“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
We continue to mourn the untimely passing of our beloved compatriot DePat, known in real life as Susie Sampson, and also as author Patricia Holden.
Until we have a dedicated author for the Tuesday daily open thread, I will be posting “placeholders” like this one, which may or may not be spiced up with additional content.
Gudthots will take DePat’s old Thursday daily open thread.
Please notify me in advance if you would like to post anything in lieu of the Tuesday placeholder. We welcome all content – the topic doesn’t matter.
W
Cholesterol and Statins
by Gail Combs
Since many of us on the Qtree are older I wanted to document my adventures with the medical establishment. Hopefully my digging will help others avoid harmful drugs by providing the information you need to make an informed decision.
My Labs came back:
LDL = 114(H)
HDL = 98(H)
The Doc wanted to put me on STATINS and my answer was HELL NO!
What I found incredible is the lack of knowledge of the three doctors I have encountered so far. The first, despite my telling her I had a major problem with losing potassium, put me on a high level of Prednisone WITHOUT mentioning the fact I might have to take addition potassium (K) to offset the additional loss of K from the drug. This is well documented in the literature.
In the follow-up visit, not only was a statin recommended but the connection between chronic inflammation (my asthma) and higher cholesterol levels was completely ignored.
As I mentioned, the vast majority of cholesterol in your body was made in your liver. Cholesterol production increases when the body is under stress: emotional stress can cause elevated cholesterol because the stress hormone cortisol is made out of cholesterol. Physical stress on the body can also elevate cholesterol. Because cholesterol helps to repair and heal your body, you will produce more if there is a great deal of inflammation occurring in your body. So all those factors above that raise inflammation, can raise your cholesterol too.
Therefore the cure for elevated cholesterol can be quite simple –lower the inflammation and you’ll also lower the cholesterol.
Manuscript Submission Deadline 29 April 2025. This Research Topic is still accepting articles.
Background
Cholesterol metabolism and immune response are closely linked. Cholesterol is critical for the synthesis of lipid rafts, which activate receptors involved in antigen recognition, influences the production of NET and modulates the activation and polarization of macrophages. Oxysterols in turn regulate macrophage activation, migration, and cytokine production. While the immune response modulates the expression of genes involved in the synthesis, absorption and efflux of cholesterol. Cholesterol accumulation in immune cells promotes proinflammatory immune responses creating a vicious cycle that sustains immune inflammation. High-density lipoproteins (HDL) are typically reduced during inflammation, when reverse cholesterol transport is impaired, thus promoting hyperactivation of TLR2 and TLR4 by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and other microbial products, resulting in inhibition of stress-induced activating transcription (ATF) 3 and enhanced production of cytokines by macrophages. Further endangering an already delicate balance, HDL proinflammatory subfractions with lower content of apoA-1, antioxidant enzymes, and L-CAT, are produced, and further fuel inflammation.
Alterations in the biochemical network between cholesterol, inflammation and immunity are emerging as a pathogenetic mechanism of numerous human disorders, among which atherosclerosis, cardiovascular diseases and their complications, metabolic diseases and diabetes, infectious diseases and sepsis, autoimmune and auto-multiinflammatory disorders, acquired and congenital hypo-immune diseases, and cancer….
So the Cabal’s bio-weapon, SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, is likely to raise cholesterol levels given the body’s response to the spike protein is inflammation and in many cases chronic inflammation known as Long Covid.
….other papers showed that the spike protein by itself (without being part of the corona virus) can damage endothelial cells and disrupt the blood-brain barrier. These findings may be even more relevant to the pathogenesis of long-COVID syndrome that may affect as many as 50% of those infected with SARS-CoV-2. In COVID-19, a response to oxidative stress is required by increasing anti-oxidant enzymes. In this regard, it is known that polyphenols are natural anti-oxidants with multiple health effects. Hence, there are even more reasons to intervene with the use of anti-oxidant compounds, such as luteolin, in addition to available vaccines and anti-inflammatory drugs to prevent the harmful actions of the spike protein.
Luteolin, 3′,4′,5,7-tetrahydroxyflavone, is a common flavonoid that exists in many types of plants including fruits, vegetables, and medicinal herbs. Plants rich in luteolin have been used in Chinese traditional medicine for treating various diseases such as hypertension, inflammatory disorders, and cancer. Having multiple biological effects such as anti-inflammation, anti-allergy and anticancer, luteolin functions as either an antioxidant or a pro-oxidant biochemically…. Vegetables and fruits such as celery, parsley, broccoli, onion leaves, carrots, peppers, cabbages, apple skins, and chrysanthemum flowers are luteolin rich….
Next I want to get into the vilification of cholesterol and it’s history. The following is a great article and well worth reading. This is just a sample.
The mean would be 224 so my LDL is actually on the very low end of the scale! And even if the chart is actually looking at the combined amount of LDL + HDL, then my 114+98 = 212 is still lower than average. From the article:
This same range of cholesterol levels has been seen in people who do have heart disease and peoplewho do nothave heart disease, as documented by Professor Brisson using data from the Framingham Study – which is one of the largest studies ever done in it.
Since the Framingham Study, other studies have also confirmed that people WITH heart disease have the same cholesterol levels as people WITHOUT heart disease.
For example, in the UK, the typical person who has a heart attack tends to have the same cholesterol level that is seen for healthy middle-aged and older people in the general population. Something that is not unique to the UK.
A study published in the Lancet, included 5,754 patients from Australia and New Zealand who had already had a heart attack. The average cholesterol level of this group of people was around 220 mg/dl (5.7 mmol/l). Data from the WHO Global Infobase shows that around the same time, the average cholesterol level for the general population was also 220 mg/dl (5.7 mmol/l).
So people who suffered a heart attack had the same average cholesterol level as the general healthy population.
This is a direct and explicit consequence of the shift to eating garbage.
Processed food is INHUMANE. It’s the fastest way to kill off our population, which it looks like these people are trying to do.
The Real Research Has Been Buried
One of the most comprehensive studies on heart disease was COMPLETELY buried.
Data from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment was unearthed in 2017 after 40 years of sitting dormant.
Ancel Keys, the progenitor of the diet-heart hypothesis, was the lead on the study. It was one of the most comprehensive to date: randomized, controlled and 9,400 participants.
Subjects were in mental health institutions or nursing homes, which helped to ensure the dietary guidelines were followed to a tee for 56 months.
The control group continued to eat a diet high in saturated fats and animal fats. The intervention group ate a serum cholesterol lowering diet that replaced saturated fat with vegetable oils (from corn oil and corn oil polyunsaturated margarine).
Results:
The intervention group had a 14% reduction in cholesterol
But this didn’t reduce death rate. There was a 22% HIGHER risk of death for each 30 mg/dL reduction in cholesterol….
A Sharyl Attkisson clip of 9 minutes, giving some history. In 2004, recommended cholesterol levels were lowered based on a study by doctors connected to the drug manufacturers. When this conflict of interest was pointed out the FDA ignored it. And then the recommended levels were lowered even further in 2013. Half of the ‘advisors’ recommending the levels were compensated by the Drug manufacturers. And then there is the American Heart Association who develops the standards and its relationship to the drug manufacturers.
What is worse, is not only are statins a money waster, they are also very bad for you.
Since their introduction in the 1980s, statin drugs have been almost universally hailed as “wonder drugs” by medical authorities around the world. The global market for statins was $16 billion in 2016, and approximately 40 million Americans (that’s one in every five adults!) takes a statin….
As you know, we have seen statin cholesterol drugs do really bad things to stem cells in culture. On the other end of that spectrum, we’ve also seen high triglycerides due to metabolic syndrome hurt stem cells. One of our patients who was instructed to get off statin drugs before her stem cell procedure recently sent this article by MIT professor Dr. Stefanie Seneff, which is so well done and does such a great job of explaining why statins are bad for you, I had to share. It is also so scientifically dense; I thought a quick summary would be helpful for my readers. Here goes:
Statins decrease cholesterol by blocking an important enzyme pathway, yet cholesterol is needed for the normal health functioning of all cells. In particular, cholesterol is a key component of all healthy cell membranes.
Cholesterol is also needed to make vitamin D3, sex hormones, and steroid hormones.
The brain is only 2% of the body’s total weight, but houses 25% of the body’s cholesterol.
LDL cholesterol is what we have been trained to believe is “bad” cholesterol, when in fact it’s an important transport container for many key items.
The outer shell of the LDL transport container is vulnerable to attack by high blood sugars, so in patients with poor blood sugar control (metabolic syndrome) these important transport containers for key nutrients get gummed up by these extra sugars in the blood.
These “gummed up” LDL containers get attacked by cells of the body in the walls of blood vessels which lead to “plaques” that clog arteries.
Artificially lowering cholesterol by statin drugs causes the LDL transport containers to have too little protection. The function of these containers would normally be to transport excess blood sugars from the liver as fat and get rid of this throughout the body. However, these cholesterol deficient containers can’t perform this important function, magnifying the bad effects of excess sugar consumption. This is what makes high fructose corn syrup so dangerous, as fructose as a sugar is ten times more efficient in gumming up the LDL transport system.
This damaged sugar to fat transport system due to a lowered cholesterol level also results in too much fructose in the blood stream (which would normally be converted to fat in the liver and transported by the LDL transport system). This excess blood sugar causes damage to the proteins in the blood.
Co-enzyme Q10 synthesis is hampered by the blockage of the cholesterol enzyme pathway and this is needed to run cells and muscles. This can result in problems in the batteries of the cells and muscles (mitochondria).
Since the muscles can’t use CoQ10, they decide instead to use all of that extra fructose in the blood serum, which is now in plentiful (and damaging) supply because statins block it’s conversion into fat by the liver and it’s transport out of the liver by the LDL containers. When they do this, it’s without oxygen, so it’s anaerobic and lactic acid builds up, causing painful muscles.
The muscles do process the fructose, but they do so in a really inefficient way, requiring 19 times more energy to get the same muscle output-causing a sense of fatigue.
This alternative fuel system for the muscles leads to damaged muscle cells. After several years of lactic acid build-up due to statin use (the equivalent of being forced to run a constant marathon), the muscles “give out”. This author believes that this leads to a higher rate of severe muscle disorders like rhambdomyolysis as well as kidney failure (due to the renal system processing all of these muscle break down products). The author also believes that these muscle breakdown products can lead to nerve damage. She believes that this nerve damage can lead to a higher incidence of severe diseases such as ALS. My comments: These claims will take intensive study to see if they hold up.
The lack of cholesterol in the system eventually results in the heart and other tissues becoming dependent on an alternate fuel supply-sugar. There is also impaired uptake of glucose by the cells, which leads to the higher prevalence of diabetes that shows up in statin studies.
Cholesterol is critical for normal brain function. As mentioned already, the brain contains a lot of cholesterol as it makes up the important covering of the nerves (myelin sheath). Think of this as like the plastic covering of a wire, which insulates the wire and allows it to conduct electricity. This would explain the common reports of memory loss in patients taking statin drugs. A recent study that involved careful manual labeling of statin side effects from large studies showed a higher degree of neurological disorders in patients taking statins. These include neuropathy, parasthesia and neuralgia, and debilitating neurological diseases, ALS and Parkinson’s disease.
Longer life in one study that followed patients for 17 years was associated with higher cholesterol levels and full function of the enzymes that statin drugs inhibit. The author concludes that statins are a great way to fast track aging.
This author belives that eating foods rich in cholesterol and sulfur (like eggs) and sun exposure are ways to increase your cholesterol sulfate levels which can help clear arteries, not block them.
The upshot? Dr. Seneff believes that these statin side effects will eventually cause the recall of the drug class. Is she right? All I can say is that much of the science she explains makes sense and that we’ve seen what statin drugs can do to cells in culture and it isn’t pretty!
From: Cuppa Covfefe(@guest_1428881) March 7, 2025 21:01
Statins can cause issues with the mitochondrial respiratory chain… lots of conflicts, interactions, and contra-indications when mito issues exist or are suspected…
Joe Biden never won. This is our Real President – 45, 46, 47.
AND our beautiful REALFLOTUS.
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – 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).
As I have been researching and writing these stories I have been deeply moved by how each patriot started as well as how they finished their respective journeys in life. I am of the philosophical camp that it is not how you start, it is how you finish. However, the exercise of researching and writing these stories has led me to remember the primary message of the following song. I guess we are never too old to be reminded of a valuable lesson.
Y’all probably did not know that this old gray hair has enjoyed some of TobyMac’s works through the years, especially when he was in DC Talk. I have never been a fan of secular rap or hip hop, but music dominated, poetic rap of Toby and a few other Christian artists is a different story. I also especially enjoy the works of (David) Crowder with the earthy raw emotion in his words, observations and musical style. I am big fanboy of him, however, I enjoy many styles and genres of music. This song may or may not be familiar to you, so I am happy to provide this official lyrics version.
As we have dug into the lives of these incredible patriots I have been struck by the intention and commitment to doing what they individually believed was right for all colonists no matter the cost. This also was expressed in the behavior and support of their wives and families. They were globally focused on the greater good and not just on themselves and their families. Some seemed to throw all caution to the wind and attack the prospect of independence and freedom from the chains of oppression. Others sought compromise and accommodation until they were boxed into corners and forced to choose. All seemed to relish the opportunity to give their input and insights while serving in the governance of assemblies and congresses. They sensed they were playing a part in something much bigger than themselves and spoke of it in their letters and journals. When it became obvious to most that it was time to change history; all of the signers found consensus and were ready to accept whatever fate awaited them. They walked to the table to sign with solemn minds and hearts.
Fellow Christian – don’t you just love it when the Lord implements His plans and you get to play a part in it? This American Experiment was more than just a bunch of pizzed off rebel colonists. Something that grand developed from people who were of a similar ancestral lineage with linked family bonds who were placed under the thumbs of the leaders of the world’s great superpower of the day. Where have you seen that before, Christian? Oh yeah, in stories of struggle throughout the Holy Word. Fast forward to the past decade here in America. Can you see and feel the parallels, interconnections, etc. with history in America today?
The song speaks to that dash between birth and death that we see on many tombstones. You will read of the personal history, the dash, on one such tombstone below concerning a Declaration signer. It leads us to see that the time we spend in the dash is about the choices we make. It addresses how we spend that time has eternal consequences. We should choose wisely what we do and not waste it. Our time may not be one of a bitter war or strife, but it will always be a time of reaching the lost and hurting. Many God fearing men and women in these stories went about doing just that even when some had much safer options. We are the beneficiaries of their choices. They modeled what we know from John 15:13, which says, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (NKJV)
I am eternally grateful for what those great founding fathers and their families did with their dashes. I have peace in doing these stories because I now see how the details of history relate to what God planned for America. To think that approximately 250 years later we are in the same camp as the Sons of Liberty and working out our freedom and liberty as AMERICA FIRST MAGA movement patriots is humbling as well as inspiring. Thanks to our collective commitment and response, our George Washington is in the White House saving and helping America prosper along with his patriot Vice President, who is performing the modern role of John Adams. While Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and others were building the rep and security of America in other lands, so is our equivalent Secretary of State and various cabinet members. The revolutionary warfighters stayed on the alert and protected the homeland against all enemies foreign and domestic, just as ours today under the leadership of a man who has been there and done that with honor and distinction on the battlefields as well as with a man who has defended our borders from illegals invading for decades.
We may even have advantages the patriots did not have with a hugely wealthy and successful man in a Darth cap with incredible vision, talent and intelligence who can slice through those who create their own fiefdoms within our central government. This man can deliver a modern, fiscally responsible operational system of government unlike any other on the planet that by its presence will prevent much of the corruption and fraud that we have endured for so long. He is doing what always must be done to starve the evil doers – follow the money and cut off the flow.
We also have men and women with steely resolves leading the work to root out those alien criminals and terrorists who would take us down that were invited in by past incompetent and even demonic administrations to infiltrate our ranks. This restoration that will lead to The Golden Age for America is being accomplished with perhaps the greatest cabinet and patriots backing any POTUS in history since the Declaration was signed. All desire to be a part of something bigger than themselves and we can all feel the success that awaits. They are ready and willing to protect and provide for America with the personal time they have left within their dashes, so that we can make the most of the time left within ours and all future Americans. They have been chosen for this great moment in history.
It is now time to discuss a couple more great founding fathers who accomplished much during their dashes.
George Walton
This signer was supposedly born in 1741 in Prince Edward County, VA, although it is not known with certainty and guesses range from 1740 – 1750. George Walton‘s education was informal and for the most part he taught himself. Both parents died when he was young, so he was adopted by an uncle who did not believe in schooling. As a result he apprenticed as a carpenter under that uncle. In 1769 after realizing he had an interest and the intelligence to do so, he moved to Savannah, GA to study law. He was later admitted to the bar in 1774. It is in this independence infused area that he joined the patriot movement. He spent many years in the state in its development as well as in a political feud with the infamous Button Gwinnett that we previously discussed.
In the lead up to the Revolutionary War he was elected Secretary of the state’s Provincial Congress and President of the Council of Safety. He became a delegate in the second Continental Congress that led to him being a Declaration signer. Somehow in the period he found time to marry Dorothy Camber and they had two sons together.
After the Declaration signing he entered into the Revolutionary War as Colonel of the First Regiment Militia in the state. He was hit in the leg by a musket ball, thrown from his horse and taken prisoner in the Battle of Savannah while serving under Gen. Robert Howe. Unlike some of his fellow colonist prisoners throughout the war, he was allowed to heal before being sent to Sunbury Prison. He was later released in 1779 in a prisoner exchange.
As a political ally and friend of Lachlan McIntosh he was involved in controversy his entire political career. He was even censured by the state legislature in 1783 for his role in the famous duel that resulted in Gwinnett ‘s death, but never formally charged. By this point he was considered to be one of the most competent and successful lawyers in the state. He was used to negotiate a treaty with the Cherokees in TN as well. He was requested to assist at the U. S. Constitutional Convention with its preparation, but declined due to all he was doing for the state.
None of the previous conflicts with Gwinnett prevented him from being named as the Chief Justice for the state that same year. He served in that role until 1789 while becoming a Presidential elector. He was also the acting Governor of the state in 1789 – 1790. He served as Superior Court Judge starting in 1789, which continued until 1798. In 1795 he served as a U. S. Senator on an interim basis.
He retired to the Augusta area and passed away in 1804. Though he owned a plantation, he had no slaves. This was possibly due to his upbringing as well as his understanding that all people were created equal. He was an abolitionist in a period and region where it would least be expected. Only one son survived from the marriage to Dorothy; George, Jr. He became the first Secretary of the Territory of Florida as well as the acting Governor. He was of great comfort to his father during his later years. Dorothy lived in Pensacola after her husband’s death and she passed away in 1832. Walton County, GA is named after him.
From an Augusta Press article of 10/14/21 by Scott Hudson:
In the center of Greene Street and across from the Municipal Building in Downtown Augusta sits an obelisk known as the Signer’s Monument. Underneath it lies the graves of Lyman Hall and George Walton, two of the three signers of the Declaration of Independence from Georgia.
Less than a mile away from the Signer’s Monument is Meadow Gardens, Walton’s home. The modest home is located near the corner of Walton Way and 13th Street. It has been preserved and holds weekday tours.
George Walton lived through very difficult, humble beginnings. He was self taught and driven to both learn and do his best for his country. He was a doer, not a public speaker known for his inspiring quotes. He gave his entire life to the independence movement as well as on the battlefield. After that he threw himself into public service and the law. As a result Georgia and America benefitted greatly. We have much to appreciate about this great American patriot.
John Witherspoon
With the previous discussion in Part 9 about Stockton and son in law, Rush, meeting with John Witherspoon in Scotland pre war, it is probably time to review him as a Declaration signer. John Witherspoon was born in 1722 or 1723 in Gifford, Scotland. His parents were James Witherspoon and Anna Walker. His mother taught him in the early years and he was able to read by age 4. She used the Bible and later in his youth he was able to recite the New Testament. His father was a minister of Yester Parish and very involved in the General Assembly. His mother came from a long line of ministers as well. The couple had six children.
John was so advanced in his education and in the understanding of English, Latin, Greek, French, the classics and mathematics that he was sent to the University of Edinburgh at age 13. By age 16 he had a Masters of Arts with a thesis in Latin. By age 20 he received a Doctor in Theology and was licensed to preach. At age 22 he received his first parish. Three years later he married Elizabeth Montgomery. They had nine children with five surviving that traveled with them later to the colonies.
When Dr. Samuel Finley died as President of the College of New Jersey, Witherspoon was solicited for the role by Stockton and Rush among others as mentioned previously. He had been requested to do so years before and declined. This time he was persuaded and they left for Philadelphia in 1768. He was successful almost immediately. He grew endowments, improved the curriculum, and helped bring peace within the Presbyterian Church. By 1770 the students began advocating for independence and Witherspoon agreed, including stating this belief in a commencement address. He was soon chosen to represent the county in the Provincial Assembly and went on to be chosen as a delegate to the Continental Congress.
When others in the period waffled on independence by suggesting the time was not ripe to do so, he replied to one such complainer, “Not ripe sir, we are not only ripe for the measure but in danger of rotting for the want of it”. Not long after the Declaration signing and the war increasing, the college was taken by the British. They proceeded to occupy the campus, burn down the library, and destroy his documents and personal writings. The next year he lost one son in the Battle of Germantown.
He stayed with the Continental Congress until 1782. He helped reorganize the Board of Treasury along with performing other duties that utilized his expertise. Prior to that in early 1778 he had begun the difficult rebuild of the college and was able to restart classes later in that year. As the war ended Witherspoon became more active than ever. He was in the voting delegation that approved the Constitution for NJ. He was a key contributor to the newly organized, independent Presbyterian Church in America. His contributions as a pastor, educator and patriot brought great recognition to Princeton.
In 1789, his wife passed away. A month later he turned his attention to involvement in the NJ Assembly. He soon had responsibilities that included prisoner treatment, pensions of invalids, public debts, promotion of religion and morality, divorce, paper money, vital statistics and promotion of manufacturing. The seemingly odd thing was he kept two slaves, although as he aged he turned his attention toward abolition and the systematic acclimation of slaves into society as free men. It seems that a number of his descendants were involved in Confederate causes in the years that followed. Witherspoon believe as Charles Carroll did, that the nation was heading toward abolition anyway. He preferred the slave be assisted into freedom and the world that laid ahead rather than cutting them loose to make a go without preparation and acceptance by society.
Apparently, Witherspoon was not done with living at this point, so at age 68 he married 24 year old Ann Marshall Dill. The couple had two children, one of whom died a week or so after birth. It was not long before he lost his eyesight and passed away in 1794.
He left us with many memorable quotes, a handful of which are below:
It is only the fear of God, can deliver us from the fear of man.
Never rise to speak till you have something to say; and when you have said it, cease.
Those who wish well to the State ought to choose places of trust men of inward principle, justified by exemplary conversation.
The people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with moral authority either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.
Never read a book through merely because you have begun it.
Wisdom. Words for all of us to take to heart just like they were in that day. The following is inscribed on his tombstone in Princeton Cemetery, a description of his dash.
Beneath this marble lie interred the mortal remains of JOHN WITHERSPOON, D.D. LL.D. a venerable and beloved President of the College of New-Jersey. He was born in the parish of Yester, in Scotland, on the 5th of February, 1722, O. S. And was liberally educated in the University of Edinburgh; invested with holy orders in the year 1743, he faithfully performed the duties of his pastoral charge, during five and twenty years, first at Beith, and then at Paisley. Elected president of Nassau Hall, he assumed the duties of that office on the 13th of August, 1768, with the elevated expectations of the public. Excelling in every mental gift, he was a man of pre-eminent piety and virtue and deeply versed in the various branches of literature and the liberal arts. A grave and solemn preacher, his sermons abounded in the most excellent doctrines and precepts, and in lucid expositions of the Holy Scriptures. Affable, pleasant, and courteous in familiar conversation, he was eminently distinguished in concerns and deliberations of the church, and endowed with the greatest prudence in the management and instruction of youth. He exalted the reputation of the college amongst foreigners, and greatly promoted the advancement of its literary character and taste. He was, for a long time, conspicuous Among the most brilliant luminaries of learning and of the Church. At length, universally venerated, beloved, and lamented, he departed this life on the fifteenth of November, 1794 aged 73 years.
John Witherspoon made his mark on America that will long be remembered especially as a patriot and leader of what became Princeton University. He laid a foundational building block for education and faith that has stood the test of time. He was a great American patriot.
Conclusion
I will stop here with this part. The lessons learned appear profound. We find the dash on every tombstone represents the results of the breath God gives all of us. We find that with the Declaration of Independence signers that they gave all for freedom and liberty. None were perfect men, they all had feet of clay just like all of us today. Yet, they allowed themselves to be used by the Lord to achieve what we now experience despite all of the hardship and strife.
With Walton and Witherspoon we see two very different men and a study of contrasts. One was raised in hardship, not even permitted to experience the love and care of parents for a time due to life and death getting in the way. He was self taught by his own curiosity and intelligence to achieve. He had the internal fortitude to take on the challenges of his life and overcome while finding meaning for his existence.
The other was raised in plenty and of good repute. He experienced the benefits of societal standing and parental love and care. He learned the value of his Christian upbringing and threw himself into learning all he could as quickly as he could with the religious and educational opportunities that were made available. He achieved at an incredible pace and was placed in positions of trust in his native Scotland as well as later in America.
When it came time to walk to the table to sign, they both did in solemn agreement and despite their very different journeys. They both did so knowing it could result in their deaths and harm to their families and communities. How is it that an orphaned southern colonist boy who grew up hard in GA and a Scottish born boy brought into a world of privilege who immigrated to America to restore a college in New Jersey, could equally share legacies as great American patriots? That is our shared American legacy. Both were needed, both answered the call, and both were honored to serve all of the citizens and as a result, all of us.
The hand of God was on display then and is now. We need to hear him and respond. As Isaiah said in Isaiah 6:8, “Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!” (NASB)
This Rejoice & Praise God 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’s 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 your opinion addresses the issue only, and does not confront or denigrate 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.
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.”
Fallen Angels
When exactly God created angels is open for debate, but what is known for sure is that God created everything good because God, in His holiness, cannot create something sinful. So when Satan, who was once the angel Lucifer, rebelled against God and fell from heaven (Isaiah 14; Ezekiel 28), one third of the angelic host joined his insurrection (Revelation 12:3-4,9). There is no doubt these fallen angels are now known as the demons.
We know that hell was prepared for the devil and his angels, according to Matthew 25:41: “Then He will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’” Jesus, by using the possessive word his makes it clear that these angels belong to Satan. Revelation 12:7-9 describes an end-times angelic battle between Michael and “his angels” and the devil and “his angels.” From these and similar verses, it is clear that demons and fallen angels are synonymous.
Some reject the idea that the demons are the fallen angels due to the fact that Jude verse 6 declares the angels who sinned to be “bound with everlasting chains.” However, it is clear that not all of the angels who sinned are “bound,” as Satan is still free (1 Peter 5:8). Why would God imprison the rest of the fallen angels, but allow the leader of the rebellion to remain free? It seems that Jude verse 6 is referring to God confining the fallen angels who rebelled in an additional way, likely the “sons of God” incident in Genesis chapter 6.
The most common alternate explanation for the origin of the demons is that when the Nephilim of Genesis 6 were destroyed in the Flood, their disembodied souls became the demons. While the Bible does not specifically say what happened to the souls of the Nephilim when they were killed, it is unlikely that God would destroy the Nephilim in the Flood only to allow their souls to cause even greater evil as the demons. The most biblically consistent explanation for the origin of the demons is that they are the fallen angels, the angels who rebelled against God with Satan. xhttps://www.gotquestions.org/fallen-angels.html
What is it that feeds our battle, yet starves our victory?
Do We Still Need the Kang (Mis)Quote?
I’m still using the quote about winning the battles but losing the war. It seems like this doesn’t make sense right now given that we seem to be going from triumph to triumph.
On the contrary. This is the exception that proves the rule. The quote isn’t just a lament, it’s to point out why we can never seem to win.
You see, the RINOs cannot interfere and that is why, just for once, we are actually winning. And that is just one more piece of evidence (for the willfully blind) as to what I have been saying with that quote.
It stays.
Speaker Johnson Pinging you on January 6 Tapes
Just a friendly reminder Speaker Johnson. You’re doing some good things–or at least trying in the case of the budget–but this is the most important thing out there still hanging. One initial block released with the promise of more…and?
We have American patriots being held without bail and without trial, and the tapes almost certainly contain exculpatory evidence. (And if they don’t, and we’re all just yelling in an echo chamber over here, we need to know that too. And there’s only one way to know.)
Either we have a weaponized, corrupt government or we have a lot of internet charlatans. Let’s expose whatever it is. (I’m betting it’s the corrupt weaponized government, but if I am wrong, I’d like to see proof.)
Justice Must Be Done.
The 2020 election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.
Yes this is still true in spite of 2024. Fraud must be rooted out of our system and that hasn’t changed just because the fraud wasn’t enough to stop Trump winning a second term. Fraud WILL be ramped up as soon as we stop paying attention.
Otherwise, everything ends again in 2028. Or perhaps earlier if Trump is saddled with a Left/RINO congress in 2026, via fraud.
Small Government?
Many times conservatives (real and fake) speak of “small government” being the goal.
This sounds good, and mostly is good, but it misses the essential point. The important thing here isn’t the size, but rather the purpose, of government. We could have a cheap, small tyranny. After all our government spends most of its revenue on payments to individuals and foreign aid, neither of which is part of the tyrannical apparatus trying to keep us locked down and censored. What parts of the government would be necessary for a tyranny? It’d be a lot smaller than what we have now. We could shrink the government and nevertheless find it more tyrannical than it is today.
No, what we want is a limited government, limited not in size, but rather in scope. Limited, that is, in what it’s allowed to do. Under current circumstances, such a government would also be much smaller, but that’s a side effect. If we were in a World War II sort of war, an existential fight against nasty dictatorships on the brink of world conquest, that would be very expensive and would require a gargantuan government, but that would be what the government should be doing. That would be a large, but still limited government, since it’d be working to protect our rights.
World War II would have been the wrong time to squawk about “small government,” but it wasn’t (and never is) a bad time to demand limited government. Today would be a better time to ask for a small government–at least the job it should be doing is small today–but it misses the essential point; we want government to not do certain things. Many of those things we don’t want it doing are expensive but many of them are quite eminently doable by a smaller government than the one we have today. Small, but still exceeding proper limits.
So be careful what you ask for. You might get it and find you asked for the wrong thing.
Political Science In Summation
It’s really just a matter of people who can’t be happy unless they control others…versus those who want to be left alone. The oldest conflict within mankind. Government is necessary, but government attracts the assholes (a highly technical term for the control freaks).
His Truth?
Again we saw an instance of “It might be true for Billy, but it’s not true for Bob” logic this week.
I hear this often, and it’s usually harmless. As when it’s describing differing circumstances, not different facts. “Housing is unaffordable” can be true for one person, but not for another who makes ten times as much.
But sometimes the speaker means it literally. Something like 2+2=4 is asserted to be true for Billy but not for Bob. (And when it’s literal, it’s usually Bob saying it.) And in that sense, it’s nonsense, dangerous nonsense. There is ONE reality, and it exists independent of our desires and our perceptions. It would go on existing if we weren’t here. We exist in it. It does not exist in our heads. It’s not a personal construct, and it isn’t a social construct. If there were no society, reality would continue to be what it is, it wouldn’t vanish…which it would have to do, if it were a social construct.
Now what can change from person to person is the perception of reality. We see that all the time. And people will, of course, act on those perceptions. They will vote for Trump (or try to) if their perception is close to mine, and vote against Trump (and certainly succeed at doing so) if their perception is distant from mine (and therefore, if I do say so, wrong). I have heard people say “perception is reality” and usually, that’s what they’re trying to say–your perception of reality is, as far as you know, an accurate representation of reality, or you’d change it.
But I really wish they’d say it differently. And sometimes, to get back to Billy and Bob, the person who says they have different truths is really saying they have different perceptions of reality–different worldviews. I can’t argue with the latter. But I sure wish they’d say it better. That way I’d know that someone who blabbers about two different truths is delusional and not worth my time, at least not until he passes kindergarten-level metaphysics on his umpteenth attempt.
Lawyer Appeasement Section
OK now for the fine print.
This is the Q Tree Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Political 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.
Gold blooped up over the 3000 dollar mark briefly Friday, but retreated a bit and closed at the level shown above (it actually closed a bit higher than that on Thursday). So of course the FRNSI is at an all-time weekly high. Silver did very well this last week; long overdue; gold is now worth over an ounce less silver than last week. Platinum shows some signs of life. Maybe it is only mostly dead.
*The SteveInCO Federal Reserve Note Suckage Index (FRNSI) is a measure of how much the dollar has inflated. It’s the ratio of the current price of gold, to the number of dollars an ounce of fine gold made up when the dollar was defined as 25.8 grains of 0.900 gold. That worked out to an ounce being $20.67+71/387 of a cent. (Note gold wasn’t worth this much back then, thus much gold was $20.67 71/387ths. It’s a subtle distinction. One ounce of gold wasn’t worth $20.67 back then, it was $20.67.) Once this ratio is computed, 1 is subtracted from it so that the number is zero when the dollar is at its proper value, indicating zero suckage.
The Ides of March
Yes, our calendar is a direct descendant of the Roman calendar, particularly after Julius Caesar’s reforms.
That doesn’t mean we’d have any idea WTF we were looking at when looking at a Roman Calendar. They didn’t lay out months in tidy little rectangles like we do, with days numbered from 1-31. (Or 30, or 28 or fairly rarely 29.)
Nope they did something totally wacky, at least from our point of view.
The Kalends was the first day of the month. The Nones was the ninth day before the Ides. The Ides were, in turn the 15th day of full months (months of 31 days), or the 13th day of hollow months (months of 30 days) [Before Julius and Augustus Caesar, February had 30 days.] After some reforms months could have four different lengths and even the 31 day months were handled two different ways.
Counting through the days of the month, the 1st was “on the Kalends”. the 2nd was “the day after the Kalends” OR it could be called (in March, May, July and October–MMJO) the “Sixth day before the Nones” and for every other month the “Fourth day before the Nones”. Then count down each subsequent day until on the 7th (MMJO) or 5th (all others), was “On the Nones.” But beware because the “Third day before the Nones” was followed by “the day before the Nones” (there was no “second day before the Nones). The next day (8th or 6th) was “The day after the Nones.” OR that day could be called the 8th day before the Ides. Then the 7th, 6th, 5th, 4th, 3rd days before the Nones…and then skipping over “the second day before the Ides” to “the day before the Ides.” Then the Ides…which was on the 15th (MMJO) or 13th (all other months).
Then it gets tricky. For MMJO, the day after the Ides (the 16th) could be called “The day after the ides” or “the 17th day before the Kalends” Note, though that (for example) March 16 was called “the 14th day before the Kalends of April.” So April was being named…even though it was really still March! For January, August, and December, the “day after the Ides” (the 14th) was also “the 19th day before the Kalends”. For April, June, September, and November (all 30 days at the time), the “Day after the Ides” (the 14th) was “the 18th day before the Kalends”. For February (28 or 29 days) the “Day after the Ides” (the 14th) was either the 16th or 17th day before the Kalends of March”.
You would then count down to the second-to-last-day of the month and that would be the 3rd day of the Kalends, and the last day would be “the day before the kalends.”
Of course they did this in Latin, not English, so for example, they’d say “ante diem tertium decimum Kalendas” (the 13th day before the Kalends) and write it down as “a.d. XIII Kal.” since who wants to write all that out?
The day after Kalends, Nones, or Ides were considered “black” days and unlucky. (Though they were off one day for Julius Caesar.)
[Note before the Julian reforms, there were no thirty day months; there were MMJO (31 days), February (28 days) and everything else (29 days) and they followed the rules for MMJO, 28 day Februaries, and the 29 day February, respectively). When the caesars made January, August and December into 31 day months, they actually left the Ides in the same place relative to the Kalends (i.e., on what we call the 13th of the month) rather than moving the Ides to the 15th, to avoid messing up festival days.]
Somehow, they were able to use this insanely complex system and still have enough brainpower left to conquer the entire Mediterranean world.
And NO I don’t have this memorized, I had to look it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar. Otherwise I’d not have the brainpower left to butcher the topic of geology.
A Deeper Dive on Isotopes
Last time I described the atomic nucleus as it came to be known during the early 20th century, and I discussed radioactivity. I touched on isotopes a bit; time for a deeper dive.
As chemists worked to measure atomic weights for all known elements (painstaking and unglamorous work; the ones doing this are the unsung heroes of chemistry) it became apparent that most elements had atomic weights that were almost an integer multiple of the element with the lightest atomic weight: hydrogen (for example, taking hydrogen as 1 (not the currently used value!), helium comes in at 3.971, very close to 4. But there were a few oddballs, too, elements with a not-very-close multiple, like (and now I’ll use the current values, with hydrogen at 1.008, not 1.000) boron (10.81), neon (20.18), chlorine (35.45). Just eyeballing the list it looks like about a quarter of all elements are “off” like this.
It wasn’t until people started ionizing elements and sending the ions through a magnetic field to see how much their trajectories bent that we started to understand this. This was first done by J. J. Thomson (who had discovered the electron, and loved to play with magnets and charged particles) in 1912 with neon gas. Neon is atomic number 10, ten protons, and as I mentioned its atomic weight is 20.18. Thomson discovered that neon is actually mixture of two different things, one with an atomic weight of 20, another with an atomic weight of 22. The signal was weaker for 22, so he figured it neon was mostly the atomic-weight-twenty stuff.
These were both undeniably neon; there was no way to separate them chemically because they both behaved the same (which is to say, being totally unwilling to engage in chemical reactions; neon is a noble gas). They just weighed different. Thomson however had been brought up believing that atomic weight was an inherent property of an element, so he thought of it as two separate gases. We don’t think this any more. They’re both neon. And we now know there’s a very small amount of neon atoms with a mass of 21.
As more and more of these experiments happened, it became clear; if an element’s atomic weight was far off from an integer, it was a mix of these “isotopes.” Aston (who formulated the “whole number rule” for isotopic masses) showed in 1920 that chlorine’s 35.45 atomic weight was due to being a mixture of atoms with mass 35 and mass 37 units.
When talking about just the nucleus of an atom, we often use the term nuclide instead of isotope (which is the whole atom). It’s not a hard and fast rule but chemists will tend to use “isotope” and nuclear physicists including those researching fusion will be a bit more likely to say “nuclide.”
Again, the chemical behavior is nearly identical. In principle a heavier isotope should be slightly slower to react than an lighter one, but the practical difference is nil except in one case. Thus when it matters (and it usually doesn’t), chemists and physicists will write something like neon-20 or neon-22. When they can do so they will follow the formal convention: 20Ne or 22Ne. I am able to do that here (writing the post) but not in comments; but it’s such a pain to do so (wordpiss), that I will stick with writing either neon-20 or Ne-20.
And by the way, for our purposes here, it does matter. Quite a lot.
The one exception regarding chemical differences is the case of hydrogen, which usually has mass number of 1, but some few atoms have a mass number of 2. If you concentrate the mass-2 stuff, and use it to make water, you have heavy water, which even though it’s technically hydrogen monoxide just like tap water is, will kill you. (It also melts at 4 degrees Celsius so it’s possible to put a heavy water ice cube in a glass of water at 1 degree Celsius and it won’t melt. It will sink to the bottom, too, which is even weirder.) In fact for hydrogen and hydrogen alone, there are “special” names for the heavier isotopes; hydrogen-2 is called deuterium and (in this context) hydrogen-1 is called protium. There is also hydrogen-3, which is radioactive and is called tritium.
Once the neutron was discovered by James Chadwick in 1932, we got some clarity as to what was going on. Neutrons, it turns out are very slightly more massive than protons, We now know that neon-20, neon-21 and neon-22 all contain ten protons (neon has ten protons, by definition), but they contain 10, 11, and 12 neutrons, respectively, the total of the two numbers 10+10, 10+11, 10+12 gives you the mass number.
So what happens when you do this sort of analysis on other elements as found in nature? Fluorine (#9) has one isotope, F-19. Tin (#50) has no less than ten isotopes: Sn-112, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, and 124. The natural proportion for each of these ranges from 0.34 percent to 33 percent.
It is possible to create isotopes in the lab. So long as the number of neutrons isn’t too high or low, you’ll get a nucleus that hangs together for a while, perhaps even permanently. Otherwise the excess neutrons will “drip” off (fail to stick even momentarily) or if there are too few neutrons, a proton will “drip” off.
Between these bounds, the isotope will be intensely radioactive, less intensely radioactive, even less intensely radioactive, dang near stable, or actually stable. (Those are not “official” terms by the way.) And if you include all those made-in-a-lab-and-very-unstable isotopes the isotope counts go way up. Tritium is one of them for instance, and tin actually has isotopes ranging from 99 through 140.
Why do we need to make those highly radioactive isotopes in a lab? Because if there were any on earth originally, they have long since decayed away and none are left.
[If you poke around on wikipedia you may see references to something being “observationally stable.” That means an isotope that they believe on theoretical grounds is almost stable but it’s so close to stable they haven’t caught it decaying yet. In other words “we think this ought to be very very mildly radioactive–so mild we haven’t detected it yet so maybe it’s really stable after all.” Three of the ten tin isotopes I mentioned are “observationally stable”]
Because we are able to produce almost-arbitrary nuclides in the lab, we have pretty complete tables of nuclides–both a table with columns and a bunch of numbers in them, like you see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_tin, or nice graphical ones like this:
Going across the bottom, you have the number of neutrons, going up you have the number of protons, as shown in this excerpt from the very lower left corner. Note that the same isotope number for different elements lie on a diagonal. (They also threw in a bare neutron, mass number 1, element zero.)
The colors indicate how the isotopes decay; black is a stable isotope. Blue is a β+ (positron) decay (or capturing an electron), orange is losing a proton (technically it’s “dripping” the proton), deep purple is dripping a neutron, yellow is alpha decay (note that 8Be alpha decays–and what’s left over is a helium nucleus, which is itself an alpha particle; so really it just splits in two). Green (visible at the other end of the chart) is spontaneous fission where a nucleus splits into two or more large pieces. Finally the pink or light purple squares like 3H are β– (ordinary beta decay).
If you paid attention last time, you should be able to figure out what the isotope will turn into. For example 10Be undergoes beta decay, so it goes up one in charge (it now has 5 protons) but stays the same mass. It becomes boron-10, which is stable.
This chart also indicates half life. And I will more than likely be pasting in other pieces of it in future posts.
OK, so we have this list of all possible isotopes (and ones that arguably shouldn’t be considered isotopes because they “drip” when you try to create them). What do we see when we look “out there” on Earth? This is, after all, supposedly a series on geology, right?
The isotopes we see fall into three broad categories.
Stable isotopes. Every single stable isotope is found on Earth. Every last one.
Long lived isotopes. Isotopes over a certain half-life (which I will discuss below) will be found on Earth too. Again, every last one. (And by the way some of those half lives exceed present day estimates of the age of the earth by millions or even billions of times. And “observationally stable” isotopes, if they turn out to be radioactive, will have even longer half lives.)
Short lived isotopes. Some of the known short-lived isotopes can be found in nature. Here’s the thing though. In all of these cases, we can identify a natural process that is creating those isotopes, even at the present moment. For example, carbon-14 with a half life of about 5,760 years is being produced in the upper atmosphere by cosmic rays impacting nitrogen-14 nuclei. Uranium-234 has a half life of 245,500 years, and is created by uranium-238 decay (U-238 becomes thorium-234 due to an alpha decay, then Th-234 becomes protactinium-234 via beta decay, then Pa-234 becomes U-234 after another beta decay). All of those intermediate products, of course, we also detect in nature (and they have very short half lives of days or hours) so they fall into this category too. But, very important: We do not have any short lived isotopes we cannot account for this way.
This actually paints a picture: We have a situation where we have primordial isotopes–ones that apparently were always here on Earth, and the others, that weren’t. Since anything that could be a primordial nuclide based on being stable or having a long half life, is here, there’s no reason to suppose that some other nuclide that is now not found in nature wasn’t actually once here–only to have decayed completely away. Which means the Earth would have to be old enough for them to be gone by now.
OK, so what’s the dividing line between short lived and long lived isotopes? Somewhere between 100 and 700 million years.
Uranium-236 is listed twice (I just noticed). The 234,200,000 figure should not be there, so I crossed it out.
We cannot find plutonium-244 in nature. We’ve tried, some claim to have found it, but it’s inconclusive. Likewise with samarium-146. But we have no trouble finding uranium-235…and were even able to send Hiroshima, Japan a care package of the stuff on August 6 of 1945, the first nuclear bomb to be detonated in anger.
As it happens, samarium-146, if any were present on our Earth 4.5 billion years ago, would have gone through over 40 half lives, which is to say less than a trillionth of it would be left today. Uranium-235 (which we know was here) has gone through six half lives, so over one percent of it is still left.
In other words, this situation is consistent with Earth being 4.5 billion or so years old, as dated by other methods. If there were significant amounts of Pu-244 or Sm-146 around, the Earth would have to be considerably younger than this (though it could still be in the billions of years) for that to make sense.
All told, there are 251 stable nuclides, and 35 long-lived primordial nuclides.
As it happens many of the primordial nuclides can be of use in radiometric dating. We’ll dive into that next time. It’s now 10:16 PM here and I’m sure people are getting antsy.
The above free image of heart shapes is courtesy of iStock and Google Images.
Health Friday is a series devoted to information about Big Pharma, vaccines, general health, and associated topics. As today’s post speaks about the disaster of COVID-19 (the COVID-19 virus itself, and the COVID-19 “vaccines”), Yours Truly dedicates it to the memory of all persons, of whatever age or location, who have passed away from the negative effects of these lab-created bioweapons.
There are Important Wolf Moon Notifications; the Rules of our late, good Wheatie; and, certain caveats from Yours Truly, of which readers should be aware. They are linked here. NOTE: Yours Truly has checked today’s offering for any AI-generated content. To the best of my knowledge and belief, there is none. Also: if readers wish to post anything in the discussion thread for today’s offering that is AI-generated, they must cite their source.
Today’s post may be regarded as a “narrow-focus” offering, one of a “mini-series.” This first “narrow-focus” offering regards the inducement of cardiac issues after COVID-19 “vaccination”; and, the potential for cardiac issues also induced from an infection of the COVID-19 virus itself. Yours Truly begins here: https://www.thefocalpoints.com/p/new-study-fatal-malignant-cardiac, “NEW STUDY — Fatal Malignant Cardiac Tumors Following COVID-19 mRNA Injection”, by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH, 6 March 2025. The paper that is cited in the article is here: https://doi.org/10.1093/ehjcr/ytaf009, “Heart-breaking tumours: a case series of malignant pericardial effusion”, Abdur Rahman Mirza, et al., 18 January 2025. The paper is also found here: https://academic.oup.com/ehjcr/article/9/3/ytaf009/7960074. Below are screenshots of the Introduction of the paper; followed by a screenshot of the graphic of the paper that traces the “journey of pericarditis”:
And, the final portion of the Discussion section of the paper:
Note the mention of “diagnostic bias” regarding whether or not a cardiac issue presents after the patient has been COVID-19 “vaccinated.” In Yours Truly’s opinion, the young physician who is the lead author of the cited paper has likely not studied how the COVID-19 “vaccines” affect the heart (for example, this article: https://doctors4covidethics.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/causality-article.pdf, “Vascular and organ damage induced by mRNA vaccines: irrefutable proof of causality”, Michael Palmer, MD, and Sucharit Bhakdi, MD); has likely not read the BNT162b2 5.3.6 Postmarketing Experience report that Pfizer-BioNTech gave to the FDA in April 2021 (https://phmpt.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/5.3.6-postmarketing-experience.pdf); and, has likely not read any of the posts that Dr. Peter A. McCullough, MD, has on his website (https://www.thefocalpoints.com/.) One suspects that many other physicians have not read these items, either.
Turning to the Hulscher article on The Focal Points blog, cited above: It is known that the COVID-19 “vaccines” can, and do, cause pericarditis, a type of inflammation involving the heart (please refer to the BNT162b2 Postmarketing Experience report cited above, page 36 of the report, in the Appendix 1. List of Adverse Events of Special Interest section of said report.) The Cleveland Clinic has an article on pericarditis, found here: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/17353-pericarditis. Below is a screenshot from the Cleveland Clinic article:
It is also known that the COVID-19 “vaccines” can, and do, cause myocarditis (another type of cardiac inflammation.) Both pericarditis and myocarditis can, and do, cause permanent damage to the heart. Both pericarditis and myocarditis can ultimately result in the death of the patient. However, the COVID-19 “vaccines” contain BOTH the ingredients of the original Wuhan Hu1 virus (SARS-CoV-2 virus, aka COVID-19 virus), AND lab “enhancements” (dangerous lipid nanoparticles; N1-methylpseudouridine; “loose DNA” from the manufacturing process; a piece of the SV40 African Green Monkey cancer promoter gene code) — that make the COVID-19 “vaccines” much more dangerous and/or deadly to the cardiac system of the “vaccinated” person. There is more new information on this situation (thank you to Valerie Curren): https://slaynews.com/news/epidemiologist-new-data-linking-covid-vaccines-global-heart-death-surge/, by Frank Bergman, 1 March 2025. The paper linked in the article is found here: https://doi.org/10.4330/wjc.v17.12.1039909, “Risk stratification for future cardiac arrest after COVID-19 vaccination”, Peter A. McCullough, MD, and Nicolas Hulscher, MPH, 26 February 2025. Below are two screenshots from the paper: the Abstract; and, the McCullough Protocol for spike protein detoxification:
Note the clear statement that cardiac issues can appear years after the person is COVID-19 “vaccinated.”
And, the McCullough Protocol:
Yours Truly finds it ** interesting ** that the above paper was given a “Grade C” for “scientific quality” by the paper’s reviewers, none of whom are identified except by their initials.
Malignant pericardial effusion is the subject of the Mirza, et al., paper cited above in today’s post.
**** On the other hand, the COVID-19 virus itself can cause cardiac issues in persons who contract an infection of said virus. The following paper is from July 2020, well before any COVID-19 “vaccines” was granted an Emergency Use Authorization in any country: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41569-020-0413-9, “COVID-19 and cardiovascular disease: from basic mechanisms to clinical perspectives”, Masataka Nishiga, et al., 20 July 2020. This paper is a good source of information regarding how the COVID-19 virus itself works; and, how this virus can affect the cardiovascular system. A screenshot of the Abstract of the paper is below:
Another paper, also from 2020, well before any COVID-19 “vaccine” was granted an EUA, regards how the COVID-19 virus itself can affect the cardiovascular system: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7095524/, “COVID-19 and the cardiovascular system”, Yi-Tong Ma, et al., 5 March 2020. Yours Truly finds it ** interesting ** that the authors of this paper are affiliated with either the Wuhan Institute of Virology, or to medical facilities linked to the People’s Liberation Army (all CCP.) Below is a screenshot from the Background section of the paper:
The following article has more information on the ACE2 receptors in the human body: https://www.cas.org/resources/cas-insights/ace2-covid-19-target, “ACE2: Targeting a potentially important receptor in disease pathogensis”, by Angela Zhou, 15 December 2022. Below is a screenshot from this article:
The point here is that BOTH the COVID-19 virus itself (aka SARS-CoV-2), AND the COVID-19 “vaccines” (since these injectables contain SARS-CoV-2), target and attack the ACE2 receptor cells in the human body.
Yours Truly will again emphasize that the COVID-19 virus itself, AND the COVID-19 “vaccines”, were BOTH designed to cause as much damage to the human body as possible. They are BOTH lab-created bioweapons. The COVID-19 virus is not “just another type of virus.” The COVID-19 “vaccines” were designed to be capable of “shedding” elements of these injectables onto other persons (whether those persons are “vaccinated”, or not.) What is of utmost importance is that all people, “vaccinated” or not, must be doing all that is possible to have, and to maintain, the highest degree of personal health. The COVID-19 “vaccines” must be removed from use worldwide — now.
Welcome. Please visit this January 1st daily thread for the rules of the road, which are few but important.
2024 Presidential Election Map by County. (an uncertain credit) Let us Never Forget: our VOTES gave the Trump Administration a Mandate to FIX IT ALL.
Do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.
For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. — Galatians 5:1
We got our miracle. America is back.
Let us dedicate ourselves to the cleansing, healing, and rebuilding of our beautiful nation.
God will guide us. Prayers & thanks to God for President Donald J. Trump.
Rogue States.
Picking up from last week’s presentation, United Sovereign Americans (USA) states that they have the evidence for declaring 5 states as having “gone rogue,” as being out of compliance with the U.S. Constitution, as provably illegitimate:
18/ Illinois, New York, California, Pennsylvania and Michigan are rogue states. No one in those governments knows if their congressional representatives are legitimate. I don’t know, you don’t know, and neither do they. Certifying elections for Congress with millions of fictitious voters and votes is an act of defiance against the United States Constitution, and USA has gathered the proof, from the states’ own official records, that this is exactly what happened. – @UnitedSAmerican
Not only is all of the above true, but there are many other ways in which many of the states are failed. Bankrupt. Corrupt. And worse. The levels of dissatisfaction of the people in all of the states are sky high.
At this point in the conversation, it’s important to note that any discussions of states leaving the Union will need to overcome this ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. “Texas v. White, 74 U.S. 700 (1868)” which is summarized here:
The secession of the Southern states in 1861 sparked the Civil War. The Confederacy was defeated on the battlefield rather than in the courts. However, subsequent legal issues created by attempts at independence led the courts to express an opinion on the legality of secession. In Texas v. White, a dispute over a bond sale by the Confederate States, the Supreme Court ruled in 1869 that Texas’ secession had not been legal. According to the majority opinion, entry into the Union formed “an indissoluble relation”; it was “final,”“perpetual,” and left “no place for reconsideration or revocation, except through revolution or through the consent of the States.”
As of this writing there are groups in Texas, California, Louisiana, Alaska, and New Hampshire that have as their stated goal to get their state to secede from the Union. However, it seems, without armed conflict, the only path for success involves a Constitutional amendment (which would require getting approval by two-thirds of both houses of Congress and being ratified by 38 states). This doesn’t seem very likely.
A New State.
What does the U.S. Constitution say about creating a new state? Article IV Section 3 of the United States Constitution says: “New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union; but no new States shall be formed or erected within the Jurisdiction of any other State; nor any State be formed by the Junction of two or more States, or parts of States, without the Consent of the Legislatures of the States concerned as well as of the Congress.”
Reading this in the context of those groups wanting to form a new state from territory currently part of another state it would require: (1) consent of the old state, (2) consent of the new state, and (3) consent of Congress.
The history of the creation of West Virginia’s statehood should be instructive (ref: National Archives, WVencyclopedia.org). I’m going to try and create the “Cliff Notes” version of the difficult and contentious history of the creation of the new state of West Virginia.*
Virginia joins confederacy, seceding from Union.
Western part of Virginia doesn’t agree with leaving the Union, but there is no longer a legitimate old state government to get consent from.
Western Virginia deliberates and develops a “reorganized” government of Virginia made up of representatives from non-secessionist areas in the state of Virginia (from June of 1861 to May of 1862).
On May 13, 1862, the state legislature of the reorganized government approves the formation of the new state from the non-secessionist areas of Virginia and a government of the new state of West Virginia is formed. (This new state of West Virginia obviously “consents” to the formation of the new state.)
An application for admission to the Union is then made to Congress. On July 14, 1862, the US Congress adopts a statehood bill for West Virginia, which includes the condition of gradually freeing all blacks under the age of 21 on July 4, 1863.
President Lincoln signs the enabling act on December 31, 1862.
The revised constitution for West Virginia, which meets the demand for gradual emancipation, is adopted on March 26, 1863.
On April 20, 1863, President Lincoln issues a proclamation admitting West Virginia to the Union at the end of 60 days, on June 20, 1863.
*Please respond in the comments if there are errors in the above summary, I make no claims to know much at all of what I am writing about here.
Dear Wolf and kind readers: some of the above was built from text given to me from Brave AI’s summarizer. I have now gone to the referenced sources to check Brave’s work and updated the text where necessary for clarity and to give credit to sources.
Separatist Movements.
Will Trump will sew a 51st star on our flag?
Time will not permit going into much detail on the various separatist movements active today (for creating new states or redrawing of state lines), but a pretty detailed article “Splitsville: separatist movements are gaining steam in blue states” written by Dave Seminara (published in “The Spectator” in January of this year) covers some of it (reprint here). Dave muddies up some of the details, but it’s still a great place to start reading. From the article:
According to Grant Dahl, co-host of the Secession Speakeasy podcast, there are separatist … movements in Oregon, Illinois, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, New Hampshire, Louisiana, California, Washington, Minnesota, New York and Pennsylvania.
The goals aren’t the same in each place — and some movements are far more serious than others. Dozens of counties in Illinois and Oregon, for example, have already voted in favor of some form of separation from their current states.
Apparently there are also movements in Michigan and Maryland, which are not in Dahl’s list.
Interesting Times.
Our Turn.
We can’t leave this to others. We can get informed on what has been found, what is being done about it, and what more needs to be done.
We can make a difference. And we must make a difference.
May God bless and guide you as you pray and take action for our nation.
Twitterati, etc.
And now for something completely different. @BretWeinstein might be an outlier in terms of your usual “trapline” on X (to borrow a term from another denizen of our tree, MarieUrsula), but he brings good insights to the table from time to time.
Prayer.
God Bless America, Land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her Thru the night with a light from above. From the mountains, to the prairies, To the oceans, white with foam God bless America, My home sweet home.
Before I get into the meat of this controversial subject, I want to cover a bit of background. …. The three topics are, Oligarchs, Propaganda, and Astroturf Terrorism. Since those three are critical to understanding our current situation, I am going to make this a stand alone article.
OLIGARCHS
This author has a very good definition which applies nicely to the Banksters and Mercantilists. He is correct, together they form the oligarchs who are intent on controlling the world.
An oligarch is someone who has amassed immense wealth and converted it into political and social authority…
The question is how does one become an oligarch? The suggestion is that some achieve oligarch status due to their shrewd business acumen. Many people are astute in business but that alone is not enough to rise to the oligarchy.👉In order to be an oligarch you have to be accepted by the other oligarchs. If oligarchs oppose you, your business will probably be crushed, or at least severely restricted, and access to political authority or social influence will be stifled…👈
PROPAGANDA
“We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” William J. Casey, CIA Director.
This quote was originally spoken by Casey sometime in early February of 1981, at a meeting in the Roosevelt Room in the West Wing of the White House, at which the White House policy analyst Barbara Honegger was present (who was then acting as Assistant to the chief domestic policy adviser to the President). She then relayed it to her Godmother, the Senior White House Correspondent Sarah McClendon, who made the quote public without naming the original source, through the Radio host Mae Brussel. — LINK
The primary tool that the Cabal (oligarchs) use against us is propaganda. This is why the EU and WEF are pushing so hard to clamp down on the truth and to get censorship re-installed in the USA and around the world.
Countering online disinformation is one of the biggest challenges democracies face today.
The European Union is listening to the concerns raised and taking serious action to counter the phenomenon. Here are 10 things the EU is doing to tackle disinformation: …The EU has a dedicated team, whose job it is to identify examples of disinformation targeting the EU and its citizens….
…The letter was sent by Thierry Breton and was dated August 12, 2024.
Thierry Breton is a French business executive, politician, writer and the current Commissioner for Internal Market of the European Union. In the letter, Thierry warns Elon Musk, “You have the legal obligation to ensure X’s compliance with EU law and in particular the DSA in the EU.”
Since when do Americans have to comply with EU law?
And what right does the EU have to censor OUR political candidates?
Speakers: Arthur Gregg Sulzberger, Vera Jourová, Jeanne Bourgault, Brian Stelter
Description:
How can the public, regulators and social media companies better collaborate to tackle disinformation, as information pollution spreads at unprecedented speed and scale?
WEF’s Global Risks Report 2025 downplays economic threats while pushing disinformation fears to justify tighter control and global governance.
And then there was the absolutely CLASSIC LIE of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer to President Trump and VP Vance.
We’ve had free speaks for a very very long time in the United Kingdom and it will last for a very very long time. – Starmer
Starmer gets the Trump stink eye.
Paul Joseph Watson showcasing Starmer’s lie. (9minutes) H/T Kea
In the USA, once the Central Bank was in place in 1913 the Cabal took over the media.
“In March, 1915, the J.P. Morgan interests, the steel, ship building and powder interests and their subsidiary organizations, got together 12 men high up in the newspaper world and employed them to select the most influential newspapers in the United States and sufficient number of them to control generally the policy of the daily press in the United States. LINK
…Obama might have slithered out of the White House without a flashy “legacy” tag, but he sure did leave a mess. It’s as if he was the Dems and Deep State’s MVP, playing a long game we’re still trying to wrap our heads around. He wasn’t just about making policy changes; he was on a mission to infiltrate every corner of our sacred institutions and flip them inside out for his—and their—advantage. Just look what he did by weaponizing the intel community, churches, health care, and so much more… back in 2013, he made a move to ditch the Smith-Mundt Act, basically rolling out the red carpet for propaganda in our national media. This wasn’t just a small change; it was a game changer for how stories are told and sold to us to this day…
Limited Hangouts
This is an absolutely critical concept because it is used to derail the curious.
Paperback sample link. Want to know what happened to California? CIA put LSD in the food of Americans from 1953 to 1963… DARN! Amazon will not allow me to link to the page with the sample so you will have to look at the samples for the kindle version and the paperback. (They are different.)
After reading that, I realized that it was very similar to Willing Accomplices: How KGB Covert Influence Agents Created Political Correctness and Destroyed America by former?? CIA Agent Kent Clizbe.Kent connected with me via Tony Heller’s site and gave me a free PDF of his draft over ten years ago. He even gave me his phone number! 🤔
In both cases our focus is directed towards the communists and NOT the Brits Fabian Society. Colonel Towner mentions the CIA uses the communists as their ‘Boogeyman’ in order to justify their regime change coups. The coups are NOT about ‘democracy’ but about helping the Transnational corporations, her ‘International Syndicate,’ acquire raw materials and cheap labor.
Whether these men know it or not they are purveyors of the type of propaganda called a ‘Limited Hang-out’
The best weapon you can have in the Second American Revolution is the ability to think clearly and critically. The Deep State has been working hard to keep Americans from real truth–from the inside job of 9-11, to the human trafficking and blackmail operations that keep our elected officials in tow, to the U.S. Patent Office theft of hundreds of patents from social media to free energy. What many people do not know is that it is legal to propagandize and terrorize Americans thanks to the NDAA…
One area of propaganda that you may not be aware of is something called controlled opposition, also known as limited or partial hangouts.
A limited hangout or partial hangout is, according to former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence AgencyVictor Marchetti, “spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”…
….This question would go through our minds every time we would see a new false flag event plastered all over the media. Like many of you, we would think, “It has to be real, otherwise the government and participants would be engaging in treason.” But the narrative and the evidence never seem to match up.
…It even seemed that the “official story” that was “fed” to the news agencies was filled with holes on purpose. When 450 responders showed up in San Bernardino, including FEMA, ATF, Homeland Security, FBI, DoD, and all local agencies, within 14 minutes and had their lawn chairs and coolers set up while most of them walked around aimlessly with no worries in the world, we couldn’t take it anymore. We had always known that “false flags” usually precede severe military action and we couldn’t really imagine military action within US domestic borders since the military is not empowered to act against its own citizens.
Therefore, we decided to WAKE UP and study the false flag phenomena. Don’t presume to think this is just another conspiracy theory article. What you will read will chill you to the bone. We know this is a long article, but while you were sleeping much has been done to destroy your country. You need to see the immense work that is being done behind your back…
Astroturf Terrorism
‘Strategy of Tension’ It is important to understand this concept. The world we live in today operates on a strategy of tension. Most people do not know enough history to realize that if you look at a world map of 1910 and you look at a world map of 1950 there are a lot of ‘made-up countries’ that did not exist in 1910. — Colonel Towner
Colonel Towner goes on to say that after WWII when the maps of Europe and the Middle East were redrawn, incompatible groups were placed together in one country. This guaranteed conflicts within a country could easily be ignited.
….The Cloward-Piven Strategy of Orchestrated Crisis
In an earlier post, I noted the liberal record of unmitigated legislative disasters, the latest of which is now being played out in the financial markets before our eyes. Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress – with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?
Why?
One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit….
I have already introduced Colonel Towner and Operation Gladio to the Qtree in other articles, this is another author who documents how Operation Gladio was revealed:
Operation Gladio was formally revealed in 1990 by the Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti in an official statement to the Italian parliament. By then, Gladio had already been exposed in the courts and elsewhere, but Andreotti’s ‘official’ revelations widely exposed the unpalatable reality. Italian investigations, into the ‘Years of Lead‘, revealed NATO’s hand in a series of terrorist atrocities that had taken place in Italy throughout the 1950s to the 1980s. These included bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and mass shootings by terrorist organisations. There is no doubt that elements within the NATO deep state were routinely using false flag terrorism to control and manipulate public opinion and shape policy.
This is not the speculation of ‘looney conspiracy theorists,’ it is proven, well documented historical fact…
Following the end of WWII, both the U.S. and British intelligence agencies…
The co-option of Nazi technological and scientific expertise was enabled through Operation Paperclip. Top Nazi scientists, intelligence operatives, engineers and military strategists were either protected from prosecution or resettled in the U.S. and elsewhere. Authorised by President Truman in 1946, who stipulated that no committed National Socialists should be co-opted, the secret operation nonetheless supported many fervent Nazis….
Valierie pointed to this Book: “Destroying America: The CIA’s Quest to Control the Government.”
Meticulously sourced and rife with documentation from beginning to end, DESTROYING AMERICA details the CIA’s quest to control the government and shows how one Presidential Administration after another supported the egregious corruption in the CIA and government. It shows how Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, are intricately involved in CIA corruption.
CIA officers and CIA “assets” have been targeted for the Presidency in Presidential races from 1964 to 2016, and there have been CIA officers in Congress since the earlyi950s.
Over the years, CIA officers in Congress have risen through the ranks to become some of the most powerful and influential members of Congress. They have ranged across the political spectrum from the far left to the far right…
An interesting side note based on information that Colonel Towner brought up. Obama’s mother worked for USAID. The CIA funded foreign students that they radicalized and used as part of their Werewolf Units in their home countries. Now think of Barack Obama, Sr. and Lolo Soetoro. BOTH were subversives. SEE: 2010
We continue to mourn the untimely passing of our beloved compatriot DePat, known in real life as Susie Sampson, and also as author Patricia Holden.
Until we have a dedicated author for the Tuesday daily open thread, I will be posting “placeholders” like this one, which may or may not be spiced up with additional content.
Gudthots will take DePat’s old Thursday daily open thread.
Please notify me in advance if you would like to post anything in lieu of the Tuesday placeholder. We welcome all content – the topic doesn’t matter.
W
Hidden Colors, Rainbows and MAPs
Follow The Dichroic Rabbit – From the Roman Empire, through Cabal Kingmakers, to Ukrainian Bio Labs and Beyond
This is going to be a weird, if not wild post. And I’m bringing a friend!
In some ways it’s very “Gail” – in other ways it’s very “Valerie”. It’s also very “Steve” and a bit “para59r”. But I will try to keep it as WOLFM00N as possible, whatever that means.
Valerie said THIS on Thursday, March 6, 2025:
My response explains this very post and it’s odd title:
I will try to get through this quickly.
This cup Valerie is asking about, is well-described on Wikipedia:
By Chappsnet – Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=142942126
The most magnificent of all ancient #Roman ‘cage cups’ is the 4th c. CE Lycurgus Cup, made of dichroic glass. In normal light, the glass appears milky green, when backlit, it glows a ruby red. The effect was achieved by adding silver and gold nanoparticles to the glass.
By Brit_Mus_13sept10_brooches_etc_044.jpg: Johnbodderivative work: Johnbod (talk) – Brit_Mus_13sept10_brooches_etc_044.jpg, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11549754
When viewed in reflected light, as in this flash photograph, the cup’s dichroic glass is green in colour, whereas when viewed in transmitted light, the glass appears red.
Dichroism – literally “two colors” – can come from a variety of physical phenomena.
The first time I ever saw this, during high school, it was also red-green dichroism – from chlorophyll. Yes – a simple suspension of chlorophyll in aqueous alcohol looks vivid green, until a flashlight is shown directly into it, in which case it glows RED from fluorescence of the chlorophyll.
Many phenomena will give rise to dichroism, which can be of many different kinds and degrees. All that is needed is for there to be a change in the spectrum of light leaving an object, which somehow depends on the specifics of the illumination of the object. “Di-” is used loosely, in that dichroism can include two or more – and includes “tri-“, “quatra-“, and even “poly-“.
Even more confusing, dichroism can refer to different lights being shined ONTO something together.
Steve has mentioned circular polarization of light. This can be used to investigate stereochemistry (the “handedness” of molecules) using a phenomenon/technique called circular dichroism. A.k.a. CD.
To be almost too brief, CD is this. An equal mix of right-handed and left-handed light (thus dichroic) will notice the difference between right-handed and left-handed molecules, as well as the difference of either of these from unhanded molecules. CD can thus tell you about the handedness of a sample.
Note that an actual human heart is “handed”, but an idealized one is not.
So – “dichroism” is used two ways – for both (1) two (or more) kinds of light leaving an object, and (2) a sort of reverse scenario, in which two kinds of light impinge upon an object simultaneously. Wikipedia states it like this:
In optics, a dichroic material is either one which causes visible light to be split up into distinct beams of different wavelengths (colours) (not to be confused with dispersion), or one in which light rays having different polarizations are absorbed by different amounts.[1]
So now let’s answer, very specifically, Valerie’s original question: how does the Lycurgus Cup work? Well, I found a great answer. I don’t regard this as “settled science” – but this is very likely close to the truth.
The dichroic effect is achieved by making the glass with tiny proportions of nanoparticles of gold and silver dispersed in colloidal form throughout the glass material. The process used remains unclear, and it is likely that it was not well understood or controlled by the makers, and was probably discovered by accidental “contamination” with minutely ground gold and silver dust. The glass-makers may not even have known that gold was involved, as the quantities involved are so tiny; they may have come from a small proportion of gold in any silver added (most Roman silver contains small proportions of gold), or from traces of gold or gold leaf left by accident in the workshop, as residue on tools, or from other work. The very few other surviving fragments of Roman dichroic glass vary considerably in their two colours.[7]
The glass
It is estimated that to a conventionally composed Roman glass flux 330 parts per million of silver and 40 of gold were added: “These particles were precipitated as colloids and form a silver-gold alloy. When viewed in reflected light the minute metallic particles are just coarse enough to reflect enough of the light without eliminating the transmission. In transmitted light the fine particles scatter the blue end of the spectrum more effectively than the red end, resulting in red transmission, and this is the colour observed. Since it is impossible that the Roman artisans managed to add these incredibly low levels of silver and gold to the volume of the glass used to make the vessel deliberately, the levels were probably added at higher levels to a larger volume of glass-melt, and increasingly diluted by adding more glass.”[8] The particles are only about 70 nanometers across,[9] and embedded in the glass, so they cannot be seen by optical microscopy, and a transmission electron microscope is needed instead.[10] At this size they approach the size of the wavelengths of visible light, and a surface plasmon resonance effect takes place.[11]
TL;DR – the highly dilute metal nanoparticles interact with visible light, scattering blue and transmitting red. The result is greenish reflection and reddish transmission.
One other thing.
Although I can’t get into the details, my early learning about dichroisim is connected to my knowledge of “occultish things in academic science”. Thus, I was immediately calling for backup by Suspicious Cat as soon as I knew we were talking about dichroic glass.
Suspicious Cat – TheseTruths.jpg
The fact that the artistic subject of the Lycurgus Cup is mythology about what Aubergine refers to as “the old gods” is just a hint of the attraction this stuff holds for the more idolatrous humans.
Check out the cup’s recent history. COUGH, COUGH, COUGH.
The early history of the cup is unknown, and it is first mentioned in print in 1845, when a French writer said he had seen it “some years ago, in the hands of M. Dubois”.[41] This is probably shortly before it was acquired by the Rothschild family.[42] Certainly Lionel de Rothschild owned it by 1857, when the touring Gustav Friedrich Waagen saw it in his collection and described it as “barbaric and debased”.[43] In 1862 Lionel lent it to an exhibition at what is now the Victoria and Albert Museum, after which it virtually fell from scholarly view until 1950. In 1958, Victor, Lord Rothschild sold it to the British Museum for £20,000, £2,000 of which was donated by the Art Fund (then the NACF).[44]
The cup forms part of the museum’s Department of Prehistory and Europe rather than the Greece and Rome Department, and was previously on display, lit from behind, in Room 50. In 2015 it was on display with the new display of the Rothschild donation of the Waddesdon Bequest in Room 2A, with a changing internal lighting source that shows the colour change very effectively, though only one side of the cup can be seen. By October 2015 it was back in the re-opened Room 41.
While Room 41, where it was then displayed, was closed for refurbishment, from November 2012 to August 2013 it was on display with other British Museum pieces at The Art Institute of Chicago‘s Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman and Byzantine Art,[45] where it was very effectively displayed in a free-standing case, lit from above with changing light so that the colour change was clearly visible.[46][47] It is considered able to travel to important exhibitions and in 2008 was exhibited in “Reflecting Antiquity, Modern Glass Inspired by Ancient Rome” at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, New York, in 2003 at the Hayward Gallery in London in “‘Saved! 100 Years of the National Art Collections Fund”, and in 1987 in “Glass of the Caesars” in the British Museum, Cologne, Milan, and Rome.[48]
Oh, this fascination with dichroism doesn’t just start or end with the Roths.
Consider scarab beetles, many of which show dichroism due to nanostructural layering in their shell materials. Here is the rainbow scarab:
Interestingly, there is good evidence that such beetles, in which increasing color has to be balanced with decreases in structural strength, have undergone evolution of their shells primarily for color, rather than strength.
The corporate headquarters of Amazon.com in Seattle, Washington, incorporates dichroic glass into the exterior of its high-rise building, reflecting light into various colors that depend on the time of day.[9]
The Museum at Prairiefire in Overland Park, Kansas,[10] which opened in May 2014, is devoted primarily to natural history. It borrows displays from larger museums and hosts at least two major traveling exhibits per year. Its striking glass exterior was designed to reference the intentional prairie fires[11] that were an integral part of farming life in Kansas. The glass is dichroic, which means that its color changes with the light of the day. The museum is itself a work of art.[12]
OK – let’s take a look at these.
Amazon first.
The dichroic glass is basically one tower in one building in a huge complex located in Arlington, VA, located conveniently close to CIA and Babylon On The Potomac. This is the SECOND headquarters campus of Amazon, after the first in Seattle.
The 22-story Jasper tower (left) features an iridescent, color-changing coating and the 22-story Merlin tower (right) is designed with metal fins and a color-shifting pearlescent coating. Photo by Jim Cunningham.
Nice dichroic glass they’ve got all over the place, in a kind of mock stained-glass way.
Notice the “optical illusion” windows, suggesting a third dimension that is not there. The symbol of Meta (Zuckerberg, Facebook) does a similar thing. See if you can visualize in your head, how the weird symbol makes more sense in 3 dimensions.
Prairiefire appears to be the name of a development district in the Eastern Kansas suburb of Overland Park, including a park, a wetlands, a shopping center, and the aforementioned museum.
ANYWAY…..
Surely they wouldn’t refer to themselves as “The MAP” – right? Because that would be…….
OK. But surely they wouldn’t advertise any connection to the company that built biolabs in Ukraine, connected to pedophile Hunter Biden and his USAID-partnered (yes, read the link) company Metabiota or whatever – I mean…..
OK, yeah, but surely they wouldn’t throw all this stuff together with “let’s attract kids with dinosaurs” and…..
OK, but they DEFINITELY don’t have a huge focus on a preschool program for…..
LOOK! Just because you wander near any of this “naturalist/materialist-interesting” stuff, and you kick it over, and a bunch of things that sure look like creepy-crawlies run out in all directions, doesn’t mean we need to be suspicious – right? RIGHT?
OK. I am just gonna be blunt. This operation in Kansas may be perfectly innocent – as pure as the driven snow. And with my love for natural history, I am bound to think it’s a wonderful place. I have always loved dinosaur museums for kids. But my grandkids ain’t goin’ inside this place (or even outside) unless I am sitting IN THAT CLASSROOM watching every dang second of every dang minute of every dang day. Because if this place ain’t CATNIP FOR PEDOS, I don’t know what is.
SIGH.
And with that, I yield the floor to my fellow QTreepers. Have a great Tuesday!
Joe Biden never won. This is our Real President – 45, 46, 47.
AND our beautiful REALFLOTUS.
This Stormwatch Monday Open Thread remains open – 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).
Our various sister sites, listed in the Blogroll in the sidebar
Our beloved country is under Occupation by hostile forces.
Daily outrage and epic phuckery abound.
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.
And we will keep saying Joe Biden didn’t win until we get His Fraudulency out of our White House.
Wolfie’s Wheatie’s Word of the Week:
wallflower
noun, adjective
a color which is yellowish red
an attribute of being colored yellowish red
a light purple color marketed by Sherwin-Williams
a genus of flowering plants, Erysimum, in the family Brassicaceae (mustards)
a shy, unassuming person
Used in a sentence
Whether wallflower is yellow-to-red or purple seems to depend upon the circumstances.
Shown in a picture
Shown in a different picture
But wait! Some wallflowers show the other wallflower!
MUSIC!
Wallflowers. Just can’t get away from them!
But wait! There’s moar!
THE STUFF
So what do you think about going to Mars? I can tell you, the crowd at Trump’s inauguration was incredibly enthusiastic. I was cheering BIG TIME. But let’s look at it more critically – both sides of the question. We’ve learned from Trump – always cover the downside. Listen to the critics, and think about what they say.
