“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert.” –J. Robert Oppenheimer
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread is VERY OPEN – a place for everybody to post whatever they feel they would like to tell the White Hats, and the rest of the MAGA/KAG/KMAG world (with KMAG being a bit of both).
Yes, it’s Monday…again.
But it’s okay! We’ll get through it.
Free Speech is practiced here at the Q Tree. But please keep it civil. We’re on the same side here so let’s not engage in friendly fire.
If you find yourself in a slap fight, we ask that you take it outside to The U Tree…which is also a good place to report any technical difficulties, if you’re unable to report them here.
Please also consider the Important Guidelines, outlined here. Let’s not give the odious Internet Censors a reason to shut down this precious haven that Wolf has created for us.
Please pray for our real President, the one who actually won the election:
For your listening enjoyment, I offer this from Eternal Eclipse, titled ‘Oathkeeper’:
And this 3-song mix from Emil Nilsson, track titles: ‘In Motion’, ‘Together We Stand’ and ‘Unite’:
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
We can give in to despair…or we can be defiant and fight back in any way that we can.
Joe Biden didn’t win.
I will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Wheatie’s Word of the Day:
somnolent
Somnolent is an adjective which means…drowsy; sleepy; having an inclination to sleep; in a condition of incomplete sleep; semicomatose.
Used in a sentence:
Demoncrats may try to pass off the behavior of the Fraud in the White House as merely somnolent, but it is more likely a display of dementia.
What we are seeing now, with “woke Generals”, political purges in the military, and various “letters of warning” to the current administration and its military collaborators in the Pentagram – whoops – I mean Pentagon – coming from a lot of current and ex-military, is evidence that we are finally talking about the core of the issue.
Does our military have to defend a communist takeover?
Personally, I don’t think so. “But that’s just my opinion”, as they say.
Yup. Your mileage may vary. And I’m at the point where I just don’t care. You’re either with the commies. Or you’re with America.
This cuts to the CORE of why the Bolshevism-defending FBI targeted the “Oathkeepers”. That group is the least nebulous and most well-defined group of military and/or law enforcement who LITERALLY hold to the idea of defending the Constitution – based on TRUTH – from communist infiltrators who got into power through LIES and CHEATING.
Nobody wants to talk about what’s really going on, but we are almost there.
That poor kid. If only he knew that HE was right and the ENTIRE US MILITARY was wrong.
I’ve had an entire lifetime to adjust to the treason. I was only in my 20’s when I was exposed to stuff that shouldn’t have even EXISTED. They tried to make me remove the “loose end” for them, but I refused. Instead, I kept my mouth shut and tried to figure out what the HELL was going on. I still don’t know – but I’ve got a better idea than most.
I would never kill myself over THEIR treason, which I KNOW they will try to make me internalize through MIND-FRACK, but to a young person who wanted to get into the military, and is then made to feel like HE is what’s wrong with the mismatch – well, it’s easy to see why a person might turn their anger on themselves, instead of realizing that entire systems can become LITERALLY psychotic, because there are people TRYING to MAKE THEM psychotic.
Nope. I’ve had TIME to figure out who’s doing all the lying. And it ain’t me.
Every possible trick, force, and betrayal is being used to bring America down.
Over 1,000 former members of the military have signed a scathing public letter warning that the increased priority placed on “wokeness” in the military is a threat to the Constitution and the nation’s military readiness.
The letter comes after Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley defended the teaching of critical race theory in the military during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on Wednesday.
Former President Donald Trump blasted Milley as “pathetic” for defending the toxic ideology during an interview Friday morning on Newsmax.
“General Milley – I watched his statements and it was pathetic. I watched the statements of some others – your head of the Navy. It was pathetic,” Trump said. “They didn’t talk that way when I was around, I can tell you. They didn’t talk that way or I would have gotten rid of them in two minutes. In particular Navy and Milley, just sad, pathetic statements,” the former president added.
Two military groups—Flag Officers 4 America and the Committee to Support and Defend—have joined forces to warn that the military’s embrace of the woke ideology is a major national security issue. LTC Allen West is a member of the Policy Board of the American Constitutional Rights Union’s Committee to Support and Defend, and leads its military initiatives.
Now, the FBI has been trying to do a number on patriotic Americans – getting THEM to think THEY are the problem, but I’m sorry – I’m just not buying it.
This is why you need a BULLDOG PATRIOT LAWYER – and not some bullshit Washington Bolshevik pustule excretion like the example which follows.
Deprogramming of January 6 Defendants Is Underway
The entire investigation is an attempt to prosecute people based on their beliefs. Those who purge their views and admit their wrongthink will be given mercy. Those who don’t will pay dearly.
“My lawyer has given me names of books and movies to help me see what life is like for others in our country. I’ve learned that even though we live in a wonderful country things still need to improve. People of all colors should feel as safe as I do to walk down the street.”
That passage is part book report, part white privilege mea culpa submitted to a federal court this month by Anna Morgan-Lloyd, one of the more than 500 Americans arrested for her involvement in the events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. The 49-year-old grandmother of five from southern Indiana was charged with four counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct even though she walked through an open door and was inside the building for about five minutes. She was ratted out to the FBI by a county worker who saw her January 6 posts on Facebook.
On Wednesday, Lloyd, who has a clean criminal record, pleaded guilty to one count of “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building”—but not before she consented to undergo a reeducation exercise at the urging of her court-appointed lawyer. (Like many January 6 defendants, Lloyd does not have the means to hire a private attorney.)
It’s safe to say Heather Shaner, a D.C.-based criminal defense attorney representing a handful of January 6 protesters, does not share the political beliefs of her Capitol clients, which is why she’s forcing them to read books and watch movies highlighting dark chapters in U.S. history.
In an interview with Huffington Post, Shaner explained her belief that “this is the most wonderful country in the world, it’s been great for all kinds of immigrant groups, except for the fact that it was born of genocide of the Native Americans and the enslavement of people.”
Shaner’s legal captives are learning the hard way what the government will do when one resists their commands to comply. Not only have their personal lives been shattered, finances depleted, and reputations destroyed by an abusive Justice Department investigation, Shaner’s clients must be indoctrinated with leftist propaganda about America’s alleged systemic racism.
The purge of the populist mindset is underway, courtesy of the fetid Beltway judicial system and the Joe Biden regime. Judges routinely lecture January 6 defendants about the wrongthink of a “stolen election” while prosecutors openly mock their political beliefs, including home schooling and gun ownership.
“I have had many political and ethical discussions with Anna Lloyd,” Shaner wrote in her motion agreeing to the plea and probation for Lloyd. “I tendered a booklist to her. She has read Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Just Mercy, and Schindler’s List to educate herself about ‘government policy’ toward Native Americans, African Americans and European Jews. We have discussed the books and also about the responsibility of an individual when confronting ‘wrong.’”
BUT let me warn you. If you stand up to the FBI simply by proclaiming your innocence, but not in manners which they somehow deem fitting, you may STILL get the Roger Stone treatment.
Joseph Bolanos, of the Upper West Side, has not been charged with any crime regarding the Jan. 6 DC riots, but he has suffered two strokes from the stress of being detained and FBI raids.Matthew McDermott
Joseph Bolanos was a pillar of his community. President of his Upper West Side block association for the past 23 years, he looked out for his neighbors during the pandemic. He dropped off masks and kept extra heaters in his rent-controlled apartment for seniors. He raised morale with a weekly street dance to show his support for essential workers.
A Red Cross volunteer after the 9/11 attacks, the 69-year-old security consultant once received a police commendation for heroism after saving a woman from being mugged.
Unmarried, and caring for his 94-year-old mother, he was a well-loved character in the quiet residential area.
But now his neighbors think he is a domestic terrorist.
Yes, he attended then-President Donald Trump’s rally in Washington, DC, on Jan. 6, but he never entered the Capitol. He was in a friend’s room at the JW Marriott a 30-minute walk away when the Capitol breach occurred.
Nonetheless, he was raided in February by the FBI anti-terrorism task force, handcuffed, paraded and detained for three hours while his apartment was ransacked and all his devices confiscated. Four months later, he hasn’t been charged and doesn’t have his devices back, but his neighbors are shunning him, and he’s had two strokes from the stress.
That’s actually a long one that’s worth reading. Now, it’s possible that this guy was just unlucky enough to be in the tar pit known as SDNY, but there is more evidence that the Federal Bureau of Instigation is up to the same thing at many of not ALL of its field offices.
If you check out my prior article on this topic, we have a lady doctor who did make the mistake of entering the Capitol Building – apparently non-violently – as well as somebody who entered but was for some reason NOT charged (he’s black and Hollywood, possibly explaining it), but who was still subjected to a violent intimidation raid.
This is a HEADS UP to all authentic American patriots about our phony globo-nazi “friends” in DOJ and FBI, otherwise known as “Dodge” and “FIB”. Let me give you the TL;DR right here. The Bidenistas and Bidenazis are going to try to GO CANADA during however long they remain in power. “FIB” is going to …
However, none of these people are getting it like the “Oathkeepers”. THOSE people are really being brutalized.
I hope you see what we are ALL facing. RE-EDUCATION. The only question is WHEN. They do it when they CAN, so if they don’t think they can get away with it, they don’t try. They WAIT until they have the upper hand.
Are you seeing how “Red Dawn” really works? It works best when you have a chorus of wokies saying it’s not happening.
I don’t know about YOU, but I’m not going to let them “re-educate” me.
It’s not that I simply “reject” their “education” on race. I think it’s an INFERIOR PRODUCT. I think their understanding is DEFECTIVE. It’s INFERIOR. It’s INTENTIONALLY BROKEN – by CHINA – to CEDE POWER TO THE CCP.
Thus, it’s STUPID. And I will not be educated by STUPIDITY.
There is no way this can end “nicely” if you refuse reeducation.
It’s only a matter of WHEN it gets ugly.
Do your deciding now.
W
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
This Sanctuary Sunday Open Thread, with full respect to those who worship God on the Sabbath, is a place to reaffirm our worship of our Creator, our Father, our King Eternal.
It is also a place to read, post and discuss news that is worth knowing and sharing. Please post links to any news stories that you use as sources or quote from.
In the QTree, we’re a friendly and civil lot. We encourage free speech and the open exchange and civil discussion of different ideas. Topics aren’t constrained, and sound logic is highly encouraged, all built on a solid foundation of truth and established facts.
We have a policy of mutual respect, shown by civility. Civility encourages discussions, promotes objectivity and rational thought in discourse, and camaraderie in the participants – characteristics we strive toward in our Q Tree community.
Please show respect and consideration for our fellow QTreepers. Before hitting the “post” button, please proofread your post and make sure you’re addressing the issue only, and not trying to confront the poster. Keep to the topic – avoid “you” and “your”. Here in The Q Tree, personal attacks, name calling, ridicule, insults, baiting and other conduct for which a penalty flag would be thrown are VERBOTEN.
In The Q Tree, we’re compatriots, sitting around the campfire, roasting hot dogs, making s’mores and discussing, agreeing, and disagreeing about whatever interests us. This board will remain a home for those who seek respectful conversations.
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we do not struggle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God; 18 praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all the saints—
Ephesians 6:12 clearly indicates that the conflict with Satan is spiritual, and so no tangible weapons can be effectively employed against him and his minions. We are not given a list of specific tactics Satan will use. However, the passage is quite clear that when we follow all the instructions faithfully, we will be able to stand, and we will have victory regardless of Satan’s strategy.
The first element of our armor is truth (verse 14). This is easy to understand, since Satan is said to be the “father of lies” (John 8:44). Deception is high on the list of things God considers to be an abomination. A “lying tongue” is one of the things He describes as “detestable to Him” (Proverbs 6:16-17). We are exhorted to put on truth for our own sanctification and deliverance, as well as for the benefit of those to whom we witness.
Also in verse 14, we are told to put on the breastplate of righteousness. This righteousness is not works of righteousness done by men. Rather, this is the righteousness of Christ, imputed by God and received by faith, which guards our hearts against the accusations and charges of Satan and secures our innermost being from his attacks.
Verse 15 speaks of the preparation of the feet for spiritual conflict. In warfare, sometimes an enemy places dangerous obstacles in the path of soldiers. The idea of the preparation of the gospel of peace as footwear suggest there will be traps. Satan has many obstacles placed in the path to halt the propagation of the gospel.
The shield of faith spoken of in verse 16 makes Satan’s sowing of doubt about the faithfulness of God and His Word ineffective. Our faith—of which Christ is “the author and perfecter” (Hebrews 12:2)— is like a golden shield, precious, solid, and substantial.
The helmet of salvation in verse 17 is protection for the head. We could say that our way of thinking needs preservation. The head is the seat of the mind, which, when it has laid hold of the sure gospel hope of eternal life, will not receive false doctrine or give way to Satan’s temptations. The unsaved person has no hope of warding off the blows of false doctrine because he is without the helmet of salvation and his mind is incapable of discerning between spiritual truth and spiritual deception.
Verse 17 interprets itself as to the meaning of the sword of the Spirit—it is the Word of God. While all the other pieces of spiritual armor are defensive in nature, the sword of the Spirit is the only offensive weapon in the armor of God. It speaks of the holiness and power of the Word of God. A greater spiritual weapon is not conceivable. In Jesus’ temptations in the desert, the Word of God was always His overpowering response to Satan. What a blessing that the same Word is available to us!
In verse 18, we are told to pray in the Spirit (that is, with the mind of Christ, with His heart and His priorities) in addition to wearing the full armor of God. We cannot neglect prayer, as it is the means by which we draw spiritual strength from God. Without prayer, without reliance upon God, our efforts at spiritual warfare are empty and futile. The full armor of God—truth, righteousness, the gospel, faith, salvation, the Word of God, and prayer—are the tools God has given us, through which we can be spiritually victorious, overcoming Satan’s attacks and temptations.
There are two primary errors when it comes to spiritual warfare—over-emphasis and under-emphasis. Some blame every sin, every conflict, and every problem on demons that need to be cast out. Others completely ignore the spiritual realm and the fact that the Bible tells us our battle is against spiritual powers. The key to successful spiritual warfare is finding the biblical balance. Jesus sometimes cast demons out of people; other times He healed people with no mention of the demonic. The apostle Paul instructs Christians to wage war against the sin in themselves (Romans 6) and warns us to oppose the schemes of the devil (Ephesians 6:10–18).
Ephesians 6:10–12 says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” This text teaches some crucial truths: we can only stand strong in the Lord’s power, it is God’s armor that protects us, and our battle is ultimately against spiritual forces of evil in the world.
Ephesians 6:13–18 is a description of the spiritual armor God gives us. We are to stand firm with the belt of truth, the breastplate of righteousness, the gospel of peace, the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, and by praying in the Spirit. What do these pieces of spiritual armor represent in spiritual warfare? We are to know the truth, believe the truth, and speak the truth. We are to rest in the fact that we are declared righteous because of Christ’s sacrifice for us. We are to proclaim the gospel no matter how much resistance we face. We are not to waver in our faith, trusting God’s promises no matter how strongly we are attacked. Our ultimate defense is the assurance we have of our salvation, an assurance that no spiritual force can take away. Our offensive weapon is the Word of God, not our own opinions and feelings. And we are to pray in the power and will of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is our ultimate example of resisting temptation in spiritual warfare. Observe how Jesus handled direct attacks from Satan when He was tempted in the wilderness (Matthew 4:1–11). Each temptation was combatted with the words “it is written.” The Word of the living God is the most powerful weapon against the temptations of the devil. “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).
A word of caution concerning spiritual warfare is in order. The name of Jesus is not a magic incantation that causes demons to flee from before us. The seven sons of Sceva are an example of what can happen when people presume an authority they have not been given (Acts 19:13–16). Even Michael the archangel did not rebuke Satan in his own power but said, “The Lord rebuke you!” (Jude 1:9). When we start talking to the devil, we run the risk of being led astray as Eve was (Genesis 3:1–7). Our focus should be on God, not demons; we speak to Him, not them.
In summary, what are the keys to success in spiritual warfare? We rely on God’s power, not our own. We put on the whole armor of God. We draw on the power of Scripture—the Word of God is the Spirit’s sword. We pray in perseverance and holiness, making our appeal to God. We stand firm (Ephesians 6:13–14); we submit to God; we resist the devil’s work (James 4:7), knowing that the Lord of hosts is our protector. “Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will never be shaken” (Psalm 62:2).
God is in Control . . . and His Grace is Sufficient, so . . . Keep Looking Up
Hopefully, every Sunday, we can find something here that will build us up a little . . . give us a smile . . . and add some joy or peace, very much needed in all our lives.
“This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn nor weep.” . . . “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Over the past four years, President Donald Trump’s administration delivered for Americans of all backgrounds like never before. Save America is about building on those accomplishments, supporting the brave conservatives who will define the future of the America First Movement, the future of our party, and the future of our beloved country. Save America is also about ensuring that we always keep America First, in our foreign and domestic policy. We take pride in our country, we teach the truth about our history, we celebrate our rich heritage and national traditions, and of course, we respect our great American Flag.
We are committed to defending innocent life and to upholding the Judeo-Christian values of our founding.
We believe in the promise of the Declaration of Independence, that we are all made EQUAL by our Creator, and that must all be TREATED equal under the law.
We know that our rights do not come from government, they come from God, and no earthly force can ever take those rights away. That includes the right to religious liberty and the right to Keep and Bear Arms.
We believe in rebuilding our previously depleted military and ending the endless wars our failed politicians of the past got us into for decades.
We embrace free thought, we welcome robust debate, and we are not afraid to stand up to the oppressive dictates of political correctness.
We know that the rule of law is the ultimate safeguard of our freedoms, and we affirm that the Constitution means exactly what it says AS WRITTEN.
We support fair trade, low taxes, and fewer job-killing regulations, and we know that America must always have the most powerful military on the face of the Earth.
We believe in Law and Order, and we believe that the men and women of law enforcement are HEROES who deserve our absolute support.
We believe in FREE SPEECH and Fair Elections. We must ensure fair, honest, transparent, and secure elections going forward – where every LEGAL VOTE counts.
Some say the village was named after William Welling, a local resident, while others believe the name is derived from the title of the Duke of Wellington.[4]
Wellington was incorporated as a village in 1855.[5]
In 1858, the former American House Hotel (later torn down and replaced by Herrick Memorial Library) was the site of the Oberlin-Wellington Rescue. A group of men, both white and black and many from Oberlin, swarmed the hotel to rescue runaway slave John Price. He was being held by a US Marshal and his men, who intended to return him to his master in Kentucky.
The abolitionists transported Price out of town en route to the Underground Railroad and helped convey him to Canada. Thirty-seven men were indicted, but only two, Simeon M. Bushnell and Charles Henry Langston, were tried in federal court for interfering with the marshal in carrying out the Fugitive Slave Law. After Langston’s eloquent speech about slavery and discrimination, the judge gave them light sentences. The events and trial received national attention, and kept the issue of slavery at the forefront of debate.
Archibald M. Willard, painter of the patriotic Spirit of ’76 painting, lived in Wellington during the 19th century. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery on the outskirts of the village. The Spirit of ’76 Museum,[6] also located in Wellington, is dedicated to Willard and the history of Wellington. The original drum and fife used as models in the painting are also on display.
On New Year’s Day, 1951, two eleven-year-old boys, Gerald Kordelsky and William Flood, accidentally drowned in an abandoned well at Chismar Farm in Wellington.[7]
In 2010, Wellington was named the “Best Old House Neighborhood” for the state of Ohio by This Old House Magazine in their annual feature article.[8]
The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.
Kamala Harris has a new nickname since she finally went west from DC to El Paso Texas: Westward Hoe.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines, here, with an addendum on 20191110.
We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.
And remember Wheatie’s Rules:
1. No food fights 2. No running with scissors. 3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone. 4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns. 5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded. 5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty. 6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy. 7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire. 8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.
(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)
Spot Prices
All prices are Kitco Ask, 3PM MT Friday (at that time the markets close for the weekend).
The net result of the last week is mostly stability. Rhodium did dip below $19K but has blipped back up over it. (EDITED: these numbers were wrong until about 0330 Saturday, because I forgot to edit them.)
The Endgame for Classical Physics
Introduction
Physics before 1900 is known as “Classical Physics.” It still works as well as we used to think it did–provided you are working on every day scales. Go very small, very fast, or very massive and you discover that classical physics is an approximation very close to the truth for things that aren’t very small, very fast, or very massive, so very close that one can practically ignore the difference.
What happened around 1900? We started investigating things outside that zone.
Our daily lives exist in that zone though some of our tech goes into places where non-classical physics must be accounted for. In fact no semiconductor would work if modern physics weren’t true, and you wouldn’t be reading these words because no dead-tree leftist gatekeeper publisher would have me.
Yes. This is the day. This is the day we don’t stop at 1895.
But first…
Go Back: Avogadro’s Number
I made the claim that no one had any idea as to the size of Avogadro’s number before 1895. As a reminder, this is the number of molecules of some compound with an “atomic weight” of X, in an X gram sample of it, or almost equivalently, the number of atomic mass units in a gram. Taking oxygen as an example, it forms a two-atom molecule, O2 whose atomic mass by definition was 32 atomic mass units. How many O2 molecules in 32 grams? The answer to that, whatever it is, is Avogadro’s number.
It turns out that in 1865 Josef Loschmidt was able to make an argument about at least the approximate size of atoms and how far apart they had to be in comparison for a gas to behave as a gas and was somehow able to figure out how many molecules of a gas were in one liter of it, at standard temperature and pressure.
But since we already know that 22.4 liters of gas under the same conditions is one mole, so simply multiplying Loschmidt’s number by 22.4 gives you Avogadro’s number, the number of molecules of anything in a mole of that thing.
The modern value of Loschmidt’s number is 2.6867811(15)×1025 per cubic meter, but there are a thousand liters in a cubic meter, so 2.687×1022 works well enough for our purposes.
Apparently Loschmidt himself didn’t go all the way through the reasoning to get the number, it was left to people like James Clerk Maxwell (whose name had better sound familiar by now) to cite a figure of “about 19 million million million” per cm3, or 1.9×1025 m-3. Which is a bit over 29% too low, but really, given that we had no way of directly measuring it before then, was pretty good.
So contrary to what I said, we did have some idea what Avogadro’s number was.
Today, the mole is one of the seven fundamental units of the SI (metric system) and is defined to be precisely 6.02214076×1023 particles (i.e., roughly 22.4 times Loschmidt’s number. If it should turn out that that many atoms of (say) atomic mass 12 doesn’t quite mass 12 grams, tough. (We know it’s pretty doggone close though, so high school chemistry lab can ignore the difference. Besides the proportions will be right even if NA isn’t quite where it “should” be.)
OK, that’s out of the way.
The Crookes Tube
Today there are actually four…well, three and a half…stories to be told, and the Crookes tube is tied up in two of them.
What is a Crookes tube? Well, it’s sort of like the “cathode ray tube” no one uses for televisions and computer monitors any more. Or any of a host of other vacuum tubes.
It was first created sometime before 1869, and it was a geek toy par excellence. Take a large, oblong glass tube, run two conductors into it, one near each end. Seal it off and pump almost all of the air out. I’d guess they pumped as much air as they could out of it, but couldn’t get the last millionth out of it. As it turns out it won’t work if it’s a total vacuum.
Now put a ten thousand volt potential between the two conductors. The one hooked up to positive is called the anode, the negative one is the cathode.
You get an eerie green glow on the end of the tube that’s behind the anode.
Now that was interesting, what was going on here? There wasn’t any current flowing. So physicists started tinkering. By putting a cutout of a Maltese cross near the anode (done by Julius Pluecker in 1869) and noting that the green glowing part of the glass had Maltese cross-shaped “shadow” in it, it was proved that whatever it was was traveling in a straight line away from the anode and past the cathode, and some of the “rays” were being blocked by the Maltese cross. (And nowadays any time someone draws a diagram of a Crookes tube in action, they always show it with a Maltese cross; and even the one demoed in the picture below uses it; it’s some sort of cliche now.)
Crookes tube, and in the dark.
The straight line travel and the fact that glows like this (“fluorescence”) were thus far known to only be caused by ultraviolet light, led some to conclude that these rays were electromagnetic in nature. Others thought that the rays might just be charged atoms.
In 1876 Eugen Goldstein experimented with different shapes of cathode, (a point, a flat surface he could tilt, and so on) and was able to prove that the rays behaved like charged particles. Some sort of electromagnetism would leave every point on the surface going in every direction (which is why you see the whole light bulb not just the point that faces you full on), but if the cathode were a flat surface the rays would all come out perpendicular to the surface, as if they were particles repelled by that surface. Of course, it’s a negatively charged surface, so the particles repelled by it would be negatively charged.
Goldstein gave them the name “cathode rays.”
Heinrich Hertz, who, you’ll remember, discovered radio and though it was useless, decided to try another experiment to see whether the “rays” were particles, or some sort of electromagnetism. He put two other plates inside the tube on either side of the beam and put an electrical potential across the plates. The electrical field between the plates should bend the beam, if it were particles. He didn’t see it happen, but it turned out his apparatus just wasn’t good enough. Later Arthur Shuster repeated the experiment with a better vacuum in the tube and did see the bending. So the “particle” side of the argument was looking better and better.
Crookes himself put magnets on either side of the tube and got the beam to deflect in accordance with:
F = v⨉B
(You know, the right hand rule and all that.)
That just made the “particle” theory even better.
So there that stood at the end of 1894. But this time we aren’t going to stop there!
Recap
We had, up to this time, identified at least the following conservation laws that applied to any closed system (one where nothing could get in or out).
Conservation of mass
Conservation of momentum
Conservation of energy
Conservation of electric charge
Conservation of angular momentum
The following mysteries were unanswered at the end of 1894.
Why was the long axis of Mercury’s orbit precessing more than expected, by 43 arcseconds every century? Was it, indeed, a planet even closer to the sun? If so, it’d have been nice to actually see it.
Why was Michelson unable to measure any difference in speed of light despite the fact we, being on planet Earth that is orbiting the sun, had to be moving through the medium in which it propagates?
What makes the sun (and other stars) shine (beyond the obvious “they shine because they’re hot” answer). What keeps the sun hot, what energy is it harnessing?
How did the solar system form? Any answer to this must account for how the planets, only a tiny fraction of the mass of the solar system, ended up with the vast majority of the angular momentum in the system.
What is the electrical “fluid” that moves around when there is an electric current, and that somehow seems imbalanced when we perceive that an object has a charge? Were there both negative and positive fluids, or just one fluid that had a natural neutral level; below it was negative (deficit), above it was positive (excess)?
Why are there so many different kinds of atoms? How did electrical charges relate to chemistry? How is it that 94 thousand coulombs of charge are needed to bust apart certain molecules (though it often had to be delivered at different voltages depending on the molecule)?
Why were the atomic weights almost always a multiple of hydrogen’s? Why was it never quite a perfect multiple? Why was it sometimes nowhere near to being a multiple?
(and the 8 disappears?) Why does the photoelectric effect work the way it does, where it depends on the frequency of the light hitting the object, not the intensity?
Why does black body radiation have a “hump” in its frequency graph?
And remember we left the story of Ramsay hanging at the end of 1894, as he decided to look for other elements in the new “Group 0” of the periodic table, now represented by argon, whose mass was between that of chlorine and potassium.
And with that recap out of the way…
WE
ARE
READY
FOR
1895
1895
In November of this year, Wilhelm Röntgen was investigating all sorts of different “tubes,” the Crookes tube among them. He noticed that he could fashion an aluminum sheet with a rectangular window in it and block the cathode rays, but if he placed a board painted with barium platinocyanide ([Pt(CN)4]2−) near the window, the chemical would glow. Something was getting out of the tube and causing fluorescence.
On November 8th (a Friday) he decided to investigate further. He covered a Crookes tube with cardboard to block the light it was emitting (so he thought!), fashioned a similar window, ensured that the cardboard cover was completely covered by darkening his lab and looking for leaks. There were none, but he noticed an odd shimmering out of the corner of his eye. Striking a match, he realized it was his barium platinocyanide.
Over the next couple of days, he discovered that if the tube was firing while a piece of lead were in front of the barium platinocyanide, the lead cast a shadow (even though the cardboard around the tube clearly didn’t block the radiation, the lead did.) He also noticed quite by accident he could see the bones in his own hand by interjecting it between the tube and the barium platinocyanide. That was spooky, spooky enough to get Roentgen to conduct his experiments in secrecy until he was sure of what he had.
Since he didn’t know what these things were he called them X-rays; X often stood for “unknown.” Now that we know what they are, we still call them X-rays, though some also call them Roentgen waves.
The first ever X ray photograph was of his wife’s hand; when she saw her own skeleton she exclaimed that she had seen her death.
As it turned out X rays are also electromagnetic waves, they are of an even shorter wavelength/higher frequency than ultraviolet rays. “Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz (30×1015 Hz to 30×1018 Hz)” (Wikipedia. A picometer is 1/1000th of a nanometer or one trillionth of a meter, a petahertz is a quadrillion cycles per second. Remember that visible light runs from 400,000 to 700,000 picometers.)
The Crookes tube was no longer a nerd toy. It was now a piece of medical equipment, and it was in practical use within months, probably the fastest a basic physics discovery has ever been exploited. On January 11th, barely three months after Roentgen started investigating the Crookes tube, it was used by someone else (John Hall Edwards of Birmingham, England) to find a needle embedded in a patient’s hand.
This wasn’t some obscure thing; it made the newspapers and this was before they were all fake news.
X rays were going to become a very useful research tool outside of medicine.
Roentgen received the very first Nobel Prize for Physics in 1901, because of this discovery that had turned out to be so very useful right away.
And let us pick up our story of Group 0. Ramsay was preparing to look for more of these gases in the air, but during this year two Swedish chemists, Per Teodor Cleve and Nils Abraham Langlet, discovered a gas emanating from cleveite, an ore of uranium. On further investigation, this gas was totally non-reactive, and had an atomic weight of about 4. Well, that is perfectly midway between hydrogen (1) and lithium (7), and logically the top of that “Group 0” should be an element in between these two, so, very cool, the top of the column was in place. There was a gap between it and argon, and nothing below argon in the column was filled in yet. Ramsay would find neon, krypton and xenon in very, very tiny percentages in our atmosphere, and there’s even a bit of this top gas.
But we didn’t have to figure out a name for this gas. Because when we put some of it in a tube and got it to glow, and took the spectrograph…it turned out to be helium, the mystery element known from the solar spectrum!!! It wasn’t a metal after all, but a gas; logically it should be named “helion” (to match the -on ending of the other gases in that column), but…too late!
1896
Our main character here is Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), who was fascinated by phosphorescence. This was the way an object could absorb one wavelength of light for some period of time, then glow in a different wavelength for a time afterwards, as if the light “pumps up” the chemical which then gets rid of the energy later. He heard about X rays (who could hear anything else in the din) early in 1896 and thought, perhaps some chemicals might phosphoresce in X-rays after being pumped up in ultraviolet light, like from the sun.
Well this was easy to test. Wrap photographic plates up in paper, so that ordinary light and even UV cannot get in. Pump up a candidate mineral, then put it next to the photographic plate. If it is emitting X rays, those should fog the plate even through the paper.
Becquerel’s candidate material was uranium salts, which phosphoresced very nicely in visible light. He just needed a bright day to perform the experiment.
At which point, in Paris, it got cloudy. No bright sunlight to run the experiment in! He put the plates and the uranium salts in a drawer, and waited for good weather, smoke no doubt pouring from his ears.
After a days of this crap, he decided, “Aw, what the hell!” and developed the photographic plate.
This has to be the most consequential “Aw, what the hell!” moment in history.
The plate had blackened right next to his sample. It even bore the outline of a Maltese cross (OK, someone come up with a new idea), which was there to prove the fogging came from the sample, not some other cause–though the cross didn’t block the rays completely.
Something had blasted through the paper and reacted with the chemicals on the photographic plate. Something that didn’t need to be pumped up–or something that stayed pumped up.
And the world was never the same again.
This had actually been noticed back in 1857, by a friend of Becquerel’s family…who didn’t pursue it very far.
Becquerel did. And the world was never the same again.
Further experiments established it didn’t have to be a phosphorescent compound of uranium; any compound of uranium would do this. Pure uranium would do this. This had to do with uranium, and uranium would do this no matter what. By May of 1896 Becquerel had realized this, and published his results, and now the world knew of “Becquerel rays” which we now call “radioactivity.”
His own words from the 2nd of March
I will insist particularly upon the following fact, which seems to me quite important and beyond the phenomena which one could expect to observe: The same crystalline crusts [of potassium uranyl sulfate], arranged the same way with respect to the photographic plates, in the same conditions and through the same screens, but sheltered from the excitation of incident rays and kept in darkness, still produce the same photographic images. Here is how I was led to make this observation: among the preceding experiments, some had been prepared on Wednesday the 26th and Thursday the 27th of February, and since the sun was out only intermittently on these days, I kept the apparatuses prepared and returned the cases to the darkness of a bureau drawer, leaving in place the crusts of the uranium salt. Since the sun did not come out in the following days, I developed the photographic plates on the 1st of March, expecting to find the images very weak. Instead the silhouettes appeared with great intensity … One hypothesis which presents itself to the mind naturally enough would be to suppose that these rays, whose effects have a great similarity to the effects produced by the rays studied by M. Lenard and M. Röntgen, are invisible rays emitted by phosphorescence and persisting infinitely longer than the duration of the luminous rays emitted by these bodies. However, the present experiments, without being contrary to this hypothesis, do not warrant this conclusion. I hope that the experiments which I am pursuing at the moment will be able to bring some clarification to this new class of phenomena.
Henri Becquerel
Marie Sklodowska Curie (who is definitely not the subject of any “Polish joke”) was looking for a doctoral thesis topic and decided to investigate. Her husband Pierre Curie had invented an electrometer, a very sensitive device for studying electrical charge. She discovered that the air around a uranium sample was able to carry a current–the radiation was somehow making the air charged. Careful measurements revealed that the amount of radiation was directly proportional to the uranium in the compound. But this was a compound created in the lab.
And by 1898 she had noticed that thorium, too, was radioactive, though in this case she was scooped two months before by Gerhard Carl Schmidt.
Going to an ore that had had uranium in it for a long time, however, turned out different. The ore was four times as radioactive as the uranium that was in it. There was something else in the ore, something unknown, that was radioactive.
Her husband, Pierre, became so intrigued he dropped his own work on crystals to pursue this. They started with a carefully-weighted 100 grams of pitchblende.
They ended up going through tons of pitchblende. There was so little of what they were searching for that they needed to process that much pitchblende to find enough to actually experiment with.
In July 1898, they announced the existence of the element polonium. On December 26th, they announced radium. These were both elements of atomic weight higher than lead and bismuth, but below uranium (and there had been a big empty gap there in the weight sequence).
It took Marie Curie until 1910 to get a pure radium sample, and she never did manage to drag enough polonium together to constitute a “sample.”
Becquerel and the two Curies got the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics for their work on these phenomena.
Pierre was killed in a traffic accident in 1906; Marie ultimately received the 1911 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. she was the first to get a second Nobel, and is still one of just two people who have received two different categories of Nobel prize.
And this was just the beginning of what came of Becquerel’s What the Hell moment. We owe the nuclear bomb and the nuclear power plant and our entire knowledge of nuclear physics (and physics even smaller than that) to this moment.
What would have happened had he not done this? How long would it have taken?
Not all that long. Another scientist, it turned out was mere weeks behind him; if Becquerel had tarried publishing, he’d have been scooped. And if that hadn’t been the case, well someone would have noticed eventually, and pursued it.
This was rather surprising to me. It seemed as if this discovery were a freak accident that could have waited another couple of centuries to happen. It’s often used as the perfect example of serendipity; something turning up unexpectedly, but in front of a man with the imagination and intelligence to pursue it. (Read, sometime, the story of the discovery of teflon. Or penicillin.) Instead of that, it’s actually a discovery whose time had come.
1897
The man of this chapter was J. J. Thomson (1856-1840), and he too liked to play with Crookes tubes. He worked at the Cavendish laboratory (we’ve heard that before, haven’t we?).
He did some very careful, exacting work with both magnetic and electric deflection of the cathode rays. He used an electromagnet so he could vary the strength of the magnetic field (rather than simply bringing in a big permanent magnet). He then varied the electric field and the magnetic field until he got both deflections to be the same angle. His goal was to determine the charge-to-mass ratio of whatever particles were in the cathode rays.
The formula for the electric deflection is:
Θ = E e ℓ / mv2
While the magnetic deflection is:
Θ = B e ℓ / mv
Where Θ was the angle of the deflection, E the strength of the electric field, B the strength of the magnetic field, ℓ the length of the plates applying the deflection, m the mass of the particle, and v its velocity, and e the electric charge of the particle.
If the two angles are equal then we can write:
E e ℓ / mv2 = B e ℓ / mv
A lot of simplification and substitutions can reduce this down to:
m/e = B2ℓ / E Θ
The magnetic and electric field strengths were known, as was the length of the plates, and the angle of the deflection, so we now had the mass to charge (or charge to mass) ratio of these cathode rays.
It’s generally quoted as charge to mass, and its modern best value is −1.75882001076(53)×1011 C/kg.
Which means that a single gram of cathode ray “stuff” has a charge of −1.75882001076(53)×108 coulombs.
So that was pretty definitive, cathode rays are made of negatively charged particles.
Now if we step back to Faraday, who figured out that 96,485.3 colombs would break up one mole of electrical bonds, or as by now was realized, was the charge of one mole (one gram) of hydrogen, when the hydrogen had a positive charge, i.e., was a positive hydrogen ion.
The same charge on a cathode ray stuff would be carried by 0.000548 grams of cathode ray stuff.
The conclusion was that the cathode rays consisted of particles that weighed 0.05 percent as much as a hydrogen atom, or (taking the reciprocal) that a hydrogen ion had about 1823 times the mass of a cathode ray particle. (The actual value is closer to 1836, but that’s because a mole of hydrogen does not weigh exactly one gram.) Thomson actually got a value closer to a thousand, but it was still a striking figure.
Now up to this point, atoms were regarded as simple, indivisible things, that could get an electric charge to be sure, but were nevertheless indivisible. Now there had been scientists who had speculated that atoms might be made up of smaller things (William Prout and Norman Lockyer, for instance) but in the absence of any real evidence that’s all it was, speculation. Prout and Lockyer had figured the smaller building block was probably about the mass of a hydrogen atom, so basically hydrogen contained one of these items, helium four, lithium seven, and so on. (Of course they couldn’t explain why the ratios weren’t perfect clean integers and couldn’t explain the elements with large fractions (like a half) in their atomic weights.)
It appeared that the Crookes tube operated by knocking a very, very small chip off of an atom, a chip bearing a huge negative charge. The remainder of the atom had to bear a positive charge that matched. Certainly nothing as substantial as an entire hydrogen atom!
(However, Prout and Lockyer weren’t completely wrong, as we will eventually see.)
JJ Thomson in his own words (extracted from Wikipoo):
As the cathode rays carry a charge of negative electricity, are deflected by an electrostatic force as if they were negatively electrified, and are acted on by a magnetic force in just the way in which this force would act on a negatively electrified body moving along the path of these rays, I can see no escape from the conclusion that they are charges of negative electricity carried by particles of matter.
J J Thomsen
As to the source of these particles, Thomson believed they emerged from the molecules of gas in the vicinity of the cathode.
If, in the very intense electric field in the neighbourhood of the cathode, the molecules of the gas are dissociated and are split up, not into the ordinary chemical atoms, but into these primordial atoms, which we shall for brevity call corpuscles; and if these corpuscles are charged with electricity and projected from the cathode by the electric field, they would behave exactly like the cathode rays.
J J Thomson
The Electron
The new particle came to be known as the electron (not a “corpuscle”) and it soon became clear that this was our “electrical fluid.” You may very well use this word or its derivatives every day (it’s part of electronic, and that’s not a coincidental pun, the word electronic was derived from the word electron), but 125 years ago the word did not exist.
Any positively charged particle that could be ginned up in a tube (and there were indeed some even in Crookes tubes, these were known as canal rays) were basically atoms or even whole molecules with a positive charge. The measurement precision was too poor then to tell for sure, but these positively charged particles were simply a little light, because they were minus an electron. Or two, or perhaps even three.
Thomson concluded that an atom consisted of some number of electrons, embedded in a larger mass that had a positive charge; it’s called the “plum pudding” model to this day (actually, raisins but you know…the Brits).
Now we’ve wiped out one of our mysteries, number 5 above, and we now had an inkling of what was going on between atoms. A sodium atom, for example, could give up one electron and become a positively charged ion, a chlorine atom would scoop it up, and become a negatively charged ion. If enough of these transactions happened, you could crystallize all of these ions into a cube of table salt, or you could dissolve it and there’d be slightly light, positively charge sodium atoms and slightly heavy, negatively charged chlorine atoms floating around in the water. Since the total charge still came out to zero, drinking salt water wouldn’t electrocute you (but could kill you in other ways).
Generally, in an electrical circuit, it’s the negative electrons that move around, not the positive ions. So Franklin was right, there was one fluid. But he guessed wrong, too, in assigning the “negative” label to what turned out to be the fluid. But then Du Fay wasn’t completely wrong either; because there was clearly a positively charged thing out there, the bulk of the atom.
If you remember when I was talking about electricity, with the movement of the fluid, I implicitly assumed the fluid was positively charged, and moved from the positive terminal of the battery (or other power source) through the circuit to the negative terminal. So basically, I should go back and trash all those diagrams, right?
Nope. It turns out it’s mathematically equivalent to the real situation, with a negatively charged bunch of electrons flowing from the negative terminal to the positive terminal. Electrical engineers still simply pretend a positively charged current flows from positive to negative, because the math is exactly the same as running a negatively charged current from negative to positive.(Ask me how I know this.) It makes no actual difference. There are situations where it really does matter that the stuff that is moving is negatively charged, but that’s getting into semiconductors, and you’re moving from the realm of electrical circuits to electron-ic circuits.
Thomson showed in 1906 that the uncharged hydrogen atom contained exactly one electron. No more, no less. There was no way to knock two electrons out of it, as some had thought.
In 1905 he showed that natural potassium was radioactive.
He won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906.
Alpha, Beta Gamma
OK, let’s return to radioactivity.
In 1899, right after the Curies found polonium and radium (unlike Vladimir Putin, Marie Curie killed herself with the stuff, eventually dying of cancer in the 1930s), Ernest Rutherford, a Kiwi working at McGill university in Canada, and Paul Villard in Paris, were able to determine that radioactivity, the actual stuff coming out of polonium, radium, thorium and uranium, consisted of three different types of thing. They did this by applying a magnetic field and seeing what got deflected, and also by noting how strongly penetrating the things were.
Alpha particles were massive, had a double positive charge, and would be stopped by a few centimeters of air or your skin or a sheet of paper. Rutherford, in fact, was able to measure the charge to mass ratio and by 1907 proved that an alpha particle was essentially a helium atom, with two electrons removed from it. So it had twice the charge of a positive hydrogen ion, but four times the mass (the charge ratio originally measured would be half that of a hydrogen ion). Their typical speed turned out to be four percent of the velocity of light (which is still 12,000,000 meters per second).
Beta particles were a hundred times as penetrating. Becquerel in 1900 had a comeback, he was able to measure the charge to mass ratio of beta particles…and they turned out to be electrons.
Gamma rays were found by Villard in 1900; Rutherford worked with them and fit them into his naming scheme in 1903. These turned out to be electromagnetic radiation, of even higher frequency (and lower wavelength) than x rays. They were very penetrating, indeed. Today, we know of some forms of radioactivity that produce relatively long-wave gamma rays, longer than some X rays, so the dividing line between X-ray and gamma ray is fuzzy. For EM radiation in this overlapping range of wavelengths, it’s considered a gamma ray if it came from radioactivity, an X-ray otherwise.
It was fairly easy to measure how much energy these particles had in them. It turns out that if you can wait for a kilogram of uranium to decay (which takes billions of years) you get 1.72 trillion joules of energy out of it. And that ignores the fact that what the uranium decays into decays again, and again, and again, adds more energy to a grand total of a whopping 22.8 terajoules.
Compare this to a kilogram of coal: rougly 24 megajoules. The uranium, just in decaying, contains almost exactly a million times as much energy as the coal, though it has to release it very slowly.
A lot of energy, released over a very long time….what does that remind you of?
Stars, I hope. Could this be part of the answer to what powers the stars? At first look, it doesn’t seem promising, and that’s mainly because we now had ways of knowing what was in stars, and there was very, very little uranium in them. But now we had a suggestion as to what the answer might look like, as opposed to just a shoulder shrug.
For now, let’s chew on this alpha particle a bit. It turns out to be a double-ionized helium atom. And it comes out of a block of pure uranium. Somehow, pure uranium seems to consist, at least in part, of He2+ ions.
Maybe Prout and Lockyer were onto something after all, if one atom could be built up, somehow, out of other atoms without it being a molecule, and only breaking apart through radioactivity. Of course the basic piece seemed to be a helium atom, not a hydrogen atom, but who was to say the helium atom couldn’t actually be a group of four hydrogen building blocks?
But regardless of the details, this explains a couple of things.
Remember those Swedes who found helium coming out of uranium ore? That’s why. The uranium was spitting out alpha particles, which were combining with electrons in the rock or the air, and becoming perfectly normal helium gas.
And when, in 1903, it turned out that natural gas wells in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas were producing gas that had a lot of helium in it…that made sense. That helium ended up deep underground because it was created there…by uranium and thorium radioactivity.
Every single helium atom on Earth today was once an alpha particle crashing out of a nucleus at 4 percent of the speed of light. You’re filling your balloons with chilled radioactivity.
And that part of the US is still the major world source of helium gas.
(Everyone say “‘Murica!!!” in a high, squeaky voice!)
Conclusion
What a wild ride in only five years!!!
We went from having no real clue that atoms had pieces, to having seen those pieces; we were starting to understand the structure of atoms. We now had some notion of what was going on in chemistry.
And the wild ride was just getting started.
And Joe Biden didn’t win.
A Personal Announcement
I’m probably going to be nearly buried by other obligations, and soon. At some point, I’m going to have to put the physics posts on “hold” and just do a complete skeleton of a post each week (I’d still include the bullion prices)…and this will last for a couple of months. If that’s not satisfactory, I suppose we will need another author to fill in.
Obligatory PSAs and Reminders
China is Lower than Whale Shit
Remember Hong Kong!!!
Whoever ends up in the cell next to his, tell him I said “Hi.”
中国是个混蛋 !!! Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!! China is asshoe !!!
China is in the White House
Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.
Joe Biden is Asshoe
China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.
But of course the much more important thing to realize:
Joe Biden Didn’t Win
乔*拜登没赢 !!! Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!! Joe Biden didn’t win !!!
“Every time we turn our heads the other way, when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom and decency and justice.”
Robert Kennedy
Welcome back to Wolf’s Pub! It’s Friday and we’ve been “enjoying” the bumpy ride of living in Jibberish Joe Biden’s America for five months now. I’d say that’s a good excuse to hearken back to a simpler time and enjoy a Grasshopper, that iconic American cocktail that embodies the sweetness of a time when phrases such as “the benefits outweigh the risks” could be accepted with a good will.
But first, let’s get to the down and dirty. They’ve been lying to us for a long time. They’ve been using all kinds of techniques on us, getting us to feel those emotions that make us easily manipulated:
FEAR
CONFUSION
ANXIETY
DEMORALIZED
It isn’t just the USA that’s experienced this kind of psychological operation. They’ve been doing the same thing all over the world.
Here’s Ivor Cummins, the Fat Emperor, and Laura Dodsworth discussing the PSYOPS that our governments used on us during the fake pandemic:
This prompted two replies (here and here), that tie right in with the psyops we’ve been experiencing since late in 2019:
Later, Concerned Virginian had an excellent comment about the CDC here. Partial below:
This prompted Emerald Star to reply:
Mantras, catch-phrase chants, sound-bytes, advertising slogans…PROPAGANDA and THOUGHT CONTROL.
AND THEN THERE’S THE ACTORS
Some Bitch Told Me chronicles how actors disguised themselves as reporters and then sought to blend in with MAGA at the January 6 rally. There’s video at the link, in which we see how the actors engage Americans who are understandably upset with our government’s behavior, and entice them to unload on the “reporter for OAN.”
The “reporters” later mock the Americans and twist things to suit their narrative. Another form of psyops.
I think this is where discernment comes in. We must be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” It is difficult to navigate the immense and pervasive psyops we’ve been under for decades now. We all get fooled, and it isn’t just “the other side” engaging in it.
Are we infallible? Nope. We all get fooled at times. But we have learned enough to see many of the tricks as they come at us and sooner than before. In fact, I would say we are beginning to learn faster than they are able to try new tricks.
GRASSHOPPERS AT THE BAR!
Yes, today our special is the Grasshopper, that minty sweet cocktail that saw its heyday in the 50s and 60s. It was invented in Louisiana in the early 1900s, and to this day is a favorite at one of the oldest “stand up” bars there.
I used to work in a smallish honky-tonk somewhere in the southwest, and yes, there were plenty of orders for Grasshoppers, even in the 80s. Of course, they are experiencing another surge of popularity as seen here.
Zany and fun video here:
Here’s a nice video with a history twist on the Grasshopper. Can you say Prohibition?
HOUSE RULES
We aim to please here at Wolf’s Pub, so do Make Nice. Rules here to review. If you need some “dangerous freedom” head over to the Utree, which is also a rendezvous in case we need it.
BACK TO THE PSYOPS
There’s always a spiritual element of the attack on humanity. From Ann Barnhardt:
Have you heard about Mystore.com? It’s Mike Lindell’s answer to Amazon. American-made products from Americans. Imagine where this could go if we support it! If you have a market-ready product you can submit it for consideration. This is just a wonderful and God-fearing idea whose time has come.
Incidentally, Mike’s towels are on sale ($39.99 down from $109.99 for a set of six) at My Pillow. Ends today! Use code: Warroom to get the sale price.
HELP WITH THE COVIDIOTS
Since it seems like the business fascists are attempting to implement injection mandates:
Defending the Republic (the incomparable Sidney Powell is looking for people to help with legal Covid issues). Watch here on Warroom with Steve Bannon (around the 39-minute mark):
“Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”
Robert Kennedy
ODDS AND ENDS
JIBBERING JOE BIDEN DIDN’T WIN. HE’S A FAKE AND A FRAUD.
The man who knew too much, or the good guys stashing him somewhere safer than a Spanish jail?
From yesterday’s daily:
Getting subtle messages from U.S. officials saying, in effect: "We're coming for you McAfee! We're going to kill yourself". I got a tattoo today just in case. If I suicide myself, I didn't. I was whackd. Check my right arm.$WHACKD available only on https://t.co/HdSEYi9krq🙂 pic.twitter.com/rJ0Vi2Hpjj
John McAfee Found Dead In Prison Cell After US Extradition Approved
BY TYLER DURDEN
WEDNESDAY, JUN 23, 2021 – 03:36 PM
Update (1530ET): Just after Spain’s National Court approved a request for his extradition back to the US, where he faced the prospect of dying in a jail cell, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported Wednesday evening that John McAfee committed suicide in his cell, dying at the age of 75.
He was being held in a prison in Barcelona. So far, initial evidence of his death, which occurred Wednesday afternoon, local time, points to suicide.
Whatever happened, John McAfee did not kill himself.
John here to help speaks again.
In COVID news, the day after the World Health Organization took down the recommendation to not jab kids”
CDC Finds More Cases of Heart Inflammation in Vaccinated Young Males. “More than 1,200 cases.” But even though there are near zero risks for getting Covid for kids and zero benefit for kids getting the jab, that’s an insignificant number…unless it’s YOU! https://t.co/HsWVMH6w9c
Stunning. With a little mental flip, you can see this as the Earth spinning on its axis, unanchored in space, rather than the night sky moving – something we all know is the case, but don't usually feel in our bones. pic.twitter.com/yknxij2dXa
— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) June 22, 2021
Somehow, I don’t think this is the recommended diet for bears.
I’m sure I could find more, but then what would we have to talk about?
Take heart. It’s almost Friday.
Oh, and before I forget:
_______________________________________________
Please review our HOST and site owner’s Guidelines for posting and discussion for this site. Wolf is kind enough to put up with *most* of us and our antics after thorough vetting. Violators of the baiting and deliberately attempting to divide the group rules WILL face consequences.
The discourse on this site is to be CIVIL – no name calling, baiting, or threatening others here is allowed. Company manners are appreciated. Those who are so inclined may visit Wolf’s other sanctuary, the U-Tree, to slog out discussions best saved for a wrestling mat. Say hi to anyone who is actually hanging out there for the rest of us. If, for some reason, this site is not available, head over to the UTree and visit the post at the top of the list.
This site is a celebration of the natural rights endowed to humans by our Creator as well as those enshrined in the Bill of Rights adopted in the founding documents of the United States of America. Within the limits of law, how we exercise these rights is part of the freedom of our discussion. THAT MEANS THAT ALL OF US HERE ARE ENTITLED TO OUR OPINIONS AND PREJUDICES, ETC., SO LONG AS THEY CAUSE NO PHYSICAL HARM TO OTHERS OR DOXX OUR FELLOW TREE DWELLERS.
All opinions here are valued for the diversity they bring to the issues, and the shaping of understanding regarding topics for which many of us do not have all information.
Be careful in expressing thoughts as we would all like to think well of the rest of the group, and ill-thought out comments have a way of wrecking that for everyone.
Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights
No running with scissors
If you bring snacks, be sure they are made with bacon
Auntie DePat’s requests as we are all supposedly adults and not perpetual high school sophomores or the back row of the soprano section in any big chorus:
If you see something has not been posted, do us all a favor, and post it. Please, do not complain that it has not been done yet.
The scroll wheel on your mouse can be your friend. As mature adults, please use it here in the same manner you would in avoiding online porn.
Thank you so much for any and all attention to such details. It is GREATLY appreciated by more than one party here.
57Now the time came for Elizabeth to be delivered, and she gave birth to a son. 58And her neighbors and kinsfolk heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. 59And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child; and they would have named him Zechari’ah after his father, 60but his mother said, “Not so; he shall be called John.” 61And they said to her, “None of your kindred is called by this name.” 62And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he would have him called. 63And he asked for a writing tablet, and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all marveled. 64And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. 65And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea; 66and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him. 80And the child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness till the day of his manifestation to Israel.
(Today is the Feast of St. John the Baptist)
Prayers for the nation, the salvation of humanity, and all of us here – lurkers and members – as well as our families, are welcome.
Okay, so, it was a SPECTACULAR summer day here in flyover country. Temps in the low 80s, low humidity, etc., and that being the case, yours truly took the special needs nephew to the zoo. To put it mildly, the place was jammed. I mean jammed, and since we all were supposed to have reservations…it was JAMMED. (Our Zoo is on a special tax base with four other institutions, and thus has free admission, so, EVERYBODY goes anytime.)
In way of a ground report, there were signs everywhere saying, “We trust that those who are not vaccinated will wear masks.” As maybe 5% of the patrons of the Saint Louis Zoological Park were masked, I’d venture to guess no one is paying attention.
I did try to get a good picture of a camel for the header, and the camera was not cooperating. And not only that, the picture is too big to upload.
Hence why we’ve been so dumbed down and trained to trust “experts.”
george carlin gives one of the most succinct analyses of how the US is a corrupt oligarchy dominated by the capitalist class pic.twitter.com/mBdc0irvT2
Inspired by the trip to the zoo. While we were on the Zooline Railroad, we passed the exhibit known as “The River’s Edge” where the elephants are, and two of the ladies were out in their yard. Dear nephew said, “Those are Asian elephants.” (He was right.) I asked, “How do you know?” And he came back with, “I don’t know.”
Per the Boss:
And now for the obligatory message from our sponsors:
Here at the Q tree we believe in the concept of CIVIL open free speech and the discussion that fleshes out ideas. When commenting and participating in the OPEN discussion on this thread all comments MUST NOT CONTAIN personal threats, baiting, name calling, or other anti-social words fomenting hate, violence or destruction. Our host Wolfm00n has strict rules about that.
Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone
Please, stock up on blanks for celebratory gunfire, be ready to swing from the chandeliers…and no messing with the nuclear weapons.
Please remember to remain locked and loaded and ready for trouble should the insurrectionists try to invade your space.
Those who have things to say that do not fit the generally accepted limits of “civil” discussion, Wolf has provided a venue known as the UTree. You’re welcome to visit over there and say hi to anyone hanging out over there. The “Rescue Thread” is also over there. In the event a rendezvous of the tree is needed, please check it out.
Auntie DePat’s requests as we are all, ahem, adults, not uncivilized pygmies:
If you see something has not been posted, do us all a favor, and post it. Please, do not complain that it has not been done yet.
The scroll wheel on your mouse can be your friend. As mature adults, please use it here in the same manner you would in avoiding online porn.
Thank you so much for any and all attention to such details. It is GREATLY appreciated by more than one party here.
One other vital note:
Please, review these rules that our host Wolfm00n outlined toward the beginning of the growth of the tree itself. it won’t take long.
15″Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. 16You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? 17So, every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit. 18A sound tree cannot bear evil fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. 19Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. 20Thus you will know them by their fruits.
“Our task is not one of producing persuasive propaganda; Christianity shows its greatness when it is hated by the world.” –St. Ignatius of Antioch
As always, prayers for the fight against that which seeks to enslave us are welcome.
Please include: President Donald Trump, the Q team, our soldiers in the field, special forces, tactical units, first responders and those working behind the scenes…and any and all people with family members in the hospital, COVID or not.
Guess what. J.P. knows how “Rapinoe” is supposed to be pronounced.
Carole Mac@HerbsandDirt I wonder how many homeopathic or natural remedies they’ve overtly vilified are actually THE answer to healing so many ailments ? Clearly we see that it’s never been about health, safety & our well-being. The Food Pyramid should have been our first clue. 11:47 PM · Jun 20, 2021
I’d go on, but then what would we talk about in the comments?
Okay…I’ve been fighting a sinus migraine for days, and there are so many wacko things going on in this house, I can’t think right now. So, talk amongst yourselves. Thanks
Something to remember, always.
Per the boss’s instruction:
I’d throw in a few Rockefellers and Rothschilds also.
Of course, this does not mean committing felonies, but standing up to the forces that want to tear this nation – and humanity apart. The very people XVII told us will be destroyed by the time this movie comes to an end are currently roaming the halls of power…supposedly. It’s a sickening sight.
And now for some mood music:
Your weekly reminder to take the pledge:
“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”
And now for the nitty gritty of the Q Tree 5 minute, stand up, Tuesday morning meeting version of the Daily Thread.
The discourse on this site is to be CIVIL – no name calling, baiting, or threatening others here is allowed. Those who are so inclined may visit Wolf’s other sanctuary, the U-Tree, to slog it out with anyone who happens to still be hanging out there. There is also a “rescue” thread there for members of the Tree to rendezvous if the main site goes kablooey.
This site is a celebration of the natural rights endowed to humans by our Creator as well as those enshrined in the Bill of Rights adopted in the founding documents of the United States of America. Within the limits of law, how we exercise these rights is part of the freedom of our discussion.
Fellow tree dweller Wheatie gave us some good reminders on the basics of civility in political discourse:
No food fights.
No running with scissors.
If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
And Auntie DePat’s requests as we are all, ahem, adults, although some of us are beginning to wonder what the threshold for true adulthood is:
If you see something has not been posted, do us all a favor, and post it. Please, do not complain that it has not been done yet.
The scroll wheel on your mouse can be your friend. As mature adults, please use it here in the same manner you would in avoiding online porn.
Thank you so much for any and all attention to such details. It is GREATLY appreciated by more than one party here.
2Now Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold. 5And Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, 6so that the land could not support both of them dwelling together; for their possessions were so great that they could not dwell together, 7and there was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle. At that time the Canaanites and the Per’izzites dwelt in the land. 8Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herdsmen and my herdsmen; for we are kinsmen. 9Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.” 10And Lot lifted up his eyes, and saw that the Jordan valley was well watered everywhere like the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zo’ar; this was before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomor’rah. 11So Lot chose for himself all the Jordan valley, and Lot journeyed east; thus they separated from each other. 12Abram dwelt in the land of Canaan, while Lot dwelt among the cities of the valley and moved his tent as far as Sodom. 13Now the men of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the LORD. 14The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Lift up your eyes, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; 15for all the land which you see I will give to you and to your descendants for ever. 16I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your descendants also can be counted. 17Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.” 18So Abram moved his tent, and came and dwelt by the oaks of Mamre, which are at Hebron; and there he built an altar to the LORD.
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Hosts, by the power of God, cast down to Hell Satan and all his evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.
>>148156518 Amen brother. Q
As always, prayers for the fight against that which seeks to enslave us are welcome. Via con Dios.
One of the really big shockers for me has been the relationship of the tech giants to the bat coronavirus researchers. What the heck is up with that?
Why did Zuckerberg and Chan (after COVID “struck”) fund Baric, who worked with “the bat woman” and Wuhan? It smells every bit like a “book deal” – an influence pay-off after the fact. This would lead me to believe that Zuck and Chan and Baric actually go back FURTHER, in ways that have not appeared yet.
Why did Google fund Daszak and a group that then funded Wuhan? This actually goes back. And then, Daszak trying to cover up HIS role in the cover-up of the Wuhan Institute of Virology connection – what’s up with THAT?
I don’t want to get into all that stuff too much, but I want to leave you some great links to show you this is REAL – this is not BS. The “fake news snopesing complex” is all over this, trying to hide it, but the word is OUT.
TECH and BAT RESEARCH are THICK.
References on tech / bat research monetary links
Here is the Zuckerberg-Chan “book deal payoff” to Baric’s lab.
Fauci reveals that Mark Zuckerberg offered him “resources and money” – this at the same time Zuck was using cash to interfere in the 2020 election on behalf of Democrats.
Now, I had just heard about all of these monetary connections now being discovered, and thought that any relationship between the tech giants and these virus creeps had to be connected to the FAKE ELECTION PLOT.
BUT – as I was perusing the internet COVID literature, I encountered two scientific papers that made me realize something.
These tech tyrants may have had ANOTHER motive. A DEEPER and MORE PERSONAL motive.
Wanting to live forever – or at least LONGER.
And it gets BIGGER – as in all of society – as in FITNESS – as in EUGENICS.
Here is the part of this paper that set off the alarms. I will make BOLD or underline the most important parts:
BAT MICROBES CAN SHED LIGHT ON DISEASE, IMMUNITY, AND LONGEVITY
Bats and their microbes are increasingly recognized as important components of zoonotic disease cycles (37, 38). A few studies have identified potentially pathogenic members of the excreted bat microbiome such as Bartonella spp. (39, 40) and Leptospira spp. (41). Bats are also known or suspected to be the reservoir of several viruses that are lethal to humans, such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Ebola, and rabies viruses (42,–44), as well as of Plasmodium parasites closely related to those in rodents that are used as models to study malaria (45). Genomic insights have generated plausible explanations for how bats may have evolved to harbor such deadly microbes (e.g., reference 46), but in spite of abundant evidence that the microbiome interfaces directly with the host immune system (47, 48), there has not yet been an integrative study addressing whether microbial symbionts contribute to bats’ innate ability to act as pathogen reservoirs. As an additional axis of variation, bats which have flexible roosting habits can be found in close proximity to humans and may potentially swap microbes with humans and their companion animals (49). Bats may transfer microbes to livestock when they exist in close proximity (e.g., pigs consuming partially eaten fruits dropped by fruit bats [50]) or use the same habitats (e.g., horses coming into contact with bat droppings in pastures [51]). Studying bat microbiomes would therefore have obvious public health implications and could help to explain the epidemiology of emerging infectious diseases.
Similar avenues of research can also consider what impact, if any, the host microbiome has on susceptibility of bats to white nose syndrome (WNS), a frequently fatal cutaneous infection that has reduced hibernating bat populations by up to 90% in North America (52). Because not all individuals are killed by the infection, there may be selection on the skin microbiomes of surviving individuals to become enriched with antifungal bacteria. Indeed, one study discovered that in WNS-positive populations, the skin microbiome of bats was enriched with Rhodococcus and Pseudomonas spp., which are known to have antifungal activity (53). Additional studies in this area can answer the questions of how exactly these bacteria inhibit the growth of the causative agent of WNS and what enrichment of the microbiome with these bacteria might mean for the long-term survival of affected host populations.
Bat microbiomes can be used more generally to understand the links between the microbiome and the evolution of other phenomena of interest, such as immunity and longevity. To date, studies addressing the link between host aging and the microbiome in humans and lab animals have uncovered direct links between microbial metabolic products and life span of the host (54). Bats represent an exciting system in which to test for links between the microbiome and aging because they are exceptionally long-lived for a mammal of their size (55, 56). Mice are conventional model mammals, but the commonly used BALB/c mouse strain has a life span of about a year and half, making studies of longevity in these animals rather short-lived (57). Bats of comparable mass can achieve life spans of up to 40 years, and many are philopatric to particular roosts, making repeat sampling of individuals throughout their lifetimes possible (58, 59). Because these animals’ microbiomes can be sampled nonlethally, they are inherently attractive for such studies (36). However, it is worth noting that these animals are especially sensitive to disturbance during hibernation, so experimental designs should minimize unintended disturbance of roosts, particularly in areas where white nose syndrome has decimated bat populations (60). It may also be possible to keep bats in captive colonies in order to sample them throughout successive years of their lives. Recent evidence suggests that metabolites produced by gut microbes in bats might offset the oxidative damages incurred during active flight, resulting in downstream impacts on aging (61). However, many questions still remain. By what mechanism does the microbiome help to extend life span, and is this pattern consistent across mammals? How does interindividual variation impact the relationships between longevity and microbiome community structure? We believe that studies of bat microbiomes can help to answer these important questions and more.Go to:
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
Bats represent an untapped resource for understanding microbiome evolution in mammals. Because of their exceptional diversity, longevity, and ecological importance, we believe that studies of their microbial symbionts will reveal exciting new roles for microbes in driving host evolution and fitness and may help us to better understand the dynamics of emerging zoonotic pathogens. We provide applications of bat microbiome research in the hopes that more researchers will realize the potential that this system has to offer. Multi-omics approaches can be used to parse apart the contributions of host genome, metagenome, and microbial metabolites to the processes described above, and as the costs of these methods continue to decrease, such studies will only become more feasible. The results of studying bat microbiomes using these approaches will undeniably advance the fields of host-microbe interactions, comparative physiology, and public health.
This then led me to a paper specifically about bats and longevity.
This paper is an absolute GOLD MINE of authoritative scientific optimism about life extension through bats, tying in IMMUNITY and INFLAMMATION. I cannot just pick out some part to highlight – the WHOLE THING is evidence of what people are thinking.
What I have done is grabbed the IMAGES which are the most quickly informing. Not all of them – just some of them. Plus a few selections of text which are equally useful.
Abstract
For centuries, people believed that bats possessed sinister powers. Bats are thought to be ancestral hosts to many deadly viruses affecting humans including Ebola, rabies, and most recently SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. However, bats themselves tolerate these viruses without ill effects. The second power that bats have is their longevity. Bats live much longer than similar-sized land mammals. Here we review how bats’ ability to control inflammation may be contributing to their longevity. The underlying mechanisms may hold clues to developing new treatments for age-related diseases. Now may be the time to use science to exploit the secret powers of bats for human benefit.
Figure 1 Bats Live Longer Than Similar-Sized Land Mammals
(A) Major lineages of bats.
(B) Relationship between lifespan and body mass in mammals. Bats are indicated by red circles; all other species of mammals are indicated by black circles. The lifespan and body mass data are from Healy et al. (2014).
Treatments Based on Bat Strategies
Bats have evolved multiple mechanisms to suppress inflammation, in particular by dampening nucleic acid sensing pathways. A number of pharmacological interventions targeting nucleic acid sensing pathways had already been developed. Historically, the focus has been on developing activators of these pathways to serve as antiviral or anticancer drugs (reviewed in Vanpouille-Box et al., 2019). However, with the realization that inflammation contributes to a wide range of diseases from autoimmunity to age-related conditions, the interest has shifted to developing antagonists of nucleic acid sensors (Sheridan, 2019). This proved to be a challenging task due to high level of redundancy within nucleic acid sensing pathways and the danger of increasing vulnerability to infections. Here, the information obtained from the studies of bats can assist in drug discovery (Table 1 ).
Future Perspectives
In summary, besides serving as a source of deadly diseases and harboring viruses similar to SARS-CoV-2, which caused the current pandemics, bats have a lot to offer humanity by illuminating the pathways to develop novel therapeutics to treat age-related conditions and promote longevity. Already studies of the altered innate immune responses in bats point to several classes of small molecules, some of which have links to aging. However, we can only see the tip of the iceberg when it comes to understanding how bats deal with inflammation, and clearly more studies are warranted. This is also true for other hallmarks of aging, which are still minimally explored. In addition to finding small molecules targeting specific pathways that can be tested in humans, it will be of interest to engineer specific bat alterations in mice and determine whether this leads to enhanced lifespan and healthspan.
Bats have evolved skewed, and ultimately successful, strategies to experience longer and healthier lives, even if this is a secondary outcome of selection for responses to viral infections and/or the dramatic range of metabolic states that accompany periods of flight and torpor. Humans in the last century have created a lifestyle that has gone bats; we live in high densities and (many of us) travel extensively, enhancing exposure to and spread of pathogens. By embracing “batty” strategies to deal with the challenges that our new lifestyle presents, we may be able to solve what look to be the two biggest medical challenges of the 21st century: the rise of viral pandemics and the ever-increasing prevalence of chronic diseases that all share aging as their biggest risk factor.Go to:
Acknowledgments
This perspective was conceived when the authors were quarantined together for potential exposure to COVID-19. Research in authors’ laboratories is supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, United States.
Where does this go?
OK? It really helps to skim through that SECOND article, because one can ALMOST see the stuff that would make these TECH TITANS DROOL.
Centuries more of life if we just got PARTIAL success in bringing over some “bat tech” to human life.
And I didn’t really dig here, either. This was just what was floating on TOP of the “bat longevity” literature.
Think how much “good” Zuckerberg, Brin, Gates and these others could do, in a few more centuries, if they just had the elixir vitae that bats seem to promise!
Those who don’t think this is a possible motivation, can look at my previous discussion of “life extension” in another article about the more “fictional” science of adrenochrome, wherein I discussed WHY it’s possible to sell a complete fiction like adrenochrome the drug to both CUSTOMERS and CRITICS. In that discussion, the interest of the tech titans in life extension is both mentioned and referenced.
The Truths, Lies, and Disinformation Surrounding a Mythical yet Very Real Substance There is nothing more intriguing than an enigmatic character who defies political and cultural boundaries to tell great truths, yet mixes in just enough lies, fakery, shiny objects, red herrings, exaggerations and omissions to make himself or herself economically viable solely on their …
In the process of this scientific and social examination of the mythical “adrenochrome”, I looked at the very real concept of “young blood”.
There is a REAL market for any REAL or merely RUMORED rejuvenation.
People will even inject themselves with a deadly POISON to look younger.
Yes. “Beautox” is real. And it “REALLY” works – to make people LOOK younger.
Oh, Mark Zuckerberg – you are looking MAAAAHRRRRVELOUS!
Now, I don’t know WHO or HOW – China or CIA or Obama or DARPA – but I suspect that LIFE EXTENSION is the HOBBY WITH BENEFITS of the elite. And BATS was a natural attractor.
So I suspect that this INFLUENCER – bat research as the path to the elixir vitae – was introduced into the RIGHT CIRCLES by people who understood influence. And HERE WE ARE.
W
PS:
How will China and their puppets study the success of their bioweapon here in the United States, and its effect on voting?
