WashPo is having none of it.
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AMERICAN HEALTHCARE IN A NUTSHELL
In other words, so many people have come to the general consensus that Donald Trump is an idiot that it actively affects Google’s algorithm which takes into account trillions of websites and web searches to try to match keywords with relevant images. This is a real world example of “If you look up x in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of y” and the fact that the Republicans blame Google for “search results bias” instead of admitting that most people think that the current president is an idiot. That’s hilarious.
Extinct tree grows anew from ancient jar of seeds unearthed by archaeologists
“For thousands of years, Judean date palm trees were one of the most recognizable and welcome sights for people living in the Middle East — widely cultivated throughout the region for their sweet fruit, and for the cool shade they offered from the blazing desert sun.
From its founding some 3,000 years ago, to the dawn of the Common Era, the trees became a staple crop in the Kingdom of Judea, even garnering several shout-outs in the Old Testament. Judean palm trees would come to serve as one of the kingdom’s chief symbols of good fortune; King David named his daughter, Tamar, after the plant’s name in Hebrew.
By the time the Roman Empire sought to usurp control of the kingdom in 70 AD, broad forests of these trees flourished as a staple crop to the Judean economy — a fact that made them a prime resource for the invading army to destroy. Sadly, around the year 500 AD, the once plentiful palm had been completely wiped out, driven to extinction for the sake of conquest.
In the centuries that followed, first-hand knowledge of the tree slipped from memory to legend. Up until recently, that is.
During excavations at the site of Herod the Great’s palace in Israel in the early 1960’s, archeologists unearthed a small stockpile of seeds stowed in a clay jar dating back 2,000 years. For the next four decades, the ancient seeds were kept in a drawer at Tel Aviv’s Bar-Ilan University. But then, in 2005, botanical researcher Elaine Solowey decided to plant one and see what, if anything, would sprout.
“I assumed the food in the seed would be no good after all that time. How could it be?“ said Solowey. She was soon proven wrong.
Amazingly, the multi-millennial seed did indeed sprout — producing a sapling no one had seen in centuries, becoming the oldest known tree seed to germinate.
Today, the living archeological treasure continues to grow and thrive; In 2011, it even produced its first flower — a heartening sign that the ancient survivor was eager to reproduce. It has been proposed that the tree be cross-bred with closely related palm types, but it would likely take years for it to begin producing any of its famed fruits. Meanwhile, Solowey is working to revive other age-old trees from their long dormancy.”
***Does anyone in the know have any comments?
(Source: Tree Hugger)
HOLY FUCK
Here’s a ten year update. The scientist, Elaine Solowey, has germinated and grown other ancient date palm seeds and there are a couple of female plants that Methuselah could pollinate.
Trump quietly shuts down HIV cure research to appease the religious right
“This effectively stops all of our research to discover a cure for HIV,” one researcher says, after Trump "paused" his experiments in a nod to anti-abortion activists.
(lgbtqnation.com)
Part of attempts to ban all research that involves human fetal tissue, because the superstitious feelings of anti-choice fanatics over useless, garbage corpse flesh is apparently more important than any number of entire human lives.
Source: http://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/the-central-intelligence-agency-cia-behavioral-modification-collection/
“Important Document Drop: Here are THOUSANDS of pages on “Behavioral Modification,” #MKULTRA and Mind Control techniques researched by the @CIA. I fought for these docs for YEARS…”
Project OFTEN is referenced many times in these docs, and it starts to make more sense when you understand what the CIA was researching:
Via Wikipedia:
“Project MKOFTEN was a covert Department of Defense program developed in conjunction with the CIA. A partner program to MKSEARCH, the goal of MKOFTEN was to “test the behavioral and toxicological effects of certain drugs on animals and humans”.[1]
According to author Gordon Thomas’s 2007 book Secrets and Lies the CIA’s Operation Often was also initiated by the chief of the CIA’s Technical Services Branch, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, to “explore the world of black magic” and “harness the forces of darkness and challenge the concept that the inner reaches of the mind are beyond reach”. As part of Operation Often, Dr. Gottlieb and other CIA employees visited with and recruited fortune-tellers, palm-readers, clairvoyants, astrologists, mediums, psychics, specialists in demonology, witches and warlocks, Satanists, other occult practitioners, and more.[2]…”
“The Central Intelligence Agency made six remote-controlled dogs as a part of their MKULTRA “behavior modification” or mind control program. Using brain surgery, newly requested documents show that the dogs were “field operational” and controlled by human beings.
As if their mind control experiments on humans were not disturbing enough, the CIA also admits that the goal was to control the behavior of a dog.
“The specific aim of the research program was to examine the possibility of controlling the behavior of a dog, in an open field, by means of remotely triggering electrical stimulation of the brain,” the report states.
“Such a system depends for its effectiveness on two properties of electrical stimulation delivered to certain deep-lying structures of the dog brain: the well-known reward effect, and a tendency for such stimulation to initiate and maintain locomotion in a direction which is accompanied by the continued delivery of stimulation.”
After the surgery to control the mind of a dog, the CIA states that the gruesome side effects could be “infection at the electrode site due to a failure of the surgical wound to heal.” Newsweek reported that after trying out a plastic helmet, government scientists instead settled on the new surgical technique that involved, “embedding the electrode entirely within a mound of dental cement on the skull and running the leads subcutaneously to a point between the shoulder blades, where the leads are brought to the surface and affixed to a standard dog harness.
Once the surgeons implanted the electrodes deep in the subject dog’s brain, a battery pack and stimulator was added to the harness, through which signals could be sent to the electrodes. “The stimulator had to be reliable and capable of sufficient voltage output to be usable in the face of expected impedance variation across individual dogs.”
Another of the documents revealed perhaps even more disturbing new details on the use of experimental mind control drugs on unwilling human beings, suggesting experimenting with the use of such drugs on inmates in prison hospitals and drugging suspected criminals awaiting trial. According to Sputnik News, it gets even worse.
Yet another document details experimentation with hypnotic speaking techniques to enable mind control over “large audiences.”
