Did you know that it is now impossible to label honey organic--well, unless the beekeeper owns all the property for at least a two-mile radius?
Not only are the plants on which bees forage polluted with multiple backyard and city toxins, which wind up in the honey; commercial beekeepers (in fact, most beekeepers, commercial or not) use antibiotics and chemicals on their hives that wind up in the wax and the honey.
It is very difficult to find honey from organically raised bees. There are few beekeepers who use completely organic methods. Even in their hives, wax has been found to contain not one or two, but dozens of contaminants.
There is a great deception and little regulation in the honey marketplace. Much of store-brand honey is bought from China, where toxins are rife, as well as doctored products. Even U.S. beekeepers are widely known to mix their honey with sugar, corn syrup, or molasses. Nobody is testing for this. 
We know a folksy, bearded, plaid-shirted beekeeper who sells honey at a popular farmer's market. While it purports to be local, and people exclaim about it, this honey is actually purchased from a huge supplier who buys honey from many different places. It is full of contaminants.
Honey labeled as being predominantly from one kind of plant may not have any pollen or nectar from the plant on its label. A beekeeping friend bought Manuka honey--known for its purported healing qualities--last year from Trader Joe's and tested it. There was not even a trace of Manuka pollen in the honey! (We grant that this is not always the fault of the beekeeper, but due to the preferences of the bees.)
Author Les Crowder, a gentle and good soul who teaches organic top-bar beekeeping, is now battling cancer at horrific cost both physically and financially. He writes this:
"As a young man I worked for a beekeeper with 4,000 hives that had me fumigating supers with ethylene di-bromide. My breath smelled of the carcinogenic gas for hours after work. The makers and promoters of that chemical are not now paying for my cancer treatments. But soon the public and the insurance companies are going to realize that the makers, users and those who profit from the distribution of toxic chemicals have to pay for the damage they cost. Organic will suddenly seem real cheap."

MARIJUANA AND AN INCREASED LIKELIHOOD OF STROKE

In these days and times, it is extraordinarily unpopular to say anything negative about marijuana, even though smoking pot does irrefutably damage the lungs and can impede brain growth in young people.

A brand new study, cited below, shows an unexpected risk from pot: marijuana use is associated with a high risk for acute ischemic stroke (18%).

We live in weird times where, in people's minds, their opinions apparently trump hard science, so there are those who will protest vehemently against this study. They will cry out about conspiracies and say that they don’t “believe” in science. (Which means they should immediately discard their cellphones, their automobiles, their refrigerators and their bottles of aspirin!)

Any substance that has such a dramatic effect on a person's brain is bound to have side effects. One of my former students and friends, who is a brilliant young neurologist, took part in this study. It found quite conclusively that smoking OR ingesting cannabis increases a person's likelihood of stroke by 18%. In layman’s terms, this is because cannabis makes certain blood vessels in the brain spasm.

These neurologists are young and hip. They don't live in a bubble, and they certainly didn’t set out with a bias against pot.

This study does not refute some of the scientifically documented positive medical benefits that people may receive from cannabis; it stands alone. Do not mistake this article for one railing against the use of marijuana; today nearly everyone knows people who smoke pot regularly. Those who smoke or ingest cannabis, however, need to be fully informed of the potential risks, so that they can make their choices wisely.

Sadly, I think a lot of pot-smokers will stick their fingers in their ears and hum loudly rather than pay attention. Regardless, here are some of the facts:

•Marijuana use increases the likelihood of AIS (acute ischemic stroke), adjusting for other stroke risk factors.
•Marijuana use predicts symptomatic cerebral vasospasm, a proposed mechanism of AIS

•Risk of marijuana-associated AIS increases with concurrent use of tobacco ± cocaine.

http://www.jns-journal.com/article/S0022-510X%2816%2930066-1/abstract

THE DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS AND THE RISE OF CORRUPTION

One sad thing about the death of newspapers is that important investigative reporting is increasingly buried. People no longer sit at their breakfast table, ride on subways, or take breaks from work with newspapers in hand.

Years ago I wrote for the newspapers. While features and interviews became my forte, I started out as a stringer, reporting on the local news of my small town for the newspaper headquartered in a larger city. Everyone for miles around subscribed to the paper. 

I didn't really like my job. I shared with a friend how discouraging it was to have such a lowly position. Not only was I required to attend tedious meetings of the city council and school board; I had to understand what was going on and report on it. My friend set me straight on the importance of such a job. It is only through newspapers, she said, that misconduct  can be brought to the surface, and small communities are the most at risk for this. Without exposure and the resulting pubic awareness, corruption could run rampant.

Few people read newspapers any longer. Most of us get our news through the television or the internet, and it is highly filtered. TV only reports on issues in sound-bites and selects those stories with the most audience appeal. Dirty politics regarding the contracts awarded to sewer plants are not likely to make TV headlines.  Furthermore, television news today is rarely impartial. As a news reporter, we were taught to report the facts, avoid the use of adjectives, and permit people to make up their own minds. Opinions were saved for the editorial page. This is no longer the case. Adjectives are rarely avoided on TV news. They not only make stories more colorful; they are a sly way of slanting a story in the direction the owner of that particular media chain desires and manipulating points of view.

The internet is even more limited. With most of us only clicking on internet news stories that stand out and catch our attention, and with the choices of what is shown to us on the web having been hand-tailored and filtered so that we will see only those stories that Google, Facebook or other groups have deemed to be our preferences, even exposures of large levels of corruption stand little chance of reaching the public eye, much less those in small communities. It is doubtful today that something like the Watergate scandal would get the attention of many people; even if it did, in our sound-bite society, few of us would bother to absorb, much less care about, the in-depth reporting that finally brought down the Nixon presidency.

Here is one small example of vitally important and scandalous news that will never reach the public eye, but should be a major headline: https://news.vice.com/article/the-environmental-protection-agency-says-fracking-is-safe-but-its-scientists-disagree  The public ought to be outraged by this. In the past, it would have been a headline that could not be avoided. Few now, however, will even be exposed to this story.

We need a solution. The problem is worsening. Corruption is becoming blatant, but without public understanding, little will be done to stop it.


(c) 2016, Mary Elizabeth (Leach) Raines

WHY BACON JOKES AREN'T FUNNY

Pigs are one of the most highly intelligent creatures on the planet, as smart as chimpanzees & dogs, and both very affectionate and social. The problem is, they do not have the big eyes, soft fur and the other features that we humans find attractive, so we tend to scorn them.

We are outraged when we see videos of dogs being stacked on trucks and slaughtered for food in Asian countries, but the terrible way that pigs are raised, shipped, and killed for food right here in the USA is indefensibly cruel. They are reared in cages so small that they cannot move or turn around, their intelligence and sentience ignored. It is inhumane.

This is why bacon jokes are not the least bit funny.

I AM GOING TO SING A SONG BY....

by Mary Elizabeth Leach Raines

© M. E. Raines, 2015

Quickly: name an opera composer who is alive today!

Can’t think of one? Even if you have never listened to opera, chances are you know the names of at least a few of the great opera composers of the past, like Mozart, Wagner, Handel, and Verdi.

Sadly, they wouldn’t have a chance in today’s world.

On a recent broadcast of a television show called Dancing with the Stars, singer Chaka Khan was asked by an interviewer which song she had chosen for her dance. She said that she would be dancing to “Chicago by Frank Sinatra.”

Chicago was not by Frank Sinatra. He was only one of the people who sang and recorded it, and he did so decades after it was written by a composer whose name was Fred Fisher. Ever heard of Fred Fisher? No, of course not! Perhaps Kahn can be excused; as a performer herself, it is only natural that she would want to give credit to another performer.

Our society glamorizes performers and scorns composers so much, however, that in the USA, stating that a song is by a musician rather than by the actual  composer has become a habit in just a few years. It is a cruel one. Even on older TV shows like American Idol, (which should have known better, but probably was largely responsible for popularizing this travesty), singers routinely say that the music they will be singing is “by” an individual who had performed the music at an earlier time.

It is both sad and insulting that composers and lyricists are seldom mentioned and even more rarely given credit for their compositions; the only exceptions occur when the performer is also the composer. It takes incredible talent to compose an enduring piece of music. Mozart and Beethoven would go unrecognized in contemporary society, and Burt Bacharach or the astonishing team of Rodgers and Hammerstein would be complete unknowns.

The  performer is glorified. The person with the huger talent—that individual who composed the piece—is left out of the loop and forced to fade into anonymity. And the real loser? Music. Who will write brilliant music when it’s a sure bet that nobody will ever even know your name, much less give you credit?

THE NEW DARK AGES HAVE BEGUN

Superstition, hysteria and hype are plunging us into a new Dark Age, where misinformation abounds and fear has replaced judgment. Statements posted on YouTubes or random websites are being mistaken for facts. People are not digging for the truth. Anyone who calls himself an expert is given credibility. Gullibility and superstition have replaced true, hard science. People sway towards the loudest, most fear-mongering voice. Those who possess the factual truth are bashed, and shrill screams drown out reason.

1. Einstein, Mark Twain, Barbara Bush, etc., did not say most of the things attributed to them on internet memes.
2. Sorry people, but there is no evidence whatsoever for chemtrails. A YouTube is not evidence. No one has ever brought a single bit of solid evidence before the U.S. Congress. There are hundreds of thousands of airplanes in the air, however, from UPS, FedEx, United Airlines, Southwest, etc., that all leave water vapor trails. These contrails vary in texture and size depending on the altitude, temperature and humidity. The chemicals "discovered" on the ground have always been there. If chemtrails were real, not only would the droplets fall far, far away from the place where they are spotted in the sky; we would have to have a huge complex with enormous plants and storage facilities, employing thousands of workers, along with great fleets of airplanes. Check the flight patterns, which frequently crisscross and parallel one another, and check to see what airlines are flying overhead when you think chemtrails are being spread. You will be surprised. 
3. There are no huge worldwide conspiracies of them against us. A few powerful people may huddle now and again in board rooms, granted, but there is no great big bad they who have combined forces to take over the world. There are no James Bond mastermind villains. People who work forThe government, in the USA, consists of people we have voted into office. “They” are, for the most part, just as confused as we are.
4. Here's one that a lot of people will have to rethink. The church in historical times did not conspire to keep people in the dark deliberately so that they could have power. Trust me, they weren't that organized. Our own government isn't that organized! (See the following.)
5. Detoxing? If it's not from an addictive substance, it's probably worthless. A huge sham market has been created around the theme of detoxing: removing assorted toxins and unwanted byproducts from the body. The actual truth is that without hospitalization and specialized intensive care, there are almost no substances that will remove toxins from your body, despite what the labels say. Sorry. The best way to detox is to eat healthy foods that support your body's own detox system--the liver and kidneys--and to drink reasonable amounts of water. That's it. Nearly everything else purported to detox you, from soaking in Epsom salts to drinking special potions to going on detox diets, is bunk.
6. There is no worldwide or national conspiracy to depopulate the planet. If there was, we would have far fewer than the 7+ billion human beings with whom we currently share space! Reducing human population would actually be easy if “they” wanted this; all “they” would need to do would be to promote birth control and make it readily available. Sadly, this is not happening. Quite the contrary is happening. It’s too bad, because it would be a good idea.
7. There are no secret military bases on the dark side of the moon or on other planets.
8. The 9/11 conspiracy theories are absurd and paranoid. Our own government did NOT do it. Bin Laden and Al Queda were quite capable of hijacking airplanes and causing massive destruction and mayhem in a very cruel way. Because of the conspiracy theories, they have succeeded beyond their dreams in harming us. Who knows? Maybe they were even the ones responsible for starting the conspiracy theories. Internet speculations on YouTube and random websites that buildings couldn't collapse the way they did is not scientific evidence! Plenty of experts find what happened credible. After all, we had never before on planet Earth experienced large aircraft crashing into skyscrapers, nor what the effects would be. Denying the fact that one of the hijacked airliners crashed into the Pentagon is a huge disrespect for the families of the passengers who lost their lives. Once again, there is plenty of credible evidence about what happened on 9/11. Accusing our own government of conspiring to bring down buildings by planting bombs in them is really, really sad, and plays right into the hands of the terrorists. 

There is a lot to be genuinely concerned with on this increasingly poisoned, polluted planet. Focus your attention on the genuine problems, research carefully, and do your best to find solutions. Meanwhile, you may want to stop believing everyone who puts on a suit, uses a white board, and has made a YouTube video. Look at the hard science in all of these cases.

WALL STREET RANT

Buying and selling stocks has always seemed so ludicrous to me. It is frightening that our economy is based on a complicated but essentially silly game, one of gambling with no regard for the businesses that thrive or lose as a result. It is also frightening that people have made stern rules about how to play the game, and take it so seriously. I want to shake them and shout, “Wake up!!!!” 

Now, I’m not a rugged sort. I absolutely love the benefits of modern society—creature comfort, availability of good food, my grand piano, books, movies, cars, computers—but it hurts to see how greatly we have become dissociated from planet Earth and all her blessings. I do not believe that Wall Street is one of those blessings. Part of me yearns deeply for another way of living.

© M. E. Raines, 2015

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