VP Tim Walz outshines Kamala at DNC

I'm the same age as VP Kamala

Once upon a time there was a book called Hillbilly Elegy. It's not clear if Tim Walz ever read it, but he didn't need to. He lived it, unlike the author, not-so-good-old-boy, name-changing, high-powered capitalist, Yale-educated, pseudo-redneck JD Vance. On Night 3 of the DNC 2024, Walz made mincemeat out the MAGA movement and its titular head DJ and his flunky JD. This excellent choice for a running mate does present one problem: as humble and supportive as he is, he is clearly outshining the Shiny One, VP K. Devi Harris. Does she have any chance of presenting a speech anywhere as well as T. Walz, B. Clinton, B.S. Obama, Michael/Michelle Obama, Cat Lady Oprah, Genocide Joe, or AOC? Not blooming likely. Tim is a natural, the real thing.

VP candidate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz at DNC: full speech

(FOX 4 Dallas-Fort Worth) Aug. 21, 2024: Tim Walz formally accepted the Democrat party's nomination for vice president at the DNC. Here's his full speech.

Cheap supercars for broke boys: QtrLife Crisis

Ideal Media, March 3, 2022; Team T (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

There's room for all ages and genders on this ride.

Consider the fact that our hormones, patriarchal societies, the ways we're raised don't change so much. At the time of the Buddha, rich kids raced around in cool chariots with parasols and white stallions. Why? Image, chixdiggit, ego, testosterone, competitiveness, vanity, memories of life in the lower heavens (planes of existence in the deva worlds of the Sensual Sphere), who knows? But they did. And many people do it here and now, no longer limited to rich boys. Think of the new lowrider law in Los Angeles, California. Every kind of person in our U.S. car culture gets sucked in at least a little. Some a lot, but everyone a little. This is the Sensual Sphere (kama-loka). We aim for rebirth in the Fine Material Sphere or, at the very least, the sensuous heavens. Some more wisely aim for an end to rebirth or rearising in the hard-to-conceive Immaterial Sphere (the formless realms). Here, in the world of form (rupa), we want to experience things viscerally, corporeally, in the gut, on the skin, in the nether regions. We didn't make it that way. The karma of the being reborn here make it that way. So, given that we're wealthy and in the West with all its excesses, let's look at cars before they become illegal and we all go EV and start drag racing Priuses in tubes through our smart tubular cities, like that massive one being built in the desert. Kids, don't try this at home; ask a parent instead. But, you know, Knowledge and experience come from choices, and bad choices seem to yield the most knowledge and experience.

Cheap supercars for broke boys

(Ideal Media) Let's look at some not so expensive supercars for less than anyone thinks! Get in a 500 HP, 200 MPH beast that smokes a friend's BRZ. Some cheap cars make one look rich, from the Sl55 AMG, Fisker Karma, Aston Vantage, and Lotus Elise to the Dodge Viper, these cheap rides will make a statement wherever they're being driven. OK, OK, what's "cheap"? That depends. What's a "supercar"? That depends, too. Shut up. The average new car in America costs $50,000.00 so "cheap" varies.

Join The Ideal Fam at bit.ly/IdealMembership.  #dodgeviper #supercars #cheap

The House of Wisdom: Arabic Enlightenment

Jim al-Khalili, The House of Wisdom; Bettany Hughes (The Moors...); Editors, Wisdom Quarterly

Enlightenment is far better than ignorance...even if it upsets our worldviews and comfort. Here British historian Bettany Hughes stands in front of the Bodhi tree in Enlightenment Grove (Bodh Gaya, India), where Siddhartha became the Buddha or "Awakened One."

When the Moors Ruled in Europe (Part 1/11) with British historian Bettany Hughes - the shocking truth.

Arabic Science Gave us the Renaissance

This is a myth-shattering view of the Islamic world's myriad scientific innovations and the role they played in sparking the European Renaissance.

• [The "Dark" Ages, according to British historian Bettany Hughes, are said to have been when for seven centuries black Muslim Moors ruled Europe.]

Many of the innovations we think of as hallmarks of Western science actually had their roots in the Arab world of the Middle Ages, a period when much of Western Christendom stagnated in intellectual darkness.

Author: British physicist Jim al-Khalili

Author Jim al-Khalili, a leading British-Iraqi physicist, resurrects this lost chapter of history in The House of Wisdom: How Arabic Science Saved Ancient Knowledge and Gave Us the Renaissance.

Given current East-West tensions, his book could hardly be more timely.

With transporting detail, al-Khalili places readers in the hothouses of the Arabic Enlightenment, shows how they led to Europe's cultural awakening, and poses the question:

Why did the Islamic world enter its own Dark Age after such a dazzling flowering? More

Blacks ruled Europe?

Seven centuries of hidden European/African history

Join British historian Bettany Hughes as she examines a purposely-buried, hidden, and forgotten chapter of European history -- the risemof Islamic culture in what is now Spain and Portugal (bordering Northern Africa).

Although generations of Spanish rulers have tried to expunge this era from the historical record, recent archeology and scholarship have shed fresh light on the black Moors who flourished in Al-Andalus for more than 700 years.

The fascinating documentary WHEN THE MOORS RULED IN EUROPE explodes racist stereotypes and offers shocking new insights.

Black lives used to matter

Discover the ingenious mathematics behind Granada's dazzling Alhambra Palace, trace El Cid's lineage to his black Moorish roots in Africa, and learn how the population of the Iberian peninsula in white Europe willingly converted to liberal Islam in droves.

Through interviews with noted scholars, see how Moorish advances in mathematics, science, astronomy, art, and agriculture helped propel the West out of its Dark Ages and into its Renaissance ("Rebirth").

What emerges is a richly detailed portrait of a sensuous, inquisitive, and remarkably progressive black African Islamic culture dominating Christian Europe.

[The Moors (the definition of these people is constantly changed to make them less African, less black, and less brilliant, and less Muslim/Islamic) were royalty beyond the peninsula. They ruled throughout Europe, as many artifacts and revealed histories show.]

• REVIEW: When the Moors Ruled in Europe (SF Gate)

When home is the most dangerous place (video)

Dr. S. Lipscomb (Absolute History, 3/15/19); CC Liu, Crystal Quintero, Wisdom Quarterly

Simple mistakes that killed 1950s homeowners

Dr. Suzannah Lipscomb looks at the hidden dangers of the British post-war home [which was less dangerous than the American version]. In the 1950s, people embraced modern design for the first time after years of wartime austerity and self-denial. The "modern" home featured molded plywood furniture, fiberglass, plastics, and polyester -- chemical materials and technologies that were developed during World War II.

• New household solutions (inspireuplift.com)

Content licensed from DRG. Any queries, please contact: realstories@littledotstudios.com

Apes have "mid-life crises," humans too

Wisdom Quarterly

Balding, flabby, and testosterone-poisoned, that's the crisis at mid-life (WQ)

 
Yet again proving that we humans are simply the most spiritually and intellectually (albeit not necessarily the most socially or emotionally) evolved of the apes, we aren't the only ones to go through a mid-life crisis.

Everything we do, perhaps short of moral reasoning, exists in the animal world: tool-making, language (all animals communicate and some, without adequate voice boxes, manage to mimic our linguistic sounds, e.g. parrots, Mina birds, Beluga whales, howling dogs), promiscuity (bonobos), planned violence, murder, cannibalism, self-injury (most animals in captivity), anorexia (dolphins chuck), bipedalism (all birds walk on two legs in addition to a better way of traveling), smoke (monkey in Tobacco Company studies), drink (under fermenting fruit trees in desert oases), pleasure themselves... The great Noam Chomsky declared chimps could never use abstract language, until Nim Chimpsky proved him wrong.

(NewsyScience) Noc can talk. But marine biologists
discovered whales' human voices back in 1984.

 
Even apes have "midlife crises," study finds

Youth in a tube (cartoonstock.com)

(FOX News) Chimpanzees in a midlife crisis? It sounds like a setup for a joke. But there it is, in the title of a report published Monday in a scientific journal: "Evidence for a midlife crisis in great apes."

  

So what do these apes do? Buy red Ferraris? Leave their mates for some cute young bonobos? Uh, no. "I believe no ape has ever purchased a sports car," said Andrew Oswald, an author of the study. But researchers report that captive chimps and orangutans do show the same low ebb in emotional well-being at midlife that some studies find in people.

• Bigfoot is part human, study finds - Giants - 11 most mystifying Bigfoot sightings - Atom smasher creates new matter - Phantom island found on Google Earth - Ancient life lives in Antarctic lake - Alibaba: The new Facebook?
  

That suggests the human tendency toward midlife discontent may have been passed on through evolution, rather than resulting just from the hassles of modern life, said Oswald, a professor of economics at the University of Warwick in England who presented his work Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A second study in the journal looks at a younger age group and finds that happiness in youth can lead to higher income a few years down the road. More on that later. Let's get back to those apes. Several studies have concluded that... More

"This is one of the great patterns of human life.

We're all going to slide along this U for good or ill."

- Study author Andrew Oswald

Chemical Midlife: 1 in 10 on Anti-Depressants

Claire Bates (dailymail.co.uk)

Overwhelmed by life? One in 10 middle-aged adults in Europe take anti-depressants

Seeking chemical happiness: Why one in 10 of us reaches for the anti-depressants in middle age

It's a time of life when many adults reach the peak of their careers and are busy raising their children, but a new study reveals you are most likely to be depressed in your late 40s.

Researchers from the University of Warwick and the University of Stirling found one in 10 middle-aged adults acrossEurope took anti-depressants in 2010. [They do not work but rely on placebo effect and are toxic]. The rates were greatest in the UK alongside Portugal, France, and Lithuania.

In Britain, seven percent said they had been on drugs such as Prozac for more than four weeks, while two percent said they had taken them for under a month or from time to time.

This means 5.5million adults in the UK were on anti-depressants at some point last year.

Middle-aged women who were unemployed, divorced, or separated were the most likely to pop the pills.

Co-author Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick, said: "As we live in the richest and safest era in the history of humans, perhaps we are going to have to ask ourselves why one in ten of Europe’s middle-aged citizens need a pill to cope with life.

"That is an awful lot of people relying on chemical happiness."

The scientists said that the results supported the hypothesis that most of us experience well-being in life as a U-shape. So we start and end our lives relatively content but become bogged down by stresses and strains at work and home leading to a mid-life crisis. More

What's the Alternative?

Wisdom Quarterly

If you cannot afford to be depressed, you cannot afford to eat poorly, no matter how much it costs to eat well instead. We are the only people happy to ruin our health to get rich then go give that wealth away to try to get well again.

There is so much that can be done, a plethora of therapies and solutions. But the one thing we refuse to do is listen to the condition. Why are we depressed?

Oftentimes it is appropriate. It becomes inappropriate and debilitating. Nevertheless, chemical allopathic drugs do not themselves work. Being paid attention to, given something, taken care of, feeling side effects (that reinforce the placebo effect)... all of these give us hope. We are being sold hope and cancer. With help comes a high price -- soaring health care costs, toxic livers (full of fluoride, heavy metals, enzyme disruptors, and artificial excipients).

The shocking truth is that MOST of our serotonin is made in the gut, not the brain. Eating well (food combining" for smooth digestion) and avoiding "food complementing" (for complete protein, which means food goes undigested ruining our digestion and serotonin levels) is often enough.

Utilizing an alkalizing diet also helps so long as we alkalize the blood not the stomach. The stomach needs to be acidic. Anyone who thinks s/he has an "acid stomach" is almost certainly lacking acid. Antacids are a terrible idea! Instead, the solution is vegetarian digestive enzymes. Digest more, be depressed less with no intestinal distress.

Anyone who has gut problems is likely to become depressed. There is an ancient Chinese saying: We are only as healthy as our intestines and only as young as our backs.

Good digestion is a blessing we do almost everything we can to ruin -- with sugar, starch/grains/carbohydrates, alcohol, vinegar, artificial and "natural" flavors (all of which are artificial excitotoxins toxic to braincells but legally called "natural" because they mimic a naturally existing flavor), gluten and grain damage (Celiac disease), chemical sweeteners...

• Food Combining Chart (acidalkalinediet.com)

Our "Food Pyramid" is a testament to the Four Food Lobbies. No human group in history or prehistory has ever eaten this way. If one wants to see the danger in such a diet, here is how:

Go to an Indian reservation. Its food supply is provided by the American government and wholly subsidized. It therefore follows American (Food Pyramid) guidelines. You will not find worse health -- obesity, acne, diabetes (insulin resistance), hypoglycemia, heart disease, high cholesterol, alcoholism, oxidative stress (premature aging), sugar addiction, and depression.

The other major cause of depression is lack of steady sleep (due to stimulant use, worry in reaction to stress), failing to exercise (a little many times a week is much better than a lot a few times a week), and toxicity. Heavy metals can be cleared by chelation.

But good luck trying to get any help for any of these things from an allopathic doctor. Such doctors and the medical industry in generally is utterly vested in disease and symptom treatment. Health means invasive treatment in this sense. But this is not holistic or sustainable but enslaving and bankrupting.

• Eat fats that heal (which are satiating)
• Avoid all processed carbohydrates and sugar
• Eat greens daily, preferably at every meal
• Eat antioxidant rich organic fruits and berries
• Consume clean proteins (unfried, cruelty-free, vegetable-based)
• Drink lots and lots of water (unfluoridated and never in plastic)
• Eat daily probiotics (cultured food, not fermented)
• Eat as much fiber/roughage as possible ensuring as many bowel movements as meals in a day
• Detox through exercise, sweating, deep breathing, bathing in chlorine-free water (use a shower filter)
• Avoid hydrogenated fats in plastic containers (which means processed oils such as canola and soy oil, even though they do not say so on the label)
• Avoid putting chemicals on skin such as sunscreen (replacing it with antioxidants and phytonutrients), sodium lauryl sulphates (and related chemicals) or in hair.

There is much we can do to avoid depression. If it all seems like to much to be responsible for in our own lives, consider that we are doing all these things that need avoiding. Simply stop. There are countless alternatives.

Wisdom Network News: Midlife Crises Galore

T.B. Macpherson

Male midlife crisis from a Jungian point of view (sporeflections.wordpress.com)

Midway through a promising career as a world-renonwed Buddhist teacher, British born Ajahn Brahm, took it upon himself to ordain women in the Theravada tradition -- a first for a senior monk in Thailand's forest tradition. The fallout continues in spite of the fact that there are now fully ordained Buddhist nuns in various Theravadin countries:

Thai Buddhist council severs ties over women

BANGKOK (Monsters&Critics) - Thailand's Sangha Supreme Council, which governs the country's Buddhist monkhood, has severed all ties with an Australian monastery for ordaining two Buddhist nuns, media reports said Tuesday. "The expulsion took effect Monday after the council had ruled to cancel the monastery's status as a branch of Wat Nongpapong in Ubon Ratchathani province," The Nation online news site reported. More>>



It's never too late to change your mind spiritually -- or to change it back again -- as this story from India illustrates:

Over 1,700 reconverted to Hinduism

SURAT CITY - In its offensive against conversion of tribals to Christianity, the Maharashtra-based Shree Sampraday sect claimed to have reconverted 1,747 people back to Hinduism in Surat on Monday. A shadow has, however, been cast on the event with Surat district magistrate taking note of the organizers’ failure to seek permission for reconversion as stipulated in the Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act, 2003. The camp to reconvert tribals, who had embraced Christianity was held in the city for the first time and nearly 5,000 people from Maharashtra and Gujarat participated in the ceremony. More>>

Need to portray Hinduism’s human face
CHENNAI - Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa here on Thursday refuted perceptions that Hindu spiritual organizations lacked social consciousness and that they lacked commitment to social service. He said networking and showcasing their social activities was the best way to demolish such myths. “This myth (about Hinduism) needs to be demolished in order to gain the rightful place for these organizations in the global order of things,” he said at a function to inaugurate the first ever “Hindu Spiritual and Services Fair-2009,” by over 100 Hindu spiritual organizations across India. More>>

Former Security Advisor predicts two wars for India
"In the next four years Pakistan and China may attack us." The former Indian National Security Advisor, Brajesh Mishra, has predicted that in next four years, India may have to defend itself from Pakistan and China at the same time. Mishra said that China's present threat to India is more dangerous than in 1962, when the countries clashed in a war, and that Indian politicians were to blame for India's weak defense position. He pointed out at a book-release function in New Delhi that there has been a change in China's stand regarding Kashmir, which could lead to a bigger threat. More>>

• Officials: Suspected U.S. missile strike kills in Pakistan
• Security in Afghanistan is at a new low after a grim year
• In Sri Lanka, tsunami anniversary inspires mixed reactions

But what midlife crisis would be complete without an impulse for sexual indiscretion or outright misconduct? Divorce or infidelity is usually enough. Yet, from time to time people, even monks, get in much more trouble.

• One year jail term for pedophile Briton in Cambodia
  PHNOM PENH (AFP) — A Cambodian court on Friday sentenced a British man to one year in prison for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl. Judge Ke Sakhan of Phnom Penh Municipal Court convicted 51-year-old Gareth Ashley Corbett, arrested in the popular seaside town of Sihanoukville in July, of committing indecent acts. He handed Corbett the one-year jail term and ordered him to pay a 1,000-dollar fine. More>>
• Mo. man says monk rape charge retaliation
  ST. LOUIS (UPI) -- A Missouri man facing an extortion charge is sticking by his allegations that a Roman Catholic monk exposed himself to him. Steven Gillispie, 45, told the St. Louis (Mo.) Post-Dispatch that he made up a rape allegation only after the monk's order failed to pay him off over what Gillispie said was a flashing incident that actually took place. More>>
• Vatican to review security after Pope knocked down

Then there's the meaning of life and the search for it. It's about giving of yourself, saving the world, doing for others, communing with nature... All that is accomplished by becoming an activist participating in a great movement like saving the whales and the ocean.

Japanese whalers clash with militant activists
CANBERRA, Australia – Japanese whalers and militant conser-vationists have clashed in the Antarctic Ocean over two days, with weapons including water cannon, blinding lasers and bottles of rancid acid, both sides said Wednesday. (Slideshow: Whaling Controversy) Each accused the other of coming dangerously close during the clashes. Neither reported any injuries or ship damage. More>>

Pondering Nature, God, and Existence
(NYT) Mr. Douthat tells readers that in the absence of an “escape upward” from heartless Nature into the arms of a God willing to “take on flesh and come among us,” human existence is a tragedy. He further says that we are “beasts with self-consciousness” who “stand half inside the natural world and half outside it.” More>>

Scientists complete sequencing Tibetan antelope genome

Fluffy mystery at edge of Solar System solved
(SPACE.com) Our solar system is passing through a cloud of interstellar material that shouldn't be there, astronomers say. [Is it Xirbiru?] And now the decades-old Voyager spacecraft have helped solved the mystery. The cloud is called the "Local Fluff." It's about 30 light-years wide and holds a wispy mix of hydrogen and helium atoms, according to a NASA statement released today. Stars that exploded nearby, about 10 million years ago, should have crushed the Fluff or blown it away. So what's holding the Fluff in place? "Using data from Voyager, we have discovered... More>>

The vast Santanic conspiracy

Is St. Nick the tool of a plot too monstrous to mention? Could it be… SATAN?

Christian soldiers, marching as to war in the pitched battle for the meaning of Christmas, worry that Santa is a tool of the vast Satanic conspiracy. To be sure, the similarity of their names, identical but for one transposed letter, is provocative.... Could the Religious Wrong be right, just this once? Is Santa the Deceiver’s way of hijacking the Christ child’s birthday? Kriss Kringle is a corruption of the German dialectal Christkindl, “little Christ child.” Were Satan and Santa separated at birth? More>>

• 2nd Human Skull Found In Angeles National…
• Family, friends remember Brittany Murphy…
• DNA helps identify remains of Argentine "dirty war" victims

Science on weight, yoga, and mindfulness

SEATTLE, Aug. 14, 2009 (UPI) -- Regular yoga practice may help prevent middle-age spread in normal-weight people, and over-weight people may drop a few pounds, U.S. researchers said. Alan Kristal and his colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle said in an earlier study, the researchers learned middle-age people who practice yoga gained less weight over a ten year period than those who did not -- independent of physical activity and dietary patterns. The follow-up study, published in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found people who ate mindfully... More>>