Taomeow

Sounds wonderful. My parents used to always agree with each other and never have arguments between themselves -- they teamed up against me instead. Did you and your dad gang up on your mom by any chance? or a sibling of yours?..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wv3ic6OOXns

There's two main impulses that draw people of two different kinds into arguments: 1. I need to prove I am right. If I'm not right, I'm wrong. If I'm wrong, mommy and daddy won't love me. (The world is a stand-off for mommy and daddy who were the first experience of "the world" and got the basic blueprint of "what the world is like" imprinted into the child. For people imprinted in this manner, proving their rightness is, on a deeper level, about proving to the world their right to exist, something they aren't imprinted to take for granted and need to keep struggling to establish. Because it is the struggle itself that was imprinted rather than the "victory," no amount of victories ever makes any difference to them -- they will still seek the struggle. This is typical for those who were not accepted for who they are early on, and instead were being molded and shaped into what the parents wanted to get for the end product, either by direct demands or indirectly via subtle "attitudes" of approval and disapproval toward the child's every manifestation. Many of them had to show "accomplishments" or else face contempt, lack of acceptance, lack of love... lack of the right to just be. In other words, this type of personality originates in trauma.) 2. I need truth to prevail over lies, misconceptions, delusions, mistakes, falsehoods, ruses, honest but costly errors, dishonest manipulations, and so on. This is normal and healthy. One may or may not verbalize this need, but not verbalizing it is nowhere near "always" superior to verbalizing it. "Wake up, your house is on fire" is what you might want a neighbor next door to be able to yell at the top of his lungs rather than keep to himself.

Zhongyongdaoist, aside from your opening sentence in which you grant yourself the right to paternalize (without merit -- I am also a mensa bailer-out ), I agree with much of your sentiment or at least see where you're coming from. I didn't mean to contrast "my way" with yours when I was describing it. I was just describing it. I am fully aware that "my way" can be suspect to those who don't use it (which was the original objection you had to my "western derived from taoist" statement with no footnotes to back it up), because I seldom retain linear "proof" -- I merely wanted it to go on record that I do review such proof before discarding and not using and forgetting it, is all. Meaning, I have the tool, I just don't use it "at all times for all purposes." Not so when I've zeroed in on what I do want to know in depth and be able to explain to someone else if necessary. That's where all the fine details matter, and if I don't have them, it's only because I'm dealing with something huge that you can't grok all at once. Chinese astrology is one such area. My teachers suggested a timeline of 30+ years to become truly an expert. I have invested about 12 so far. This means I have thoroughly forgotten hundreds of sources that I perused during this time because I no longer need them. This also means I'm not afraid to make a mistake because a mistake no longer signifies cluelessness, it signifies about as much as a spelling error does for someone who actually does know how to write in general and how to spell in particular -- i.e. nothing to be hung up about. Once you know the right way to write "the right way," you don't sweat accidentally writing "the light way" -- see what I mean? I used to have to consult books to figure out the motion of the Nine Flying Stars, e.g., till I learned how to do it on my fingers. Once I learned to do it on my fingers, I proceeded to learn how to do it in my mind. The image of motion -- the universal pattern of motion of qi in the universe -- is nonverbal, so now that I have it installed in my mind, I know something that started out as knowledge on the verbal level and ended up abandoning this level and moving on to the next one. When asked to retrace my steps, back to the verbal and numerical level, I may or may not remember all of them, particularly because the decisive bit of information that allowed for all of it to fall into place came in an instant blaze of inspiration, blinding me with its beauty and simplicity and burning all the bridges -- elaborately engineered, sturdy, tangible, respectable, linear bridges that took me to that place only to be destroyed in a fierce blaze of truth... ...see what I mean? It's not easy being me.

It's not genetics, contrary to what scientists used to believe, it's exposure. Turns out our enzyme-producing systems are trainable and the traits acquired are transmitted to the offspring -- second generation only. If a food of a particular kind that requires specialized enzymes to be metabolized is not consumed, the body shuts down the production of digestive enzymes in charge of metabolizing it, and if a child is born to a parent who uses no dairy, she will inherit the shut-down. So will her own children, who will inherit it from her directly if she keeps having no exposure to this particular type of food. However, if she starts getting such exposure, her offspring will only have inherited partial shut-down, and their offspring will be born with unblocked enzymatic production for this food. I.e. the trait of East Asians being unable to digest dairy disappears in the third post-exposure generation. And of course Mongolians, while being genetically indistinguishable from their neighbors across the border, and having consumed dairy for many generations unlike their neighbors across the border, don't know that East Asians are supposed to be genetically unable to. This interesting mechanism of enzymatic systems turning on and off in response to exposure explains many phenomena people observe when they go on this or that funky diet, lose the ability to digest a normal food, and then when they try and discover it makes them feel bad, draw the conclusion that they've become superhealthy and supersensitive and therefore what they can no longer process was "bad" to begin with. However, in many cases all it takes to get back the enzymes and digest the food without any problems is gradual small-portion reintroduction of the item, and within days the body gets a clue. Enzymatic systems do not work for nothing -- no exposure, no enzymes, we don't waste valuable resources on complex metabolic pathways (which enzymatic ones are) which we don't use. This is worth remembering for someone who's been a vegetarian for a while, e.g., or raw foodist, or alternatively, never ate anything raw that in our culture is not usually eaten raw. My acupuncturist, who's Chinese, used to disapprove of my sushi habit -- "how can anyone eat raw fish?.. Humans who eat raw fish are at risk of being..." -- "...Japanese?" I suggested.

There is no "nutritional science" as pertaining to health because Western medical science does not have a definition for "health" (sic) and only understands it as "the absence of a diagnosed illness." If you want to review scientific literature on the subject of nutrition, keep in mind it is all designed in this manner, i.e. as related to illness that can be supposedly brought about or prevented by this or that food consumption. (The lists of foods keep changing though... eggs used to "cause" then "help" then "cause" again problems with cholesterol... High fiber used to "prevent" then "cause" then "the jury's still out" colon cancer. Soy used to "prevent" then "cause" breast cancer, "aggravate" then "relieve" thyroid problems -- till all of a sudden neither one is the issue, the issue is whether it "causes" or "alleviates" brain damage. And so on. Same food, same illness, different studies, different "results." I really, really stopped wondering why.) This said... if you still insist... A book you will find most comprehensive coming from this perspective would be "Nutritional Influences on Illness" by Melvyn Werbach. It is a rather thorough overview of a helluva lot of scientific literature on, well, nutritional influences on about 100 "popular" illnesses. There's also a "Nutritional Influences on Mental Illness" arranged in a similar fashion. For nutritional science of health, however, you would have to choose a modality to study that has actually developed a particular paradigm of "health" that does not rely for any of its definitions on "illness." (Within this paradigm, a food is good or bad for a particular purpose, for a particular person in a specific situation, during a certain period of time... and the same food is going to be no good for another person, in a different situation, during a different period of time, etc.. You will find that such and such items are good for pregnant women for the duration of the first trimester, or for hard-working students for the winter semester, but that something altogether different may be needed if the pregnant woman AND the hard-working student are the same person.) I'd say go with TCM or Ayurveda, either one would be a complete system of this nature; there's no Western counterpart. For the Western counterpart, there's numerous schools, sects, and fad enclaves of nutritional thought of course, some of which are better than others (nearly all of which I have studied diligently, until summarily abandoning them all as grossly pathetic), but if you want a systemic understanding, consider going with one of the complete traditions available for study.

Well, let's see if we can rescue it a bit. One of the hidden dietary perils in modern Western diets is the frequent absence or near-absence of fermented foods (of the kind not killed by canning). These are a major contributor to health due to beneficial bacterial cultures that in a healthy digestive tract are abundant enough to account for about 2 lb of weight. They produce certain vitamins in the gut not really available from other sources (e.g. vitamin K, a major player in vascular health, among other things) and do half the work digesting our foods for us and making sure we get what we eat broken down to bioavailable bits and pieces. They can become extinct after a course of antibiotics, or very poorly represented if no fermented foods are consumed regularly. Fermented dairy products are the only ones worth eating these days, and they are far from perfect (not because of the junk science that denounces them on the basis of we're not baby calves and so on -- with this logic we would have to conclude India, Pakistan, all of the Middle East, etc., are populated exclusively by baby calves, billions of them -- and have been for all of their recorded history, since there's no recorded history of these parts of the world not consuming dairy at any time in their existence -- on a daily basis whoever could afford it, or as often as they could for everyone else), but because of the horrible things done to modern dairy that make it into what it's naturally not. However, if it is organic AND fermented, half the battle is won -- it is predigested by the critters in the process of fermentation and made bioavailable for humans this way (unless it is "fat-free" or "low fat" -- nothing can make a human body metabolize these properly, because high levels of calcium present in dairy only become bioavailable to the body in the presence of fat and fat-soluble vitamins, otherwise it turns into building blocks for kidney stones and never makes it to the bones or anywhere else it might be needed). So... cheese. The story of cheese, an ancient staple of Indo-European but not East Asian cultures, is the story of a simple, nutritious, healthy product, very useful in situations where growth is desirable (due to polyamines it is particularly rich in, which are growth facilitators -- and the reason behind Ayurvedic, traditional European, etc., medicinal uses -- primarily for children who are not growing well, are skinny, lag behind in physical or mental development, are prone to illness and weakness, and for adults convalescing from an illness or suffering from any number of digestive problems, which are often alleviated by this mild, easy-to-assimilate food). Of course if the cows were molested, so is the milk and so is the cheese; but otherwise, if it's just cheese, from a healthy non-factory-farmed animal's milk and with no harmful additives, it's quite wonderful. East Asians, in the meantime, pickle, ferment, and otherwise preserve with beneficial critters everything that moves or doesn't move, eat it pretty much on a daily basis, and that's where they get their share of beneficial bacterial cultures. I used to buy something almost every day from a particular vendor in Xi'an who was selling homemade, un-canned, fermented goodies -- dozens of varieties of vegetables, but not only -- and that's how I got by on no cheese in China.

The "German scientists" at the beginning should read "the Nazi scientists who were asked to back up the Nazi antismoking campaign." The rabbit hole wikipedia circumvents goes sooooooo deeeeeeep... None of it was real science. It was propaganda machine manufacturing its products. Is all. Good luck quitting the habit of using these products. I know it's hard... they are addictive, they are designed to be... but quitting them is the single healthiest thing one can do in this-here life.

Scotty, my information is neither arbitrary, made up by me, or unresearched -- only unexpected, reflective of a position that has been laboriously made unpopular, new to those not exposed to other sides of the story, and unorthodox in the present set-up. I STRONGLY recommend reading this most enlightening book as a starting point in real research into the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Tobacco-Cultural-History-Seduced-Civilization/dp/0802139604 You can look at some of the reviews at Amazon for starters, and satisfy yourself that it is neither "pro" nor "against" but instead clear, superbly researched (I remember 30+ pages of scientific references listings at the end -- I don't own the book, it was from the library so I can't verify, but I checked out many of them when I read it some ten years ago), and wonderfully written -- lively, witty, rich in historic fact (did you know, e.g., that our freedom and democracy, our Declaration of Independence, was designed and signed by people most of whom were tobacco farmers?..) -- and accurate. It will give anyone a much better perspective of what it is we are dealing with in reality than any and all vested-interest sources whence their dis-information has been coming so far -- both "pro" and "con." Get your information and draw conclusions using a mind, not a repeat-the-repeaters device, is what I'm driving at. But "information" is key word. With primary sources addressed, not the repeat-the-repeaters antismoke screens and mirrors of propaganda. With actual scientific, historic, multicultural, experiential, facts to replace fiction. Ask your brain to do some leg work for a change of pace everyone who had it riding the syndicated train of "thought" for too long. Read a book... I'm not asking anyone to take my word for anything. I'm asking everyone to help me maintain faith in the human race, is all. I need that. As for your (Scotty) other questions, if they remain unanswered after that, I'll be happy to answer to the best of my ability.

Thank you once again for helping me formulate my own position with much clarity. OK, there's two things I know about smoking tobacco (that's tobacco the sacred/medicinal herb in human use for 18,000 years, and as an agriculturally cultivated crop in the Andes for 6,000 years, NOT big tobacco's cocktail of chemicals slightly flavored with tobacco we all love to hate -- including me). 1. It is a powerful medicine (not "drug") with strong effects. Like any medicine, it should only be used by those who need it and shouldn't be used by those who don't. Like any strong medicine, it can be habit forming and used by those who don't need it, but research actually shows that people who don't need it do not get "addicted" to it (the term is "chippers" I believe -- people who might smoke "socially" but do not form the habit and can easily go for months or years without smoking, and if they do smoke, they stay in the low consumption range -- often something like one cigarette a day. Compare to Freud who smoked eighteen CIGARS a day and got mouth cancer. IMO, he smoked like that because he wanted to numb his mouth to the fact that his mouth was busy lying all the time, and cancer of the mouth was the outcome of lying, a health-damaging systemic distortion of function, smoking being his attempt at self-medication for the condition.) Medicinal uses are both ancient and modern -- I have references to current, present-day American research into anticancer (sic) properties of tobacco, shockingly enough, and no, they weren't funded by big tobacco. As well as dozens of references to worldwide research into tobacco smoking preventing neuromuscular disorders (Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, MS) especially coupled with coffee drinking (an almost 100% prevention rate in this combo). Before Rockefeller medicine, tobacco smoking was the single most often prescribed medical intervention by MDs (sic) in the United States (sic), for conditions ranging from depression (safety and efficiency far surpassing those of designer molecules used today for the purpose) to digestive trouble of many kinds to allergies, while in ointments and tinctures tobacco preparations (recipes stolen or borrowed or purchased from Native Americans) were successfully battling cancer. 2. The ability of natural tobacco (NOT the commercial brands with neuroactive chemical drugs for additives designed to increase addictiveness and dependency -- big tobacco employs neuroscientists working specifically for this purpose) to form the habit is fully attributable to the fact that ...please start reading carefully here, please... nicotinergic neural pathways (we have nicotine receptors in the brain -- we don't and can't have receptors in the brain for "drugs") act as a back-up system for dopaminergic pathways. I.e. if one's dopamine-norepinephrine axis is weak, due to (always) high levels of stress prenatally, in infancy, or in early childhood, nicotinergic pathways can be used instead to take on many of its functions. Dopaminergic pathways are the most significant stress mediation system the human being has; when they are weak developmentally or weakened environmentally, the resulting problems are numerous and range from mild to severe to deadly. That's where nicotine comes into the picture. It is as sanctioned evolutionally as the need of the great apes and humans for vitamin C from dietary sources, which all other mammals (with the curious exception of the guinea pig) produce in their liver and do NOT require in the diet. We, however, get sick and die if we don't get it in adequate amounts from extraneous (plant) sources. We have exactly the same situation with nicotine, but unlike with vitamin C, it is not "all" members of the species that require it from extraneous sources, only "some" -- specifically those whose brains underproduce dopamine or have lost (or failed to develop early on, as in premature babies) an adequate number of receptors, or both. (Nicotine, in addition to having its own receptors in the brain, stimulates and preserves the existing ones for dopamine -- which is the reason behind its preventive role in diseases that are the outcome of the destruction of dopamine receptors -- MS, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, and some types of age-related senility.) So "addicted" smokers self-select for getting "addicted" in a situation where without this addiction (self-medication, really) they would be much worse off. They are using a medicine that has untoward effects -- which, however, are seldom anywhere near as bad as the bad effects of the underlying condition -- the systemic failure to mediate ANY type of stress, whether brought about by factors of emotional, psychological, infectious, environmental-toxic, exertion-related, or any other nature. Someone with a dopamine problem is a sitting duck for many illnesses, on top of high rates of suicide, violence, and all sorts of social maladaptation patterns. In many MANY cases, all it takes to eliminate ALL of these factors outta one's life is to activate the back-up system to take on the functions of the weak dopaminergic one -- the nicotinergic one. Instead, they are being cut off from this option, brainwashed into believing they smoke because they are "bad," and self-righteously discriminated against by the less-than-stellar representatives of ALL races, nations, creeds, genders, sexual orientations and religious beliefs, which is more than any one of these ever had to endure, and aimed against people who are in the position of weakness (unless they are allowed to make themselves stronger) to begin with. A weakness which is invisible (it is not a skin color or a gender, not something obvious on the surface... it is in the BRAIN, stupid!). And of course exploited by commercial interests while at it (that's where big tobacco enters the picture). And left with the option of a troubled, unhealthy, and shortened life as their reward for being good and staying away from the only medicine out there that could change that. Beautiful. I want anyone who is going to argue to actually read what I am saying. Someone who is heavily dependent on smoking is in a position of stress-mediating weakness from the get go, so whatever health problems this person may encounter in the future, he or she will encounter them more readily than someone who doesn't have the dopamine problem to begin with and combats ANY type of stress more successfully -- that's a lifelong disparity between the two categories. So there's no comparison that can be meaningfully made between the state of health of people who smoke and "can't quit" vs. people who are not into smoking -- they are coming from metabolically different health bases to begin with. Please let this sink in before I move on to TCM and hopefully get the topic back on track...

I post like a freedom warrior, you, like a label machine.

Excellent elucidations, thank you. And now let's move on to the actual studies that "proved" smoking "causes" what they told the public it causes -- the only studies ever performed. Here's how they were designed -- I guess it tells you a bit about the character of the people who found it necessary to design and implement them in this manner, on top of other interesting ideas you might derive from the actual information as to what it takes to make "hard scientific proof" in the lab and how easy it is to prove absolutely anything under extreme torture conditions. And how necessary it is to resort to torture to prove something that is a lie and therefore can't be "confessed" by the living body in any other manner. Smoking Beagles In the earliest experiments (1950s or early 1960s) the "beagles were strapped side-by-side to a long bench, in a rather unnatural upright position. They were fitted with face masks, which forced them to inhale and exhale smoke from lighted cigarettes. A mechanical device lit a new cigarette and dropped it into the air line as soon as an old one was used up. Colby writes, "Although the Surgeon General later claimed the smoking machines did not force animals to inhale and exhale deeply, the newsreel footage sure make it look as if the dogs were inhaling and exhaling deeply." Colby then describes an experiment by government scientist Oscar Auerbach et al which was cited in the Surgeon.General's report of 1971. In this one, the government scientists slit the throats of 78 Beagles and inserted mechanisms in these "tracheotomies" which enabled the dogs to "smoke" through their throats. This experiment was again described in the 1977 S.G.'s report. The 1982 S.G.'s report also described it. Chapter 9, In Defense of Smokers Incidentally, no dogs contracted lung cancer. Deaths were due to "various causes," chiefly "food aspiration." Severed Legs Not covered by Colby but listed in the Center for Disease Control's Bibliography of Continuing Studies on Smoking and Health, 1984-85 is a study on the effect of tobacco to the circulatory system. In this one, the legs of the dogs were completely severed except for the major arteries. The dogs, still living, were monitored for extended periods while the researchers kept track of the effects of nicotine on the circulatory system. Presumably they were unconscious during these tests. Ripped Chests Ten dogs had their chest cavities opened so that their coronary arteries could be mechanically manipulated to reduce blood flow. The dogs were forced to breathe cigarette smoke, then treated with Ethanol. Ethanol then cigarette smoke, cigarette smoke then Ethanol.1 Secondhand Smoke For a change, no animals were pierced, cut, strapped down, rendered unconscious, shot up with dangerous substances or forced to breath tobacco smoke through tracheotomies. Instead two veterinary teaching hospitals examined pet dogs in the comfort of their own homes. Exposure levels to secondhand smoke were assessed. Disappointingly, the researchers found no dose response, no statistical significant risk.3

Yes, if it being the outcome of smoking wasn't made up, it would have been horrible. Like Scotty said, his grandmother smoked till age 102 but it doesn't mean it was good for her. However if she died at half that age of cancer, it would definitely mean "because of smoking," right? Scotty, why I posted about secondhand smoke -- because that's where we need to start rescuing people from the cult. The nonsmokers who are brainwashed into believing they are being harmed by smokers, and belligerently hostile toward the latter as a result. If they learn they'd been given a target instead, a scapegoat ('cause who's gonna fight corporations that poison food, water, air, and yes cigarettes too, everything and everybody? no one has the power... whereas lashing out at an individual who lights up is a welcome break from this powerless self-perception, an empowering power trip... which is one of the many reasons we have been co-opted into the cult to begin with). If even this sinks in, for starters, then the next question might be, well, what else did they lie about?.. If this question consciously arises, I will answer. I'm not going to waste arguments where they can't get through... something has to give first. Oh, on the subject of stinking clothes and so on. I am extremely sensitive to smells. I can't handle the smell of commercial cigarettes, because they don't smell of tobacco, they smell of toxic chemicals therein. But there's worse things out there. There's deodorants and perfumes. Petroleum-based personal hygiene products, with volatile toxic chemicals -- they are designed to be volatile, unlike nicotine which is a tar and doesn't float around as a smell once the open window takes the smoke out of the room -- but perfume is designed to last and last, right?.. So unlike nicotine which doesn't have this ability, deodorants and toilet waters and perfumes that everybody uses and no one is investigating for health impact (why would they?.. right?..) really really stink. Some people use a little, and I can handle being in their company, but others (many) use a lot, and I start having breathing problems. And moral and ethical and health concerns too. I would love to start educating people (not discriminating against them, mind you) about the health hazards of what they use for "attractiveness" and "smelling good" but first they would have to believe they smell bad, not good. Can they believe it if their all senses are confused?.. if when they are not using these products, they smell of a toxic body (no showers help, not for longer than half an hour anyway), they smell of poisonous "diet" foods and drinks, of constipation (for which smoking real tobacco is a cure, by the way), they breathe out stinking ketones because their insulin-glucose metabolism is off kilter, they smell of mold when they are on antibiotics, of quiet desperation when on antidepressants... yuck. Real tobacco which many of you may never have smelled (it was tampered with, see) smells the way a burning herb is supposed to smell -- nice. The word "perfume" means "through the smoke" in Latin -- the original way to "perfume" yourself for nice smell and health and attractiveness was to get smudged with the smoke of burning herbs. Don't we all love our Better Life Through Chemistry.

I highly recommend, as a first step in the general direction of the truth for those who have been summarily denied it by the globalist fundamentalist antismoking cult, the study of a document known as The Brussels Declaration of Scientific Integrity, in particular the section dealing with prohibitionist pseudoscientific tactics used to artificially manufacture nonexistent data on the health hazards of secondhand smoke and manipulate public opinion and attitudes accordingly. http://brusselsdecla...assive_smoking/ You can also familiarize yourself with some of the documents and books listed here: http://fightingback.homestead.com/ Once the basics are covered, we can proceed to "TCM and tobacco" the real story.

Oh, I would really love to see all those sensitive folks intolerant of the toxic impact of the smell of tobacco on clothes to be permanently relocated to the Gulf of Mexico. Let them smell oil and Corexit instead. They can even be employed as FDA experts who determine the safety of seafood by smell test -- that's official by the way -- they sniff dead fish scooped out for public consumption and then announce it safe and chemicals-free. Oh, and the crusaders against the personal habits that are a public hazard like the smell of tobacco on clothes could still fight the smokers there -- it's a tad easier than taking on BP et al, but every bit as gratifying, righteous indignation 'n all.

This looks pretty ad hominem to me... too bad, I wasn't yet giving up on you till now. OK, to address your concerns: I wasn't particularly tense, you just used this move in order to gain a patronizing superiority stance -- but much as I hate to disappoint you, I'm in perfect control of how tense or how relaxed I choose to be at any given moment, and pretty aware of it too; I am not acting like I'm waging a war, I'm acting like I'm writing a forum post expressing a strong opinion; my 'strategic secrecy' is nothing more than my lack of interest in satisfying a trolling appetite; and yes, Israel does have nukes, they told me so, but they won't tell you because you are not asking questions in order to get answers, you are asking them in order to turn the acquired information against the opponent. Fair enough?..

Herr Freud, you are WAY off. I didn't tell you if I smoke because I owe you no confessions. If I do I do so proudly, not shamefacedly. If I don't I don't want to undermine my support for those who do by stepping to the safe side of PC. In any event, the "pain" you psychoanalyzed out of -- um, thin air? smoke? -- is in reality involved in observing the proliferation of anti-smoking junta's laws and the behavior of its hired fuhrers and self-appointed enthusiasts. Why it pains me is, in part, because my mother has to go out into the street in February in the middle of a celebration of her golden wedding to have a cigarette. But you need an ulterior motive. You need me to crack up and confess an even more sinister secret. Well, bring on the nail-pulling pliers. Bring on the waterboarding. Bring on the priestly robes and have me whisper my sins into a booth, or however it's supposed to be done. Bring on a forum post? -- nah... you have to take away my choice of what I tell whom and what for first. Wear a uniform or something and you might succeed, but otherwise...

It matters who finances the study because if the big pharma does, the scientists who don't go along with what the financing party wants proved don't get the financing, or get fired if they fail to produce the prescribed "results." The argument I'm making is you have been lied to, massively, and manipulated the hell out of. That's the argument I'm making. Whether smoking is harmful is a separate discussion. Being brainwashed is harmful is the argument I'm making. Harmful to self, cruel to others, and overall wrong.

For your personal enlightenment: my mother has been smoking for close to 70 years, so when you et al say "smokers stink" I want to flush the contents of this particular stinking trash can some people have had installed in their mind down the toilet.

You are mistaken. The original argument against smoking (presented by King James of the King James Bible) was exactly the one I offered -- it is a heathen practice, coming from people of color who serve the devil. Since you are in Germany, you may want to research into who exactly launched a new antismoking campaign in the 20th century and on what grounds and with what kind of arguments. Repeating the repeaters can take one far away from reality. E.g., all the people who say "there's been tons of studies" would be hard pressed to actually produce one -- ONE -- they have personally seen. And if they do, they will be still harder pressed to find an independent source of financing of that study that is not traceable to big pharma. Whose products with which smoking competes too successfully -- addictive antidepressants -- is another trillion-dollar bonus of demonizing smoking... by the way, tobacco companies the perusers of chemical additives to tobacco and pharmaceutical companies are in snug cahoots and sit on the same boards of directors of the same medical establishments creating their policies and strategies together. Did you know that?.. The same people who write about the perils of smoking are the people who slip addictive additives into the smokes... did you know that?.. No need to know anything when it's all chewed up and offered on a platter, with a hate target on the side for all the untoward feelings one's life might generate for whatever reasons. E.g., for the reason of one's unconscious mind knowing that the conscious mind is being manipulated but having no power to do anything about it.

Thanks for sharing in the fun! There's more where this comes from... good to know I'm not the only one who likes pulling rabbits out of the old worn top hats of history where one wouldn't expect to find anything alive... but... hey presto!

What smokers are really useful for is to replace, well, others who used to occupy the same spot in society. We used to have "no colored people" posted in bars and restaurants and on the buses. In fact everywhere where now we have our lovely "no smoking" signs instead. We used to have "no homosexuals in this church" or "this army" or "this family." We used to have all those convenient second-class citizens for all our purposes, and then we lost some of them, but thank god they gave us smokers to compensate for the loss. Surely we have come a long way, baby.

When you are looking at a steak you're about to eat, your eyes inform your brain as to what they're looking at and your brain starts predicting the future and transmitting the information to the rest of your body. The prediction is, "There's an 80% chance you are going to have to digest this." Based on this prediction, your brain informs your salivary glands: "something will happen in the near future that will require some input from you. You need to be prepared, so start secreting, please." It also informs the stomach, "I have a prediction for you, you are going to have to digest a piece of meat in the near future. Please release the hydrochloric acid." It also informs your heart, "something will happen in the near future, you don't need to know all the details but you have to pump some blood away from me, the brain, and in the general direction of the digestive tract -- starting in about ten minutes. Trust me. And get to work." It also informs your liver and pancreas, "there's a job coming your way, an easy one, no sugar involved, just proteolytic enzymes, please." In this way, your whole body is adjusted to meet the future with adequate tools. If something breaks down in this system of communications about the future, an illness follows. Just as it happens in a society that has lost this "just the tool for predicting the future."

I wrote a response but then realized that it went a bit off the thread and on a tangent, so I moved it to my personal forum. Please come visit!

However, if you go to Shiji, the historic record by Sima Qian written around 100 B.C. but containing much earlier material (the second most read Chinese book in history, after the I Ching), you will find a series of predictions or "omens" that deal with the rising of the planets, their conjunctions and paths through the stars that are strikingly similar to the Enuma Anu Enlil -- so much so that communication between Chinese and Mesopotamian astrologers before 100 B.C. can only be disputed by someone not familiar with either source. Multiple caravan routes intersecting in Persia connected the Greeks and the Chinese and that's where and that's how the (much) older civilization was being vigorously absorbed by the budding one. The origin of "The Greek Miracle" -- the sudden (sic) cultural and scholastic boom it experienced, which seeded the rest of Western civilization, is fully traceable to these contacts. A Eurocentric view of culture has been circumventing this plain fact of history for centuries. The premise that China was "isolated" originates in the same ideology, not in the historic fact. So... research in this direction if interested, or not if not. I don't approach these things as a scholar with an ax to grind... I merely go to research when I need to get a better idea as to what to choose for in-depth study out of all the inexhaustible "stuff out there," but I have no use for trivia accumulated in the process of making this determination in the form of "precise dates" and "exact places" and "correctly spelled names." Once I've satisfied myself that the authors I've reviewed have already done the job (or not), I don't memorize for Jeopardy type victories... so I remember the very central what-it's-all-about of things, and promptly lose the rest. So if you won't look at the sources I mentioned yourself, for no other reason than because I got you curious... then that's pretty much the end of it. I have nothing to prove except "I don't do homework for forums."