By: s_peak • April 18, 2012
Oh, also… if anyone actually reads this… you may have noticed the theme changed. I’m working on a new wordpress mod that’s going to completely revamp this site with visualizations built to display posts. The mod will be made available for free when it’s done. It uses Raphael.js and mootools to run.
More very soon!
By: s_peak • April 18, 2012
Just watch this. So well said… I can’t top it.
By: s_peak • January 31, 2011
(I wanted to quickly repost this from my other blog, because I think everyone should know what aquaponics is.)
One of my favorite new subjects is aquaponics… the combination of aquaculture and hydroponics (or just plain gardening). Most people haven’t heard of it… but it’s quickly becoming well known among hydroponic gardeners and aeroponic enthusiasts alike. This time two years ago, there was almost no information available about aquaponics, but now there are several websites with awesome information to guide the average hobbyist.
Aquaponics, like hydroponics, can produce more plant life (or food) with less space than conventional gardening, and a well balanced system is healthier for both fish and plants. The key to it all is balance, however… and getting your system running in equilibrium can take time, patience, and some disappointment.
The picture above represents the aquaponic system, which is based entirely on natural systems (Basing our designs on those of nature is know as “biomimicry”). The picture above also goes over the nitrogen cycle, which is essentially the chemical path that waste takes to become usable to plants. Microbiological life in the soil (Generally) helps convert nitrogen into viable nutrient forms for plants, among other things. Nitrogen is often thought of as the most crucial nutrient for plants, as it is primarily responsible for leafy growth. Not all types of fish or plants work well in an aquaponics system, but some types thrive. I’ll go into more detail on this one in the next post.
This is the first of many posts on aquaponics and is meant to be an introduction. For more on this awesome new field of study, check out some links:
Backyard Aquaponics – a decent site, that now has a magazine with lots of Aquaponics info!
Comments/questions are encouraged!
By: s_peak • January 4, 2011
We are becoming increasingly disconnected. From each other, and from our world. Where has it led us so far…. this “progress”… this “civilization”? Where are we going? Is the world truly as sinister as we color it? There is so much hate in the world… and so much fear. We are told that war is inevitable, and that war is the way of the world, but this is unacceptable. For nature to exist in the condition of division and destruction… is to destabilize the entirety of life. It is thought that animals exist in a state of constant conflict, but in fact, this isn’t true. The species who have done the best to survive have done so by cooperating with others of their species. As has been shown many times, participation and cooperation are much more effective at furthering survival in the wild. We are conditioned to believe that we need instruction, that our world is imperfect and in need of control… but these things can’t be correct. Planet Earth didn’t need us to form mountains, or fill the oceans. But since the advent of money, we have begun to tear down everything she built. The evolution of very early societies is predicated on participatory democracy and cooperation. Our current system of hierarchy and structure is a prison of our own design. Within these walls our minds are closed and decaying. The connections between us, once like roots spanning an ancient forest, sharing information like nutrients… to spread creativity and possibility between our shared minds… these connection are beginning to rot and fall away as the byproducts of our selfish and hateful attitudes divide us into smaller and smaller groups. Without these connections, we are doomed to failure, not only personally… but as an entire species, and an entire planet.
We spend so much time trying to find impurities and inequities between us, that we constantly overlook one simple fact… that from the microbes in the soil, to the massive redwood tree… and even us… we are all woven into the same web. Removing just one tiny species from this web sends ripples through the very system on which we depend for life, fresh air, clean water, and, essentially… happiness. Our planet is a rare gift, and the gift of our consciousness is even more rare.
It takes many types of minds to make the world work, and only one type to make it fail. It takes only one type of mind to end the world in a bath of fire, or a toxic rain. The mind of a human being is shaped by the environment we feed it, and it will always crave this input as it matures. But the world we’re building now is a legacy of destruction, hate, and division. All religious belief aside… we are human beings, and no God would advocate for the destruction of any form of life. When the birds fall from the sky by the thousands, and when the most fresh sources of water become tainted with deadly levels of neurotoxins… it is time to stop everything. We are not weak of heart, and we are not weak of mind. We are a creature of vast capability… the extent of which we can never truly understand unless we are willing to trade our hate and greed… for love, trust and cooperation. Indeed, life on this planet was only able to progress due to one immutable fact: cooperation means survival.
But now… our division leads to our destruction… And there is but one type of mind, cultivated by the darkness of greed and nurtured by our self interest, that is burning us from the inside like a cancer. This is the mindset of hate. Do we really want to build a world on fear and domination? Should we spend our lives afraid to go outside, or too scared to drink water from a stream? Or even too afraid to meet our neighbors? This is not in the essence of life. Fear is in the essence of death. Fear diminishes our capacity to trust or even love.
The change must happen in each of us. Switching our mindset from that of fear and hate, to cooperation and trust… is how we stop the bleeding. When you find yourself hating anything, or anyone… for any reason… you only further cultivate the destruction in which we wade. Violence begets violence… and we cannot make peace from war. Every civilization in history has tried to convince it’s people that destroying their enemy will bring peace and freedom, but with history as our guide (at the very least), we know this is not true.
By: s_peak • January 4, 2011
Hello my friends,
More books and media have been added to their respective pages. If you haven’t watched any of the free documentaries I posted, you should check them out!
Love,
-Steve
By: s_peak • December 30, 2010
Keep your eye on this… Monsanto has just released a new “sweetener” that’s based on the Aspartame formula… and it’s already been shown to be highly toxic. How do they get away with it? Because the FDA is a corrupt organization that sells our health for cash. Check this out:
Neotame has similar structure to aspartame — except that, from it’s structure, appears to be even more toxic than aspartame. This potential increase in toxicity will make up for the fact that less will be used in diet drinks. Like aspartame, some of the concerns include gradual neurotoxic and immunotoxic damage from the combination of the formaldehyde metabolite (which is toxic at extremely low doses) and the excitotoxic amino acid. Given all of the suffering being caused by Monsanto’s aspartame, the prudent course would be to start out with the assumption that it may cause toxic damage or cancer from long-term exposure and conduct many thorough, long-term, and independent human studies to see the effects.
Even Monsanto’s own pre-approval studies of neotame revealed adverse reactions. Unfortunately, Monsanto only conducted a few one-day studies in humans rather than encouraging independent researchers to obtain NIH funding to conduct long-term human studies on the effects of neotame.
It is obvious to anyone who has thoroughly read the scientific literature on aspartame that 1) nearly 100% of the independent studies found problems with aspartame (Monsanto’s studies never showed problems); and 2) that industry-funded studies bordered on fraudulent research (and a Grand Jury was convened because the officials wanted to pursue fraud charges). Much of industry-funded research related to other Monsanto products such as rBGH and toxic carpeting is similarly deceptive and poorly designed. In addition, a “research” organization led by one of Monsanto’s close business parters was caught hiding a reaction-causing substance in beverages given to control groups in double-blind studies. (They did this for 13 years!)
Given all of the problems with aspartame industry research and scientific abuse, it is clear that any neotame research that Monsanto, industry groups, or consultants or research friends of Monsanto have any part of should be rejected until which time more trustworthy, independent research can be conducted. Such experiments should include independent animals studies and especially long-term (e.g., 4-5 years+) human studies in various susceptible population groups.
Is it too much to ask for food that hasn’t been manhandled by a gene-jockey?… or food that doesn’t contain neurotoxins that were intentionally put there? Unfortunately, it gets worse. The FDA is ridiculously corrupt, and if you didn’t know that already, this should provide enough evidence…
On July 5, 2002 – Monsanto’s Neotame molecule was approved by the US FDA over formally registered objections of the Aspartame Consumer Safety Network and others. (Long term effects on humans are unknown.) Read the full release on The Aspartame Consumer Safety Network.
The food labeling requirements required for aspartame have now been dropped for Neotame, and no one is clear why this was allowed to happen. Neotame has been ruled acceptable, and without being included on the list of ingredients, for:
- USDA Certified Organic food items.
- Certified Kosher products with the official letter k inside the circle on labels.
And how do they get away with this every time?
- Monsanto’s subsidiary, the FDA, will accept Monsanto research as if it were legitimate.
- Monsanto will given money to their research consultants at various institutions (rather than NIH funding of truly independent researchers) to repeat poorly designed tests and “confirm” neotame safety. This is what they did with aspartame so that they could claim safety.
- The FDA and Monsanto will claim that “comprehensive” research [by Monsanto consultants] at various institutions proves that neotame is safe. There will be alot of press releases, PR statements from their friends in the research community, and from organizations they fund (e.g., IFIC, ADA, etc.). This will be a time of a massive PR blitz. Please see “Toxic Sludge Is Good For You” for information on these techniques.
- The FDA will claim to track adverse reaction reports. But they made the same claim when they told people that had received only 16 aspartame toxicity reaction reports in 1996, but refused to tell people that they stopped taking such adverse reaction reports in early 1996.
Fight for your food, people! We’re going to spend the rest of our lives trying to avoid all the toxins we’ve put in our food, and it’s already not going well for us. There are no longer any redeeming factors to companies like Monsanto, who are literally poisoning us KNOWINGLY for profit. If you ever see anything with the name Monsanto, destroy it, run away, or don’t buy it. Also… if you haven’t seen it already, you must watch the documentary “The world according to Monsanto“. It’s eye opening.
By: s_peak • December 29, 2010
Personally, I think college is overrated. Without a doubt, the most intelligent people I have ever met, were not college educated. I’ve met some smart college graduates, too… but they were all lacking something important… an open mind (or maybe it’s just “street smarts”). All the ivy league graduates I know always seem to know better than you, and they’re great salesmen, but they don’t have the ability to talk to people as if they are equals. It’s okay to want to learn on your own. School really doesn’t work for some people, if you ask me.
Don’t get me wrong, I think school is good in a lot of ways. I think education is VERY important… but privatization of school, just like anything else, seems to corrupt it’s very nature. Privatization corrupts to the point of making anything it touches into a leg that supports capitalism first, and the goals of the “industry” in question second. The problem I have with college is that it teaches students basically only to support the system that supports privatized schooling. Schools don’t teach students to open their minds to new theories as often as they should. They teach them to accept old theories, because that’s what all those professors have PHDs in… and they don’t want to lose their jobs. This would be fine, if humans had any idea how the world worked. All the great thinkers of the past were all stepping stones to knowledge, none of them really had it right. We made strides. From geocentrism to heliocentrism… from spontaneous life, to well… something more scientific (mitosis?). From witches, to… well… yeah, we still go witch-hunting. Never mind. But at least we know that the witch hunts were probably caused by wheat tainted with ergot. We’re getting somewhere.
So what the hell am I saying with this rant? As usual, I’m not totally sure… but I do know that privatization of essential systems like education and medicine tends to corrupt the good nature of these things. Just because you CAN make a ton of money treating cancer, doesn’t mean you should. There are several cures for cancer that are suppressed simply because they would hurt the profitability of cancer treatments. Look it up. Here are my two favorites: Sodium Bicarbonate (baking soda oxygenates tumors, which has been known for a while to work), DCA (a drug made by big pharma that’s too cheap to produce but works without side effects. Taken off the market.)… and more. So that’s my point. Privatizing the medical industry removed the incentive to find an actual cure.
In a similar fashion, privatized education corrupts our knowledge… by making us study and support the very systems that create that corruption. In my eyes, the “ivy league army” is just an extension of the military. Toeing the line, supporting lost, corrupt, and destructive ideals. Spreading division and mis-education through the populace. Undermining our minds.
Rant… END
By: s_peak • December 11, 2010
The enemy of fascism is cooperation and unity. By arguing about moot points, we lack the perspective that we gain from working together… and that perspective is simple: Our government (by extension of greedy corporations and the wealthy elite) is oppressive, and will continue to push us… until we show them that the mindless bullshit spewed that’s meant to separate us, isn’t working anymore. Racism, sexism, political alignment, money… they’re all ways of degrading our connections with one another, slowly but surely…. ways of controlling us and our relationships… and when we no longer have a common connection with one another (which should be peace, health, justice, love, freedom, untainted water and food… etc) we will have nobody by our side to march through the streets against them and demand it from them. The sad truth is that they will continue to take until we’re all gone, a victim to our own slavery (or stress, or toxins produced from this slavery…). And all the while, the world will burn around us.
The world is utterly imbalanced. Call it a social pathology. That’s what I do… but whatever you do, don’t call it human nature.
By: s_peak • December 9, 2010
Your body is constantly sending and receiving countless numbers of chemical signals. The body, in essence, is a chemical computer and converter (but that isn’t all it is, of course). All while operating at a much higher efficiency than your computer, at a fraction (unless you have a low power machine, or are using a laptop) of the power usage (80 watts while sleeping, 120 standing). You’ve probably heard that before, to be honest… but most people don’t realize that bacteria ALSO communicate with chemical signals. This method of communication is called “quorum sensing”. Here’s a quote from Wikipedia:
Quorum sensing is a type of decision-making process used by decentralized groups to coordinate behavior. Many species of bacteria use quorum sensing to coordinate their gene expression according to the local density of their population. Similarly, some social insects use quorum sensing to make collective decisions about where to nest.
Bacteria and other micro-life are a lot more clever than we like to give them credit for. They’re hard to beat because since they live lives much faster than ours (more generations), they are basically capable of evolving faster… and this allows them to develop resistance to antibiotics. Using quorum sensing… we could, instead, (hive) “mind” control bacteria. We could cause them to self destruct, or who knows… maybe even switch sides and start working for, rather than against us.
I think it’s important to remember, however… that detrimental micro-life is the exception to the rule. Most human flora is beneficial or benign. Our bodies are filled with tiny organisms that are not only beneficial… they are integral! Without the human flora in your gut, you would be unable process food properly, which would lead to your demise. Bacteria are, generally speaking, our friends. We should not live in fear of them. That being said, let’s talk about soap:
…frequent hand washing with soap and antiseptics can cause chronic contact dermatitis. Damage to the skin can change the skin flora, resulting in more frequent colonization by staphylococci and gram-negative bacteria. Because alcohol-based sanitizers may be less irritating to the skin, their use may actually improve hand hygiene.
That’s the simple side of it all. Your skin is currently colonized by many species of organisms. Washing them away makes room for new ones to move in, and just like in an aging city, if you start to lower the quality of your “neighborhood”… you will see an increase in “crime”. Cracks in your skin left by too much hand washing (and, I think, too much hand sanitizer) basically leave you MORE vulnerable to infection. I’m a simple man. I think hand sanitizers have their place… like in a hospital… but that we shouldn’t just use them daily for no real reason. My motto is basically… the less chemicals I put on my body, the better.
( Also worthy of side-noting…. the advent and widespread use of soap changed something else within us. It eventually pushed away at least one “beneficial” (I used that term loosely here) organism that we used to carry. Too much of this organism can make you sick… but the proper balance will stop allergic reactions. Allergic reactions, though, are the product of living in a “clean” environment… and, generally speaking… are caused by dust mites. Dust mites live in your carpet and your bed, among other places. )
Without bacteria and fungi in the soil, plants have trouble growing and wastes have trouble breaking down. Fear and hate are not the answer… as with everything else in life… we cannot sustain our relationship in this way. The only way is through understanding and cooperation.
By: s_peak • December 9, 2010
To whom it may concern…
I updated the media section with a couple awesome free documentaries you can check out online. I highly recommend them. Psywar is long, but worth it. Settle down to watch it with a nice warm meal and a loved one.
I also made some admin changes and allowed users to upload a picture for an avatar. I’m excited… are you?