December 2014 – The Book Blog

The Marked Year 1914 (Part Two)

As described in the previous post The Marked Year 1914 , many historians and analysts have declared that 1914 was a turning point in human history. At the close of centenary year 2014, here are more. For instance, columnist Joe Chapman writing in The Spectator of Hamilton, Ontario:

“How innocent, how mercifully ignorant, was the world of August, 1914! And yet, in many ways, the First World War, in a macabre sense at least, may well deserve the title ‘great’. It was the first war which could, with justification, be called a world conflict, involving nearly every important nation, with campaigns fought on many fronts, from Arctic wastes to steaming jungles. It was the first ‘total’ war, in which the whole nation became deeply involved, with the entire apparatus of civilian life becoming an integral part of the war effort. It was the first war in which technology played such an important part. No other war saw the introduction of so many new weapons used on a large scale: The machine-gun, the tank, the airplane, the submarine, poison gas, motor transport, telephones and other items, and artillery used on a truly grand scale. In short, it was the first of our modern wars.”

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How Trans-Fat Harms Your Memory

Dr. Mercola is the founder of the world’s most visited natural health web site,www.Mercola.com. You can learn the hazardous side effects of ‘over the counter’ remedies by getting a FREE copy of his latest special report The Dangers of Over the Counter Remedies by going to his Report Page.

There are a number of dietary links between dementia and heart disease. Excessive sugars, grains, and trans-fat consumption are three factors that promote both.

Not surprisingly, recent research has pointed out that heart disease also increases your odds of developing Alzheimer’s disease, a serious and deadly form of dementia.

According to the authors, vascular damage may predispose your brain to increased amyloid plaque build-up, which is a hallmark of this degenerative brain disease. Plaque build-up worsens with stiffer arteries, so preventing arterial plaque formation may be a critical factor in the prevention of dementia.

For decades, saturated fats have been the prime suspect as the cause of heart disease. The food industry, responding to such health concerns, replaced saturated fats with trans-fats, and a whole new market of low-fat (but high-sugar) foods was born.

Americas’ health has plummeted ever since, and there’s no telling how many may have prematurely died by this decision… Making matters worse, genetically engineered soy oil, which is a major source of tran-fats, can oxidize inside your body, thereby causing damage to both your heart, brain and your immune system.

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Jonathan Swift and the moons of Mars

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others”. “When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him”. [Jonathan Swift]

Born on November 30, 1667, Irish author, clergyman and satirist Jonathan Swift grew up fatherless. Under the care of his uncle, he received a bachelor’s degree from Trinity College and then worked as a statesman’s assistant. Eventually, he became dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. Most of his writings were published under pseudonyms. He is best remembered for Gulliver’s Travels. He died on October 19, 1745. Although not a scientist, he had friends and acquaintances that were, and was familiar with the work of astronomers such as Johannes Kepler.

Gulliver’s Travels was published on October 28^th 1726. It is regarded as his masterpiece. As with his other writings, he had the Travels published under a pseudonym, the fictional Lemuel Gulliver, a ship’s surgeon and later a sea captain. Though it has often been mistakenly thought of and published in abridged form as a children’s book, it is a great and sophisticated satire of human nature based on Swift’s experience of his times. Gulliver’s Travels is an anatomy of human nature, a sardonic looking-glass, often criticised for its apparent misanthropy (a generalized hatred for mankind). It asks its readers to refute it, to deny that it has adequately characterised human nature and society. Each of the four books—recounting four voyages to mostly fictional exotic lands—has a different theme, but all are attempts to deflate human pride. Critics hail the work as a satiric reflection on the shortcomings of the then current Enlightenment thought.
In the third chapter of ‘Voyage to Laputa’ we read: ‘They (the Laputans) have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty-one and a half; so that the squares of their periodical times are very near in the same proportion with the cubes of their distance from the centre of Mars, which evidently shows them to be governed by the same law of gravitation that influences the other heavenly bodies’.

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Dinosaurs in the Age of Man

Based upon material collated by Dr.Immanuel Velikovsky and published in Kronos journal

Dinosaur fossils have been found in the Laramie basin in Wyoming together with land plants “remarkably modern in their aspect”; these land plants suggest a much more recent age than the Cretaceous, said to have ended about 70 million years ago. The plants were referred by paleo-botanists to at least the Tertiary epoch, or the Age of Mammals.

“The Laramide group has given rise to one of the two most prolonged controversies in the history of American geology.” [C.O. Dunbar, Historical Geology (1949), p. 375.]

But the paleo-zoologists persisted in ascribing the fossils along with the plants to the Cretaceous.

In the red sandstone wall of Hava Supai Canyon in the region of the Grand Canyon in northern Arizona were discovered figures of animals cut by some prehistoric man. “The fact that some prehistoric man made a pictograph of a dinosaur on the walls of this canyon upsets completely all of our theories regarding the antiquity of man.” [Dunbar]

“The fact that the animal is upright and balanced on its tail would seem to indicate that the prehistoric artist must have seen it alive.” [Dunbar]

Dinosaurs were in the vicinity, as is established by footprints discovered not more than one hundred miles from the picture.

“Dr. Ales Hrdlicka, President of Anthropology, has given a lecture on these discoveries. Though his facts seem almost fantastic, they demand attention. They are actually nothing more or less than an image of a dinosaur supporting itself on its hind legs and balanced by its enormous tail. And a second drawing shows a saurian attacking a man. … the third drawing portrays a human figure beside a mastodon.” [Samuel Hubbard, Discoveries relating to prehistoric man by the Doheny Scientific Expedition in the Hava Supai Canyon, Northern Arizona (1927), p. 5. E. George, referring to these drawings in The Adventures of Mankind (1931)]

The paleontologist’s scheme requires the extinction of dinosaurs sixty to seventy million years before man appeared on the Earth.

“Either man goes back in Geologic time to the Triassic Period, which is millions of years beyond anything yet admitted (assigned the period 200-240 million years ago), or else there were ‘left over’ dinosaurs which came down into the age of the mammals. Yet even this last conclusion indicates a vast antiquity.” [Hubbard]

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