House of Numbers

This is absolutely a fascinating documentary. Watch this now if you think you know everything (anything?) about HIV.

"Because its been surrounded by Day 1 with so much emotion so much fear so much psychology so much drama, very few people can look at AIDS logically."

I feel like few people feel they know much about what AIDS is, but they are aware of the energy of deep fear that surrounds it. Is it possible this is some type of control tactic? How honest has our scientific community and government been about telling us all we need to know? Before I say more... I could not say it better than what is written on some of the articles online. And you really need to see this documentary.

There was a time when I imagined medical research as an idealized endeavor, carried out by scientists interested only in truth. Up close, it turns out to be much like any other human enterprise, riven with envy, ambition and the standard jockeying for position. Labs and universities depend on grants, and grantmaking is fickle, subject to the vagaries of politics and intellectual fashion, and prone to favor scientists whose work grips the popular imagination. Every disease has champions who gather the data and proclaim the threat it poses. The cancer fighters will tell you that their crisis is deepening, and more research money is urgently needed. Those doing battle with malaria make similar pronouncements, as do those working on TB, and so on, and so on. If all their claims are added together, you wind up with a theoretical global death toll that "exceeds the number of humans who die annually by two- to threefold," said Christopher Murray, a World Health Organization director.

Rian Malan in his article AIDS in Africa In Search of the Truth (Rolling Stone 2001)

“We can be exposed to HIV many times without being chronically infected. Our immune system will get rid of the virus within a few weeks, if you have a good immune system.”

Dr. Luc Montagnier, 2008 Nobel Prize winner for discovering HIV

My education in the complexities of the ELISA test started when I came across an article in a scientific journal published last year. It told a story that began in 1994, when researchers ran HIV tests on 184 high-risk subjects in a South African mining camp. Twenty-one of the subjects came up positive or borderline positive on at least one ELISA. But the results were confusing: A locally manufactured test indicated seven, but different people in almost every case. A French test declared fourteen were infected.

It seemed something was confounding the tests, and the prime suspect was plasmodium falciparum, one of the parasites that causes malaria: Of the twenty-one subjects who tested positive, sixteen had had recent malaria infections and huge levels of antibody in their veins. The researchers tried an experiment: They formulated a preparation that absorbed the malaria antibodies, treated the blood samples with it, then retested them. Eighty percent of the suspected HIV infections vanished.

Rian Malan in his article AIDS in Africa In Search of the Truth (Rolling Stone 2001)

There is strong evidence that the HIV test you took is very often wrong. We have found over fifty different scientific studies listing seventy non-HIV conditions that can make the test produce false positive results. Depending on which test you took, they have been proven to be wrong as much as 90% of the time, and could be wrong 100% of the time. So you might not be HIV-positive at all.

- HelpforHIV.com

In Africa, HIV status is irrelevant. Even if you test negative, you can be called an AIDS patient:

From a study in Ghana: “Our attention is now focused on the considerably large number (59%) of the seronegative (HIV-negative) group who were clinically diagnosed as having AIDS. All the patients had three major signs: weight loss, prolonged diarrhea, and chronic fever.” (Lancet. October,1992)

Knowing is Beautiful: the Hidden Face of HIV by Liam Scheff

Start questioning. Why have we assumed this all to be true? Maybe it's not even remotely true. The video even says there is no evidence to say its sexually linked. It's an excellent documentary and poses a lot of questions that demand answering before we make the assumptions we are already making. Watch this!

Where is everyone?

I thoroughly enjoyed this video on the fundamental question of extra terrestrial life. And he goes even more in depth here, where he talks about the Great Filter. First, read this whole section on the Fermi paradox.

The critical feature of the Fermi paradox is that in terms of TIME & SCALE, we should already see e-t life. Because, "there are an estimated 200–400 billion stars in the Milky Way and 70 sextillion in the visible universe." and the universe is 13.7 billion years old.

I like how they wrote this. It boils down to essentially this...

The Fermi paradox can be asked in two ways. The first is, "Why are no aliens or their artifacts physically here?" If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy.[11] This is a relatively small amount of time on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the Sun, or since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already. Even if colonization is impractical or undesirable to all alien civilizations, large-scale exploration of the galaxy is still possible; the means of exploration and theoretical probes involved are discussed extensively below. However, no signs of either colonization or exploration have been generally acknowledged.

The argument above may not hold for the universe as a whole, since travel times may well explain the lack of physical presence on Earth of alien inhabitants of far away galaxies. However, the question then becomes "Why do we see no signs of intelligent life?" since a sufficiently advanced civilization[Note 1] could potentially be observable over a significant fraction of the size of the observable universe.[12] Even if such civilizations are rare, the scale argument indicates they should exist somewhere at some point during the history of the universe, and since they could be detected from far away over a considerable period of time, many more potential sites for their origin are within range of our observation. However, no incontrovertible signs of such civilizations have been detected.

It is unclear which version of the paradox is stronger

Now the Great Filter from what I understand, is some hypothesis that there is a most critical test, that should we not pass, we cannot be labelled at "expanding lasting life". This is a very odd hypothesis to me, because all things begin and end, so I'm not sure why they assume there is some final obstacle we must cross to see if we are really viable in this universe. But either way, from one perspective, it appears there are obstacles - for a single celled organism to turn into a multi celled one, we assume that it has reached the next level, and is a higher, more intelligent being as a result of it.

I like how he ends the Great Filter video though, noting that "it's entirely possible no one really knows we're here." When he said that, it took loneliness to a whole other level. What if there is a community of extra-terrestrial beings out there... who are completely focused on another section of the sky. They forgot to check here, or they find it improbable that we would exist? But if they knew, they would be able to contact us right away. Wow, what a strange thing to think of.

With that... good night :)

Star Of The Sea

 


Star Of The Sea by Stellamara

I've been lucky to stumble on this album by Stellamara, "Star Of The Sea". It's melodic and euphoric. Apparently it "draws on the most arcane and ancient melodies from 13th and 15th century Galacia, Croatia, and Persia"... another plus for me. :)

enka by Jero

Wow, this is definitely the coolest thing since sliced bread (cept that sliced bread aint very cool).



Last time, I talked about Enka and black people... and wha la... you might imagine how surprised I was to see Jero walk up to the stage. Really a wondrous thing though. He's my new favorite Enka singer. Just stunning. And the guts to stick out like that... is thrilling and inspiring and beautiful to see. I'm just happy all around. Can't wait to dig through his songs now.

I like this style of music, called Enka.

I love the way Wu-Tang throws those old tracks into the background of their songs, and in their videos, they set the tone for desperation. Like in the video linked above, it's winter and its NJ. There are scenes of them driving down NJ lanes, getting warm around trash cans. It's really like that. I remember taking the train from my town in NJ up through to NYC and passing by quite a few abandoned buildings were you could see large gatherings of gangsters all wearing the same headbands. This was mainly around Newark, which is quite a spooky place. But I remember my mom once got lost around there, and it was early morning. And she asked some man warming his hands around a fire outside how to get back to a highway. She was completely stunned by his niceness. She said much nicer than anyone would ever be in the areas she was going to, where people were wealthier and wouldn't even pay you the time of day unless you had something to give THEM.

I don't know this man, but I'm suspecting his heart just cracked open under the surrender of his condition. Who knows, really. He could easily be an alcoholic and criminal by night. But by day, he might just return back to this supreme niceness. It's all very puzzling, the way people develop given their circumstances.

I think there is a real heart in Newark. I've always been oddly drawn there, even though it's scared me to death. In fact, I remember lying at home in NJ and pondering about how close I was to Newark and how much that scared me. It was brutal there, the night and the winter. What does that do to people? What would that do to me? I'm all fluffy and weak. I only gain strength when I'm being watered and shined upon properly, like any other plant.

My memories are distinct - my first experiences were waiting on long lines to get Visas to go out of country there with my family as a kid. You'd wait outside and the wait for hours for the doors to open. They'd only let in so many people. This would actually help ensure you'd be out of there as soon as possible. As you'd wait, gangsters would come harass you and ask for money. Around that little part of town was the only section where there were any white people. Outside of that, you'd stick out like a foreigner. And the fact that it was dangerous was no understatement. A friend of mine went to university in Newark and they had to be on campus by 6pm and the gates would lock to keep them safe.

But what is it like for the residents there? They probably have a very different perspective. They probably have a lot more street smarts. I'm not sure really.

Well anyway, back to this song too, I don't know if its just that spooky back track, but it also reminds me of NY. In a lovely darkness, in winter, in its glamour and very large painfulness. Everyone involved is also everything in it. If you really love NY and then you must really love all of it.

tiaelrvis

I named this blog using this site.

"Elves prefer names that flow off the tongue like wind through the trees."

Wow, so cool. My intention was to call it "The magic leaves". leaves at night, blowing in the wind, though in the heart of a thick forest. It's interesting because "tia" does bring to mind magic, but it also brings to mind night. the way you'd stumble upon a bushy creature in the forest cloaked by the night, lit by moonshine and be captivated by its total mystery. And also in reference to the Nadi astrology leaves, which are supposed to have written on them everything about a living being.

I had a similar realization once that trees (from which books are made of) are like books themselves, of all the knowledge of the world. It seems apt that we store our human-made knowledge onto their sheets. but I am willing to believe that if we only knew how to read a tree, it's bark is complete, without the need of ink of any kind. it would spell out the most wondrous stories.