"Figures Don't Lie, but Liars Figure"

"Figures Don't Lie, but Liars Figure"

by Jeff Thomas

"It’s an old saying, but never truer than today, when profoundly false figures are being used to fuel the COVID hysteria. In less than one year, the rulers of the US and many other countries have successfully closed down businesses, decimated social interaction, shut down those who sought to seek group solace in their faith, trashed economies and forcibly seized power, replacing democratic structure with executive edict.

This has been achieved solely through the creation of fear over a flu virus. Mother Jones has stated, "The staggering death toll was both preventable and entirely predictable. Even aside from his vast personal incompetence… Trump blithely put into practice cherished conservative principles that are incompatible with a decent pandemic response. Castigating and de-legitimizing government institutions, demonizing minority communities, and playing into white grievances may help Republicans win elections, but when it comes to beating back a massive public health catastrophe, what’s paramount is robust public agencies, a strong health care system, and special attention to the vulnerable. In many ways, we were doomed from the start."

Pretty scathing. As we can see, the media are not just commenting, but handing out pitchforks to the villagers. As in all irrational calls to arms, the former president has already been convicted of genocide in the court of public opinion. By comparison, Dr. Fauci, who has served as the government’s expert physician has been left off the hook entirely; yet no eyebrow is raised.

Some people in the US will swear by the above statements, whilst others will say that they are exaggerations and misinterpretations. Interestingly, however, most all Americans seem quite willing to accept the 400,000 death count as being accurate. And yet we can obtain the A.M.A. and/or CDC/NCHS annual All-Cause death statistics and both sources offer up a very different picture. Let’s have a look:

We can see that the death count seems to increase by about 1% each year – predictably, as the population also increases. Therefore, if there had been no coronavirus, we might have expected an all-cause death count of about 2,883,386, but the actual count for 2020 was 2,916,492, or an increase from the norm of 33,106, not 400,000. Based upon a total population of 330,849,169, if every single one of these additional deaths was due to covid-19, this would mean a death rate of .01%.

This death rate is clearly not in keeping with a pandemic. But it is, in fact, very much in keeping with a standard flu season rate. The only way that the coronavirus could be responsible for 400,000 deaths in the US in 2020 would be if at least 367,000 people conveniently ceased dying of other causes, such as heart failure, car crashes and cancer.

Researcher Thomas Di Ferdinando, in reviewing the extraordinary increase in claimed death count, has commented, "Without those added deaths, there would be no evidence of a Covid pandemic. This triangulation of facts: essentially no excess deaths beyond the normal annual background count; absolutely NO relationship between Covid "confirmed" cases and Covid "confirmed" deaths; and the mysterious, last-minute dump of 268,259 all-cause deaths into the 2020 end-of-year all-cause death totals; completely demolish any pretext of their having been a 2020 viral pandemic, whether caused by a novel coronavirus or by anything else and that therefore there is no rational reason to be putting masks on children, isolating elders, destroying businesses, locking down populations and shattering the public trust."

Quite so. I couldn’t have phrased it better. But if all the misery that has occurred in the past year has been unnecessary – that is, if this was just another in the series of coronaviruses that have caused a periodic nuisance for over sixty-five years – why have all the lockdowns, loss of jobs, loss of personal liberties, etc., been forced upon people?

Well, in fact, that question may be easily answered. All we really need do is to ask ourselves what a government would accomplish by imposing such draconian requirements. What we see all around us is a people who have been subjugated. "Inalienable" rights that we are supposed to enjoy have been removed. In their place is a state of tyrannical rule. Any demands that have been made by the government, no matter how irrational, have been instituted through force and the populace have caved in to it all.

What might otherwise have taken decades of incremental depreciation of rights has been accomplished in a very short time. And just in time, too. For dramatic changes are in store in the form of rule that the country will live under very soon. A litany of new plans has been put forward that will effectively eliminate freedoms of every type.

In the place of the old system will be a state of totalitarian collectivist rule. Out of a job? The state will provide universal basic income. Can’t afford your education? The state will forgive all student debt. Can’t afford your health plan? The state will provide universal health care. I doubt that it would be a rash prediction to make, that an all-encompassing collectivist plan will be unfolding very soon. And that the fear that has been manufactured will be maintained until the plan is well under way."

- internationalman.com

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Related:

"The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”.

 Vaccination as a Platform for “Digital Identity”

"The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered

 Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 3/29/21"

"Covid-19 Pandemic Update 3/29/21"

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“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have

 the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call." 

- Dr. Anthony Fauci, 3/11/21

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 Coronavirus Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak 

 March 29, 2021 12:36 AM ET: 

The coronavirus pandemic has sickened more than 127,104,000 

people, according to official counts, including 30,285,447 Americans.

Globally at least 2,783,-00 have died.

  March 29, 2021 12:36 AM ET: 

Coronavirus in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count

- www.nytimes.com

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"The COVID Tracking Project"
Every day, our volunteers compile the latest numbers on tests, cases, 
hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every US state and territory.
- https://covidtracking.com/

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Editor's Note: This excerpt was originally published in the article “Sleepy Joe's Next $3 Trillion Boondoggle” at David Stockman's ContraCorner.

"The lone political ranger in Washington who has articulately and forcefully confronted Fed Chairmen, Dr. Fauci and the Deep State peddlers of the RussiaGate Hoax specifically and the Forever Wars generally is Senator Rand Paul. Most of his so-called conservative GOP colleagues have either been AWOL completely on these deeply symptomatic matters or joined the fray after it was way too late or had become a matter of Trumpian loyalty-signaling.

Where were they last year at this time when the Donald disastrously anointed a 52-year Federal apparatchik, publicity-hound and scientific lightweight to be the Covid-czar? And then, they permitted him to host his own daily reality TV show which sparked the calamity of Lockdown Nation and impregnated the national psyche with unhinged hysteria about a respiratory virus that was not appreciably more virulent than many which had come before.

There were plenty of scientific voices at the time who said this was a giant folly, but even a brief acquaintance with the history of respiratory diseases and the principles of constitutional government was all that was required to deliver a loud, no!

Senator Rand Paul was one of the few who did from the very beginning, and now that the data is in and the visible pandemic is fast fading, he has been fully vindicated. Indeed, we have rarely seen anything which more powerfully discredits the Covid-as-Black Plague Myth and the resulting depredations of the Virus Patrol than the chart below.

Click image for larger size.

It shows the age-adjusted death rate from all causes for the 120 year span since 1900. As such, it takes all the noise and misdirection out of the daily Covid counts blared across the screen by the cable TV chyrons, and actually embeds the matter in real science.

That is to say, it’s age-adjusted so that the rapidly increasing population of the very elderly with inherently high mortality rates does not bias the picture. Nor do the squirrely death certificate coding conventions promulgated by the CDC last March distort the metric. That’s because it includes deaths from all causes - including the hundreds of thousands where the deceased succumbed to multitudinous causes and co-morbidities but also tested positive under the radically flawed PCR test for Covid.

Needless to say, when the age-adjusted mortality rate from all causes oscillated at about 7 per 1,000 population in recent years and then blipped up to about 8 per 1,000 in 2020 (green bar), you do not have a Black Plague or even a deathly pandemic.

What you have is a bad flu season that unfortunately resulted in a modest excess death rate -and one overwhelmingly centered in the nursing homes and the very elderly population beset with weak immune systems. Also, you have an all-causes death rate that was actually no higher than what was taken as a standard outcome as recently as 2004–2006.

The point is, the chart tells you that there should never have been a Covid hysteria or a lockdown, which caused previously unthinkable economic repercussions such as 70 million newly filed unemployment claims. That’s to say nothing of the crash of whole industries such as air travel and restaurants, the loss of lifetime investments by several millions of small businessmen and entrepreneurs, and the calamity of $6 trillion of Everything Bailouts that were recklessly stood up to compensate for the lockdown carnage.

A few decades from now, the blip represented by the green bar will hardly be visible with even a magnifying glass. That’s because several subsequent years will show a small dip in the annual mortality rates owing to the fact that the Grim Reaper came a few months early when medical treatments and therapeutic protocols failed to become available to the most vulnerable in the initial months of the pandemic.

More importantly, the reason for the sweeping folly of 2020 will become readily apparent. It wasn’t "the science." On the contrary, it was the result of an old-fashioned power grab by a camarilla of public health bureaucrats, their overlords in the pharma industry and the state and local officials who suddenly had a chance to wield dictatorial powers over the daily lives of their constituents.

No rational government in a free society with a healthy opposition party would have wreaked the havoc brought upon America during the last year owing to the tiny blip reflected in the green bar below.

Senator Rand Paul and a few intrepid colleagues - plus an occasional on-point anchor on Fox News like Tucker Carlson - tried as they might, but they simply could not thwart the ceaseless aggrandizement of an Imperial City that has become the living embodiment of Leviathan.

The chart above puts us in mind of our own youth on a rural Michigan farm. At our one-room school, we all wanted to get measles, mumps and chickenpox so that we would have the natural immunities going forward; and when it came along, we wanted to get Dr. Salk’s vaccine because we didn’t wish to get polio. But either way, no one thought we were living in a world beset by deathly plagues and medical pestilence; this includes the virulent Asian flu that came along in 1957, which resulted in 116,000 deaths among a population half today’s size.

Still, the age-adjusted death rate from all causes in 1957 was about 14 per 1,000 or double the rate recorded for the Year-of-the-Covid in 2020. The fact that US economic and social life has been monkey-hammered by unhinged government interventions is evidence that there is not much left in Washington to thwart the on-going metastasis."

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Related:

• "Basic Arithmetic For Leftist Losers"

• "Shot in the Dark: 

Medical Doctor Exposes Deadly Dangers of Covid-19 Vaccines"

• "The COVID Fraud Will Not Stay Hidden Forever"

• "Straight Talk On Covid"

• "Redefining Death"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/29/21"

"Economic Market Snapshot AM 3/29/21"

○

"Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will

do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone."

- John Maynard Keynes

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"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/29/21:

"Alert! Oil Refinery Destroyed! 

Stocks Set For Lower Open"

- https://traderschoice.net/

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"The more I see of the monied classes, 

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

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MarketWatch Market Summary, Live Updates

- https://www.marketwatch.com/tools/marketsummary

CNN Market Data:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/markets/

CNN Fear And Greed Index:

- https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/

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A comprehensive, essential daily read.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

March 28th to 30th, Updated Daily 

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Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

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Daily Job Cuts

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

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- https://www.zerohedge.com/

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- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

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- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

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- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

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- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

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Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

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And now, the End Game...

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Oh yeah...

"How It Really Is"

 

Edward Snowden, "It's Worse Than We Thought"

Edward Snowden, "It's Worse Than We Thought"

"Housing Crash Is Coming! Price Bubble Threatens To Trigger The Most Dramatic Home Value Drop Ever"

Full screen recommended.

"Housing Crash Is Coming! Price Bubble Threatens

 To Trigger The Most Dramatic Home Value Drop Ever"

by Epic Economist

"The last time the U.S. saw such skyrocketing home prices, the global economy faced a catastrophic meltdown. The imbalances between supply and demand, wages and home price appreciation, interest rates and inflation, are once again setting up the stage for a dramatic crash. Now, the U.S. housing market bubble is out of control, and although this bubble may be configured differently from the one that preceded the Great Recession of 2008, it keeps expanding just as rapidly. Even policymakers are concerned their easy money policies and stimulus packages - which helped to fuel the growth of this splendid bubble - may soon blow up on their faces as the economy reopens, inflation surges, and interest rates are pushed up, collapsing the entire housing market and bursting several other asset bubbles. As more and more Americans continue to be priced out of the market, the current home valuations will have to adjust and experts are warning that a sharp price correction is looming on the horizon. That is to say, a major housing market crash is coming, and that's what we're going to expose in this video.

The U.S. real estate sector is completely out of whack. On one hand, as a significant chunk of the population remains unemployed or experiencing steep financial setbacks, nearly 10 million Americans can't pay their rent. While on the other hand, those who managed to stay employed throughout the current economic recession have been frantically looking to buy houses, but there are just not enough homes for sale. According to the chief economist for the National Association of Home Builders, Robert Dietz, some underlying causes for this imbalance is what he calls "the five L's," which stand for labor, land, lending, lumber, and laws.

The labor issue started after the previous housing crash, when a lot of construction workers decided to leave the market. Land has also been incredibly expensive, and that's an obvious obstacle for building companies, which leads us to the lending issue because now getting loans isn't as simple and easy as it used to be, so these companies are facing extra strains to start construction projects. On top of that, lumber prices are through the roof, having hiked 180% in less than a year, adding almost $25,000 to the cost of a house. Another problem is zoning laws. With so many rules in the way of home building, in addition to all the previously cited factors, companies are entirely overwhelmed.

When rents and home prices start to move in opposite directions, that's a clear sign that the housing bubble is inflating. In January alone, which is considered a slow month for the market, home prices increased 14 percent compared to the same time last year, and sales climbed 24 percent, regardless of an unemployment rate that was roughly twice as high. As the pace of home price appreciation is fast outstripping wage growth, determinants are once again setting up the stage for a stunning housing market crash.

The market is registering artificially inflated home valuations that are justified by estimates that distort our economic reality, which means things are getting increasingly unsustainable, and very soon prices will be forced to a correction. The price run-up is going to choke off first-time buyers for a prolonged period of time and the more the bubble expands, the sharper the correction will have to be. The affordability crisis will not only weigh upon the market's future but also prevent millions of Americans to build up wealth and become extremely financially vulnerable.

Without first-time buyers, the market's long-term growth is put in jeopardy. Moreover, another major concern is rising mortgage rates. As the economy reopens, the trillions injected into the economy will create an inflationary surge that will force policymakers to push interest rates up in order to cool off the overheated economy. That will cause a sudden drop in property prices because the threat of rising inflation will burst all asset bubbles that have been artificially fueled by printed money, the housing bubble included.

Now, we are right in the middle of a global “everything” bubble. And past experiences suggest that when interest rates start to rapidly soar, and easy money stops flowing into the markets, bubbles start popping. The best-case scenario would be the occurrence of a housing market crash happening in isolation from other asset crashes. But as we discussed in previous videos, all signs point to the simultaneous bust of the real estate, stock, and bonds market.

As the nation stays engaged in a budget and monetary policy stimulus experiment of epic proportions, the rest of the world will soon find out what happens to the global economy when America succumbs to an inflationary fever. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that any of this will end well."

- https://www.epiceconomist.com

Musical Interlude: 2002, "The Calling"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "The Calling"

"A Look to the Heavens"

“To some, the outline of the open cluster of stars M6 resembles a butterfly. M6, also known as NGC 6405, spans about 20 light-years and lies about 2,000 light years distant. M6 can best be seen in a dark sky with binoculars towards the constellation of Scorpius, coving about as much of the sky as the full moon.

Like other open clusters, M6 is composed predominantly of young blue stars, although the brightest star is nearly orange. M6 is estimated to be about 100 million years old. Determining the distance to clusters like M6 helps astronomers calibrate the distance scale of the universe.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110906.html

Edward Abbey, "Benedicto"

"Benedicto"

“May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you - beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.”

- Edward Abbey

Chet Raymo, “Roofs”

“Roofs”

by Chet Raymo

"It would be well, perhaps, if we were to spend more of our days and nights without any obstruction between us and the celestial bodies, if the poet did not speak so much from under a roof, or the saint dwell there so long." Good advice, Mr. Thoreau.

I came here to this island for its unobstructed sky. Built a house called Starlight House. I'm no poet or saint, but I settled in to nurse what slender gifts I have. The sky has not disappointed. Except occasionally. We have just come off a rare four-day string of cloudy days, and the celestial bodies have been sorely missed, especially full-moon rises over the sea. Rare enough to make one wonder what history would have been like had the Earth been permanently shrouded in cloud.

What of poetry? What of sanctity? What of science? But, you say, we have lifted ourselves above the clouds. By now we would have seen the stars. And been as astonished by what we saw as stout Cortez and all his men on that peak in Darien.

Not yet, I think. The origins of science and math are so intimately linked with observations of celestial bodies that I think it entirely reasonable to suppose that the advent of space exploration would have been delayed on a cloud-covered Earth, by at least a century, likely longer. We would still be waiting, in ignorance, for that greatest of all revelations.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

"Don't Let Yesterday..."

"Health, Wealth and What Kills Most of Us

"Health, Wealth and What Kills Most of Us

by Charles Hugh Smith

"Longtime correspondent J.F. (MD) recently shared a fascinating graphic ranking the leading causes of death in the U.S. (2016 data, pre-pandemic) compared to searches on Google and what the media reports. (see chart below) Note that this data isn't a survey asking people to rank the leading causes of death, but it does reflect what health topics they were interested in finding more about via web searches.

Click image for larger size.

The media coverage of each cause of death is also not a representation of what the media presents as the leading causes of death; it's a reflection of the quantity of media coverage of each cause of death. I'm making these stipulations because this reminded me of a similar chart which depicts three different views of wealth inequality in the U.S.: (see chart below)

1. The actual distribution of wealth.

2. What survey respondents thought was the actual distribution of wealth.

3. What survey respondents thought was the ideal distribution of wealth.

Click image for larger size.

This survey made quite a media splash when it was published a few years ago because wealth inequality was so much more extreme than what people thought and what they reckoned as ideal. "Economic Inequality: It's Far Worse Than You Think:" The great divide between our beliefs, our ideals, and reality. 

Here's the source research: "(Mis)perceptions of Inequality"

And here is a typical research presentation of just how extreme wealth inequality has become in the U.S.: "Middle Class Now Holds Less Wealth than Top 1 Percent"

Returning to the causes of death chart, note the remarkable disparity between the leading cause of death, heart disease, and the search and media coverage of heart disease. While heart disease causes almost a third of all deaths, the search results and media coverages were tiny fractions of the total searches/coverage.

Cancer has a higher profile, appearing in searches somewhat in proportion to its ranking as the #2 cause of death, also about a third. Media coverage of cancer was modest but far more significant than the coverage of heart disease. Not surprisingly, the most dramatic and tragic causes of death - suicide, homicide and terrorism - attracted the most media coverage, and a larger percentage of searches than the actual percentages of causes of death.

This may reflect the higher media coverage, the human interest in life-and-death situations and perhaps the often-noted skewing of our perceptions of risk to the dramatic (terrorism, aircraft crashes, shark attacks, etc.) rather than the mundane (heart disease).

I noticed an interesting "missing link" in the causes of death data: no mention was made of alcohol impairment as a cause of death, even though alcohol is clearly a factor in deaths from disease, homicide and motor-vehicle accidents. J.F. noted that half of all homicides involve alcohol impairment: "Strong Alcohol Policies Help Reduce Alcohol-involved Homicides" (sciencedaily.com)

"In the U.S., between 40 and 50 percent of homicides involve the use of alcohol by either the victim or perpetrator, and more than half involve people who are significantly impaired by alcohol, which means that their blood alcohol levels are at or above 0.08 percent, the legal limit for driving." About 30% of all vehicle fatalities involve alcohol impairment as well.

This means alcohol impairment is a direct causal influence in 8,000 murders and between 10,000 and 12,000 traffic deaths each year, plus the 95,000 people who die every year of alcohol-related diseases - a total of around 115,000 people annually.

That puts alcohol as the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S. If we include smoking as a key cause of respiratory diseases (160,000 deaths annually, the 4th leading cause) and lung cancer (142,000 deaths annually), tobacco and alcohol are key factors in 300,000+ deaths annually, right behind heart disease and all cancers. "Deaths from Excessive Alcohol Use in the U.S." (CDC) What are the leading causes of death in the US? 

In stark contrast, cannabis use has no statistical effect on mortality. Though various authorities continue to claim cannabis is a "gateway drug," alcohol isn't a gateway; it's a major cause of death all by itself. The legal substance kills 115,000 users a year, and the illegal substance (Schedule 1, as dangerous as heroin according to our federal government) has no discernable impact on mortality.

"The Health Effects of Cannabis and Cannabinoids: The Current State of Evidence and Recommendations for Research." (NCBI): "After adjusting for confounders, including alcohol use, cigarette smoking, and demographic factors, individuals who reported using cannabis, but not other substances (i.e., cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, inhalants), at baseline were not at increased risk of all-cause mortality compared with individuals who reported not using cannabis or other substances at baseline." "After accounting for potential confounders, Andreasson and Allebeck (1990) found no statistically significant association between cannabis use and mortality."

Prohibition of alcohol didn't work as intended, and neither does the Prohibition of cannabis. Public health education, economic opportunities and healthier choices are the policy keys, not 10-year prison sentences.

This raises the question: how large a role does behavior play in the causes of death? Although it's an inexact calculation for obvious reasons, it's been estimated that roughly 2/3 of our health and longevity results from our behaviors and environment and only a third is the result of genetics.

The low search/media profile of heart disease suggests it's accepted almost as background noise rather than the #1 cause of death that is largely preventable by behavioral means: diet and fitness. Many cancers also have behavioral factors. It's been well established that deficiencies in diet and fitness dramatically increase the risks of many cancers.

J.F. is a physician, and he reminds me that high blood pressure is a key indicator of cardio-vascular risk. You've probably heard this from your doctor and from health-related literature/ research. In past posts, I've covered the remarkable discoveries being made about the profound impacts of the microbiome on our health. All the research on the importance of the microbiome reaches the same conclusion: the more diverse real food rich in fiber, the better.

Mental Health May Depend on Creatures in the Gut: The microbiome thrives on a diverse diet of real (non-processed) foods rich in fiber. The connection between wealth and health is well-established, and while much of the correlation is attributed to the high cost of healthy food, beans and brown rice are not expensive, and neither are ethnic vegetables in season. Widening how we shop and cook need not cost a fortune. Rather, once the money being squandered on fast food (garbage in, garbage out) is spent on real food (assuming every ounce is eaten rather than thrown away), household spending on food may well drop dramatically.

"Dietary Effects on Human Gut Microbiome Diversity: How the Western Diet Has Derailed Our Evolution:" Burgers and fries have nearly killed our ancestral microbiome.

I've also covered the dramatic positive effects of regular modest exercise. As a generality, the 80/20 Rule (the Pareto Distribution) applies to exercise: the first 20% of regular exercise generates 80% of the positive results. For example, walking an extra 2 miles a day will generate most of the benefits gained by walking more than 2 miles.

As we all know, the trick is to form habits of fitness that are akin to brushing our teeth - or even better, of course, find types of fitness that we enjoy. If health is wealth, and it most certainly is the highest form of wealth, then we would be well-served to take charge of our health-wealth in terms of what behaviors we can sustainably modify that will increase our health-wealth over the long-term. (Or put another way, what can we do to lower the risk factors that are within our control?)

Our choices and habits have an enormous impact on our health and health risks. Even modest changes can have life-changing positive results over time once they become our new set-point."

- https://www.oftwominds.com/

Gregory Mannarino, "Markets, A Look Ahead: Updates, Expect Stocks To Gain"

"Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

Your guide:

Gregory Mannarino, AM 3/28/21:

"Markets, A Look Ahead: Updates, Expect Stocks To Gain"

- https://traderschoice.net/

The Daily "Near You?"

Hastings, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. Thanks for stopping by!

"In the Inbox"

"In the Inbox"

"From: Coordinator of Volunteer Services

"We have a young man, thirty-six, on hospice who has a very young child. They want someone to help him do a life review and perhaps put some pictures together for he and his wife so the child will know him. Call me if you are willing to do this."

"The next time, friend, your life seems too hard, check your Inbox."

- Jose Orez

“The Stuff of (Disturbing) Dreams”

“The Stuff of (Disturbing) Dreams”

by Dr. Michael J. Breus

“Dreams are one of the most fascinating -  and least understood -  aspects of sleep. Though science has offered possibilities, we don't yet understand the purpose of dreaming. Dreams can encompass a dramatic range of emotion, and subject matter. Some dreams seem plucked directly from our everyday lives. Most of us have had the experience of waking up shaking our heads at the odd and sometimes amusing circumstances that unfolded while dreaming.

Dreams can contend with deep emotions, dealing with loss and reunion, anger, sorrow and fear. Bad dreams and nightmares are among the most startling and emotionally potent of remembered dreams. Even a partially remembered disturbing dream can linger in our waking minds. But what do we know about this phenomenon of disturbed dreaming? And what's the difference between a bad dream and a nightmare?

Much of the research into disturbed dreaming has focused on the neurological activity of these dreams, as a way to investigate the function and purpose of dreaming. Other research has focused on the connections between disturbed dreams and psychological conditions, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, and anxiety disorders. Less attention has been paid to the content of disturbed dreams, in particular the disturbing dreams that occur as a normal aspect of sleep life among a broad and varied population. We know that nightmares and bad dreams are common experiences -  but we don't know much about what these dreams contain.

What distinguishes a nightmare from a bad dream? One common theory is that nightmares are more emotionally disturbing and intense versions of bad dreams, a more severe form of the same essential phenomenon. One way nightmares are often distinguished from dreams is in whether the dream causes a person to wake -  whether out of fear, or to put an end to the dream.

New research investigates the content of disturbed dreams, in an effort to gain a better understanding of what emotions, triggers and themes propel these dreaming experiences, and also to help further illuminate potential distinctions between bad dreams and nightmares. Researchers at Quebec's Université de Montréal recruited 572 volunteers, both men and women, to keep daily dream reports of all remembered dreams -  good and bad -  for anywhere from two to five consecutive weeks. The reports included details about dreams' narratives, the emotions present and their level of intensity, as well as the presence of sleep terrors -  brief, highly intense periods of fright during dreams, that are often accompanied by actual screaming or movement like sleepwalking. Researchers considered episodes of sleep terrors to be distinct from nightmares.

They collected nearly 10,000 dream reports on dreams of all types. From this collection, researchers identified 431 bad dreams and 253 nightmares, experienced by 331 participants, which met the criteria for evaluation. Researchers excluded dreams that were too vague to analyze, as well as dream experiences that seemed to be sleep terrors. They also excluded nightmares and bad dreams experienced by people who reported having only these two types of dreams. Researchers used the result of waking from the dream as the distinguishing characteristic between bad dreams and nightmares: nightmares resulted in awakenings, and bad dreams did not.

Researchers defined several themes for volunteers to use in identifying the content of their dreams. The themes covered common territory for disturbed dreams, including physical aggression; being chased; interpersonal conflicts; accidents; failures and helplessness; evil presences; disasters and calamities; apprehension; worry; and health concerns. Volunteers were allowed to identify both primary and secondary themes.

They also established emotional categories to further define dream content, including fear, anger, sadness, confusion, disgust, guilt and frustration. Researchers used scales of both rationality and "everydayness" to evaluate levels of bizarreness in disturbed dreams. Their results give insight into the complex emotional and thematic landscape of disturbing dreams, as well as new possibilities for delineation between bad dreams and nightmares:

• Nightmares occurred more rarely than bad dreams, according to results. Of a total of 9,796 dreams collected, nightmares made up 2.9 percent, while bad dreams accounted for 10.8 percent of all dreams.

• The most common themes in both bad dreams and nightmares were physical aggression, interpersonal conflicts and failure or helplessness. More than 80 percent of nightmares, and more than 70 percent of bad dreams contained one or more of these themes, compared to 38.2 percent of non-disturbing dreams.

• Fear was the most common emotion reported in both nightmares and bad dreams. Among nightmares, 65.1 percent contained fear as the main emotion, as did 45.2 percent of bad dreams.

• Fear was not only more common in nightmares, it also took a larger proportional share of emotional content in nightmares than in bad dreams.

• Though fear was the most prevalent emotion, nearly half of all disturbing dreams had primary emotions other than fear.

• Volunteers reported nightmares having significantly higher intensity than bad dreams.

• Nightmares contained more aggression, more frequent experiences of failure, as well as more unfortunate and negative conclusions, than bad dreams. Nightmares were also more bizarre.

• Physical aggression was 1.5 times more frequent in nightmares than in bad dreams. Evil presences and experiences of being chased were other commonly reported themes of nightmares.

• Bad dreams overall contained a wider range of themes than nightmares. After physical aggression, interpersonal conflicts and failure, bad dreams also included themes related to health concerns and apprehension and worry.

• The thematic differences between nightmares and dreams suggested to researchers that nightmares are more likely to contain threats to basic physical security and survival, while bad dreams are more apt to grapple with a broader range of psychological anxieties.

Researchers found some interesting differences between men's and women's dreams. Both men and women dreamed about the same basic range of thematic and emotional content. But men's nightmares were more heavily populated with themes of disaster and calamity, while women's nightmares were more than twice as likely to contain interpersonal conflicts.

One particularly unexpected finding? Researchers compared the presence of negative events and outcomes in everyday dreams to disturbing dreams. They found nightmares and bad dreams contained more aggressions and misfortunes, and contained fewer positive, friendly aspects than everyday dreams. However, bad dreams and nightmares contained less failure than everyday dreams. This suggests, says researchers, that our disturbing dreams deal less often with issues of competence than more ordinary, less overtly upsetting everyday dreams.

Fascinating stuff, isn't it? These results give further credence to the theory that nightmares are a rarer, stranger and more intense form of bad dreams, but that both types of disturbed dreaming are versions of the same basic experience. It's not clear what purpose these dreams serve, or what relationship the content of our disturbing dreams may have to issues and concerns in our waking lives. But these findings should make scientists -  and the rest of us -  eager to discover more about our dreaming lives. Sweet Dreams...”

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

Michael J. Breus, PhD, The Sleep Doctor® 

- www.thesleepdoctor.com

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Related:

“9 Things You Probably Didn't Know About Dreaming”

- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/

"I Believe..."

 

Musical Interlude: Peder B. Helland, "Dance of Life"

Full screen highly recommended.

Peder B. Helland,"Dance of Life", 

for relaxation and meditation.

Incredibly beautiful...

"How It Really Is"

“You Now Have A Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish”

“You Now Have A Shorter Attention Span Than a Goldfish”

by Time

"No longer can we boast about 12 seconds of coherent thought. The average attention span for the notoriously ill-focused goldfish is nine seconds, but according to a study from 2015 by Microsoft Corp., people now generally lose concentration after eight seconds, highlighting the affects of an increasingly digitalized lifestyle on the brain.

Researchers in Canada surveyed 2,000 participants and studied the brain activity of 112 others using electroencephalograms (EEGs). Microsoft found that since the year 2000 (or about when the mobile revolution began) the average attention span dropped from 12 seconds to eight seconds. “Heavy multi-screeners find it difficult to filter out irrelevant stimuli — they’re more easily distracted by multiple streams of media,” the report read. On the positive side, the report says our ability to multitask has drastically improved in the mobile age.

Microsoft theorized that the changes were a result of the brain’s ability to adapt and change itself over time and a weaker attention span may be a side effect of evolving to a mobile Internet. The survey also confirmed generational differences for mobile use; for example, 77% of people aged 18 to 24 responded “yes” when asked, “When nothing is occupying my attention, the first thing I do is reach for my phone,” compared with only 10% of those over the age of 65. And now congratulate yourself for concentrating long enough to make it through this article.”

- http://time.com/

"Not Such An Easy Business..."

“Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.”

- Woody Allen

"My Humanity..."

"My humanity is bound up in yours, 

for we can only be human together."

- Desmond Tutu