theDrahos

The month you were born does have an impact on how likely you are to become ill, researchers have claimed. They created software to scour birth and medical records to look for links. After using the algorithm to examine New York City medical databases, they found 55 diseases that correlated with the season of birth. Overall, the Columbia University study indicated people born in May had the lowest disease risk, and those born in October the highest. ‘Lifetime disease risk is affected by birth month,’ the researchers wrote in in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. ‘Seasonally dependent early developmental … Continue reading →

Licenses are chicken and egg. To qualify for, say, a road racing or heavy truck (commercial) license, one must already have attained the necessary skill. The license is a kind of after-the-fact “yep, he can do that.” But the fact is he could already do that. Was he any less able as a road racer or heavy-truck driver the moment prior to the state’s conferring of its seal (and permission slip)? Does possession of the permission slip make him more able? Of course not. Learning – and acquiring additional skills – that’s great. Whether we’re talking reading more books or … Continue reading →

The Sumerians were the first known people to settle in Mesopotamia over 7,000 years ago.  Located in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers (modern day Iraq), Sumer was often called the cradle of civilization. By the 4th millennium BC, it had established an advanced system writing, spectacular arts and architecture, astronomy and mathematics. The Akkadians would follow the Sumerians, borrowing from their culture, producing a new language of their own, and creating the world’s first empire. The origin of the Sumerians remains a mystery till this day.   They called themselves Saggiga (the “black-headed” or “bald-headed … Continue reading →

Submitted by Lance Roberts via STA Wealth Management, Just like the hit series “Scandal” in which a political “fixer” delves into the manipulation, deceit and obfuscation that prevails in the dark corners of Washington, D.C., so to has Wall Street’s earnings. From time to time, I analyze the previous quarters earnings for the S&P 500 to reveal the “quality” of earnings rather than the “quantity” as focused on by Wall Street. One of the most interesting data points continues to the be the extremely low level of “top line” revenue growth as compared to an explosion of the bottom line … Continue reading →

A professor from Japan’s Fukushima University Institute of Environmental Radioactivity (Michio Aoyama) told Kyodo in April that the West Coast of North America will be hit with around 800 terabecquerels of Cesium- 137 by 2016. EneNews notes that this is 80% of the cesium-137 deposited in Japan by Fukushima, according to the company which runs Fukushima, Tepco: (a petabequeral or “PBq” equals 1,000 terabecquerels.) This is not news for those who have been paying attention.  For example, we noted 2 days after the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami that the West Coast of North America could be slammed with radiation … Continue reading →

Last week, Republicans and Democrats in Congress joined President Barack Obama in congratulating themselves for taming the National Security Agency’s voracious appetite for spying. By permitting one section of the Patriot Act to expire and by replacing it with the USA Freedom Act, the federal government is taking credit for taming beasts of its own creation. In reality, nothing substantial has changed. Under the Patriot Act, the NSA had access to and possessed digital versions of the content of all telephone conversations, emails and text messages sent between and among all people in America since 2009. Under the USA Freedom … Continue reading →

Ever since the early days of the Boston Marathon bombing investigation, it’s been commonly understood that Tamerlan Tsarnaev first came to the attention of the FBI thanks to a March 2011 “warning” from the FSB, Russia’s security services. We now know this to be false. In a little-noticed exchange during congressional testimony, the FBI’s then-director Robert Mueller admitted that the Bureau had an interest in the elder Tsarnaev beforeRussia’s warning. That crucial admission has somehow become buried over time, and the government has been only too happy to leave it out of sight. What else is the Bureau hiding—and what … Continue reading →

Modern society is the first to routinely fill teeth cavities with toxic materials as soon as they occur. But we may not need to turn to these modern practices if we simply take natural precautions. In fact, we may actually be able to remineralize teeth and heal cavities naturally with some natural solutions. For many decades, mercury amalgam fillings were used because the malleability of the mercury allowed for the fillings to completely fill all the small spaces, tiny grooves, and narrow crevices. The temperature sensitivity of the mercury also permitted the filling to expand and contract accordingly. Unfortunately, this … Continue reading →

Has freedom of speech become a thing of the past in America? College campuses now are intellectual prisons, and the thin-skinned offendotrons are the guards. And in post-9/11 America you can’t criticize the Regime without being called a “traitor” or “unpatriotic.” The political and social fascists and control freaks really seem to be trying to drive people into silence these days. For example, on college campuses if you say something deemed offensive, you might actually receive a formal complaint from another student. Or if you’re a professor, you might receive an official reprimand because just one student complained about a … Continue reading →

As one summit closes, another opens. Thursday sees the start of the influential Bilderberg policy conference, which this year is being held in Austria, just 16 miles south of the G7 summit, and in a similarly inaccessible luxury alpine resort.The participant list for the conference has just been released by the organisation, and some big names leap off the page. No fewer than three serving European prime ministers will be attending, from the Netherlands, Finland and Belgium. They will be discussing “European strategy” with the head of Nato, Jens Stoltenberg, and the president of Austria, Heinz Fischer. Two European finance … Continue reading →

Single-sex high schools are already finding themselves in legal and ethical limbo as LGBT activists promote transgenderism as normal and healthy. Colleges and universities like women’s schools Barnard, Smith, Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Scripps and Mount Holyoke revised their admissions polices in the last two years to accept students who identify as females. However, the situation is still fluid among private all-girls’ schools at the high school level. In January 2013, the National Coalition of Girls Schools formed a Transgender Study Task Force to research the issue and later released a position paper outlining where the coalition stood on all-girls secondary … Continue reading →

Love & Mercy is a superb new biopic about head Beach Boy Brian Wilson’s creative summit in 1966, the year of the groundbreaking Pet Sounds album (featuring the sublime “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “God Only Knows”) and follow-up “Good Vibrations” mega-single, the greatest Southern California track ever constructed. The film follows Wilson briefly into his rapid collapse into mental illness and obesity, and then skips to his slow but gratifying recovery in the early 1990s. This may not sound particularly promising, in part because musical biopics are out of fashion. Further, the Beach Boys’ family melodrama is familiar from … Continue reading →