One Particular Harbour
Thoughts about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness from Dave Darby.
All posts in Philosophy
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How do you know what it means?
Dec 26, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »A very old Chinese man and his young son lived during a period of much civil strife. They were considered rich by the villagers because they owned a horse.
One morning, the son awoke to find his horse had run away. Running to his father, he informed him of this tragedy, saying this was the worst thing that could have happened. His father, in all his wisdom, replied, “Is that so? How do you know what it means?”
The next day, as the boy was working in the barn, he heard the sound of horses galloping in the distance. When he looked up he saw his horse leading a herd of wild ponies to him. Seeing this, he ran to the house shouting, “The horse has come back leading a herd. This is the greatest thing that’s ever happened!” In all his wisdom, the old man replied once again: “Is that so? How do you know what it means?”
That afternoon, the boy decided to tame one of the ponies. As he proudly sat atop the new-found gift, the horse bucked, throwing the boy to the ground causing a broken collarbone and a fractured arm. As he was placed in his bed by his father, he said, “All those horses coming – that’s the worst thing that could have happened.” Once again, the old man spoke: “Is that so? How do you know what it means?”
The next day, father and son were abruptly awakened by the sound of militia knocking on their door. They were here to take the boy to fight in the civil war. The old man said, “There he is, take him.” The captain took one look and said, “He’s useless to us,” and left. The boy said, “This is the best luck I’ve ever had.” And the old man, in his wisdom replied, “Is that so? How do you know what it means?”
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If
Jun 25, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!~Rudyard Kipling
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Genetic Scapegoat Loose
Jun 13, 2010Posted by Dave Darby
Read more »O where o where has our little scapegoat gone, o where o where can it be?
For nearly ten years, I’ve been working to educate people on the importance and impact of their environment on not only their success but on their health. Even before the Human Genome Project, Americans were all too happy to pin the tail on some other donkey.
“My parents were obese – it’s in my family genes. It’s not my fault.”
“Well, it’s not like my family was ever good in school. We’re built for sports.”
“Well, it’s not like my family was ever good at sports. We’re built for science.”
“Farming is in my blood.”
And on and on and on.
Dolly Parton who, regardless of whether or not you like country music, is an amazing singer and musician, was on Larry King a few months ago. When Larry asked “Do you think musical talent is hereditary?”, Dolly who was and is usually light and airy, became very serious when she answered “Oh yes, I think it is. My family was always singing and playing music.”
Well that doesn’t make it hereditary or genetic. That’s still the environment teaching and those who are rewarded with praise (false or earned) will develop a passion for what they and others around them are doing – monkey see, monkey do. If you’ve seen Simon Cowell and American Idol, then you know that some genetically ‘un-gifted’ people believe they can sing despite the contrary, obnoxious evidence.
Now, this is all harmless fun. It doesn’t matter what you believe about musical talent and how it is obtained. But when it comes to health, Americans tend to believe the same way. And who could blame them – it is after all shoved down our throats by the AMA. They used to tell us – “We need to know about your family history – this is the greatest predictor of disease as diseases tend to be genetic.”
Then, here comes the Human Genome Project to save us. When it was announced 10 years ago, it was seen as the savior to all our ills. It would, after all, be expected to map out all of our genetic makeup (markers) and combined with data on diseases, illuminate us all as to which markers ‘created’ which diseases.
But as the New York Times pointed out yesterday – A Decade Later, Genetic Map Yields Few New Cures – it has failed to show anything conclusive after spending $3 Billion. Three Ba Ba Ba Billion.
For biologists, the genome has yielded one insightful surprise after another. But the primary goal of the $3 billion Human Genome Project — to ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s and then generate treatments — remains largely elusive. Indeed, after 10 years of effort, geneticists are almost back to square one in knowing where to look for the roots of common disease.
One sign of the genome’s limited use for medicine so far was a recent test of genetic predictions for heart disease. A medical team led by Nina P. Paynter of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston collected 101 genetic variants that had been statistically linked to heart disease in various genome-scanning studies. But the variants turned out to have no value in forecasting disease among 19,000 women who had been followed for 12 years.
The old-fashioned method of taking a family history was a better guide, Dr. Paynter reported this February in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
So, I just want to say it once again maybe this time a little LOUDER.
YOUR ENVIRONMENT IS KILLING YOU
The AMA wants you to believe that they hold the key, the golden chalice to all things medical. Yet, after $3 Billion, they have not been able to prove their conclusions.Here’s a thought and, hey, I’ll offer it up for free to save the taxpayers $3 Ba Ba Ba Billion. You SHOULD check your family history, but not because of the chance future disease is genetic, but BECAUSE you share the same environment. You eat the same food, you sleep in the same house with all of the same carcinogens entrapped by caulking and sealing yourself in (to save energy), you brush your teeth with the same chemicals, you walk on the same chemically-induced lawn and you breathe the same polluted air.
When there is a salmonella outbreak, let me ask you this, do medical ‘professionals’ run around checking family history or do they run around trying to find everyone who ate the same thing? They try to find everyone who ate the same thing – go figure.
Four years ago when we sold our house and moved away from the midwest and venture south, we learned something disturbing. For the entire 8 years of living in our cush house in a cush golf-course community we just happened to be trapping too much Radon in our home. So much so that we had to install a special basement to roof vent/blower system to make the house safe for the new owners. THE NEW OWNER’S??? Not to sound insensitive, I care about the new owners, but what about US?
Here are some tasty facts about Radon:
- It is a radioactive, colorless, odorless, tasteless noble gas, occurring naturally as the decay product of radium. It is one of the densest substances that remains a gas under normal conditions and is considered to be a health hazard due to its radioactivity. NICE
- According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, radon is the second most frequent cause of lung cancer, after cigarette smoking. NICE
Wow. Now if I were to develop lung cancer one day, some idiot from the AMA might well conclude that it was because of all of the smoking I was exposed to as a kid as my parents were pretty heavy smokers and that I was genetically prone to lung cancer. And then if my kids get it, well, simple – it’s genetic, runs in the family.
Then again Waldos, it might just be that no matter my genetic markers, Radon is bad. And it might just be that my environment as a kid and as an adult living for 8 years in a Radon trap had a little something to say about my future health.
So we moved to change our environment to a more satisfying, more productive place for us. We didn’t feel healthy emotionally or physically where we were. So we moved. We had control over our environment and we took the reigns to make things better.
I encourage you to do the same. Take the reigns back in your life and stop looking for the genetic scapegoat that ‘proves’ things are beyond your control.
OR – you can listen to the AMA and your physicians if you feel compelled to with the logic that their training, their profession’s commitment to continued studies/trials/education and societal pressures all dictate that we don’t question authorities/professionals.
Go ahead, it’s your life.
For me and my family, hell, I’m going to use my eyes and react to tangible data. A clinical trial of 982 sample patients means Donkey Kong to me. If clinical trials were reliable and pharmaceutical companies were not selling us a load of manure to make profits and please shareholders, we’d still be buying Vioxx.
