Associate Professor of German, University of California, Davis
Disclosure statement
Chunjie Zhang receives research funding from the University of California, Davis.
During one of my daily walks with my toddler, when we passed his favorite playground, I noticed a new sign warning that the coronavirus survives on all kinds of surfaces and that we should no longer use the playground. Since then, I’ve taken great pains to prevent him from touching things.
This hasn’t been easy. He loves to squeeze bike racks and graze tree trunks, jostle bushes and knock on picnic tables. He likes to run his fingers against bars around a swimming pool and pet the chickens at the neighborhood coop.
Whenever I bat his hand away or try to distract him from potentially absorbing these dreaded, invisible germs, I wonder: What’s being lost? How can he possibly indulge his curiosity and learn about the world without his sense of touch?
I find myself thinking about Johann Gottfried Herder, an 18th-century German philosopher who published a treatise on the sense of touch in 1778.
“Go into a nursery and see how the young child who is constantly gathering experience reaches out, grasping, lifting, weighing, touching and measuring things,” he wrote. In doing so, the child acquires “the most primary and necessary concepts, such as body, shape, size, space and distance.”
During the European Enlightenment, sight was considered by many to be the most important sense because it could perceive light, and light also symbolized scientific fact and philosophical truth. However, some thinkers, such as Herder and Denis Diderot, questioned sight’s predominance. Herder writes that “sight reveals merely shapes, but touch alone reveals bodies: that everything that has form is known only through the sense of touch and that sight reveals only … surfaces exposed to light.”
To Herder, our knowledge of the world – our relentless curiosity – is fundamentally transmitted and satiated through our skin. Herder argues that blind people are, in fact, privileged; they’re able to explore via touch without distraction and are “able to develop concepts of the properties of bodies that are far more complete than those acquired by the sighted.”
For Herder, touch was the only way to understand the form of things and grasp the shape of bodies. Herder changes René Descartes’ statement “I think, therefore I am” and claims: We touch, therefore we know. We touch, therefore we are.
Herder was onto something. Centuries later, neuroscientists like David Linden have been able to map out the power of touch – the first sense, he notes in his book “Touch: The Science of Hand, Heart, and Mind,” to develop in utero.
Linden writes that our skin is a social organ that cultivates cooperation, improves health and enhances development. He points to research showing that celebratory hugging among professional basketball players improves team performance, that premature babies are more likely to survive if they’re regularly held by their parents instead of being kept solely in incubators and that children severely deprived of touch end up with more developmental problems.
During this period of social distancing, what sort of void has been created? In our social lives, touches are often subtle and brief – a quick handshake or hug. Yet it seems as though these brief encounters contribute mightily to our emotional well-being.
As a professor, I know it’s been a huge advantage to have digital technology that enables remote learning. But my students are missing out on the little touches, intentional or accidental, from their friends and classmates, whether it’s in the classroom, in dining halls or in their dorms.
Perhaps not surprisingly, touch plays a bigger role in some cultures than in others. Psychologist Sidney Jourard observed the behavior of Puerto Ricans in a San Juan coffee shop and found that they touched one another an average of 180 times per hour. I wonder how they’re handling social distancing. Residents of Gainesville, Florida, are probably having an easier time; Jourard found they only touched twice per hour in a coffee shop.
Social distancing is crucial. But I’m already pining for the day when we can all engage with the world unimpeded, touching without anxiety or hesitation.
On this Earth Day 2020 our world is changing…fast. We’re growing from one paradigm to another. We seeds have had a lot of fertilizer thrown on us of late. What we need to help make sense of things is to push through all that and get out of our box. Look at things from a higher perspective. Act more like the cosmic tree that we are, rather than identifying with the seed.
For instance, what if we view earth as a doughnut? Or a torus? A wormhole? You can see it everywhere – in atoms, cells, seeds, flowers, trees, animals, humans, hurricanes, planets, suns, galaxies and even the cosmos as a whole.
What if we begin to identify with this pattern?
Agnes Denes.
Agnes Denes did this. She reimagined our globe’s spatial coordinates, squished them a bit, and voila, our beautiful home now bends to torus physics. In fact, our universe may be torus shaped.
There are wonderful similarities between the torus model of the universe and such mythic models as Yggdrasil, the World Tree or Cosmic Tree.
Yggdrasil.
Yggdrasil is understood to be two trees in one, the part which branches above ground and the part which branches below.
The Cosmic Tree compares geometrically with the torus, the trunk being the central worm hole. Also, both trees are a single dynamic recirculating systems like the torus.
Yggdrasil is understood to be two trees in one, the part which branches above ground and the part which branches below. From its central trunk — or central wormhole — we see the lustrous rainbow bridge Bifröst , the shimmering wormhole.
With its branches in the heavens and its roots in the underworld, the Cosmic Tree is a common feature of religions and mythologies around the globe.
Ultimately the Cosmic Tree is our body. We are like Odin hanging on Yggsdrasl. Each of us is a tree rising in the center of the universe. Our body is a ladder we use to descend into the underworld or ascend into the heavens. We are heavens bridge.
How would this change your personal relationship with the universe?
What would you differently if you know that with every breath the universe collapse into you, just as you collapse into it?
You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. Really? Democracies can die.
This is the sixth in a new series of columns by Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister on essential contemporary virtues. Posted on NCR online on 1/15/20
“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable” is a spin on John 8:32, popularized in the 1970s and often misattributed to James A. Garfield, the 20th president of the United States, who served only for 200 days before being assassinated.
It’s a point worth taking seriously.
It’s been a long time since national life has seemed steady, seemed predictable. After all, we live in the “richest, most powerful nation in the world,” some tell us, so it seems we ought to be able to expect a lot more certainty than we’re getting right now. But being in the present social climate is like living in a political fun house, the chief feature of which is a rollercoaster ride that bucks and tilts and then denies being a ride at all.
Nothing is certain; little makes sense. The nation of immigrants wants to stop immigrants from coming. The country that extends from “sea to sea” now divideThe questions abound: Will we remove all troops from Iraq or not? Answer: No, if the Iraqis themselves want us to; yes, if they don’t?
Will we bring American industries back to the United States or not? And if so, how are we going to do that, since none have come?
Does the president still have a cabinet — that is, officials confirmed by the Senate — whose obligation it is to advise the president on major issues for the good of the entire nation? Or since nearly all the cabinet ministers have resigned, does the president run all the departments of the government himself?
And if that’s the case, do we have a democracy anymore or a citizen monarch without a crown?
Where is normal now? What is real? Most of all, what do we have to do to get normal, democratic, American again, if ever?
For weeks now, I’ve been inverting our national virtues to keep up with the implosion of one institution after another which, until now, were also considered immutable. Built on age-old pilings of cement and steel, bound together at the heart of the Constitution for the sake of the common good (we thought), the government — House, Senate, presidency and party system — is now at war with itself. This so-called guardian of the “United States” is pulling the country apart.
The only part of the political system left to emend the balance of the country now that the political system itself is failing us, lies in the hands of the electorate. Modern political virtues like anger, skepticism, bias, disavowal and extremism are the only voice, the only authority, the only power the voter has left.
The right of the citizen to pour disdain and depredation on the heads of public figures — to get angry at them — is limited. And should be. As a result, those who are supposed to be advancing the goals of the public, but are not, go blithely on, scot-free of accountability, until the next election. Whether that is due to modern indifference or the kind of distance people keep from public issues is anyone’s guess. Nevertheless, it is crucial.
Skepticism about the likelihood that any politician’s promises will be realized leaves us with little but experience and character to depend on as a candidates’ commitment to effectiveness and hope of integrity. But both matter greatly. If we vote against what we see and then wonder why this administration isn’t working for us the way we would like, as the mother was fond of telling her children, “You wanted it; you got it; now be quiet.” Then, if we’re lucky, whatever politicians do will at least be done with justice to every level of society.
It’s bias for equality and respect for the concerns of the other that makes a democracy work. Without them, there is no such thing as democracy.
Disavowal of past measures in the face of new realities — embracing climate change over the protection of fossil fuels, for instance — is what keeps the country healthy for everybody. To serve one of those elements without developing the other may save a politician’s seat in government, but it will destroy the government it purports to defend.
Extremism is the quality that keeps people invested in the politics upon which their futures depend. It means following the politics as well as the politicians. It means being informed, being involved in the public conversation, following the way politicians themselves vote on bills that will affect the future of the country, of the globe, of our children’s lives.
Finally, there is one more virtue necessary to the stability of the country. And it may well be the one most lacking in this society today. It is truth.
Honesty, verity, authenticity and factuality are the underpinnings of good, effective government. But facts alone are not its gold standard. We can use facts to prove that the stock market is rising, but that does not make it true that everyone in the country is paid a living wage. As Maya Angelou said in a 1989 interview, “There is a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.”
The facts upon which we make our decisions determine the quality and character of those decisions. But just as true is the fact that the political partisanship that is running this country at this time is the most dangerous that we’ve dealt with.
It threatens our sovereignty, it threatens our citizenship, it oppresses our people, it depresses our national welfare. It turns us into just one more failed phony cardboard cutout of the brilliant concept of government our forefathers launched in 1776. It makes us just like every other political saboteur who used the people and the levers of government to get power and money for themselves.
It is a fact, for instance, that the House has impeached the president. It is not true that every senator intends to participate in the process objectively if partisanship has already sealed the process.
From where I stand, it seems that we must become awake to the fact that democracies can die, have died, are dying and that we are not immune from that political plague ourselves. That’s the miserable truth of this time. Take it seriously.
A careful new study from Switzerland by Daniel Favre, published online April 13, 2011, demonstrates the effects of cell phones on honeybees.
More than 80 sound recordings were taken from 5 different hives during February through June 2009. A cell phone was place in the hives near the bees. When the cell phone was off, or on standby mode, the bees were not disturbed. When the cell phone was turned on, the effect was dramatic: within 25 to 40 minutes the sounds made by the bees increased in intensity and frequency, producing the “worker piping signal.” If the cell phone was turned off immediately, the bees calmed down within 2 or 3 minutes. If the cell phone was left on for 20 hours and then turned off, the piping signal continued for up to 12 hours more. The effect was consistent and repeatable.
Worker piping is usually produced by bees preparing to leave the hive in a swarm.
The author refers to another study recently done in India. In that study, when a mobile phone was kept continuously on near a beehive it resulted in collapse of the colony in 5 to 10 days, with the worker bees failing to return home.
Could 5G be Triggering the Spread of the Coronavirus?
Posted on Wednesday, March 4, 2020
In his landmark book on electricity and life, “The Invisible Rainbow,” Arthur Firstenberg, traces an eerie connection between the advent of four new technologies and major influenza epidemics in 1889, 1918, 1958 and 1968.
Spanish Flu 1918
The most notable connection is the famous Spanish Flu Epidemic of 1918, which killed more than 20 million people worldwide. This epidemic actually started on military bases in the US at about the same time the US military was rolling out a new form of wireless communications. Between 1917 and 1918, the US military built the world’s largest radio network. Meanwhile, the flu accelerated across military bases both stateside and overseas, and on ships equipped with the powerful wireless transmitters. As the troops and wireless equipment arrived in the European theatre during WWI, a sudden explosion of disease raced unabetted across Europe.
Wireless Impacts to the Earth’s Natural Electrical Field
As this influenza seemed to move too fast for historic disease models, dozens of scientists began to question the idea of a contagious virus. Testing was inconclusive as to whether the Spanish flu virus (H1N1) was actually being spread by germs, or something else. Firstenberg and others put forth the theory that wireless and other electrical fields may change the electrical nature of the earth’s atmosphere. The electrical core of the earth generates the earth’s electromagnetic field, which sends electromagnetic waves outward to the ionosphere, where they bounce back to earth and circumnavigate the globe. In its natural state, the earth emanates a 500 milligauss magnetic field at about 7.83 cycles per second. Yet, dramatic electrical changes to the earth’s atmosphere could disrupt the evolutionary balance of the electrical nature of the planet.
Could such an electrical shock to earth’s natural electrical field trigger dormant viruses in people and animals? After all, we are all electrical creatures. When we are healthy, 50 trillion cells in our bodies operate at around 70 millivolts. Could the new US military wireless signals, which had suddenly sprung up across the globe, have activated unnatural electrical activity in the already highly, electrically-charged ionosphere? And what effects could this have on our own body chemistry, which depends on a delicate electrical balance?
1889 Flu Epidemic
Firstenberg also connects the flu epidemic of 1889 with a new electrical innovation. This time it was the rapid expansion of the electrified railroad in the US. Until 1888, there were only 45 miles of electrified railroad in the US. Yet, in a single year, this network grew to over 1000 miles. These very low frequency waves can travel thousands of miles, bouncing off the ionosphere and virtually traveling around the world at the speed of light. That same year a vicious flu erupted virtually simultaneously in such far-flung places as Greenland, Uzbekistan and Northern Alberta. It then quickly appeared in even more disparate locations, such as Philadelphia, Australia and the Balkans. In the days of pre-air travel, it seemed impossible that a contagious disease could travel this fast to so many seemingly-unrelated geographies.
Flu becomes an Annual Phenomenon
By the end of 1889, the death toll had reached over one million worldwide. Even more telling is that until then, influenza outbreaks had been a relatively rare occurrence. It had been nearly 30 years since the previous influenza outbreak in England. Firstenberg suggests that 1889 marked the beginning of influenza being an annual phenomenon for humans.
Missile Defense Systems and the Asian Flu of 1958
We now flash forward to 1958. In the heart of the Cold War, the US had just completed the build-out of the most powerful and extensive missile defense system the world had ever seen. Hundreds of high power radar stations which generated 1350 megahertz signals and included Doppler stations, operating at more than one kilowatt, were suddenly filling the heavens with unnatural levels of microwave radiation. The problem is that all these microwave signals bounce off the ionosphere and then come back to earth. The earth’s electrical envelope acts like a resonating chamber that traps all this electrical activity and propels it at light speed to all corners of the planet.
During the build-out the US triple-threat missile defense system, the Asian Flu was born in China. The death toll ultimately reached 4 million worldwide. Scientists associated this flu with the H2N2 virus, which was thought to be avian-related.
So, which is it? Is the flu caused by long dormant viruses, which are suddenly triggered by electrical disruptions in the atmosphere? Or, as it is generally believed, is the flu transmitted by viruses mainly found in birds, or poultry that somehow find their way into the human population?
Actually, both theories may be correct.
Immune System weakened from Wireless Radiation
In 2013, a Washington State University professor, Dr. Martin Pall published a landmark paper, “Electromagnetic fields act via activation of voltage-gated calcium channels to produce beneficial or adverse effects.” This paper shows how electrical changes to ion channels can lead to biological chaos in the body, including the proliferation of free-radicals and excess calcium ions. Excess calcium ions (electrically charged elements) can be toxic. Typical symptoms include nausea, fatigue, muscle pain and fuzzy thinking. Sound a little like the flu? Meanwhile the proliferation of free-radicals creates inflammation, neurological impacts, and a compromised immune system.
If both Pall and Firstenberg are right, the rapid spread of the flu is much more than just the exposure to the underlying virus. While the virus is real, it may be both triggered and accelerated by changes in the electrical environment. Such changes undermine our immune response to these viruses and we are unable to fight them off.
The 5G Connection
This brings us to 5G. For those who are unfamiliar with 5G, it is the fifth generation of wireless and cellular technologies. It uniquely uses intense clusters of wireless transmitters, which produce extremely high frequency signals and raise radiation exposures to humans exponentially. The frequency levels of this new technology can be many, many times higher than current wireless standards. Noted physicist Maxwell Planck showed that the level of energy in an electrical source is proportional to its frequency. Thus, 5G stands to impose significantly higher biological effects on humans than any previous technology.
Now, is it any coincidence that Wuhan, China, a leading “Smart City”, and one of the earliest adopters of 5G transmitters, is the very source of Covid-19 – the Coronavirus?
Well, if you are still doubting the connection between 5G and the Coronavirus, check out this overlay map* which locates major 5G installations in China and the major outbreaks of the Corona virus there.
Maybe Firstenberg’s claim of a connection between influenza and wireless technology is not so far-fetched after all.
The red and blue circles below represent 5G installations in China and North Korea. The light pink shows the regions marking the spread of Coronavirus. The map was created by an independent researcher overlaying a map of the 5G rollout in China with a map of the Covid-19 outbreak, both downloaded as of 2/26/20. Understand, this is a crude gauge using what information was publicly available on that date, and it is presented here only as a means to suggest that further serious research correlating Covid-19 incidence with locations of the 5G infrastructure should be undertaken. If greater incidence of the Coronavirus is occurring in locations where 5G technologies have been deployed, this will be of critical public health importance.
See recent write up on 5G risks, including mention of the Covid-19 by Dr. Martin Pall here.
Forget Sourdough! How to Make 10 of the World’s Easiest Breads
Keen to bake for your family or housemates, but put off by previous attempts? Here are delicious options – including some that don’t require yeast, and one that doesn’t even need an oven.
Focaccia … ‘rarely fails’. Photography by Paula Thomas / Getty Images.
In times of great uncertainty, knowing how to make your own bread and thereby feed your family, is palpably reassuring. The very act of kneading dough is calming, like Play-Doh for adults. So, of course, newbie bakers are all over social media, obsessing about “bubbling mothers” (AKA sourdough starters).
Look a little closer, though, and they’re not very happy. “We are all baking bread and some of us are not so good at it,” tweeted one journalist, dejectedly. That’s because sourdough is high-maintenance baking. People write memoirs about mastering the technique. By contrast, watching Noji Gaylard making South African steamed bread (see below) is like hugging a baby. Three minutes and 30 seconds of pure calm. Her recipe, alongside the others included in our 10 basic breads, is easy enough for even the most inexperienced baker.
But first a note about yeast. As Adrian Chiles has noted, it appears to have been stockpiled right off all the shelves. So, if you do have any, set aside a portion of whatever leavened dough you make to leaven the next (variously called old dough and pâte fermentée; you’ll find plenty of instructions for this online). And, if you don’t, you could try making your own yeast. Lisa Bedford, the self-styled Survival Mom, has written a really thorough how-to. I appreciate that making your own yeast somewhat negates the premise of this piece, but you’ve got to admit it’s awesome that you can.
Also, reserve any pasta or potato cooking water for your bread baking. As Nigella tweeted: “It will help the bread’s texture and rise.”
Flatbreads
At its simplest, a flatbread is flour and water mixed into a dough, rolled into balls, rested, flattened and griddled. Dan Lepard tweeted the basic ratio: 500g of any wheat flour (white, wholemeal, self-raising, plain) to 300g cold water. Add some form of oil to the mix, and you get everything from chapatis and rotis (Meera Sodha fills hers with coconut, raisins and almonds) to tortillas and lavash. Jamie Oliver switches things up a bit, using yoghurt, self-raising flour and a little baking powder, and cooks with griddle pan over a high heat. Elsewhere, his coconut flatbreads are made with just coconut milk and self-raising flour and fried in butter.
Quick Bread
AKA batter bread, this is the base recipe used in such things as apple bread, banana bread and the French savoury cake studded with everything from bacon and olives. You mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, salt) with wet ingredients (milk/buttermilk/yoghurt, oil and eggs) and flavour it any way you like. Kristin “Baker Bettie” Hoffmann gives you every option thinkable: sweet, savoury, gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan and without baking powder (she separates the eggs, and whips the whites to get the rise needed). Texture-wise, this is more on the muffin/cake side of things, so if that’s not what you’re after, read on.
Soda Bread
The original no-kneader, and as Chiles put it last week, a gift to the yeastless. The rise comes from bicarb, so that ingredient is a must, but flour-wise it’s flexible: wholemeal, oatmeal, rolled oats, plain, self-raising, rye or whatever mixture you can manage. Liquid-wise, milk, yoghurt, buttermilk, Nigella’s pasta water: they’ll all work, too. You’ll want a dollop of salt and sweetness (honey, soft brown sugar); Chiles flavours his with treacle and Marmite, and nothing has ever endeared a columnist to me more. And there’s nothing to say you can’t jazz it up further: Oliver puts dark chocolate and hazelnuts in his.
No-Knead Crusty Loaf
The New York Times calls this the world’s easiest yeasted loaf; a step-up from the already groundbreaking easy method devised by Jim Lahey (if you’re a budding bread person, I recommend his books). You mix plain flour with yeast, salt and lukewarm water into a loose dough, cover and let rise for two to five hours. Then you shape it and bake it. The crustiness comes from having a broiling panful of water – or a few ice cubes – in the bottom of the oven to steam the loaf while it cooks.
Pitta
Putting yeast in a wheaten flatbread essentially means it can puff up while baking, to create those soft pockets so perfect for picnics. Yotam Ottolenghi puts sugar in his dough and seven spices in his chicken filling, and, well, what more could you want? Although it is technically possible to make them completely lean, Felicity Cloake doesn’t recommend it: the fat contributes to flavour and shelf-life.
Hard Dough Bread
A Jamaican speciality, this is a plain-flour yeasted dough, enriched with butter and sugar. It takes a short knead (you want the dough nice and elastic) and a 45-minute rest. You then roll it out flat with a rolling pin and – to give it that moist, dense crumb – roll it right back up again into a tight log, tucking the ends in (DaJen Eat’s Jen and her grandmother Cynthia will show you how). Then, after a short rest, it is baked golden brown in a loaf pan.
Steamed Bread
The one loaf you don’t need an oven for. This South African beauty involves mixing a very sticky batter of plain flour, salt, sugar, yeast (no oil) and lukewarm water in a bowl with a wooden spoon. (Gaylard’s demo is quite possibly the most mesmerising cooking video I’ve ever come across. It’s now my lockdown backdrop.) Cover with a lid to let it rest, then beat it once more and let it rest again. Pour into a buttered bowl and place in a large pot for which you have a lid, with enough boiling water to come halfway up the side of your bowl, adding water when necessary to keep the steam going. It is cooked when, as with a cake, a knife stuck into the centre comes out clean.
Maple Oat Breakfast Bread
This takes a couple more ingredients (maple syrup and rolled oats) and an overnight rest (eight hours or more), but it makes, as Food52 notes, darn good toast. Much like in soda bread, the oats impart a welcome bite. As with the no-knead crusty loaf, you’ll need an oven-safe heavy-based pot with a lid to achieve consistent, high heat and a good seal so the moisture doesn’t escape.
Focaccia
Nigel Slater once said that he thought focaccia was the bread to attempt first, before any trad white loaf. “A batch rarely fails.” Now most recipes will ask for strong white bread flour and/or 00 flour (used for making pasta). But Marcella Hazan makes hers with plain flour, and she’s not someone to mess with. You’ll need a good amount of olive oil (River Cottage uses 150ml), some flaky salt and something like a baking stone – a heavy cookie sheet will do.
Bagels
Surprisingly easy to make at home, as Jennifer Garner demos in episode 15 of her aptly named Pretend Cooking show. Sure, there is the extra step of poaching before you bake, but you can use plain flour and honey for the dough (or strong bread flour and malt syrup, if you want to be fancy). Food52’s Kenzi Wilbur says the hardest part is waiting an excruciating 30 minutes once you have removed them from the oven. But I’ve never known anyone able to resist freshly baked anything, so why would you even attempt to do that here? Butter at the ready …
Dale Berning Sawa is a French-South-African freelance writer based in London, covering culture, food, health, tech and work.
At least 5 dead as tornadoes touch down in Oklahoma, Texas
A sixth person died in Louisiana floodwaters.
By Mark Osborne and William Mansell
April 23, 2020,
An outbreak of reported tornadoes across Oklahoma and Texas on Wednesday night has killed at least three people.
An official with Marshall County Emergency Management confirms that at least two people were killed and several others injured when a tornado struck in Madill, OK. It hit as people were getting off of work in two manufacturing facilities and were in cars. He could not confirm if the two dead were in cars or in buildings.
There are at least three people dead in Polk County, Texas, following severe weather Wednesday. The hardest hit area was in Onalaska, Texas.
At this time, search and rescue is ongoing, and Polk County Emergency Management officials said there are at least 20-30 injuries.
Video showed a massive tornado in Madill, flinging sheet metal and debris into the air Wednesday afternoon.
Madill is in far southern Oklahoma, about 10 miles from the Texas border.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott confirmed there was tornado damage in Polk County, in eastern Texas. There was a “large and extremely dangerous” tornado near Sebastopol at about 5:45 p.m. local time, according to the NWS.
“My office, the Texas Division of Emergency Management, and other state agencies are working with local officials to provide immediate support to the areas devastated by this tornado,” Abbott said in a statement. “The state has already deployed response teams and medical resources to help Texans in need and to provide assistance to these communities. Our hearts are with our fellow Texans tonight and the state will continue to do everything it can to support those affected by this severe weather.”
Polk County issued a disaster declaration, saying there has been significant damage to residential and commercial structures, and to public infrastructure.
There was also a confirmed tornado on the ground in Jasper, Texas, near the Louisiana border.
Officials in Louisiana said a man died after getting caught in floodwaters.
Deputy Mark Pierce, a spokesman for DeSoto Parish Sheriff’s Office, told ABC News a male victim somehow got caught in a drain/ditch and was swept away by floodwater in Mansfield, Louisiana.
“Mansfield PD received a call in reference to an individual that was seen trying to get a trash can from some flooded water,” Sheriff Jayson Richardson told ABC affiliate KTBS. “He ended up getting swept into that water. We, ultimately, found him 50 to 60 yards downstream.”
As of 7 a.m. Eastern time Thursday, there had been 24 tornadoes reported across Texas, Oklahoma, Mississippi and Louisiana.
There are still tornado watches in effect until 2 p.m. for Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida.
At least 34 people were killed in an outbreak of tornadoes earlier this month in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
ABC News’ Marilyn Heck, Melissa Griffin and Cammeron Parrish contributed to this report.
Bill Gates Continues To Push ‘Immunity Passports’ And Tech-Enabled Surveillance State To Combat COVID
Bill Gates has inserted himself into the national dialogue as a self-proclaimed coronavirus sage who will lead the world out of dark times through a digitally-assisted brave new world of testing, contact tracing, and of course – a vaccine.
Of course, some of this might not be such a bad idea if it wasn’t coming from Gates, who’s written an op-ed in the Washington Post to elaborate on his thoughts – which makes the whole thing seem even more nefarious.
‘Sure, my Dad was on the board of planed parenthood – an organization founded by a eugenecist, and yes, I’ve talked about the need for population reduction for years. And sure, I want you to take my vaccines and get chipped. And ok, maybe India kicked us out after our immunization campaign was blamed for paralyzing 490,000 kids. And yeah, there was that whole ‘coronavirus pandemic‘ simulation my foundation spearheaded late last year which modeled 65 million dead. BUT, hear me out…‘
All jokes aside, here’s what Gates proposes in his WaPo Op-Ed in order to ‘reopen the economy.’
Widespread, at-home testing – “We can’t defeat an enemy if we don’t know where it is,” says Gates, who advocates home testing kits which “produces results that are just as accurate” as nasal swabs performed by healthcare professionals. Ok, not evil. Probably a good idea.
Choosing who to test – Essential workers and symptomatic people, or those who have been in contact with someone who tested positive, should be prioritized, otherwise “we’re wasting a precious resources and potentially missing big reserves of the virus.” Asymptomatic people who aren’t in the above categories should not be tested until there are enough tests, according to Gates. Again, not a terrible idea.
Using technology to enable a surveillance state – ah, here we go. Gates says the United States needs to follow Germany’s example; “interview everyone who has tested positive and use a database to ensure someone follows up with all their contacts.” And how to ensure accuracy? Digital big brother tools!
An even better solution would be the broad, voluntary adoption of digital tools. For example, there are apps that will help you remember where you have been; if you ever test positive, you can review the history or choose to share it with whoever comes to interview you about your contacts. And some people have proposed allowing phones to detect other phones that are near them by using Bluetooth and emitting sounds that humans can’t hear. If someone tested positive, their phone would send a message to the other phones, and their owners could get tested. If most people chose to install this kind of application, it would probably help some. -Bill Gates
Gates suggests this would be voluntary, unlike South Korea – which forces COVID-19 positive patients to self-isolate and install a tracking app on their smartphones which will alert authorities when an infected person has left their home, while warning them to return immediately. Admittedly, South Korea – which also employed widespread testing and the use of face masks, has had just under 11,000 confirmed cases and 240 deaths.
Treatment options – Gates notes that while Hydroxychloroquine has ‘received a lot of attention,’ his foundation is funding a clinical trial which will determine if it works on COVID-19 by the end of May, and that “it appears the benefits will be modest at best,” despite overwhelming anecdotal evidence of its efficacy by doctors using it in the field.
We’re guessing Gates’ trial doesn’t include the use of zinc, much like most of the other studies which are ‘proving’ that the anti-malaria drug doesn’t work. This is disingenuous science, as HCQ acts as an ‘iononpore‘ which allows zinc into infected cells, disrupting virus replication. On its own, HCQ only allows low levels of zinc to enter cells, vs. the high-dose cocktail employed by doctors such as Vladimir Zelenko, who claims he’s cured over 700 patients with the combination.
Gates, meanwhile, is promoting the use of plasma therapy, which involves “drawing blood from patients who have recovered from covid-19, making sure it is free of the coronavirus and other infections, and giving the plasma (and the antibodies it contains) to sick people. Several major companies are working together to see whether this succeeds.”
If you want to get back to large gatherings, we need a vaccine! Perhaps, but immeasurably more creepy coming from Gates considering his history.
Every additional month that it takes to produce a vaccine is a month in which the economy cannot completely return to normal.
The new approach I’m most excited about is known as an RNA vaccine. (The first covid-19 vaccine to start human trials is an RNA vaccine.) Unlike a flu shot, which contains fragments of the influenza virus so your immune system can learn to attack them, an RNA vaccine gives your body the genetic code needed to produce viral fragments on its own. When the immune system sees these fragments, it learns how to attack them. An RNA vaccine essentially turns your body into its own vaccine manufacturing unit. -Bill Gates
Gates then says that distributing vaccines will be the next hurdle – and that governments which fund vaccine development, countries which test the vaccines, and hardest-hit regions “will all have a good case that they should receive priority,” and that “Ideally, there would be a global agreement about who should get the vaccine first.”
In short – get tracked, don’t trust hydroxychloroquine, and take the shot.
This article was spotted by D.W. who sent it along, and it’s a stunner, because I’ve blogged a lot on this site, and even written a book (Microcosm and Medium) about mind manipulation and the techniques and technologies about mind control.
But this one is a stunner, not only because MIT is behind it – think about Bill Hates’ implantable vaccine technology that is supposedly in development with MIT – but also for what it portends:
The concept here is simple enough: a “glove” that uses various prompts to “tweak” or “control” the subjects of one’s dreams:
A team of researchers at MIT’s Dream Lab, which launched in 2017, are working on an open source wearable device that can track and interact with dreams in a number of ways — including, hopefully, giving you new control over the content of your dreams.
The team’s radical goal is to prove once and for all that dreams aren’t just meaningless gibberish — but can be “hacked, augmented, and swayed” to our benefit, according to OneZero.
Think “Inception,” in other words, but with a Nintendo Power Glove.
“People don’t know that a third of their life is a third where they could change or structure or better themselves,” Adam Horowitz, PhD student at MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group and a Dream Lab researcher, told OneZero.
“Whether you’re talking about memory augmentation or creativity augmentation or improving mood the next day or improving test performance, there’s all these things you can do at night that are practically important,” Horowitz added.
To be sure, as I pointed out in Microcosm and Medium, dream states, hypnotic states, and so on, were the subject of much experimentation around the world, and particularly in the former Soviet bloc, and there was much success in enhancing people’s performance and creativity. But there’s a downside to this, as is suggested by this statement:
But the Dream Lab might be on to something with its Dormio glove. For instance, in a 50-person experiment, the speaking glove was able to insert a tiger into people’s sleep by having the glove say a prerecorded message that simply said “tiger.”
And at the end of the article, there’s this:
“The unconscious, it’s another kind of intelligence,” Rubin Naiman, sleep and dream expert at the University of Arizona, told OneZero. “We can learn from it. We can be in dialogue with it rather than dominate it, rather than ‘tap in’ and try to steer it in directions we want.”
For the purposes of today’s high octane speculation, let’s take that last statement first and then deal with the statement about inserting “tigers” into people’s dreams by means of the simple prompt of saying the word “tiger”. In the case of the second statement, we’re being asked to be in “dialogue” with our unconscious mind. Well, for the record, the word “dialogue” is one of my hot buttons, because usually when people say that they want a “dialogue” these days, that usually means that they don’t want a discussion, but rather, a pseudo-conversation designed to wear you down until you agree with them. That makes me doubly anxious about having “dialogues” with the unconscious. Anyone who’s read a bit of Freud or Jung will immediately be made aware of how deep that pool is, and if I may so put it, “here lurk demons.” Whatever one makes of their theories or for that matter of psychiatry or psychology in general, they did not formulate them in a vacuum, but over a long period of observation of their patients. It is a bizarre world. And that brings me to a point: in the spiritual tradition to which I attempt to adhere, there is constant caution about engaging in “dialogue” with such things for the simple reason that that part of the human mind is open to all sorts of influences, and hence, in that tradition, one prays for protection from them during sleep, the “time of least resistance” to their influences.
Which brings me to the “tiger” statement, because this I found most chilling, for it indicates an ability to insert a meme or topic by the mere mention of a word, into someone’s dreams. If one may thus influence someone’s creativity for the better, one might, equally, damp it or extinguish it altogether.
In other words, they now not only want the ability to manipulate your conscious thought, now they want your dreams as well.
Restaurants and their allies are lobbying President Trump and Congress to press insurance companies to cover “business interruption” claims stemming from the coronavirus, even where restaurants have policies that exclude losses from pandemics.
While insurers do offer coverage, those policies are significantly more expensive than standard business-interruption policies, and few restaurants carry them, industry representatives said. But restaurants and some U.S. lawmakers say the business-shutdown orders in states and cities should constitute business interruptions under their existing policies.
Insurers are pushing back hard with the help of some Republican senators and conservative groups, saying retroactive changes to coverage policies and threats of lawsuits from restaurants could undermine the nation’s insurance system.
“Big” Bedfellows
Cheatsheet reports Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck has joined fellow renowned chefs Thomas Keller, Daniel Boulud, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, and Dominique Crenn to form BIG, (Business Interruption Group), a new national legal, political, and communications campaign launched in partnership with an industry-savvy insurance attorney.
The group has spoken by phone to President Trump for his assistance in communicating with insurance companies, who have, for the most part, denied restaurants assistance during the pandemic. Specifically, they are requesting the U.S. president to step in on their behalf. And it looks like Mr. Trump is sympathetic.
Puck said, “We were encouraged by our conversation with the president about the urgent need to help the restaurant industry. All of us paid business interruption insurance for years to protect the livelihood of our employees. If the restaurant industry collapses, it has a massive effect on the entire economy. . .”
Understanding the Legal Battle
Those with no business interruption policy have no claim.
Restaurants that do have business interruption policies ought to be covered unless the policy specifically excludes pandemics.
Policies cannot be changed after the fact by Congress or anyone else, except by universal agreement of all of those who the policy covers.
The disagreement is whether the shutdown is pandemic-related or government-related.
Lobbyists have taken sides.
I believe this should be up to a court of law with the decision depending on specific policy language.
It should not be up to Congress to interpret law, nor to make businesses whole for those companies with inadequate insurance, nor insurance companies who got burnt by offering pandemic insurance.
