http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5hD4vGfiLCxoaS_tgEmMyM5UqPPhQ
DreamWorks to build theme park in Dubai
1-20-8
DUBAI (AFP) — DreamWorks, the US studio behind the hit box-office animated movie "Shrek", is to build a theme park in the booming Gulf emirate of Dubai.
The studio has signed an agreement with Tatweer, a subsidiary of state-owned investment firm Dubai Holding, to develop the project which includes restaurants, hotels and retail outlets, the Khaleej Times newspaper reported on Sunday.
The Western-oriented emirate of Dubai, one of seven that make up the United Arab Emirates, is a leisure hub in the oil-rich Gulf and draws millions of visitors every year.
Under a deal concluded last September, Warner Brothers will also set up a theme park in the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi.
A hotel, several multiplex cinemas and a joint film and computer game development fund will also be created as part of the deal between Warner Brothers, the Abu Dhabi Media Company and real estate developers ALDAR.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Strike writers to spare Grammys from picketing
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012202474.html
Strike writers to spare Grammys from picketing
By Steve Gorman
Reuters
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The union for striking Hollywood screenwriters said on Tuesday it had decided to spare next month's Grammy Awards from picketing that could dampen the recording industry's highest honors.
The announcement by the Writers Guild of America marked a surprise reversal from the union's previous stance that it would likely picket the Grammy show, slated for a live telecast on February 10 from the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Writers Guild leaders said the decision, approved by the WGA's governing board, was "made on behalf of our brothers and sisters" in two unions that represent musical performers and had sought a strike "waiver" for the Grammys.
The move was welcomed by those unions, as well as by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammys, and CBS, which will carry the telecast.
"We are gratified that the 50th annual Grammy Awards will focus solely on the great music, artists and charitable work resulting from our show," academy spokesman Neil Portnow said.
The Writers Guild has been using the threat of picketing of major entertainment awards venues to draw attention to its cause and to press major film and TV studios to renew negotiations aimed at settling the union's 11-week-old strike.
The Grammy decision came as the WGA and studios announced they would open "informal discussions" on Wednesday aimed at paving the way for a resumption of official contract talks that collapsed on December 7. The two sides have not met since then.
In giving the Grammys a pass, the striking writers cleared the way for the show to go on without the spectacle of stars having to cross picket lines. It was not clear whether union writers would still be barred from working on the show.
A number of high-profile Grammy nominees this year, including Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and Alicia Keys, are also members of the WGA's sister union for TV and movie performers, the Screen Actors Guild.
It was the threat of an awards boycott by SAG members that derailed the Golden Globe Awards earlier this month, forcing organizers to scrap their traditional gala event in favor of a bare-bones news conference to announce winners.
But with the principal talent unions for recording stars poised to openly break ranks with the Writers Guild and SAG, it was doubtful a Grammy boycott would have gathered much steam. Beyonce's father and manager last week issued a statement saying she planned to participate in the music awards.
The prospect of WGA picketing still hangs over the film industry's most prestigious honors, the Oscars, whose organizers vow to go on with some form of their ceremony as scheduled on February 24.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and David Wiessler)
Strike writers to spare Grammys from picketing
By Steve Gorman
Reuters
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The union for striking Hollywood screenwriters said on Tuesday it had decided to spare next month's Grammy Awards from picketing that could dampen the recording industry's highest honors.
The announcement by the Writers Guild of America marked a surprise reversal from the union's previous stance that it would likely picket the Grammy show, slated for a live telecast on February 10 from the Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Writers Guild leaders said the decision, approved by the WGA's governing board, was "made on behalf of our brothers and sisters" in two unions that represent musical performers and had sought a strike "waiver" for the Grammys.
The move was welcomed by those unions, as well as by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, which sponsors the Grammys, and CBS, which will carry the telecast.
"We are gratified that the 50th annual Grammy Awards will focus solely on the great music, artists and charitable work resulting from our show," academy spokesman Neil Portnow said.
The Writers Guild has been using the threat of picketing of major entertainment awards venues to draw attention to its cause and to press major film and TV studios to renew negotiations aimed at settling the union's 11-week-old strike.
The Grammy decision came as the WGA and studios announced they would open "informal discussions" on Wednesday aimed at paving the way for a resumption of official contract talks that collapsed on December 7. The two sides have not met since then.
In giving the Grammys a pass, the striking writers cleared the way for the show to go on without the spectacle of stars having to cross picket lines. It was not clear whether union writers would still be barred from working on the show.
A number of high-profile Grammy nominees this year, including Justin Timberlake, Beyonce and Alicia Keys, are also members of the WGA's sister union for TV and movie performers, the Screen Actors Guild.
It was the threat of an awards boycott by SAG members that derailed the Golden Globe Awards earlier this month, forcing organizers to scrap their traditional gala event in favor of a bare-bones news conference to announce winners.
But with the principal talent unions for recording stars poised to openly break ranks with the Writers Guild and SAG, it was doubtful a Grammy boycott would have gathered much steam. Beyonce's father and manager last week issued a statement saying she planned to participate in the music awards.
The prospect of WGA picketing still hangs over the film industry's most prestigious honors, the Oscars, whose organizers vow to go on with some form of their ceremony as scheduled on February 24.
(Editing by Dan Whitcomb and David Wiessler)
Rough-Edged Actor Who Carved An Indelible Image
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012202890.html
A Rough-Edged Actor Who Carved An Indelible Image
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 23, 2008; C01
A young movie star dies and the mind automatically cues up the clip reel and FFs through the footage, even before it occurs to you to simply turn on the television and just watch the actual, endless loop:
Here is Heath Ledger -- fresh and hunky and unknown -- singing "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and dancing on the school stadium bleachers in a teen flick adaptation of Shakespeare ("10 Things I Hate About You," a reworking of "The Taming of the Shrew"). Here is Heath Ledger caressing that empty, soiled cowboy shirt kept by his dead lover in "Brokeback Mountain." And Heath Ledger as one of the Bob Dylans in "I'm Not There," in sunglasses and a dour expression, one of the Bob Dylans who were impossible to be around.
A sneak peek of Heath Ledger from this summer's upcoming Batman movie as the Joker, fully unhinged, erasing in a few seconds any ownership Jack Nicholson may have claimed to that role. Working backward now, here is Heath Ledger in period pieces, wooing women or fighting in the Revolution. Heath Ledger in a knighthood fantasy, with swords. Heath Ledger as the unhappy prison guard in "Monster's Ball" who shoots himself in front of his father . . .
Edit that, rewind, start again:
Video suddenly from someone's phone of the curious crowd that gathered in the early evening yesterday, the gawkers and stalkers in all of us, at the SoHo apartment where Ledger was found dead at 28 by the housekeeper and the massage therapist. He was naked in a bed, with prescription sleeping pills reportedly found nearby -- fame's tragic tableau mort. Next we carry him to the gauzy and reverential place we reserve for such men: James Dean in a roadster on the highway, River Phoenix at a nightclub.
There can only be so many articles about a young actor's understatement, about his steeliness and cool. These always go with pictures of him in $400 jeans. Here you had a man who got a decent chance at everything a young actor could hope for, starting from Australian TV and leading to an Academy Award nomination for "Brokeback Mountain" -- a part that, by conventional Hollywood wisdom, had just as much potential to kill a leading man's career.
Had he lived to old age, Ledger would have never stopped hearing "I wish I knew how to quit you" jokes, the line uttered by his co-star Jake Gyllenhaal in "Brokeback Mountain." MTV gave the two of them the "best kiss" prize at its movie awards show. What got lost in all that is how good the movie was, and how good Ledger was as Ennis Del Mar, the pent-up ranch hand with a broken heart. (Really it was a role about not talking, about the unsaid. Easier said than done.)
Some of Ledger's movies worked, and many of them did not, but all along, a viewer could sense that he went about the craft with almost too much seriousness, with pain. In almost every interview he downplayed celebrityhood, tried to deny its meaning and place in his life, shrugged the usual serious-actor shrugs -- often while lighting his cigarette, creating a mood of nonchalance. Just a couple of years ago he and his pretty girlfriend moved to the pretty part of Brooklyn and had a pretty baby girl. People (the magazine, and actual people) followed them everywhere. They broke up, and it seemed like a shame, though what sort of shame you can never quite say: Ours? Theirs?
Despite the initial huzzah and marketing by Ledger's publicists -- the Vanity Fair cover eight years ago and the expert chiseling that goes along with that -- the heartthrob thing never clicked for Ledger. He worked another angle, something that is sometimes called "smoldering" when writers are out of ways to describe it. It looked like it was a chore for him to be cute. "He's handsome, but not in a traditional sort of way," Shekhar Kapur, who directed Ledger in the 2002 drama "Four Feathers," said about the actor to The Washington Post. "He's a bit craggy, but he's very, very sexy."
Craggy sexy. That was it, and perhaps that was all of it. Craggy sexy is not a lot of smiles and fashion spreads. The result of craggy sexy is that a certain niche of fans winds up swooning, writing letters of adulatory praise to Entertainment Weekly, but not as many people who opt for the more mainstream definition of sexy. Those people like Brad Pitt.
In public, Ledger kept dirtying up, dressing down, adding tattoos, chain-smoking, letting his hair get long and greasy. (Message: I don't care about that kind of thing. Message: Only the art matters.)
But like all of them -- all of these craggy sexy serious actors in search of a good part -- he cleaned up good. The lasting photo is of him in a tuxedo, making his way down the red carpet in 2006 with his then-girlfriend, Michelle Williams. They'd met on the set of "Brokeback Mountain." They'd just had the baby a few months before, and named her Matilda. In the carpet moment, Williams is in curry yellow Vera Wang chiffon. The couple do their best to fulfill all the requirements of the carpet, talking optimistically and proudly about his nomination for Best Actor, and also talking about nothing, and looking great.
He didn't win. Hours later, at the Vanity Fair party at Morton's in Beverly Hills, he was drinking with friends. People stood near him and just watched him. It was Ledger, Williams and Jake Gyllenhaal. It was Gyllenhaal's talented sister, Maggie, and her fiance, the un-craggy, heavy-lidded Peter Sarsgaard.
We hovered around them and tried to overhear their conversation. Soon enough they all drew closer and shut everyone out with their body language. They formed an impenetrable circle of young Hollywood cool.
A Rough-Edged Actor Who Carved An Indelible Image
By Hank Stuever
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 23, 2008; C01
A young movie star dies and the mind automatically cues up the clip reel and FFs through the footage, even before it occurs to you to simply turn on the television and just watch the actual, endless loop:
Here is Heath Ledger -- fresh and hunky and unknown -- singing "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" and dancing on the school stadium bleachers in a teen flick adaptation of Shakespeare ("10 Things I Hate About You," a reworking of "The Taming of the Shrew"). Here is Heath Ledger caressing that empty, soiled cowboy shirt kept by his dead lover in "Brokeback Mountain." And Heath Ledger as one of the Bob Dylans in "I'm Not There," in sunglasses and a dour expression, one of the Bob Dylans who were impossible to be around.
A sneak peek of Heath Ledger from this summer's upcoming Batman movie as the Joker, fully unhinged, erasing in a few seconds any ownership Jack Nicholson may have claimed to that role. Working backward now, here is Heath Ledger in period pieces, wooing women or fighting in the Revolution. Heath Ledger in a knighthood fantasy, with swords. Heath Ledger as the unhappy prison guard in "Monster's Ball" who shoots himself in front of his father . . .
Edit that, rewind, start again:
Video suddenly from someone's phone of the curious crowd that gathered in the early evening yesterday, the gawkers and stalkers in all of us, at the SoHo apartment where Ledger was found dead at 28 by the housekeeper and the massage therapist. He was naked in a bed, with prescription sleeping pills reportedly found nearby -- fame's tragic tableau mort. Next we carry him to the gauzy and reverential place we reserve for such men: James Dean in a roadster on the highway, River Phoenix at a nightclub.
There can only be so many articles about a young actor's understatement, about his steeliness and cool. These always go with pictures of him in $400 jeans. Here you had a man who got a decent chance at everything a young actor could hope for, starting from Australian TV and leading to an Academy Award nomination for "Brokeback Mountain" -- a part that, by conventional Hollywood wisdom, had just as much potential to kill a leading man's career.
Had he lived to old age, Ledger would have never stopped hearing "I wish I knew how to quit you" jokes, the line uttered by his co-star Jake Gyllenhaal in "Brokeback Mountain." MTV gave the two of them the "best kiss" prize at its movie awards show. What got lost in all that is how good the movie was, and how good Ledger was as Ennis Del Mar, the pent-up ranch hand with a broken heart. (Really it was a role about not talking, about the unsaid. Easier said than done.)
Some of Ledger's movies worked, and many of them did not, but all along, a viewer could sense that he went about the craft with almost too much seriousness, with pain. In almost every interview he downplayed celebrityhood, tried to deny its meaning and place in his life, shrugged the usual serious-actor shrugs -- often while lighting his cigarette, creating a mood of nonchalance. Just a couple of years ago he and his pretty girlfriend moved to the pretty part of Brooklyn and had a pretty baby girl. People (the magazine, and actual people) followed them everywhere. They broke up, and it seemed like a shame, though what sort of shame you can never quite say: Ours? Theirs?
Despite the initial huzzah and marketing by Ledger's publicists -- the Vanity Fair cover eight years ago and the expert chiseling that goes along with that -- the heartthrob thing never clicked for Ledger. He worked another angle, something that is sometimes called "smoldering" when writers are out of ways to describe it. It looked like it was a chore for him to be cute. "He's handsome, but not in a traditional sort of way," Shekhar Kapur, who directed Ledger in the 2002 drama "Four Feathers," said about the actor to The Washington Post. "He's a bit craggy, but he's very, very sexy."
Craggy sexy. That was it, and perhaps that was all of it. Craggy sexy is not a lot of smiles and fashion spreads. The result of craggy sexy is that a certain niche of fans winds up swooning, writing letters of adulatory praise to Entertainment Weekly, but not as many people who opt for the more mainstream definition of sexy. Those people like Brad Pitt.
In public, Ledger kept dirtying up, dressing down, adding tattoos, chain-smoking, letting his hair get long and greasy. (Message: I don't care about that kind of thing. Message: Only the art matters.)
But like all of them -- all of these craggy sexy serious actors in search of a good part -- he cleaned up good. The lasting photo is of him in a tuxedo, making his way down the red carpet in 2006 with his then-girlfriend, Michelle Williams. They'd met on the set of "Brokeback Mountain." They'd just had the baby a few months before, and named her Matilda. In the carpet moment, Williams is in curry yellow Vera Wang chiffon. The couple do their best to fulfill all the requirements of the carpet, talking optimistically and proudly about his nomination for Best Actor, and also talking about nothing, and looking great.
He didn't win. Hours later, at the Vanity Fair party at Morton's in Beverly Hills, he was drinking with friends. People stood near him and just watched him. It was Ledger, Williams and Jake Gyllenhaal. It was Gyllenhaal's talented sister, Maggie, and her fiance, the un-craggy, heavy-lidded Peter Sarsgaard.
We hovered around them and tried to overhear their conversation. Soon enough they all drew closer and shut everyone out with their body language. They formed an impenetrable circle of young Hollywood cool.
Is the Cause of Cancer a Common Fungus?
http://www.nexusmagazine.com/articles/CancerIsAFungus.html
Is the Cause of Cancer a Common Fungus?
According to this hypothesis based on years of scientific and clinical research, the cause of cancer is infection by a common fungus, Candida albicans. The good news is that it can be treated with a powerful antifungal agent that can't be patented.
Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 14, Number 5 (August - September 2007)
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: http://www.nexusmagazine.com/
by Dr Tullio Simoncini ©2007
Email: t.simoncini@alice.it
Website: http://www.cancerfungus.com/
My idea is that cancer doesn't depend on mysterious causes (genetic, immunological or auto-immunological, as the official oncology proposes), but it results from a simple fungal infection whose destroying power in the deep tissues is actually underestimated.
The present work is based on the conviction, supported by many years of observations, comparisons and experiences, that the necessary and sufficient cause of the tumour is to be sought in the vast world of the fungi, the most adaptable, aggressive and evolved micro-organisms known in nature.
I have tried many times to explain this theory to leading institutions involved in cancer issues (the Ministry of Health, the Italian Medical Oncological Association, etc.), elaborating on my thinking, but I have been brushed aside because of the impossibility of setting my idea in a conventional context. A different, international audience represents the possibility of sharing a view about health which differs from what is widely accepted by today's medical community, either officially or from the sidelines.
There is an opposition between the allopathic and the Hippocratic medical ideal. The position that I promote represents instead a meeting point of these two conceptions of health, since from the conceptual point of view it sublimates and adds value to both, while highlighting how they both are victims of a common conformist language.
The hypothesis of a fungal aetiology in chronic-degenerative illness, able to connect the ethical qualities of the individual with the development of specific pathologies, reconciles the two orientations (allopathic and holistic) of medicine. The hypothesis is a strong candidate for being that missing element of psychosomatics that was sought but never found by one of the fathers of psychosomatics, Viktor von Weiszacker.
In considering the biological dimensions of the fungi, for instance, it is possible to compare the different degrees of pathogenicity in relation to the condition of organs, tissues and cells of a guest organism, which in turn also and especially depend on the behaviour of the individual.
Each time the recuperative abilities of a known psycho-physical structure are exceeded, there is an inevitable exposure, even considering possible accidental co-founders, to the aggression--even at the smallest dimensions--of those external agents that otherwise would be harmless. In the presence of an indubitable connection between patient morale and disease, it is no longer legitimate to separate the two domains (allopathic and naturopathic) which are both indispensable for improving the health of individuals.
Flaws in mainstream theories on cancer causation
When facing the most pressing contemporary medical problem, cancer, the first thing to do is to admit that we still do not know its real cause. However treated in different ways by both official and alternative medicine, cancer has an aura of mystery that still exists around its real generative process.
The attempt to overcome the present impasse must therefore and necessarily go through two separate phases: a critical one that exposes the present limitations of oncology, and a constructive one capable of proposing a therapeutic system based on a new theoretical point of departure. In agreement with the most recent formulation of scientific philosophy, which suggests a counter-inductive approach where it is impossible to find a solution with the conceptual tools that are commonly accepted,1 only one logical formulation emerges: to refuse the oncological principle which assumes that cancer is generated by a cellular reproductive anomaly.
However, if the fundamental hypothesis of cellular reproductive anomaly is questioned, it becomes clear that all the theories based on this hypothesis are inevitably flawed.
It follows that both an auto-immunological process, in which the body's defence mechanisms against external agents turn their destructive capacity against internal constituents of the body, and an anomaly of the genetic structure implicated in the development of auto-destruction are inevitably disqualified.
Moreover, the common attempt to construct theories about multiple causes that have an oncogenic effect on cellular reproduction sometimes seems like a concealing screen, behind which there is nothing but a wall. These theories propose endless causes that are more or less associated with each other; and this means in reality that no valid causes are found. The invocation in turn of smoking, alcohol, toxic substances, diet, stress, psychological factors, etc., without a properly defined context, causes confusion and resignation, and creates even more mystification around a disease which may turn out to be simpler than it is depicted to be.
As background information, it is important to review the picture of presumed genetic influences in the development of cancer processes as they are depicted by molecular biologists. These are the scientists who perform research on infinitesimally small cellular mechanisms, but who in real life never see a patient. All present medical systems are based on this research, and thus, unfortunately, all therapies currently performed.
The main hypothesis of a genetic neoplastic causality is essentially reduced to the fact that the structures and the mechanism in charge of normal reproductive cellular activity become, for undefined reasons, capable of an autonomous behaviour that is disjointed from the overall tissular economy. The genes that normally have a positive role in cellular reproduction are, then, imprecisely referred to as "proto-oncogenes"; those that inhibit cellular reproduction are called "suppressor genes" or "recessive oncogenes". Both endogenous (never demonstrated) and exogenous cellular factors--that is, those carcinogenic elements that are usually invoked--are held responsible for the neoplastic degeneration of the tissues...
From a very superficial analysis of the presumed oncological picture, however, it seems to be clear how the assertion of all this unstoppable genetic hyperactivity can do nothing more that unveil the abysmal stupidity that is at the basis of this way of conceiving things. All those who work in the field do nothing but repeat the stale litany of reproductive cellular anomalies on a genetic basis. It is better to look for new horizons and conceptual instruments that are capable of unearthing a real and unique neoplastic aetiology.
Back to taxonomy
In order to find the possible carcinogenic ens morbi on the horizon of microbiology, it appears useful to return to the basic taxonomical concepts of biology where we can see, incidentally, the existence of a noticeable amount of indecision and indetermination.
Already in the last century, a German biologist, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), departing from the Linnaeian concept that makes for two great kingdoms of living things (vegetable and animal), denounced the difficulties of categorising all those microscopic organisms which, because of their characteristics and properties, could not be attributed to either the vegetable or the animal kingdom. For these organisms, he proposed a third kingdom, Protista (protists).
"This vast and complex world includes a range of entities beginning with those that have sub-cellular structure--existing at the limits of life--such as viroids and viruses, moving through the mycoplasms to, finally, organisms of greater organisation: bacteria, Actinomycetes, Myxomycetes, fungi, protozoa and perhaps even some microscopic algae."2
The common element of these organisms is the feeding system, which, being implemented (with very few exceptions) by direct absorption of soluble organic compounds, differentiates them both from animals and vegetables. Animals also feed as above, but especially by ingesting solid organic materials that are then transformed through the digestive process. Vegetables, by utilising mineral compounds and light energy, are capable of feeding by synthesising the organic substances.
The contemporary tendency of biologists is once again to pick up, though in a more sophisticated way, the concept of the third kingdom. One goes even further, however, arguing that within that kingdom, fungi must be classified in a distinct category.
O. Verona3 says that if we put multicellular organisms provided with photosynthetic capabilities (plants) in the first kingdom and the organisms not provided with photosynthetic pigmentation (animals) in the second kingdom--and organisms from both these kingdoms are made of cells provided with a distinct nucleus (eukaryotes)--and, furthermore, if we put in another kingdom (protists), those monocellular organisms that have no chlorophyll and have cells that are without a distinct nucleus (prokaryotes), the fungi can well have their own kingdom because of the absence of photosynthetic pigmentation, the ability to be monocellular and multicellular, and, finally, their possession of a distinct nucleus.
Additionally, fungi possess a property that is strange when compared to all other micro-organisms: the ability to have a basic microscopic structure (hypha) with a simultaneous tendency to grow to remarkable dimensions (up to several kilograms), keeping unchanged the capacity to adapt and reproduce at any size.
From this point of view, therefore, fungi cannot be considered true organisms, but cellular aggregates sui generis with an organismic behaviour, since each cell maintains its survival and reproductive potential intact regardless of the structure in which it exists. It is therefore clear how difficult it is to identify all the biological processes in such complex living realities. In fact, even today, there are huge voids and taxonomical approximations in mycology.
Fungi characteristics
It is worthwhile to examine more deeply this strange world, with such peculiar characteristics, and try to highlight those elements that somehow may be pertinent to the problems of oncology.
1) Fungi are heterotrophic organisms and therefore need, as far as nitrogen and carbon are concerned, pre-formed compounds. Of these compounds, simple carbohydrates, for example monosaccharides (glucose, fructose and mannose), are among the most utilised sugars. This means that fungi, during their life cycle, depend on other living beings which must be exploited in different degrees for their feeding. This occurs both in a saprophytic way (that is, by feeding on organic waste) and in a parasitic way (that is, by attacking the tissue of the host directly).
2) Fungi show a great variety of reproductive manifestations (sexual, asexual, gemmation; these manifestations can often be observed simultaneously in the same mycete), combined with a great morphostructural variety of organs. All of this is directed toward the end of spore formation, to which the continuity and propagation of the species is entrusted.
3) In mycology, it is often possible to observe a particular phenomenon called heterokaryon, characterised by the coexistence of normal and mutant nuclei in cells that have undergone a hyphal fusion.
Nowadays, phytopathologists are quite worried about the creation of individuals that are genetically quite different even from the parents. This difference has taken place by means of those reproductive cycles, which are called parasexual. The indiscriminate use of phytopharmaceuticals has in fact often determined mutations of the nuclei of many parasitic fungi with the consequent creation of heterokaryon--and this is sometimes particularly virulent in its pathogenicity.4
4) In the parasitic dimension, fungi can develop from the hyphas more or less beak-shaped, specialised structures that allow the penetration of the host.
5) The production of spores can be so abundant as to include always, at every cycle, tens, hundreds and even thousands of millions of elements that can be dispersed at a remarkable distance from the point of origin5 (a small movement is sufficient, for example, to implement immediate diffusion).
6) Spores have an immense resistance to external aggression, for they are capable of staying dormant in adverse conditions for many years while preserving unaltered their regenerative potentialities.
7) The development coefficient of the hyphal apexes after the germination is extremely fast (100 microns per minute under ideal conditions) with ramification capacity, thus with the appearance of a new apex region that in some cases is in the neighbourhood of 40-60 seconds.6
8) The shape of the fungus is never defined, for it is imposed by the environment in which the fungus develops. It is possible to observe, for example, the same mycelium in the simple isolated hyphas status in a liquid environment or in the form of aggregates that are increasingly solid and compact, up to the formation of pseudoparenchymas and of filaments and mycelial strings.7
9) By the same token, it is possible to observe in different fungi the same shape whenever they must adapt to the same environment (this is called dimorphism). The partial or total substitution of nourishing substances induces frequent mutations in fungi, and this is further proof of their high adaptability to any substrata.
10) When the nutritional conditions are precarious, many fungi react with hyphal fusion (among nearby fungi) which allows them to explore the available material more easily, using more complete physiological processes. This property, which substitutes co-operation for competition, makes them distinct from any other micro-organism, and for this reason Buller calls them social organisms.8
11) When a cell gets old or becomes damaged (e.g., by a toxic substance or by a pharmaceutical), many fungi whose intercellular septums are provided with a pore react by implementing a defence process called protoplasmic flux, through which they transfer the nucleus and cytoplasm of the damaged cell into a healthy one, thus conserving unaltered all their biological potential.
12) The phenomena regulating the development of hyphal ramification are unknown to date.9 They consist of either a rhythmic development or in the appearance of sectors which, though they originate from the hyphal system, are self-regulating,10 that is, independent of the regulating action and behaviour of the rest of the colony.
13) Fungi are capable of implementing an infinite number of modifications to their own metabolism in order to overcome the defence mechanism of the host. These modifications are implemented through plasmatic and biochemical actions as well as by a volumetric increase (hypertrophy) and numerical hyperplasy of the cells that have been attacked.11
14) Fungi are so aggressive as to attack not only plants, animal tissue, food supplies and other fungi, but even protozoa, amoebas and nematodes.
Fungi hunt nematodes, for example, with peculiar hyphal modifications that constitute real mycelial criss-cross, viscose or ring traps that immobilise the worms.
In some cases, the aggressive power of the fungus is so great as to allow it--with only a cellular ring made up of three unit--to tighten its grip, capture and kill its prey within a short time, notwithstanding the desperate struggling of the prey.
From the short notations above, it therefore seems fair to dedicate greater attention to the world of fungi, especially considering the fact that biologists and microbiologists constantly highlight large deficiencies and voids in all their descriptions and interpretations of fungi's shapes, physiologies and reproductions.
So the fungus, which is the most powerful and the most organised micro-organism known, seems to be an extremely logical candidate as a cause of neoplastic proliferation.
Imperfect fungi (so called because of the lack of knowledge and understanding of their biological processes) deserve particular attention, since their essential prerogative sits in their fermentative capacity.
The greatest disease of mankind may therefore hide within a small cluster of pathogenic fungi, and may after all be located with just some simple deductions able to close the circle and provide the solution.
Candida albicans: a necessary and sufficient cause of cancer
Considering that among the human parasite species the Dermatophytes and Sporotrichum demonstrate an excessively specific morbidity, and that experience shows that Actinomycetes, Toluropsis and Histoplasma rarely enter the context of pathology, the Candida albicans fungus clearly emerges as the sole candidate for tumour proliferation.
If we stop for a second and reflect on its characteristics, we can observe many analogies with neoplastic disease. The most evident are:
1) ubiquitous attachment--no organ or tissue is spared;
2) the constant absence of hyperpyrexia;
3) sporadic and indirect involvement of the differential tissues;
4) invasiveness that is almost exclusively of the focal type;
5) progressive debilitation;
6) refractivity to any type of treatment;
7) proliferation facilitated by multiplicity of indifferent co-founders;
8) Symptomatological basic configuration with structure tending to the chronic.
Therefore, an exceptionally high and diversified pathogenic potentiality exists in this mycete of just a few microns in size, which, even though it cannot be traced with the present experimental instruments, cannot be neglected from the clinical point of view.
Certainly, its present nosological classification cannot be satisfactory because, if we do not keep the possibly endless parasitic configurations in mind, that classification is too simplistic and constraining.
We therefore have to hypothesise that Candida, in the moment it is attacked by the immunological system of the host or by a conventional antimycotic treatment, does not react in the usual, predicted way but defends itself by transforming itself into ever-smaller and non-differentiated elements that maintain their fecundity intact to the point of hiding their presence both to the host organism and to possible diagnostic investigations.
Candida's behaviour may be considered to be almost elastic. When favourable conditions exist, Candida thrives on an epithelium; as soon as the tissue reaction is engaged, it massively transforms itself into a form that is less productive but impervious to attack: the spore. If, then, continuous subepithelial solutions take place, coupled with a greater areactivity in that very moment, the spore gets deeper into the lower connective tissue in such an impervious state that colonisation is irreversible.
In fact, Candida takes advantage of a structural interchangeability, utilising it according to the difficulties, e.g., in feeding, to overcome its biological niche. In this way, Candida is free to expand to maturation in the soil, air, water, vegetation, etc.--that is, wherever there is no antibody reaction. In the epithelium, instead, it takes a mixed form, which is reduced to the sole spore component when it penetrates the lower epithelial levels, where it tends to expand again in the presence of conditions of tissular areactivity.
The initial mandatory step of an in-depth research endeavour would be to understand if and in which dimensions the spore transcends, what mechanisms it engages to hide itself or, again, to preserve its parasitic characteristic, or if it has available a neutral quiescent position which is difficult or even impossible to detect by the immunological system.
Unfortunately, today we do not have the appropriate means, either theoretical or technical, to answer these and similar questions, so the only valid suggestions can come solely from clinical observation and experience. While not providing immediate solutions, these sources can at least stimulate further questions.
Assuming that Candida albicans is the agent responsible for tumour development, a targeted therapy would take into account not just its static and macroscopic manifestations but even the ultramicroscopic ones, especially in their dynamic valency, that is, the reproductive. It is very probable that the targets to attack are the fungi's dimensional transition points in order to perform a decontamination with such a scope as to include the whole spectrum of the biological expression--parasitic, vegetative, sporal and even ultradimensional and, to the limit, viral.
If we stop at the most evident phenomena, we risk administering salves and unguents forever (in the case of dermatomycosis or in psoriasis), or clumsily attacking (with surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy) enigmatic tumoural masses with the sole result of facilitating their propagation, which is already heightened in the mycelial forms.
Why, one may ask, should we assume a different and heightened activity of Candida albicans, since it has been abundantly described in its pathological manifestations? The answer lies in the fact that it has been studied only in a pathogenic context, that is, only in relation to the epithelial tissues.
In reality, Candida possesses an aggressive valency that is diversified in function in the target tissue. It is just in the connective or in the connective environment, in fact, and not in the differentiated tissues, that Candida may find conditions favourable to an unlimited expansion. This emerges if we stop and reflect for a moment on the main function of connective tissue, which is to convey and supply nourishing substances to the cells of the whole organism. This is to be considered as an environment external to the more differentiated cells such as nervous, muscular, etc. It is in this context, in fact, that the alimentary competition takes place.
On the one hand, we have the organism's cellular elements trying to defeat all forms of invasion; on the other hand, we have fungal cells trying to absorb ever-growing quantities of nourishing substances, for they have to obey the species' biological imperative to form ever larger and diffused masses and colonies.
From the combination of various factors pertinent to both the host and the aggressor, it is possible to hypothesise the evolution of a candidosis.
First stage: Integer epitheliums, absence of the debilitating factors. Candida can only exist as a saprophyte.
Second stage: Non-integer epitheliums (erosions, abrasions, etc.), absence of stage debilitating factors, unusual transitory conditions (acidosis, metabolic disorder, and microbial disorder). Candida expands superficially (classic mycosis, both exogenous and endogenous).
Third stage: Non-integer epitheliums, presence of debilitating factors (toxic, stage radiant, traumatic, neuropsychic, etc.). Candida goes deeper into the subepithelial levels, from which it can be carried to the whole organism through the blood and lymph (intimate mycosis).12
Stages one and two are the most studied and understood, while stage three, though it has been described in its morphological diversity, is reduced to a silent form of saprophytism. This is not acceptable from a logical point of view, because no one can demonstrate the harmlessness of the fungal cells in the deepest parts of the organism.
In fact, the assumption that Candida can behave in the same saprophytic manner that is observed on integer epitheliums when it has successfully penetrated the lower levels is at least risky, because the assumption would have to be sustained by concepts that are totally aleatory (i.e., dependent on chance).
In fact, we are asked not only to accept a priori that the connective environment is (a) not suitable to nourish the Candida, but also at the same time to accept (b) the omnipotence of the body's defence system towards an organic structure that is invasive but that then becomes vulnerable once lodged in the deeper tissues.
As for point (a), it is difficult to imagine that a micro-organism so able to adapt itself to any substrata cannot find elements to support itself in the human organic substance; by the same token, it seems risky to hypothesise that the human organism's defence system is totally efficient at every moment of its existence.
As for point (b), the assumption that there is a tendency to a state of quiescence and vulnerability in the case of a pathogenic agent such as fungus--the most invasive and aggressive micro-organism existing in nature--seems to carry a whiff of the irresponsible.
It is therefore urgent, on the basis of the abovementioned considerations, to recognise the hazardous nature of such a pathogenic agent which is capable of easily taking the most various biological configurations, both biochemical and structural, regardless of the conditions of the host organism.
The fungal expansion gradient in fact becomes steeper as the tissue that is the host of the mycotic invasion becomes less eutrophic and thus less reactive.
Benign tumours
To that end, it seems useful to consider briefly the "benign tumour" nosological entity. This is an issue that always appears in general pathology but is brushed aside most of the time too easily, and it is overlooked because it usually doesn't create either problems or worries. It constitutes one of those underestimated grey areas seldom subjected to rational, fresh consideration.
If the benign tumour, however, is not considered a fully fledged tumour, it would be advantageous, for clarity, to categorise it in an appropriate nosological scheme.
If it is thought that, instead, it fully belongs to neoplastic pathology, then it is necessary to consider its non-invasive character and consequently to consider the reasons for this.
It is in fact evident how in this second scenario, the thesis based on a presumed predisposition of the organism to auto-phagocytosis, having to admit an expressive graduation, would stumble into such additional difficulties such as to become extremely improbable.
By contrast, in the fungal scenario, the mystery of why there are benign and malignant tumours is exhaustively solved, since they can be recognised as having the same aetiological genesis.
The benignity or malignancy of a cancer in fact depends on the capability of tissular reaction of a specific organ expressing itself ultimately in the ability to encyst fungal cells and to prevent them from developing in ever-larger colonies. This can be achieved more easily where the ratio between differentiated cells and connective tissue is in favour of the former.
Situated between the impervious noble tissues, then, and the defenceless connective tissues, the differentiated connective structures (the glandular structures in particular) represent that medium term which is only somewhat vulnerable to attack because of an ability to offer a certain type of defence.
And it is in these conditions that benign tumours are formed; that is, where the glandular connective tissue is successful in forming hypertrophic and hyperplastic cellular embankments against the parasites. In the stomach and in the lung, instead, since there are no specific glandular units, the target organ, provided with a small defensive capability, is at the mercy of the invader.
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning how several types of intimate fungal invasion do not determine the appearance of malignant or benign tumours but a type of particular benign tumour (specific degenerative alterations), as is the case with some organs or apparatuses that do not have peculiar glandular structures but nevertheless are attacked in their connective tissue, although in a limited way.
In fact, if we consider multiple sclerosis, SLA, psoriasis, nodular panarthritis, etc., the possible development of the fungus in a three-dimensional sense is actually limited by the anatomic configuration of the invaded tissues, so that only a longitudinal expansion is allowed.
Going back to the precondition of areactivity that is necessary for neoplastic development in a specific individual, it is permissible to affirm how in the human body each external or internal element that determines a reduction of well-being in an organism, organ or tissue possesses oncogenic potentiality. This is not so much because of an intrinsic damaging capability as much as a generic property of favouring the fungal (that is, tumoural) flourishing.
Then the causal network so much invoked in contemporary oncology, which involves toxic, genetic, immunological, psychological, geographical, moral, social and other factors, finds a correct classification only in a mycotic infectious perspective where the arithmetical and diachronic summation of harmful elements works as a co-factor to the external aggression.
Conventional treatments vs antifungal therapy
With the theoretical basis of the tumour/fungus equivalency demonstrated, it is clear how this interpretative key offers a long series of questions concerning contemporary therapies, both oncological (used without reference indexes) and antimycotic (utilised only at a superficial level).
Which path is best to walk today, then, when faced with a cancer patient, since the conventional oncological treatment, not being aetiological, can only occasionally have positive effects and most of the time produces damage?
In the fungal perspective, in fact, the effectiveness of surgery is noticeably reduced because of the extreme diffusibility and invasiveness characteristic of a mycelial conglomerate. Surgery to solve the problem is therefore tied to the case; that is, to conditions in which one has the luck to be able to remove the entire colony completely (which is often possible in the presence of a sufficient encystment, but only where benign tumours are concerned).
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy produce almost exclusively negative effects, both for their specific ineffectiveness and for their high toxicity and harmfulness to the tissues, which in the last analysis favours mycotic aggressiveness.
By contrast, an antifungal, antitumour-specific therapy would take into account the importance of the connective tissue together with the reproductive complexity of fungi. Only by attacking the fungi across the spectrum of all its forms, at points where it is most vulnerable from the nutritional point of view, would it be possible to hope to eradicate them from the human organism.
The first step to take, therefore, would be to reinforce the cancer patient with generic reconstituent measures (nutrition, tonics, regulation of rhythms and vital functions) that are able to enhance the general defences of the organism.
Concerning the possibility of having available pharmaceutical cures, which unfortunately do not exist today, it seems useful, in the attempt to find an antifungal substance that is quite diffusible and therefore effective, to consider the extreme sensitivity of Candida towards sodium bicarbonate (i.e., in the oral candidosis of breastfed babies). This is consistent with the fact that Candida has an accentuated ability to reproduce in an acid environment.
Theoretically, therefore, if treatments could be found that put the fungus in direct contact with high sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) concentrations, we should be able to see a regression of the tumoural masses.
And this is what happens in many types of tumour, such as colon and liver--and especially stomach and lung, the former susceptible to regression just because of its "external" anatomic position, and the latter because of the high diffusibility of sodium bicarbonate in the bronchial system and for its high responsiveness to general reconstituent measures.
By applying a similar therapeutic approach, it has been possible in many patients to achieve complete remission of the symptomatology and normalisation of the instrumental data.
It is important to emphasise that these cases are just an example of what could be a new way of perceiving the complexity of medical problems, especially in oncology.
[Reports of seven cases of patients, several of whom have been documented for 10 years following sodium bicarbonate treatment, are summarised in the complete article at the web page http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/simoncini-writes.html; Editor]
Critical considerations
It seems appropriate to analyse, in a critical and self-critical spirit, what may emerge in neoplastic pathology that is new and concrete. If we closely observe the proposed therapeutic approach, it is possible to see that, independently of its real effectiveness, it has value as an innovative theory. First, it challenges the present methodology and especially its assumptions. Second, it offers a concrete alternative proposal to a mountain of conjectures and postures that sound authoritative but are too generic and therefore ineffective.
The identification of one tumoural cause, even with all the possible general provisos, would represent a step forward that is indispensable for escaping that passivity determined by a lack of results, and which is responsible for medical behaviours that are based too much on faith and not enough on real confidence.
Given, therefore, that an unconventional medical approach can benefit some patients betterÑfrom any point of viewÑthan the official treatments, and since valuable results can be demonstrated, this should stimulate us to pursue further research while avoiding patronising postures that are both limiting and non-productive.
We can therefore discuss whether or not sodium bicarbonate is the real reason for the recoveries or if, instead, those recoveries are due to the interaction of a number of conditions that have been created, the results of unidentified neuropsychical factors, or maybe the results of something totally unknown. What is beyond question, however, is the fact that a certain number of people, by not following conventional methods, have been able to go back to normality without suffering and without mutilation.
The message of this experience is therefore a call to search for those solutions that are in accord with the simple Hippocratic obligation to man's "well-being"; that is, we must be stimulated to a critical evaluation of our contemporary oncological therapies which indubitably can guarantee suffering. When we group together both malignant tumours that are occasionally or never healed (such as lung and stomach) and tumours that border with benignity (such as the majority of thyroid and prostatic tumours, etc.) or put them together with those that have an autonomous positive outcome notwithstanding chemotherapy (i.e., infantile leukaemia)-all of this appears to be devious and misleading, having only the purpose of forging a consensus that would otherwise be impossible to obtain with intellectually ethical behaviour.
The fact that modern medicine not only cannot offer sufficient interpretative criteria but even uses dangerous methodologies that are also harmful and meaningless-even if carried out with good faithÑis something which must push us all to search for humane and logical alternatives. At the same time, it is necessary to carefully, open-mindedly and logically consider any theory or point of view that is dared to be advanced in the battle against that monstrous and inhuman yoke that is the tumour.
To this end, a note of acknowledgement is to go to all those who are aware of the harmfulness of conventional therapeutic methods and constantly try to find alternative solutions. People like Di Bella, Govallo and others, although guilty of utilising the same inauspicious principles of official medicine (thus showing an excessively conformist mindset), are actually using common sense by trying to relieve the suffering of cancer patients through the use of painless methodologies, and in some cases are able to achieve remissions, even though they're in the dark about the real causes of cancer.
In an alternative perspective, then, it would be necessary to conceive a new approach to experimentation in the oncological field, setting epidemiological, aetiological, pathogenic, clinical and therapeutic research in line with a renewed microbiology and mycology that would probably drive us to the conclusion already illustrated: that is, the tumour is a fungusÑCandida albicans.
The possible discovery that not only tumours but also the majority of chronic degenerative disease could be reconciled to mycotic causality would represent a qualitative quantum leap, which, by revolutionising medical thinking, could greatly improve life expectancy and quality of life. Such reconciliation might include a wider spectrum of fungal parasites (for example, in diseases of the connective tissues, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, some epileptic forms, diabetes type 2, etc.).
In closing, considering that the world of fungi-those most complex and aggressive micro-organisms-has been bypassed and left unobserved for far too long, the hope of this work is to promote awareness of the hazards of these micro-organisms so that medical resources can be channelled not up blind alleys but towards the real enemies of the human organism: external infectious agents.
Addendum: A Note on Cancer Treatment
The implications from my hypothesis that cancer is a fungus which can be eradicated with sodium bicarbonate are that:
1) eighty years of genetic study and application has been for nothing, especially considering that the genetic theory of cancer has never been demonstrated;
2) the loss of millions, if not billions, of lives with all the suffering has been for nothing;
3) the billions of dollars spent on chemotherapy medicine, radiotherapy, etc. has been for nothing;
4) the recognition and prizes given to eminent researchers and professors has been for nothing;
5) the oncologist could be replaced by the family doctor; and
6) the pharmaceutical industry will incur tremendous financial losses (sodium bicarbonate is inexpensive and impossible to patent).
My methods have cured people for 20 years. Many of my patients recovered completely from cancer, even in cases where official oncology had given up.
The best way to try to eliminate a tumour is to bring it into contact with sodium bicarbonate, as closely as possible, i.e., using oral administration for the digestive tract, an enema for the rectum, douching for the vagina and uterus, intravenous injection for the lung and the brain, and inhalation for the upper airways. Breasts, lymph nodes and subcutaneous lumps can be treated with local perfusions. The internal organs can be treated with sodium bicarbonate by locating suitable catheters in the arteries (of the liver, pancreas, prostate and limbs) or in the cavities (of the pleura or peritoneum). (Note that sodium bicarbonate should not be used as a cancer preventive.)
It is important to treat each type of cancer with the right dosage. For phleboclysis (drip infusion), 500 cc given in a series of intervals-5% strength on one day and 8.4% the next-is required, depending on the patient's weight and condition; the stronger dose may perhaps be needed in cases of lung and brain cancers according to the tumour type (primary or metastatic) and size. For external administrations, it is enough to taste if the solution is salty. Sometimes it is judicious to combine different administrations.
For each treatment, take into consideration that tumour colonies regress between the third and fourth day and collapse between the fourth and fifth, so a six-day administration is sufficient. A complete, effective cycle is made up of six treatment days on and six days off, repeated four times. The most important side effects of this care system are thirst and weakness.
For skin cancers (melanoma, epithelioma, etc.), a 7% iodine tincture should be spread on the affected area once a day, 20-30 times consecutively in one sitting, with the aim of producing a number of layers of crust. If, after one month of treatment, the first crust is gone and the skin is not completely healed, then the treatment should be continued in the same manner until the second crust forms, heals and then comes loose without any assistance. (The procedure is also applicable for treating psoriasis.) After this treatment, the cancer will be gone and stay away forever.
For more information, see "Protocol Treatments with sodium biocarbonate solutions" at http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/cancer-therapy-simoncini-protocol.html and FAQ sections at http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/.
Editor's Note:
Due to space constraints, we are unable to reprint Dr Simoncini's paper in full. To download the complete paper including case study summaries, go to the web page http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/simoncini-writes.html.
Endnotes
1. Feyerabend, P.K., Contro il metodo ("Against Method"), Feltrinelli, Milano, 1994, p. 26
2. Verona, O., Il vasto mondo dei funghi ("The Vast World of Fungi"), Edizioni Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1973, p. 1
3. op. cit., p. 2
4. Rambelli, A., Fondamenti di micologia ("Basics of Mycology"), Edizioni Guida, Napoli, 1972, p. 35
5. op. cit.
6. op. cit., p. 28
7. Verona, op. cit., p. 5
8. Rambelli, A., op. cit., p. 31
9. op. cit., p. 28
10. op. cit., p. 29
11. op. cit., p. 266
12. op. cit., p. 273
About the Author:
Based in Rome, Italy, Dr Tullio Simoncini is a medical doctor and surgeon specialising in oncology, diabetology and metabolic disorders. He is also a Doctor of Philosophy. An humanitarian, he is opposed to any kind of intellectual conformity, which he sees as often based on suppositions without foundation or, worse, on lies and falsehoods. Dr Simoncini regularly attends medical conferences and does interviews to explain what's wrong with conventional cancer theories and treatments, to present his fungal theory of cancer and to describe case studies involving patients healed with sodium bicarbonate, a powerful antifungal. His book, Cancer is a Fungus: A revolution in the therapy of tumours (Edizioni Lampis), is available in Italian, Dutch and English from the website http://www.cancerfungus.com/.
For more information on Dr Simoncini's theory, therapy and case studies, and to view interviews and testimonials, visit the portal website http://www.cancerfungus.com/.
Is the Cause of Cancer a Common Fungus?
According to this hypothesis based on years of scientific and clinical research, the cause of cancer is infection by a common fungus, Candida albicans. The good news is that it can be treated with a powerful antifungal agent that can't be patented.
Extracted from Nexus Magazine, Volume 14, Number 5 (August - September 2007)
PO Box 30, Mapleton Qld 4560 Australia. editor@nexusmagazine.com
Telephone: +61 (0)7 5442 9280; Fax: +61 (0)7 5442 9381
From our web page at: http://www.nexusmagazine.com/
by Dr Tullio Simoncini ©2007
Email: t.simoncini@alice.it
Website: http://www.cancerfungus.com/
My idea is that cancer doesn't depend on mysterious causes (genetic, immunological or auto-immunological, as the official oncology proposes), but it results from a simple fungal infection whose destroying power in the deep tissues is actually underestimated.
The present work is based on the conviction, supported by many years of observations, comparisons and experiences, that the necessary and sufficient cause of the tumour is to be sought in the vast world of the fungi, the most adaptable, aggressive and evolved micro-organisms known in nature.
I have tried many times to explain this theory to leading institutions involved in cancer issues (the Ministry of Health, the Italian Medical Oncological Association, etc.), elaborating on my thinking, but I have been brushed aside because of the impossibility of setting my idea in a conventional context. A different, international audience represents the possibility of sharing a view about health which differs from what is widely accepted by today's medical community, either officially or from the sidelines.
There is an opposition between the allopathic and the Hippocratic medical ideal. The position that I promote represents instead a meeting point of these two conceptions of health, since from the conceptual point of view it sublimates and adds value to both, while highlighting how they both are victims of a common conformist language.
The hypothesis of a fungal aetiology in chronic-degenerative illness, able to connect the ethical qualities of the individual with the development of specific pathologies, reconciles the two orientations (allopathic and holistic) of medicine. The hypothesis is a strong candidate for being that missing element of psychosomatics that was sought but never found by one of the fathers of psychosomatics, Viktor von Weiszacker.
In considering the biological dimensions of the fungi, for instance, it is possible to compare the different degrees of pathogenicity in relation to the condition of organs, tissues and cells of a guest organism, which in turn also and especially depend on the behaviour of the individual.
Each time the recuperative abilities of a known psycho-physical structure are exceeded, there is an inevitable exposure, even considering possible accidental co-founders, to the aggression--even at the smallest dimensions--of those external agents that otherwise would be harmless. In the presence of an indubitable connection between patient morale and disease, it is no longer legitimate to separate the two domains (allopathic and naturopathic) which are both indispensable for improving the health of individuals.
Flaws in mainstream theories on cancer causation
When facing the most pressing contemporary medical problem, cancer, the first thing to do is to admit that we still do not know its real cause. However treated in different ways by both official and alternative medicine, cancer has an aura of mystery that still exists around its real generative process.
The attempt to overcome the present impasse must therefore and necessarily go through two separate phases: a critical one that exposes the present limitations of oncology, and a constructive one capable of proposing a therapeutic system based on a new theoretical point of departure. In agreement with the most recent formulation of scientific philosophy, which suggests a counter-inductive approach where it is impossible to find a solution with the conceptual tools that are commonly accepted,1 only one logical formulation emerges: to refuse the oncological principle which assumes that cancer is generated by a cellular reproductive anomaly.
However, if the fundamental hypothesis of cellular reproductive anomaly is questioned, it becomes clear that all the theories based on this hypothesis are inevitably flawed.
It follows that both an auto-immunological process, in which the body's defence mechanisms against external agents turn their destructive capacity against internal constituents of the body, and an anomaly of the genetic structure implicated in the development of auto-destruction are inevitably disqualified.
Moreover, the common attempt to construct theories about multiple causes that have an oncogenic effect on cellular reproduction sometimes seems like a concealing screen, behind which there is nothing but a wall. These theories propose endless causes that are more or less associated with each other; and this means in reality that no valid causes are found. The invocation in turn of smoking, alcohol, toxic substances, diet, stress, psychological factors, etc., without a properly defined context, causes confusion and resignation, and creates even more mystification around a disease which may turn out to be simpler than it is depicted to be.
As background information, it is important to review the picture of presumed genetic influences in the development of cancer processes as they are depicted by molecular biologists. These are the scientists who perform research on infinitesimally small cellular mechanisms, but who in real life never see a patient. All present medical systems are based on this research, and thus, unfortunately, all therapies currently performed.
The main hypothesis of a genetic neoplastic causality is essentially reduced to the fact that the structures and the mechanism in charge of normal reproductive cellular activity become, for undefined reasons, capable of an autonomous behaviour that is disjointed from the overall tissular economy. The genes that normally have a positive role in cellular reproduction are, then, imprecisely referred to as "proto-oncogenes"; those that inhibit cellular reproduction are called "suppressor genes" or "recessive oncogenes". Both endogenous (never demonstrated) and exogenous cellular factors--that is, those carcinogenic elements that are usually invoked--are held responsible for the neoplastic degeneration of the tissues...
From a very superficial analysis of the presumed oncological picture, however, it seems to be clear how the assertion of all this unstoppable genetic hyperactivity can do nothing more that unveil the abysmal stupidity that is at the basis of this way of conceiving things. All those who work in the field do nothing but repeat the stale litany of reproductive cellular anomalies on a genetic basis. It is better to look for new horizons and conceptual instruments that are capable of unearthing a real and unique neoplastic aetiology.
Back to taxonomy
In order to find the possible carcinogenic ens morbi on the horizon of microbiology, it appears useful to return to the basic taxonomical concepts of biology where we can see, incidentally, the existence of a noticeable amount of indecision and indetermination.
Already in the last century, a German biologist, Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), departing from the Linnaeian concept that makes for two great kingdoms of living things (vegetable and animal), denounced the difficulties of categorising all those microscopic organisms which, because of their characteristics and properties, could not be attributed to either the vegetable or the animal kingdom. For these organisms, he proposed a third kingdom, Protista (protists).
"This vast and complex world includes a range of entities beginning with those that have sub-cellular structure--existing at the limits of life--such as viroids and viruses, moving through the mycoplasms to, finally, organisms of greater organisation: bacteria, Actinomycetes, Myxomycetes, fungi, protozoa and perhaps even some microscopic algae."2
The common element of these organisms is the feeding system, which, being implemented (with very few exceptions) by direct absorption of soluble organic compounds, differentiates them both from animals and vegetables. Animals also feed as above, but especially by ingesting solid organic materials that are then transformed through the digestive process. Vegetables, by utilising mineral compounds and light energy, are capable of feeding by synthesising the organic substances.
The contemporary tendency of biologists is once again to pick up, though in a more sophisticated way, the concept of the third kingdom. One goes even further, however, arguing that within that kingdom, fungi must be classified in a distinct category.
O. Verona3 says that if we put multicellular organisms provided with photosynthetic capabilities (plants) in the first kingdom and the organisms not provided with photosynthetic pigmentation (animals) in the second kingdom--and organisms from both these kingdoms are made of cells provided with a distinct nucleus (eukaryotes)--and, furthermore, if we put in another kingdom (protists), those monocellular organisms that have no chlorophyll and have cells that are without a distinct nucleus (prokaryotes), the fungi can well have their own kingdom because of the absence of photosynthetic pigmentation, the ability to be monocellular and multicellular, and, finally, their possession of a distinct nucleus.
Additionally, fungi possess a property that is strange when compared to all other micro-organisms: the ability to have a basic microscopic structure (hypha) with a simultaneous tendency to grow to remarkable dimensions (up to several kilograms), keeping unchanged the capacity to adapt and reproduce at any size.
From this point of view, therefore, fungi cannot be considered true organisms, but cellular aggregates sui generis with an organismic behaviour, since each cell maintains its survival and reproductive potential intact regardless of the structure in which it exists. It is therefore clear how difficult it is to identify all the biological processes in such complex living realities. In fact, even today, there are huge voids and taxonomical approximations in mycology.
Fungi characteristics
It is worthwhile to examine more deeply this strange world, with such peculiar characteristics, and try to highlight those elements that somehow may be pertinent to the problems of oncology.
1) Fungi are heterotrophic organisms and therefore need, as far as nitrogen and carbon are concerned, pre-formed compounds. Of these compounds, simple carbohydrates, for example monosaccharides (glucose, fructose and mannose), are among the most utilised sugars. This means that fungi, during their life cycle, depend on other living beings which must be exploited in different degrees for their feeding. This occurs both in a saprophytic way (that is, by feeding on organic waste) and in a parasitic way (that is, by attacking the tissue of the host directly).
2) Fungi show a great variety of reproductive manifestations (sexual, asexual, gemmation; these manifestations can often be observed simultaneously in the same mycete), combined with a great morphostructural variety of organs. All of this is directed toward the end of spore formation, to which the continuity and propagation of the species is entrusted.
3) In mycology, it is often possible to observe a particular phenomenon called heterokaryon, characterised by the coexistence of normal and mutant nuclei in cells that have undergone a hyphal fusion.
Nowadays, phytopathologists are quite worried about the creation of individuals that are genetically quite different even from the parents. This difference has taken place by means of those reproductive cycles, which are called parasexual. The indiscriminate use of phytopharmaceuticals has in fact often determined mutations of the nuclei of many parasitic fungi with the consequent creation of heterokaryon--and this is sometimes particularly virulent in its pathogenicity.4
4) In the parasitic dimension, fungi can develop from the hyphas more or less beak-shaped, specialised structures that allow the penetration of the host.
5) The production of spores can be so abundant as to include always, at every cycle, tens, hundreds and even thousands of millions of elements that can be dispersed at a remarkable distance from the point of origin5 (a small movement is sufficient, for example, to implement immediate diffusion).
6) Spores have an immense resistance to external aggression, for they are capable of staying dormant in adverse conditions for many years while preserving unaltered their regenerative potentialities.
7) The development coefficient of the hyphal apexes after the germination is extremely fast (100 microns per minute under ideal conditions) with ramification capacity, thus with the appearance of a new apex region that in some cases is in the neighbourhood of 40-60 seconds.6
8) The shape of the fungus is never defined, for it is imposed by the environment in which the fungus develops. It is possible to observe, for example, the same mycelium in the simple isolated hyphas status in a liquid environment or in the form of aggregates that are increasingly solid and compact, up to the formation of pseudoparenchymas and of filaments and mycelial strings.7
9) By the same token, it is possible to observe in different fungi the same shape whenever they must adapt to the same environment (this is called dimorphism). The partial or total substitution of nourishing substances induces frequent mutations in fungi, and this is further proof of their high adaptability to any substrata.
10) When the nutritional conditions are precarious, many fungi react with hyphal fusion (among nearby fungi) which allows them to explore the available material more easily, using more complete physiological processes. This property, which substitutes co-operation for competition, makes them distinct from any other micro-organism, and for this reason Buller calls them social organisms.8
11) When a cell gets old or becomes damaged (e.g., by a toxic substance or by a pharmaceutical), many fungi whose intercellular septums are provided with a pore react by implementing a defence process called protoplasmic flux, through which they transfer the nucleus and cytoplasm of the damaged cell into a healthy one, thus conserving unaltered all their biological potential.
12) The phenomena regulating the development of hyphal ramification are unknown to date.9 They consist of either a rhythmic development or in the appearance of sectors which, though they originate from the hyphal system, are self-regulating,10 that is, independent of the regulating action and behaviour of the rest of the colony.
13) Fungi are capable of implementing an infinite number of modifications to their own metabolism in order to overcome the defence mechanism of the host. These modifications are implemented through plasmatic and biochemical actions as well as by a volumetric increase (hypertrophy) and numerical hyperplasy of the cells that have been attacked.11
14) Fungi are so aggressive as to attack not only plants, animal tissue, food supplies and other fungi, but even protozoa, amoebas and nematodes.
Fungi hunt nematodes, for example, with peculiar hyphal modifications that constitute real mycelial criss-cross, viscose or ring traps that immobilise the worms.
In some cases, the aggressive power of the fungus is so great as to allow it--with only a cellular ring made up of three unit--to tighten its grip, capture and kill its prey within a short time, notwithstanding the desperate struggling of the prey.
From the short notations above, it therefore seems fair to dedicate greater attention to the world of fungi, especially considering the fact that biologists and microbiologists constantly highlight large deficiencies and voids in all their descriptions and interpretations of fungi's shapes, physiologies and reproductions.
So the fungus, which is the most powerful and the most organised micro-organism known, seems to be an extremely logical candidate as a cause of neoplastic proliferation.
Imperfect fungi (so called because of the lack of knowledge and understanding of their biological processes) deserve particular attention, since their essential prerogative sits in their fermentative capacity.
The greatest disease of mankind may therefore hide within a small cluster of pathogenic fungi, and may after all be located with just some simple deductions able to close the circle and provide the solution.
Candida albicans: a necessary and sufficient cause of cancer
Considering that among the human parasite species the Dermatophytes and Sporotrichum demonstrate an excessively specific morbidity, and that experience shows that Actinomycetes, Toluropsis and Histoplasma rarely enter the context of pathology, the Candida albicans fungus clearly emerges as the sole candidate for tumour proliferation.
If we stop for a second and reflect on its characteristics, we can observe many analogies with neoplastic disease. The most evident are:
1) ubiquitous attachment--no organ or tissue is spared;
2) the constant absence of hyperpyrexia;
3) sporadic and indirect involvement of the differential tissues;
4) invasiveness that is almost exclusively of the focal type;
5) progressive debilitation;
6) refractivity to any type of treatment;
7) proliferation facilitated by multiplicity of indifferent co-founders;
8) Symptomatological basic configuration with structure tending to the chronic.
Therefore, an exceptionally high and diversified pathogenic potentiality exists in this mycete of just a few microns in size, which, even though it cannot be traced with the present experimental instruments, cannot be neglected from the clinical point of view.
Certainly, its present nosological classification cannot be satisfactory because, if we do not keep the possibly endless parasitic configurations in mind, that classification is too simplistic and constraining.
We therefore have to hypothesise that Candida, in the moment it is attacked by the immunological system of the host or by a conventional antimycotic treatment, does not react in the usual, predicted way but defends itself by transforming itself into ever-smaller and non-differentiated elements that maintain their fecundity intact to the point of hiding their presence both to the host organism and to possible diagnostic investigations.
Candida's behaviour may be considered to be almost elastic. When favourable conditions exist, Candida thrives on an epithelium; as soon as the tissue reaction is engaged, it massively transforms itself into a form that is less productive but impervious to attack: the spore. If, then, continuous subepithelial solutions take place, coupled with a greater areactivity in that very moment, the spore gets deeper into the lower connective tissue in such an impervious state that colonisation is irreversible.
In fact, Candida takes advantage of a structural interchangeability, utilising it according to the difficulties, e.g., in feeding, to overcome its biological niche. In this way, Candida is free to expand to maturation in the soil, air, water, vegetation, etc.--that is, wherever there is no antibody reaction. In the epithelium, instead, it takes a mixed form, which is reduced to the sole spore component when it penetrates the lower epithelial levels, where it tends to expand again in the presence of conditions of tissular areactivity.
The initial mandatory step of an in-depth research endeavour would be to understand if and in which dimensions the spore transcends, what mechanisms it engages to hide itself or, again, to preserve its parasitic characteristic, or if it has available a neutral quiescent position which is difficult or even impossible to detect by the immunological system.
Unfortunately, today we do not have the appropriate means, either theoretical or technical, to answer these and similar questions, so the only valid suggestions can come solely from clinical observation and experience. While not providing immediate solutions, these sources can at least stimulate further questions.
Assuming that Candida albicans is the agent responsible for tumour development, a targeted therapy would take into account not just its static and macroscopic manifestations but even the ultramicroscopic ones, especially in their dynamic valency, that is, the reproductive. It is very probable that the targets to attack are the fungi's dimensional transition points in order to perform a decontamination with such a scope as to include the whole spectrum of the biological expression--parasitic, vegetative, sporal and even ultradimensional and, to the limit, viral.
If we stop at the most evident phenomena, we risk administering salves and unguents forever (in the case of dermatomycosis or in psoriasis), or clumsily attacking (with surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy) enigmatic tumoural masses with the sole result of facilitating their propagation, which is already heightened in the mycelial forms.
Why, one may ask, should we assume a different and heightened activity of Candida albicans, since it has been abundantly described in its pathological manifestations? The answer lies in the fact that it has been studied only in a pathogenic context, that is, only in relation to the epithelial tissues.
In reality, Candida possesses an aggressive valency that is diversified in function in the target tissue. It is just in the connective or in the connective environment, in fact, and not in the differentiated tissues, that Candida may find conditions favourable to an unlimited expansion. This emerges if we stop and reflect for a moment on the main function of connective tissue, which is to convey and supply nourishing substances to the cells of the whole organism. This is to be considered as an environment external to the more differentiated cells such as nervous, muscular, etc. It is in this context, in fact, that the alimentary competition takes place.
On the one hand, we have the organism's cellular elements trying to defeat all forms of invasion; on the other hand, we have fungal cells trying to absorb ever-growing quantities of nourishing substances, for they have to obey the species' biological imperative to form ever larger and diffused masses and colonies.
From the combination of various factors pertinent to both the host and the aggressor, it is possible to hypothesise the evolution of a candidosis.
First stage: Integer epitheliums, absence of the debilitating factors. Candida can only exist as a saprophyte.
Second stage: Non-integer epitheliums (erosions, abrasions, etc.), absence of stage debilitating factors, unusual transitory conditions (acidosis, metabolic disorder, and microbial disorder). Candida expands superficially (classic mycosis, both exogenous and endogenous).
Third stage: Non-integer epitheliums, presence of debilitating factors (toxic, stage radiant, traumatic, neuropsychic, etc.). Candida goes deeper into the subepithelial levels, from which it can be carried to the whole organism through the blood and lymph (intimate mycosis).12
Stages one and two are the most studied and understood, while stage three, though it has been described in its morphological diversity, is reduced to a silent form of saprophytism. This is not acceptable from a logical point of view, because no one can demonstrate the harmlessness of the fungal cells in the deepest parts of the organism.
In fact, the assumption that Candida can behave in the same saprophytic manner that is observed on integer epitheliums when it has successfully penetrated the lower levels is at least risky, because the assumption would have to be sustained by concepts that are totally aleatory (i.e., dependent on chance).
In fact, we are asked not only to accept a priori that the connective environment is (a) not suitable to nourish the Candida, but also at the same time to accept (b) the omnipotence of the body's defence system towards an organic structure that is invasive but that then becomes vulnerable once lodged in the deeper tissues.
As for point (a), it is difficult to imagine that a micro-organism so able to adapt itself to any substrata cannot find elements to support itself in the human organic substance; by the same token, it seems risky to hypothesise that the human organism's defence system is totally efficient at every moment of its existence.
As for point (b), the assumption that there is a tendency to a state of quiescence and vulnerability in the case of a pathogenic agent such as fungus--the most invasive and aggressive micro-organism existing in nature--seems to carry a whiff of the irresponsible.
It is therefore urgent, on the basis of the abovementioned considerations, to recognise the hazardous nature of such a pathogenic agent which is capable of easily taking the most various biological configurations, both biochemical and structural, regardless of the conditions of the host organism.
The fungal expansion gradient in fact becomes steeper as the tissue that is the host of the mycotic invasion becomes less eutrophic and thus less reactive.
Benign tumours
To that end, it seems useful to consider briefly the "benign tumour" nosological entity. This is an issue that always appears in general pathology but is brushed aside most of the time too easily, and it is overlooked because it usually doesn't create either problems or worries. It constitutes one of those underestimated grey areas seldom subjected to rational, fresh consideration.
If the benign tumour, however, is not considered a fully fledged tumour, it would be advantageous, for clarity, to categorise it in an appropriate nosological scheme.
If it is thought that, instead, it fully belongs to neoplastic pathology, then it is necessary to consider its non-invasive character and consequently to consider the reasons for this.
It is in fact evident how in this second scenario, the thesis based on a presumed predisposition of the organism to auto-phagocytosis, having to admit an expressive graduation, would stumble into such additional difficulties such as to become extremely improbable.
By contrast, in the fungal scenario, the mystery of why there are benign and malignant tumours is exhaustively solved, since they can be recognised as having the same aetiological genesis.
The benignity or malignancy of a cancer in fact depends on the capability of tissular reaction of a specific organ expressing itself ultimately in the ability to encyst fungal cells and to prevent them from developing in ever-larger colonies. This can be achieved more easily where the ratio between differentiated cells and connective tissue is in favour of the former.
Situated between the impervious noble tissues, then, and the defenceless connective tissues, the differentiated connective structures (the glandular structures in particular) represent that medium term which is only somewhat vulnerable to attack because of an ability to offer a certain type of defence.
And it is in these conditions that benign tumours are formed; that is, where the glandular connective tissue is successful in forming hypertrophic and hyperplastic cellular embankments against the parasites. In the stomach and in the lung, instead, since there are no specific glandular units, the target organ, provided with a small defensive capability, is at the mercy of the invader.
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning how several types of intimate fungal invasion do not determine the appearance of malignant or benign tumours but a type of particular benign tumour (specific degenerative alterations), as is the case with some organs or apparatuses that do not have peculiar glandular structures but nevertheless are attacked in their connective tissue, although in a limited way.
In fact, if we consider multiple sclerosis, SLA, psoriasis, nodular panarthritis, etc., the possible development of the fungus in a three-dimensional sense is actually limited by the anatomic configuration of the invaded tissues, so that only a longitudinal expansion is allowed.
Going back to the precondition of areactivity that is necessary for neoplastic development in a specific individual, it is permissible to affirm how in the human body each external or internal element that determines a reduction of well-being in an organism, organ or tissue possesses oncogenic potentiality. This is not so much because of an intrinsic damaging capability as much as a generic property of favouring the fungal (that is, tumoural) flourishing.
Then the causal network so much invoked in contemporary oncology, which involves toxic, genetic, immunological, psychological, geographical, moral, social and other factors, finds a correct classification only in a mycotic infectious perspective where the arithmetical and diachronic summation of harmful elements works as a co-factor to the external aggression.
Conventional treatments vs antifungal therapy
With the theoretical basis of the tumour/fungus equivalency demonstrated, it is clear how this interpretative key offers a long series of questions concerning contemporary therapies, both oncological (used without reference indexes) and antimycotic (utilised only at a superficial level).
Which path is best to walk today, then, when faced with a cancer patient, since the conventional oncological treatment, not being aetiological, can only occasionally have positive effects and most of the time produces damage?
In the fungal perspective, in fact, the effectiveness of surgery is noticeably reduced because of the extreme diffusibility and invasiveness characteristic of a mycelial conglomerate. Surgery to solve the problem is therefore tied to the case; that is, to conditions in which one has the luck to be able to remove the entire colony completely (which is often possible in the presence of a sufficient encystment, but only where benign tumours are concerned).
Chemotherapy and radiotherapy produce almost exclusively negative effects, both for their specific ineffectiveness and for their high toxicity and harmfulness to the tissues, which in the last analysis favours mycotic aggressiveness.
By contrast, an antifungal, antitumour-specific therapy would take into account the importance of the connective tissue together with the reproductive complexity of fungi. Only by attacking the fungi across the spectrum of all its forms, at points where it is most vulnerable from the nutritional point of view, would it be possible to hope to eradicate them from the human organism.
The first step to take, therefore, would be to reinforce the cancer patient with generic reconstituent measures (nutrition, tonics, regulation of rhythms and vital functions) that are able to enhance the general defences of the organism.
Concerning the possibility of having available pharmaceutical cures, which unfortunately do not exist today, it seems useful, in the attempt to find an antifungal substance that is quite diffusible and therefore effective, to consider the extreme sensitivity of Candida towards sodium bicarbonate (i.e., in the oral candidosis of breastfed babies). This is consistent with the fact that Candida has an accentuated ability to reproduce in an acid environment.
Theoretically, therefore, if treatments could be found that put the fungus in direct contact with high sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) concentrations, we should be able to see a regression of the tumoural masses.
And this is what happens in many types of tumour, such as colon and liver--and especially stomach and lung, the former susceptible to regression just because of its "external" anatomic position, and the latter because of the high diffusibility of sodium bicarbonate in the bronchial system and for its high responsiveness to general reconstituent measures.
By applying a similar therapeutic approach, it has been possible in many patients to achieve complete remission of the symptomatology and normalisation of the instrumental data.
It is important to emphasise that these cases are just an example of what could be a new way of perceiving the complexity of medical problems, especially in oncology.
[Reports of seven cases of patients, several of whom have been documented for 10 years following sodium bicarbonate treatment, are summarised in the complete article at the web page http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/simoncini-writes.html; Editor]
Critical considerations
It seems appropriate to analyse, in a critical and self-critical spirit, what may emerge in neoplastic pathology that is new and concrete. If we closely observe the proposed therapeutic approach, it is possible to see that, independently of its real effectiveness, it has value as an innovative theory. First, it challenges the present methodology and especially its assumptions. Second, it offers a concrete alternative proposal to a mountain of conjectures and postures that sound authoritative but are too generic and therefore ineffective.
The identification of one tumoural cause, even with all the possible general provisos, would represent a step forward that is indispensable for escaping that passivity determined by a lack of results, and which is responsible for medical behaviours that are based too much on faith and not enough on real confidence.
Given, therefore, that an unconventional medical approach can benefit some patients betterÑfrom any point of viewÑthan the official treatments, and since valuable results can be demonstrated, this should stimulate us to pursue further research while avoiding patronising postures that are both limiting and non-productive.
We can therefore discuss whether or not sodium bicarbonate is the real reason for the recoveries or if, instead, those recoveries are due to the interaction of a number of conditions that have been created, the results of unidentified neuropsychical factors, or maybe the results of something totally unknown. What is beyond question, however, is the fact that a certain number of people, by not following conventional methods, have been able to go back to normality without suffering and without mutilation.
The message of this experience is therefore a call to search for those solutions that are in accord with the simple Hippocratic obligation to man's "well-being"; that is, we must be stimulated to a critical evaluation of our contemporary oncological therapies which indubitably can guarantee suffering. When we group together both malignant tumours that are occasionally or never healed (such as lung and stomach) and tumours that border with benignity (such as the majority of thyroid and prostatic tumours, etc.) or put them together with those that have an autonomous positive outcome notwithstanding chemotherapy (i.e., infantile leukaemia)-all of this appears to be devious and misleading, having only the purpose of forging a consensus that would otherwise be impossible to obtain with intellectually ethical behaviour.
The fact that modern medicine not only cannot offer sufficient interpretative criteria but even uses dangerous methodologies that are also harmful and meaningless-even if carried out with good faithÑis something which must push us all to search for humane and logical alternatives. At the same time, it is necessary to carefully, open-mindedly and logically consider any theory or point of view that is dared to be advanced in the battle against that monstrous and inhuman yoke that is the tumour.
To this end, a note of acknowledgement is to go to all those who are aware of the harmfulness of conventional therapeutic methods and constantly try to find alternative solutions. People like Di Bella, Govallo and others, although guilty of utilising the same inauspicious principles of official medicine (thus showing an excessively conformist mindset), are actually using common sense by trying to relieve the suffering of cancer patients through the use of painless methodologies, and in some cases are able to achieve remissions, even though they're in the dark about the real causes of cancer.
In an alternative perspective, then, it would be necessary to conceive a new approach to experimentation in the oncological field, setting epidemiological, aetiological, pathogenic, clinical and therapeutic research in line with a renewed microbiology and mycology that would probably drive us to the conclusion already illustrated: that is, the tumour is a fungusÑCandida albicans.
The possible discovery that not only tumours but also the majority of chronic degenerative disease could be reconciled to mycotic causality would represent a qualitative quantum leap, which, by revolutionising medical thinking, could greatly improve life expectancy and quality of life. Such reconciliation might include a wider spectrum of fungal parasites (for example, in diseases of the connective tissues, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, some epileptic forms, diabetes type 2, etc.).
In closing, considering that the world of fungi-those most complex and aggressive micro-organisms-has been bypassed and left unobserved for far too long, the hope of this work is to promote awareness of the hazards of these micro-organisms so that medical resources can be channelled not up blind alleys but towards the real enemies of the human organism: external infectious agents.
Addendum: A Note on Cancer Treatment
The implications from my hypothesis that cancer is a fungus which can be eradicated with sodium bicarbonate are that:
1) eighty years of genetic study and application has been for nothing, especially considering that the genetic theory of cancer has never been demonstrated;
2) the loss of millions, if not billions, of lives with all the suffering has been for nothing;
3) the billions of dollars spent on chemotherapy medicine, radiotherapy, etc. has been for nothing;
4) the recognition and prizes given to eminent researchers and professors has been for nothing;
5) the oncologist could be replaced by the family doctor; and
6) the pharmaceutical industry will incur tremendous financial losses (sodium bicarbonate is inexpensive and impossible to patent).
My methods have cured people for 20 years. Many of my patients recovered completely from cancer, even in cases where official oncology had given up.
The best way to try to eliminate a tumour is to bring it into contact with sodium bicarbonate, as closely as possible, i.e., using oral administration for the digestive tract, an enema for the rectum, douching for the vagina and uterus, intravenous injection for the lung and the brain, and inhalation for the upper airways. Breasts, lymph nodes and subcutaneous lumps can be treated with local perfusions. The internal organs can be treated with sodium bicarbonate by locating suitable catheters in the arteries (of the liver, pancreas, prostate and limbs) or in the cavities (of the pleura or peritoneum). (Note that sodium bicarbonate should not be used as a cancer preventive.)
It is important to treat each type of cancer with the right dosage. For phleboclysis (drip infusion), 500 cc given in a series of intervals-5% strength on one day and 8.4% the next-is required, depending on the patient's weight and condition; the stronger dose may perhaps be needed in cases of lung and brain cancers according to the tumour type (primary or metastatic) and size. For external administrations, it is enough to taste if the solution is salty. Sometimes it is judicious to combine different administrations.
For each treatment, take into consideration that tumour colonies regress between the third and fourth day and collapse between the fourth and fifth, so a six-day administration is sufficient. A complete, effective cycle is made up of six treatment days on and six days off, repeated four times. The most important side effects of this care system are thirst and weakness.
For skin cancers (melanoma, epithelioma, etc.), a 7% iodine tincture should be spread on the affected area once a day, 20-30 times consecutively in one sitting, with the aim of producing a number of layers of crust. If, after one month of treatment, the first crust is gone and the skin is not completely healed, then the treatment should be continued in the same manner until the second crust forms, heals and then comes loose without any assistance. (The procedure is also applicable for treating psoriasis.) After this treatment, the cancer will be gone and stay away forever.
For more information, see "Protocol Treatments with sodium biocarbonate solutions" at http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/cancer-therapy-simoncini-protocol.html and FAQ sections at http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/.
Editor's Note:
Due to space constraints, we are unable to reprint Dr Simoncini's paper in full. To download the complete paper including case study summaries, go to the web page http://www.curenaturalicancro.com/simoncini-writes.html.
Endnotes
1. Feyerabend, P.K., Contro il metodo ("Against Method"), Feltrinelli, Milano, 1994, p. 26
2. Verona, O., Il vasto mondo dei funghi ("The Vast World of Fungi"), Edizioni Nuova Italia, Firenze, 1973, p. 1
3. op. cit., p. 2
4. Rambelli, A., Fondamenti di micologia ("Basics of Mycology"), Edizioni Guida, Napoli, 1972, p. 35
5. op. cit.
6. op. cit., p. 28
7. Verona, op. cit., p. 5
8. Rambelli, A., op. cit., p. 31
9. op. cit., p. 28
10. op. cit., p. 29
11. op. cit., p. 266
12. op. cit., p. 273
About the Author:
Based in Rome, Italy, Dr Tullio Simoncini is a medical doctor and surgeon specialising in oncology, diabetology and metabolic disorders. He is also a Doctor of Philosophy. An humanitarian, he is opposed to any kind of intellectual conformity, which he sees as often based on suppositions without foundation or, worse, on lies and falsehoods. Dr Simoncini regularly attends medical conferences and does interviews to explain what's wrong with conventional cancer theories and treatments, to present his fungal theory of cancer and to describe case studies involving patients healed with sodium bicarbonate, a powerful antifungal. His book, Cancer is a Fungus: A revolution in the therapy of tumours (Edizioni Lampis), is available in Italian, Dutch and English from the website http://www.cancerfungus.com/.
For more information on Dr Simoncini's theory, therapy and case studies, and to view interviews and testimonials, visit the portal website http://www.cancerfungus.com/.
Ten Jobs You Didn't Know You Wanted
http://finance.yahoo.com/career-work/article/104272/Ten-Jobs-You-Didn
Ten Jobs You Didn't Know You Wanted
by April Joyner
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
What's in the perfect job? Money, of course, matters, but it isn't the only measure of an awe-inspiring career. Creative opportunities, healthy interaction, a good challenge from time to time, and other intangible rewards all count, too. FastCompany.com brings you ten jobs that have all these qualities in spades.
Appealing to the Senses
Flavorist
What gives your favorite foods their special taste? It's the flavorist's job to figure out the precise combination of chemicals. Flavorists' creations most often mimic naturally occurring flavors while adding sharpness and robustness, though they create novel flavors as well, particularly for new candies and beverages. Whether the flavors are old or new, flavorists must ensure that their creations endure once they go into a particular food or drink. They often face special challenges, like striving for flavors that avoid triggering certain allergies, even if they taste like the allergens.
Creating flavors isn't all chemistry. It also involves a fair share of art, as different chemical combinations can produce the same flavor. Because of this intricacy, flavorists spend seven years in apprenticeship before they gain seniority. Once they have enough experience, they can make subtle manipulations in chemical formulas to produce unique versions of even common flavors such as vanilla.
Additionally, the scientific understanding behind the flavorist's art continues to develop. Chemists still have an incomplete understanding of the factors that separate taste from odor. "It's an exciting area, a challenging and interesting field," says Gary Takeoka, a research chemist at the Western Regional Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who has also worked for Nabisco.
Combined with the steady demand for innovation in the food industry, such ambiguities offer exciting possibilities for new flavorists. Those entering the field will also enjoy a comfortable salary. Most flavorists earn $58,000-$76,000 a year, according to estimates from the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Brewmaster
Brewmasters, or head brewers, manage the daily operations of beer breweries, including ordering raw ingredients for brewing and planning the brewing schedule. They participate in the actual beer-making process as well, ensuring that each step transitions smoothly to the next. Doing so requires a combination of management skill and heavy physical labor, including shoveling the raw grain out of containers to prepare beer for fermentation. Even the labor presents opportunity for innovation, however. Brewmasters often play a direct part in the brewing process, in order to test new varieties of beer.
Brewmasters' passion for the job allows them to build strong relationships, even across competing breweries. "There is a very strong sense of camaraderie among brewers in the country," says Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association. "There's very much a sharing of information, a sharing of resources." And brewers can bring home the fruits of their labor to partake and share with their drinking buddies.
According to surveys of head brewers at packaging breweries and brewpubs conducted by the Brewers Association, brewmasters make $41,000-$76,000 a year. The pay level usually increases with the size of the brewery.
Sensory brander
As brand strategy has grown increasingly sophisticated, it has expanded well beyond the visual. Using similar skill sets as interior designers and architects, sensory branders help companies incorporate the other underappreciated but powerful senses into their brands. They encourage clients to consider even minute features such as the sound of a car door closing or the grip of a bottle opener.
"Often when you suggest the idea of sensory branding to a company, they look at you like you're crazy sometimes," says Peter Dixon, creative director of Lippincott, a New York branding agency. "But they already have a scent -- they just haven't paid attention to it yet." Sensory branders are steadily curbing this lack of attention, however; in Asia, several agencies solely dedicated to multi-sensory branding can be found.
Sensory branders must understand customers' perceptions. They research how different groups react to particular sensory triggers, such as the combination of scent and color. This research often involves travel for insight into international cultures. For Dixon, however, the biggest perk comes from the innovative nature of the field. "It's a very fun thing to do because it's such a novel idea right now," he says.
Sensory branders make similar salaries to their peers in other areas of marketing management. According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, they can expect $51,000-$92,000 a year.
Enhancing Life and the Bottom Line
Carbon coach
Reducing contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, or the carbon footprint, is one huge step toward sustainability, but few guidelines exist for how companies gunning to be green should proceed. Carbon coaches offer this essential information. In addition to calculating carbon footprints and offering advice for offsetting them, carbon coaches help companies fit sustainability into their overall mission. Their services range from providing branding strategy for "green" product launches to advising companies on their relationships with NGOs.
Already prevalent in Europe, carbon consulting is steadily catching on stateside. "Getting corporate culture to change is challenging and frustrating, but companies are really starting to change," says Michael Gillenwater, Dean of GHG Management Institute. "It's enormously exciting." The quickly changing nature of the field and the frequent opportunities to compare notes with colleagues worldwide only adds to the excitement.
Most carbon coaches work at consulting firms, where they command salaries ranging from $40,000 to $60,000 for entry-level positions and $60,000 to $100,000 for mid-level positions, according to Gillenwater. Non-profit organization salaries aren't as high; an entry-level carbon coach with a master's degree can expect a salary of $30,000 to $50,000.
Sleep instructor
Sleep instructors help the overworked catch their zzz's with mind-body exercises for the bedroom and beyond. With corporate clients, they focus on productivity, alertness, and cognitive performance during the day -- key factors in achieving restful nights, according to Michael Krugman, inventor of the Sounder Sleep System. Sleep consultants also advise managers on how to create a "sleep-supportive" environment, including limiting work hours and helping employees avoid stressful commutes.
Sleep instructors can sometimes escape the workplace altogether, leading retreats in calm and often exotic locations. But customer satisfaction brings Krugman his biggest reward. "These are people that are really in trouble," says Krugman of his most sleep-deprived clients. "Once they start to feel more rested, they really come alive."
Because sleep instructors do not receive regular salaries, their earnings potential widely varies. "It's a freelance profession, so it depends on how much you work," says Krugman. "For a corporate client, you could charge up to $1250 per day." Based on earnings in similar fitness and wellness training fields, sleep consultants can earn between $25,000 and $60,000 a year.
Metaverse evangelist
As Second Life and other virtual worlds, called metaverses, have grown in popularity, they've transformed from a gaming novelty into a communications boon for job-hunters as well as corporate leaders. Ian Hughes, an IT specialist at IBM Hursley in Hampshire County, England, has taken on a new title -- metaverse evangelist -- to advise how these virtual worlds can benefit individuals and companies. Hughes also joined a team of specialists at IBM to develop a metaverse on the company's intranet so that employees could have a more private place to discuss their work.
While technically, Hughes, along with his colleagues, works a standard forty-hour week, as an evangelist, he continuously promotes the technology, which means plenty of hours spent in Second Life. But for the metaverse enthusiast, that's definitely a perk, along with "freedom to operate and explore," says Hughes.
Regarding salary, Hughes only comments, "Probably not as much as you would think," though the standard salary range of $60,000 to $80,000 for a computer developer is far from shabby.
Interaction designer
Interaction designers work at all stages of product development to design innovative and user-friendly products. In addition to wearing the traditional hat of a designer, they work with executives to define goals for products and systems in development. They also investigate how people actually engage with new products and systems by creating "personas," hypothetical users with constructed life stories, to predict their reactions.
Although many interaction designers have advanced degrees in design, such a background isn't a prerequisite, says David Fore, head of consulting services at Cooper, a pioneering interaction design firm. Fore previously worked as a reporter for industry publications -- valuable experience, given that interaction designers' research requires "the skills of a reporter and an anthropologist," according to him.
Because interaction designers bring such a comprehensive approach to design, their relatively new field, only ten to fifteen years old, is growing in demand. As a result, entry-level designers with two years of background can expect $75,000 to $80,000 a year, with ample opportunity for an increase in salary. Beginning interaction designers usually gain experience through an apprenticeship.
In addition to the competitive salary, interaction designers enjoy the opportunity "to learn about every walk of life and industry imaginable," says Fore. "There's working with stock brokers, working with a golf course superintendent, an advertising creative director, working with a nurse to build infusion pumps. Everyone needs product design."
Setting Creativity in Motion
Roller coaster engineer
The experts behind a roller coaster's loops, drops, and turns bring several disciplines of engineering -- structural, civil, mechanical, and electrical -- to each design. Structural and civil engineers design the track structure, keeping in mind the client's budget as well as the proximity to other rides in the park. Mechanical engineers design the cars that run along the roller coaster's track. Their primary challenge is to maximize thrills, achieved by manipulating the g-force, without compromising safety. Electrical engineers then work to configure the system that operates the ride.
Aspiring roller coaster engineers should obtain at least a bachelor's degree in a related field of engineering. Although an internship or entry-level position at a firm specializing in roller coaster design offers ideal entry into the field, such positions are limited. Most roller coaster engineers begin their engineering careers in other fields and then switch to the amusement industry.
Once they've made it, roller coaster engineers command salaries from $45,000 to $80,000. Along with their paychecks, they enjoy another perk: being first in line to ride.
Animator
As animation technology has advanced, the field has expanded well beyond feature films to areas such as video games, television, and Internet projects. In all these areas, animators consult with their clients, whether film directors, Web advertisers, or game developers, and then collaborate to develop storyboards for the animations. They also work closely with the people providing sound for their animations, including voice actors and sound engineers.
Although the vast majority of animated projects involve computer and 3-D animation, drawing skills remain invaluable. Most animators train in art school and then complete internships or apprenticeships to improve their craft. New animators often land jobs as in-betweeners, in which they sketch intermediary frames for animations so that the movement appears fluid.
Animators earn salaries ranging from $30,000 to $70,000 a year, with the most prized among their craft earning even more. All who are lucky enough to enter the field, however, share in the magical experience of seeing their sketches come to life.
Travel writer
Travel writing certainly requires a love of adventure, but above all, it demands passion for the written word. The writers use the same skills as other journalists: an eye and ear for detail and the ability to fact check extensively and thoroughly. In transit, the latter often poses steep challenges, especially in rarely traveled locations. The excitement of diving into the unfamiliar, however, well outweighs the hitches they encounter.
Travel writers, especially those just starting out, bankroll most of the adventures they chronicle. Like in other areas of journalism, new travel writers usually begin at small, local publications, most frequently as freelancers. As they earn more clips, or published stories, they have a greater chance at being featured in larger travel magazines or landing a full-time position at a travel guide. Writers with expertise in locations off the beaten path or a particular niche, such as culinary travel, may also secure book deals.
Most travel writers are freelancers, so they don't receive a regular salary. Earnings range from $20,000 to $60,000 a year, with even greater potential for the most successful writers. Even when earnings are tight, however, writers in locations with a low cost of living can often thrive. And unlike most workers who have to dip into vacation time for travel, they make a return on pursuing experiences that many can only imagine.
Fast Company acknowledges Abigail Gehring, author of Odd Jobs: 101 Ways to Make an Odd Buck, VocationVacations founder Brian Kurth, and FabJob.com co-founder Tag Goulet for their help and suggestions in compiling the jobs that comprised this piece.
Ten Jobs You Didn't Know You Wanted
by April Joyner
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
What's in the perfect job? Money, of course, matters, but it isn't the only measure of an awe-inspiring career. Creative opportunities, healthy interaction, a good challenge from time to time, and other intangible rewards all count, too. FastCompany.com brings you ten jobs that have all these qualities in spades.
Appealing to the Senses
Flavorist
What gives your favorite foods their special taste? It's the flavorist's job to figure out the precise combination of chemicals. Flavorists' creations most often mimic naturally occurring flavors while adding sharpness and robustness, though they create novel flavors as well, particularly for new candies and beverages. Whether the flavors are old or new, flavorists must ensure that their creations endure once they go into a particular food or drink. They often face special challenges, like striving for flavors that avoid triggering certain allergies, even if they taste like the allergens.
Creating flavors isn't all chemistry. It also involves a fair share of art, as different chemical combinations can produce the same flavor. Because of this intricacy, flavorists spend seven years in apprenticeship before they gain seniority. Once they have enough experience, they can make subtle manipulations in chemical formulas to produce unique versions of even common flavors such as vanilla.
Additionally, the scientific understanding behind the flavorist's art continues to develop. Chemists still have an incomplete understanding of the factors that separate taste from odor. "It's an exciting area, a challenging and interesting field," says Gary Takeoka, a research chemist at the Western Regional Research Center of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, who has also worked for Nabisco.
Combined with the steady demand for innovation in the food industry, such ambiguities offer exciting possibilities for new flavorists. Those entering the field will also enjoy a comfortable salary. Most flavorists earn $58,000-$76,000 a year, according to estimates from the Occupational Outlook Handbook.
Brewmaster
Brewmasters, or head brewers, manage the daily operations of beer breweries, including ordering raw ingredients for brewing and planning the brewing schedule. They participate in the actual beer-making process as well, ensuring that each step transitions smoothly to the next. Doing so requires a combination of management skill and heavy physical labor, including shoveling the raw grain out of containers to prepare beer for fermentation. Even the labor presents opportunity for innovation, however. Brewmasters often play a direct part in the brewing process, in order to test new varieties of beer.
Brewmasters' passion for the job allows them to build strong relationships, even across competing breweries. "There is a very strong sense of camaraderie among brewers in the country," says Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association. "There's very much a sharing of information, a sharing of resources." And brewers can bring home the fruits of their labor to partake and share with their drinking buddies.
According to surveys of head brewers at packaging breweries and brewpubs conducted by the Brewers Association, brewmasters make $41,000-$76,000 a year. The pay level usually increases with the size of the brewery.
Sensory brander
As brand strategy has grown increasingly sophisticated, it has expanded well beyond the visual. Using similar skill sets as interior designers and architects, sensory branders help companies incorporate the other underappreciated but powerful senses into their brands. They encourage clients to consider even minute features such as the sound of a car door closing or the grip of a bottle opener.
"Often when you suggest the idea of sensory branding to a company, they look at you like you're crazy sometimes," says Peter Dixon, creative director of Lippincott, a New York branding agency. "But they already have a scent -- they just haven't paid attention to it yet." Sensory branders are steadily curbing this lack of attention, however; in Asia, several agencies solely dedicated to multi-sensory branding can be found.
Sensory branders must understand customers' perceptions. They research how different groups react to particular sensory triggers, such as the combination of scent and color. This research often involves travel for insight into international cultures. For Dixon, however, the biggest perk comes from the innovative nature of the field. "It's a very fun thing to do because it's such a novel idea right now," he says.
Sensory branders make similar salaries to their peers in other areas of marketing management. According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, they can expect $51,000-$92,000 a year.
Enhancing Life and the Bottom Line
Carbon coach
Reducing contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, or the carbon footprint, is one huge step toward sustainability, but few guidelines exist for how companies gunning to be green should proceed. Carbon coaches offer this essential information. In addition to calculating carbon footprints and offering advice for offsetting them, carbon coaches help companies fit sustainability into their overall mission. Their services range from providing branding strategy for "green" product launches to advising companies on their relationships with NGOs.
Already prevalent in Europe, carbon consulting is steadily catching on stateside. "Getting corporate culture to change is challenging and frustrating, but companies are really starting to change," says Michael Gillenwater, Dean of GHG Management Institute. "It's enormously exciting." The quickly changing nature of the field and the frequent opportunities to compare notes with colleagues worldwide only adds to the excitement.
Most carbon coaches work at consulting firms, where they command salaries ranging from $40,000 to $60,000 for entry-level positions and $60,000 to $100,000 for mid-level positions, according to Gillenwater. Non-profit organization salaries aren't as high; an entry-level carbon coach with a master's degree can expect a salary of $30,000 to $50,000.
Sleep instructor
Sleep instructors help the overworked catch their zzz's with mind-body exercises for the bedroom and beyond. With corporate clients, they focus on productivity, alertness, and cognitive performance during the day -- key factors in achieving restful nights, according to Michael Krugman, inventor of the Sounder Sleep System. Sleep consultants also advise managers on how to create a "sleep-supportive" environment, including limiting work hours and helping employees avoid stressful commutes.
Sleep instructors can sometimes escape the workplace altogether, leading retreats in calm and often exotic locations. But customer satisfaction brings Krugman his biggest reward. "These are people that are really in trouble," says Krugman of his most sleep-deprived clients. "Once they start to feel more rested, they really come alive."
Because sleep instructors do not receive regular salaries, their earnings potential widely varies. "It's a freelance profession, so it depends on how much you work," says Krugman. "For a corporate client, you could charge up to $1250 per day." Based on earnings in similar fitness and wellness training fields, sleep consultants can earn between $25,000 and $60,000 a year.
Metaverse evangelist
As Second Life and other virtual worlds, called metaverses, have grown in popularity, they've transformed from a gaming novelty into a communications boon for job-hunters as well as corporate leaders. Ian Hughes, an IT specialist at IBM Hursley in Hampshire County, England, has taken on a new title -- metaverse evangelist -- to advise how these virtual worlds can benefit individuals and companies. Hughes also joined a team of specialists at IBM to develop a metaverse on the company's intranet so that employees could have a more private place to discuss their work.
While technically, Hughes, along with his colleagues, works a standard forty-hour week, as an evangelist, he continuously promotes the technology, which means plenty of hours spent in Second Life. But for the metaverse enthusiast, that's definitely a perk, along with "freedom to operate and explore," says Hughes.
Regarding salary, Hughes only comments, "Probably not as much as you would think," though the standard salary range of $60,000 to $80,000 for a computer developer is far from shabby.
Interaction designer
Interaction designers work at all stages of product development to design innovative and user-friendly products. In addition to wearing the traditional hat of a designer, they work with executives to define goals for products and systems in development. They also investigate how people actually engage with new products and systems by creating "personas," hypothetical users with constructed life stories, to predict their reactions.
Although many interaction designers have advanced degrees in design, such a background isn't a prerequisite, says David Fore, head of consulting services at Cooper, a pioneering interaction design firm. Fore previously worked as a reporter for industry publications -- valuable experience, given that interaction designers' research requires "the skills of a reporter and an anthropologist," according to him.
Because interaction designers bring such a comprehensive approach to design, their relatively new field, only ten to fifteen years old, is growing in demand. As a result, entry-level designers with two years of background can expect $75,000 to $80,000 a year, with ample opportunity for an increase in salary. Beginning interaction designers usually gain experience through an apprenticeship.
In addition to the competitive salary, interaction designers enjoy the opportunity "to learn about every walk of life and industry imaginable," says Fore. "There's working with stock brokers, working with a golf course superintendent, an advertising creative director, working with a nurse to build infusion pumps. Everyone needs product design."
Setting Creativity in Motion
Roller coaster engineer
The experts behind a roller coaster's loops, drops, and turns bring several disciplines of engineering -- structural, civil, mechanical, and electrical -- to each design. Structural and civil engineers design the track structure, keeping in mind the client's budget as well as the proximity to other rides in the park. Mechanical engineers design the cars that run along the roller coaster's track. Their primary challenge is to maximize thrills, achieved by manipulating the g-force, without compromising safety. Electrical engineers then work to configure the system that operates the ride.
Aspiring roller coaster engineers should obtain at least a bachelor's degree in a related field of engineering. Although an internship or entry-level position at a firm specializing in roller coaster design offers ideal entry into the field, such positions are limited. Most roller coaster engineers begin their engineering careers in other fields and then switch to the amusement industry.
Once they've made it, roller coaster engineers command salaries from $45,000 to $80,000. Along with their paychecks, they enjoy another perk: being first in line to ride.
Animator
As animation technology has advanced, the field has expanded well beyond feature films to areas such as video games, television, and Internet projects. In all these areas, animators consult with their clients, whether film directors, Web advertisers, or game developers, and then collaborate to develop storyboards for the animations. They also work closely with the people providing sound for their animations, including voice actors and sound engineers.
Although the vast majority of animated projects involve computer and 3-D animation, drawing skills remain invaluable. Most animators train in art school and then complete internships or apprenticeships to improve their craft. New animators often land jobs as in-betweeners, in which they sketch intermediary frames for animations so that the movement appears fluid.
Animators earn salaries ranging from $30,000 to $70,000 a year, with the most prized among their craft earning even more. All who are lucky enough to enter the field, however, share in the magical experience of seeing their sketches come to life.
Travel writer
Travel writing certainly requires a love of adventure, but above all, it demands passion for the written word. The writers use the same skills as other journalists: an eye and ear for detail and the ability to fact check extensively and thoroughly. In transit, the latter often poses steep challenges, especially in rarely traveled locations. The excitement of diving into the unfamiliar, however, well outweighs the hitches they encounter.
Travel writers, especially those just starting out, bankroll most of the adventures they chronicle. Like in other areas of journalism, new travel writers usually begin at small, local publications, most frequently as freelancers. As they earn more clips, or published stories, they have a greater chance at being featured in larger travel magazines or landing a full-time position at a travel guide. Writers with expertise in locations off the beaten path or a particular niche, such as culinary travel, may also secure book deals.
Most travel writers are freelancers, so they don't receive a regular salary. Earnings range from $20,000 to $60,000 a year, with even greater potential for the most successful writers. Even when earnings are tight, however, writers in locations with a low cost of living can often thrive. And unlike most workers who have to dip into vacation time for travel, they make a return on pursuing experiences that many can only imagine.
Fast Company acknowledges Abigail Gehring, author of Odd Jobs: 101 Ways to Make an Odd Buck, VocationVacations founder Brian Kurth, and FabJob.com co-founder Tag Goulet for their help and suggestions in compiling the jobs that comprised this piece.
MATT DRUDGE IS GAY FOR TOM BRADY!!!
XXXXX KONFORMIST REPORT XXXXX SUN FEB 03 20088 XXXXX
EXCLUSIVE FROM THE KONFORMIST!!!
MUST CREDIT ROBERT STERLING & THE KONFORMIST!!!
MATT DRUDGE IS GAY FOR TOM BRADY!!!
If there were any questions before this season started if Tom Brady was truly a great quarterback or merely a good one on a great team, he pretty much silenced them. Finally given weapons at receiver (most notably Randy Moss, the best receiver in football over the past decade) that Peyton Manning long has had as his personal luxury, he had what would have to be the best season in NFL history by any quarterback, throwing for a record 50 touchdowns vs. only eight interceptions, leading the Patriots to an unprecedented 16-0 regular season. (The undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins only played a 14-game regular season.) He followed that up by completing 26 of 28 passes (a NFL record 92.9% completion percentage for a game) with 3 TDs in the AFC semifinals. And though he threw 3 interceptions in the AFC Championship game, he is the heavy favorite to win his 4th Super Bowl today against the New York Giants, which would tie him with Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana (AKA "The Greatest Quarterback of All-Time") for most Super Bowl wins ever by a QB. And its only his eighth season.
Okay, so I give Mr. Brady the deserved respect he's earned this season and his career, whether he wins today or not. One thing that has long puzzled me, though, is why Terrific Tom has long been so heavily featured on The Drudge Report. Granted, Brady is an incredible QB, and this has been an amazing season for both him and the Patriots. Still, even before this year, Brady has been heavily featured on the Drudge Report. This is odd because, well, Mr. Drudge has never seemed to be a sports-loving kind of guy. Indeed, aside from right-wing politics and White House blowjobs, the subjects that Drudge long has fixated on are Barbara Streisand, Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell, not to mention dishing out other Hollywood celebrity gossip.
Some would argue its politics: many of Drudge breathless posts about Brady have mentioned the possibility that he is privately a Republican. The problem with this explanation is, even if it is true, that would hardly make him unique. NFL quarterbacks are, for the most part, rich white jocks, a group of people that certainly lean to the right. Meanwhile, look at some of the names of great quarterbacks over the Drudge era: John Elway, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner (who certainly is an open right-wing poster boy) and Peyton Manning. None have received anywhere the amount of coverage on Drudge that Brady has, even before this season.
On closer examination, the Drudge posts on Brady being a closet Republican seem to be some sort of wish fulfillment. They resemble in style what a post by me would look like if I reported rumors that Jessica Alba has a weakness for underpaid conspiracy theorists in their late thirties. (Though Cash "The Luckiest Man on the Planet" Warren doesn't quite fit the bill.)
Which leads to another explanation: a decade ago, The Konformist became the first place to report the rampant West Hollywood rumors that Matt Drudge was gay. (The article was cleverly titled "Matt Drudge Is a Homo!!!" Boy, am I clever or what?) The rumors, though still not admitted as true by Drudge to pacify his reactionary audience, have since been confirmed by multiple sources, most notably David Brock in his book Blinded by the Right. That said, isn't the best explanation for the Drudge obsession with Brady nothing more than a homosexual celebrity crush?
Can Matt Drudge be blamed for being unable to resist the charms that have swept Gisele Bundchen off her feet? No, of course not. So our advice to Drudge: come out of the closet and interview Tommy in a wedding gown. After all, he's still looking for a permanent Mrs. Brady...
EXCLUSIVE FROM THE KONFORMIST!!!
MUST CREDIT ROBERT STERLING & THE KONFORMIST!!!
MATT DRUDGE IS GAY FOR TOM BRADY!!!
If there were any questions before this season started if Tom Brady was truly a great quarterback or merely a good one on a great team, he pretty much silenced them. Finally given weapons at receiver (most notably Randy Moss, the best receiver in football over the past decade) that Peyton Manning long has had as his personal luxury, he had what would have to be the best season in NFL history by any quarterback, throwing for a record 50 touchdowns vs. only eight interceptions, leading the Patriots to an unprecedented 16-0 regular season. (The undefeated 1972 Miami Dolphins only played a 14-game regular season.) He followed that up by completing 26 of 28 passes (a NFL record 92.9% completion percentage for a game) with 3 TDs in the AFC semifinals. And though he threw 3 interceptions in the AFC Championship game, he is the heavy favorite to win his 4th Super Bowl today against the New York Giants, which would tie him with Terry Bradshaw and Joe Montana (AKA "The Greatest Quarterback of All-Time") for most Super Bowl wins ever by a QB. And its only his eighth season.
Okay, so I give Mr. Brady the deserved respect he's earned this season and his career, whether he wins today or not. One thing that has long puzzled me, though, is why Terrific Tom has long been so heavily featured on The Drudge Report. Granted, Brady is an incredible QB, and this has been an amazing season for both him and the Patriots. Still, even before this year, Brady has been heavily featured on the Drudge Report. This is odd because, well, Mr. Drudge has never seemed to be a sports-loving kind of guy. Indeed, aside from right-wing politics and White House blowjobs, the subjects that Drudge long has fixated on are Barbara Streisand, Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell, not to mention dishing out other Hollywood celebrity gossip.
Some would argue its politics: many of Drudge breathless posts about Brady have mentioned the possibility that he is privately a Republican. The problem with this explanation is, even if it is true, that would hardly make him unique. NFL quarterbacks are, for the most part, rich white jocks, a group of people that certainly lean to the right. Meanwhile, look at some of the names of great quarterbacks over the Drudge era: John Elway, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner (who certainly is an open right-wing poster boy) and Peyton Manning. None have received anywhere the amount of coverage on Drudge that Brady has, even before this season.
On closer examination, the Drudge posts on Brady being a closet Republican seem to be some sort of wish fulfillment. They resemble in style what a post by me would look like if I reported rumors that Jessica Alba has a weakness for underpaid conspiracy theorists in their late thirties. (Though Cash "The Luckiest Man on the Planet" Warren doesn't quite fit the bill.)
Which leads to another explanation: a decade ago, The Konformist became the first place to report the rampant West Hollywood rumors that Matt Drudge was gay. (The article was cleverly titled "Matt Drudge Is a Homo!!!" Boy, am I clever or what?) The rumors, though still not admitted as true by Drudge to pacify his reactionary audience, have since been confirmed by multiple sources, most notably David Brock in his book Blinded by the Right. That said, isn't the best explanation for the Drudge obsession with Brady nothing more than a homosexual celebrity crush?
Can Matt Drudge be blamed for being unable to resist the charms that have swept Gisele Bundchen off her feet? No, of course not. So our advice to Drudge: come out of the closet and interview Tommy in a wedding gown. After all, he's still looking for a permanent Mrs. Brady...
Chavez: Pull reserves from US
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080126/ap_on_bi_ge/venezuela_alba_summit
Chavez: Pull reserves from US
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 26, 2008
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.
Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence.
"We should start to bring our reserves here," Chavez said. "Why does that money have to be in the north? ... You can't put all your eggs in one basket."
To help pool resources within the region, Chavez and other leaders launched a new development bank at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Nations of Our America, or ALBA.
The left-leaning regional trade alliance first proposed by Chavez is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.
Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying "that has to do with this summit."
"The empire doesn't accept alternatives," Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.
Chavez warned that U.S. "imperialism is entering into a crisis that can affect all of us" and said Latin America "will save itself alone."
Rice left Colombia on Friday after a trip aimed at reviving a free trade deal that has stalled in the U.S. Congress. She sidestepped an opportunity to confront Chavez, who accused Colombia and the United States of plotting "military aggression" against Venezuela.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined Chavez in his criticism of U.S.-style capitalism, saying "the dictatorship of global capitalism ... has lost control." Three days earlier, Ortega had shouted "Long live the U.S. government" as he inaugurated an American-financed section of highway in his country.
The ALBA Bank is "being born with the aim of boosting development in our countries," Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Saturday as he and other officials gathered at the bank's Caracas office for an inaugural ceremony.
Isea has said the bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
Chavez welcomed the Caribbean island of Dominica into the ALBA — an acronym that means "dawn" in Spanish — joining Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. Attending as observers were the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with officials from Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis.
Chavez said a new fund created by Venezuela and Iran to support projects in third countries would have links to the ALBA Bank.
Chavez: Pull reserves from US
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 26, 2008
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez urged his Latin American allies on Saturday to begin withdrawing billions of dollars in international reserves from U.S. banks, warning of a looming U.S. economic crisis.
Chavez made the suggestion as he hosted a summit aimed at boosting Latin American integration and rolling back U.S. influence.
"We should start to bring our reserves here," Chavez said. "Why does that money have to be in the north? ... You can't put all your eggs in one basket."
To help pool resources within the region, Chavez and other leaders launched a new development bank at the summit of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Nations of Our America, or ALBA.
The left-leaning regional trade alliance first proposed by Chavez is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.
Chavez noted that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Colombia in recent days, saying "that has to do with this summit."
"The empire doesn't accept alternatives," Chavez told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Bolivia and Nicaragua and Cuban Vice President Carlos Lage.
Chavez warned that U.S. "imperialism is entering into a crisis that can affect all of us" and said Latin America "will save itself alone."
Rice left Colombia on Friday after a trip aimed at reviving a free trade deal that has stalled in the U.S. Congress. She sidestepped an opportunity to confront Chavez, who accused Colombia and the United States of plotting "military aggression" against Venezuela.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega joined Chavez in his criticism of U.S.-style capitalism, saying "the dictatorship of global capitalism ... has lost control." Three days earlier, Ortega had shouted "Long live the U.S. government" as he inaugurated an American-financed section of highway in his country.
The ALBA Bank is "being born with the aim of boosting development in our countries," Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Saturday as he and other officials gathered at the bank's Caracas office for an inaugural ceremony.
Isea has said the bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion.
Chavez welcomed the Caribbean island of Dominica into the ALBA — an acronym that means "dawn" in Spanish — joining Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba. Attending as observers were the prime ministers of Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, along with officials from Ecuador, Honduras, Haiti and St. Kitts and Nevis.
Chavez said a new fund created by Venezuela and Iran to support projects in third countries would have links to the ALBA Bank.
Venezuela, Allies to Start New Bank
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iMCLEISU-Nv0nIUJnH1WkxcabXYgD8UDAQ7G0
Venezuela, Allies to Start New Bank
By IAN JAMES
1-25-8
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and three of his closest allies are teaming up to create a regional development bank intended to strengthen their alliance and promote independence from U.S.-backed lenders like the World Bank.
The bank is to be launched Saturday as Chavez hosts a summit with leaders from Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba — members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA.
The left-leaning regional trade alliance is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.
The ALBA Bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion of capital, Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Friday, according to the state-run Bolivarian News Agency.
Venezuela, with its plentiful oil earnings, is expected to be the leading financier. The funds will go toward social programs and other joint efforts, from farming projects to oil ventures.
Chavez and the leaders of six other South American countries last month launched a similar venture, the Bank of the South, which is projected to have as much as $7 billion in startup capital and offer loans with fewer strings attached than those given by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he believes the ALBA Bank will bring "mutual benefits." For instance, he said, Nicaragua's farm projects could "start supplying Venezuela with milk, with beef" — which could help Chavez's government stem recent shortages of such products.
The two governments Friday signed a series of accords, including one for "food security" under which Nicaragua pledged to help supply milk, corn, beans and beef to Venezuela.
"I want to thank Daniel and all of Nicaragua," Chavez said. "We still have to depend on a lot of imported foods."
In turn, Chavez's government is selling oil under preferential terms to Nicaragua and has sent the country fertilizers, tractors and electric generators.
Venezuela, Allies to Start New Bank
By IAN JAMES
1-25-8
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and three of his closest allies are teaming up to create a regional development bank intended to strengthen their alliance and promote independence from U.S.-backed lenders like the World Bank.
The bank is to be launched Saturday as Chavez hosts a summit with leaders from Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba — members of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA.
The left-leaning regional trade alliance is intended to offer an alternative, socialist path to integration while snubbing U.S.-backed free-trade deals.
The ALBA Bank will be started with $1 billion to $1.5 billion of capital, Venezuelan Finance Minister Rafael Isea said Friday, according to the state-run Bolivarian News Agency.
Venezuela, with its plentiful oil earnings, is expected to be the leading financier. The funds will go toward social programs and other joint efforts, from farming projects to oil ventures.
Chavez and the leaders of six other South American countries last month launched a similar venture, the Bank of the South, which is projected to have as much as $7 billion in startup capital and offer loans with fewer strings attached than those given by the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund.
Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he believes the ALBA Bank will bring "mutual benefits." For instance, he said, Nicaragua's farm projects could "start supplying Venezuela with milk, with beef" — which could help Chavez's government stem recent shortages of such products.
The two governments Friday signed a series of accords, including one for "food security" under which Nicaragua pledged to help supply milk, corn, beans and beef to Venezuela.
"I want to thank Daniel and all of Nicaragua," Chavez said. "We still have to depend on a lot of imported foods."
In turn, Chavez's government is selling oil under preferential terms to Nicaragua and has sent the country fertilizers, tractors and electric generators.
The Roots of a Counter-Culture
http://fora.tv/2007/07/26/Summer_of_Love_at_40
San Francisco, CA
Jul 26th, 2007
The Roots of a Counter-Culture with panelists, David E. Smith, Executive Medical Director, Prometa Center for Addiction; Founder, Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, Wavy Gravy, Activist; Clown; Former Frozen Dessert, Wes "Scoop" Nisker, Author; Radio Commentator; Paul Krassner, Writer, Founder, The Realist Magazine, moderated by Peter Finch,Co-host, KFOG Morning Show.
In the summer of 1967, youths from all over the country converged on San Francisco and laid the foundation for a socio-political legacy. Forty years later, decisions made during the Summer of Love continue to have an impact on our national politics and our lives. Join in a discussion with panelists who witnessed the revelry and the repercussions of a summer that shaped not only a generation, but a way of life. - Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, CA
Jul 26th, 2007
The Roots of a Counter-Culture with panelists, David E. Smith, Executive Medical Director, Prometa Center for Addiction; Founder, Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, Wavy Gravy, Activist; Clown; Former Frozen Dessert, Wes "Scoop" Nisker, Author; Radio Commentator; Paul Krassner, Writer, Founder, The Realist Magazine, moderated by Peter Finch,Co-host, KFOG Morning Show.
In the summer of 1967, youths from all over the country converged on San Francisco and laid the foundation for a socio-political legacy. Forty years later, decisions made during the Summer of Love continue to have an impact on our national politics and our lives. Join in a discussion with panelists who witnessed the revelry and the repercussions of a summer that shaped not only a generation, but a way of life. - Commonwealth Club of California
Congo conflict causes 45,000 deaths a month
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,2245036,00.html
Congo conflict causes 45,000 deaths a month: study
Chris McGreal in Johannesburg
Tuesday January 22, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
The effects of a decade of fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo is continuing to kill about 45,000 people each month - half of them small children - in the deadliest conflict since the second world war, according to a new survey.
The International Rescue Committee said preventable diseases and starvation aggravated by conflict had claimed 5.4m lives since the beginning of the second Congo war in 1998, equivalent to the population of Denmark.
Although the war officially ended in 2002, malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition have continued to claim enormous numbers of lives in part because fighting continues in the east of the country.
The study of 14,000 households across Congo between January 2006 and April 2007 found that nearly half of all the deaths were of children under the age of five, who make up only 19% of the population.
"The majority of deaths have been due to infectious diseases, malnutrition and neonatal- and pregnancy-related conditions," the survey says.
"Increased rates of disease are likely related to the social and economic disturbances caused by conflict, including disruption of health services, poor food security, deterioration of infrastructure and population displacement. Children are particularly susceptible to these easily preventable and treatable conditions."
Congo has endured two foreign invasions and protracted civil war since the aftermath of Rwanda's genocide spilled across the border in 1994 with an influx of more than a million Rwandan Hutu refugees.
The years of conflict resulted in millions of people fleeing their homes, sometimes to live for years in forests where many died, and the collapse of what infrastructure still remained after decades of neglectful rule under Mobutu Sese Seko.
Those who returned home found water sources, health clinics and farms destroyed. Marauding bands of armed men were responsible for mass rape, particularly in the east of the country, which made it much more difficult for women to venture into fields to grow food.
"When war destroys a country's economy and infrastructure, there's no quick fix," said Dr. Richard Brennan, one of the survey's authors.
"Significant improvement in Congo's health and mortality will require years of unwavering commitment from the government and the international community and substantial financial investment. Sadly, the humanitarian crisis in Congo continues to be overlooked and funding remains disproportionate to the enormity of need."
The IRC said that a peace deal in the eastern province of North Kivu, where continued fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in recent months, is also crucial to curbing the rising death toll.
There was hope today that the conflict in the east might finally be drawing to a close after the government and armed groups were reported to be ready to sign a peace agreement. But the deal apparently did not directly address how to deal with two of the most important armed factions - that of the rebel Tutsi general, Laurent Nkunda, who is wanted for war crimes, and the Rwandan Hutu group that has been a leading cause of instability.
Congo is one of 11 countries where 20% of children die before the age of five according to a Unicef report released today. A child born in Sierra Leone has the lowest chance of surviving until the age of five. The report, the State of the World's Children, says nearly 9.7 million children under five died worldwide last year from disease or lack of food.
In Sierra Leone, which is still recovering from an 11-year civil war, the child mortality rate was 270 deaths per 1,000 births. The average rate in developed countries is six deaths per 1,000 births.
Twenty-eight of the 30 countries with the highest child mortality rates are in sub-Saharan Africa. But Unicef said there have also been successes on the continent. Mozambique has seen a 41% drop in child mortality since 1990.
Congo conflict causes 45,000 deaths a month: study
Chris McGreal in Johannesburg
Tuesday January 22, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
The effects of a decade of fighting in the Democratic Republic of Congo is continuing to kill about 45,000 people each month - half of them small children - in the deadliest conflict since the second world war, according to a new survey.
The International Rescue Committee said preventable diseases and starvation aggravated by conflict had claimed 5.4m lives since the beginning of the second Congo war in 1998, equivalent to the population of Denmark.
Although the war officially ended in 2002, malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition have continued to claim enormous numbers of lives in part because fighting continues in the east of the country.
The study of 14,000 households across Congo between January 2006 and April 2007 found that nearly half of all the deaths were of children under the age of five, who make up only 19% of the population.
"The majority of deaths have been due to infectious diseases, malnutrition and neonatal- and pregnancy-related conditions," the survey says.
"Increased rates of disease are likely related to the social and economic disturbances caused by conflict, including disruption of health services, poor food security, deterioration of infrastructure and population displacement. Children are particularly susceptible to these easily preventable and treatable conditions."
Congo has endured two foreign invasions and protracted civil war since the aftermath of Rwanda's genocide spilled across the border in 1994 with an influx of more than a million Rwandan Hutu refugees.
The years of conflict resulted in millions of people fleeing their homes, sometimes to live for years in forests where many died, and the collapse of what infrastructure still remained after decades of neglectful rule under Mobutu Sese Seko.
Those who returned home found water sources, health clinics and farms destroyed. Marauding bands of armed men were responsible for mass rape, particularly in the east of the country, which made it much more difficult for women to venture into fields to grow food.
"When war destroys a country's economy and infrastructure, there's no quick fix," said Dr. Richard Brennan, one of the survey's authors.
"Significant improvement in Congo's health and mortality will require years of unwavering commitment from the government and the international community and substantial financial investment. Sadly, the humanitarian crisis in Congo continues to be overlooked and funding remains disproportionate to the enormity of need."
The IRC said that a peace deal in the eastern province of North Kivu, where continued fighting has displaced hundreds of thousands of people in recent months, is also crucial to curbing the rising death toll.
There was hope today that the conflict in the east might finally be drawing to a close after the government and armed groups were reported to be ready to sign a peace agreement. But the deal apparently did not directly address how to deal with two of the most important armed factions - that of the rebel Tutsi general, Laurent Nkunda, who is wanted for war crimes, and the Rwandan Hutu group that has been a leading cause of instability.
Congo is one of 11 countries where 20% of children die before the age of five according to a Unicef report released today. A child born in Sierra Leone has the lowest chance of surviving until the age of five. The report, the State of the World's Children, says nearly 9.7 million children under five died worldwide last year from disease or lack of food.
In Sierra Leone, which is still recovering from an 11-year civil war, the child mortality rate was 270 deaths per 1,000 births. The average rate in developed countries is six deaths per 1,000 births.
Twenty-eight of the 30 countries with the highest child mortality rates are in sub-Saharan Africa. But Unicef said there have also been successes on the continent. Mozambique has seen a 41% drop in child mortality since 1990.
White Hot
http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/412/white-hot;_ylc=X3oDMTE2MDVocjJhBF9TAzI3MTYxNDkEc2VjA2ZwLXRvZGF5BHNsawNob3QtY29sb3Jz
White Hot
Silver loses its long-held top spot as the most popular car color.
by Althea Chang
After seven years wearing the color crown, silver has been dethroned.
For the first time this century, more white cars were manufactured in 2007 than those in any other color, according to DuPont’s most recent color study.
In North America, 19 percent of vehicles manufactured in 2007 were either white or "pearl white," which is white with an iridescent or metallic sheen. Eighteen percent of 2007 vehicles were silver, and 16 percent were black, including black with metallic effects.
White has also taken a decisive lead in other countries, including Japan and Mexico. In Europe, however, black was far and away the top color.
White had an even stronger showing among luxury cars, where it made up 22 percent of vehicles manufactured in 2007 (5 percent of those were pearl white) and tied with the color black. Silver was the next most common color for luxury cars in 2007, at 20 percent. "Our report is based on quantities of paint sold to OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], production data they share with us, and other sources,” says DuPont spokesperson Rick Straitman.
The color white is increasingly dominant, not just in the auto industry, but in home furnishings, fashion, consumer products, and industrial design, says Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute.
White was the most popular color among Chevrolet and Ford buyers, according to J.D. Power and Associates' Power Information Network, which tracks consumers’ buying habits. Dodge buyers preferred red, while BMW, Cadillac, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz buyers gravitated toward black.
White is also a popular color for so-called fleet vehicles, which are cars and trucks used commercially, such as by power companies and rental agencies, says Global Insight analyst John Wolkonowicz.
Despite white's victory in 2007, silver will still likely be the dominant color on the roads for some time. "Given silver's popularity over the past seven years and the fact that it is still a popular color choice, you should expect to see a high number of silver vehicles on the road for the coming years," says Karen Surcina, color marketing and technology manager at DuPont.
Considering that the average vehicle is on the road for 13 years, according to U.S. Department of Transportation estimates, it could take a decade or more for silver cars to start thinning out, and that’s only if the color decreases in popularity. "When silver first came on the scene [in the mid to late 1990s], it was a high-tech color that corresponded with people's interest in technology and the future," Surcina says. Then the tech bubble burst and the economy started to suffer. As time went on, silver became a “safe” color that consumers could opt for and not worry about it standing out too much, or turning off potential buyers when it came time to resell their vehicles.
Even if white continues to swell in popularity and sparkling particles give the color new life, the trends may not be seen on highways and in driveways for some time. "While palate-cleansing white is expected to usher in a new era in car colors and iridescent paints, and sparkling mica particles and unusual effects are gaining popularity among more adventurous types, most car buyers are still sticking with safe colors like silver and black,” says Christopher Li, industry analyst at the Power Information Network.
White Hot
Silver loses its long-held top spot as the most popular car color.
by Althea Chang
After seven years wearing the color crown, silver has been dethroned.
For the first time this century, more white cars were manufactured in 2007 than those in any other color, according to DuPont’s most recent color study.
In North America, 19 percent of vehicles manufactured in 2007 were either white or "pearl white," which is white with an iridescent or metallic sheen. Eighteen percent of 2007 vehicles were silver, and 16 percent were black, including black with metallic effects.
White has also taken a decisive lead in other countries, including Japan and Mexico. In Europe, however, black was far and away the top color.
White had an even stronger showing among luxury cars, where it made up 22 percent of vehicles manufactured in 2007 (5 percent of those were pearl white) and tied with the color black. Silver was the next most common color for luxury cars in 2007, at 20 percent. "Our report is based on quantities of paint sold to OEMs [original equipment manufacturers], production data they share with us, and other sources,” says DuPont spokesperson Rick Straitman.
The color white is increasingly dominant, not just in the auto industry, but in home furnishings, fashion, consumer products, and industrial design, says Leatrice Eiseman, director of the Pantone Color Institute.
White was the most popular color among Chevrolet and Ford buyers, according to J.D. Power and Associates' Power Information Network, which tracks consumers’ buying habits. Dodge buyers preferred red, while BMW, Cadillac, Lexus, and Mercedes-Benz buyers gravitated toward black.
White is also a popular color for so-called fleet vehicles, which are cars and trucks used commercially, such as by power companies and rental agencies, says Global Insight analyst John Wolkonowicz.
Despite white's victory in 2007, silver will still likely be the dominant color on the roads for some time. "Given silver's popularity over the past seven years and the fact that it is still a popular color choice, you should expect to see a high number of silver vehicles on the road for the coming years," says Karen Surcina, color marketing and technology manager at DuPont.
Considering that the average vehicle is on the road for 13 years, according to U.S. Department of Transportation estimates, it could take a decade or more for silver cars to start thinning out, and that’s only if the color decreases in popularity. "When silver first came on the scene [in the mid to late 1990s], it was a high-tech color that corresponded with people's interest in technology and the future," Surcina says. Then the tech bubble burst and the economy started to suffer. As time went on, silver became a “safe” color that consumers could opt for and not worry about it standing out too much, or turning off potential buyers when it came time to resell their vehicles.
Even if white continues to swell in popularity and sparkling particles give the color new life, the trends may not be seen on highways and in driveways for some time. "While palate-cleansing white is expected to usher in a new era in car colors and iridescent paints, and sparkling mica particles and unusual effects are gaining popularity among more adventurous types, most car buyers are still sticking with safe colors like silver and black,” says Christopher Li, industry analyst at the Power Information Network.
Mystery man's annual visit to Poe grave
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080119/ap_on_fe_st/poe_mystery_visitor
Mystery man's annual visit to Poe grave
By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 19, 2008
Undeterred by controversy, a mysterious visitor paid his annual tribute at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe early Saturday, placing three red roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac before stealing away into the darkness.
Nearly 150 people had gathered outside the cemetery of Westminster Presbyterian Church, but the man known as the "Poe toaster" was, as usual, able to avoid being spotted by the crowd, said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum.
The tribute takes place every Jan. 19 — the anniversary of Poe's birth.
The visitor did not leave a note, Jerome said, electing not to respond to questions raised in the past year about the history and authenticity of the tribute.
Sam Porpora, a former church historian who led the fight to preserve the cemetery, claimed last summer that he cooked up the idea of the Poe toaster in the 1970s as a publicity stunt.
"We did it, myself and my tour guides," Porpora, a former advertising executive, said in August. "It was a promotional idea."
Porpora said someone else has since "become" the Poe toaster.
Jerome disputes Porpora's claims and says the tribute began in 1949 at the latest, pointing to a 1950 article in The (Baltimore) Evening Sun that mentions "an anonymous citizen who creeps in annually to place an empty bottle (of excellent label)" against the gravestone.
Jerome invites a handful of Poe enthusiasts to join him inside the church every year but withholds details of the tribute in an effort to help the toaster maintain his anonymity. He said the visitor no longer wears the wide-brimmed hat and scarf he donned in the past.
In 1993, the visitor left a note reading, "The torch will be passed." A later note said the man, who apparently died in 1998, had handed the tradition on to his two sons.
This year's visitor was the same man who has come to the grave site many times in the past, Jerome said.
"We recognize him from his build, the way he walks," he said. "It would be very easy for us, visually, to see if this were a different person."
Poe, who wrote poems and horror stories including "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart," died Oct. 7, 1849, in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern. Next year will be the 200th anniversary of his birth.
___
On the Net:
Poe House and Museum: http://www.eapoe.org/
Mystery man's annual visit to Poe grave
By BEN NUCKOLS, Associated Press Writer
Sat Jan 19, 2008
Undeterred by controversy, a mysterious visitor paid his annual tribute at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe early Saturday, placing three red roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac before stealing away into the darkness.
Nearly 150 people had gathered outside the cemetery of Westminster Presbyterian Church, but the man known as the "Poe toaster" was, as usual, able to avoid being spotted by the crowd, said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum.
The tribute takes place every Jan. 19 — the anniversary of Poe's birth.
The visitor did not leave a note, Jerome said, electing not to respond to questions raised in the past year about the history and authenticity of the tribute.
Sam Porpora, a former church historian who led the fight to preserve the cemetery, claimed last summer that he cooked up the idea of the Poe toaster in the 1970s as a publicity stunt.
"We did it, myself and my tour guides," Porpora, a former advertising executive, said in August. "It was a promotional idea."
Porpora said someone else has since "become" the Poe toaster.
Jerome disputes Porpora's claims and says the tribute began in 1949 at the latest, pointing to a 1950 article in The (Baltimore) Evening Sun that mentions "an anonymous citizen who creeps in annually to place an empty bottle (of excellent label)" against the gravestone.
Jerome invites a handful of Poe enthusiasts to join him inside the church every year but withholds details of the tribute in an effort to help the toaster maintain his anonymity. He said the visitor no longer wears the wide-brimmed hat and scarf he donned in the past.
In 1993, the visitor left a note reading, "The torch will be passed." A later note said the man, who apparently died in 1998, had handed the tradition on to his two sons.
This year's visitor was the same man who has come to the grave site many times in the past, Jerome said.
"We recognize him from his build, the way he walks," he said. "It would be very easy for us, visually, to see if this were a different person."
Poe, who wrote poems and horror stories including "The Raven" and "The Telltale Heart," died Oct. 7, 1849, in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern. Next year will be the 200th anniversary of his birth.
___
On the Net:
Poe House and Museum: http://www.eapoe.org/
Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7204635.stm
Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News, education
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Three Digital Pigs
A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned down by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.
The digital book, re-telling the classic story, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues".
Becta, the government's educational technology agency, is a leading partner in the annual Bett Award for schools.
The judges also attacked Three Little Cowboy Builders for offending builders.
The book's creative director, Anne Curtis, said the idea that including pigs in a story could be interpreted as racism was "like a slap in the face".
'Cultural issues'
The CD-Rom digital version of the traditional story of the three little pigs, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, is aimed at primary school children.
But judges at this year's Bett Award said that they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues".
The Three Little Cowboy Builders has already been a prize winner at the recent Education Resource Award - but its Newcastle-based publishers, Shoo-fly, were turned down by the Bett Award panel.
The feedback from the judges explaining why they had rejected the CD-Rom highlighted that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community".
They also warned that the story might "alienate parts of the workforce (building trade)".
The judges criticised the stereotyping in the story of the unfortunate pigs: "Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?"
Animal Farm?
Ms Curtis said that rather than preventing the spread of racism, such an attitude was likely to inflame ill-feeling. As another example, she says would that mean that secondary schools could not teach Animal Farm because it features pigs?
Her company is committed to an ethical approach to business and its products promote a message of mutual respect, she says - and banning such traditional stories will "close minds rather than open them".
Becta, the government funded agency responsible for technology in schools and colleges, says that it is standing by the judges' verdict.
"Becta with its partners is responsible for the judging criteria against which the 70 independent judges, mostly practising teachers, comment. All the partners stick by the judging criteria," said a Becta spokesman.
The reason that this product was not shortlisted was because "it failed to reach the required standard across a number of criteria", said the spokesman.
Becta runs the awards with the Besa trade association and show organisers, Emap Education.
Merlin John, author of an educational technology website which highlighted the story, warns that such rulings can undermine the credibility of the awards.
"When benchmarks are undermined by pedestrian and pedantic tick lists, and by inflexible, unhelpful processes, it can tarnish the achievements of even the most worthy winners.
"It's time for a rethink, and for Becta to listen to the criticisms that have been ignored for a number of years," said Mr John.
Three Little Pigs 'too offensive'
By Sean Coughlan
BBC News, education
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Three Digital Pigs
A story based on the Three Little Pigs fairy tale has been turned down by a government agency's awards panel as the subject matter could offend Muslims.
The digital book, re-telling the classic story, was rejected by judges who warned that "the use of pigs raises cultural issues".
Becta, the government's educational technology agency, is a leading partner in the annual Bett Award for schools.
The judges also attacked Three Little Cowboy Builders for offending builders.
The book's creative director, Anne Curtis, said the idea that including pigs in a story could be interpreted as racism was "like a slap in the face".
'Cultural issues'
The CD-Rom digital version of the traditional story of the three little pigs, called Three Little Cowboy Builders, is aimed at primary school children.
But judges at this year's Bett Award said that they had "concerns about the Asian community and the use of pigs raises cultural issues".
The Three Little Cowboy Builders has already been a prize winner at the recent Education Resource Award - but its Newcastle-based publishers, Shoo-fly, were turned down by the Bett Award panel.
The feedback from the judges explaining why they had rejected the CD-Rom highlighted that they "could not recommend this product to the Muslim community".
They also warned that the story might "alienate parts of the workforce (building trade)".
The judges criticised the stereotyping in the story of the unfortunate pigs: "Is it true that all builders are cowboys, builders get their work blown down, and builders are like pigs?"
Animal Farm?
Ms Curtis said that rather than preventing the spread of racism, such an attitude was likely to inflame ill-feeling. As another example, she says would that mean that secondary schools could not teach Animal Farm because it features pigs?
Her company is committed to an ethical approach to business and its products promote a message of mutual respect, she says - and banning such traditional stories will "close minds rather than open them".
Becta, the government funded agency responsible for technology in schools and colleges, says that it is standing by the judges' verdict.
"Becta with its partners is responsible for the judging criteria against which the 70 independent judges, mostly practising teachers, comment. All the partners stick by the judging criteria," said a Becta spokesman.
The reason that this product was not shortlisted was because "it failed to reach the required standard across a number of criteria", said the spokesman.
Becta runs the awards with the Besa trade association and show organisers, Emap Education.
Merlin John, author of an educational technology website which highlighted the story, warns that such rulings can undermine the credibility of the awards.
"When benchmarks are undermined by pedestrian and pedantic tick lists, and by inflexible, unhelpful processes, it can tarnish the achievements of even the most worthy winners.
"It's time for a rethink, and for Becta to listen to the criticisms that have been ignored for a number of years," said Mr John.
Weird Las Vegas and Nevada
Weird Las Vegas and Nevada is the new book by Tim Cridland, better know to many by his stage name Zamora the Torture King.
Weird Las Vegas is the latest in the Weird US series, which started with Weird New Jersey. Each of the Weird US books covers the legends, folklore, personalized properties, eccentric people and events, outlandish rumors and of the different States.
Why was Zamora selected to write Weird Las Vegas? The Las Vegas weekly newspaper City Life explained it well when they wrote "...the selection isn't so puzzling. Turns out Zamora's real name is Tim Cridland, a Las Vegan who, before he decided to make a living by sticking spikes through his face, used to publish a 'zine devoted to the weird called Off the Deep End. This venture allowed him to indulge in his passion for sideshow acts by forming one himself with the help of friends. His act would eventually evolve into the Jim Rose Circus, which toured not just Lollapalooza but the world. If Cridland's name (or pierced profile) seems familiar, it's because you've seen him on shows like Ripley's TV, Guinness World Records and 48 Hours. Oh, and he already co-wrote the book Circus of the Scars, a history of the early years and rise (if you can call it that) to infamy of the Jim Rose Circus."
Here is what the reviews have said about Weird Las Vegas and Nevada:
"Do not venture into the Silver State without this guidebook..." --- Richard Menziez
"This book is a must if you visited or live in Las Vegas... Buy this book is worth every dollar!!!!!" --- Paul A. Vincent
"This is a great book for anyone’s collection on Nevada. The stories are interesting, well-done, and the quality of the book is superb."
--- Ryan Jerz's blog
"Anyone ... curious about some of the off-the-wall history facts; plus ghosts, bizarre architecture; unusual places to visit; UFO’s will have a field day with this nicely-priced guidebook to the Silver State should get a copy of Weird Las Vegas and Nevada. Beautifully illustrated, easy-indexed and covering everything from Busy Siegel to Elvis, Area 51, Liberace, thrill rides, strange museums, roadside oddities and more, it’s a “gee-whiz” book with class and character. It approaches this unique state like no other travel guide."
--- Howard Schwartz Gambler's Book Club
"...add Weird Las Vegas to your collection of quirky books about Sin City" --- Las Vegas City Life
You can get a copy signed copy of Weird Las Vegas, direct from the author, postage paid, for only $20.00, less than it costs at a store. Plus, you will also get a copy of the article Fear and Loafing in Las Vegas from the newspaper Los Angeles Alternative Press. This is a mini-guide to Weird Las Vegas written by Zamora and is one of the things that lead to the contract to write the book.
Los Angeles Alternative Press is now out of business and the article can no longer be found on the Internet. I saved a stack of the issue when it came out, so you will receive the original article, not a photocopy or rewrite.
To get your copy of Weird Las Vegas, send $20.00, cash check or money order to:
Tim Cridland
PO Box 71652
Las Vegas, NV 89170
Make the check or money order out to "Tim Cridland" and state how you would like your copy signed
Weird Las Vegas is the latest in the Weird US series, which started with Weird New Jersey. Each of the Weird US books covers the legends, folklore, personalized properties, eccentric people and events, outlandish rumors and of the different States.
Why was Zamora selected to write Weird Las Vegas? The Las Vegas weekly newspaper City Life explained it well when they wrote "...the selection isn't so puzzling. Turns out Zamora's real name is Tim Cridland, a Las Vegan who, before he decided to make a living by sticking spikes through his face, used to publish a 'zine devoted to the weird called Off the Deep End. This venture allowed him to indulge in his passion for sideshow acts by forming one himself with the help of friends. His act would eventually evolve into the Jim Rose Circus, which toured not just Lollapalooza but the world. If Cridland's name (or pierced profile) seems familiar, it's because you've seen him on shows like Ripley's TV, Guinness World Records and 48 Hours. Oh, and he already co-wrote the book Circus of the Scars, a history of the early years and rise (if you can call it that) to infamy of the Jim Rose Circus."
Here is what the reviews have said about Weird Las Vegas and Nevada:
"Do not venture into the Silver State without this guidebook..." --- Richard Menziez
"This book is a must if you visited or live in Las Vegas... Buy this book is worth every dollar!!!!!" --- Paul A. Vincent
"This is a great book for anyone’s collection on Nevada. The stories are interesting, well-done, and the quality of the book is superb."
--- Ryan Jerz's blog
"Anyone ... curious about some of the off-the-wall history facts; plus ghosts, bizarre architecture; unusual places to visit; UFO’s will have a field day with this nicely-priced guidebook to the Silver State should get a copy of Weird Las Vegas and Nevada. Beautifully illustrated, easy-indexed and covering everything from Busy Siegel to Elvis, Area 51, Liberace, thrill rides, strange museums, roadside oddities and more, it’s a “gee-whiz” book with class and character. It approaches this unique state like no other travel guide."
--- Howard Schwartz Gambler's Book Club
"...add Weird Las Vegas to your collection of quirky books about Sin City" --- Las Vegas City Life
You can get a copy signed copy of Weird Las Vegas, direct from the author, postage paid, for only $20.00, less than it costs at a store. Plus, you will also get a copy of the article Fear and Loafing in Las Vegas from the newspaper Los Angeles Alternative Press. This is a mini-guide to Weird Las Vegas written by Zamora and is one of the things that lead to the contract to write the book.
Los Angeles Alternative Press is now out of business and the article can no longer be found on the Internet. I saved a stack of the issue when it came out, so you will receive the original article, not a photocopy or rewrite.
To get your copy of Weird Las Vegas, send $20.00, cash check or money order to:
Tim Cridland
PO Box 71652
Las Vegas, NV 89170
Make the check or money order out to "Tim Cridland" and state how you would like your copy signed
Kenn Thomas & Nick Nolte - Separated at Birth?
"America's Most Beloved Conspiracy Theorist" and "People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive"
Rupert the Anti-Christ
http://www.ruperttheantichrist.com/
Hi, I’m Rupert the Anti-Christ and this here's my website!And two listen too me annoucne my fourmal inauguration, listen here:
http://gorightly.podomatic.com/entry/2008-01-27T23_17_36-08_00
Rupert announces on the Space Brother Radio show his intentions to run for President of these here United States of America! Also announced: his running mate!
Thanks for yer support!
And for the website of the kewl artist for this site:
http://www.bentoandstarchky.com/
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