Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Epigenetic therapy-- the best words in medicine since vaccine.

First, here's what the dictionary has to say:
In biology, the term epigenetic refers to changes in phenotype (appearance) or gene expression caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.


Over the last century scientists have discovered that we share most of our genes with all other life forms on this planet. In fact, our closest relative, the chimp, has almost 99% of our genes. The remaining 1.1% account for all of the differences between humans and apes... OR SO WE THOUGHT.

Recently we have discovered that genes are only our genetic framework. The final touches to our body chemistry are environmentally derived. The things we feel and are exposed to emotionally affect who we eventually become. Epigenetics are concerned with the plethora of molecules which attach themselves to our genes. The results from these modified genes affect our looks, abilities, and lifetime health tendencies. This new science explains, for example, why identical twins aren't identical.

We now know were to look to unravel the rest of the "where do we come from" story. What a fascinating generation we are living in. Soon we will be able to zero in on and possibly reverse commonplace maladies like cancer or organ disease and failure.

One effect of these gene modifications is they are multi-generational. That is, we pass our environmentally modified genes on to our future generations based upon the dramatic events that occur to each of us during our lives.

The consequences from world traumatic events like the Holocaust will take many generations to fully manifest themselves. Scars from wars and other atrocities we afflict upon each other alter our core genetic makeup by causing some genes normally turned off to be turned on and others normally on to be turned off. These switches, from birth on, affect each one of us differently and are what really make us different from each other.

In other words, who we are is as much a result of the stresses, or happiness, or emotional content, be it nurturing or otherwise, that surrounded our parents and our grandparents during their lives as we are a result of what we eat and breathe and drink throughout our lives.

Behavioral science now has a foundation in chemistry and biology. As more sophisticated instruments are built to decipher our brain waves, clues are discovered and unraveled which have led to an understanding of the organic responses to our physical environment.
We had best get to cleaning up our act if we expect future generations to avoid our missteps.

What a brave New World we will soon live in.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

What should really irk us.

The country lost five trillion in wealth over the past two years.

The people who caused this financial nightmare have for the most part lost nothing. In most cases, especially at the top of the banking community where the real gambling with the country's equity took place, the biggest bettors got paid the most.

They walked away with billions in spite of the fact that their gross negligence and greed cost millions of working-class Americans their homes, their jobs and incomes, and at least for now, their future or even a small chance at a piece of the American pie.

With their jobs gone, their home gone, their insurance gone, their security gone and now living in tent city it is amazing that these people haven't erupted Watts style on Wall Street. (Yet)

As heavily armed as we are in this country, if we implode again the consequences will be worse than the civil war. There won't be a Mason-Dixon line to separate the combatants in this war; the war between the haves and have-nots.

Political opinions are as likely to split down the middle of the dining room table as well as they will across streets and neighborhoods, towns, cities and states.

We will go fractal. Those who defrauded this country had better figure out how to get that money back into society. Otherwise society will be crippled for a long long time.

VoilĂ ! Along comes a plan for the government to be financed by Wall Street. Talk about a world-class Ponzi scheme. The federal reserve charges a margin to print the money it lends to the Federal Reserve...

The federal reserve charges a percentage to lend the money to Wall Street bankers...

The Wall Street bankers charge a percentage to lend the money back to the government...

The very same government who owns the printing presses which started the process in the first place...

People, we have to smarten up or everything we just did to prop up the banksters will just cost us more money. This latest proposed loop de loop just inflates the currency more than our borrowing is already inflating it. Inflation is, at it’s core, just another tax on the poor.

The problem with financial pigs is that their eyes aren't bigger than their stomachs.

Monday, September 14, 2009

A stroke of brilliance!

Obama is finally on track.

Although the entire world was caught with our collective pants down
one year ago, we have been "educated".

Obama's most recent proposals put our greedy banksters on notice
that there will be No More Bailouts! Any further gambling with
risky investments will fall squarely on the individual banks involved,
their officers and their shareholders. In other words, those who stand
to gain the most NOW stand to lose the most.

Life is now somewhat in balance. Should a bank CEO lead his cronies
off a cliff, with shareholder approval, then they all take the plunge together.
Shareholders will now have a say in the egregious bonuses paid to
CEOs on short-term, often unsustainable, profits. Masterminds
of previous disasters still employed, which includes most bank CEOs,
will no longer have the benefit of the most self serving compensation
policy ever designed... the "when the bank wins, I win huge and if
the bank loses I still win" policy.

It only took a year and the loss of 13 trillion in national equity to
effect this change.

Hopefully this and more changes to come will prevent another world
disaster like the one we are still digging out from under.



For more blogs from Bob just visit I Love Grants Pass and search for parmsplace.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Legitimate Thieves

You know who I mean. Companies who rely on "small print" to steal your money.
Banks and insurance companies are probably the biggest culprits. Somewhere
in page after page of legalese they slip it to you. The contracts you are forced
to sign because you are required by law to purchase services, like auto insurance for example, are written entirely in the company's favor. After all, they are the ones paying the attorney fees. A common tactic of lawyers is to design run on sentences whose content is so convoluted only company lawyers can figure them out. Somewhere within those often paragraph sized sentences they provide themselves with "weasel clauses" giving them the right to screw you somewhere down the line.

How about credit card companies? These are my personal favorite leaders in the legitimate thief category. They offer what appears to be a good deal up front and then allow you to develop self-destructive habits like overspending. If you were doing fine without something yesterday, chances are you can manage without that something today. But if you own a credit card, why wait? Once you're in over your head these companies increase your rate. You go "hey, how come my interest jumped from 10 to 20% overnight?", and they go "read the fine print”. If you have a credit card and have never read the small print I will summarize it for you here. Essentially they can do whatever they want and you are stuck with it.

Then came the Internet. I try to be careful but at least several times a year I get "educated". The most recent example of internet screwing came to me by way of a company called Ryder Marketing. They offered a "how to make a million online" CD which had some brilliant sales copy and a cheap price, $7.95 delivered, so I decided I might learn something. I was right! About three weeks later I received my disk and before I even opened the package my account was charged an additional $105.00. Long story short, by ordering the disk I was automatically
enrolled in a $1260 year long course payable in 12 easy $105.00 payments. I attempted to have the charges reversed but apparently somewhere in the video "fine print", which I hadn't even viewed prior to the charge, I "agreed" to accept one additional disk per month.

Agreed my ass. Moral of that story (and we can thank the Bush banking gangsters for this) is if you don't know who you are dealing with online, cancel your card after every online transaction. It is your only protection. It turns out even a punk like Ryder has a better attorney than the banks do. (My personal moral to the story is if my money is with Chase, it is no longer safe.)
An interesting note to the Ryder ripoff was my attempt to destroy this guy by posting a scam alert. To my chagrin I had to get in line, and the line was, at that point in time, almost three half-million people long. The guy wasn't lying. He really is making millions online... by stealing! The worst part was his video wasn't worth the substrate it was printed on.

I'm not even going to get into health insurance legitimate thievery except to say the only way for us little guys with small money to survive is to align ourselves with bigger money than the legitimate thieves can muster. Unfortunately, and in spite of all the pitfalls and potential for disaster, the only bigger money in Washington than lobby money is the government's money itself.

We need a government option to keep the health-care legitimate thieves in line.