One of the world’s most famous monuments, Stonehenge abounds in mysteries and anomalies.
Why was Stonehenge built in the first place? Why was it radically transformed shortly before 2500 BC into a masterpiece of megalithic architecture? What explains the intricate, changing patterns of the stones over time? Why the extraordinary effort?
We now have answers to these and other questions, but to get to them we need to set aside preconceptions and come to terms with something that isn’t simple.
If we can interpret certain ancient myths correctly, they could lead us to more accurate and penetrating views of the history of the Earth and the solar system. They might teach us about the forces at work and explain anomalies bequeathed to us by a long-hidden past. But how can we interpret these myths, the products of minds so far removed from ours? How do we know which interpretation is correct, if any? Are we doomed to speculate without ever achieving certainty?
Here we will interpret two Bronze Age myths to illustrate the high scientific value such myths might contain. We will also see how easy it can be to understand a myth once the right interpretation becomes available.
There are two sides to every story. Judges rightly admonish juries to check out both sides before coming to a conclusion. Our entire system of adversarial justice is built on this principle. But under surveillance by FBI in the 2001 anthrax mailings case, U.S. Army scientist Bruce Ivins committed suicide. So only one side got to tell its version of the story.Upon closing the case on February 19, 2010, FBI issued an Amerithrax Investigative Summary that concludes that Ivins was the anthrax mailer. The Summary contains serious errors as well as minor ones. It also omits crucial information. So, to ensure a fair outcome, we need to look at it through the eyes of a defense attorney, to make sure that the American people can check out both sides of the story before coming to a conclusion.
The apparent misdeeds and cover-ups of the administration of George W. Bush related to the terrorist attacks of 2001 remain in historical limbo. Neither presidents, nor the Congress, nor the media have gotten to the bottom of these tragic events. The 9/11 Commission Report, while providing hundreds of useful details, egregiously and unpardonably failed to examine the doings of senior government officials in the run-up to 9/11 and so must be considered a cover-up. As a result, the American public has not come to closure on the 9/11 attacks or on the anthrax mailings of 2001, nor is there a shared understanding of such a critical issue as the real reasons that the US attacked Iraq in 2003.
These failures have left the field open to wild speculations regarding these events, generally termed “conspiracy theories”, though this term obscures the crucial distinction between elaborate prospective plots involving many actors (silly in the context of an open society) and retrospective cover-ups that government officials who have made embarrassing mistakes are all too prone to engage in (very realistic and plausible). However, it is also true that simple prospective plots involving two or three individuals can occur.
Failure to reach a full, shared understanding of major events that led to interminable wars and occupations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia as well as to the undermining of civil liberties has helped to alienate Americans from their government and media, a triumph for America’s enemies. So we must make every effort to establish a clear common interpretation of what actually happened.
Slipping endlessly through the crack between oral and respiratory medicine, the humble mouthwash has slowly won more respect among savvy practitioners and patients as a solution for a range of indications.1 In Japan many millions of people gargle three times a day with green tea extracts or other mouthwashes to ward off upper respiratory tract infections (URTIs), and Japanese clinical studies have confirmed the value of this approach (Furushima D et al. Molecules. 2018 Jul 20;23(7)). Worldwide, medical practitioners recommend gargling to patients. Many people on their own have decided that gargling makes sense, while millions swish with mouthwash to protect teeth and gums as well as to combat halitosis.
Still, for curious reasons, this formidable method of suppressing infections remains in medical limbo. Not because there is no need. The average American suffers 2.5 episodes of URTI per year, with high costs for treatment, lost days of work, and morbidity. URTIs also exacerbate asthma, and they can enter the lungs and prove fatal. As a generic adjuvant therapy, gargling can help reduce viral load during epidemics while remaining hard for mutating viruses to outflank.
Sea-based approaches to the disposal of nuclear waste make it hard for terrorists, rebels, or criminals to steal for use in radiological weapons or in nuclear bombs. The world’s oceans have a vastly greater dilutive capacity than any single land site in the event of unintended leaks (though by the same token the effects of a leak could travel farther). And seawater itself contains a variety of radionuclides, so treating it as a domain in which there is no natural radioactivity runs counter to fact. Meanwhile, without a great deal of additional investment and endless political arguments, land-based geological storage sites will not have the capacity to store all the waste that will be generated in future decades.
The most important rationale, though, is that siting, constructing, and operating land-based long-term storage sites constitute major, difficult technological and political problems. It is wrongheaded and irresponsible to assume that many relatively poor, unstable, and technologically lagging countries with nuclear reactors will deal successfully with these challenges. Too many things can go wrong, with disastrous outcomes.
So a shared international solution to the problems of the long-term storage of nuclear waste should represent a high priority. And investigating sea-based solutions makes eminent sense because they are peculiarly suited to international cooperation. When considering solutions that require significant noise generation, we need to consider potential damage to sea creatures, similar to the damage caused by undersea mining.1
Four sea-based approaches recommend themselves.
April 4, 1968. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King was killed by a single bullet as he stood on the second floor balcony outside his hotel room in Memphis.1 The shot came from high on his right, not on a horizontal trajectory from the rooming house behind the hotel of the alleged assassin, James Earl Ray. Ray, a mediocre shot, would have needed to stand on the edge of the common bathroom tub to see out the window, and a wall (since conveniently removed) would have kept him from aligning the rifle. Ballistics, forensics, and medical evidence all rule him out. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there had been a conspiracy, with Ray as the patsy.
Critical researchers have argued that the federal government, especially FBI or perhaps CIA, carried out the assassination
August 4, 1962. Celebrity actress Marilyn Monroe died in her bedroom in Los Angeles (or in the guest house near her house, from which she was carried back to her bedroom).1
On April 27, 1996, 76-year old William Colby, former director of the CIA, disappeared from his vacation home on the water at Rocky Point, Maryland. Colby had spent the day at a marina fixing his sloop. He returned home after 6 pm, phoned his wife, who was visiting her mother in Texas, and told her he was tired and would eat supper, then go to bed. He watered his trees, met with his gardener and his visiting sister around 7:15 pm (sunset was at 7:57), and fixed himself a meal. The next day there was no sign of him. Eventually, a neighbor phoned the police. They found his supper half-eaten. The computer and radio were on. His canoe was missing.1
By the next day a full-scale search with helicopters and divers was under way.
The United States needs an Anti-Gerontocracy Amendment
. Just as the minimum age of 35 for becoming president reduces the risk of immaturity and inexperience, a maximum age of 75 would reduce the risk of the ravages of old age. It’s not a question of whether a given individual can outperform. It’s whether
The Theory of the Reversing Earth was a key component of Immanuel Velikovsky’s Venus theory in which he contended that close passages of Venus caused Earth to topple over four times during the Bronze Age catastrophes. Now we have a Revised Venus Theory that corrects inadequacies of the original theory and provides a cause of the inversions as well as approximate dates (2200, 1628, 1210, and 820 BC), an array of new evidence, and a link to the great mass extinctions of prehistory. Viktoria Nagudi interviews Kenneth J. Dillon of Scientia Press. 9 Likes, 0 Dislikes.
Kenneth J. Dillon has a Ph.D in history from Cornell University and has taught at several universities.
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