If Browncoats ruled the land by dreamtrove

Comments first, ideas once I got time to think on it some...

Get ready to duck bullets, cause they really, REALLY don't like it when you point out that the company store's scrip is just little bits of paper, no indeedy they do not.

As for assumed debt - here's a novel thought.

Why the hell I should be responsible for debts incurred against me not only before I was old enough to vote and thus have a say in it, but also for those laid against my *potential* future existence before I was a gleam in daddys eye ?

Wouldn't that logically constitute a form of slavery, to saddle a debt upon a person who'd done nothing but happen to be born in a country as screwed up as this one ?

Just something to mentally chew on for a while, and one reason I have about zip point shit amount of respect for most of my "elders" who not only spent all their own money, but spent alla mine before I was even old enough to start earning it!

Grrrr

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, January 2, 2009 4:59 AM

Of course to all of that. We're still paying interest on the War bonds, or their roll over.

This is a platform of ideals. How I would actually implement it was let them get all the dollars them wanted, while shifting the rest of the country to a new economy.

Tories in the UK have a pretty decent platform, full of ideals that they couldn't possibly enact, but they get votes, and more of them lately. One is to get rid of the EU. That's a very good idea. Harder to pull off. Of course, once in office, easier to pull off.

Action requires a lot of subtlety. I'm looking for a platform that is most likely to unite a large group of independents not glued to either lever.

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Friday, January 2, 2009 2:07 PM

Well, reccommended reading for the topic.

Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor
http://www.amazon.com/Off-Books-Underground-Economy-Urban/dp/ 0674030710/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230940816&sr=1-1
(spaced link)

And one minor victory we nailed down a while ago was finally killing off the "temporary" telephone line tax originally established back in 1898 to help pay off the freakin spanish-american war.
http://news.cnet.com/Senators-want-to-nix-1898-telecom-tax/2100-1036_3
-5769948.html
http://www.taxfoundation.org/publications/show/123.html

One useful item that should be included in any proposals from our intended coalition is a mandatory, irreversible sunset provision on ANY measure, be it a law, tax, or what have you, cause the lack of such has led over the years to tremendous abuses.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, January 2, 2009 3:48 PM

cumulative legilation is a good one.
We want good legislative ideas, and also, we want button pushers, but not ones that will switch people off. We don't want to alienate potential members.

I've been expecting a 2nd amendment post here. I think that something which breaks a compromise between roving reavers and personal protection would be good, but otherwise, we should steer clear of divisive issues.

Actually, let's do that. Like I can recommend "true non-lethals" as an innovation to work for, but without specifying anything else

Let's deconstruct ron paul for a second. What do you think resonated best with the public...

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Friday, January 2, 2009 5:24 PM

KWICKO

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:

I've been expecting a 2nd amendment post here. I think that something which breaks a compromise between roving reavers and personal protection would be good, but otherwise, we should steer clear of divisive issues.

I'm with ya on wanting rid of "roving reavers" - the rub is in how to do it WITHOUT stomping on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. From what I've seen, banning a certain kind or type of gun does a great job of getting them out of the hands of law-abiding folks, because they're law-abiding first and gun owners second. What it doesn't do is do anything to get them out of the WRONG hands, where they should never have been in the first place.

It's a quandary.

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Friday, January 2, 2009 8:09 PM

NVGHOSTRIDER

I've always loved the fact that America pays interest on aid given to countries who would otherwise have diddly crap as capital.

Funding insurgencies, investing in companies who pay for the displacement of people, training rebel armies for combat, we apparently cannot do enough for the rest of the world. We should have adopted Klinton policies and just dropped cruise missiles on the heads of people pissing us off like a bunch of bitches unwilling to dig in with our own two hands.

We must reserve smiting from above for the gods. We are but mere mortals and will be replaced by others in a very short while.

Okay, I aim to state right off, I AM NOT TARGETING DT.

See that (points up), I am not singling Dreamtrove out.

But it's funny, the 2nd Amendment thing and "some" supporters keep coming up. Kinda reminds me of the Germans opposing the use of the twelve gauge in WWI. Strange that they were still willing to use chemical weapons that target entire groups of soldiers at a time. But use 00BUCK against superior Europeans and there seems to be a breech of human rights.

I'm sorry, the avenue of violence is less important than the context of the violence. Wartime, political ideation, mental illness; seems violence against living beings should be paramount to the avenue of those reasons people find. In many ways of thinking the human condition, corrupted thought processes, and the lack of human emotion should be more important than the weapon used.

In many ways we are the sickness and need to be cured before the true issues are ever resolved. Is money more important than the well being of the Earth?

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The country is making a big mistake not teaching kids to cook and raise a garden and build fires.
-Loretta Lynn

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 4:14 AM

KIRKULES

Quote:
Originally posted by nvghostrider:

I'm sorry, the avenue of violence is less important than the context of the violence. Wartime, political ideation, mental illness; seems violence against living beings should be paramount to the avenue of those reasons people find. In many ways of thinking the human condition, corrupted thought processes, and the lack of human emotion should be more important than the weapon used.

In many ways we are the sickness and need to be cured before the true issues are ever resolved. Is money more important than the well being of the Earth?

It does seem like mental illness is becoming the norm rather than the exception in our society. Mental illness has become so common today that most people don't even recognise it when they see it. Other threads here have dealt with the possible causes and Frem and Rue are brilliant on this subject, but few seem to argue against the idea.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 6:50 AM

Quote:

I'm with ya on wanting rid of "roving reavers" - the rub is in how to do it WITHOUT stomping on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. From what I've seen, banning a certain kind or type of gun does a great job of getting them out of the hands of law-abiding folks, because they're law-abiding first and gun owners second. What it doesn't do is do anything to get them out of the WRONG hands, where they should never have been in the first place.

It's a quandary.

Mike
Good points. Also, guns are trading hands illegally at an increasing rate. This means a gun bought by a law abiding citizen who wants to protect his home from roving reavers might be sold to by his son for drugs to some roving reaver. This sort of thing is common around here.

I always liked the idea of some sort of biosensor "this gun only works for its owner" but people would just disable it, just as they do with the suppression of automatic fire.

As a platform point, I think that I would humbly recommend this. Afterall, the platform has the goal of attracting all browncoats, and it has been my experience on this forum over the years that 1/2 are on the left, and more generally anti-gun than me, I'm probably the middle here.

We should propose to move towards true non-lethal weapons with no ownership restrictions. A gun could fire a well designed chemical pellet that would stop an intruder faster than a bullet, save a shot to the head. Bear in mind that for a some of us, the invading intruder might someday be govt. stormtroopers, who would have helmets, and probably vests. A tranq shot to the arm could stop an intruder. There are a lot of possisble solutions, but phasing out the death only weapon is probably one which would appeal to the left. I don't know how it would stand with the right.

Also, I think there is another issue I brought up and no one commented on. What happens when they come for you with more than guns, eg. Waco. Those people definitely had the right to defend themselves, but not sufficient firepower.

NVG

No offense taken here, I was just looking for a platform stance that would attract the right and not alienate the disaffected left.

True on violence. Maybe including this in the stance, a general anti-violence, would soften the image, which would be good. Our danger is not losing the right, it's losing the left.

Consider this. Obama won an election just 2 months ago, he's not even in office, and already, everyone I know who voted for him wants to undo that vote, and most of the people I know voted for him. That's a rapid loss of faith.

The same thing happened with John Kerry, not because he lost, but because they thought there was shady business in Ohio that Kerry was not willing to fight. Also the guy is a git.

But what's really happening here is there is a large slice of the left that doesn't really support what the democratic party stands for or does. They tend to think it's too interventionist, a big spender in corporate welfare for its friends etc. They just get hyped into voting for it every four years.

And there was no shortage of the audacity of hype.

My point on 2nd amendment wouldn't be as much my own position, but recognizing the degree to which the libertarians lose support on the left.

As my brother said, it brings out violent reactions on both extremes. If we have a position on it, it has to be one that neither offends hippie chick or yosemite sam.

If we don't have a position on it, we'll probably be labelled as having one.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 6:58 AM

Kirk

As a member of the mentally ill, I have to say, who isn't? I had a number of mental problems as a result of a food poisoning, bacterial infection, which was eventually treated by me, but not after three years of loony bin experimentation at the hands of our medical establishment, all of whom refused to even check for anything physically wrong.

But in that time, I viewed a lot of mental illness. Most of it I would say is caused by long term drug use, some might be due to food additives. While this may sound extreme, I know an amnesiac who seems to have done nothing wrong other than drink too much diet coke. Looking it up online, that was a possible effect of aspartame. Most of these don't effect the avg. citizen too much, because if they have a diet coke, it's once a day. But just like with drinking, having one beer a day isn't going to do too much to you. Having 12 a day will take its toll.

The final problem is overdiagnosis and treatment. If a kid was hyperactive, when I was young, they would say "oh, he's hyperactive" and usually respond by giving him something to do that would wear him out.

Now, he would be diagnosed with ADHD, and prescribed something like adderall, which is an amphetamine. I can think of no surer way to make a population of the insane than to feed amphetamines to our children. To use a Steven Colbert term, Psychopharmaparenting has to stop.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 8:12 AM

Re: Food additives.

Researchers in the UK have some promising studies that do indeed seem to support that conclusion, DT, well worth a looksee into that if you have the time.

Re: 2nd Amendment.

Here's a novel thought - the merits of leaving well the hell enough alone!

I wouldn't mind progress on it, but yanno, I'd settle for a lack of further infringements if I had to... and I honestly do think we can sell a status quo position to both sides by the simple merit of electing to actually enforce the entirely sufficient laws we DO have on the matter.
Never made sense to me to respond to laws that don't work due to lack of enforcement by creating more that are even more difficult to enforce and all the more illusory in function for that.

By leaving things the hell alone you remove the problem of this becoming a wedge issue save with zealots who aren't going to jump on board unless you take a radical position anyway.

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 9:36 AM

Frem.

Your probably right. Ditch the 2nd amendment as an issue. A few things:

1. enforce the entirely sufficient laws we DO have on the matter.

Laws, in general, aren't very effective. This is part of my feeling on RTL. If we had a better adoption system that would prevent more abortions than if we banned abortion. I also think that such a position might be a winning one, without ever using the word abortion.

So, stopping the illegal traffic of firearms would probably be an okay stance. I just want a defense if someone throws a label at us, so it doesn't stick.

Here's an idea, 2nd amendment crowd, let me know if you think this is an infringement, and the pros and cons:

RFID bullets. This might also go a long ways to solving crimes. If Bob Jackson buys bullets later found in Lana Carson, then the chances that Bob Jackson killed Lana Carson increase. Also, when you can trace the illegal transfer of ammunition, you can affect the gun situation. Sure, some folk can make their own, but I'll bet roaming reavers won't. I think this would probably blanket catch the roaming reavers while missing the self defense crowd.

Okay, maybe it's a big govt. intrusive idea, but I like the sci-fi quality of a cop leaning over a body and clicking a little remote and having the bullet say "I belong to Bob Jackson."

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 1:58 PM

KWICKO

Quote:

RFID bullets. This might also go a long ways to solving crimes. If Bob Jackson buys bullets later found in Lana Carson, then the chances that Bob Jackson killed Lana Carson increase. Also, when you can trace the illegal transfer of ammunition, you can affect the gun situation. Sure, some folk can make their own, but I'll bet roaming reavers won't. I think this would probably blanket catch the roaming reavers while missing the self defense crowd.

Couple problems I see there.

1) Cost. It ratchets up the cost to EVERYBODY who wants to own or use a weapon for sport or fun. It ratchets up the cost for military and law enforcement, too, which is going to be hard to justify in this money-starved era.

2) The illegal ammo trade will expand to fill a need for non-traceable ammo. You say there aren't that many people molding their own bullets now, but you can bet every Crip or Blood gang would have someone whose job it was to make fresh bullets that weren't easily tracked. Also, there's always a hard-up soldier or a dirty cop willing to sell non-RFID ammo to the highest bidder, even when he KNOWS full well that it's going to be used in a crime. Money trumps all, for some.

Not saying we should scrap the idea; just throwing out a couple quick roadblocks I see that would have to be worked around.

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 3:56 PM

Mike

Okay, something simpler: A signature. The inner casing could contain some imprint allow like a unique serial number, that could be scanned. If you wanted to track ammo, you could probably just RFID random casings, boxes or bullets. One in a thousand would probably be enough to pull up the patterns.

My current worry for the US is that the RUF is exporting to the US. This is a threat that dwarfs Al Qaeda. These guys are hardcore reavers, and they are trading gold, diamonds, cash, drugs and true reaver tactics with inner city gangs. Reading up on these guys is really sobering. What they do to their own people is as bad as anything that any group has done to anyone. To their own children. I'm talking about stuff like cutting off their hands and feet and making them eat them. I felt sure, after reading up on this stuff that this is where the idea of the reavers were specifically drawn from. And this is being exported to the US. And it's not getting a lot of coverage.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 4:45 PM

KWICKO

Or an RFID chip in every tenth round might help... The folks using these weapons for illicit means are generally using magazines with a capacity of more than ten rounds, so it's a fair bet that one or two would end up in their target, or in the immediate area - and it wouldn't raise the price of the ammo TOO much.

Ammo cost is a real issue for folks like me, who like to go and fire off 75 or 100 rounds at the range just for fun. In the last 3 years, I've watched the price go from less than eight cents a round to over 24 cents each - a more than TRIPLING of ammo costs! Gangs and armies might not be feeling the crunch, but people - law-abiding people, mind you - are feeling the crunch.

And oddly enough, Obama's perceived anti-gun stance has dramatically increased ammo sales, raising prices even more. So by being seen as anti-gun, he ends up making gun and ammo sales soar. Ironic, ain't it?

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 4:53 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Chemical taggants - trace (ppm) amounts of signature elements - would be cheaper and easier to detect.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 5:40 PM

With a unique signature?

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 5:51 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Not per each one, but, for economy's sake, per batch. There are enough different elements that are easy to detect, and in combination you could get approximtely:
1! + 2! + 3! ... + 15! signatures
((1x1) + (1x2) + (1x2x3) ... + (1x2x3x4x5x6 ... x 15))
which is over a trillion combinations.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 5:51 PM

Mike

On Obama, I don't know how much of this any govt. official understands, or when this reverse effect is intentional. If the govt. announced a tax on ammo companies and didn't announce the tagging, then no one would be suspicious at the increase in cost.

I think you could track the whole clip with a random bullet, I said that, and you could just signature them inside with an embedded bar code or something.

Personally, like smoking and various other luxuries, I can't feel your pain on this, there are lots of ways around it, like paintball. This may sound silly, but I found having only fired weapons in videogames that I was perfectly well prepared to use actual firearms.

I'm extremely fiscally conservative so my reaction to things like the "let's make our own fuel" plan is really more "or, let's just convert everything to electric. My main worry with this whole social structure is that it is a web which pulls us in, and in order to achieve economic freedom, we need to disassociate ourselves from it. At the moment, I have zero expenses and have since last summer. I have expenses, but they are paid for by independent revenue streams, see multiple streams of income. I've been working on an independence plan, which I might publish as a manual on personal independence when its done.

But a lot of it revolves around reducing unnecessary expenses. Ammo for sport probably falls in there.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 6:02 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Off the track this thread has taken, but I do keep stumbling over the title.

Browncoats wouldn't rule. That's what makes them Browncoats.

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Anyway, I don't mean to derail a discussion.

Please keep on.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 6:37 PM

Also doesn't address privacy issues, nor the fact that someone smart would ensure the RFID code pointed to someone *else* when they capped someone.

Again, merits to leaving alone.

Re: Adoption/Abortion...

Well, eliminating certain *religious* requirements would go a long damned way, not to mention the prohibitive expense - it's actually far more expensive in legal fees to adopt, and if you can't afford to buy a brand new Hummer H2 every year, forget it, they'll bust you down on the income requirements alone.

There's what's on the paper, and then there's what REALLY goes on, we went rounds and rounds with MARE*, and effectively the capstone and more or less relationship crushing issue came down to the fact that I do not happen to be a "good christian", and I found that so offensive it's beyond even words.

They make it far, far, far and away more difficult than the sign-waving, curse-spitting zealots at the clinics believe it is, and having seen what *happens* to these kids when they're not adopted, within residential and foster care systems, the cold truth of the matter is that a lot of them don't face any life worth living once they're too old to be reasonable prospects for adoption, which is something no one ever seems to bother thinking about, much less investigating.

-Frem
http://www.mare.org/

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 6:37 PM

Of course not. But I'm searching for platform ideas

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 7:01 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

That's a more difficult thing to address, as what you're looking for are solutions to global problems.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 7:14 PM

KIRKULES

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
Kirk

As a member of the mentally ill, I have to say, who isn't? I had a number of mental problems as a result of a food poisoning, bacterial infection, which was eventually treated by me, but not after three years of loony bin experimentation at the hands of our medical establishment, all of whom refused to even check for anything physically wrong.

But in that time, I viewed a lot of mental illness. Most of it I would say is caused by long term drug use, some might be due to food additives. While this may sound extreme, I know an amnesiac who seems to have done nothing wrong other than drink too much diet coke. Looking it up online, that was a possible effect of aspartame. Most of these don't effect the avg. citizen too much, because if they have a diet coke, it's once a day. But just like with drinking, having one beer a day isn't going to do too much to you. Having 12 a day will take its toll.

The final problem is overdiagnosis and treatment. If a kid was hyperactive, when I was young, they would say "oh, he's hyperactive" and usually respond by giving him something to do that would wear him out.

Now, he would be diagnosed with ADHD, and prescribed something like adderall, which is an amphetamine. I can think of no surer way to make a population of the insane than to feed amphetamines to our children. To use a Steven Colbert term, Psychopharmaparenting has to stop.

It would be nice if baning diet coke would cure the mental problems of the world today, but I'm afraid the problem runs much deeper. Human sedentary lifestyle no longer fulfills the hunter gatherer programing evolution has given us. Lack of physical exercise plus the lack of mental stimulation results in atrophy of the brain that results in mental illness. In my experience those in jobs that do hard physical labor and those that read and pursue advanced learning are less likely to experience mental illness. It's not that they don't have the phobias and quirks of the mentally ill , they do , but they are capable of recognising their own mental flaws an compensating.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 7:24 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

People need - NEED - 1 to 3 grams of DHA and EPA (fish oils) in their diets every day for normal neurological function. Those oils are an intrinsic part of the very structure of brain cells. They are as vital to health and life as vitamins and essential amino acids.

Add on top of that the 40,000 - 60,000 synthetic organic compounds manufactured by humans, some of which alter biochemistry at the part-per-million to part-per-billion level, and NONE of which have been studied in combination.

Throw in the large numbers of people who get sub-opitmal iodine and/or are exposed to perchlorate.

It's a wonder people aren't doing much worse.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 7:33 PM

KIRKULES

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
People need - NEED - 1 to 3 grams of DHA and EPA (fish oils) in their diets every day for normal neurological function. Those oils are an intrinsic part of the very structure of brain cells. They are as vital to health and life as vitamins and essential amino acids.

Add on top of that the 40,000 - 60,000 synthetic organic compounds manufactured by humans, some of which alter biochemistry at the part-per-million to part-per-billion level, and NONE of which have been studied in combination.

Throw in the large numbers of people who get sub-opitmal iodine and/or are exposed to perchlorate.

It's a wonder people aren't doing much worse.

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I do feel better when I eat Salmon and Broccoli. If I could just eliminate some sugar I might be normal. At my age the Mercury is not a major concern, is it?

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 7:44 PM

Kirkules

I agree about the exercise. It would depend on your age, except it doesn't. Mercury is always a danger. It's more so if you're younger, but if you're old, it's not exactly safe. There's relatively little in fish, it's mostly just scare.

Rue

I don't think this is accurate. I'm dubious about the need of DHA. I know you work in Pharm, but you also know I'm an herbalist with pretty advanced knowledge of neurochem. I think we can debate this one at length. I think that the omega 3-6-9 are the major oils you're getting , that broccoli is bringing you folic acid, all of which is essential. If you're veg. like me, then flaxseed and stuff like that will do the same.

On platform, no, not looking for solutions to global issues. Looking for "save america from the abyss" stances that would attract a large swath of american voters from both sides of the aisle.

I'm sort of counting on you as the leftest part of this forum to be the counterpoint on some issues.

how about you run down a platform that would make a good ticket, trying to stay within the limited govt. framework.

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 7:50 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Kirkules

Mercury is eliminated by the body over time. Generally, mercury attaches to sulfur-containing proteins. As these proteins turn over in the body, the mercury is released to be excreted by the kidneys. Additionally, mercury attaches itself to the abundant sulfur proteins in hair and skin, which are shed, relieving the body of mercury through another route.

http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/mercury.htm

"Mercury in the blood has a half-life of only three days, but tissue mercury has a half-life of perhaps 90 days. Small amounts of mercury, therefore, are efficiently excreted and cause no harm. This information is from the Handbook of Laboratory Safety (2000)."

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 8:12 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Hey DreamTrove

I was looking to see if fish actually synthesized 'fish oil' (and if krill synthesized 'krill oil') or if they merely concentrated it by feeding, ultimately along down the chain, on algae. I didn't find specific information on my very short search. I do know there is algal oil, which has the same components as fish oil.

(As an aside and not directly related, B12 ultimately comes from single-celled organisms, so those can be an efficient source.)

As far as I know, people simply don't have the enzymes to add the omega three double bond to any fatty acid chain, no matter how long or short. They DO however, have some limited ability to take a shorter chain omega three fatty acid such as found in flax, and lengthen the other end to create DHA and EPA. However, some people do this efficiently, while other people do not.

It's part of the natural variation of people. Some people for example have very efficient forms of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, others (roughly 25% of the population) have variations that are only 1/100 as efficient. These people need roughly 100x the dietary folate of everyone else.

My overall impression is that where dietary sources are abundant in the evolutionary past, the capacity for de novno synthesis in the body accumulates more slop over time. This would argue for a human evolution with high dietary levels of folate and fish oil (and also iodine, which is poorly conserved compared to terrestrial animals).

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Saturday, January 3, 2009 9:59 PM

Rue

F^&king ticked at Finn, who had the gaul to play the holocaust card on me and whined and bitched when I threw it back in his face. Sorry if I went ballistic. I invite any jews present to throw the book at him.

On mercury, it may leave the system but first it circulates through the hypothalmus causing damage to the NT producing cells.

Oil is generally synthesized, there's very little that organisms absorb, and when they do, it's for a specific purpose. Here, specifically, birds and fish store oil to synthesize more complex regenerative tissues such as collagen. The base oils appear in seaweed and throughout the biomass, but the mercury content in fish oil extracts is trace at best, so that's pointing towards they probably synthesize it from random amines.

> I do know there is algal oil, which has the same components as fish oil.

yeah, the biomass is largely plankton, so it's hard to say for sure. Ultimately, I suppose it doesn't matter.

> (As an aside and not directly related, B12 ultimately comes from single-celled organisms, so those can be an efficient source.)

Huh. I don't know the end fish synth seq. story.

> As far as I know, people simply don't have the enzymes to add the omega three double bond to any fatty acid chain, no matter how long or short.
> They DO however, have some limited ability to take a shorter chain omega three fatty acid such as found in flax, and lengthen the other end to create
> DHA and EPA. However, some people do this efficiently, while other people do not.

We can break down a lot of weird long chain fatty acids, basically anything that's liquid at room temp, or body temp. Some people lack the ability to break down peanut oil which can lead to badness, but if you're not one of them, then it's all good.

The biochem of a human can be very easily predicted with the foreknowledge that humans are descended from an arborial mouse. That means that everything we need is going to come from nuts, seeds, fruits and berries. Of course, since we're also native to the sahara, where our ancestors engaged in very bad farming, some of those species may be extinct, so it's possible fish is an evolved substitute. Most likely I think the the omegas are just a natural collagen precursor, and the stores enable fish longevity, and ditto for birds, and that we can make use of this.

> It's part of the natural variation of people. Some people for example have very efficient forms of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, others
> (roughly 25% of the population) have variations that are only 1/100 as efficient. These people need roughly 100x the dietary folate of everyone else.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTHFR
huh

> My overall impression is that where dietary sources are abundant in the evolutionary past,
> the capacity for de novno synthesis in the body accumulates more slop over time.
> This would argue for a human evolution with high dietary levels of folate and fish oil
> (and also iodine, which is poorly conserved compared to terrestrial animals).

Depends on your time frame. Humans and fish may coexist and each act civilized, but only recently. Arborial mice catch no fish. And though there were once fish in the sahara, I'm not convinced that we a natural predator. I suspect the ideal human diet probably contains no meat, but that we have meat fallback capacity. I would further speculate that omega fatty acid chemistry is pretty basic to lifeforms, so it's coincidental. It's possible that no higher animals synth it.

Mechanisms like Resveratrol are much more curious. I'm sure you caught the story about resveratrol activating sirtuin. This looks to me like an evolutionary hook. We didn't necessarily have a use for the resveratrol itself, but the sirtuin activation may have encouraged us to eat grapes for other reasons. It would not be unique. There are certain things we consume because we get some sort of happy from them which possess other benefits. Evolution is a complex critter at times, and having genes which lie dormant unless you eat the magic fruit and then let you live longer would be a tricky bit of programming. Some of diet is of course amazingly simple. Not the one you just posted. But glucosides, it's pretty basic. given the right enzyme we'd all be eating wood.

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Sunday, January 4, 2009 12:33 AM

Ok, post work rumination wrapup here, gonna be a bit of it, fair warning.

Re: Guns n Stuff

Come to think of it, I do believe you're pursuing a flawed and previously failed model here.

Adding more regulation when the first batch doesn't work rarely solves this sort of problem, and look what's happened in the past with the model in question.

Alcohol - via prohibition.

Tobacco - de-facto prohibition via taxation, giving rise to massive bumps in smuggling by otherwise law abiding folk, and in combination with recent fuel prices, driving many otherwise decent truckers to participate in efforts to keep the repo guys off their rigs.

"Intellectual property" - widely viewed as an outright scam by the general public, aiding and abetting content monopolies and in practice all but ineffective while raising the cost/hassle factor for the law abiding.
Eric Flint has some *great* rants about this at the Baen Free Library, where absolute proof has been delivered that going the other route is more profitable.

Drugs - via the "war on (some) drugs", and do we really need to repeat this same idiocy, stupidity and invitation to abuse with firearms ?

The model itself is flawed, and I think much of the problem with gun violence is directly related to the imbalance of power caused by the law abiding obeying the law, and the criminals disobeying it, resulting in a directly counterproductive effect as the legally-disarmed are now easier victims to an armed criminal and thus have exactly the opposite effect as intended by encouraging the armed criminal.

Laws and Regs exist to protect people and their stuff, but when one of them either fails to do this, or somehow becomes twisted into being more important than that basic principle, often distorted into contravention of it, then that Law or Reg loses all honest legitimacy.

I think we should go the other way, simply leave it the hell alone, and let folks have the means to defend themselves while encouraging manufacturers to require effective training and proof thereof as a condition of sale in exchange for immunity to lawsuit.

And that's really, really enough on that topic, I dun wanna get sidetracked as I have stuff after this to post which is more useful.

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Sunday, January 4, 2009 12:33 AM

Re: Party Ticket

I'm thinking we have to get Colin Powell back in the game, cause a Powell/Paul ticket would be a damned good gameplan - Powell has the makings of another Ike, and Paul has some solid ideas but they're a little too radical for him to run up front.

That ticket would have a very broad appeal, and we could mitigate Powell's selling that line of crap to the UN with a nice little "god help me, I believed them" sob story, which the media will eat right up, all to our gain.

Re: Dealing with the UN.

Yanno, one of the most unforgiveable acts of gross stupidity EVER, was to send that arrogant zealot Bolton over there, who's boneheaded idea was that ?

Diplomacy is the art of selling snake oil, the last person you wanna send is a guy so damn grating that like some obnoxious high school gym coach, he offends EVERYONE IN RANGE the moment he opens his mouth even if they don't speak his language, that was just plain dumb!

We shoulda sent Bill Clinton, imho that would have been a better use of his talents even than the presidency, they do not call the guy "slick willie" for nothing you know, and he's right damn good at selling snake oil.
Not to mention being a globalist he knows all the hooks and right buttons to push on his fellow NWO wannabes, and has the added edge of being just the type of asshole that'll make sure our country benefits *first* off anything he does get done.

Dredge up anyone in our intel community who actually knows how to do something other than plant evidence and give phony plots to patsies, and set them up in his entourage, and work it this way...

We start helping "clean up the corruption" by our intel guys feeding stuff to opposite factions who will expose it and hammer it home, while keeping our hands relatively clean, and then a little quiet blackmail here and there on those we can encourage to toe the line that way, while we try to claw back the moral high ground by closing Abu Gharib, Gitmo and such while throwing a few mid-level patsies to them (NeoCons who've been left to sink when the rest of em flee to non-extradition countries, preferably) to be dragged over the coals in the world court.

And so forth, and so on, till we've got a leadership role and a nice strongarm for those that don't play ball.
And we can go either way with that, either truly become world leaders, or bend it into another arm of US policy, depending on where we want to go and how we need to get there.

Re: Foreign Aid

Yank it, sorry folks, but we're not your mommy.

Re: Social Security
Cap it, pick a fiscal year and cut any more influx (and do NOT charge those folks relative taxes, or you'll start something ugly) but do hold to the bargain and pay out to those who paid into it X amount of years/income or more, and refund to the rest with their regular tax refund.

Then use tax abatement for personal savings/CD/IRA/Qualifying programs, while putting that money in motion to rebuild infrastructure and investing in the companies which build and maintain it, which is a pretty damn solid investment.
Can even put a nice catchy name to it like "Investing in America" or whatnot.

That's all I got for the moment, I think...

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Sunday, January 4, 2009 4:56 AM

Quote:
Ok, post work rumination wrapup here, gonna be a bit of it, fair warning.

Ah, maybe in all this ranting all of us could spend a little time editing I think I'll start with myself.

Quote:
Come to think of it, I do believe you're pursuing a flawed and previously failed model here.

It's entirely possible

Quote:
Adding more regulation when the first batch doesn't work rarely solves this sort of problem, and look what's happened in the past with the model in question.

Actually, I oppose regulation. I think it never works. I'll t

Quote:
Alcohol - via prohibition.

Exactly. Here's what does work though: food labeling. It's not a prohibition. You can stick it on the shelf and say "Now with melamine!"

War on drugs, otoh, not doing so well.

Quote:
"Intellectual property" - widely viewed as an outright scam by the general public, aiding and abetting content monopolies and in practice all but ineffective while raising the cost/hassle factor for the law abiding.
Eric Flint has some *great* rants about this at the Baen Free Library, where absolute proof has been delivered that going the other route is more profitable.

There are countless examples. I recall a list of the ten most profitable videogames of all time, nine of them were shareware, including 5 of the top five.
But you can go back further. The clash originally wanted to name their second album "steal this album" but the record company didn't like it, so they went with "black market clash." Their reasoning: The more the album got bootlegged, the more concert tickets they sold.

Quote:
"war on (some) drugs"

lol. this is good, can I steal it?

Quote:
The model itself is flawed

Yes, no one was suggesting gun prohibition though. The "War on Guns" I can see it now.

Quote:
I think we should go the other way, simply leave it the hell alone

That won't work, lots of people being killed

Quote:
lawsuit.

Actually, I'm going to oppose a deal on this. How about removing the liability of protection from lawsuit. I think that fixes it. It not only says "be careful who you sell this to" it also encourages the development of better non-lethals. The guy who sold the gun to the VA Tech shooter later sold another gun to another psycho that killed someone. He was able to use his poor judgment repeatedly because he has no reprocussions from the first. VA Tech itself was not immune, and is facing serious bankruptcy from the incident. There's no reason to protect the shmuck who didn't do the background check to find out that the buyer was already labelled criminally insane before buying the gun.

Quote:
enough on that topic

agreed.

Quote:
I'm thinking we have to get Colin Powell back in the game

Disagree. He's damaged goods. Once you've been labelled a traitor, you're a liability. I used to support the guy, but now he's on my list of evil people.
Here's the only thing he have to know about Powell to lose all faith in him: He covered up My Lai. That's how his career got started. He was the cover up guy. If looked at in that light, all the rest of his actions can be seen a different way. Also, he's too old. We need young people.

Quote:
we could mitigate Powell's selling that line of crap to the UN with a nice little "god help me, I believed them" sob story

Nah, never trust the media to be your ally, or independent. Assume it will be 100% against us. Just outnumber their zombie hoards, and do it under the radar, so they never know how many there are.

Quote:
Yanno, one of the most unforgiveable acts of gross stupidity EVER, was to send that arrogant zealot Bolton over there, who's boneheaded idea was that ?

Lol. It was Bush's idea. Condi wanted him fired, because she hated him, and they couldn't actually fire him because he knew where the bodies were burried.

Quote:
just plain dumb!

Quote:
We shoulda sent Bill Clinton

The democrats were begging for Bush Sr. lol. I think that would have been a better pick. Bill Clinton just has too much "ew" to him.

But we should rejoice in this fuckup, because it hurt the globalist agenda. We should support hurting it.

Quote:
Dredge up anyone in our intel community who actually knows how to do something other than plant evidence and give phony plots to patsies, and set them up in his entourage, and work it this way...

This has its merits. I favor just supporting the Globalists in their own path of self destruction, while quietly carving a new one.

Quote:
We start helping "clean up the corruption" by our intel guys feeding stuff to opposite factions who will expose it and hammer it home

A great third party line, but I'm going to support corruption. Corruption is a time bomb. Look at the USSR. It's about to happen to China. Corrupt govt. eventually pops. If govt. becomes so corrupt that it can't function because it's far more concerned with hookers and coke than getting the job done, than that slows down the agenda.

But all stuff to gnaw on.

I think we should help them in their driving desire to fail without actually crossing them.

I say, ignore the extant power structure. There are enough disaffected people that when you start to look like a force, they'll want to join you.

Quote:
Yank it, sorry folks, but we're not your mommy.

This was a standard 3rd party line also. I agree. I think it loses some softy lefties. Yank military aid, that's almost all of it, as a platform plank. In reality, yeah, we should just yank it.

Quote:
Cap it, pick a fiscal year and cut any more influx (and do NOT charge those folks relative taxes, or you'll start something ugly) but do hold to the bargain and pay out to those who paid into it X amount of years/income or more, and refund to the rest with their regular tax refund.

It's a screw deal. replace it with something better. Adjusted for interest, every dollar put into it gives 3 cents back, and 2 of those cents go to households with more than one million in assets. Actually, I've written a social security reform proposal, which I sent to congress. It was a pretty well though out package.

Quote:
putting that money in motion to rebuild infrastructure and investing in the companies which build and maintain it, which is a pretty damn solid investment.

Privatize the infrastructure. Let businesses who want the traffic pay for it.

Quote:
Can even put a nice catchy name to it like "Investing in America" or whatnot.

Yes we can :)

I made a similar plan, I called it rebuilding america.

I favor using worthless federal reserve notes and giving billions in contracts to do some of this. That keeps these guys occupied, and helps increase corruption.

Of course, if we take over the GOP, we'll be opposing whatever Obama does, and he may do something like this. He wants a new new deal.
Of course, that's going to make the govt. everyone's mommy. But first what we need to do is draw in as many people as we possibly can

So, here are some points I think that might win some votes

End the war on drugs
End war
End taxes. (I mean, screw it, the govt. only hands that money to the fed for interest)
End the Fed.
Return of Tarrif as a source of income, and corporate income tax on any profit not re-invested, or any money that gets given in dividends passed x amount.
I had a plan I called the fat tax, it taxed money that did nothing. When money transfered from one place to another, without any real business, stuff like that, non-productive money. What we do right now is stupid: We tax income. That doesn't mean we tax workers, we tax employers, once for each american they hire. That's a wonderful incentive program. It's like free ass-rape for every job you create.

Meanwhile, we're not selling anything to china now because they have a 50% tarrif on anything america, and we have no tarrif on anything chinese.

As for faces, we need new faces. The only face I've seen lately that I like is Sarah Palin

Maybe this shouldn't be one united movement, but a bunch of little ones that differ slightly, but can later be united with little difficult, like puzzle pieces.

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Sunday, January 4, 2009 11:22 AM

Re: Powell/Mai Lai.

Thing is, DT - that's how you *make* general, you don't get that first pretty little star without doing something seriously heinous to earn it.

Look at Patton and MacArthur, who made their bones kicking the crap out of vets exercising their right of peaceable assembly and free association, or even Smedley Butler, a man I happen to idolize, who made his by throwing the smack down for United Fruit.

David Hackworth's refusal to cross that line is why he never made general, so it's prettymuch a sure bet that anyone bearing one or more stars has those kinds of skeletons in their closet whether we know about them or not - but ponder this closely...

A man capable of such dark deeds, is a man of great capacity, also capable of great deeds, and their own personal failings remind them and drive them to better themselves and those around them, in General Butlers case, the very ghosts of his past that haunted him so probably prevented a very real coup attempt by an earlier version of the modern neocons, by driving him to act against it.

Ergo, I think Powell is redeemable, and it's not like we have a whole lot of other options that would match his skills, appeal and abilities.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Sunday, January 4, 2009 11:42 AM

Frem,

I'm Vetoing the suggestion. Here's why

Yeah, I'm aware that Ike had bonus marcher issues, and wesley clarke killed all those people at waco, I know how it works.

That's not the point. Powell is irredeemable in the eyes of the public. He would be a liability.

I say we invent new ones. Targeted ones. With small targeted appeal. Then unite later on.

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Sunday, January 4, 2009 3:12 PM

Well, i'm of the mind that what we really need, is another Ike - and if Powell ain't gonna do it, that leaves a right crummy selection of options.

I mean, I'd love to run Ron Paul up front, but that just ain't gonna work, we gotta candy coat the pill somehow to get the public to swallow it, you know this.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Sunday, January 4, 2009 8:01 PM

Taguba, he broke the Abu Ghraib scandal. He carries himself well. Young, intelligent, I'm not sure if he counts as a native born.

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Monday, January 5, 2009 1:40 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"On mercury, it may leave the system but first it circulates through the hypothalamus causing damage to the NT producing cells."

This damage, though is transitory, and reverses as mercury washes out of the system.

Mercury and other pollutant exposure is different for fetuses and children than it is for adults.

I don't know that the mechanism for the global effects of fetal/childhood mercury exposure have been elucidated, but the global effects of lead (Pb) have been traced to its effects on calmodulin. This is an important neural growth/ communication regulator. Other pollutants have been found to have effects on critical periods of differentiation and growth, where there is only 1 time to get it right and no opportunity to redo.

As an aside, when I refer to oil, I'm also including fat, and specifically referring to the fatty-acid chains which make up most of storage fats, and not the 3-carbon 3-alcohol structure (glycerol) to which they are attached.

"Oil is generally synthesized, there's very little that organisms absorb ..."
Animals do absorb oil quite readily - in humans it can be seen in the blood chylomicrons which are formed when the gut cells physically engulf oil droplets, package them with protein and transport ultimately into the circulatory system. Both fish and birds are well-equipped to ingest, digest and absorb oil - for example, sparrows prefer bugs during fall, winter and spring for their high protein and fat content. However, single-celled organisms do not seem well-equipped to either absorb or break down oil.

"The biochem of a human can be very easily predicted with the foreknowledge that humans are descended from an arboreal mouse. That means that everything we need is going to come from nuts, seeds, fruits and berries."
Though, ultimately, while we come from single celled organisms, I'm not sure I'd make the argument we can metabolically do what they do !

There are big differences even between modern mammals. Most mammals can synthesize vitamin C, while all primates (including humans) and, oddly, guinea pigs can't. Cats require the amino acid taurine, humans do not. Most mammals break uric acid down to allantoin, higher primates do not (hence, we get gout). And so on.
The signature differences generally are that single-celled organisms are self-sufficient, while more complex organisms have more and more exacting dietary requirements as they lose ability to synthesize critical compounds. Higher primates need specific amino acids, vitamins, minerals, and - yes fats.

"Most likely I think the omegas are just a natural collagen precursor ..."
Humans have a major need for DHA and more equivocally for EPA, which are important components of neural tissue. "The major fatty acid constituents of human retinal lipids were palmitic, stearic, oleic, arachidonic, and docosahexaenoic (DHA) acids."
http://www.iovs.org/cgi/reprint/3/4/441.pdf
"The Essentiality of N-3 Fatty Acids for the Development and Function of the Retina and Brain"
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146%2Fannurev.nu.08.07
0188.002505
DHA is an important component of breast milk and is recognized as beneficial to normal brain development.

Human fat metabolism is different from the fat metabolism of even our closest primate relatives, the chimpanzees. I'd like to get into it at greater length at some point, for now I'll mention that humans are equipped as fetuses to put on fat in the last month before birth (and their mothers metabolically equipped to supply that fat, even at the expense of their own tissues), and that dietetically-speaking, humans routinely make use of amounts of fat that would literally kill a chimp.

"... though there were once fish in the Sahara, I'm not convinced that we a natural predator ..."
Humans probably evolved on seashore. There is a fine line between being a predator and a browser of really slow and small creatures like clams.
I'd like to reiterate that point about our probable evolution by referring to iodine. When was the last time you read about goiter being a problem for giraffes ? Or lions, gorillas, or mule deer ? These animals live hundreds - and up to 1000 miles away from - the nearest iodine source, which is the ocean, in areas with iodine deficient soils. And yet, they show no signs of iodine deficiency. Humans OTOH globally show signs of iodine deficiency (unless supplemented) in the same areas where animals do not. http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2004/9241592001.pdf

There are other reasons to believe humans spent the last few hundred thousand years near the seashore, for example the cystic fibrosis gene which has no natural equivalent in any other animal.

I need to get on with my day, but I do hope we can continue this discussion later.

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Tuesday, January 6, 2009 9:59 AM

Quote:
This damage, though is transitory, and reverses as mercury washes out of the system.

Not what I've read. The brain is different from other systems, it does not replace cells the way other organs do. If it did, we would never develop consciousness.

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Friday, January 9, 2009 3:33 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Hey DT

I did an intensive search of available data.

Nowhere did I find any indication that 'normal' doses of mercury cause anything other than temporary problems in an adult. Of course, there are people who've been severely poisoned, but that doesn't seem to be what any of us were talking about.

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&q=hypothalamus%2Bmercury%2
Bhuman&btnG=Search

I'm curious where you got your information. I could find similar information to what you posted about the dangers of mercury on commercial websites - but they were selling detox procedures and substances. And I thought their information was probably pretty biased; additionally, their information didn't reference any actual studies or data.

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Friday, January 9, 2009 7:58 PM

Kathy,

Several things

1. You're right about the bias

2. This was some years ago. I suffered hypothalmus damage due to heavy metal poisoning, so it wasn't a mercury search, but the indication was that the hypothalamus did not repair itself, and mercury was listed as a heavy metal that could cause this damage.

3. I've done a lot of research on neurology, and the non-repair of neural tissue is not universal, but very prevalent, because of the destructive nature that such repair would have on our systems.

4. The cell death in the hypothalamus disproportionately lowers the production of GABA and to a lesser extent serotonin. I find the most curious possible impact of this being that a person who had both downes syndrome and lead poisoning might as a result be mentally normal, if, of course, in perfect balance.

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Monday, January 12, 2009 11:38 AM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

Thanks for the reply.

I'm not sure I have much more to add, except to say that there is a potential historical example of mercury poisoning and that is Abraham Lincoln. The article also cites the 'reversible' effects of mercury as the reason for Lincoln's loss of composure while taking the (mercury-containing) pills for depression, and his regaining it when he stopped taking them.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1441454.stm

His colleague Dr Robert Feldman, from Boston University, added: "Mercury poisoning certainly could explain Lincoln's known neurological symptoms: insomnia, tremor and the rage attacks.

"But what is even more important, because the behavioural effects of mercury poisoning may be reversible, it also explains the composure for which he was famous during his tenure as president."

Dr Hirschhorn said: "The wartime Lincoln is remembered for his self-control in the face of provocation, his composure in the face of adversity.

"If Lincoln hadn't recognised that the little blue pill he took made him 'cross,' and stopped the medication, his steady hand at the helm through the Civil War might have been considerably less steady."

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Monday, January 12, 2009 11:51 AM

Kathy

Ah,

yes, this isn't what I meant. I meant the cell death is not reversible from what I've read. My older sister had mercury poisoning, and has had severe depression. She can probably get over the depression itself, but that doesn't mean that the hypothalamus repairs itself.

One of my own mental problems comes from my mother's smoking when pregnant, and 3 packs a day. As a result, my brain had all this nicotine to substitute for the gaba, and didn't build enough gaba producing cells. There are ways to chemically correct that, but it's very very difficult. Physically, short of stem cells, there's no way to repair the lack of cells.

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Monday, January 12, 2009 12:56 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

That's why I was trying to differentiate between adult brains and unformed ones. The adult brain isn't undergoing the active growth and wiring-up that the fetal/ pediatric brain is.

I just thought I'd mention the following b/c I found it SO interesting. The brain undergoes extensive remodeling during adolescence.

I was studying up on EEGs, b/c a family member has brain damage and I was wondering about the EEG abnormalities. So I got this text on EEGs. It showed typical EEGs of infants, children, adolescents and adults. Infant EEGs are pretty chaotic though there are some typical normal patterns which help distinguish between normal brain function and abnormal. Children's EEGs look like adult EEGs, oddly enough. Teenage EEGs are not at all like infant's, children's or adults' EEGs. They get some of the brainwaves completely reversed between the front and back of the brain, some brain waves that were there during childhood (and which will come back in adulthood) go missing, and the like.

It's just to say that the re-wiring that happens during the teenage years is SO profound it shows up even with a crude measure like an EEG.

I know a lot has been written about the pre-natal and first 2 years growth of the brain, and the wiring-up learning process that takes place up to the age of 12 (the end of the critical period * for language acquisition).

But the neural events of the teenage years are profound.

* "Critical periods are a general phenomenon that is associated with a number of different sensory systems. Though the most comprehensive studies have dealt with the visual systems of mammals (follow the Experiment Module link to the left), critical periods have also been identified in the development of the auditory, olfactory, and somesthetic systems."

Anyway, I have a lot left to do today. I hope we can continue this later.

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Monday, January 12, 2009 1:01 PM

Quote:
The brain undergoes extensive remodeling during adolescence.

Link me this?

My understanding was that the brain was basically formed <2-3, and that it underwent a restructuring until 7, then skill acquiring though 12, and after that it was chemical changes, but no rewiring per se, as in a re-aligning of neural connections.

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Monday, January 12, 2009 1:06 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

I got the EEG stuff from a book:

http://www.amazon.com/Fisch-Spehlmanns-EEG-Primer-Principles/dp/044482
1481/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231801528&sr=1-1

Fisch and Spehlmann's EEG Primer: Basic Principles of Digital and Analog EEG (Paperback)

I'll jump back in a few minutes to see if this is what you're looking for, or if you're looking for sources for other things instead.

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Monday, January 12, 2009 1:53 PM

EEG doesn't really give you a wiring though, you can radically alter you eeg not just with drugs, but with meditation. You can will yourself into a pretty foreign eeg state.

I don't think this touches on brain repair. Mostly, I think that brain alteration is a chemical thing anyway.

A couple things concern me, one, my own brain, and getting it to a state I want to be in, and the other is people with serious problems, like i know some addicts trying to become independent, and trying to understand the mechanisms of addiction, etc. Basically, everything interests me in the end.

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Monday, January 12, 2009 2:24 PM

I have a vote and I'm not afraid to use it!

"EEG doesn't really give you a wiring though, you can radically alter you eeg not just with drugs, but with meditation. You can will yourself into a pretty foreign eeg state."

It's what I was mentioning a couple of years ago to a friend - 'what is the EEG of a thought ?' The person in my family who has massive brain damage (stroke) was repeating some very bizarre things over and over in a very fixed, staring, unresponsive monotone - all the while the EEG was looking pretty normal. So I know one can have a normal looking EEG but have abnormal firing going on anyway.

The EEG is a crude measure.

But even fMRI is crude, because it relies on repeated brain signals that cause average activity to be significantly altered, and therefore measurable in a gross anatomic way.

But I did want to point out that the EEGs in the book that I referred to were typical and normal, not part-time or one-off events. I do still think that teenage EEGs are significantly different from childhood and adult EEGs, and this reflects different connectivity in the brain. (Different brain waves are generated by different structures in the brain. And that they become conducted differently through the brain of the average teenager means that brain itself is talking to itself in a new way.)

"I don't think this touches on brain repair."

Yes, you're right. I just mentioned the teenage thing b/c it was so striking to me when I saw it (and b/c people often talk about the sensitivity of the fetal/ childhood brain, but there is not much recognition of the sensitivity of the teenage brain). It was off-topic, though.

"Mostly, I think that brain alteration is a chemical thing anyway."

I'd have to say yes - but, within limits.

There are some brains that are altered in gross anatomic ways. Some people are born that way (people without a cerebellum, or people with microgyri for example), other people have their brains altered through accident (strokes, car accidents), and sometimes long-term chemical damage results in altered anatomy (the large sulci and ventricles of Alzheimer's).

"A couple things concern me, one, my own brain, and getting it to a state I want to be in ..."

If you find an answer, I'd like to know ! In my childhood, I had a few minutes of blessed peace from the mental clanging in my thoughts. I remember it to this day as a time of extreme clarity, equanimity, and focus. I would certainly like to get there again.

"... and the other is people with serious problems, like i know some addicts trying to become independent, and trying to understand the mechanisms of addiction, etc."

I'm not trying to discourage you or trivialize your aim - but you DO realize that if you figure it out you would get a Nobel prize !

Knowing your aim though, does help me respond a little better.

Please bump this up in a few days if I don't get back to it. I'd hate for it to drift down the list into oblivion.

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Silence is consent.

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Monday, January 12, 2009 3:43 PM