a fiercer confrontation. Even though this is often painful rather than pleasurable, it’s all right, for you are reaching toward that freedom which lies beyond pleasure and pain.

When you want to burn away the grip of your ego on your awareness you’ll endure whatever is needed to clean up your life.

 

– Ram Dass, Journey of Awakening: A Meditator’s Guidebook

from:    https://www.ramdass.org/low-points-on-the-path/

December Beacons of Light – the Group

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Greetings, dear ones.

I am the Keeper of Time. I join you this day to share with you from our perspective what it will be like for you on the path ahead. Oh, you have so many changes happening. Yes, planet Earth is all about change. That’s very challenging for humans who don’t do well with change. Typically,you have all sorts of challenges with it, especially when you become hung up with your belief systems and believing that you cannot change in some way. Well, I will tell you a little bit of what’s coming and you can choose if you wish to change.

A Time of Mastery

The focus of the game here on Earth can be summed up in a single word called “mastery.” In reality you are pretending to be separate from Home, and from all of the connections that you have with all of us. You’re pretending to be a human inside that physical bubble of biology. As you pretend to be human, you are learning how to master everything one piece at a time. That’s typically why you take life lessons as you come into the game. Not only do you take on life lessons, but you work with them over and over and over, lifetime after lifetime, to make sure that you have a level of mastery. As you are well aware, everything is changing very rapidly now. The biggest challenge that we see on planet Earth right now is that all of you can be a part of the very simple separation.

With so much separation occurring people go into fear, that’s what they do. They step back in their belief systems, start separating, and begin focusing on taking care of themselves rather than connecting with the whole. That causes its own set of challenges down the road, with everyone acting separate. Let us give you a different view of what’s going on. You’re seeing a lot of confusion and frustration. People are using the energy in different ways, and you’re experiencing manipulation on so many different levels right now. It’s incredible and most of it is actually happening right out in the open, because that’s the only way it can.

Even though you truly have no more secrets, you can always choose to believe what you wish to. Your beliefs are at the base of much frustration and that is in turn causing separation. We find it fascinating that humans have these systems set up to share their wealth, and to work toward common goals. Consider the very simple illustration of insurance in any type of situation, whether life insurance, health or any type of insurance. The basic idea is to spread out the risk so that no one has to pay an absorbent amount. As you move into this type of separation that you’re in right now, people start seeing the smaller picture instead of the larger one and start re-examining. Some rightfully ask, “Why am I paying for that person over there? Why should I pay for them to have a benefit out of my own pocket?” And so these systems begin to fail.

2019 A Year of Change

The year will be filled with a lot of shifting and change. We tell you that is happening and you will not have to deal with those same initial issues. However, the planet is changing. As you witness that change, you will see people go into fear. As they go into fear, they will step back into their own belief systems and isolate themselves. They will disconnect themselves intentionally from others for fear that they’re going to give too much away. Unfortunately, that is a norm with humanity. When you go into fear you separate, but that is what we’re asking all of you to start working with.

Small Empowerment Groups

Find ways that you can unify even in small groups, because they can make more of a difference now for humanity to step to this next level. When spirits gather the energy is amplified exponentially. But when that energy is harmonized in small groups it becomes like a focused laser. This is a time when that can make a huge difference, especially with the Earth changes ahead. Have a small group of spirits come together on a regular basis. You will start to ground light in a profound way and those will actually be the markers for others to follow.

In other words, you have the opportunity to step out of the difficulties and challenges. It doesn’t need to affect you in that way. So, do you have a part to play there? Yes, some do. Some of you have come in with very specific jobs. Your contracts are that if this happened in a certain way, then you would awaken from the dream showing up at the perfect time with your part of the puzzle. Others may stay in the confusion, but when that happens please do not think that you are doing something wrong or that somehow you are not good enough.  Generally, it simply means that you have a contract.

Follow your heart and that will shift the outcome of your world. Re-member, in some cases your contracts are completed with just a sentence, smile, or pat on the back. Sometimes it is just to be there to remind the person that they are not going through something alone. Yes, you can all connect and walk through this together. How does one move through the quicksand, which will quickly sink everything if forward motion is stopped? The only way to do it is to hold hands, for that is unity.

2019 Positioning for Higher Ground

As you move into 2019 several things are going to happen. First, you’ll have a lot of opportunities for things happen in ways that you never dreamt possible before. You’re at a stage now where things are not working very simply; people are clearly manipulating things behind the scene. Most of the time people can even see them, they’re right out in the open. What is happening here is you’re working with planting the seeds for the collective vibration of humanity, which is carrying a new dimensional reality. It is absolutely astounding. You see, dear ones, the progression of things seems to be falling apart. Why? Because what happens if and when you fall completely apart is that you begin anew. Why would one want to begin again? Ah, now you get back to this word mastery and that’s a key element. From your very first lifetime on this planet, you were pretending to be separate and your intent was to master the art of mastery. Yes, this is how to master everything as it comes up. It has taken you lifetime after lifetime. Some of you are perfectionists and even though you’ve reached very high levels of mastery in certain areas, you’ve decided to take that life lesson again so that you could really perfect it. When you are complete with it, then you simply move onto another life lesson that you’ve signed up for. You have opportunities this next year to start mastering things very quickly, much faster than humans ever thought possible before.

Usually, to master even one of the 12 primary life lessons could take up to 40 or 60 lifetimes before you would actually move on to the next. What if you were able to speed things up and suddenly were able to master several at once. Can you imagine how life on planet Earth would change if that were the case? We tell you that is the case and it begins in 2019 and the opening will peak in 2022. But how can you move into this unity consciousness in the fifth dimension from where you currently are? We have already mentioned spiral time and soon you’ll start thinking in those terms as well.

Spiral Thought

As humans begin thinking in spiral thought and focusing in a different way, things will be faster for you. You will have a way of being able to communicate very similarly to the days of Lemuria, with open hearts. They had always connected to each other and felt every emotion and thought from everyone. Teachers will have opportunities to work with their students who will be forsaking questions and seeking answers. Although you may not always have their answers, you can help them to perfect their questions. Dear ones, that is what mastery is all about. Master healers are awakening from the dream at an incredible pace right now, and you can do several things to work with this. First, you can be there to offer assistance in any way that you can. Your teachings, your truth, and all those things that you have learned over all of your lifetimes as a spirit can be of service.  You are starting to come back together and access all those multidimensionality pieces as one. If you start using that gift, you can heal one-on-one in so many ways.

Many of you will leave imprints, even different types of energetic imprints. Some will leave these imprints in things that you touch and leave for others to find and pick up. For example, some will have a magical ability to touch a door knob and leave a beautiful energy so that everyone who follows you, touching that door knob in some way, will light up.

Gardeners of the Heart

Another way that many of you will be working with others is through the planting of seeds. Dear ones, some of you are marvelous gardeners of the heart. You have this ability to help people awaken from the dream, to heal themselves and clarify their own energies. Many of you are quite good at it, actually. Much of this is happening not only because you wish to master, but so do your students. You can teach them how to master one thing after the next, which is what you are doing during this remaining time on your planet. You are mastering everything that you can, so that as you step up into this next level you don’t have to carry those lessons with you. You don’t have to try to go through all those difficulties to recreate those situations again. A New Harmony with Earth.

There’s one key element that we’d like all of you to focus on, especially during 2019, and that’s your connection with the Earth. All humans are experiencing a massive change, but so is the Earth and you’re a part of her as well. You are carrying a dense physical body which is actually made up of the Earth, for the physical body is not yours. When you look in the mirror, you see that body reflected back to you. But you are not that body. In the future humanity will step up into a higher form with much less density. In the meantime what is happening now is that humans have an opportunity to master things, one right after the other to step up to this next level.

This mastery of a connection with the Earth will be an incredible focus for 2019. We told you some time ago that by the time 2022 arrives, you will be in the midst of another solar cycle. Those cycles can start sending solar flares or “CME” as you call them, coronal mass ejections. Basically, these are particles of the sun which are coming to you. Some of them you already know quite well, x rays, gamma rays, etc., and light rays in all forms of visible light. There are also new particles arriving now, but you have a weakened defense shield. The magnetic field around planet Earth has been decreasing drastically and is now down by some 26 percent of what it used to be only a century ago. So, that is drastically reducing the amount of filter that provides protection. As the sun spews out these particles, normally your magnetic fields diffuse and neutralize them. However, this time it could be different. If the Earth becomes too charged up from the solar flares coming in during through 2022, that could trigger some significant challenges.

What can you do about that? Well, you don’t have an influence over the Earth or her magnetosphere in a physical form. But you do with her heart, because you love the Earth and that can heal the planet if only enough energy is spent to do so. Many of you are still going through the grieving process of learning that the next steps are coming from all of you.  Just like moving into a perfect and brand new home, there will be space for you to grow with your family and it is everything that you need. But then one day you’re packing everything up out of your old house, as you prepare to move once again. You walk around from room to room, remembering all those beautiful memories that were made in this house. You remember all the events, everything that happened, and all the smiles that took place there, but in doing so you also grieve for it.

Well, dear ones, planet Earth and her people are not very well versed at grieving. People simply have no idea what to do with these emotions. In your next game we hope you teach this in your schools, because that grief process can either elevate things very quickly or slow down the progression of everyone. There are different phases of it, such as times when you become fed up. You get sick and tired of being sick and tired, and then you go through the anger phase. But don’t try to cut it short or think that you must resolve the entire grieving process so you can move to the next level.

Star Gazing

Right now many of your scientists are focusing their research on Mars, but how can a human build an entire life on Mars? How can we expand our consciousness? You will find out much more about the systems around you, particularly about what used to be on Mars. Dear ones, it was you that used to be there a long time ago before your memories and certainly before any recorded history of those times. What we tell you dear ones, is that you do not need to go there again. You can step up right where you are and create a new game. What will that look like? Does it mean you’ll have to release the body? Will you have to go through a death process? No, you won’t. You can literally step up in vibrational increments to achieve what is needed.

So, will it be confusing? Yes, we can pretty much guarantee you it’s going to be confusing. Gradually what will happen is that you no longer have physical difficulties. It doesn’t happen instantly, but over time it’s happening more quickly. However, if your vibrational frequencies do not match this, at certain times you’ll become somewhat invisible. Now, this may be difficult for many of you that came in with an incredible sensitivity and empathic ability. That actually gave you the gift of learning how to become invisible, but this will happen quite by accident now.

There’s no more waiting. It is possible to start stepping up into these higher vibrational bodies and into the new game. Most importantly, use the time you have remaining in your dense physical body to master everything that you can. Look for every opportunity to learn something new to grasp something new, to play and even dare to fail at something. Oh, we love that there are so many possibilities. These next few months can be quite exciting for all of you. So, don’t be afraid. Step up,try to come back together in any way possible, even if you are all separate. Or even if you are invisible in that group, send love, because you will never be disconnected. That is the one piece that we wish you always to know, dear ones.

That is why you have always been attracted to hearing messages from the other side of the veil, because you re-member them in your heart. It doesn’t have to ring true in your head or even your ears or eyes, but in your heart it always will. We remind you of who you really are and that’s our job. It’s our only job, for we’re not here to change your world or show you the open door. However, you will be experiencing a lot of that soon, especially from other beings that have been working with you for quite some time. Know that you’re never alone and you will have help. When you feel that separation, step up because there is something that you can master in that instant. Step up to the next level and watch what happens, then teach your students to do the same.

It’s a changing world, dear ones. You came here specifically with this to give, so the greatest of honor is that we help you re-member who you truly are. Hold this mirror in front of you, until you can carry it yourself. Then help all of your students to take that step and to treat each other with respect, as you walk through this new game. Nurture one another and play well together. Hold that door open as you create a whole new set of rules. It is a magical time to be a human on planet Earth. We are watching every step that you take with love, honor and gratitude.

Espavo, dear ones, I am the Keeper of Time.

 

from:    https://www.espavo.org/beacons-light-december-2018/

The Ether Returns

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Subquantum Kinetics

(a nontechnical summary

Subquantum kinetics is a novel microphysics paradigm that incorporates concepts developed in the fields of system theory and nonequilibrium thermodynamics. One of its distinctive features is that it begins at the subquantum level for its point of departure. By comparison, conventional physics and most alternative physics theories begin with mathematically quantified observations of physical phenomena at the quantum and macrophysical level and attempt to deduce physical theories based on those observations. Since the conventional approach must take into account numerous experimental observations, the end result is a fragmented and often contradictory set of theories which must later be sewn together with mathematical acrobatics. Such “unified field theories” more closely resemble a patchwork quilt than a contiguous fabric.

Instead of beginning with physical observations, subquantum kinetics begins by postulating a set of well-ordered reaction processes that are proposed to take place at the subquantum level. Collectively, these reaction processes compose what is termed the transmuting ether, an active substrate that is quite different from the passive mechanical ethers considered in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It further proposes that the concentrations of the substrates composing this ether are the energy potential fields that form the basis of all matter and energy in our universe. The operation of these ether reactions causes wave-like field gradients (spatial concentration patterns) to emerge and form the observable quantum level structures and physical phenomena (e.g., subatomic particles with mass, charge, spin, and force field effects and electromagnetic waves).

So, subquantum kinetics: a) begins with a mathematical model of subquantum processes; b) it then computer simulates this model to generate quantum level phenomena; and c) it compares the model’s simulated results to actual observations. The model’s mathematical parameters are then “fine-tuned” so that its simulated results accurately reflect experimental observation, thereby making the model a realistic representation of the physical world. Because, it begins with a single reaction system model as its point of departure for describing essentially all observable physical phenomena, subquantum kinetics qualifies as a unified theory. By comparison, conventional physics begins with many theories conceived independently from one another and later attempts to “sew” these together. But the result is far from unified, being instead a self-contradictory aglomeration.

In choosing an adequate model to represent subquantum process, subquantum kinetics turns to the macroscopic natural world, to theories describing how certain reaction systems spontaneously evolve well-ordered wave patterns. This self-organization phenomenon, for example, is seen in the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction, a chemical reaction first discovered in 1958. Slowly moving concentration fronts called chemical waves, or “reaction-diffusion waves,” can be discerned when a dye indicator is added to this reacting solution.

The Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction. A dye indicator elucidates wave-like zones of regularly alternating chemical ion concentration that spontaneously arise in the reacting solution. (Photo courtesy of Arthur Winfree)


A video showing the formation of chemical waves, both
spiral and concentric in the Belousov-Zhabotinskii reaction.

Wave patterns and wave motion may also be produced mechanically, as is commonly experienced in the movement of water waves or in the vibrations of a violin string. Early physical theories, in fact, proposed mechanical ether models in an attempt to describe phenomena such as light wave propagation. However, such models lead to very different assumptions about primary creation. a mechanical universe could not arise spontaneously, instead requiring the miraculous injection of an initiating energy impulse inexplicably arising out of a state of non-existence. Such mechanical models are inadequate for the approach outlined here which postulates an orderly and explicable process of creation.

Subquantum kinetics was partly inspired from work done on a reaction kinetic model known as the Brusselator. This two-variable model holds the distinction in the field of reaction-kinetics of being an archetypal reaction-kinetic oscillator comparable in simplicity to the simple harmonic oscillator of wave mechanics. That is, it is the simplest reaction system known to produce wave patterns that have well-defined wavelength properties. To arrive at a model that produces a physically realistic simulation of quantum structures, the Brusselator must be modified into the three-variable reaction system known as Model G. Hence in proposing Model G as a descriptor of the subquantum processes that generate physical order, subquantum kinetics takes concepts that have been developed in the well-established field of nonlinear chemical kinetics and applies them to the domain of microphysics.

The subquantum kinetics paradigm avoids many of the pitfalls of conventional physics and astronomy theories and interprets physical phenomena in a distinctively different manner. A listing of the numerous problems of the conventional paradigm and how subquantum kinetics resolves them is presented in the following tables.

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